1 Samuel 8:21-22 -- When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the Lord. The Lord answered, “Listen to them and give them a king.”
The biblical history of Israel is not pretty. To the contrary, it is down right brutal and idolitrous at times. But it is rich with lessons and messages for us.
I recently finished an excellent historical book by Barry Strauss about the Jews and Rome. It covered about 200 years of Jewish history. There was tremendous strife and violence in Israel's past, marked by enormous internal conflicts and violence.
This video presents a longer period of time from a biblical perspective.
When you look at the difficulties with uniting just 12 tribes in a tiny parcel of land, it is a wonder that any nation as large and diverse as a America exists. Uniting the 13 original colonies, let alone all 50 states, is remarkable. We united without internal battles. The colonies and states didn't wage war against one another. We had no King. The glue that bound us together was the love of freedom, a belief in biblical principles, strong resentment of taxation and conflicts of interest by our leaders and rights guaranteed in our Constitution.
America put into action the lessons and principles in the bible. I think it can be said that if there wasn't either the Hebrew Bible or the Gospels, there wouldn't be America.
Both the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels provided foundational principles and models for our young nation’s laws, values, and vision. Without these cornerstone texts, the unique character of America’s founding and it's conception of liberty, justice, and human dignity would likely not have emerged as it did.
Key founding symbols like the Liberty Bell bear direct quotations from Leviticus (“Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof” – Leviticus 25:10). Revolutionary leaders, regardless of their personal faith, frequently invoked stories like the Exodus as metaphors for breaking oppression and creating a new people under God. The structure of American self-government, including ideas like the separation of powers, can be traced to warnings against centralized power in passages like 1 Samuel 8 and principles of justice and equality found throughout the Torah.
The Gospels and Christian teachings saturated both the private lives and public institutions of early Americans. The overwhelming majority of early Americans and their leaders identified as Christian, and the Bible (including the "Old" and "New Testament") was the most-read and most-quoted book of the era. Christian moral teachings heavily influenced concepts such as forgiveness, charity, and civic virtue, which were seen as essential for self-government and a just society. Colonial documents and state constitutions openly declared the necessity of Christian moral principles for ordering society and sustaining liberty. Jews made great contributions directly and indirectly.
Ironically, Jews by & large refuse to study the Gospels. Here we are living in a nation that cherishes our Hebrew scriptures, and which has sheltered us from antisemitism for centuries, yet we have scales in front of our eyes when in comes to the words and teachings of the New Testament. We have no problem reading about Marx or Buddah, yet heaven forbid we open the Book of Matthew, the first book in the Gospels. It makes no logical sense. It isn't natural.
The story of Israel isn't natural. It is supernatural. It promises a messiah from the line of David. "The Hope of Israel is 2000 years old." So it says so in Israel’s national anthem. Jews and Christians, with faith, both believe in The Hope. Come.