Attention this morning to Amos chapter 9, which
is one of our favorite texts here at
Ben Israel.
I'm glad that Reggie is here, Adam, David,
others of John.
We're invited to join and in and extract
the remarkable riches and depth of this chapter.
I always speak of it as the one
great comprehensive statement in a single chapter of
a whole remarkable eschatological schematic of Israel judged,
Israel disciplined, Israel restored, right through to millennial
blessing.
It's there in one chapter.
So Lord, grant us grace to bear it,
to understand it, to be participant and witness
to it in these last days, and that
because we understand the end, we can bear,
my God, those things that will pertain to
it.
The end is glorious.
So open it even in a new way
for those who are familiar with the text.
Let it not just be a routine exercise
of review, but your word is inexhaustible.
And if this is on your heart this
morning, Lord, let everyone receive benefit, even those
of us who share.
So, my God, we bless you, we look
to you, instruct our understanding, we pray, affect
our character, our life.
We give you praise, glory, honor.
In Jesus' holy name, amen.
Well, chapter 9, in fact, much of the
whole book of Amos contains the severest statements
of judgment for Israel to be found anywhere,
even the commencement of this chapter, where the
prophet saw the Lord standing beside the altar,
and he said, strike the capitals until the
thresholds shake, and shatter them on the heads
of all the people.
And those who are left I will kill
with the sword.
Not one of them shall flee away, not
one of them shall escape.
Though they dig into Sheol, from there shall
my hand take them.
Though they climb up to heaven, from there
will I will bring them down.
Though they hide themselves on the top of
Carmel, from there I will search out and
take them.
Though they hide from my sight at the
bottom of the sea, there I will command
a sea serpent, and it shall bite them.
And though they go into captivity in front
of their enemies, there I will command the
sword, and it shall kill them.
And I will fix my eyes on them
for harm and not for good.
The Lord God of hosts, he who touches
the earth and it melts, and all who
live in it mourn, and all of it
rises like the Nile and sinks again like
the Nile of Egypt, who builds his upper
chambers in the heavens and founds his vault
upon the earth, who calls for the waters
of the sea and pours them out upon
the surface of the earth.
The Lord is his name.
There are not many that would want to
own a God of that kind.
They must be persuaded that there's some kind
of typographical error.
How did that slip into Scripture?
That God would acknowledge and even boast of
the severity of such a judgment so all
-inclusive that no matter where his people seek
to flee, there he will find them, and
there they will suffer the full severity of
that judgment.
Probably it's because texts of this kind offend
us, that we either shrink from them or
pass them over, and in doing so we
lose something of the aspect of God that
risks the loss of all of the knowledge
of God, because if we're unwilling to receive
God in his severity, we even cheapen God
in his goodness, and unless we understand his
judgments and not receive them by holding our
nose, having to take castor oil, but rejoice
in them, knowing that he's righteous, however severe
the language, that we don't know God as
we ought, we're not celebrating him as we
ought, and in fact are trivializing him.
So there has been either a conscious or
unconscious shrinking from the acknowledgement of God as
judge, and where is that judgment more painful
than when it's announced and performed upon his
own people the apple of its eye?
Not only painful for us to consider, painful
for him to perform.
That he will perform it is a statement
of what he is in himself.
He'll not flinch from a righteous requirement.
It's we who hedge and compromise.
The Lord honors his word, maintains the standard
of his own righteousness and his own integrity,
particularly as it pertains to Israel, well how
then is he God?
And what standard then of righteousness will exist
anywhere if he himself defaults on the kind
of judgments that his righteousness requires?
So the issue of Israel, wow what shall
we say?
To miss it in any aspect is to
miss essentially the faith.
It's to miss God, and if we have
a truncated, inadequate, sentimentalized, trivialized God, it's probably
especially for that reason.
We have voided, or have refused to consider,
or shrunk from considering, or want always to
abide in the New Testament scriptures and miss
what God says of himself in the old,
in judgments not yet fulfilled and that yet
await fulfillment.
So this is not passé.
This is not the God of the past.
These are statements that refer to that which
is yet to take place.
So he's the same yesterday, today, and forever.
I can't think of anything more fallacious than
to speak of the God of the New
Testament and the God of the old as
if they are alternate deities.
The one, consistent, comprehensive, continuing God.
So that's the prelude to getting into the
portion that's before us this morning.
Just to continue in verse 7, are you
not like the Ethiopians to me, O people
of Israel, says Lord?
But don't think that because you're the apple
of my eye and my covenant and chosen
people that you're exempt from anything that the
Ethiopians have had to bear from my hand.
You still will be judged as with all
nations and in fact your judgment will be
the greater because your privilege has been the
greater.
So don't think you're exempt.
One of the things that has been a
theme and thread through the tragedy of Israel's
history is called by the theologians the inviolability
of Israel.
The presumption that because we're chosen, because he
has established his presence at Zion and in
Jerusalem and in the nation that somehow we
are exempt from and protected from the kinds
of calamity that fall upon others.
And so the final outworking of that misconception
are men on the roof of the temple
at the time of Titus's destruction of Jerusalem
thinking that that's the safest place to be
and went up with the flames that consume
the temple itself.
Zion is not inviolable.
It is not exempt from the judgments of
God.
In fact they are all the more susceptible
to double judgment as we read in Isaiah
40.
You have suffered double for your sins because
to you has come the great privilege of
the revelation of myself my law and my
way my covenant and when you desecrate that
and violate that despite my sending the prophets
rising up early and daily then upon you
will fall the severity of a kind that
eclipses that which comes to other nations.
So don't think that the you're exempt from
what the Ethiopians will experience or have.
Did I not bring Israel up from the
land of Egypt the Philistines from Kastor and
the Aramaeans from Achaia and then we begin
our text.
The eyes of the Lord God are upon
the sinful kingdom and as we even had
occasion this morning to review of English sharing
with us last night how sinful is the
sinful kingdom becoming.
It's mistreatment of men, it's abuses, it's failing
to sanctify God by its conduct.
Israel was called to be a witness nation
to the nations that in what it would
display in its conduct is the unique relationship
that it enjoys with its God and make
him known by what it displays in itself.
You shall be witnesses unto me.
God's victim to the church is exactly of
the same kind.
Where's that passage art that says you only
have I known.
It's unanimous isn't it?
Could be.
But it compliments.
You only have I known.
Therefore I will punish you.
What a note of pathos.
You only have I known.
It breaks my heart to have to lower
the boom.
You only have I known.
What a sacred holy privilege but because of
it and with this regard of so unique
a relationship in history therefore I'm required to
judge you yet more severely.
There's a pathos in God's heart.
This is not some clinical judgment that is
performed without emotion.
He says in all your afflictions I am
afflicted.
In your judgments I am also bearing it
in the same way that the father bore
the crucifixion of the son not viewing it
as from a distance in some kind of
dispassionate separation but in and with the son
in that suffering and in that anguish even
in the anguish of my God my God
why has done forsaken me somehow in the
wisdom of God that intense separation from the
father at the time of the presence was
most desperately needed was part maybe the coolest
part of the suffering that Jesus had to
bear but he did not bear it alone
he bore it with the father.
I and the father are one.
Don't think that God is some kind of
distant deity whose passion and pathos and compassion
is not touched.
He waits for that exact quality in his
people.
Interesting the phrase that we see the Holocaust
memorials never again is cited in this text
that's before us this morning but with an
entirely different meaning to which Israel must come
from the one that celebrates it to the
never again that celebrates God.
Well you can see from what you've cited
how and from what we shared this morning
how distant and separated this people is from
their own calling and from their own knowledge
of God that they can even construe and
turn things in such a way that they
come out as the victim or the object
of pity or as if they're doing God's
service.
So failing to be the priest as we
said this morning by so abusing the people
who are the victim of their power without
any consideration of the culture, the disposition, the
things that are respected for which Jews have
little consideration or even scorn.
Yet priestly people would have an obligation to
understand the history, the culture, the disposition of
those for whom they intercede and witness.
Israel's present conduct is a complete antithesis of
that calling and maybe we had to come
to the end and see that and all
of its painful implication and then suffer the
judgment of it for whatsoever a man or
a nation sows that too shall it reap.
You've abused their women and you've intimidated their
men and mocked them, you're going to suffer
exactly that same thing at their very hands.
What does it say when Jesus comes?
Two-thirds are perished and the women are
ravished.
Israel is going to pay in full for
every mistreatment and every abuse that it is
now inflicting upon those that are hapless for
the day will come and it's not distant
when they also will be hapless and be
overrun and be unable to defend themselves.
It says in Isaiah 51, your young men
will be like antelope in a net at
the head of every street.
Helpless, your IDF, your vaunted military forces will
be completely tied in knots and completely incapacitated
as even your generals even now acknowledge that
all of our strategy and training is for
the battlefield but we have never been prepared
for an internal battle and it's one that
you'll not know how to fight and one
in which you'll be defeated.
Not only defeated but humiliated and your women
will be ravished.
You who scorn the sensibilities of others will
yourself be scorned.
You'll hear their shrieks and cries and be
helpless to intercede as was also the consequence
for Germany at the end of World War
II.
As I know from my time in Germany,
my first wife coming from Stuttgart, that that
part of Germany was captured by the French
and they came with their colonial troops, many
of them from Africa, and so all day
and night the defenseless women were being raped
by these black soldiers without mercy and you
could hear a continual shriek and a cry
coming out from every house in every alley
and every rooftop and the women were defenseless
because their men were either dead or on
the Russian battlefield or incapacitated.
You don't hear anything about that now but
anyone who was a GI in Germany in
the early 50s as I was know how
degraded the German women were even in accommodating
the American soldiers.
Politeness will not permit me to describe the
kinds of practice that were everyday occurrences for
us with a people that were so humbled
and broken who were the master race.
The ironies of God's judgment are written in
history and it behooves us as the church
to be able to recognize and read them
so that we might proclaim warning that God's
hand is not withheld and though it seems
that it's in abeyance, there comes a moment
when he will perform and honor his word,
whatsoever a man or a nation sows, that
too shall it reap.
It will be a terrible, degrading, humiliation, defeat,
and brokenness but it's the kind of brokenness
that Israel will carry with it into its
millennial destiny and will forever remember.
The judgments start with a consequence of their
sin and it will temper them with a
priestly disposition for all of the days of
their life and so they'll be going into
the same nations where they are now anathema
or a curse or a threat to bring
the benevolent way of God to the knowledge
of Iraqis and Jordanians and Palestinians and Arabs
to show the mercy of God on the
basis of the mercy which they themselves have
received and they will then fulfill their destiny.
A nation of priests, a light unto the
world.
Arabs will be hanging on the necks of
Jews in gratitude for the knowledge of God
communicated to them that will be salvational in
the same way that the elders at Ephesus
hung onto the neck of Paul when he
said you'll see my face no more.
Jews who are now despised and feared and
hated will be loved and revered as God's
priests who bring in every place in the
world the knowledge of himself in the deeps
in which Israel has been required to learn
him.
Not talmudically or even biblically but experientially both
in the severity of his judgments and in
the mercy of their return.
Okay yeah what we saw even from the
threats that come into this organization that goes
to bat for blacks in the south and
other places how they are threatened to be
hung from lampposts and not only killed but
tortured.
There's a vile demonic hatred for people standing
for simple justice and righteousness so what shall
we expect that when this venom comes upon
Jews shall we be exempt?
It will be proportionate to our own identification
with them and when they're seeing that we're
willing to suffer such a risk and such
a consequence to take up an identification that
is not needful and all other Gentiles are
shirking they'll be moved to jealousy and say
this can't be explained religiously.
This is beyond religious obligation what you guys
are doing and being joined with us and
putting your life at risk and your families
at risk has got to be God.
There's no other way to explain what's coming
from you as Gentiles for certainly you owe
us nothing and yet you're extending yourself sacrificially
even unto death.
Jews have never seen that coming from Gentiles
and coming from the church but the extremity
of the last days will display it.
We've got to be to them a priestly
identification to even reveal to them what they're
calling us so it's more than just a
religious condescension it's a jointedness as one with
them which is what Jesus himself performed at
the commencement of his ministry when he allowed
himself to be baptized into the Jordan which
was God's provision as repentance for the sins
of Israel.
He did not stand at the bank in
detachment as God's anointed called to Israel and
looking with pity at those who have to
go down into the muddy waters he went
down into them to say I'm one with
the nation and I share in its sin.
We see that in Daniel in chapter 9
that great prophetic cry of Daniel's prayer is
a complete identification of the sins of those
people.
You can't affect that.
That can't be a kind of a religious
halo that's that's the deepest statement of God
himself reflected in a man who has the
kind of union whose cry is God's cry.
The church is not there yet but God
waits for it and when it comes it's
the set time to favor Zion.
Okay can I get into the text?
Okay the eyes of the Lord God are
upon the sinful kingdom.
You know what I love about God among
the other things that I love about God
not only does he not mince words he
does not avoid truth.
He does not just want to fashion his
eyes upon the happy side and neglect seeing
the grim.
He sees all things.
He's a prophet and he's required to see
things whole and steady and so he sees
the sinful kingdom and he doesn't mince words
about it and that kingdom will become increasingly
sinful until it itself as we said this
morning recognizes the truth of its own condition
as only its own failure will have revealed
it and that there were no other reason
for the establishment of the State of Israel
then this this would be reason enough.
Now we Jews see I know Jews.
I was one long enough I still am
and we celebrate some supposed sense of moral
superiority.
I don't know where we got the idea.
We think that we have in a special
ethical and moral sensitivity above the Graham above
the Gentiles which is of course completely contradicted
by Scripture.
If God were to mark iniquity who can
stand when Jesus was sought to be complimented
by the rich young ruler and he was
called good he said why call it found
me good you're not going to get away
with this one there's no man good but
God.
Israel refuses Jews historically have refused to accede
to that truth of God's statement of our
condition as men.
We think that the doctrine of human depravity
is a Christian doctrine when it's rooted in
Hebrew scriptures so how come we don't see
it because we ourselves are not rooted in
our own word we are the the the
ultimate humanists that celebrate man over God and
until that's broken how can we be forgot
what we look and so it's not too
lavish for God to allow the establishment of
the state not that it would be intended
to succeed but be intended to reveal the
depravity that God says is inherent in all
men including Jews.
We've got to see our own conduct painfully
duplicating and coming too dangerously close to what
the Germans had visited upon us that we
are now tattooing men and well ready to
deport Palestinians wholesale out from Israel from the
West Bank to Jordan to some other place
who are we to merchandise and men what
are they stock items on a grocery shelf
that we can move it from one place
to another these are human beings they're rooted
in their culture in their place with their
olive trees with their families the family that
we know in a booth that Inga was
speaking last night Lily who was here for
several months and worked in the kitchen she
only moved 35 yards from the house in
which she grew up into the house in
which she married they know that village their
life was that village the people look at
the way Inga knows these names I'm impatient
I don't have time for detail at that
time we Jews but Inga loves it they
love it they know the boobies they know
that the grandmothers the grandfathers the uncles the
aunts the cousin this one born that one
died they're enmeshed in that and here here's
Israel talking about deporting well we were deported
on cattle cars and now we ourselves are
talking about deporting others we were tattooed now
we're tattooing others and don't think that it's
not being shoved in our face that this
is too painfully close to the Nazi mistreatment
of ourselves that we are now somehow out
of the requirement for the preservation of the
state are compelled so to act we are
a sinful nation and that that sinfulness will
increase so you Christian Zionists will have everything
to do to defend Israel until you'll just
run out of explanation and you yourself will
be mortified that you come to a place
where no defense can be made where they
cannot be justified and that we ourselves have
to learn the painful truth that as much
as we have a heart for this people
we must be as God in recognizing the
truth of their condition or we will fail
to be to them what we ought to
sentimentalize them now to pamper them to to
give them a comfort before the time is
a false comfort so I praise God for
being God thank you Lord you're gonna be
that for Israel be it for us don't
spare us don't baby us don't mollify us
tell it to us as it is speak
to us as sons and daughters grow us
up my God in the reality to which
everything wants to save us and preserve us
this is my greatest conflict with Ingrid God
bless her she's wanting to make nice sentimental
yes she admitted it okay the eyes of
the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom
and I will destroy it from the face
of the earth not that Arafat will destroy
the PLO of Saddam Hussein these are only
rods of God's judgment I will destroy it
and when you read Psalm 102 you'll recognize
the two things that God is waiting for
to conclude the age one is the church
my servants coming of age who have compassion
on their stones and pity upon the dust
but the other is the acknowledgement of a
subdued and broken Israel that we have received
these things at your hand you have cast
us aside read that text that is an
acknowledgement that did not come out of the
Nazi Holocaust that's why we can say never
again we think that the Nazi Holocaust was
the issue of our defenselessness and the power
of those who oppressed us we do not
see God's hand in our calamity and until
we do the calamities will continue to come
that's why they are given as calamities that
we might see the hand of God in
judgment a first principle is always to ask
where have I sinned in what way can
what I'm experiencing or seeing be considered a
judgment or a chastisement before we give consideration
to any other explanation usually it's the last
of considerations rather than the first well the
weather has changed that this is happening that
we have I say time newsweek mentalities and
try to interpret adverse and things socially politically
and so on rather than divinely so I'm
saying for the church a first principle of
consideration is how is God to be understood
in this how is this possibly a judgment
because it's by judgment that we learn sin
judgment is the revelation of sin it's Christ
on the cross as the judgment of God
that opens up the whole question for what
reason did he suffer that death so sin
does not reveal itself as sin that's its
nature is to conceal it and we Jews
have been mesmerized and duped in justifying our
conduct of the most atrocious kind it's the
judgment that begins to open the question of
what the sin is that justified so severe
a consequence so the first thing in examining
any severity is to what degree is this
a judgment and for what reason might it
have been suffered had Jews asked that at
the end of the Nazi Holocaust we could
even theoretically consider that there would not have
need to be yet another Holocaust but of
course the question was not asked nor was
there a church that suggests the question because
the church itself quickly accommodated itself to the
Jewish community and yielded to the Jewish communities
interpretation that the real fault of the Holocaust
was not Jewish sin but the collapse and
the failure of Christianity itself a revelation of
the bankruptcy of Christianity and so the church
bowed and scraped and acceded to that view
and completely left Jews off the hook took
the ground out from God and made the
whole sacrifice so to speak vain they do
not even subscribe to the Adam's fall if
you read Eric Fromm who is drawing from
Talmudic and mystical Judaism Zohar and the Kabbalah
you know how they interpret the fall of
Adam it's not a fall that God himself
was testing Adam and Eve to see if
they would rise above God's own restriction that
if they asserted their humanity to disobey that's
what God was waiting for and wanting well
that was the beginning of the commencement of
individuation and self-realization what are you going
to do with the people who interpret the
fall of Adam in that way as to
come out smelling like a rose and that
God actually wanted it so they would say
that's a Christian premise they don't realize it
as a foundational biblical proof and part of
our obligation to them is to show them
that what they call Christian is foundationally Hebrew
from the God of Israel and Hebraic that's
right but we have failed in communicating that
for we ourselves have made nice and have
not wanted to offend and wanted to be
kind few of us have Hamlet's fierce determination
with his mother Gertrude to say sometimes one
must be cruel in order to be kind
we're unwilling to be cruel because we want
to be accepted and here's what I've observed
in 38 years as a believer maybe you
can explain to me why is Jewish acceptance
so important for Christians they'll fall all over
themselves to be accepted by Jews you probe
that I'm not even going to try and
answer it it goes deep and it has
to do with humanistic assumptions itself that somehow
Jews are looked upon in such a honorific
way in the humanity now to receive their
benevolent acceptance of is a prized and esteemed
thing that we don't want to violate by
taking the risk of speaking to them in
truth so this is part of that whole
mystery of Israel in the church how the
Orthodox will explain why it is that PLO
terrorists came aboard in rubber dinghies and commandeered
a bus of found a Jewish school and
killed about 20 30 kids because the mezuzah
was not hanging at the right angle you
know the mezuzah on the door that contains
the parchment scroll of Deuteron 6 what it
wasn't hanging at the right angle even as
they analyze Jewish history and the destruction of
the temple in 70 AD they do not
attribute it to the real causes but to
internecine difficulties between the in the Jewish community
itself the failure to be brethren went to
another the factions the zealots versus the Pharisees
as if it's an internal problem rather than
recognizing that the eternal problem is only a
symptom of a much deeper failure the failure
of God to God himself so even the
Orthodox so they acknowledge it wrongly listen to
this paradoxical statement my eyes are upon the
central kingdom I will destroy from the face
of the earth except here's mercy coming up
out of judgment except I will not utterly
destroy the house of Jacob says the Lord
first the singer sweeping judgment except I love
the Lord for his exceptions and his until
wonderful for we're not for that we'd all
be dead they've just written that down for
lo I will command and shake the house
of Israel among all the nations not so
much as a grain or a pebble shall
fall to the ground how exacting is God's
last day sifting of this people because not
all Israel is Israel and God has an
elect from among them whom we would not
ordinarily ourselves recognized and we might even say
they're not even a candidate we don't see
a spiritual potentiality it might come from the
most fierce antagonist of Christ as Saul was
to become a Paul but he has a
remnant he has a people he'll have a
nation but he must sift the nation among
all the nations as one shakes a sieve
but not so much as a pebble or
a grain shall fall to the ground that's
why I can say with on the basis
of this verse with complete confidence whether I'm
in New Zealand Africa Brazil I'm trying to
think of the most recent places Chile it
doesn't matter where or what even in Egypt
itself I have preached this and said expect
Jews to be sifted through your nation and
if they say well we we don't have
a Jewish population I said that doesn't disqualify
you they will yet be brought there by
the process of the sifting itself because God's
object is not only to sift Israel but
to sift the nations through Israel and to
sift the church in the nations in their
response to Israel in its final and calamitous
condition that's on that basis we can understand
Matthew 25 and the now seated King performing
his first judgment of separating sheep from goats
among the nations on one question only what
did you do with the least of these
my brethren the issue of the Jew in
his final extremity is the issue of the
church it's the issue of the nations and
so critical an issue that the Lord is
not loath to pronounce an eternal judgment on
those who fail to have recognized and responded
to the least of these his brethren they're
cast into the lake of fire prepare for
the devil for his angels this raises so
remarkable a depth of question how could God
bring an eternal judgment just for the failure
of this one little thing maybe they were
nice because they say Lord when did we
see you for a hungry thirsty naked in
a prison with the very use of the
word Lord implies that he's sifting and separating
those who purport to be Christians using the
language of the faith but they failed at
a critical juncture and others who did not
even recognize what was at stake not even
knowing that they were the least of the
brethren of Jesus could not but but help
extend mercy whatever the consequence of themselves for
which reason Jesus calls them righteous and invites
them to enter the kingdom prepared for them
the reward that we were speaking about yesterday
at this time of participation in the rule
and reign with Christ over one last final
issue of sifting I will shift you through
all nations all the sinners of my people
shall die by the sword who say evil
shall not overtake or meet us remarkable of
how the Lord defines a sinner is his
attitude toward calamity and his inability to recognize
that it's coming at God's hand and to
think in his presumption in human pride that
there's a way in which he can be
saved from it independent of God God calls
out an enemy it's a complete God forsakenness
even in the threat of calamity if you'll
not consider God then when then will you
consider him and so I'll bring you out
of the nations where you have sojourned but
I'll not bring you into the land that's
why I'm expecting a great attrition of the
15 million Jews are in the world today
likely two-thirds of them will not survive
this time so great are the enemies to
be found among us to God a remnant
will return to Zion the redeemed of the
Lord will return to Zion but they will
not be great in number the great majority
will suffer the consequence of this verse how
will we bear that as Christians how many
of us will have complaint with God and
say where is he and how can you
allow this ruthless extermination a second time within
less than a century who purports to be
the God of Israel and yet what lets
his people suffer a wholesale devastation and death
that's why we need to have a preparation
in Scripture and be in agreement with God
those things that are now at the door
and soon to break we really need to
put the scalpel in and open this up
and look at it deeply who say this
shall not come upon us is not just
whistling in the dark and hoping against hope
it's the statement of deepest assumption about human
self-sufficiency that's why will this not come
but we'll see to it that won't come
upon us when they should what was the
thing that initiated my path to conversion who
was a humanist of this kind and I
believe with absolute confidence that there was no
problem that could ever come to me beyond
my intellectual ability to solve it and my
human capacity to understand and to relate to
it until God gave me a German wife
who had been in the Hitler Youth was
schizophrenic and I had under my roof to
act out the whole tragedy of Germany and
the Jew because in the frustration of her
own schizophrenic condition the only way to get
at him whom she loved and hated was
the one place where I was susceptible in
my Jewishness and when that happened you know
what I found out I was not a
nice guy I thought I was a nice
guy I could take anything that comes my
way I could respond coolly and calmly and
dispassionately and reasonably until I got zapped in
a place that only God himself could have
arranged and when that collapsed my reason was
not sufficient my intellect was not and what
I was as a man was not I
had to take a leave of absence from
the teaching profession I had nothing more to
say to my students put a pack on
my back and go to look out for
somewhere in the world for philosophy of some
answer to the new predicament which was the
predicament of the recognition of my own insufficiency
as a man here these rebels refuse to
acknowledge that insufficiency and they think however great
the calamity their reason their ability their influence
their wealth will save them and God says
when you still believe that you're a rebel
you still refuse to accede to me as
God and you make yourself your own Savior
and you are in fact your own God
and your own Lord and this is the
height of blasphemy and rebellion against myself let
me say this lest we would be encouraged
into some kind of anti-semitic disposition ourselves
to see how intractable these Jews are and
even in their final calamity what we need
to understand is that the issue of the
Jew is the issue of humanity the issue
of mankind this is man writ large this
is what is human this is in the
heart of man when we are displaying for
the world is God's statement about man it's
the revelation of himself as he is but
it's the revelation of man as he is
and Israel has got to represent that and
express that so we have to be careful
that this is not a description of a
particular ethnic people but the essence of what
man is in himself that Israel is is
acting out for the benefit of all the
world so we can see that even now
with the covenant that they sought to make
at Oslo predicated on total humanistic assumptions that
if you appeal to your enemy and show
him the benefit of what would come to
him if they will only put aside their
vengeful opposition and share in the prosperity that
would come to both of us as Israel
and Palestinian in the Middle East then we
can find the basis for peace what's the
assumption that man will act in his best
self interest we can appeal to our our
enemy on the basis of their own enlightened
self-interest is the assumption that man will
act in that interest but what if man
acts against his own interest by blowing up
his own children and is acting not out
of rationality but out of demonic compulsion we
Jews have never had to face that problem
before and now it's before us and it
is humanly insoluble it is intractable and God
had to bring us to an impasse of
this kind because up till now even with
the Nazi Holocaust and the and the sufferings
of the past and the pogroms of the
persecutions and even the destruction of Jerusalem and
the expulsion into the nations we have always
yet continued to believe that we could raise
ourselves by our bootstraps and that there's no
problem coming to us that is insurmountable that
cannot be met on the basis of our
own human ability and self-sufficiency without God
can you see why this crisis had to
mount and come to such a thing that
the Oslo agreement would fail as the other
and future agreement will fail be a false
covenant with death but the fact that we
think we can make such covenants and negotiate
on terms that will assure our security without
having to seek God or exceed to him
a bow or pray or consult shows the
depth of our human intransigence and that's what
humanism is and this is why we have
to be cut down at the pass that's
the explanation it came up with yesterday's discussion
when Inge was sharing how do we understand
this how can we justify them we need
to understand it in this context God is
bringing a people to the end of themselves
as I personally had to be brought 38
years ago to launch out with a year's
leave of absence from teaching with a pack
on my back looking for philosophical answers but
I knew that I needed something that was
not to be had in educational institutions or
Marxist institutes or in anything wasn't looking for
God I was an atheist but I was
a candidate like you can almost say that
I was repenting before I knew what the
word was repent meant I was repenting of
any confidence or trust in myself or in
men and in that condition for the first
time I heard the still small voice of
God calling me by name we Jews are
so filled with our own clamor our own
noise our own ideologies our own convictions that
we could not hear God if he shouted
there's got to come a destitution of hope
in ourselves by which our mouths are shut
and we have nothing to say and then
in that moment we can be candidates to
hear the still small voice of God and
he'll do whatever it takes to bring us
to that end so there's a remarkable book
that describes the progressive emptying of a man
the revelation of the Lord and precious salvation
that's come and it's symptomatic of all Jews
it's not just a man's testimony because that
man is a piece of jewelry but more
than that the salvation that comes to him
comes when he is cast out from this
place of security affluence and his ideologies and
his categories and is cast into the nations
and has moved from nation to nation in
14 months of traveling with living it for
what I can carry on my back and
meeting in every nation a new species of
mankind who picked me up off the side
of the road who received me with kindness
who spoke a word that penetrated my heart
and set me up even for the reading
of the first New Testament and the revelation
that came and then all the way through
of the salvation that is a picture of
microcosm of God's last days mode of the
salvation of Israel through a sifting through the
nations because the purpose of God as I
say so often is not the shortest distance
between two points but a movement through many
nations over a three and a half year
period of time that they might see in
every nation where however diverse the people the
same consistent love of God expressed toward them
whether it comes through Canadians or North Americans
or North American Indians or simple Indians in
the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico they will
see God in his consistency despite the diversity
of nationality and race through which these Jews
pass it's going to take that demonstration it
took that demonstration for my mother here in
community she had to have lunch at this
house and dinner at that house we circulated
her through the community I should have the
children so beautiful it's so peaceful I've never
seen such order I said are you getting
the point mom this is more than just
the happenstance of individual personalities what you're seeing
in every household is the consistency of a
kingdom and the reality of a king which
I finally came to her ten days before
her death so this sifting through the nations
is the final stratagem of God by which
he says I will meet with you in
Ezekiel chapter 20 face to face in the
wilderness of the nations and there you will
come into the bond of my covenant and
under the right of my authority something happens
in the sifting something happens in what is
revealed to Jews by those who express God
in extending refuge okay in that day verse
11 and I have an italics above verse
11 the statement the restoration of David's kingdom
we need to understand that in the very
context of God's judgment there's already something working
that presages and was set in motion to
bringing about of the desired kingdom that we
spoke yesterday coming in that day it's related
to the judgment of Israel this kingdom waits
for and comes out of that very nexus
of devastation and judgment which is perfectly in
keeping with other prophetic scriptures as for example
at your own leisure you can look at
the last statement in Isaiah chapter 6 when
the prophet is called to judge Israel that
his word is not going to liberate but
to condemn and to judge that who shall
go for us send me okay you speak
and in your speaking their ears will be
stopped their heart will be numb they'll not
be able to hear they'll not be able
to believe to be saved how long Lord
the prophet knows this cannot be the Lord's
final statement and the answer is until until
the cities are left without inhabitants until the
land suffers devastation and ruin so there's the
last judgment sets in motion the process of
restoration and the issue of the kingdom and
it's called the Davidic kingdom on that day
I will raise up the booth of David
or the tabernacle of David that is fallen
repair its breaches and raise up its ruins
and rebuild it as in the days of
old and you know what we sappy charismatics
have done with them we think that the
tabernacle of David is a of charismatic Davidic
worship that all of this turmoil and devastation
is to introduce a new wrinkle and a
Hebraic melody in our church services what a
statement of the paucity of the church and
its lack of kingdom consciousness as to construe
the tabernacle of David to be a form
of worship because David danced when the Ark
of God came from Shiloh to Jerusalem this
is government that the Davidic kingdom is the
tabernacle of David and what's the evidence for
that verse 12 in order that they the
redeemed nation coming out of its judgment may
possess the remnant of Edom and all the
nations who are called by my name says
the Lord who does this Israel was not
fit for its kingdom centrality until it passes
through the sifting refining fire of God in
judgment but having passed through it the Lord
can establish the kingdom of David not for
Israel's sake but for all nations sake for
the Lord shall go forth out of this
redeemed Zion and the word of Lord out
of Jerusalem all of these texts come together
Isaiah chapter 2 Psalm 2 that yesterday's material
and now Amos chapter 9 all refer to
the same reality the establishment of the kingdom
that affects all nations for the word Edom
is a symbol for Gentile nations that will
now come under people who can rule in
equity and justice and in its priestly demeanor
without warding it over the Gentiles this is
an answer to the question of the disciples
before the ascension of Jesus who in his
resurrection body before 40 days spoke to them
the things pertaining to the kingdom we didn't
think that there's that much to say if
the kingdom is only some subjective and internal
thing or a mode of refinement for the
church but if it is the polity if
it is the political rule of God over
creation the massive thing that takes back the
from usurping powers the governance of God's own
creation it takes 40 days of instruction and
so they asked a final question is it
time now to restore the kingdom to Israel
he never rebuked them to say oh how
petty are you in your nationalistic aspirations as
if this is your baby it was a
perfectly legitimate question based on biblical expectation even
of the kind that we're reading now in
the prophets they knew there would be a
restoration of the kingdom what they didn't understand
is how the kingdom though it is centered
in Israel is not exclusively for Israel but
all the so now here's the fulfillment when
does it come it comes in the context
of Israel's final chastisement and sifting through the
nations in that day the tabernacle of David
will be raised up and its breaches repaired
says the Lord who does this when shall
the kingdom be restored when the Lord does
this when the king comes and can come
and rightly reign over people who have been
redeemed and returned and restored upon whose head
is everlasting joy when mourning and sighing passes
away why are they rejoicing why is there
everlasting joy not only because they're not again
suffer expulsion and devastation but because they have
the honor now to be exalted above all
nations and being the locus of God's rule
over all creation all of this comes to
bear you see how at first the prophets
are something like the Psalms so much is
said in so few words and remains for
us to dig it out and to understand
the wide implications of what is being described
here because this goes right into the Millennium
for verse 13 says the time is surely
coming it's that same day says the Lord
when the one who plows shall overtake the
one who reaps and the treader of grapes
the one who sows the seed this is
poetry this this is prophetic rhetoric but what
is described as something so remarkably expansive that
it could not be set forth in prose
it has it requires this kind of imaginative
language that the one who sows his is
treading on the heels of the one who
reaps that that that the abundance of the
millennial blessing is so great that Israel will
fill the world with its fruit not only
its tangible and the natural food but its
spiritual fruit as well blessedness of a millennial
kind comes to Israel after it has been
abased and denigrated the same exaltation that came
to Jesus having been brought into death as
a criminal in the place of shame and
then given a name above every name and
exalted above all and become king is the
same kind of exaltation that comes to the
nation itself millennial blessedness of a kind where
the where the the abundance is so great
and so blessed this is a people going
to be experiencing famine as well as devastation
before their end comes but here the mountains
shall drip sweet wine and the hill shall
flow with it for I will restore the
fortunes of my people Israel the same I
will is the Lord who does this and
restoring the kingdom is the same God who
restores the fortunes and brings to a land
of famine exceeding great abundance and then they
there they shall rebuild the ruined cities and
inhabit them these are not the cities of
antiquity but this is modern-day Jerusalem Tiberias
Haifa Tel Aviv all of the present cities
of Israel will be devastated in that final
time of Jacob's trouble that has its inception
in the land and upon the return and
part of the millennial blessing is the rebuilding
of the ruined cities and inhabit them they
shall plant vineyards and drink their wine they
shall make gardens and eat their fruit this
is a complete reversal of the Deuteronomic judgments
spoken in the concluding chapters of Deuteronomy Leviticus
that you will plant vineyards but you'll not
drink the wine you'll plant gardens but you'll
not eat the fruit you'll build houses but
you might inhabit them now that's the curse
this is now the blessing and the enduring
blessing the millennial blessing you'll plant and you'll
you'll eat you'll plant and you'll drink you'll
build and you'll inhabit and that's God's final
statement that has carried on into eternity and
I will plant them in their land and
they shall never again be plucked up out
of the land that I have given them
says the Lord your God our controversy with
Christian Zionist messianic believers and purported prophets who
say this is fulfilled already but the context
indicates otherwise that this is a final fulfillment
after the ruin that requires rebuilding and after
the expulsion that requires exile I will then
plant you in the land and as we
have so often said is there a word
any more precious than the word plant that
I will you took a shot at it
yourself your Zionist endeavor is impressive historically who
else could have thought in a half century
to resuscitate a malarial wasteland and build a
modern civilization as you guys have done and
so great high-tech civilization military enterprise I
mean remarkably impressive but the end of it
is destruction but I will plant you you
sought to establish yourself now I'll show you
the contrast for when I plant you you
will not again be plucked up and when
I plant you'll stay planted and when I
plant you're not going to have neighbors that
are exacerbated you're not going to have Palestinians
forming at the mouth whose lands have been
confiscated or whose olive orchards have been uprooted
and bulldozed when I plant it will be
in my character I will plant it's more
than the action it's the character of God
and it'll be a it'll be an establishment
of a totally different kind for how something
begins is how it will end and carry
the character if God begins it by planting
it will be an entirely other kind of
Israel than what we have presently seen but
it waits for the destruction of the cities
the expulsion and the exile the sifting through
all nations the restoration of the tabernacle of
David all in one chapter so let's let's
dwell now a few moments here on this
remarkable and why if we don't dwell upon
it if we don't take it into our
spirits we don't rejoice already for this assurance
that it will come how should we bear
when it's preceded how what keeps us from
falling apart at the seams I'm worried about
myself I'm tougher than most of you but
I'm I don't know that I'll make it
I'm likely to crack up when I see
Jewish women raped and and families devastated and
blood gore all over the place and wholesale
devastation the cities and the Israel that I
have an affection for being ground-to-powder
how will I bear the sight and the
knowledge of that except that I'm sustained and
buoyed up by the knowledge that this is
the preliminary to the end Jesus said when
you see these things look up for your
redemption dwarf night the church that is the
church has a distinctive grasp on the end
it is an eschatologically minded church it has
a sense that we're moving toward a conclusion
and the conclusion is glorious or will not
be able to bear the pain of the
judgments that preceded and must necessarily proceed it
we need to dwell on this remarkable poetry
of these images that are brought up by
the prophet inspired by the Spirit of God
of what will be the millennial blessing it
will be so great that the Israel who
have suffered these devastations and survived it will
say it was worth it all what will
we say for what devastation we have to
experience and we because our end is yet
more glorious than this they are in the
land and in the earth their life is
prolonged if a child dies at the age
of 100 it's considered premature but we will
have glorified bodies we will be experiencing the
greater thing that Jesus showed to Nathanael angels
of ascending we will be in the rule
and reign with him from heavenly places we
will be able like Jesus to be on
the earth and in the heavenlies the glories
that no I have seen what you have
heard that the Jesus speaks of his mentions
will not have to be envious of Israel's
eternal blessedness what the blessing that will come
to us will even eclipse and even fit
us to be in relationship with them who
are ruling from the earth as we in
the heavenlies so that the benevolence of God's
kingdom can go forth to all nations you
know what does their saints we are not
kingdom minded and we are not millennial in
mind it and both these things need to
be restored to the church that is the
church well how shall we encourage these Jews
and what shall we say to them when
they come upon our doorstep be draggled broken
stripped confused and having no hope what what
do we say that they could they can
revive and go on for that three and
a half year trek before they are returned
to as the redeemed of the Lord to
Zion unless we can speak to them this
unless we can show them that this is
a judgment but it's it's only God's penultimate
word it's not his final word it's only
the until but this is what follows and
the day will come that though you're now
bowed down and you're depressed and broken and
it's a brokenness that's needful the day will
come when they'll be everlasting joy upon your
head not only because you have the confidence
that you're not again be plucked up or
rooted out but that there's a place of
honor and celebration that every nation will acknowledge
that you are the redeemed of the Lord
and the Holy One Holy Ones of Israel
and the priests of the Living God and
there and you say it's worth it all
we could never have attained to this except
we were first purged and put through this
refining fire we have to be able to
communicate that not just as men who are
women who are clinically correct but with prophetic
passion we have to project an image of
something in the same kind of prophetic splendor
as if it being set forth by Amos
we've got to go beyond the mere capacity
of information but to speak it in such
a way that it's an encouragement and a
hope for those who are destitute of all
hope and will perish without hope unless we
can convey hope according to the Word of
God and a word we have got to
be as prophetic as Amos and that that
means that it's got to be into in
us the prophet is his message we've got
to exhibit it the joy of it even
though we are sharing with them the present
blight of their time of Jacob's trouble so
the ultimate requirement is the church and we
see that in Isaiah 35 where the wilderness
is glad for them whose hands are lame
their knees are weak they're blind and they're
despairing and they're caught up in the wilderness
in places where they had never thought to
be and can't see any light at the
end of the tunnel they're ready to perish
just as many in the Nazi time in
the Holocaust perished for the want of hope
it's not the strongest who survived it was
those who had hope of some kind that
were enabled and so God says to someone
with them in the wilderness you can read
it say to them your God will come
yes he will vindicate you when they hear
that word the eyes of the blind are
open than the lame leap and water breaks
out of the dry ground they're saved by
a word even before the fulfillment of the
word for the word is not just a
piece of information it's a prophetic proclamation that
constitutes the reality before it comes right that
does not come to them in the wilderness
they will perish and never return to Zion
and how then shall the word of Paul
be fulfilled that what shall their return be
but life from the dead they've got the
return sense and the issue of their return
is the issue of the church that is
the church of a prophetic kind whose word
is life more than information more than saying
the correct thing imbued with the reality long
before any sense of it can be seen
or exists right because the Prophet stands above
time he's with God with him there's no
present past or future he already sees the
future thing as present that's why they speak
to us that way this this is spoken
of as if it's already taken place and
that's why those who have misread it say
there'll be no future calamity for Israel look
he said I'll plant them in the land
that's what it said of Israel is you're
not reading it in context and you're not
reading it prophetically before their wilderness experience are
we willing for our own and the Lord
can do that right where we are my
most powerful wilderness experience did not come out
in the naked forest it came in creature
comfort Denmark where I lived with Inga for
several months after the Lord expelled me out
from the u.s. and some years ago
are we willing for our own wilderness as
the Lord himself will mediate it knowing our
frames and knowing what we need that he
will come to us when there's no light
at the end of our tunnel and when
we are ready to despair and ready to
throw in the towel for the want of
hope that the Lord will come and we'll
we'll experience the Lord in such a way
that we can convey that reality to those
who would otherwise perish the Prophet lives his
message that's why we were expelled from this
property that's why for three years there was
no life on these grounds that's why we
were exiles because we had to experience in
some measure the pangs the pain the death
and the humiliation of expulsion and the hope
and the glory of restoration and return of
which you are receiving some measure of the
blessing no why because the Prophet must be
his message he must speak it with a
conviction that only can come not because he
agrees with the verbal truth of it but
because he has passed through it and that's
painful and then so God is saying the
church itself must be this where Israel will
not have a living prophetic word for the
prophetic word constitutes an event what happened then
brings life the word of the prophetic word
is event but it's from expressed by those
who have themselves been dealt with by God
I've never thought of it before but maybe
we can understand that as a willingness to
bow to enter a degree of suffering of
a sanctifying kind for we have just a
few minutes notice in verse 15 the phrase
never again here's an ironic echo of God
of the Zionist human assumption that says never
again based on their supposed strength and ability
to deter evil but here God says it
I will plant them upon the land and
they shall never again be plucked up the
only phrase never again that has validity is
when God speaks it not when man speaks
it because it's a complete reversal of Zionist
presumption and will stand eternally they will never
again be plucked up because it says at
the end of verse 12 says the Lord
who does this and all you need to
do is go through the text and see
how many times we touch the phrase I
will I will restore I will plant I
will destroy I will command says the Lord
who does this Israel's final experience and it's
saving experience is the Lord who does this
he has allowed them to give it a
their best shot and that must necessarily fail
and fail tragically but I will I will
I will I will I will I'll judge
I'll sift I'll restore I'll build I'll plant
I will seed it you'll never again be
plucked up you're gonna have millennial blessing that
will fill the earth with its fruit both
naturally and spiritually because I will says the
Lord who will do this so what a
remarkable conclusion and how God is set forth
before the nations who have who will visibly
see because Jews will be sifted through the
nations both the severity of his judgment and
the mercy of his restoration has returned and
in the return to plant them and to
be an everlasting blessing to all the families
of the earth fulfilling them what was spoken
at Abraham as at the beginning as God's
answer to the rebellion of nations I will
make of you a great nation and give
you a name and you will bless all
the families of the earth your millennial blessedness
will go out to all the families of
the earth so we just need to bow
before the Lord and catching something of the
majesty of all of this because the church
is denuded and robbed of essential dimensions of
the knowledge of God and the grandeur of
God as is only demonstrated and exhibited in
both his dealing and his if they exempt
that and dismiss it and have no heart
for it they are necessarily confined to a
narrow and inadequate evangelical charismatic self-serving self
-propagating self-perpetuating religious entity they have lost
the glory because it's caught up in that
people whom God has chosen and elect for
the demonstration of itself so we could pray
the communication of this to the church and
that is fulfillment so let's let's take a
few minutes asking the Lord to put something
in us of the sweep of this remarkable
chapter giving us a glimpse of the end
and the painful means by which it can
it must be obtained and that men will
say that they are grateful so Lord save
us from religious speak religious save us from
learning something in a technical way thank you
Lord for underlining our prophetic call as the
church in total the church itself as a
prophetic entity and the test of it will
be our ability to speak a life-giving
word to Jews in the ultimate extremity of
their distress who without hope if we fail
that they fail the issue is not then
they'll they'll be dead they'll be inert and
what brings them to life and makes them
to leap in their eyes to be open
is a word that comes from those who
are with them in the wilderness and have
not been absconded in some premature rapture that
the church so calmly covets so my God
we're asking to be formed for this and
in a sense as we're willing for whatever
it takes it could be said we're bowing
to enter the tent of Shem we're bowing
to be an identification with that people we're
bowing to receive from you there can only
be obtained in that tent at your hand
through dealings and preparation that we shall not
fail in that final moment toward them thank
you that whatever it means we welcome it
whatever wilderness whatever despair whatever stretching to breaking
where our own faith is ready to fail
unless you appear and vindicate we're willing Lord
that we would have a living tested prophetic
word to speak that will be life for
those would otherwise perish we know it's not
cheap the prophetic thing is ultimate and it
comes through a school of preparation and of
life my God that we have some little
understanding bless us and receive our yes this
morning would turn this morning into an event
by our assent to whatever it will require
to obtain the issue of Israel is the
issue of the church the church of this
ultimate kind for which we make ourselves willing
candidates as did and then went into a
dark night of the soul where none went
to comfort her except the Lord himself who
will do this give us that knowledge my
God of yourself that we lack we have
shielded ourselves and kept adversity at arm's length
but we're opening ourselves Lord foolishly by welcoming
what you think is needful for our preparation
and our destiny we ask it in Jesus
name