A thought that comes to me in conjunction
with our reading from Psalm 78 today, that
these things are written for our admonition upon
whom the ends of the age have come.
Israel is our textbook.
Israel is the expositor of the human condition.
The Jew is man writ large.
Their history, their failing, their apostasy, is such
an open textbook and revelation not only of
the Jewish condition but of the human condition.
So it behooves us to be instructed and
to see that we are they, that we
are capable of and exhibit even some of
the same sins for which Israel was guilty.
That's why it's in the book.
These things are written for our admonition upon
whom the ends of the age have come.
The things that refer to Israel are not
just for antiquarian interest.
They're not just little historical asides.
They are the most pointed and profound instruction
for us upon whom the ends of the
age have come.
Israel herself is a sacrifice for the church.
Her failings and her agonizing and her judgments
are for our benefit.
So let's read the psalm with that kind
of understanding.
The subtitle in my edition here is God's
Goodness and Israel's Ingratitude.
And then it says a maskil of Asaph.
A maskil is something designed for the instruction
of others.
Something like wisdom.
Whether he himself is the author or was
given this by David and then transposed it,
we're not told.
But some of the deepest psalms are given
with the name Asaph, whoever he was.
But the remarkable thing is you can't tell
where David leaves off and Asaph begins.
There's such a congruence and a harmony of
mind and thought and heart in both men
that we're still reading the psalms of David.
It's Davidic.
So give ear, O my people, to my
teaching.
Here it's not the psalmist speaking, God himself
directly.
And often we see in the psalms the
Lord will insert himself after a statement by
the psalmist, a lament, a cry.
Then all of a sudden, bang, God himself
is speaking.
This psalm begins with God, which is unusual.
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching.
Incline your ears to the words of my
mouth.
I will open my mouth in a parable.
I will utter dark sayings from of old.
Things that we have heard and known.
That our ancestors have told us.
So it looks like verse 3 now is
no longer the Lord speaking, but the psalmist
in behalf of Israel hearing him and acknowledging.
We will not hide them from their children.
We will tell to the coming generation the
glorious deeds of the Lord and his might
and the wonders that he has done.
He established a decree in Jacob and appointed
a law in Israel, which he commanded our
ancestors to teach to their children.
That the next generation might know them, the
children yet unborn, and rise up and tell
them to their children.
So that they should set their hope in
God and not forget the works of God.
And that they should not be like their
ancestors, a stubborn and rebellious generation.
A generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose
spirit was not faithful to God.
Any comment thus far about the means by
which successive generations are instructed by those who
have preceded them.
And can bring the testimony of God out
of the reality of their known experience.
So that it fits the next generation to
tell theirs.
And in that kind of continuum, Israel grows
up in the environment of its own history
as it reflects upon the deeds of God.
And if that fails, if that communication fails,
if fathers are not faithful to communicate to
sons, then the whole heritage is lost.
And the new generation grows up in a
spiritual vacuum in which their history is lost
to them and its value.
And therefore they will find themselves repeating the
sins of their fathers.
For they had not been instructed of the
consequence of past sin by the failure to
transmit it mouth to mouth, generation to generation.
You get a sense of the economy of
God.
This is before electronics and tapes and everything
is personal.
Communication is the soul of the matter.
So that the reality of what Israel has
passed through, which is unique.
No other nation has been subject to such
dealings as this people.
No other nation has had a God appear
to them, wreathed in fire at Sinai.
And gave them his law by the writing
of his own finger.
And has carried them through 40 years in
the wilderness as we will read on.
And provided for them manna every day and
sustained them.
Gave them a Moses and an Aaron.
I mean Israel's history, what shall we say?
Do we sufficiently appreciate it?
And do we see it not just as
another people with whom we have some kind
of faint connection, but as being one with
ourselves?
This is our Israel.
We who are far off have been brought
nigh into the commonwealth of Israel.
This is our history.
And that's why Paul in 1 Corinthians, as
I mentioned so many times, speaking to Greeks.
About the episode of Israel passing through the
Red Sea.
He says, even as our fathers were baptized
unto Moses, both in the sea and in
the cloud.
How can you say to Greeks, our fathers?
Because Paul sees perfectly that they have been
made sons of Abraham by faith in Christ
Jesus.
And that this is their inheritance.
And that it's perfectly legitimate to allude to
the fathers of Israel as being their fathers.
Maybe we would not be suffering identity loss
if we were grounded in this reality.
That we have an ancestry.
We have a history.
We have the patriarchs.
We have the prophets.
We have the psalmist.
And we're not even Jewish.
You don't have to be Jewish to have
it.
You have earned to be sons of Abraham
through faith.
But you need to have it.
You need to have an ancestry.
You need to have a history.
Or else how shall your future be made
clear?
It's an unbroken continuum.
And we're caught up in the very gist
of it.
And being called to participate in bringing it
to its climax.
It's the history of Israel.
Which is redemptive history.
Which is the, what's the German word?
The Weltanschauung.
The world history.
The world revelation of the redemptive work of
God.
We don't have a word for it in
English.
Redemptive history.
But they have a word for it in
German.
Weltanschauung.
Is redemptive history.
The history of God through his people from
its inception to its climax.
We don't have that sense as the church.
That's why we're a bunch of rolling stones
and drifters and atoms and individualists who don't
have a connection.
There's no coherence because we've not seen ourselves
as being integral to that past and connected
to that future.
Because we've not read the Psalms.
Or we've read it at a distance, so
to speak, as not pertaining to us.
You know that when they have the Passover,
they have the four sons.
The foolish son, the wise son, the wicked
son.
So what's the wise son?
The wise son says, this happened to us
in Egypt.
We put the blood on the door or
something like that.
What is the wicked son?
The wicked son, well, the foolish son says,
I don't know.
No one ever told me.
Okay, you're forgiven.
But the wicked son knows and says, this
has nothing to do with me.
I'm not related to that.
That's what makes him wicked.
He will not acknowledge his connectedness to the
past of his own people.
And God calls that wicked.
So this has given us in Scripture, not
just for a passing curiosity, but to remind
us again of how integral our own present
life is.
With Israel's past.
And that we need to benefit from that
past because we're just as prone to succumbing
to the same error and sins as they.
And they have suffered severe judgment and they
are yet to suffer severe judgment.
But when we say they, we're not speaking
about some distant people with whom we have
but scant interest, but our own.
These are our brethren.
What does Jesus say in Matthew 24, is
it?
The least of these my brethren.
They're still his brethren, even though they have
been reduced in the world through persecution.
They've been made least, but their identification has
not changed.
They're still his brethren.
And Psalm 102, which I've spoken from time
to time over the years, you need to
get the tape of that.
Here's a sublime psalm showing that the set
time to favor Zion has come for the
deliverer to come out of Zion and to
take their transgression from them, even independent of
their repentance.
When my servants have pity upon their stones
and compassion upon their dust.
God waits for something, not from Israel.
Israel is a dead duck, a gone goose.
Israel's over the edge.
Israel's lost in apostasy.
They're incapable of response.
They're dry bones.
What is he waiting for?
Something from a mysterious entity alluded to in
Psalm 102 as my servants.
Certainly it's not Israel.
If Israel were the servants, they would not
be suffering these calamities.
Who are the servants?
What distinguishes them?
They have compassion on Israel's stones and pity
upon her dust.
That's more than just interest in antiquity.
That's identification with Israel in her most abject
fallenness and judgment.
When indeed Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and all of
the cities of Israel will be reduced to
stone and stubble.
And the world will be gloating over that
because of that Gentile hatred and resentment of
God's chosen people.
And relishing the fact that they're now catching
it and they deserve it.
Finishing the job that Hitler started.
The only thing wrong with Hitler, he didn't
finish it.
But there'll be a small presence in the
earth that rather than gloat and delight in
Israel's distress, will be compassionately identified with her
in her stones and in her dust.
How do we come to a place like
that?
That kind of identification is what God is
waiting for for the set time to favor
Zion.
The issue is not Israel.
The issue is the church.
That comes to a place of identification that
cannot be naturally explained.
Why should any Gentile have this identification with
a fallen apostate sinful nation now rightfully experiencing
its judgment?
Only because they're identified and in union with
a God who while we were yet sinners,
died for us.
That's exactly the same.
There's a certain remarkable parallel.
That just as the world is sifted by
the devastation that came upon Jesus.
What do you make of him?
Who do you say that he is?
This mangled man.
You can't pass this by in neutrality.
You can't make this a matter of indifference.
It's too stark.
It requires something from us either an acceptance
or a rejection.
The same thing will be true of Israel
when it will be battered into that condition.
Isaiah 53 is as perfect a picture of
Israel's future condition as it was of Jesus
at the cross.
And therefore the nations will have an opportunity
to see the cross reiterated in Israel's own
suffering before their very eyes.
God says I'll not do this in a
corner but before the face of all nations.
Because it will judge them.
What do you do with the least of
these people?
How do you respond to them?
What does Paul say in Romans 11?
What's the capstone of the church?
What's its high water mark?
That it can extend mercy.
That they will receive mercy.
And they will need it in that last
hour.
But to extend it in that last hour
will require everything from him who gives it.
Because he's putting his own head on the
block.
And putting his own life and that of
his family at risk.
To extend mercy to a people who are
being pursued the world over.
Got the idea?
So this is a whole very great subject.
But reading this psalm and considering it will
help to fit us.
So look at the grace that has come
to Israel.
The glorious deeds of the Lord in verse
4.
And his might and the wonders that he
has done.
How shall we know God as God?
If we have not understood nor seen him.
In the wonders that he has done for
Israel.
And the might that he has displayed.
Where else since that time has God turned
a red sea to dry land?
Part of the seas.
Where else has he fed multitudes?
There is over 2 million people with Moses
in the wilderness.
Talk about logistics.
I trembled with fear when God brought us
from Plainfield, New Jersey.
Out here and had to within months we
had 55 people living in this place.
In makeshift housing and without adequate insulation.
And we were living in poverty.
We didn't let the world know our need.
The Lord forbade it.
We had to live by faith and trust.
And well I could believe Lord for my
own family.
You've shown yourself faithful when I left the
teaching profession.
And gave up the security of medical insurance.
And annual benefits and increments.
And all the kinds of things that fall
to a teacher.
And left that to become a missionary to
the Jews at 100 bucks a week.
And wondered how would my family survive on
100 bucks a week.
And the Lord was ample in everything.
But then to go from that testimony to
this place.
Not just my family but 55 souls.
Pregnant women, children.
And how are they to be provided for.
And we were here for 10 years.
And no one ever died for want of
nourishment.
Although we came close.
Inga's frustration was that she could not cook.
In the grand style to which she is
disposed.
And that if we had guests she was
embarrassed that she couldn't put before them.
Wonderful illustrious meals.
We couldn't afford it.
So she was continually chafed by having to
live under those conditions.
And that tension was made manifest throughout the
body.
As one of the factors with which we
had to live.
We were tested for 10 years.
And the just shall live by their faith.
And this was during the prosperity period in
the church.
When the glass cathedrals were going up everywhere.
And multi-million dollar extravaganzas.
Our tongues are hanging out for elementary things
like food, shelter, insulation, protection from the weather.
But the Lord was faithful.
Then you go on to the next faith
and the next requirement.
From faith to faith as it is written.
The just shall live by their faith.
The mistake was leaving Plainfield, New Jersey.
Believing that you heard God at the head
of the road.
Who said end time teaching sent the community
refuge.
And you had to give up an entire
lifestyle.
And its comforts.
Jewish charismatic darling that you were.
With two Volvo's.
Old but still good.
And the 17 room house that Inger loved
dearly.
And come out to Nowheresville.
To begin with.
For the thing for which you are now
receiving the benefit.
So where do we have the knowledge of
God who can provide?
What is the basis for our confidence when
he calls us.
In tremulous uncertainty to a next step.
For which we don't see how he can
meet it.
It's because we know.
From the testimony of Israel.
That this is a God who is mighty.
In power and in glorious deeds.
If we don't know it from here we
don't know it.
And that church.
That has just come to church with its
new testament.
And has relegated the old testament to the
dustbin.
As being passe.
Has lost an entire inheritance.
A legacy about God himself as God.
And his most conspicuous givingness of himself.
To an entire nation.
We have to resuscitate.
Bring that legacy back to the church.
Or it's not the church.
And the Psalms.
And the prophets.
And the law.
And the books of Moses help us.
So we will tell to the coming generation.
The glorious deeds of the Lord.
And his might.
And the wonders that he has done.
And in the face of that.
To become apostate.
Is all the more heinous a sin.
And then in verse 5.
He established a decree in Jacob.
According to the law in Israel.
Which he commanded our ancestors.
To teach to their children.
Next generation might know them.
Children yet unborn.
Rise up and tell them to their children.
So that they should set their hope in
God.
What can we say about present Israel today?
Is there hope set in God?
That's a rhetorical question.
Doesn't even require a reply.
Clearly and evidently not.
There's no faith.
No expectancy.
No confidence.
No trust.
Not even any looking or expectation.
That God can be their hope.
When they most desperately need it.
Have you ever seen a nation be brought.
To more excruciating impasse.
Where it itself is ousting.
And compelling its own people.
Out from their homes after 22 years.
What an irony.
When men are trying to devise strategies.
By which they can survive.
In an untenable condition.
Surrounded by enemies.
And whose threat everyday is more prominent.
And an indefensible nation.
No mountain ranges.
Nothing to stop missiles.
Nothing to stop things.
That would take only minutes to come.
From any of their neighbors.
That could devastate the entire nation.
Atomically or gas, vapors, disease.
Any way in which they would seek to
exterminate.
And they have that intention.
To exterminate.
So what a pitiful dilemma.
For a nation that started out with such
expectancy.
To show the world what a Jewish nation
is.
And has not made that demonstration.
Where is their hope in God.
Where are they calling upon him even now.
In their distress.
They have turned from their own legacy.
And don't know it.
And don't believe the God.
Who has previously done glorious deeds.
And shown his might and wonders.
Because they did not rise up.
To tell their children.
So that they in verse 7 should set
their hope in God.
And not forget the works of God.
Remembrance is precious.
And life saving.
But keep his commandments.
That they should not be like their ancestors.
A stubborn and rebellious generation.
A generation whose heart was not steadfast.
And whose spirit was not faithful to God.
That's tragic.
And if the nation who had received the
law.
And seen these great wonders and deeds.
Could come to that condition.
Of being unfaithful.
And not maintaining a proper heart.
And a right spirit.
That is faithful to God.
Of what then are we capable.
If you're not asking that question.
You're not reading the Psalms right.
If they could come to a condition like
this.
After seeing the mighty wonders and the great
deeds of God.
And the giving of the law.
And his great salvation.
That they can come to a heart condition
like this.
That is rebellious.
Of what are we capable.
This should humble us.
And I believe that's the essential reason.
Why God is having us consider this text.
We're still too proud.
We're still too haughty.
We're still too bumptious.
In our own attitudes and self-congratulation.
About our spirituality.
Because we've not seen what we're capable of.
In the failings of Israel.
We need to identify with these failings.
This is not Jewish failing.
This is human failing.
This is man.
God could be lavish in his demonstration.
As he was with this nation.
And still be rejected.
If they were capable.
To what degree then are we.
So we ought to be in a repentant
frame.
Not waiting to prove that we're just as
capable.
But acknowledging.
That there but for the grace of God
go we.
We're human all too human.
God could be gracious.
I see it here.
How shall I say this.
Has there been a Sunday.
Since my return from New York.
Or overseas.
In which the Lord has not conspicuously spoken.
Sunday by Sunday by Sunday by Sunday.
In appropriateness that only he.
In his own authority and power could convey.
Yet who remembers it.
Who remembers even last Sunday.
Let alone the Sunday before the Sunday before
the Sunday before.
It's forgotten.
It's dismissed from memory.
And as if it had not taken place.
We're not a people who remember.
And acknowledge the glorious deeds of God.
And if you'll not do that.
You're making yourself by such a process a
candidate.
For having a wicked heart.
That lacks gratitude.
And has not remained steadfast.
And whose spirit is not faithful to God.
Same phenomenon.
I'm not saying that my Sunday messages.
Are equal to what God showed through Moses
at Sinai.
But they were appropriate and given of the
same God.
But are we acknowledging that?
Are we grateful for that?
Do we see that?
Are we quick to forget or never have
acknowledged?
If so then we're moving toward this kind
of condition.
So what do you think it means?
They did not prepare their hearts?
What does that mean?
We mustn't let that pass.
Because we need that instruction for ourselves.
What does it mean to prepare your heart?
I've never quite heard a phrase like that.
They didn't prepare their hearts.
Or maybe to put it the cat's edition.
They were not careful to keep their hearts.
Or watch over their heart.
Or their heart attitudes.
Because it's a process of erosion.
You don't become apostate in a day.
It begins with a faint disposition.
That is not observed or acknowledged.
And allowed as if it's legitimate.
Already you're critical.
Already you're haughty.
And then it hardens and becomes deeper and
deeper.
Until finally you are in a place in
which you're outside the faith.
Sin is not just a thing.
It's conceived in a moment.
But it needs to be identified in that
moment.
And dealt with at its inception.
So I think what the Lord is saying.
They didn't watch their hearts.
They weren't aware that you can lose something.
However precious it was.
And it's being received as given.
If you don't keep it.
If you don't rehearse it.
If you're not jealous over it.
If you're not grateful.
If you don't bring it to remembrance.
Then something will harden.
Step by step until you find yourself in
this condition.
Where you become rebellious and disloyal.
And oppose the God who demonstrated his love
so remarkably.
We talked about the scandal of the cross.
The absurdity and the foolishness of the gospel.
But to praise an invisible God.
And to give him homage.
And recognition and honor.
To worship a God who is invisible.
Must appear to the world as sheer insanity.
That how do you come to this?
You must be hyped up and freaky.
To sing choruses and hymns.
And raise your hands in praise.
And have tears trickle down your face.
An acknowledgment of who?
See that very praise and worship.
Is the statement of God.
This is his demonstration.
Though invisible to an unbelieving world.
So our praise and worship.
Is not just something euphoric.
For our own good feeling.
It's the testimony of God himself.
So not to praise him sincerely.
But just to come into a musical environment.
In which we sing mindlessly.
Is the very opposite of what God is
desiring.
We praise him on the basis of his
benefits.
We know him for his faithfulness.
And his mercy.
So all the guys like me.
Have a greater advantage.
We have a longer history.
41 years.
I'm still alive and kicking.
And the Lord has kept me through so
much.
And the whole community.
To this day.
How has he done it?
It's been remarkable.
So the longer your history.
The greater the volume.
Of the things that need to be acknowledged.
That God has done.
The more vigorous and sincere and authentic.
Your praise.
I don't know of any literature.
That uses the phrase.
Set yourself.
It's totally biblical.
David set himself to seek the Lord.
Boy that speaks volumes.
That requires taking a deep breath.
Clearing the decks.
Earnestly preparing yourself.
For the seeking of the invisible God.
The issues and how to speak.
And to address.
That's a certain posture.
To set yourself.
I remember still lashing out.
At Ariel.
When he came home from.
He had to do a homework assignment.
And he took out a crumpled piece of.
Loose leaf paper.
What do you call that?
Three hole.
And it was crumpled.
And he flattened it out.
And around his workplace were books.
The discs there.
Video games.
I said set yourself.
Sweep that crud away.
Get a decent piece of paper.
Sharpen your pencil.
Go to the bathroom.
Drink some water.
Be rested.
You didn't know what I was talking about.
Because to set yourself.
Is totally biblical.
And antithetical to the spirit of this age.
Where you slouch your way through.
And get by.
In whatever condition.
In any makeshift manner.
Setting yourself is totally biblical.
And we have learned it from Israel.
And they have failed yet to set themselves.
So what ought we to do.
For whom.
These admonitions have come.
Who are being fitted for the end of
the age.
Set yourself.
That's a real posture.
You know in so doing.
You are inserting.
Asserting your personhood.
You are a dum-dum.
You're a non-entity.
You're a piece of protoplasm.
Floating about in space.
That requires so many meals.
And your clothing to be washed.
And space to occupy.
You don't become an entity until this.
It's because of this privileged relationship.
With God.
That requires a setting ourselves.
And asserting of ourselves.
To seek him.
That our personhood is initiated.
And developed.
This is not a vain God.
Who is egoistic.
And wants this kind of acknowledgement.
It's for our sake.
That he hides himself.
Doers absconders.
The hidden God.
So that to see if we will seek
him.
Because in the seeking.
There's an assertion of ourselves.
That establish ourselves.
As entities.
We obtain personhood.
In the seeking of God.
And if we will not obtain it there.
How else should we obtain it.
By how much we eat.
That's the world.
Wear this.
Do this.
Obtain that.
Buy that.
Drive this.
Live here.
So that it's external.
Your identity is what you possess.
What you consume.
Your only value is for consumption.
Which is totally opposite.
To the basis.
For individuality.
And true personhood in God.
Seek me.
Because I'm the only object.
Worthy of your consideration.
And in the seeking of me.
Some benefit accrues to you.
It's salutary.
It's healthy.
It serves your benefit to seek me.
Or else you'll give yourself to other objects.
That are less and are degrading.
That's called idolatry.
But set yourself.
So here's a guy.
That's sending me messages.
On my internet.
A brother goes.
Tell me.
How do I seek God?
Tell me.
You seek God by seeking brother.
What do you think it is?
You want another method you Americans?
Everything can be reduced to methods.
Start seeking.
And you know what?
It's utter foolishness.
Have you ever tried lately?
To call on the invisible God.
Who's totally silent.
And has hidden himself.
To see how soon you'll be discouraged.
And that if you don't get a palpable
return.
On your investment.
In this utilitarian age.
You'll stop.
If you don't get a nice feeling.
Or a comforting sense of God's presence.
You'll quit.
How quick we are to quit.
If there's not an immediate payoff.
This is the now generation.
Who will persist in seeking the Lord.
Even as he withholds himself.
Because he's God.
Because he doesn't have to immediately give us
a payoff.
This is not a utilitarian transaction.
That would be commerce.
This is not commerce.
This is worship.
He deserves that acknowledgement that they're seeking.
For what he is in himself.
Whether or not you experience any immediate benefit.
You will experience ultimate benefit.
More than you know of.
Of course we've often quoted now.
In recent days.
The creation itself is groaning.
Waiting for the manifestation of a sense of
God.
Their very appearing.
Releases them.
But also their appearing as sons.
Maintains the creation.
Because it picks up where Adam left off.
Namely.
To have dominion over creation.
So creation is rejoicing.
Not only for the freedom from bondage.
But that it will now be rightly attended
by sons.
Who will take the dominion mandate.
Seriously.
And cultivate and nurture.
The precious soil that God has given.
So we need to think of that.
Sons not only by their appearance.
But also by their activity.
Over the soil.
Over their heart for God's creation.
And to transform it from a wasteland.
Into a flowering garden.
That it was at the first.
Sons will have this mentality.
They'll take back again the dominion mandate.
And perform it.
And to the degree that we're able.
Even now.
We want to do this for the little
plot of land that is ours.
Even if you've got a little balcony.
What do you call it?
The plant.
Tend to it.
Already prefigure the kingdom that's coming.
Already take first steps.
Toward this eschatological climax.
Where you're already tending something.
With a dominion spirit.
Because it's the Lord's.
And it beautifies and glorifies him.
But even organic nature.
Dumb innate nature.
Is responsive to love.
Okay.
So verse 9.
The Ephraimites.
Armed with the bow.
Turned back on the day of battle.
What a disgrace.
They did not keep God's covenant.
But refused to walk according to his law.
They forgot what he had done.
In verse 11.
And the miracles that he had shown them.
Which in the sight of their ancestors.
He worked marvels in the land of Egypt.
The fields of Zoan.
Which is Egypt.
He divided the sea and let them pass
through it.
He made the water stand like a heap.
In the daytime he led them with a
cloud.
And all night long with a fiery light.
He split rocks open in the wilderness.
He gave them drink.
Abundantly from the deep.
He made streams come out of the rock.
And caused waters to flow like rivers.
To water two million people.
And their livestock.
That's no trickle.
That's a gush.
Of a kind that would water the greatest
cities.
Of our present civilization.
He did in the wilderness.
Out of a rock that was split.
You believe that?
Or is that mythology?
Are these quaint myths of the past?
Or is this literal history?
Hey if he can do that then.
What can he do now?
Can he take like a 76 year old
croc.
And out of it bring forth something.
Of the same waters of life.
If he can do it with a rock.
Can he do it with a crusty carrot?
You know.
Why can we believe in the one.
And not believe for the other.
Same God.
And we need the same waters.
They are waters of life.
And they can gush out.
At his grace.
So we mustn't limit.
The Holy One of Israel.
As Israel of old.
That was one of their greatest sins.
And reduce the great streams to a trickle.
Or in fact they'll dry up.
If we don't acknowledge the source.
And be grateful for it.
Got that?
Hey this is my continual propensity.
Always to translate.
A statement about God in the past.
To the present implication.
Which I don't think in any way.
Is offensive to God.
I believe that's the way.
That's the definitive way.
In which scripture should be read and considered.
If we are to obtain its value.
Got that?
So very important that we believe this.
Can we in our.
Holy Ghost imaginations.
Picture ourselves with Israel.
In the blazing heat of that wilderness.
Destitute and barren.
And listening to the.
Mowing of their.
Their animals.
Groaning for water.
With their parched tongues sticking out.
Their children tugging the hem of their garments.
I'm thirsty mom dad.
And there's no water.
And then you watch this figure.
Whom God has called to address the rock.
And boom.
One tap and the thing breaks.
And out flows water.
In such a gush.
That sustains the life of millions.
What a God.
What a phenomenal.
40 years of this.
You would think that they would be so
schooled.
In the reality of God.
They would be impervious to sin.
They would be an ultimate.
And enduring testimony to all nations.
Throughout their entire history.
But no sooner do they get into the
land.
In fact many don't even get into the
land.
They're already murmuring in the wilderness.
And their cadavers lie there.
That they again become apostate.
And that testimony to the nations.
Does not go forth.
And they've yet to repent for it.
So when the Rabbi came to Phoenix.
When Isaiah was talking about the prophets.
And the questions and answers.
Were so puerile and shallow.
I said tell me.
When have we as a nation.
Ever acknowledged the lament of God.
The indictment of God.
Against us as a nation.
And have repented.
When in our history.
Have we ever acknowledged.
God's indictment of us.
And repented.
We have not.
We're still under the judgment.
And have not even seen it.
There's not a Jew.
In a hundred thousand.
That has conversed with what we're.
Reviewing today.
Or has taken this to heart.
But in fact the best that they can
say.
Is that this is just.
A particular culture.
This is the way in which men.
Express themselves in that generation.
They saw God vividly.
As if he himself.
Was actually doing these things.
But we know better.
It's a confluence of tides.
That the Red Sea was opened up.
That they could pass over.
We're rational.
We're empirical.
We have to have natural explanation.
And that this is just a stylistic device.
Common to that generation.
But not to be taken literally.
That's the present.
Condition of Jews.
Which is to say the condition of the
modern world.
And the condition more of the church.
Than we know.
Okay.
Look that over.
They turned back in the day of battle.
What a disgrace.
Though God is with them.
They saw the enemy.
And they calculated the possibilities.
And on the basis of logic rather than
faith.
They turned back.
They refused to walk.
They didn't keep God's covenant.
But refused to walk.
Terrible.
Conscious willful refusal.
Can there be anything more stubborn?
More vain?
More a statement of the human condition?
Than man willfully rejecting God's commandments?
Can you picture it?
Are you capable of it?
If they were.
Refusal.
It's one thing to be forgetful.
Or mindless.
Or indifferent.
But conscious willful refusal against God.
Who is the creator.
Who has sustained you.
Through this remarkable trial in the wilderness.
And then to defy him by refusing.
We want to define sin.
There it is.
That man is capable of that.
After such demonstration of God's grace.
Is the remarkable truth.
Of the depravity of mankind.
This is it.
This is the heart of it.
Conscious willful refusal.
I will not.
They forgot what he had done.
In verse 11.
And the miracles that he had showed them.
In the sight of their ancestors.
He had worked marvels.
And then it goes through the whole litany
of God's great events.
From Egypt right through the wilderness.
Dividing the sea.
Making the waters to stand like a heap.
Leading them by fire by a cloud.
Waters in the wilderness out of a rock.
Yet in verse 17.
They sinned still more against him.
Rebelling against the most high in the desert.
How do you.
In verse 11.
How do you forget what he had done.
What about the phenomenon of forgetting.
Is that just poor memory.
They needed a vitamin supplement.
And they would have remembered.
Or is forgetting itself.
A willful activity.
Can you consciously dismiss from memory.
That which you don't want to retain.
Because the implications of it are undesirable.
That's forgetting.
Forgetting is a conscious willful, sinful activity that
refuses to remember because it does not want
to receive the implications of what needs to
be remembered.
How guilty are we of forgetting.
How much do we recognize what it is.
I'm not talking about trivials like forgetting a
guy's name.
Forgetting God and his benefits after such a
demonstration as this.
And do we need to have lived through
this in order to be as guilty.
Do we ourselves have to pass through that
wilderness.
Have to actually see the water break forth
out of rocks.
Have actually to eat the manna in order
to receive the benefit of this exhortation.
This is vicarious experience.
Means you don't have to be there actually.
But the literature invites you to identify as
if you were.
So a wicked son refuses to acknowledge that
this has to do with him.
But a righteous son says, though I am
born thousands of years after this event, I
receive this as if I myself have passed
through it.
And that I'm guilty with my fathers in
their willful refusal.
That's a righteous son.
And that's the kind of son to which
we are being called.
This is our history saints.
Doesn't matter that we were not there.
God invites us to be there in the
spirit by identification of a kind that chooses
to see itself as being part with this
people and therefore guilty or receiving instruction that
we not be guilty of their sin.
Let me ask the pregnant question.
Why should you be compassionately identified with such
a people as this?
That you should have compassion on their stones
and pity on their dust?
Which is the set time for the Zion.
God's waiting for something from the church.
But my question is how can you be
expected to have this compassionate identification with so
sinful a people?
Was it some kind of magic who passed
a wand over us and all of a
sudden we just come alive with compassion for
people that have despised the world over?
I'm asking the question if you can but
recognize it.
Here's what I'm fishing for.
The basis for our compassion will not be
some kind of figment of imagination or magical
wand.
It will be the recognition of our sin.
Our vicarious identification with them.
And therefore we are totally identified.
We are capable of their apostasy and therefore
we share with them in their judgment.
This having compassion on their stones is not
people looking from a distance and clucking their
tongues too bad about you.
It's people with them in their judgment as
saying we are equally as deserving though we
ourselves did not in actuality pass through that.
But because we're human as you, we see
ourselves as equally guilty and we're thoroughly identified
with you.
That's how God saw us.
He had compassion upon us while we were
yet sinners and enemies.
He died for us.
We need to have an attitude of a
comparable kind for Israel and I'm saying this.
We will not have it if we do
not see ourselves as sinners.
If we are proud separate from and other
than them and our track record is better
and we can only look upon them with
some kind of disdain and contempt for having
failed where we would have succeeded, we will
never come to the place of compassion and
identification.
Only as sinners equal in the magnitude of
their sin and apostasy can we identify with
them also in their judgment and have compassion
upon them.
Our awareness of our condition by reading and
putting ourselves in that place vicariously is the
very grounds for the future compassion for which
God waits.
It will not come to us magically.
I attended a lecture in New York in
an Orthodox Jewish environment and the businessman who
spoke to us said the reason that we
Jews are the object of anti-Semitism is
because the world hates our virtue.
Because the world cannot stand our moral excellence
we are the object of the world's opposition.
I thought to myself, dear man, have you
ever cracked a Bible?
Have you ever heard the cry and lament
of the prophets in which we're told that
can a leopard change its spots?
Can a black man lose his color?
So fixed are you in your condition that
until a marvelous grace comes you're condemned with
your ancestors in exactly the same unchanging condition.
What are you talking about?
Virtue.
That the world is offended by our virtue?
What virtue?
Where the leaders in pornography and rap culture
and films and make-believe Spielberg's dream, what
do they call his business?
Dreamworks.
It's all vile.
It's all opposite God.
Barbra Streisand all of these liberal celebrities campaigning
for funds for AIDS as if what is
needed is scientific attention and the disease can
be rooted out that it's not God's moral
condemnation of sin.
So how do they boast like that?
One of the reasons they boast like that
is we have not made them conversant with
their own history.
We've not shown them the testimony of God
in Scripture.
Now this is part of to the Jew
first.
It's not just bringing them the formula of
what God has provided for Christ, but showing
them first that they need what God has
provided for Christ, that they are sinners.
We need to hold up a mirror that
they can glimpse at themselves because they have
no consciousness of sin being insulated from their
own scriptures.
Jews don't open the book.
We're called the people of the book, but
we're profoundly ignorant of its contents.
Other books, yes, we write them.
Marx and Freud and you name it, but
his book lies in terrible neglect.
What does that betray about the church that
loves the Israeli melodies and folk tunes and
sings and rejoices as if Israel is already
out of the wilderness and is already deserving
to celebrate her final triumph without passing through
yet another judgment that eclipses all past judgment?
What does that say about the church that
sings these ditties and creates this so-called
Zion Hebrew musicality as if they have occasion
yet to celebrate?
It's a statement of a disgraceful ignorance, naivety
and shallowness that has turned its back on
judgments of God and the clear statements of
those that are yet to come.
Out of Jesus' own mouth, there's a time
of trouble coming such as the nation has
ever known or will again know.
And if that time were not cut short,
no flesh will survive but for the elect's
sake.
Why isn't that factored in to our worship
so-called?
How do we bang the tambourines as if
it's all done and prepare a generation to
be shocked to its core when the bottom
falls out and there's no preparation or anticipation?
They'll be so demoralized that they will forsake
God in their disappointment and be part of
the great falling away which Paul predicted would
be a sign at the end.
So I personally, when I came across that
in a recent time I blew the whistle.
I said you guys have no right to
conduct yourself like this in celebration in complete
ignorance of the tragedy that has yet to
be fulfilled.
You're singing it before the time and the
only way that such singing and carrying on
is justified is if you already know and
carry it as an undertone of your worship
as a lament that has got to precede
the victorious hymns.
This is why the Jews are such a
test.
Externally, they are so impressive.
They are the B'nai B'rith Man
of the Year Award.
They are exemplary in their conduct and their
moral attitudes.
They're philosophical and ethical and don't raise their
voices.
They're cultured and we're going to tell such
a people as that, you're lost.
Your condition has not changed.
You share in the sins of your fathers.
Your forgetting is a willful forgetting and it's
a rebellion.
You have never sought the Lord.
You have no consideration for him.
You are a god unto yourself.
You're guilty of the most heinous violation of
the first commandment that you're a candidate for
the wrath of God that's just brooding over
your head waiting to fall.
You're going to tell them that despite the
appearance of their virtue or are you yourself
going to be impressed and hold back what
appears to be the most foolish contradiction of
a guy that seems to have it all
together.
What rules you both in your observation and
in your conduct?
The thing which is seen or the thing
which is unseen but is true according to
the word of God.
If you root yourself in this word and
conduct yourself according to it, you will be
a pilgrim and a stranger and a sojourner
in the world.
You will be an oddball.
You will be in the square thumb square
whatchamacallit the round hole.
You'll be out of it.
You'll be looked upon with not only contempt
but with pity.
Oh you poor misguided thing.
Because of the Bible you have these strange
quaint views about sin and about judgment that
contradicts what is so evidently being said before
you is virtue.
And you believe that word more than what
is visible?
That you shall not live by sight but
by faith.
Got that?
And the Jew is the real test of
by what which of these two we're living.
And how many Christians are not only impressed
externally by what the Jew exhibits but secretly
or otherwise covets that very thing and wants
to be like them and nothing more gratifying
to such Christians than to receive compliments from
Jews of that kind.
That's more important to them than a voice
from heaven saying this is my beloved son
in whom I'm well pleased.
To be complimented by Jews and to receive
their plaudits I've seen Gentile Christians pant over
it and are so gratified they're carried away.
It's bliss to be complimented by a Jew
and they'll do anything to cultivate that kind
of relationship by which they can receive that
acknowledgement.
41 years in the faith and I'm still
stupefied and I don't have an answer for
the phenomenon I've seen throughout all my life
are Christians pandering to Jews and wanting so
much their acknowledgement and their compliments as if
this is the high water mark of what
it means to be a Christian.
And in order to obtain it they'll turn
themselves inside out contradict the scripture completely and
agree with the Jew that what he exhibits
is commendable and perfectly pleasing in God's sight
independent of the need for that blood.
Betraying the gospel in order to obtain the
compliments of a man that's our sin.
And it's a sin against the Jew himself
because it denies him the conviction that would
come by being confronted with the truth of
his condition.
Not as he knows it, he doesn't know
it.
He subjectively deceived every sinner is.
But by the word that should have come
with conviction by those who will express it
in love willing to bear the backlash of
indignation and anger that comes from the Jew
who's got it all together and look at
you where's your evidence?
You're coming apart at the seams your marriage
is this or that and you're still groping
and fighting over this battle or another and
here's a man who seems to have it
more completely together than you and you're telling
him that he's lost.
Talk about absurdity and foolishness.
Don't be discouraged if there's no seeming response
to your witness and in fact they're hostile
or they yawn in your face or they
laugh you off.
Something has gone in to the human spirits
that God will call for at some future
time.
How else do you understand that in that
final day when they shall look upon him
whom we have pierced, they break with such
a profound repentance as the world has never
seen.
It's because in seeing him in that same
moment they are brought to the recall of
every witness given them prior to that event
and it hits them like a broadside.
It's the conjunction of the seeing of him
that validates all of the testimony that they
had contemptuously refused till that moment.
Comes back to them in one fell swoop
and wham!
Down they go in such brokenness as the
world has yet to see and has never
before seen.
So your witness, I'm saying all that to
say this, your witness is not in vain
though it's been discarded, though it's consciously derided,
though it's you laugh that in your face.
Something has gone in that the Lord will
one day employ.
But do you need to be recognized?
Do you need to be gratified?
Do you need to see the result and
value of your present service?
Or can you take refusal and rejection?
You don't need validation and confirmation to serve
God rightly.
Where are you?
See how it tests you.
Can you be faithful even though there's no
validation either by man or by God and
it seems like a waste thing of no
consequence and it's a enterprise in futility.
Faith believes.
Faith does not need recognition or acknowledgement.
It doesn't need the plaudits of men.
It doesn't need to be complimented.
And we need to be weaned from that
necessity because we're still panting after it even
now, Christianly.
We need confirmation, recognition, and so we need
to be weaned from that so that we
can stand before the Jew the ultimate test
and speak what we must without having validation
or acknowledgement.
And then we'll hear it in the Day
of Eternity, the Lord's Appearance.
Well done, good and faithful servant.
These all died, the great heroes of the
faith in Hebrews 11, not having received the
promise.
What?
And yet they saw it afar off but
they served diligently and fulfilled to the uttermost
their call without receiving its payment.
Do you need to have payment now?
Are you the now generation that needs to
be gratified now?
Or can you live with a deferred compensation?
You labor now but later on you'll see
what I have not seen in the treasures
laid up for you, the mansions reserved for
you, the honor, the privilege, the dignity, the
glory for which you have labored in the
face of offense, rejection and all those other
things that the Lord himself bore and still
bears.
This is sonship, you guys.
This is maturity that does not need a
payoff now.
It can hang in, it can hang tough,
it does not need to be gratified, especially
from those Jews whose compliments repent to have.
We have a picture of how deep is
the conversion of Paul who comes out of
that Judaistic environment where men honor one another
so that they cannot even hear the truth
because they prefer the honor of men to
the honor of God.
He came out of that and came out
of it in such depth that in the
moment of one of his greatest sufferings in
the jail cell at Philippi, in the face
of seeming defeat and failure, at midnight, the
darkest hour of depression before there's a glimmer
of dawn, Paul is singing praises and worshiping
God as if it were a privilege to
suffer this failure.
He did not need even success and that
even the absence of success and being treated
as a criminal and stripped publicly, beaten and
thrown into an inner dungeon and bound hands
and feet did not discourage his praise.
Talk about a man utterly saved from the
necessity to be confirmed or validated by success
or the approval of men.
How do you come to that?
And until we come to that, how shall
there be apostolic work and testimony in our
generation?
So don't you dare whimper if God deals
with you in the area where you feel
you need to be confirmed and honored and
flattered and you don't get what you think.
He's weaning you from that necessity.
To know that you are accepted in the
beloved, deeply know is the foundation of your
life and service and not the compliments of
men or the visible success of your service.
And verse 18, they tested God in their
heart by demanding the food that they craved.
Not only am I chafed by they demanded
what they fancy, I'm chafed by the fact
that they demanded.
How dare they demand?
Who are we to demand?
As if God is our errand boy and
we submit our order and he'll be quick
to fill it?
Where do we get the presumption to make
any demand of God at all?
Demand?
Who is he?
Our lackey?
Running our errands?
That we can demand that we have it
coming and it should be according to our
fancy?
Hey listen guys, this is a picture of
man.
This is sin.
This is depravity.
This is the human condition and we are
guilty of it even now.
Demanding either explicitly or unconsciously as if God
owes us something and is under obligation to
meet our fancy.
Are you guilty of that?
Have you ever been guilty of that?
Are you guilty of that now?
In imagining the husband that you deserve or
the ministry or the reward or the benefits
or the housing or the material conditions of
life.
Any demand?
Who are we to demand?
Hey, we're worms.
We're dust.
That he's even aware of us is a
remarkable condescension of his love but that we
should demand of him anything?
Were you guys as much stopped in your
tracks by the word demand as I am?
Or you were just stopped because they demanded
what they fancied?
But if they had demanded say something simple
you would have thought it illegitimate?
Any demand against God is egregious insult to
the most high.
We have no claim.
No basis for anything that we can make
as a demand for God in our consideration.
If that has not settled, if that has
not come home, we're not in the right
place in God.
And many of us are consciously or unconsciously
I've said demanding, putting in our application, making
our requisitions of what we think we deserve.
Isn't it amazing that men will contradict God
for their guts?
That meat is of a higher priority than
God himself and his honor.
As we quoted, was it last night?
Paul talks about those who are the enemies
of the cross and whose bellies have become
their gods.
My God, what are we?
What are we?
These protoplasmic things that crave and must have
their appetites gratified over and against God himself.
And as if he's the errand boy to
fulfill it.
And if he doesn't, we're indignant.
Get with it.
You're not acting according to the program.
So we're responsible for being the inheritors of
their legacy and their history as if we
ourselves have walked through it.
But on top of that, we have a
grace that has not yet come to them
that compounds our sin yet the more.
To whom much is given much is required.
And we have been given much.
The legacy of the Old Testament plus the
legacy of the new.
And yet our conduct and attitudes is not
more or better or other than theirs.
Even though we're under a double obligation to
have known better.
And yet how many of us are convicted?
How many of us have allowed this to
register in our deeps as stricken men?
That even though forgiven the remembrance of our
ability to fall like this always lingers and
is a factor that colors our entire personality.
We will never be boisterous.
We will never be flamboyant.
We will never be hot shots.
We will never be superior and victorious in
the way that is unbecoming because we're tempered
by the continual recognition and remembrance of the
truth of our condition from which we're saved
and are always potentially capable yet again.
I would not be an exaggeration to say
do it in remembrance of yourself.
Be remembered for what reason this blood was
shed and this body was broken.
Your condition is abysmal.
How dare you demand?
You're a demanding, ungrateful, forgetful full of ingratitude,
contemptuous, disdainful, failure to obey my requirements and
my mandates to the due first.
You're a slipshod.
You're lazy.
You don't set yourself.
In every way you have reason to lament
the truth of your condition and carry it
with you as a permanent remembrance.
So when you come to that table you
come with gratitude because you're receiving again from
the one life alone that is righteous.
The life of the Lord.
Because the life of the flesh is in
the blood and that life and its righteous
blood is ours to imbibe, to enjoy, to
receive, to take in and to go throughout
our entire being and to bring the righteousness
of God into our unrighteousness each as often
as we do it.
How are we coming to that table with
that gratitude?
We're not trembling.
To this man I will look.
He was a broken and contrite spirit and
who trembles at my word.
We're not trembling.
I don't know what it is.
I'm stupefied.
I'm frustrated.
I'm at a loss for myself and for
God's people.
God could set before us the holiest content
and we treat it as if it's an
academic subject and we have sufficiently passed the
test, got a good grade, and now we
can go on to something else.
That was the attitude, the air that I
was sensing last night in the reports.
We've done our homework.
We've been dutiful.
We have reviewed the subject.
We've come to these conclusions but we're not
affected by them.
The church that severs its connection with Israel
and with the Jew and refuses to see
these things intended for their benefit, loses the
most precious factor intended for our reality and
that's the lamentable condition of church theory.
It has cut itself off.
It has no consciousness, no relatedness to this
people as if they're past and we have
now taken over and they've missed the entire
benefit God intends by that organic connectedness that
needs again to be established and what we
are about in our own service.
So let me ask, Paul says, don't boast
against the natural branches that have been broken
off because if you boast, they're capable of
breaking you off also.
Tell me, morally speaking, what is of better
value or more to be desired?
The natural branch broken off or the wild
branch grafted in?
Who's better?
Which is better?
Which can boast?
Is the wild branch better that was fruitless
until it's grafted in or the natural branch
that was broken off?
The fact of the matter is neither of
us can boast.
We're both destitute and unless we're connected to
the root and the sap of that life
we're all as dead ducks incapable of nothing.
But we need to recognize that we have
been grafted in through space created by their
being broken off.
But for what purpose?
That they might be grafted in again.
Well, Lord, how can I believe for that?
Well, because if he grafted you in who
are unnatural, how much more can he graft
then in whose tree it is?
Your own grafted in, your own salvation ought
to encourage you to believe for theirs.
That you're not believing shows that you're not
appreciating the fact of what has come to
you by pure grace and total undeservedness because
you are nothing but a stinking foreign alien
branch that was capable of nothing but fruitlessness
until he grafted you in.
We lack that gratitude.
We lack that recognition.
We lack that embrace with that people and
with their tree.
It's not our choice.
We don't want to be grafted into somebody
else's tree, let alone their tree.
But God in his wisdom knowing our Gentile
hearts and the pride that wants to be
established independent of them says no.
You'll never succeed until you recognize the grace
that has come to you because salvation is
of the Jews.
This is their salvation history.
You have no part in it as Gentiles.
I had to give Peter a trance in
order for him to recognize the grace that
has come or he could not have believed
it.
He never would have even so much a
step foot in the house of Cornelius as
a Gentile who's unclean and uncircumcised if I
had not shown him that something has happened
with the advent of my son.
But how many of us today, we need
a trance in order to recognize the magnitude
of what God has done for those who
are far off without God without hope in
the world.
Therefore we're ungrateful, therefore we're demanding.
So Lord, thank you for such instruction which
came at such cost.
Israel had to live through this.
Israel had to show itself in this condition,
unthankful, unholy, unrighteous, demanding again from the Most
High God as if they had any right
to anything.
And Lord, as we contemplate this statement of
them, we see ourselves.
If not in actuality, in every instance we
know that if we have not experienced and
duplicated their fallenness, their sin, we're entirely capable
at any moment except for your grace.
We are not better than they.
We are one with them, my God, in
that condition.
And we thank you for the mercy that
has come, that has saved us from the
wrath that we deserve.
And so thank you, Lord, that you will
one day also save a remnant of them
also in your great mercy.
Lord, temper our hearts, my God.
Forgive us our haughtiness.
Forgive us our superiority.
Forgive us our smug complacency.
Forgive us, my God, that we don't tremble.
Forgive us that we don't take this in
and internalize it as being the statement of
the truth of ourselves.
Lord, help us.
Without your help, we're goners, Lord.
We're academicians.
We're just head-trip specialists who take examinations
and give the right answers to get a
grade.
And we're not affected.
We're not changed.
We're not deepened.
We're not broken.
How shall we be a witness to them
and move them to jealousy if we are
still in a condition so like their own?
So, Lord, we thank you.
Oh, precious God.
Mercy, Lord.
Mercy.
Mercy, Lord.
Oh, help us, Lord.
We're so thick.
We're so dull.
We're so vain.
We're so petty.
We're so egoistic, my God.
We do not see.
We do not understand.
We do not receive.
Break us up in our deeps, Lord.
It's the purest mercy that you can perform
for us.
Repentance is truly a gift of God.
We cannot fabricate it.
We know we should, but we're incapable unless
you in your great mercy give us that
grace.
And we're asking it, Lord.
We'd rather go down on our faces than
to rise to be at the head of
the class.
So come, my God.
Don't pass by.
Don't let us deal with such material as
this and come out unchanged, for our condition
will then be the worst.
Thank you, my God.
Help us.
Help us, Lord.
And we thank you for your mercy.
Thank you, Lord.
That Israel suffered this to such a great
degree for our sake as well as their
own and we have not seen it.
Thank you, Lord.
Thank you, my God.
Give us a break in which we go
out and just gulp air and let your
truth sink in and prepare us, my God,
for that great break and cry for which
all the angels in heaven rejoice for so
much as one on the earth who repents.
We thank you and give you praise in
Jesus' name.