[b]The Death Before the Resurrection[/b]
[i]by Art Katz[/i]


This people has got to come to a time where their problems are so insuperable, so beyond solution, that they themselves cannot save themselves. If we do not understand that the perplexities that afflict Israel are God-given and that Israel's increasing failure to resolve those perplexities is also God-given, we will find ourselves inevitably drawn into a place where we join the increasing chorus in the world that condemns that nation for her failures because we do not understand that they must of necessity fail. There is a going down before there is a coming up. There is a death before a resurrection. There is a suffering and humiliation before the glory.

God yearns to hear men repent of any confidence that they have in their own flesh. Human pride clutches for anything if men will only esteem them, appreciate them and acknowledge them on the basis of themselves, what they are and what they can do. It dies hard. There is something in us that wants to be accepted for us. There is nothing good in the flesh at all. Jesus would not even allow Himself to be complimented when a man called Him 'good' master. He said, 'Why do you call Me good?' Jesus knew that this man was flattering Him as a man and would not allow him that kind of ideological or philosophical ground, because if that man could call Jesus good, what do you think that he thinks about himself, who obeyed all the laws and the commandments from his childhood up? 'There is no one good but God,' and Israel will never bless all the families of the earth until they believe that. When Israel recognizes that, God turns to the 'son of man', and says, "Speak to these bones." That is why this whole chapter begins not with Israel, but the 'son of man'. Israel is helpless. The 'son of man' is the whole issue.

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SI Moderator - Greg Gordon