Now friends, I want us to look at this with open Bibles as I share some scriptures and honest prayerful hearts. The murder of two little boys is not complex history. It is sin and pure evil. And the church of Jesus Christ ought to say so without stammering.

Just last week, on the seventh of October, 2023, Hamas terrorists took Shiri Bibas and her sons, Ariel, four years old, and baby Kfir, nine months old, from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. Their father, Yarden, was taken separately. After four hundred and eighty-four days he came home alive, in February of 2025. His wife and children did not. Their bodies were returned later. Yarden is the only one left of that little family.

This week a Church of England church in Leeds, Leeds Minster, hosted a large stitched display called Stitch Their Names Together. The names came from the Gaza Health Authority list. That list does not separate civilians from fighters. Jewish leaders in Leeds warned the church that names of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters were among them. The church checked some names and went ahead. Then they received further evidence of at least eighteen known Hamas fighters on the panels hanging inside the Minster. On the eighteenth of September they took the exhibition down and apologised for harming trust with the Jewish community.

Before that, campaigners asked Canon Paul Maybury, the rector, about the murdered Bibas children. He said the history is complex. Asked his view of Hamas, he said no comment. Later, the Minister put out a written statement condemning the killing of civilians and the taking of hostages by Hamas on the seventh of October. Now that is better than silence. But the first words on camera were still evasion. And beloved, evasion is not the ministry of the Word.

That is the record. It is public. It is not rumour.

Why this matters

You see, a church is not a civic hall for every cause that comes down the road. Paul tells Timothy that the church is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

1 Timothy 3:15

When a church hangs names of terrorists in the house of God, and cannot clearly condemn the murder of babies, it has lost its compass. The Word of God is not foggy here.

You shall not murder. (Exodus 20:13)

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness. (Isaiah 5:20)

Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. (Ephesians 5:11)

Jesus said it would be better for a man to have a millstone hung around his neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Matthew 18:6. These were not soldiers. They were a toddler and an infant stolen from their beds and killed.

God still says of Abraham's seed, I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you. Genesis 12:3. We are told to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Psalm 122:6. A church that treats the Jewish people as an afterthought or treats the massacre of their children as one more item in a complex file, has forgotten both the Scriptures and the Saviour who was Himself a Jew.

How some remember

Now many of us have kept orange in view since those children were taken. Orange became a colour of remembrance because of their red hair. It is a small thing. The Lord sees it.

Some remember with colour. Some remember with miles. A young runner from Manchester, Yoel Levy, has been running marathons dressed as Batman because that was Ariel's hero. He has run Jerusalem, London, New York, Sydney, Boston and more. Supporters come out in orange. He has met Yarden. Yarden's mother gave him a pin that he wears on every race. He says that pin means more than any medal. Grief put into the next step. That, beloved, is a better witness than calling murder complex.

More than colour or miles, the Lord sees a father who still writes to sons who will never open another birthday present.

The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit. (Psalm 34:18)

Pray for Yarden Bibas by name.

A word to the wider Church of England

This is not only one rector in Leeds. For years faithful ministers have warned that when bishops will not hold to the plain teaching of Scripture, the fruit will show. Confusion about marriage and holiness is one fruit. Confusion about murder and terrorism is another. Some congregations have already said they are no longer in gospel partnership with a House of Bishops that will not speak as the Bible speaks. That is not schism for its own sake. It is a plea that the church remain the church.

Now we do not hate Anglicans. We do not hate Palestinians. We hate the murder of children. We hate the honouring of those who murder them. We hate the use of a pulpit or a minister to blur what God has made plain.

What we must do

Open the Bible. Read it as it is written. Do not let the world, or parts of the institutional church, teach you that evil is complicated when God has called it sin.

Stand with the Jewish people. Pray for Israel. Pray for innocent Palestinians who suffer under Hamas as well. Do not let one grief cancel the other. Do not let context cancel the sixth commandment.

Speak the truth in love. Love without truth is not love. Truth without love is not the way of Christ. Both are required.

Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. (2 Timothy 4:2)

The Lord Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He still loves the little children. He still weeps over Jerusalem. He will still judge righteously. Until He comes, the church must not lose its voice.