What kind of righteousness have we been brought into in Christ? In this segment Reggie probes the nature of Israel’s righteousness “in That Day”, and… by extension… our righteousness now.
From a January 2016 GFW Saturday night Bible Study, this Session was on Isaiah 17.
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Full Transcript below:
Tom, it would be an interesting exercise to go through the prophets. Of course, actually, not just the Old Testament, because the New Testament is very clear that Jerusalem is the special object of Antichrist’s hatred, the treading under foot for 42 months. So this is not some Old Testament thing that a bunch of, you know, hyper literalists are latching on to here.
But this is everywhere. This is everywhere you read about the Day of the Lord. Everywhere.
Not only when that name, that word is particularly used, and it’s close associated terms in that day and in those days, etc. And then often the things that will be accomplished at that day are mentioned that have fulfillment in no other time. I mean, I know there’s some partial fulfillment throughout history, but.
So all roads lead to the Day of the Lord. And I just want to give a little story. It had to do with something that John Piper wrote some years back, and Art gave it to me, and Art was impressed with it, and I somewhat was, too.
Art said, what do you think of this? In other words, is he right? My answer was yes and no. Well, that was tentative at the time. Right now it would be a resounding no.
But it was very appealing because it asked this question, does Israel, in their present unbelief on this side of new covenant righteousness, do they have, and he used this term, talk about a slippery term. I don’t suggest at all that he did it consciously, of course, but it’s a disarming term. The word is, and some of you all may have heard this, does Israel in their present state have a quote-unquote divine right to the land? Well, first of all, that’s disarming, because how can you at once speak of grace and right? You know, there is no right, yet, you know, God has put his whole big picture together around one nation.
That’s the nation that gives the framework and the context, not only of the past, but of the future. And let’s see, where I want to go with this is this, so the idea is, is that Israel’s pretty much fair game. They’re like any other nation.
I heard one leading pastor use such a crass term as, there’s no more significance to modern Israel or to the to the Middle East conflict, biblically, than a border war between, I think he said Paraguay and Uruguay, but I don’t think those nations are actually, there’s not a natural border there. I don’t know what, but you get the point. In other words, he reduces it to a non-significance that has all to do with the Jewish apocalyptic dream, they’re back in the land.
And yet, Phil, I believe it was, one of you just a moment ago, read Joel chapter 3, verses 1, 2, and 3 there, and that clearly is the day of the Lord. And all through the scriptures, the day of the Lord is all about the the climax to a ultimate showdown in the Middle East between Israel and her neighbors most immediately, but a trembling Jerusalem, a burdensome stone that has brought all the nations into a vortex and entangled and engaged all nations in a way that they cannot disentangle themselves from. And so, you know, God is flushing something to the surface here.
And so I began to think about that, and I thought, well, when has Israel ever been in New Covenant righteousness? There is always, as June was just saying, there’s only ever been a remnant like Joshua and Caleb who had a different spirit. Moses himself knew for himself the circumcised heart, but he said to his Jewish compatriots, to his people, he says, but I know you guys, I know that you will not prolong your days in the land. You will go into the land, and you will possess it.
And be very sure, Deuteronomy chapter 9, that this is not about your righteousness, because you’re like this and not like that, and so on. In other words, this is nothing to do with any merit on your part. But it’s true that, now, and I didn’t let you go in until the iniquity of the Amorites had been fully fulfilled.
And by the way, he will bear in that land a largely unbelieving Jewish nation, as he has many times over and through many generations, so long as their iniquity has not reached a certain intolerable threshold with God. God is all, he’s very well aware that he’s only got a remnant, and for the sake of that remnant, and for the sake of his larger purpose, he bears that nation with much long-suffering. And he blesses them with common grace, and more than common grace, he blesses them with families, with a measure, but they’re always under the looming, hanging, you know, jeopardy of the covenant.
They’re under the threat of a covenant that, okay, God will be patient, he will bear, he will send prophets, but there is a threshold, just like the Amorites had a threshold of iniquity, that when you reach that threshold, Tom, you’re frozen there. Is there something going on technologically here that, I mean, can you guys hear me? I can hear you. I don’t want to get in too deep here, I’ve been enjoying, I don’t want to, but so the great, they’re coming into the land, yet Moses says, you will not be able to keep the land until I see ahead to a future time.
It’s in the latter days, and he gives it the name that the prophets are going to carry and develop the great tribulation. Now, the prophets will call it trouble, affliction, distress, many names, calamity, but it’s the great tribulation, and only at that time of great tribulation, at that time of transitioning crisis, will all the nation know him, because until then, there’ll only be a remnant, and that remnant that is righteous will, may, as we’ve often pointed out, may forestall, may give a moment of revival, may forestall captivity and exile, but can never finally prevent it. They can be assault and a lie, but they can never finally prevent the ever-present threat of the covenant and the cycles of judgment and of exile.
As you know, Daniel and Ezekiel and others went right down into exile and suffered with their nation, but always they were aware, they knew they had a new heart, they knew they even had the sure mercies of David, they would speak about the peace and the righteousness that they had by the Spirit, they had the Spirit, but they knew that was never enough. Only when all of Israel, after a time of final purging and final discipline, at the end of their power, when they would all have at that time a circumcised heart, what the later prophets will call a new heart or a sprinkled heart, only then would the Kingdom of God be able to come on earth, because it cannot come on earth unless that people and not another, I want to stress that, that people and not another are able to inherit that land and keep it forever. Now, the point I’m making against Piper’s thesis and many of these others who have joined in, is that they’re saying, well, Israel can’t really have a divine right to the land until they qualify under the new covenant, but never in their history did they qualify as a nation that was for the larger part, even for the larger part, let alone in that new covenant righteousness, in that righteousness, of course, that, and this is difficult because, you know, well, the new covenant wasn’t here until Jews was here.
Yes, in a way, the regenerating work of the Spirit was certainly here, it was on the basis of what Jews would accomplish in history, in His blood, but all of history has waited for this nation to be altogether righteous in that land, no longer subject to the threat of their enemies, no longer subject to be uprooted and put out into the nations, or even in a way where that, now, by the way, that does not mean, and the scriptures are very clear, that millennial Israel will be without sin. There’s a sin offering right in the midst of the land, there’s a continual reminder, just like we have, we’re reminded continually of our continual need of cleansing. They will have that.
The terms of the new covenant existed before Jeremiah would particularly call it new, and it was given in Psalm 89, 2 Samuel 7, you know, verse 10, a lot of places, 1 Chronicles 16, other places, where this everlasting covenant was something that was presented as present and active, but it would not, it would not be fully secure to Israel until the coming in of the everlasting righteousness, which would come at the great day of the Lord, for them, for them. It’s come already for the church, it’s come already in Christ, but this, there is an outstanding abiding not yet, and what the age is waiting for is for that nation, for ungodliness to be turned away from Jacob. So God has put all of his marbles, so to speak, all of his investment, with the bringing in of that historically impossible people, you know, intractable, you can’t, you know, you can plead with them, but for the larger part, Israel would always tend to backslide.
The new covenant promises a final victory over that tendency, the tendency to slide away backwards. The new covenant promises that, and that is given, that will come to Israel, it’s already come to the church, to the masculine, to the believing remnant, but it waits to the time when it would come to Israel, when the face of God would no longer be hidden from that nation again forever, and when they would possess that land from the Euphrates. So it’s all about, it’s all about God’s original word and his original promise that he would bring that people in, and they would be able to keep that land forever, but that would only come at the end of a final tribulation in the latter days, when not just a few of them had the circumcised heart, because there was always a remnant, but where now, all of them would have the circumcised heart, and they would no longer need to teach everyone his neighbor, but they would all know him, speaking particularly of Jewish families, would all know him from the least to the greatest, and all their children after that would be taught of God, and his spirit that was upon Isaiah, and would be upon Israel in that day, would never again depart, not only from them, but not even from their children’s children.
So now you have real security in the land by a nation who has been brought into a righteousness, not just of a few, but of a whole nation, but that righteousness, and back to what you’re saying, Tom, was never the righteousness of even the best of well-intentioned man, it was the righteousness of God. It could not be any other righteousness than the righteousness of the Spirit, working, quickening and working in the believer, and that’s why I like to talk about this point about stumbling. Adam was talking about stumbling at this thing where how we see the Jew in the last day.
What we do with these, his brethren, when they’re in their beleaguered, imperiled, in flight, you know, what we do with them in that day being very telling of our eternal destiny. I mean, he says, as you did it to them, you’ve done it to me, as you overlooked and neglected to do it to them, and while that’s true in principle of anyone, you know, of mercy and of whatever, but this is particularly, we talked about this before, this is particularly true of how people view Israel. Now, we know that we’re not saved on the basis of how we view Israel, let’s be very clear, nor are we saved by some end-time righteous work of hiding Jews.
No. What’s clear, though, is that these things are a manifestation of a disposition and bent of the heart, that we love what God loves, that we are in touch and even in fellowship with what God is doing and what he has chosen to do, and we’re in sync and we’re in step with the Holy Spirit and with the intentions and purposes and goals of God and in union with God. So, the Jew then becomes very telling.
Art would call him a litmus test. They become very telling of our true relationship with God. How we really, what kind of knowledge of God do we really have? Do we have a knowledge of God where his word is just as true and if Israel remains in exile forever, if they’re never brought in, if ungodliness is never turned away from the natural branches, is that going to be okay? Or are we really looking to God to vindicate his word and to avenge his great covenant promise and to know that we’re in the thick of it with God, like the prophets of old.
We may indict Israel, we may call Israel’s hand on their neglect of God and of his covenant and their need of a new heart, but we love Israel. We are completely in travail, like a midwife, till Christ be formed. Our heads are full of tears, God helping us.
Our heads are full of the sorrow of Paul, not because Paul warned his countrymen, say, but because God, Paul wanted the glory of God in his name vindicated and famous throughout the earth. And that the principalities and powers that began this whole war on the word that goes all the way back to Eden, they began by asking, has God really said? That’s what they’re still asking. And what significance is an unbelieving Jewish people in the land? And why does God, at the great day of God, take it out on the nations and avenge himself so absolutely, fiercely, when the people of Israel were absolutely the objects of Hitler, they were sitting ducks for divine discipline.
They had really brought upon them, through their provocation of God, through their making a covenant with death that held with very Antichrist, they had brought upon them the final throes of Jacob’s trouble itself, the greatest and most unequal time of Jewish suffering, dispersion, and throughout, you know, of history, another Holocaust. So yet, the people that are under that, by their own deserving, by their own provocation of divine wrath, and the nations, like the Assyrian being the very instrument of that wrath, yet God says, you know, woe to you who are the instruments. Woe to you who are the unwitting and willing despisers of Israel, because in your despising them, you’ve despised me.
When you laid hands upon them, and this is not just true of the last days, it’s true of all days, when you laid hands upon them, humanistic, unknowing, undiscerning hands, you were laying them on me, just like they laid them on me when they manhandled my own son. And so, Israel stumbled before Jesus came. Before Jesus came, before they stumbled at the stumbling block, Paul says they had already stumbled.
Where is that? That’s Romans 9. It says Israel stumbled at the stumbling block, and he didn’t just give that stumbling the name Jesus. Jesus would be the perfect and ultimate embodiment of an ongoing condition of truth. And that condition was summed up this way.
They had the right standard, but they had the wrong approach. They sought the righteousness that was represented in the law as if, when it never was, but as if it was a righteousness of works, when in fact it was a righteousness of faith. How they perceived and how they sought it, it was very telling of the condition of their heart.
So Jesus came and exposed an already existing condition. Now, what I submit is that what’s going to happen with Israel, and just this week I’ve learned of close friends and families and sterling homeschool families that already some of their more academic sons and so forth, they’re actually entertaining and buying in to anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian. I mean, it’s sad.
And at the same time, European Jews are feeling increasingly unsafe all over the world. There’s this circulating doctrine throughout the church that, oh yeah, the natural branches may come in someday, but they have no right to that present land. They’re nothing until Jesus comes back.
They have signified nothing but Jewish dreams and Jewish aggressions and Jewish occupation. That’s going on all throughout evangelicalism. Do you see what’s the writing on the wall? The rising tide of anti-Semitism and its resurgence.
I mean, these things should sober and make us understand. We’ve got to tell the church that, you know, I once heard a very well beloved and reputable minister who, and I know he meant well, but he says, you know, Jehovah is not in covenant with Ahab. I was a young guy when I heard that. It’s very respected that I look up to this guy.
I go, wait a minute, something’s wrong with that. You know what? Jehovah is not in a new covenant relationship with Ahab. That’s so true. But Jehovah is in covenant with Ahab, and that’s why Ahab gets a double discipline.
The Jewish people are in covenant even when they’re outside of Christ, as witness history and their exposure to a double discipline that someday will meet with a double glory. But right now and until that day, they remain under a double discipline of God. The scriptures are very clear.
You only have I known among the nations. Amos 3:2. Therefore I will punish you. Well, anyhow, so I’m talking about a couple things.
This war on the word. Has God really said? That’s what’s at stake. In Numbers 14, when God said to Moses, step aside.
The great question was, can I and will I and have I spoken concerning this people? And Moses reminds God, of course God fully knows that he would be stirring the intercessor Christ and Moses would then plead. God had already ordained he would answer that prayer. So God says, you know, indeed I’ve heard your prayer and I will forgive this people.
I will not desert them or sign off on them or go to another more cooperative people or make a nation out of a godly Moses. I will not relinquish or relent on my pursuit to bring this people in. The people that I brought out, though they be ever so recalcitrant, ever so, you know, corrupting of themselves, I will not sign off.
I will persist until my glory fills all the earth. Why? Because when the Jews return and they look upon them and unbelief is purged away forever from Israel, it will be like the parting of the Red Sea. Certainly Jesus will be back.
He will crack the sky. His feet is touched down. But at the same time, that seismic event is still happening.
The Jewish people, the heart of the Jewish people are being rent. At the same time, the Mount of Olives is dividing. Their heart is being rent as they look upon Him.
And it’s an absolute end. Now the collective veil is taken away from the Jewish people and God’s name is vindicated. So my point is, Israel stumbled at Jesus.
Jesus exposed an already existing condition. He embodied a principle. Did they know God? People knew God.
Nathaniel was an Israelite indeed. People knew God and they would prove that they knew God by hearing this carpenter’s, this prophet’s words and recognizing who he was by the Spirit. They would, whether they knew God or not, would be found out by this stumbling block in their midst.
Whether people know God or have they true Jesus. You know, there’s another Jesus. Paul speaks about another Jesus, another spirit.
That will be proven, not made one way or the other so much as proven and exposed, found out and revealed by how they will respond to the crisis of Israel. How they will understand the the controversy of Zion and what God is doing. God is closing in on the Jew.
He’s not, He cannot, His name and in words is at stake. He cannot leave them in that condition. So the issue of the Jew is the issue of a righteousness that is God’s alone.
They can build a Tower of Babel, they can have, you know, they could, they can, they can reconstruct their temple, have all their sacrifice, they can do everything. But unless they have come into what’s called the righteousness of the Lord Himself, the righteousness that is everlasting, that is to say the righteousness of the Holy Spirit. Until they come into that righteousness and seeing that unsealed, revealed mystery, the gospel, they are condemned to continue the cycle of judgment.
They remain completely vulnerable and exposed to further covenant discipline, which will in the tribulation include another dispersal. I mean, you can’t, they come down to scatter my people. I tell you, they accomplish it.
They don’t just come down there with intentions to scatter the Jewish people, they accomplish to scatter the Jewish people. And everything waits on that people coming to the end of that power and to the end of that veil that’s over their hearts, and knowing Him, not just a few, but that remaining remnant, so that every one of them that goes in the Millennium know Him from the least to greatest. What does the end of the covenant really, therefore, say? That God cannot rest until Jerusalem is appraised in the whole earth.
And what does that mean? That means the Jews have come into such a righteousness as that they will never again depart. Jeremiah 32 verse 40. To such a righteousness that no enemy can ever threaten their peace again, that they lie down safely and none can ever again make them afraid.
That’s the day when the present boast of never again will become a true fulfillment of divine promise. And so, God, the war, it’s on the Word. That’s what Israel is all about.
That’s why Satan goes after the woman with such a vehemence, because his time is short. If they come into that land and possess it as an all-righteous nation, it’s over. His tenure over the nations is utterly broken, and God’s name and Word is openly, publicly vindicated.
And so, God is the proof of the pudding. It’s not just, you know, we know and believe in Christ’s resurrection, but He was seen of chosen witnesses. His resurrection was not a public event.
It was in the sight of heaven, but it was known of hell, but it was only known of witnesses and those who would believe through their word. The resurrection of national Israel will be open and public to the confounding of every gainsaying spirit, because the mystery of God will be finished and the veil that covers the nations will be removed. When? In one day.
That’s why we get here at the end of Isaiah 17:14. Behold, an evening in trouble. You know, the Assyrian that was contemporary, that was local, that was threatening Israel, that made Isaiah’s contemporary prophecy have contemporary relevance, that guy went home after he was frustrated at the walls of Jerusalem and lived several more years.
Now, his kingdom began to decline and would later give way to Babylon, but all the prophecies that talk about this Assyrian, who, by the way, we’ve made a great case in our other gatherings, this is the Antichrist. He’s cut off in one hour, just like Israel was born in one day, this guy is destroyed in one hour, and it’s repeated many places. This evening time sounds very much like Zechariah 14, in, you know, it shall not be evening.
In other words, that one day that’s known to the Lord is the day of the Antichrist’s destruction, is the day when the Lord appears to destroy him with the brightness of his mouth, and I believe there’s a great case to be made that that’s the same day that Israel was born again, not as a secular nation, largely secular, but as a holy nation in one day. This is the Antichrist. This is not the contemporary Assyrian.
He passed off the scene, you know, and he went back home and survived a number of years, but this guy, the one that he was a mere, you know, he was a mere type of this ultimate anti-type, he is cut off in one day. So, before Jesus can come, the mystery of iniquity’s got to be fulfilled. Think with me now.
Go to 2 Thessalonians 2. Christ cannot come back right now. Why can’t he come back right now, Paul? Let no man deceive you by any means. That day will not come, except there come a falling away first, the man of sin be revealed.
Now, why? Because the mystery of iniquity has all together to do with this final man of sin who will embody this principle that was in some measure shown in all these former great aggressors and oppressors of Israel. But this guy is the ultimate embodiment of this principle, of this Lucifer, this king of Babylon, this Assyrian, same, different guys with same spirit, same essence, must come to a final climactic embodiment in this Antichrist who’s destroyed in one day. Why? Because he’s the one that’s the rod of God through which Israel is smitten and brought down to the end of their power.
And his destruction is their resurrection, is their revelation of the gospel and of the mystery of the gospel. They see Jesus like Paul saw him on the road to Damascus in one day. And I wish we had a little time, you know, if you check it sometime, just look up the word hour and you’ll see how often this Antichrist is destroyed by the voice of the Lord in one hour, in one moment.
It’s the same moment that Israel is looking upon it. It’s from that day and forward they know him, for the iniquity of that land will be cleansed in one day, and so on we could continue. But this is a crisis critical moment.
Israel is at the end of their power. This man has ruled oppressively, you know, ruled the nations for 42 months and he’s trampled Israel down for 42 months. This is what we’re looking at and his destruction is a picture of all those who have this ancient anti-semitic hatred in their heart.
God is going to use the issue of Israel and the end times to flush this out, to bring this out in the open and hearts are going to be divided and exposed over the issue of Israel. In some cases more clearly than the issue of Christ. Christ would come and expose who really knew God and who knew him not.
Israel is going to expose the hearts of those who call themselves Christians and are not. I better quit, but you see what you see that this is this is the big picture. There is this commitment of God to bring this people in because it’s his ultimate vindication against the continual hatred and opposition of Satan.
His name is at stake. That’s what Israel means and Israel is showing that no other righteousness than the righteousness that raises the dead and and preserves someone in a holiness and a righteousness that is not their own. Only a righteousness of that kind of perpetuity, of that kind of continuance can see an all-saved nation and that salvation extend to children’s children.
No wonder the commentators and theologians say that has to happen. Why? Because they can’t conceive of literal Jews on this literal planet having literal children born with natural fallen natures who before they’re of any mature age already know the Lord and that every one of them know the Lord from the least to greatest and every one of their children born to them for a thousand years of divine demonstration, of burning bush testimony and witness to every spirit that says, oh he can’t bring them in. They’re too much for him.
I tell you the Jews not too much for God any more than Paul in the road to Damascus was too much for God. For in the day of his power, the scripture says, they will be made willing. When the time to come and the time to favor Zion, yes, the set time has come.
God knows how to bring the people to their end and quicken them in a resurrection authority and power, not literal. There’ll be literal resurrection but there’ll be a spiritual resurrection for the Jews that go into the kingdom in their natural bodies and that resurrection life will show itself in that people for a thousand years. They won’t be perfect and they won’t be sinless but they will be holy and they will keep covenant and therefore the covenant will be so kept by the power of the new nature, by the power of the the outpoured spirit that they’ll never go back again or slide back and become exposed again to the threat of the broken covenant.
So those are the things that we need to simplify, clarify, make plain on tables, show the case, make the case and then put it before the nations because God will not come back and judge a world that has not become very, very accountable through the prophetic anointing and authority of clearly spoken witnesses. Like Travis’s loves that word, the credible witness of the church. That church has got to come to fullness.
Thank you, June, for that. It’s got to come to fullness. Everything waits on the church.
It’s got to come to fullness. Everything waits on the church and yet the church also waits on God because only God can take us where we corporately would not have gone. He is the one who must intervene and straighten us with a straightening of his own wise choosing that we could never get it together with all of our brilliant, you know, there’s never been a time when I’ve seen a greater dearth for the word, yet there’s a glut, simultaneously a glut of every kind of wonderful, even evangelical, even sound and accurate.
I mean, it looks like anything but a dearth for the word and yet subtly and there’s a hidden holocaust almost of a dearth for the true prophetic Word of God in its cutting-edge holiness and calling and preparation of a people unto death for the sake of this worldwide witness that must go out because the nations come down against Israel are coming down there over the dead body, so to speak, of chosen witnesses that will have spoken very clearly and confronted them. They will be confronted. They will know or have opportunity to know what they’re doing and we won’t just go out and say, oh, God loves Jews.
He chose the Jews. We’re going to be giving them the reasons why God chose the Jews. What’s at issue? What is God’s great point? Now, first of all, it’s certainly just enough that he did choose them and that’s his word.
Don’t go against his word, but God wants you to fellowship. He wants you to come on in and understand his thinking. Why he chose the Jew is not so peculiar once you begin to understand the purposes that he’s invested in them so that he could attain those great goals which have all to do with his glory in all the earth through no other means than choosing a people who would show themselves absolutely unable forevermore to get it together and yet for all their inability God would accomplish a miracle that would bring them to a place of apostolic priesthood like Paul and make them the light to the nations they were first called to be.
The age can’t end without that. We can’t just skip a millennium. We can’t just go, you know, straight to new heavens and new earth and be done with this whole Israel thing, divesting the modern state of Israel of any particular significance, making it just a war between aggressive people and victim people and all these other things.
This is God who’s brought them back and the nations are very, very accountable and I think we’ve seen nothing yet. We’ve seen nothing of how very accountable the nations are going to be when this war begins to gel and the strands begin to pull together and we begin to be very clear and this vision is made plain on tables. It will be compact, pressed together, and it will literally really challenge hearts, but it’ll give the hungry and the weary and the willing and it will give them an opportunity for glory, but it’s a costly glory and it’s going to be important that they taste that glory because only a taste of that glory will give them the stamina to be objective and not look for pre-trib raptures or some other, you know, excuse, but to prepare them to go the distance in such incredible difficult times, only it’s going to be by the same means that Jesus went the distance because the joy that was set before Him.
Unless we’ve seen and tasted the glory, it’s not about just a happy life, you know, God gives that in measure, but that’s always something we must leave and sacrifice for the glory. God is in it for the glory. He’s the only being in all the universe who literally must, in consistency with His own nature, seek His own glory because His glory is the best thing for this whole world.
So I love it when He says to Moses, I will forgive this people, this intractable nation, I will not go and find a more compliant people, I will not leave, I knew who they were and what they would be like before I even called them, you know. He called Jacob from the womb. He called him before the womb, that it might be very clear that before the children were born, that his basis for calling and the election of Jacob had nothing to do with Jacob’s merit or works and that’s the issue with Israel.
You hit it right on the head, Tom. It’s the issue of a righteousness that is not our own. And unless we attain to that righteousness, which is only attainable by faith and by the gift of the Spirit, I don’t care what you accomplish, I don’t care how you cultivate, you know, by every studied discipline you can conceive, by every accurate consent to every truth, unless that righteousness is your righteousness, then your righteousness and the best that you can do cannot stand before an infinitely holy God.
It will writhe in retreat because it’s unbearable to stand before that God without the covering that’s only provided through Messiah’s blood. That’s our task. I think we’ve got a task to the church to bring them up to with Israel of what he’s invested, why the end of the age climax is around the Israel, the issue of Israel, and why it’s not a separate issue from the gospel, but it’s intimately related.
And then the next, that’s so educating the church, but we also have to bring to the Jewish attention that anti-semitism is not just assigned to the church, it’s assigned to them, that their calamities must continue, that they must be continually exposed from one cycle of judgment to the other until their proud boast of never again comes down in the dust and they are raised into a righteousness that is not their own. But this issue, in it, Romans 117, in it is the righteousness of God revealed. I was thinking the other day, I’ve talked about the word, I think Art gave the term apocalyptic evangelism.
We’ll see. What we’re really preaching is an apocalyptic righteousness. It’s a righteousness that can only be and is only revealed by the Spirit.
It’s only found in Christ and that alone fulfills the law and it’s all of its demands. And that righteousness must be revealed by the Spirit, not by mere teaching. I mean teaching has its preparatory, preliminary role, but that’s a righteousness that must be quickened.
When Peter said, when Jesus said to Peter, upon this rock I will build my church. He wasn’t just talking about Peter’s accurate confession. He certainly wasn’t talking about Peter the man, like in Roman Catholicism, but he was talking about Peter’s revelation, which the flesh and blood could not mediate or communicate.
You must have a revelation to be alive to God that flesh and blood is powerless to quicken or communicate. You must know God by the Spirit, by the Spirit of revelation. And only when you’ve seen his face are you changed from glory to glory.
And that’s only by the Spirit. Flesh and blood cannot reveal it. The teaching can bring you up to a point and ideally it brings you to the point of crisis.
And crisis brings you to the point of weakness and self despair. And that weakness is the issue of the veil. Then the revelation of God comes.
Where does it come? It comes to those who have been touched by the finger of God that’s brought them to a death that they could never have come to. To a sense of sin and its exceeding simpleness that they could have never known except by the Spirit. So it’s all about the Spirit.
And Israel is the great test that will test the hearts of those that claim they love God and know God when they do not understand the lengths to which God will go and must go to to bring Israel back under the bond of the covenant. He’ll spare nothing. Who hates his child is the one that spares his child.
Israel will not be spared. And for those who know what Israel must go through and not have a broken heart and all they can occupy themselves is with those those immoral Jews who have gay parades in Tel Aviv. That’s all they’ve got.
That’s really knowing Israel after the flesh. That’s not knowing God’s heart. That’s a moralistic self-righteous um you know It misses the whole point.
Part of that very point is these people are helpless to lift themselves out of the quagmire of their own corruptions. They are helpless. The leopard cannot change his spots.
The Ethiopian cannot change his skin. These people that are cut, they cannot. You can count on one thing from the natural man.
That’s the natural man will act naturally. And so certainly Israel’s a bit guilty of aggressions and things that are not that not even in keeping with some of their own ideals and ethics, but that doesn’t change anything of God’s election. And the way that we presume that God is in this thing looking for a few good guys like the marines, that’s completely a misunderstanding of grace and the way it even works.
But Israel exists to demonstrate grace. They are the open public. I’ve always said, you know, they’re the window through which we see ourselves.
But if you just see them, you haven’t seen anything. But in looking at them, if you see yourself and you know that there’s no difference, then you’re seeing something and then you can be instructed. Anyhow, you opened some very rich questions, Tom.
I hope I spoke to some of them and maybe you can call out from some of that. But yeah, God is in covenant with Ahab because Ahab belongs to a corporate entity of which the gifts and calling are never revoked based on behavior. Ahab will die and go to hell without Christ, but Ahab will pay a double price on the way to hell.
That nation endures a special chasing. That is God’s national son. Prodigal? Yes.
But elect and beloved forevermore. They are his eternal nation. Other nations come and go.
And I loved what Adam’s saying, you know, you don’t see God speak of any other nation like people’s very eternal destinies being bound up with their attitude towards other nations. He is, God is born with these nations rising up and swallowing up and whatever. He’s rebuked it.
He’s judged it. He’s prophetically condemned it, but he’s born it. He’s tolerated.
But this time when these nations come down upon a rehabilitated nation of Israel that’s been in the dust of exile for 18 centuries, 19 centuries, and they sweep down like the wolf on the fold, upon that nation they’ve crossed a red line and his fury comes up in his face and says, you’ve gone too far. I’m dealing with my people. I will discipline them.
I will bring them to their end, but there’ll be redemption. But for those of you that win now, you’ll lose forever. And for the Jew that loses now, he’ll win forever.
And there’s a great table-turning thing. And so antisemitism, do we owe it to the world to warn them of the cost and the high price of it? And how come the church is falling under it, making all kinds of adjustments to begin to see, oh, they’ll even say, you know, the Jews will someday be grafted back in in some way into some end-time evangelism. And then when Christ comes and the Christians inherit the earth, the Jews may have some pinch of it and there may be some significance to the land then.
But right now there’s no significance to that land. Right now there’s no particular significance to a people that have come back against all odds for, you know, after centuries of peculiar, strange, divine chastisement, persecution, hatred among the nations. And the Jews know it.
I mean, listen to Bibi Netanyahu. He speaks about this. He says, it’s nothing new to us, this Jew hatred.
It’s nothing new. And you guys are acting like it’s nothing. And you’re letting it go.
It’s building up again. He sees it coming. And all they can do is try to muscle up and answer an insoluble dilemma in the only way they know, through strength.
And yet the only strength that God can receive is His own strength, through faith. So who cannot see Israel as a pitiable race, a byword spoken against and, you know, bowed down always. And, you know, sure, a lot of them are in Hollywood and doing, you know, prospering or whatever.
But for the larger part, they’re haunted. Even those that are in Hollywood that are living it up, they’re haunted by what happened only a generation ago to their people and what now is building up again. We have got to exploit the neurosis and fear and the natural concern in the Jewish heart to bring the great issues of the covenant and the claims of the covenant back to their consciousness.
And use that as a crowding, pointing effect to point them to the only righteousness that can ever fulfill the covenant, which is to say, is the Lord our righteousness, Jesus. And God help us. I just hope that we can be clear, because it is a rather multifaceted issue.
And it’s not enough just to say, oh, the Jews are God’s chosen people. You’ve got to show what God is doing with them. He is testing hearts.
He’s saying, what do you do with my people? Just like what do you do with my son? What do you do with them? What do you do with the Jew in your midst will be very telling of what you have done and will do with God. Even in their offensiveness, even in their unbelief and in their opposition and their vexations, God has made them that way so that we’re not loving them on the basis of some impressive morality or high standard of democracy or whatever. In other words, those cannot be the reasons that we love and receive and pray for and intercede and travail for the Jewish people.
The reason has got to be the glory of God and, of course, the mercy upon their souls. And that’s what I… Go ahead, Tom. Take it on.
Amen. Excellent. And I just have a prayer in my heart to ask the Lord to… Lord, send laborers into the harvest and send this message.
Lord, send warning to the nations that are gathering against Israel. Send warning, Lord. And send the gospel to Israel, Lord.
Gospel warning to hide yourself from the wrath to come. Lord, send laborers. Send this message.
Send your heart and speak it forth, Lord, in the earth. Send, oh God, send. You are the great sender.
It’s futile to go unless one is sent, Lord. So invest in that sending and, Lord, hasten your work in us, path in us, till we’re filled with your glory and we’re telling your story over the land and sea. Lord, publish it among the nations.
You said the Lord gave the word and great was the company that published it. That everyone that has truly read by the Spirit, Lord, will have a fire that cannot be quenched until they run and indefatigably run throughout the nations, Lord, with a witness that cannot be easily gain said or resisted, that removes the cloak and the covering and the hiding place. Lord, make us clear as simple as that a child could write it, Lord.
Let us use these complex and difficult issues, but Lord, reduce them to a simplicity that makes it accessible to the wayfaring man. Lord, make it plain. Make it simple.
Make it clear. Make it pure, unadulterated, unmixed, unconfused, and let your own claims and your own challenges be clear so that the world has a clear choice in Jesus’ name. Thank you, Lord.
Come and shut the mouths of those high speeches that are spoken against you daily. Those that lift up themselves in our universities and all throughout the world. Those who know so much and yet they know so little.
And Lord, that you would even give many of them repentance, just like you gave many of those that were official priest and Pharisees repentance. Some of them also believed. Lord, open that wonderful gate, that glorious gate of whosoever will.
But let it, Lord, come so clear that the choice is before us. And let us make that connection, the Jerusalem-Jesus connection. Let us make it clear so that the power of the prophetic scripture to blow away all the hiding place of unbelief, to expose it, and to force the choice.
And Lord, I know that not a hungry, weakened, desperate, needful person, Lord, it will not elude them. But you’ve hidden it from the wisdom of this age, Lord. Even though it’s declared, you said, I will do a work in your day, a work which you shall in no wise believe no man declared to you, Lord.
But it won’t be because it wasn’t clear. It won’t be because you had not spoken and done works which no other one can work, Lord. It won’t be because you did not bring your church to fullness and prepare the way.
Oh God, I pray, Lord, that a great line in the sand will be drawn and that the issue of anti-Semitism, we’ll know in wisdom how to use that issue to save many alive and to turn many to righteousness, Lord, and how to use the issue of God’s relentless covenant pursuit of Israel to bring them to the end of themselves and therefore to an end of the law for righteousness in the face of Jesus Christ. I just pray, God, for wisdom, you were so simple and clear. Your parables were so amazing.
Lord, give us that kind of simplicity. Lord, we don’t care that any one of us have it, but that all of us together contributing and working and laboring and sharing thoughts and helping each other, Lord, would forge and form a clear word that the young people can use with one another and that, you know, housewives and others can use to teach and to share with their loved ones. Lord, something that will be a standard lifted, a clear trumpet sound, Lord, that will go to the nations and, Lord, that many, many, Lord, will instruct many.
Lord, raise up that company. I know it’s not numerical. It is qualitative.
Raise up that company that will instruct the many and let that instruction begin now, Lord. Lord, don’t defer and wait only till the tribulations upon us, but let there be a clear word in the earth so that no one has a truly justified excuse. We just thank you, God.
We just thank you. Come, Lord. It’s you.
You paid for it. Lord, this is your day, Lord. Make your way back, Lord.
Make straight your own way back, Lord. Bring the rest of the outstanding things that you have yet to be fulfilled. Bring them to pass, Lord.
Lord, accomplish it. Fulfill your two days. Lord, bring quickly, Lord, your kingdom.
Lord, not the American dream, not just another day in paradise, but Lord, bring your kingdom, Lord, and let us love your glory more than our own comforts, enough that we will sacrifice and tremble and move with holy fear, and Lord, we repent. We repent. We’ve not been in that kind of place, but you know how to get us there, Lord.
Give us repentance, Lord. Break our hearts, Lord. Make us, Lord, a people who do not—oh, God—who do not hold back.
In Jesus’ name.
