When the Battle Lines Were Drawn

Anti-Semitism, the hatred of Jewish people, is devilish and goes back a long way. After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, God said to Satan, “I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15 NLT).

Game on. The battle lines were being drawn, and the Devil knew that a deliverer, a Messiah, would arrive on the scene. He also knew he would come through the Jewish people.

In Exodus we see the Pharaoh giving the decree to put to death all the Jewish baby boys. But courageous Hebrew midwives refused to follow his decree and saved those baby boys. One of those boys was placed in a little basket with some pitch around it to keep it afloat, and it was sent cruising down the Nile River. That little baby boy came to be known as Moses, and he delivered the Jewish people from the bondage of Pharaoh.

Then you come to the book of Esther, and the Devil is at it again with a plot to destroy the Jewish people. But God intervened.

Maybe you’re at a point in life where you’re saying, “I don’t feel like God is with me at all. I feel as though I’m all alone.” If you are not a Christian, God is with you in a broad sense, because God is omnipresent. He is everywhere. But there’s a difference between God being with you and God being in you.

That’s really what being a Christian is. It’s having Christ living inside of you. God wants to be a part of your life. It may seem as though He isn’t paying attention to you, but actually He is.