In most Bibles, there will be a little
italicized statement before the text where there's a
summary of the meaning of the text.
In my New King James, it says, the
joy of going to the house of the
Lord.
Anybody else have another inscription over there?
A song of degrees.
A song of ascents.
Ascent.
There are a number of songs of ascent.
That means the actual going up.
I guess everybody knows.
There were three times in the year when
Hebrew men were required to go up to
Jerusalem.
Keep free of the solemn feast days.
And Jerusalem is a going up, if you've
never been there.
Even by bus, the spiraling thing that brings
you up.
So I was glad when they said to
me, let us go into the house of
the Lord.
Our feet have been standing within your gates,
O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is built as a city that is
compact together, where the tribes go up.
The tribes of the Lord, to the testimony
of Israel, to give thanks to the name
of the Lord.
For thrones are set there for judgment.
The thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls.
Prosperity within your palaces.
For the sake of my brethren and companions,
I will now say, peace be within you.
Because of the house of the Lord our
God, I will seek no good.
So, this is a psalm of pilgrimage.
Literally, of pilgrim saints going up.
But I think that it wouldn't hurt us
to consider that that's a description of our
life and called also.
Are you aware of that?
Hebrew speaks about being strangers, pilgrims, and there's
another phrase in the earth.
Sojourners in the earth.
I think there are very few saints who
look upon themselves as pilgrims.
It's a word that is almost archaic, antiquated.
But we have so settled down and into
our respective cultures that we don't see ourselves
as a people in movement toward something.
There's a goal.
A pilgrim has a goal and he will
not rest until he has attained it.
Whatever the hardship of going up, and up
is always contrary to gravity.
There's a tug always that seeks to hold
down or to repress or to keep from
going up.
So, may the Lord restore and give us
the mindset of a pilgrim that is appropriate
to the faith.
Lest we stay down or stay settled in
our leaves and not realize that we're in
a movement toward something.
What that something is, maybe the psalm itself
will help to clarify.
But just get the word pilgrim in your
spirit.
We're pilgrims, strangers, and sojourners in the earth.
We're not fixed.
We're moving toward something spiritually and actually.
And it would not hurt to say that
it could be summed up in one word,
Jerusalem.
Both as an actual, physical, literal city and
center, but also as a symbol and a
statement of what is in God's ultimate intention.
So, no wonder that the psalmist says, I
was glad when they said to me, let's
go up.
Notice, they said to me, so it's more
than one who's making the suggestion.
And in fact, going up, probably, and any
pilgrimage, though there's great emphasis upon us, individually,
has to be seen also as something that's
corporate.
They said to me, it's the people of
God that go up.
We're making it with the company of God's
people, the saints of God, the sadokim, the
righteous ones.
Not that they are perfect, they are imperfect.
But God intends that we should become blameless
and he sees us as the righteous of
the world.
Because there's only one other alternative to that,
and that's the wicked.
The righteous and the wicked are the two
polarities that are continually referred to in the
psalms, and they are in contention.
The wicked have as their object the persecution
and the oppression of the righteous.
The righteous are crying out to God continually
in the psalms for the persecution and the
opposition that comes to them from the wicked.
I don't know that I have yet found
an adequate definition for wicked, but I think
we'll see as we go on in the
psalms.
It's a suggestion of those who ought to
know better, who maybe even purport to be
among the people of God, but have turned
from the faith, betray it, and their especial
hostility is to those who seek to be
faithful and want to go up to Jerusalem.
So, let us go into the house of
the Lord.
I put the word, I don't know if
you have the word into in your text.
It's more than let us go to.
Let us go into.
What about the house of the Lord?
Are we talking about a building, a structure?
What is the house of the Lord that
you can go into?
And not just come to.
There's an entry into something.
I'm asking, feel free to conjecture and think.
The house of the Lord is what you
call a pregnant phrase.
First of all, because He inhabits it.
And the house of the Lord can be
the sanctuary, the dwelling, the temple, or, and
as well, the whole corporate thing that is
made up by the body of Christ.
It's something to come into, not just merely
to approach.
It's one thing to be respectful and to
stand outside and admire a building.
It's another thing to enter.
It's another thing to be made part of.
Is not the house of the Lord also
heaven?
I'm sorry?
Is not the house of the Lord also
heaven?
Is that not the ultimate house for one?
Wherever the Lord is, heaven is.
Okay.
So heaven is not a geographical location.
It's where God is.
And His sanctuary and dwelling place is heavenly.
The house of the Lord is a heavenly
place.
And out of it radiates the light of
God and the law of the Lord and
the word of the Lord to the nations.
This is the locus.
This is the eternal center.
And we need to have a sense of
this.
The world is not just a bunch of
discordant things thrown out there.
There's a God who has structured it and
He has a center.
We've got to find the eternal center, the
quintessence, the heart of the heart of the
matter is the house of the Lord.
His designated dwelling place and presence and in
the place where He Himself has designated and
chosen, namely the city of Jerusalem in the
land of Israel and within the city of
Jerusalem the holy hill of Zion.
So if you've not read Psalm 2 that
is one of the great celebrations where He
says He holds the nations in derision.
He holds them to scorn.
He laughs because they seek to break the
fetters of God and loose themselves from the
Lord and from His anointed one.
But He holds them in derision for I
have set my King on the holy hill
of Zion.
If ever you've been to Jerusalem and see
the city of David which is Zion, it's
not all that much to look at.
Not physically.
And it's only a hill.
I call it a pimple.
When you think of the great mountains that
you would think appropriate for the locust of
God's dwelling Mount Olympus the Greeks loved the
large and the impressive and the outwardly external
thing.
God chooses the foolish the weak, the vain
the cave where David had his inception the
stable where Jesus had his inception and the
hill, the holy hill of Zion, God's choice.
But the nations rage against it.
They don't like specificity.
This is the scandal of specificity is the
God who chooses something explicit.
Jerusalem Zion Israel Not the least of the
offense of the Jew is that it shows
God's chosenness that a lot of what constitutes
the animosity against Jews or anti-Semitism is
the fact that it has to do with
a people whom God has chosen.
And in the democratic temper that characterizes our
age, we don't like God to be that
specific.
Particularly when in being specific it omits us.
Is that the idea?
We like equality, we like all things the
same male and female men and women, equal
rights, equal this equal, equal, equal but God
is hierarchical God has a divine order God
has a crowning glory, God has a pinnacle,
God has a centerpiece and it behooves us,
the church, to be in agreement with what
he has chosen Jerusalem and not merely to
admire it from afar but to come up
and into the house of the Lord.
Ironic to say that in one breath and
to acknowledge in the other that if there's
one place I dread going in the earth,
it's Israel and Jerusalem.
I need almost to be dragged by a
team of horses.
I cannot stand to be in the city
of Jerusalem.
How do you explain that, Katz?
Having said what you've said.
Well, because it is not yet a dawn
for the bridegroom.
It's a city with grass growing up in
the cracks of the street and the jerry
-built houses and hotels and motels and flashing
lights and neons and places of entertainment are
totally incongruous and unbecoming and unfitting the house
of the Lord.
But the day will come when that city
will be rebuilt upon its ruins and one
of the offenses that we bear now in
the body of Christ, especially in Israel, is
to say that this present city of Jerusalem
will be reduced to rubble and must be
in order to be raised up appropriately as
the dwelling and the sanctuary of the Most
High God that all nations shall come to
Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles.
Jerusalem will be the crowning city of God
in the earth.
So this psalm gives us a sense of
anticipation and it can almost be read eschatologically
as if it has already taken place and
that the pilgrims are going up to the
city that has been rebuilt and restored and
in which now the sanctuary is actually occupied
by the presence of the Living God and
that his word can go forth out of
Jerusalem and the law of the Lord out
of Zion.
So our feet have been standing within your
gates, O Jerusalem.
In a little commentary I looked at this
morning the writers give the Hebrew another statement.
You know, the Hebrew lends itself to varied
expressions.
It's remarkable.
I don't know if that's true for other
languages, but there's something about the nature of
the Hebrew language you could read it this
way, but you could also read it that
way.
And both are true.
So this translation says our feet have been
standing within your gates, but the translation of
Kyle and Bailich one of whom was German,
the other a Hebrew Christian German who has
written a definitive commentary on the Old Testament
in the late 19th century, their translation reads
our feet stood still within your gates.
Seeming to suggest that when the pilgrims after
their long and arduous ascent up finally come
into the gates of Jerusalem, they have to
stop.
There's not another step to be taken.
They are so awestruck by the beauty and
the magnificence, the celestial glory that is to
be found in that holy place that they
don't take another step.
You don't just come in and spit out
your chewing gum and go like a tourist
to look and gawk at this thing and
that thing.
You stand transfixed at the visible beauty of
the great city of God.
Now if that's an allegory of the church
as the house of God, may the day
come when our feet stand still and look
upon and contemplate the beauty of that house
that is now in a pretty crummy condition
but it will be a majestic habitation for
the spirit of the living God.
So what did we say about these days?
We're seeking the definitive faith of Israel in
the Psalms and we're going to see a
mindset, a perception an attitude of heart, a
disposition of spirit that so eclipses anything that
we presently know as New Testament saints.
It's a remarkable paradox that we have to
reach back into the biblical past to find
a statement of faith that it would be
appropriate for us as the church that concludes
the age that our feet would stand still
when we come within the age.
You see how out of keeping that is
with our modern mindsets?
Our feet would trample we would come rushing
in we would look for the souvenir kiosk
we would go to put our initials carved
into some building when you come into the
city of God your feet stand still when
you come in within the gates you are
awestruck at the remarkable beauty of the city
of God.
Or I don't know the grammatical justification for
the decision of the translators but some translations
put this on a future chance it says
our feet shall stand within thy gates O
Jerusalem having an eschatological tinge about it so
that this is something that they wouldn't just
go and come from go to and retire
again but it would be something permanent and
lasting and enduring that at length and at
last their feet would stand in Jerusalem a
hope of a transfigured Jerusalem that would have
the full character of the promise all the
more if the pilgrimage to that Jerusalem was
sacrificial along the way it had to do
with struggle, with sacrifice with opposition with fighting
the good fight of faith with being bloody
but unbowed and all the kinds of humiliations
and whatever it is that constitutes pilgrimage and
when you get there you're standing not only
in respect for what you see but the
price that has been extracted from the saints
of God through time immemorial to finally come
to that place that the city of God
is the awesome phenomenon that it is so
what shall we say this ought to kindle
our spirits and to encourage us in the
pilgrimage because we have a goal a pilgrimage
is not an aimless wandering a pilgrimage is
something set in a motion and a direction
with a culmination and a goal and that
goal is the city of God the tabernacle
of God, the dwelling place of God and
the locus of God's theocratic rule over the
nations this is not just pretty poetry this
is nuts and bolts governance, the government of
God over creation because when this city is
the glorious thing that will bring awe to
the pilgrims who stand there it will also
at the same time be the locus of
God's rule over creation his theocratic crown the
law of the Lord shall go forth out
of that Zion but not before not before
it becomes a splendor and a glory so
there's an incentive for our pilgrimage we're moving
towards something it's not just a physical entity
however beautiful that might be in itself, it's
the conclusion, the consummation of God's whole redemptive
drama, Paul spoke of that in these days
that Genesis 1 from 11 is creation sin,
the fall of man the rise of the
nations, the building of the tower of Babel,
the first statement of nations and defiance of
God who want to get elevate themselves even
into the heavens and then chapter 12 God's
answer is with one man out of Ur
of the Chaldees, Abram and that begins God's
whole redemptive program of bringing forth out of
him a nation and through that nation the
redemption of all mankind in the capital city
of that nation the holy city of Jerusalem
the city of peace so this is the
end of the journey Genesis 12 is its
beginning and we're caught up as pilgrims in
the process so how much of the church
has gone up follow the question how much
of the church has gone up to Jerusalem
how much of the church sees itself in
pilgrimage how much of the church understands that
there's a redemptive drama a great saga that
is taking place of which the church is
God's principle agency for its fulfillment in the
last days as we will see on other
occasions Israel itself will be down and out
Israel will be as dry bones Israel will
be incapable of the fulfilling of its own
destiny and goal it's the church in the
earth and in the nations that is God's
agency for Israel's own redemption and the restoration
of its principle city and the holy hill
of Zion but how many in the church
see that how many realize that they're embarked
on something and in something together that we're
in a pilgrimage and a journey toward an
end if you don't see it really see
it, it condemns your Christianity as I've said
on many occasions to a mere succession of
Sunday services probably one of the greatest anomalies
of the world is a church that is
bored Christians that are bored and yawn and
come sluggishly to the house of God without
any anticipation for one Sunday has become like
the next because there's no direction there's no
movement there's no pilgrimage there's no conservation this
is remarkably important that we are called to
go up so I'm raising the question how
many in the church have heard that call
and maybe we who have heard it and
are in motion need to say to others
come up with us to the house of
the Lord is it because the church is
offended by Israel the church doesn't want to
accept the fact that there is a responsibility
as Paul demonstrates that they have to be
a witness to the Jews it is no
demonstration of jealousy it's not a demonstration of
separation rather than unity they've not chosen what
God has chosen and they don't like God's
choice they would much rather it had been
Berlin or Geneva or New York City or
some other nation some other people but the
Jew the outcast the blasphemer the apostate and
we're to go to that nation to that
people to that city really searches us out
and finds the deepest reservoirs of resistance to
God as is expressed in our resistance to
what he has chosen so to say to
someone come up to a gentile come on
up to Jerusalem is to put before them
a very large thing and their unwillingness and
the dragging of their feet is a remarkable
statement not so much against the Jew as
it is against God as the God who
chooses Jerusalem and we need to recognize that
this is the principle struggle I would say
in the church today the unwillingness of the
church to understand and to give itself to
the centrality of Israel and the chosenness of
God for Jerusalem and for Zion seeing itself
in opposition wanting itself to be elevated and
yet God says to that church pray for
the peace of Jerusalem that you might prosper
get over your hang up and whatever it
is that is deep in your gentile gut
that prevents you from honoring whom God has
chosen and for being conditional and critical and
saying they don't deserve it as if we
ever deserve it you know what I mean
you see what that reveals maybe not least
of God's objective in declaring his purpose that
his purpose would be according to election is
because it does peak something in man in
fact if you look at the whole history
of redemption from Abel to Esau and Jacob
look at Joseph and his brethren always when
there was a choice it would stir the
Indian contempt and so God is doing something
in that choice to prove the hearts of
men and when they despise and protest his
choice and his freedom of that choice they
exclude themselves it's not that his choice has
excluded anyone it's that the failure to bow
before God's prerogative to choose is a self
exclusion that's what it turns out to be
remember the phrase the scandal of specificity and
note the temper of modern times to an
ambiguity to a generalization God made the male
and female but we make them unisex the
men's hair now is longer than the woman's
and the woman is shorter and is becoming
masculine there's a blurring of the distinctiveness of
what God has chosen and a kind of
a bland universality that doesn't like that which
is specific so there's much here at the
heart of the rebellion of man against God
and against his design that is nowhere revealed
more acutely than in the resistance to the
Jerusalem that God has chosen and to the
people Israel that underlies the whole conflict and
struggle we need to search our own hearts
to see what residue of resistance there might
be with us and be a people who
chooses what God has chosen and not the
least of which is your own chosenness someone
raised the question last night many called but
few are chosen I almost felt like saying
many who refuse to be chosen and you
know that that's the condition of Israel today
they don't want to be chosen it has
not brought them nachas and satisfaction it's brought
them tsuras trouble and affliction they would rather
be like every other nation they want to
become the Hong Kong of the Middle East
and a great commercial center where you can
get your Gucci handbags and other stuff like
that they don't want to be distinctive and
chosen because there's trouble there you know what
I mean so even the chosen refuse to
be chosen and maybe there's something like that
in the church we'd rather be a bland
I don't know what formless Christian we shrink
from the distinctiveness of our call and the
responsibility that goes with that acceptance and the
glory that will follow I'm offensive to the
what is specific is offensive particularly if it's
God who has specifically chosen the romanticizing of
Israel by the church the Christians have some
kind of romantic love for Israel I've been
there many times and seen the hordes of
Christians that come through that worship the Jewish
people and aren't they wonderful and haven't they
done such wonderful things and you've got the
Christian Zionists that being a Jewish believer is
embarrassing because they want to elevate you to
a position which rightfully is not to be
elevated to and there's this whole kind of
theology that Israel is not going to be
devastated the church refuses to see what God
is going to do there's this other side
too you can oppose God in your sentimentality
of endorsing the right people for the wrong
reasons some humanistic celebration of their hit squad
ability rather than their theocratic calling so we'll
talk about that some of your church is
also hypocrite because they go through when they're
in awe but when they see a Jew
on the street they're not going to talk
to him I mean you know what I'm
trying to say is that not kind of
being a hypocrite I'm always suspicious of this
love for Israel and for the Jew there
and the complete neglect of the Jews that
are in their own hometown why aren't they
as excited for them as those that are
walking God is saying something much more and
other than that right in fact what I'm
saying is the kind of peace that God
is wanting shall not be accomplished without the
first being tremendous devastation violence sacrifice and judgement
for Jerusalem Jerusalem standing as the symbol of
all Israel the real peace will not come
until that violence first falls so to pray
for the peace of Jerusalem in truth is
to invite and to welcome God's last days
dealings with Israel it's to welcome the apocalyptic
violence of God's judgement upon the people and
upon the land so that the true peace
can really come can you follow that and
us as well ok that was my next
thought if you have a heart for that
will you recognize that there's an unavoidable violence
a conflict a devastation uprooting a plucking up
and a tearing down that precedes the building
and the planting for Israel to what degree
do we welcome that for our can we
really pray for Jerusalem for that reality if
we shun that reality for ourselves in our
own life and ourselves as believers in the
church how much of our present devastation in
our marriages and our families is the shaking
up of God who is not letting us
get by with a cheap peace because we
happen to be compatible or we're doing well
financially or we have what shall I say
established a kind of relationship that's more like
a truce than it is a peace where
you can get by where you can function
where there's no squabbling and you can go
on is not the kind of peace that
glorifies God it will not suffice for Israel
and it will not suffice for us and
for the church so to be a pilgrim
and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem
means not only to welcome God's devastation where
devastation is required for them but also for
our or our prayers will fall to the
ground talk about hypocrisy they will be hollow
unless we welcome for ourselves as the Israel
of God the believing community the same thing
that we're asking God for for the Israel
of God that is national you see that
the tandem thing when you understand that you
can understand why Christians shrink from the idea
that Israel shall have to face and the
apocalyptic fury of God that there will be
a judgment and a destruction and a dispersal
and an exile before there will be a
return and a glory they would rather see
present Israel succeed progressively than be brought down
into ruin and have to be raised up
as resurrection and we have the same set
of desires for ourselves we would rather see
ourselves progressively improve than to welcome the devastations
that cannot be avoided that God would raise
us up not just as an improved people
but as the people of the resurrection because
it's only as that kind of church that
our prayers could be effectual on Israel's behalf
to pray for the peace of Jerusalem in
a way that will bring the peace of
Jerusalem has got to be itself resurrection prayer
not just wishful thinking the wishful thinking is
still at the level of humanism and I
don't think such prayers even get beyond the
ceiling but the kind of prayer that will
actually affect the peace of Jerusalem will be
God's own prayers prayed in God's own power
by a people who have welcomed his own
devastations for themselves that they might be a
people of the resurrection praying resurrection prayers and
obtaining the answers that only that kind of
prayer can bring.
If this is not making sense think on
Ezekiel 37 and the valley of dry bones
where Israel is reduced to such a condition
that they themselves say we are cut off,
we are without hope, we are as dry
bones.
That is imperative for a people who are
historically so self-sufficient so enabled in themselves
and cannot fulfill their destiny on that basis.
Remember the word that was in last night's
speaking from Paul predestined a destiny that was
established by God before Israel has a destiny
but it cannot accomplish it on the basis
of its own Jewish ability.
To think so as Christians is to be
romantic and to be deluded they can only
fulfill it as a nation that has been
raised from the dead to pray for the
peace of Jerusalem is to pray for the
death of present Israel.
But how is Israel raised from the dead
not by the Lord himself directly but by
the Son of Man who is commanded to
speak to those bones that they might live
and that speaking itself has got to be
resurrection speaking words charged with resurrection power as
if God himself had spoken it that it
is creative in its speaking it actually raises
the dead so to pray for Israel's resurrection
from the dead is to pray for our
own we're so connected our fate, our destiny
with this people and that's why we prefer
to keep it at the level of sentimentality
of romanticism of shallow humanism of wanting the
best of saying let's pray for the peace
of Jerusalem let's take a moment to pray
bring peace resolve their conflicts, remove Arafat the
PLO harmonize this establish their security that is
not only unbecoming it actually is a setback
for the church to pray prayers of that
kind is not only to pray prayers that
are invalid but it is to actually weaken
the composition of the church itself it is
to bring delusion into the church and to
make us non-church by participating in a
non-prayer because in our deepest heart we're
unwilling for the true peace and the thing
that must proceed when God says pray for
the peace of Jerusalem it's not only Jerusalem
that he's thinking about it's you who he's
calling to pray by that invitation to pray
he's calling you to an awareness and an
acknowledgement and a call of a kind that
you would not otherwise have seen and from
which you would have shrunk God always has
the two things in mind Israel and the
church it's not Israel that's being addressed here
in pray for the peace of Jerusalem they
are incapable of it they have no effectual
relationship with God their prayers at best are
mechanical liturgical humanistic he's addressing a believing people
the pilgrim people of God namely the church
you pray for the peace of Jerusalem because
you're the key to their peace your failure
to pray or your failure to pray truly
leaves Israel in it's destitute condition your prayer
is the key to it's peace and it's
peace is the key to the peace of
all nations for when the law goes forth
out of Zion nations will study war no
more and turn their swords into plowshares and
their spears into pruning hooks we're not talking
about kids stuff this is not poetry this
is a little compressed statement but when you
unpack it and come into this house it
contains the genius of the whole redemptive drama
of God of which the church is the
principal agent but a church of what kind
not a bunch of flim flam saints who
just want to discharge a little responsibility and
yes I pray for the peace of Jerusalem
but a church that prays with cognizance with
understanding prays together recognizing that there will be
no peace before the necessary judgement that to
pray for the peace is to pray for
the judgement got the picture and to pray
for their judgement is to pray for our
judgement or it's not a prayer at all
so does the church have a corporate death
ahead of them?
yes and I have never before said this
at any time but now I'm hearing myself
I'm being instructed out of my own mouth
I'm seeing something with greater clarity than I
have ever before seen it the remarkable and
inextricable union of the church with Israel which
in fact we share that destiny we are
the Israel of God so that our prayer
is the key but if prayer becomes a
trite exercise if it's a mere batting at
the air if it's only a cathartic experience
excuse my fancy language you know what that
means?
cathartic is when you engage in something for
your own relief a kind of spiritual masturbation
where your prayer is only to relieve you
of a sense of duty or obligation and
you can get rid of it I have
prayed for the peace of Jerusalem when our
prayer becomes that and it is that largely
now not only is it ineffectual but it
defaces the church itself can you understand that
if we hear a word that is a
non-word we're sitting in a church we're
hearing a man preach and it's eloquent or
impressive or sounds nice it's biblical but it's
not a true word it's not that we
have just been robbed of something but we
have been denuded we have suffered loss and
if we continue in that we're going to
become insensitive all the more if we say
amen to it and are inducted into a
religious format by which we nod in agreement
and say amen to words that are non
-words and prayers that are non-prayers we
become religious dull, dense and inert we become
non-church and totally incapable of being to
Israel what we must prayer is the measure
of the truth of what we are in
God you want to take your index you
want to know where you are in God
how spiritual you are you want to know
what the truth of your life is measure
it by your prayer and most especially your
public prayer of what are you capable of
then I'm very interested in our morning prayer
times this is more than just getting our
feet wet and setting the atmosphere for the
day this is significant transaction with God and
I don't know if you'll notice there are
whole pockets of silence that are never broken
and may not be for the entire school
how is that there are certain things that
are incapacitated we're incapable of praying aloud and
publicly it's a statement of where we are
in God and the reality and the truth
of God in our lives measured nowhere more
accurately than in the issue of prayer.
Prayer is the name of the game and
I suppose you can say with that worship
prayer, praise, worship are all statements of truth
and measure of the reality of the relationship
which we have or do not have with
God.
If prayer can become mechanical if prayer can
become religious or just remain silent what do
you think we will be capable of in
praise and in worship equally.
Something is amiss and we're talking about not
just an aspect of the Christian life but
a critical center for if our prayers have
become non-prayers, effete, ineffectual.
A brother quoted this scripture today, it's the
fervent prayer of righteous men and women that
avails much.
I'm alive today and serving you because 35
years ago some roly-poly gentile woman in
Oakland, California together with her teenage daughter were
praying for a Jewish atheist and radical who
was on his way to death but their
prayer was effectual and fervent not because they
were of an Italian descent or Latin but
because they were righteous that is to say
they would not tolerate a compromised religiosity they
would not be content with feigned prayer they
would not get through the moment of prayer
as an exercise or the relief of conscience
that I prayed for the peace of Jerusalem,
now let's go on they were taking the
faith seriously, they were fervent they were welcoming
for themselves what they were praying for others
something like Isaiah 35 when Israel is in
the wilderness and they're downcast, they're nigh unto
death not so much for physical exhaustion though
that will certainly be true but for the
lack of hope to be in a wilderness
is desolation it's the loss of hope it's
the lack of anything familiar where am I,
how do I get here, where am I
going I'm starving, I'm thirsty the heat is
burning me up we're extending our lives, we're
at the verge of death and where is
God who has allowed this calamity to fall
upon us and to uproot us from Hollywood
and Pasadena and Moscow and the places that
we have enjoyed and find ourselves in the
wilderness I'm speaking literally this is going to
take place for a remnant of Israel God
is going to shift them in the wilderness,
they'll be nigh unto death, not only from
the physical demand of it but the absence
of hope the disorientation the dread and then
God says in Isaiah 35 say to them,
who's he talking to, not to those who
are expiring, but to another people who are
not identified, who are evidently in the wilderness
with them you say to them your God
will come, he will vindicate he will save
you and when they hear that it says,
the lame leap and the eyes of the
blind are opened what a word they have
received it's more than just the pablum of
well meaning nicety it's a word of life,
that's tempered and carries the resonance of God,
because the people who speak it, have themselves
passed through wilderness experience where God, who seemed
absent, came to their rescue at the last
minute, they know their God, as a God
who saves, and they can say to the
hopeless and the destitute, your God will come
he will save you, he will deliver you
and when they hear that they leap so
too our prayer no more effectual than the
reality from which it springs the knowledge of
God to which it testifies, to pray for
the peace of Jerusalem is not a cop
out it's an ultimate challenge of the most
ultimate kind and if it cannot be met
by the church, there will be no peace,
either for Jerusalem, or for the nation the
stakes are enormous, they are ultimate, and it
rests upon the response of the people who
are called to pray, for the peace of
Jerusalem.
Almost every time I give any kind of
talk on Israel in the last days and
what will be required in trial and devastation,
in the time of Jacob's trouble invariably, someone
will ask me, at the end, how should
we pray?
If the PLO and the presence of the
Palestinians and Arabs is God's press to bring
Israel down and into the place of death
that they might cry out we've been praying
the wrong way we've been praying for God
to remove the very thing that he has
established to bring Israel to the place of
ultimate distress so how should we pray?
Well, not by your well-meaning intentions, not
by your logic or by your thought, you
have got to pray the prayers of God,
and you cannot pray God's prayers except that
you're in communion with God, and that communion
is the fellowship of his suffering and the
reality of the cross if we're a church
that has avoided that, we condemn our prayers
for being well-meaning humanistic religious it will
not affect the peace of Jerusalem the peace
of Jerusalem is the restoration of Jerusalem and
of that nation in the last days out
of death that's why it says in verse
5, for the thrones are set there for
judgment, the thrones of the house of David
is spoken before we come to pray for
the peace of Jerusalem what's that doing there?
why that reference?
why that allusion to thrones?
because throne is the statement of government and
rule the thrones are set there for judgment
God is going to judge the nation with
equity and with justice Jerusalem is the theocratic
center, but the nation through whom God will
judge needs itself first to be judged and
the people who pray that Jerusalem will be
God's throne of judgment need themselves first to
have welcomed it for themselves we've spoken before
about the plague of humanism it seems like
it's something that has to do with a
lot of the we've spoken before about the
bane of humanism, particularly true of modern Israel,
but also of the church, there's still within
the church a strong strain of a humanistic
perception of both themselves and of God and
it's for want of knowledge of ourselves and
our own nature that we pray naive cathartic
prayers even if we read in the scripture
that Jerusalem has passed through a great time
of trouble or whatever why would we have
not already known that by knowing ourselves, why
would we not already have known that without
a travail there's no birthing, and without a
death there's no resurrection in other words, it
wouldn't have required if we'd have been intimate
with the prophetic spirit it wouldn't require that
we would just read all these verses in
the bible and go, oh yeah, right here
Jerusalem's got to suffer before she is restored
we would know it both of ourselves and
of them and so there's a strong strain
of of human presumption and humanism that still
believes that if we just come with our
best of intentions the situation can be ameliorated
and it's a gross avoidance and so our
attitude towards Israel is the most significant statement
of where we in fact are nothing more
reveals the condition of the church than its
attitude towards Israel and if it's that level
of humanism or sentimentality that's the statement of
where we are in general Israel functions to
reveal the church's condition even in Israel's apostate
condition it's a remarkable thing the symmetry the
reciprocal action of Israel and the church that
Israel plays for us now even in its
unbelieving condition to reveal what nothing else would
have would have more accurately revealed about where
in fact we are the fact that what
Reggie is saying that we did not anticipate
calamity and judgment for Israel as being a
necessity before the glory that there's a suffering
that precedes the glory shows that we have
not surrendered to this axiomatic truth of the
faith itself and that we could have gone
along from Sunday to Sunday saying amen and
hallelujah and singing the choruses over this betrayal
of the heart of the faith and never
have recognized it Israel finds us out Dan
you had your hand up does anyone else
have any?
the principle you're saying about doesn't apply to
all the nations what shook me off was
that I grew up by the water here
and the best thing that happens to our
nations is the presence of God at some
moments oh God you know help our nations
it doesn't mean things along the same lines
as the nations bring the calamity we have
to have a whole vast reassessment of the
word judgment because I would say and I
will say again that nothing is more at
the heart of our knowledge of God than
the issue of judgment judgment is the key
in our perception of God as God and
to factor judgment out or to make it
something less or other than what it is
is to diffuse God as God judgment is
at the heart of God when his judgments
are in the earth the world will learn
righteousness and if judgment is for us displeasing
or distasteful or we get squeamish and we
don't like it we have not recognized the
redemptive power of judgment that it is not
something antithetical to God's love it is God's
love judgment is God operating in love when
lesser means have been spurned and is required
ultimately to bring judgment painful devastating but in
the end true redemptive and it brings peace
so we are a generation that whitewashes that
coats over that gets by we don't want
to deal head on with real issues in
a real way but to welcome God's judgment
in them and so we we don't have
the peace the shalom of God and who
can define shalom Aveinu shalom aleichem peace be
unto you but it's more than the absence
of conflict or tension we want a syrupy
peace of a shallow kind that removes tension
God wants us to receive tension all the
way through the judgment of the issue that
we might then by it come into the
authentic shalom of God the peace that passes
understanding can you imagine what the millennial age
will be we'll not only be singing and
dancing horrors Aveinu shalom aleichem but the peace
of God will be felt manifest palpable you'll
go to any place in the world and
you'll have an instant amity friendship without fear
without suspicion even if in the church alone
if we had that peace look mama mia
what a delight what prevents it the lack
of judgment the unwillingness to invite it the
skirting and the cutting of corners the unwillingness
to face hard issues and deal with hard
truths wanting a cheap route rather than the
way of God that leads to peace ladies
first praying it was always my question my
heart how to pray but isn't that also
the time when the church is committed to
pray the truth where God is just teaching
us for the peace of Jerusalem and I
hope I say it right the church like
you just said first has to be broken
and has to have gone through the wilderness
and through all the suffering so it is
ready to bring the encouragement and the word
of God you will make it so isn't
it dangerous to pray now