Good morning, Saints.
I'm totally uncomfortable, out of place.
So this is an adjustment for me, so
I might bumble a bit until I find
my stride in the Lord in place.
So be patient.
I'm not accustomed to this environment very often.
So Lord, this is nothing for you.
You're not a God to be intimidated by
anything.
And you're the sovereign God who has arranged
this occasion.
So here we are, Lord, at the commencement,
and appeal to you again, as we always
do, the great Alpha and Omega, to give
us a point of beginning, in keeping with
the end that is already determined by you,
which I don't know.
So let me not in any way transgress,
impose, assert my humanity, but just be a
piece of dust that you're pleased to employ,
that these people can receive the full measure,
Lord, of your intention, because we share with
them the sense of gravity and significance for
this time.
And only you know the full import, what
will flow, and the consequences that will issue
from this time of speaking.
So be the Lord of it all, my
God, from commencement to conclusion.
And thank you for the privilege, which is
ours before these people, my God, to be
a voice for your speaking.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.
Beginning is tough.
If you'll ever one day be a so
-called public speaker, you'll find out.
No past experience prepares you for the present
one.
And men like myself have such a heightened
sense of the significance of things that if
this congregation was reduced to a tenth its
size, I would still be inwardly trembling.
It's not the numbers.
It's the occasion, which is once and for
all and will not be given again.
So we proceed tremulously, word by word.
And so all I have as a point
of beginning is this morning's devotional psalm.
I don't know if you're in the practice
of reading the psalms as your devotional experience
morning by morning, but that's my practice.
And I don't play spiritual roulette, opening the
Bible and just finding something at random.
But today is the 19th day, is that
right, of this month?
And so in my cycle of readings, I'm
on Psalm 49 and invite you to turn
with me there.
Reading from the Bible I was required to
purchase at the Lutheran seminary that has many
deficits but gives ample space and margins for
notation.
So if you find me expressing something that's
at variance with your edition, you supplement what
is wanting here.
It's almost a feminist Bible.
This came in an age when women wanted
to correct the church for its sexist attitude,
and they overcorrected in some places.
Perhaps you'll hear if I use this Bible
more than this occasion.
But Psalm 49 reads, Hear this, all you
peoples, give ear all inhabitants of the earth,
both low and high, rich and poor together.
My mouth shall speak wisdom.
The meditation of my heart shall be understanding.
I will incline my ear to a proverb.
I will solve my riddle to the music
of the harp.
Why should I fear in times of trouble
when the iniquity of my persecutors surrounds me?
Those who trust in their wealth and boast
of the abundance of their riches.
Truly, no ransom avails for one's life.
There is no price one can give to
God for it.
For the ransom of life is costly and
can never suffice.
That one should live on forever and never
see the pit.
When we look at the wise, they die.
Fool and dolt perish together and leave their
wealth to others.
Their graves are their homes forever, their dwelling
places to all generations.
Though they named lands their own, mortals cannot
abide in their pomp.
They are like the animals that perish.
Such is the fate of the foolhardy, the
end of those who are pleased with their
lot.
Like sheep, they are appointed for Sheol or
hell.
Death shall be their shepherd.
Straight to the grave they descend and their
form shall waste away.
Sheol or hell shall be their home.
But God will ransom my soul from the
power of hell, for he will receive me.
Do not be afraid when some become rich,
when the wealth of their houses increase.
For when they die, they will carry nothing
away.
Their wealth will not go down after them.
Though in their lifetime they count themselves happy,
for you are praised when you do well
for yourself.
They will go to the company of their
ancestors who will never again see the light.
Mortals cannot abide in their pomp.
They are like animals that perish.
Amen.
My dear Danish wife has a phrase that
I frequently cite.
What do you think of them apples?
What do you think of this psalm?
It sounds very much like a New Testament
selection rather than an old.
And I don't know if you've been made
aware that often something from the psalms and
certainly from the prophets has a greater incisiveness
and brings dimensions of completeness and depth of
understanding that even exceeds New Testament scripture.
And so we would be fools to compartmentalize
and to allow the Old Testament so-called
to suffer at the expense of the New
when they are so much in tandem.
And here's an instance that struck me this
morning early in my reading it of the
sense of eternity, the sense of what follows
death that of which we ourselves need to
be reminded because we believe but we don't
believe adequately.
We're not persuading men knowing the terror of
God.
We don't have a grip on hell.
It's not a polite subject, and we are
of all things polite Christians.
So it's there.
It's factored in somewhere in our catalog of
doctrines to be approved, but we don't believe
it vehemently.
We certainly don't believe it as the psalmist
does who makes clear what the destiny of
many will be and that somehow that the
Lord has quickened to me that I should
make this a point of beginning.
And it's not as if I have now
rigidly, thoroughly studied it and I'm prepared now
to expound.
I'm just reading it now for, so to
speak, a second time this morning and just
foolishly trusting that somehow this note needs to
be struck or else nothing can really adequately
follow either about Israel or the church unless
we have taken into our deepest consideration what
is the final issue of everything, heaven or
hell from which wealth does not preserve us
or keep us.
More likely it will be an incentive to
take the wrong direction and suffer the tragic
consequence.
And I read this this morning as I
always often do through the prism of my
preoccupation with my own Jewish people because they
ought to be found among the wealthy and
not necessarily financed, though certainly they're conspicuous in
that place, but wealth of intellect, wealth of
culture, wealth of self-righteousness, of self-exaltation,
of correctness, of, I don't know what.
We Jews have a market on all of
those things that make for self-esteem in
the modern world of which we ourselves are
the principal architects.
As you know, if you just survey the
giants of the 20th century like Karl Marx
and Sigmund Freud, Einstein, and a whole host
of other and lesser men including even Steven
Spielberg and Eisner of Walt Disney Studios, and
the whole spate of CEOs and men of
place and prominence in the world of commerce
and culture who are persuasive and influential, these
are rich men.
But according to this psalm, that may be
a foreboding of an unhappy eternal destiny because
in verse 10 says, When we look at
the wise, they die.
Fool and dolt perish together and leave their
wealth to others.
Even though they have named lands as their
own or businesses or corporations or even a
nation entitled Israel, there's no guarantee that they
will not fall to the same destiny as
the poor, the obscure, the fool, and the
dolt perish together with those who think themselves
wise.
Because the issue is ransom.
The issue is atonement.
The issue is redemption which even this Old
Testament psalmist intuits and senses more deeply than
we who subscribe to New Testament doctrine of
salvation that there's an issue of ransom.
There's something that's got to take place that
is from God or else we will perish
with the dolts, with the fools, the wise
and the rich together except that we're ransomed.
Something has got to come at the expense
of another that saves us from an eternal
destiny of regret and shale or hell.
Are you guys following me so far?
Yeah?
Okay.
Why would God single out a note of
this kind that just coincidentally happens to be
my devotional reading for this morning?
Because if we don't sufficiently reckon on this
eternal destiny and what is required to save
us from it no matter how we're endowed
intellectually or financially then we can't understand the
lengths to which God will go to save
men from such an eternal lament.
We will balk and find fault with God
of what he will require.
The death of his own son which we
haven't adequately considered and have sentimentalized and I'm
not sure that the film The Passion has
done God's service in commending to audiences the
awesomeness of what the ransom was that was
required for our redemption.
Certainly the Jewish community has not the faintest
sense of this because you can only understand
it in proportion to the awareness of your
own sin.
You can't understand it by watching a film
or reading a biblical text or somebody witnessing
to you.
There needs to be a depth of comprehension
of the truth of your own condition though
you think yourself wise or wealthy or else
the issue of redemption through ransom is just
some kind of peculiar doctrine that Gentiles have
seized upon in the formulation of their own
strange faith but has no coherence or meaning
for Jews.
Let alone that they should be required in
some measure to suffer as the consequence of
their sin so as to recognize the value
of the ransom.
I'm saying all this to prepare you for
a commencement, a beginning in these days by
looking at the text of Isaiah 53 which
is the critical prophetic text of how that
ransom was supplied in a suffering servant.
But the way in which I intend to
use it and I'm not sure that I'll
even begin this morning is as a description
not only of that suffering servant whom we
know well as those who believe but as
an experience that is yet future for the
nation Israel who themselves will be required to
walk a road to Calvary and be marred
more than any man and have no beauty
that any should desire them and shall be
rejected and despised of men.
So there's a multiple use of the text
of Isaiah 53.
Ironically, rabbis have long contended that Isaiah 53
is the description of Israel as a suffering
servant nation already in its past.
And I'm suggesting a new twist.
It's a depiction of something future through which
the nation must pass.
When I say nation, I don't just mean
that political enclave in the Middle East called
the State of Israel.
But the nation, Jews, everywhere on the globe
through a time of Jacob's trouble will be
required to walk a path a road to
Calvary of suffering of abuse, of rejection of
a kind that has no historical point
of reference other than that which Jesus himself
suffered.
And what Jesus himself suffered is something that
we Jews have conspicuously avoided considering for 2
,000 years.
There's no subject more reprehensible or repulsive than
the crucifixion of Jesus.
And if we give it any consideration at
all it's only as a lamentable accident that
might have been avoided if this political misfit
had not rubbed Roman authorities in the wrong
way and suffered an unhappy but unnecessary death.
We Jews have failed to reckon on the
significance of the crucifixion of our own Messiah
and the fact that he suffered such a
death makes him yet a more loathsome and
reprehensible object of consideration and all the more
reason not to consider that he might be
the Messiah of Israel or let alone Israel's
own God.
There's something totally offensive about the cross which
is not haphazard or accidental but part of
God's deliberate wisdom so that the wise will
stumble over it or be offended by it
and the only way in which Israel shall
apprehend that suffering as its atonement and as
its ransom is by some measure experiencing the
reality of that suffering itself.
Am I getting too fancy?
Can't help it.
But I will, by the grace of God
try and expound and come back again I'm
giving a general overview and a statement so
that later on you'll be able to follow
if I take this up as we examine
the text.
So I'll repeat myself.
The issue of the crucifixion of Jesus is
the issue of ransom is the issue of
atonement which if it is not appropriated by
Jews or Gentiles they will go into Sheol
or hell.
Believest thou this?
There's no complementary secondary thing that's available to
Jews by virtue of some Abrahamic covenant that
saves them from such a necessity.
If that were so Paul would not have
anguished at the commencement of Romans chapter 9
that he would wish himself a curse for
his brethren's sake that they might know Christ.
Why would he be willing to exchange his
salvation that they might obtain it if they
already had some kind of a measure of
a complementary security that obviates the necessity to
receive this Christ this suffering Messiah this suffering
servant this atonement, this ransom.
Got the picature?
My wife always adds a syllable.
Picature.
She's from Denmark.
Bless her.
So for 2,000 years Jews have crossed
the street to avoid the shadow of the
cross on church spires to fall upon them
and there's no subject more detestable more to
be shunned than the issue of a crucified
Christ.
And I'm afraid that the Passion film for
as many Jews who may have seen it
and there are not many will repulse them
rather than inform them and that if I
were making the film I would have done
something much more to make the atrocity of
bloodshed and suffering and flagellation that was so
brutally depicted understandable in the context of redemption
and not just put there to win our
Catholic sympathy or to wring out a few
more drops of commiseration of a schmaltzy kind
that does not bring redemption but pity and
maybe even will encourage that old thing about
Christ-killer See what I mean?
So what am I saying?
That I believe that God wants me to
begin with an examination of Isaiah 53 not
that we should rehearse the sufferings through which
Jesus has already passed but that we should
anticipate the sufferings through which Israel will pass
not those in the state alone though certainly
themselves but Jews even in Kansas City or
Chicago or New York or Honolulu or Singapore
or where so ever we are proliferated in
the earth there will be a time of
Jacob's trouble wherever Jacob is and that trouble
is described for us in many places in
the prophets but Isaiah 53 is a remarkable
remarkably apt description of that suffering because it
bears such a remarkable correspondence to that through
which Jesus himself passed and so I have
coined the phrase that will stretch your American
high school mentality junior college if you've gone
that far and that is the mutuality of
suffering there's something about suffering that reveals and
maybe you're too young to have had occasion
to notice and maybe you never will be
required but Israel will be required because it's
in the identification of finding themselves cast out
and despised and rejected of men and being
marred more than any man being beaten to
a pulp fleeing from violence that in the
course of that suffering something shall break upon
their consciousness that this bears a remarkable resemblance
to that one who is described in Isaiah
53 who suffered in a like way 2
,000 years before us only the difference is
that he went as a lamb to his
slaughter silently while we also shall howl with
complaint and all the rest but nevertheless as
I hope to show you in the text
the voice changes it begins with a narration
then it's Israel itself speaking then God himself
interjects and there's a recognition oh it was
for this reason for our transgressions that he
bore those stripes for our iniquity something about
suffering in a comparable or almost identical way
with the Lord and Messiah who preceded the
nation reveals to the nation the meaning of
the suffering which we have shunned for 2
,000 years to consider and I don't have
the ability except God would give me a
special grace to say to you that to
miss the crucifixion of Jesus is to miss
God is to miss the most profound single
revelation given of God in all of the
manifold aspects of his deity and all of
the complex statement of his triune Godhead because
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
are all expressed and involved in this remarkable
debacle called the crucifixion of Christ the one
who gave himself without spot as a sacrifice
as the atonement as the what's that other
word?
the ransom he did so by
the eternal spirit not by human courage and
he did it so before the face of
the Father whose presence departed from him that
he would cry out my God, my God
why hast thou forsaken me?
in one historic moment of time in a
prescribed place and it called Calvary something is
transacted and takes place that is a once
and for all eternal statement of God as
God suffering for sin and placating and obviating
the necessity for a righteous judgment or else
God would lose his character as God if
he looks the other way and makes no
issue of sin and righteousness he's required as
God to deal with it justly and righteously
but it requires ultimate sacrifice that neither man
nor animal can provide that only he himself
can provide and in providing it himself his
own nature is revealed in his humility and
his love and many other aspects I'm just
trifling here I'm just touching and playing with
the surface of something that deserves the deepest
examination or we nullify ourselves as church if
we ourselves have not been apprehended by the
enormity of what is represented at the cross
if we trivialize that the faith is lost
we become only a culture of enjoyment of
a kind peculiar to ourselves but we have
no value outside this building if we trivialize
the cross if we have not apprehended its
depths we have nothing, we are nothing, we
have no message we cannot, like Paul, persuade
men knowing the terror of God we cannot
begin to depict to them the enormity of
sin by what was required to expiate it
because sin will never reveal itself as sin
its nature is to conceal itself as sin
what reveals sin as sin is the judgment
that is required to expiate it so something
like the Nazi holocaust six million Jews annihilated
and a million and a half children what
possible reason could God have allowed a devastation
of that kind for which there is no
other historical accompaniment than the crucifixion of Jesus
himself there are two holocausts in history one
is the crucifixion of Jesus and the other
is the crucifixion of the Jew in the
Nazi time and both have to do with
sin and judgment so if we had our
heads screwed on right as Jews the question
that we ought to be asking which we
have not asked and it takes a character
like myself to have the chutzpah to begin
to suggest that maybe we need to consider
that God was present that it was not
an historical accident an aberration of history for
which we will never have explanation and simply
have to bear it God was there and
how do you reconcile that with God of
love that he was there and present and
allowed that atrocity and that genocidal annihilation to
take place how then is he a God
of love how is he a God of
mercy how is he a God of justice
a God of righteousness that he is aware
and knows and could have intervened and did
not and more than that not only was
he observant but it was a fulfillment of
his own word given in the foundational mosaic
scriptures of Deuteronomy and Leviticus now being fulfilled
which he said would befall us in the
latter days well that's to say that that's
astonishment is to miss is not to find
yet the right word we were
taken around Olathe yesterday I'm wearing the pants
that were provided as gift the best I've
ever owned I hope you're impressed but in
the course of going to this very exclusive
men's haberdashery we passed equally exclusive businesses and
shopping malls hey don't you guys ever get
tired of shopping malls my God they're prolific
it's hard to find a patch of grass
that is not somehow attached to commerce you
guys are living in la la land and
I'm just wondering how can I succeed for
those who are have reconciled themselves and live
comfortably with the vista outside this place that
is that is commonplace and normative in Kansas
and other middle class America in general and
speak to you about the atrocity of the
cross or the meaning of the holocaust the
devastations that God allows you've got to be
jarred in your brain box and if you
are not and you sit and nod amiably
I have failed until you have fallen out
of your seat foaming at the mouth you
have not yet understood the magnitude of either
the cross or the holocaust and the symmetry
that they provide in history that the one
is the key to the understanding of the
other and for the want of that understanding
both of the crucifixion of Jesus and the
suffering of Jews in the Nazi time there's
yet another holocaust to come through which you
yourself will live and be either an observer
or a participant or a victim or run
with your tail between your legs away and
into apostasy so I'm wondering about you will
you make it in that time if you
have not some iron in your soul by
a proper apprehension of what has already been
given in history and will yet be given
again in greater measure as we say in
Brooklyn wiser than it was at the first
how do you say worse art?
because Jesus himself said that if this time
were not cut short no flesh would survive
but for the elect's sake this time will
be cut short for there's coming a time
of trouble upon the nation such as it
has never before known nor will again know
if he's speaking about a calamity of a
holocaust that is yet future that is greater
than anything that we have previously known as
Jews it will have to exceed the Nazi
holocaust and if when he comes and his
feet set on the Mount of Olives to
save Israel from its final extremity when all
nations come against Jerusalem to destroy it and
two-thirds have already perished and the final
third passes through the fire if that's the
ratio of Jewish survival not only in the
land but over the earth we're talking about
the decimation of 10 million Jews in a
period of time shorter than the Nazi holocaust
three and a half years and what
are you saying cats that this is a
necessary and final chastisement for the nation yes
and that most Jews will not survive it
yes and that the redeemed of the Lord
who survive and return to Zion with everlasting
joy in their heads and mourning and sighing
fleeing away will only constitute a remnant yes
and that remnant will constitute the redeemed nation
yes and that redeemed nation allows for the
return of its king in the holy hill
of Zion and becomes the accompaniment of a
messianic kingdom a theocratic rule that has its
center in Zion and can only be occupied
by a son of David on the throne
of David and requires a redeemed nation to
be the the platform the locus of that
rule yes and you don't understand the word
that I'm saying yes I don't know why
Mike Bickle brings me into these situations that
this suffering this future chastisement which beggars our
minds as modern people who have a heart
of concern and sympathy for Israel and for
the Jew that God will again allow such
a devastation as will eclipse the Nazi holocaust
some of you will forsake the faith because
of that you'll not be able to reconcile
that with what you understand of God because
your understanding is eminently too shallow it will
be an offense for you that he would
allow that kind of devastation again and yet
reconcile that with God as just righteous, merciful
and loving because it's in actions of that
kind that the reality of God as God
is most profoundly revealed got that?
something is revealed of God in the ultimacy
of judgment that is not revealed in any
other way and when it's revealed what we
think is harsh and severe in judgment is
seen also as righteous and that judgment itself
becomes a mercy if it will keep men
from Sheol and hell got the picture?
only if you understand the devastation of hell
can you begin to understand the lengths to
which God will go to keep men from
it as their eternal fate but if you
don't see it you'll be offended that God
will go as far as he will go
and other things can be said that Israel's
calling as a nation of priests and a
light unto the world requires this suffering because
although you're too young to understand and it
will never be required of you you cannot
be a priest except through suffering you can
be a technician you can be on the
worship team and witness and fast but priestliness
that requires a barefooted identification with the condition
of the people to whom you come as
God's representative and authority to intercede between earth
and heaven requires a demeanor and a disposition
of humility and brokenness, especially if you're coming
to those who you're former historic tormentors like
Iraq Saudi Arabia Egypt where we Jews are
called to be a nation of priests and
a light to the world which includes Islamic
nations and Palestinians and we cannot be priests
to those people except something has come into
our national experience that has affected a brokenness
that shall never heal that we will carry
as a permanent disability like Jacob with the
what you may call it in his hip
who was left lame to become Israel so
must the present state called Israel but more
truly presently Jacob, become Israel by being crippled
by being submitted to suffering by being brought
through an Isaiah 53 experience of devastation rightly
and justly required of God in his chastisement
as a father who will not spare sons
who are called to a priestly identity and
service to the nations in his eternal kingdom
well get the tape Lord mercy on this
people why do you always have me like
this to exacerbate and irritate and stretch and
there's no way that the brightest of them
can understand the breadth of what I'm already
expressing except you give a mercy to comprehend
let alone a mercy to participate let alone
a mercy to extend themselves to this Jewish
nation when it shall be proliferated even through
Kansas City especially the suburbs thereof that will
wipe their faces in the blood and will
not be offended that they're marred more than
any man or that they constitute a stink
in flight not having the ability even so
much as to wash or to shower or
change clothes this is going to make an
ultimate requirement of the church that is the
church to be present in the earth in
this final episode that transfigures the surviving nation
to come into its eternal destiny to which
they were called which has never been uh
removed because it says in Romans 11 the
gift and calling of God is irrevocable therefore
it stands therefore it must be fulfilled or
the God who gave the call is rendered
a non-God because he cannot fulfill the
calling to which he had given his people
to which they must come even against their
own contrariness and unwillingness to be a nation
of priests and a light to the world
who would much rather succeed in business and
in the film industry or rap culture recordings
that rake in the millions that's what they'd
rather do but you have a calling which
if they don't fulfill it how then are
you God you have a covenant which if
it's not on it how then are you
God that the redeemer the ransomer will come
out of Zion and take transgression from Jacob
if you don't do that and don't perform
that even against Jacob's unwillingness how then are
you God the issue of Israel is the
issue of God as God and it's got
to be demonstrated before the face of all
nations and that's why this drama is not
just going to take place in what is
called Israel it's going to take place in
Asia and Latin America because you said in
Amos chapter 9 I will sift you through
all nations and not the least of the
reasons is that all nations who themselves have
ignored the great single historic episode of the
crucifixion of Jesus or have turned it into
a triviality by hanging a cross at the
front of their churches or around their necks
or their athletes wear them will for the
first time have an opportunity to begin to
assess that historic episode of the sufferings of
Jesus for the sin of mankind through the
love of the father who made of himself
a sacrifice of the only kind that could
be acceptable when it will be reiterated and
acted out again before the face of all
nations through the suffering of the people Israel
before them Thank you Lord for recording devices
and I'm praying an anointing on the recording
that when they hear it again and again
that finally something will break in and through
that this reiteration of the cross through the
suffering of the people Israel is your last
act of mercy not only for Israel that
will come to the recognition of him who
suffered before them by what they are suffering
of a like kind but for the nations
who have turned that great ransom and that
great sacrifice into a piece of trivia or
religious culture and need to see again the
depth of it as it is acted out
before them by the suffering of a people
in the like measure of a road to
Calvary of the kind which Jesus himself trod
so that Israel in her final extremity and
suffering serves the purpose of God as being
his witness and giving the nations one last
opportunity to consider the Jesus whom they have
effectually rejected even in being Christian Teach
us what these things mean So Lord bless
these children, rattle their cage I'm brutal Don't
spare them Lord, save them my God I
pray from being sweet shallow, pretty well meaning,
nice kids have a heart for Israel want
to witness all the rest Lord save them
from that and make them effectual prophetic apostolically
minded young adults who understand the necessity for
suffering and are willing themselves to be made
candidates because suffering is the name of the
game suffering reveals it revealed God in the
sufferings of Jesus and it will reveal Jesus
in the sufferings of Israel Teach us what
these things mean and we thank you for
the privilege of being called not just to
observe this final episode in history but to
be participants grant us my God wisdom, understanding
mercy love for its victim people without which
some will not have survived except that something
comes to them from a church who share
with them in that last days extremity and
bear them up and are to them that
provision of your mercy without which they would
have perished before they came to the knowledge
of the Holy One who would have saved
them from Sheol and hell by the ransom
of himself seal that statement Lord and help
us to understand it deeply we thank you
and give you praise in Jesus name Amen
Thank you If you're getting anything that's coherent
it's because you've prayed You see how what
kind of topic this is, what kind of
mystery this is what kind of explication this
requires what kind of fathoming and understanding that
requires mercy even to comprehend what shall it
require to participate So where is Mike?