Jesus changed everything
May 27
Before Jesus was born, God demanded that that the people serve him and him alone as we know from the 10 Commandments. God’s desire to be number one and to be the only God that we serve is a theme that runs not only in the Old Testament but right through the new Testament as well. If you read the book of Samuel, you will see how David physically fought wars against the enemies of Israel. Recently I read one of the chapters of first Samuel and I saw how David slaughtered thousands and thousands and thousands of enemy troops. There was even one instance where David made all the prisoners lie down in a long row and the first two were killed and the next one was allowed to go free and then the next two were killed and the following one was allowed to go free and in that way two thirds of all of them were killed. Now this might seem extremely barbaric to us in this day and age. But as I read through that chapter, God must have said on at least three occasions in that chapter alone that He gave his favour to David in everything that he did. In other words God thoroughly approve of everything that David had done to defend his name.
The reason that I am mentioning this is that gave me some insight into the Muslims. The whole world is highly critical of radical Muslims are killed to defend their faith or what they believe is defending the faith. However what they are doing is no different to what God’s people used to do before Jesus. They would kill people who did not believe in their faith and who they believed were against their God or enemies of their God.
And so for the first time I could have a faint or vague understanding of why Muslims would act this way. In our faith everything changed when Jesus came. Jesus came as the saviour and he came to change history and to change the world as we know it. Jesus came to introduce a new covenant which was no longer based on the law. It is no longer based on a works and we were no longer required to defend the name of God by killing the enemy. Jesus said I came to give you peace. When Jesus came everything changed.