In this sermon, the preacher highlights the issue of social injustice and mistreatment of the poor, helpless, defenseless, widows, and orphans as a consequence of forsaking God. The preacher draws parallels between the present-day violence in Israel and the nation's turning away from God. The prophet Isaiah is commissioned by God to bring judgment rather than blessing through his words. The sermon emphasizes the need for repentance and cleansing in order to receive forgiveness and restoration from God.

The young brother wrote a paper called Israel and the Church as the Manifold Wisdom of God. He speaks of Israel as a kind of issue that appropriates and brings together every issue. I've noticed this, and maybe he got this from me. There's something about the issue of Israel, I'm not talking about the present state per se, the subject Israel prophetically and apostolically considered, particularly in its long history of apostasy, the judgments of God, the exiles, the expulsions, the radical dealings, the return and expulsions again, and the things spoken in the prophets, in Deuteronomy, in Leviticus, that are not yet fulfilled, that if it is appropriated, will inevitably touch every aspect of the faith as no other single subject will. It's amazing what the Church is, the Church's call, its destiny, its relationship to Israel, the Holy Spirit, the scriptures themselves, how are they to be read and understood? Are those allusions metaphorical, spiritual, or literal? Does God actually mean he's going to do this, this, and this? Is Israel going to be celebrated over all nations? Or is Zion a kind of a catch word for the Church, or spiritual things in general? Remarkable issues that come to the surface when the subject of Israel is pressed and examined beyond sentiment. Sentiment is deadly, however much you might enjoy it. I can't think of a single emotion or disposition that more inhibits the truth of God than sentimentality. It is a worse and more adverse aspect than opposition to God himself. What is well-intending and well-meaning can be more in the last analysis in opposition to God than those who seem to be opposed. So I'm an enemy of sentiment because it obstructs and contends against truth. You know what I love about scholars like the one that I'm going to quote? Kyle and Dalich. Have you ever heard of them? Two, not bad. More of you should know. The great commentators and scholars of Scripture, particularly of the Old Testament and of the Psalms, who are German more than any other nationality. Isn't that ironic that the same nation so involved in the demise of the European Jewry has produced the greatest number and the deepest scholars in Old Testament Scripture. They are Hebraicists. I can't tell you how strange it is for me to read them and see their treatment of Hebrew. I'm a Jew and I don't know enough to find my way to the men's room. And these guys are talking about nuances of Hebrew and cases and definitive and articles and the grammatical construction that would mean this rather than this, which contends with the statement made by Oskar Kuhlman or this German scholar or that one. And it's a remarkable thing that perhaps Germans are best equipped to express. It's a labor and it's a labor of love and their footnotes just to read them is exhausting. What does it take to compile them? But what is scholarship without footnotes? Where you buttress your statement by alluding to this detail, this fact, this document. Dear Saints, I never thought I'd be speaking inside of a cornfield to tell you and call you to the great heritage and treasure, which is ours, that has been the labor of scholars in ages past and is collecting dust and is unknown and of little value to the church. So I took the statements of Kyle and Delitz. Delitz, by the way, is himself a Hebrew Christian. On the commentary of Isaiah, they have done the entire Old Testament. You can get their complete set for probably 60 or 70 dollars and you'll never spend money better. Is there any better use of money than a book? It just keeps on being valuable. You can market, you can go back to it, but if you eat the meal, it's gone and it goes out with the draft. And where did it go? But the book goes on. I start my paper with a comment made by a German theologian during the Hitler time, the height of the Nazi terror. He was part of the confessing German church. Now, do you know what that means? It was the confessing church in the Hitler time and there was the national German church. The national German church had the portrait of Hitler up on the platform. The confessing church was confessing the faith once and for all, given the saints, which at that time was radical and would make a man a candidate for concentration camp. I believe we are going to face that challenge again in a soon coming time. And you won't have to be in Germany to experience it. Believers worldwide will be challenged as to what kind of faith they will uphold. It will never be more dangerous than to uphold the faith of the fathers and much more convenient to adopt a faith that is sanctioned by society and conventional and predictable and won't get you in trouble. The true faith will always bring you into an identification with God's people, Israel. And this German theologian said at that time that the God question, the future question, the Jewish question are the same question. And this young brother here says something quite like that, never having seen that, if I could find it. It's not so much that the issue of Israel and the church is a different issue than the cross, salvation, repentance, sin, et cetera. It is the culmination of these issues into a concluding purpose. This one issue will reveal whether all these others have become a part of us and whether the life of the living God has been formed in us individually and corporately. There is something about the issue of Israel that reveals the cross, that reveals the issue of sin, of judgment, and of God himself. Because if we exclude judgment from God, we dismiss God as God. We have another deity, we can label him Jesus or however you want to label him, but he is not the God of Jacob, he is not the God of Israel, he is not the God of our fathers, he is not the father of Jesus and the Lord himself. Judgment is intrinsic to God. It's central to his whole being or else he would not be righteous. His righteousness requires judgment. And when his judgments are in the earth, the world will learn righteousness. It will also learn the fear of God, which being a believer 35 years and having traveled in many parts of the world in churches of every form and shape and description, I would say is virtually unknown by the modern church today. The fear of God is unknown. The phrase itself is strange and antique and unfamiliar, let alone the reality. To remove the fear of God from the church is to disqualify the church as church. It can continue its meetings, its programs, its functions. It could mediate benefit for many, but it is not church in the apostolic sense of the word. And therefore, neither can it be employed by God in his last day's endeavor in the salvation of a remnant of Israel that will pass through the final chastisement and judgment. I won't ask you if you can follow me. I think this is being taped. I'm predicting everywhere a devastation of a global kind for Jews everywhere in the world because the scriptures speak of it prolifically called the time of Jacob's trouble. Such trouble, such tsouris, that's the Yiddish word. Wouldn't be bad if you learned a few. We have always had tsouris, but Jesus said this tsouris will eclipse all previous Jewish calamity since the world began and to its end. And if this time were not cut short, no flesh would survive. But for the elect's sake, I believe he's speaking of a yet future event because he ties it in in Luke 21 and Matthew 24 with a reference to the abomination of desolation. He was asked by his disciples, what is the end of the age? How do we know the end of the age and of your coming? So he's speaking of things that conclude history and bring in the advent of his own coming and his kingdom. And he says, you will be persecuted for my name in all nations and there will come a time of tribulation spoken of by the prophet Daniel that when you see the abomination of desolation, whatever that might be and the scholars and commentators have definite thoughts of what that will be. Those who can flee to the mountains of Judah pray that your flight does not take place on the Shabbat, the Sabbath or that you be not pregnant or come not in the winter. Making it very clear that this remarkable explosion that sets in motion the time of Jacob's trouble which will take the lives of the majority of Jews presently in the world today and leave only a surviving remnant must have its inception in the land for he's inviting some to flee to the mountains of Judah. It will have its inception in the city of Jerusalem itself. But it will not be contained nor confined to Israel. The repercussions in what will be set in motion will touch Jacob wherever he is in the world. Shanghai, Timbuktu, Milwaukee, Chicago, it doesn't matter, wherever a Jew is. The vitriolic, demonic hatred bent on the annihilation of the Jew will pursue him relentlessly unto death. I'm telling the church to expect this, to make provision for it and to be willing to extend mercy that they may obtain mercy even at the risk of your own life. That means that there'll have to be a church in the earth in the last days that has not been raptured and in fact doesn't even have a rapture consciousness and counts its presence in the earth during this time of tribulation as its final glory and hour of honor and privilege. This is when those who do not hold their lives as dear unto themselves will come forth in the radiance of God. And when Jews see them in that radiance and self-sacrificing spirit for their sake, when they are most despised of all men. I'm quoting from Isaiah 53, not to describe the crucifixion of Jesus but to describe the crucifixion of Israel. They will be marred more than any man. They will have no beauty that we should desire them. They will be adrift, cast out, the dispersed of Judah and the outcasts of Israel. But it will be your finest hour. And how can you face that and count the privilege except that you have an apostolic apprehension of eternity and eternal reward? Where you count that privilege to wear the martyr's crown and that you understand that suffering is not something to be shunned nor sought but to be born when it comes and that it is something that precedes a glory. So you see already what the issue of Israel does? It brings you necessarily into a consideration of eternity and eternal reward. Which is as absent from the mind and the consideration of today's church even at its charismatic best as is the absence of the fear of God. What I love about this Dalish is a Hebrew Christian writing about 1860, 1870 and speaking of the existence of a state in the land that must necessarily take place or else the events that conclude the age for Israel cannot have their inception. Isn't that remarkable? Long before 1948, he knows, according to scripture there must be a Jewish presence in the land. And he's writing at a time when the land, Palestine had become nothing but malarial swamps sand dunes, a few straggly elderly Jews that somehow survived or migrated and is essentially an Ottoman Empire, Turkish, Islamic and he's talking about the presence of Jews that must necessarily come. And then he talks about the judgment that must necessarily come and he doesn't wince. He doesn't recoil. He doesn't draw back. He lets the scriptures state their truth however much it impinges on his own heart as a Jew. This is the heart of true scholarship where you let the truth speak for itself in all of its ramifications without in any way bending or molding it. You let it stand however painful that truth is because it's God's truth. So he does credit to himself as a scholar a servant of the church and of Christ by not withholding any implication of his painstaking exegesis of the word of God however painful and fearful its implications. He brings to our attention from the very beginning of the book of Isaiah to the Deuteronomic framework of understanding from which the prophet spoke as being the common key to all prophecy. I'm quoting Delitzsch himself. Delitzsch sees in the prophet Isaiah and in all the prophets what was the framework of their whole prophetic vista namely the book of Deuteronomy. And the book of Deuteronomy has more to say about the last day's judgment of God for Israel than any other single Old Testament book. I would commend to you especially chapter 32 called the Song of Moses which has nothing to do with chariots being tossed into the sea but has everything to do with that which would befall us in the latter days if we turned from God and from covenant keeping and from his ordinance and statutes and became apostate. It's called the song because it was to be communicated from father to son like a poetry, like an ode. Maybe it even had a melody that they would chant it and learn it and memorize it. Well I can tell you I never heard this as a Jewish young boy. I never grew up with a father who knew it and I don't know of any other modern Jew either. And that's why when the Holocaust came in the Hitler time there were few if any Jews that had any preparation or anticipation of what would befall them who would have been instructed and maybe have been brought to a place of repentance had they known this Deuteronomic song. So let's take a look at Isaiah starting from the beginning. I remember when I had to do with Moishe Rosen of Jews for Jesus and he was fielding the criticism that the New Testament is anti-Semitic. Many Jews believe that that the root of anti-Semitism are the allusions to Jews that are very biting. He said if you think that the New Testament is bad have you read the book of Isaiah lately? Because the book of Isaiah begins with this vision that the prophet saw and he cries out in verse 2 Hear O heavens and give ear O earth for the Lord has spoken I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me the ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib but Israel does not know my people do not consider. I took the liberty of inserting the word in a red pen my people do not even consider. Not only are they rebellious apostate not only do they fail to exhibit the most rudimentary loyalty that an animal a domestic animal would give its owner but they do not even consider their apostasy. So the book of Isaiah begins with a scathing indictment of the nation Israel. Alas sinful nation verse 4 a people laden with iniquity a brood of evil doers children who are corruptors notice not just corrupted but corruptors means corrupting others they have forsaken the Lord they have provoked the anger of the Holy One of Israel they have turned the way backward. Why should you be stricken again? The Lord is asking through the prophet. You will revolt more and more the whole head is sick the whole heart faints from the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores that have not been closed or bound up or soothed with ointment. Your country is desolate your cities are burned with fire strangers devour your land in your presence and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion a kind of synonym for the city of Jerusalem is left as a hut a shack in a vineyard a hut in a garden of cucumbers as a besieged city. Unless the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small remnant we would have become like Sodom we would have been made like Gomorrah. I don't know what the actual conditions were when this prophecy was first written it may well be that none of the conditions described here at that time then existed. The prophet was seeing by the prophetic eye what is the future condition to which that city is tending while they are in the midst of everything that would assure them that they are in the right place with God. Something like the church. They have their worship services they have their feast days they have their sacrifices in fact later on God says why do you trample my courts? Your sacrifices are a stench to me I abhor them. So evidently they were being performed religion was going on there was a priesthood the functions were taking place but the prophet sees through it and is expressing God's perception of the reality of Israel that is soon to be judged and sees it as being judged. The question that we need to ask is has that condition changed? Has this people ever acknowledged the prophetic indictment or that God has a controversy with it? Has there ever been a national acknowledgement of repentance for the sins of our fathers which if we do not acknowledge their sins we of necessity adopt them and continue in the same spirit of them. That's why it says in Leviticus 26 when you will acknowledge the sins of your fathers as well as your own and that the judgments or the chastisements that I have brought have been just then I will remember my covenant toward you. God is waiting for something waiting still. Now how does this sound in the 20th century in 1998 in USA in the state of Wisconsin on a lovely evening looking out on the cornfield. It's terribly out of place. One of two things is wrong Isaiah or us? The prophetic scriptures require a radical adjustment as to reality itself. What is reality? This was my Sunday message in Racine. The things that we perceive that seem to be impressive or the statement of God that is timeless and ongoing and eternal. And if you invest yourself in scriptures like this and even in the New Testament and make that the stand for your reality you doom yourself to being an oddball a strange pilgrim in the earth. So in verse 12 when you come to appear before me who has required this from your hand to trample my courts? God himself has required it but not in the spirit that they are performing it. Bring no more futile sacrifices. Incense is an abomination to me. The new moons of the Sabbath are calling the assemblies. I cannot endure iniquity in the sacred meeting. Your new moons, your point of feast my soul hates. They are a trouble to me. I am weary of bearing them. Remember what prophets were called in the Old Testament times? Even before the Hebrew word Nabi? Seers. What were they seeing? They were seeing what God sees. They were seeing through the appearance of things to the way in which God himself sees the condition of the people and that's what they were expressing. Imagine what the charge was to those hearing them. This man is insane. He deserves to be stoned. He's a painful nuisance at best or this is God's own perception brought through the foolish thing called the prophetic vessel and we need to acknowledge it as being true of us and turn to our God and repent. In fact, God makes this generous offer in verse 16 of chapter 1. Wash yourselves. Just above that it says your hands are full of blood. Make yourselves clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Rebuke the oppressor. Defend the father's plea for the widow. You notice that when God's people forsake God, the consequence is always social injustice, mistreatment of the poor, the helpless, the defenseless, the widow and the orphan. So, get this right. This is not a social activist who's out to change society. He's a man bringing to the attention of the nation its apostasy and turning away from God, the evidence of which is injustice. Blood is on your hands. You're ruthless. You're violent. He might well be describing present-day Israel and the increase of violence in that nation not only toward the Palestinians who threaten them, but within their own nation and against themselves. Who would ever have thought that the state of Israel would ever see the assassination of its head of state by another Jew? And already there's talk of war between the orthodox, the secular and the many divisions and stripes that are taking place in the land. Gangsterism, corruption, hit squads, mafia is replete in present-day Israel. And now as was then, the issue is a separation from God. A godlessness, the consequence of which is evil in society and it always takes the form of violence and blood. But God is saying, wash yourself, make yourself clean, put away the evil of your doings. Verse 18, Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword for the mouth of the Lord. God is making a remarkable proposal that though Israel has come to a pathetic state, he's willing to extend forgiveness. If they will acknowledge their sins and come and cleanse their hands and let us reason, the Lord says. Can anything be more gracious, more just, more merciful? I will forgive you and you shall eat from the fat of the land. But if you will not, here's going to be the consequence. The sword. If you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. So what would you say was Israel's answer to this invitation? Historically speaking or even presently speaking it has been the sword and we have been devoured because we are unwilling to turn from our sin and to receive the gracious offer of God to reason together and to receive his forgiveness and the most significant expression of God's final offer of mercy came in the coming of the Lord himself as Messiah. His peacemaking, his reconciling gift, his blood would have fulfilled this gracious gift but it was spurned then as this was spurned earlier and even as it is spurned now. When you spurn the gracious gift of God, when you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Well there's so much more that deserves attention in the verses that follow how the faithful city has become a harlot. It was full of justice, righteousness lodged in it but now murderers your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water, your princes are rebellious and companions of thieves, everyone loves bribes and follows after rewards and so on. That should be scary for the church that a city has become a harlot. It was full of justice, righteousness lodged in it but now murderers. How do you go from the one thing to the other? At what point did that take place? How were you at one time full of righteousness and now you have become the opposite? When was that transacted? When was that affected? At what point? It was a process of decline in which I'm sure God had sent his prophets called the people to attention to the erosion but when it was not heeded it became the opposite of what it was intended to be. Your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water. I want to go from Isaiah 1 to Isaiah 6 because with the exception of a section of Isaiah 2 that speaks of Israel's millennial glory, the prophet returns to the sins of Israel, the judgments of God, the coming devastation. And then in chapter 6 Isaiah himself receives his commission and call when he sees the Lord high and lifted up the house filled with glory and cries out woe is me, I'm undone, I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. And so an angel, a seraphim, brings a call from the altar to touch the mouth of Isaiah to purge his iniquity. Isn't that interesting? God doesn't say don't get carried away Isaiah. You're so dramatic. You're such a flourishing, you're speaking woe is me, I'm undone, I'm a man of unclean lips. You are the prince of prophets. It's the people who are unclean. You're okay. Nothing like that. God acknowledges what the prophet says is true of himself. Though he was the oracle of God, he was a man of unclean lips. And he could not be sent of God until a divine purging had taken place. But just the ramifications of that alone are stunning. And then I heard the voice of the Lord in verse 8, whom shall I send and who will go for us? And I said here am I, send me. And here's the commission that the prophet receives. Not to bring blessing by his speaking, but to bring judgment. The Lord said go and tell this people, keep on hearing but do not understand. Keep on seeing but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and shut their eyes lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and return and be healed. What a remarkable charge for a man being sent of God after such a profound revelation of the Lord high and lifted up. Your speaking is not going to bring revelation. It's not going to bring illumination or understanding. It's going to bring the very opposite. Because you speak, their ears are going to grow heavy, their eyes dull, their heart unperceiving, lest they hear or see and be saved. It's a judgment that comes with the prophetic word. And yet when we get to chapter 40 of Isaiah and all the way to the final chapter 66, the book of Isaiah is full of prophecies of Israel's millennial glory at the end of the age. So the prophet that God uses for judgment at the inception because he's faithful in speaking the word of judgment is the God who speaks the word of hope and future restoration at the end of the book. So when will this judgment end? When will you lift this? And here is the remarkable statement of God that brings us right into the 20th century with judgments that have not yet been performed but will be. How do you know, Art? Because their heart is still heavy, their ears are still dull, and their eyes are yet unperceiving. This is yet still the state of the Jewish people worldwide except for a remnant that Paul speaks of in every generation. But the nation, the people as a people, are still under this judgment. And that's what Paul said that even when they read the books of Moses, what does it say? Their sight is veiled. There's still a blinder on them until their heart shall turn to the Lord. They're still under this and so that will explain our frustration, our sense of defeat when we try to witness to a Jew and it's so difficult. We don't seem to succeed. Like my mother, now I'm in the faith 35 years, she's still not a believer. What has she not heard? What has she not seen? What has not been conveyed to her? What ministers have not spoken to her? How many times has she visited Ben Israel, seen God's people and all of the evidences that would have opened anyone to the knowledge of the Lord? She's still in that state. How long, Lord? And the answer is until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitants, the houses are without a man, the land is utterly desolate, the Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. Who's doing this? Who's making Israel a wasteland? Who's devouring with the sword? Remember what we read? But if you rebel and turn away, you will be devoured with the sword. And here, five chapters later, is the same thing spelled out in other terms. The cities are laid waste without inhabitants, the houses without a man, the land is utterly desolate, the Lord has removed men far away. He may use nations to perform this, but it's His work. What's the word for the work of judgment? His strange work, but yet His work. But yet a tenth will be in it, and will return and be for consuming, as a turbanth tree or an oak, whose stump remains when it is cut down, so the holy seed shall be its stump. There will be a remnant, a tenth, of all of the nation that somehow will survive and remain, and it's spoken again in Zechariah, when two-thirds of Israel at the time of the Lord's coming will have perished, the women ravaged, and one-third will survive but will itself pass through the fire. And Dalit sees this as a statement of Israel's entire history to the end of time. Israel at the end will be restored, this remnant after being sifted but not destroyed, and all nations will praise Jehovah who reveals Himself both in judgment and in mercy. There'll be no doubt in the sight of the nations in that day who in fact God is. There will be no contention between deities of whether it's Allah or the God of Jacob or some other imagined deity. One God has shown Himself the true God in the devastation and the extent of His judgment that falls upon the nation, upon the people, in the face of all nations. And then He brings forth that tenth, that remnant by the mercy which is the other aspect of the nature which is His judgment, so that the nations at the end see God in His judgment and His mercy as it is expressed upon the people Israel. Because that's our function. We are His witness people in the earth, and we are more the witness in our apostasy and our sin than ever we have been in our virtue. Because it invites God's judgment and in God's performing it and the magnitude and the extent of it, the world will know that this is not an aberration of history or some strange fluke, but God Himself fulfilling His own word. So it was the task of the prophets, to hold up this mirror to the people of their own times, when it was stated that Jehovah would one day have to say in His wrath, He now said through the prophet in the same word that Moses had warned would be a judgment has now taken place. They have rebelled against me sums up the ingratitude of Israel and traces it to its root applies to the whole history of Israel from its culminating point under David and Solomon down to the prophets own time. And that this judgment that would come was brought about by Israel's failure to receive or to respond to God's gracious offer. Come, let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they will be made white as snow. Israel's refusal to accede to that offer brought the train of judgment that has continued throughout history and to this day. When I attended a lecture by a rabbi in Phoenix on one visit speaking on the prophets, and they had a question and answer period, I got up and I said can you tell me what it is that we as a people and as a nation have ever acknowledged the indictment against us in the prophets. It has never been acknowledged and therefore never been repented of therefore we are still under the indictment and under the threat of the sword which I'm saying will fall again in the last days more furiously than ever before according to the words of the Lord himself because the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. There are even greater things involved than Israel's chastisement through them one of which I have already mentioned namely the testimony to the nations that the God of Jacob is God by virtue of his judgment alone, the breadth and the extent of it and then the restoration that comes equally by his supernatural power in mercy. You can't pray that away. That concludes the age, that's the final statement of God. It chastises Israel, it prepares the nation for its own millennial destiny and in the holocaust book I quote from another precious commentator who describes a child being chastised by his father not the little soft lick that we give and maybe a little pout and it's over but a chastisement where the child really catches the sting and the pain of the stroke of the afflicting father in severe chastisement until his soul is chastised through his flesh and becomes broken in the experience, the awareness of the gravity that brought that chastisement upon him strikes his heart and it is though he may not be able to articulate it, he recognizes that the willingness to bring chastisement of that kind is very love itself. I'm persuaded that we have raised up a whole generation of spoiled and indulgent youth who are clamoring even through violence and through mayhem to catch the attention of their parents and of their fathers for a demonstration of love that has never been afforded them, namely chastisement. There's something organic that nature itself requires that makes a father a father in the sight of his son when the father in love is able to bring the chastisement that the son so desperately needs and will not withhold it because it's hard for him to perform it. Love will triumph over our own flesh's unwillingness to bring the stroke. God the father is not a soft sap. He's not going to defer to sentimentality. He's not going to say, well maybe Israel you've learned your lesson I don't need, you had the Holocaust in the Nazi time, I need not repeat it now. He'll bring what is needed to obtain the recognition that the stroke did not come from men but from God and that it was intended for the good of him who receives it. And this writer goes on to describe the son sobbing and throwing his head on the shoulder of the father in the deepest bonding of love that is made possible only in judgment. That's why you can't pray against this because you don't like it, because it's hard or because it's painful or is there some other way. The title of my paper is the inevitability of the irrevocable, cannot be taken away, judgment of God on Israel at the end of the age. There are no ifs. It's something that must come because it fits Israel in the brokenness and the repentance that follows to be the chastised people who can be the emissaries of the kingdom of God to all nations. In the spirit of the lamb, in brokenness and in meekness that comes out of the chastisement inflicted by the father on his son. Delitzsch comments, thus did Jehovah announce the way which had been irrevocably determined that he would take with Israel. Don't try and talk God out of it through your prayers. You know what people are saying to me? How then should we pray? In a way that you have never perhaps prayed before although we boast about it, namely praying in the spirit. Praying out of well-meaning intentions, praying out of I hope, I hope, I hope. Praying out of sentimentality. You may find yourself praying in opposition to God's own program. How then shall we pray? We have to pray by the spirit that knows the mind of God. In a word, remember I said at the beginning, the issue of Israel when it's properly perceived brings such a re-examination of the totality of every aspect of the faith. And not the least of it is, what is prayer? And how ought we to pray in view of these things? We're brought to a radical ground where we can't pray just out of our well-meaning intentions. We have to pray the mind of the Lord by his own spirit. And for many, even charismatic believers, that's a new dimension of prayer. We have to be in agreement with God and not in opposition because it has been irrevocably determined that he would take this way with Israel as the only way to salvation. Moreover, this was the principle of the government of God, the law of Israel's history. Quote, Zion will be redeemed through judgment and her returning ones through righteousness. This judgment and chastisement and penalty is not arbitrary. It's in proportion to Israel's own sin. And he says that sin carries the fire of indignation within itself. Sin from its very nature bears its own punishment. So God is not unjust. He's not giving Israel more than what Israel deserves. But as our sins, so also our judgment. And David says, To this wrath Israel has delivered itself up through its continued obstinacy in sinning. And the Lord now proceeded to shut the door of repentance against his people in chapter six of Isaiah. The prophet inquires how long? Because he knows that there's a God who is true to his promises would not cast off Israel as a people forever. And answers until the towns are wasted without inhabitant, the houses without men, the ground laid waste, and men shall be taken and put very far away. It's until Israel becomes impotent and despairing and has no strength of itself. Utterly desolate, without inhabitant, without man, put far away. The commentator says that the Hebrew word means a description of exile and captivity. And even those that survive, the tenth that remains, are subject to a sifting and to a judgment after the old has been destroyed. And these words describe the way that God would henceforth take with his people it contains an outline of the history of Israel to the end of time. It has not taken place yet. How do you know, Art? Because there's a people who are still deaf in hearing, blind in seeing, and whose hearts are numb and cannot perceive. That's the until. It's until these devastations take place. So those devastations are future and we will see them. It will be painful for us and in fact, if we don't understand this prophetic scenario, we will become offended with God. The first thing that we will say and I've already heard it on this trip, but haven't they suffered enough already? Or how could God allow this a second time? Unless we understand that this is the way of God with Israel, a way that has been prophetically spoken and will yet be fulfilled, we ourselves as believers stand in danger of finding ourselves in opposition to God and being displeased with God and ourselves becoming possibly apostate. Because the sign of the last time for the church is a great falling away from the faith. And maybe not the least of the reasons is a disappointment particularly with regard to Israel when the state that we had hoped would succeed becomes devastated, made desolate without inhabitants and the men cast very far away. Unless you understand that God has prophesied this as irrevocable and necessary, you will find yourself offended with God and in danger of forfeiting the faith. Because as the writer says, the passage contains an outline of the history of Israel to the end of time. This law of blessing sunk in the depths of the curse actually inflicted still prevails in the history of the Jews. And the author coins the phrase judgments of extermination. Isn't that something? In 1870, 1880, a Hebrew Christian commentator writing from his examination of Isaiah 1-6 speaks of it as judgments of extermination. The word that has come into usage with the genocide of the Nazi Holocaust. Who could have, this is my comment, who could have foreseen then the systematic annihilation of European Jewry that was to take place within the century to completely corroborate and confirm this commentator's exegesis, his analysis. Who can now imagine a greater and more sweeping devastation yet to come predicated upon the very same word of scripture. Dear saints, I'm dry as all get out. I can drink gallons of water. I can't get this word out. But I'm pleading with you, this is not a little bible study. This is an invitation to take the word of God seriously that speaks of the inevitability of Israel's final judgment which is God's last act in history. An act of such magnitude that the nations themselves will recognize, as will Israel, that this is the hand of God in fulfillment of his very word prophesied two thousand years before Christ. Or a thousand years before Christ and yet to be fulfilled. For the Lord has spoken. David says it will only be after the overthrow of the false glory of Israel that the true glory promised can possibly be realized. Talk about a remarkable comment. The false glory of Israel? What is he talking about? He's talking about the establishment of a Zionist Israel from 1948 to 1998 or whenever it will be brought down as being a false glory. He knows that of necessity some state must be raised up in the Palestine that is today Israel and whatever its degree of success, it is a false glory and that it is after the false glory is destroyed that the true glory can possibly be realized and that after the destruction of the great body of the people only a small remnant will live to see this realization. The great mass are hopelessly lost and only when they have been swept away will a holy seed saved by the covenant keeping God grow up into a new and holy Israel which will fill the earth with its fruits. Isaiah 27 verse 6. Here's my final statement in this paper. What the implications are for the present state of Israel, we leave for the reader to ponder. If the present state is a false glory that this commentator says must be destroyed to reveal the true and the abiding glory, what can we reasonably expect? The remarkable thing is that everything is set in motion. The nation is not only surrounded by enemies whose sole determination according to their own covenant to destroy Israel and cast it into the sea, but it has now within its nation a Palestinian presence through the Oslo agreement that was allowed a police force of 6,000 or 9,000 and they now estimate a military presence of 60,000 men armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated weapons that have nothing to do with mere police activity. That's within the boundaries of Israel. Everything points to a coming devastation from within and from without that the Dalish could not have foreseen in 1860 or 1870 and yet because of his scholarly examination of the scriptures and the weighing up of the Hebrew meaning of these words he knows that this judgment was irrevocable and must come in the latter days. So what the implications are we can imagine to hope for an improvement of its increasingly worsening condition if this commentary is biblically accurate is a vain hope. Let me say that again. If you are still hoping that Israel is somehow going to come out of it despite God's prophesied judgments and will improve its worsening moral condition, that is a vain hope. What's another word for vain hope? Delusion? Deception? And if you are in a state of deception with regard to Israel to what other regard are you safe? You see how the issue of Israel touches all issues? If you are soft on Israel and can't bite the bullet of judgment and have a vain hope which is contradicted by scripture itself and you continue to hold that hope because your own human heart and craving desires a better end for Israel, you are opening the door to deception not only about Israel but about anything and about everything. I would even go so far to say that some of the present movements taking place in America that are touted as revival and the power and demonstration of God may be the most remarkable deceptions in modern times and that a people who have not understood the judgment of God as a definitive principle of God are open and susceptible because of their disposition towards sentimentality and wanting the best view that makes them susceptible to those deceptions. Can I tell you what happened to me when I was invited to a conference on the North American Indian in Canada, Ottawa, Canada. It came suddenly on a fax and boom within a day I was there and I will ever be grateful for having gone. It was a massive demonstration to me of last day's deception and all evangelical churches and charismatic representatives were there if I told you the names of the speakers you would know them and I heard things from their lips that I just gasped. There was one particular service where they had set up a microphone in a room about this size it wasn't the large morning meetings and people were invited to repent for their misconduct against the Indian. The couple that I was with are from Canada, they had invited me and the lady's family had been administrators in Canada against the Indians and through them had come much injustice and so what I saw was people wanting cathartic relief from the burden of guilt going to the microphone and soulishly crying their few tears and a little sob and experiencing the momentary relief. I sat there like a piece of lead. People around me were weeping and mopping their faces I was in my spirit completely untouched. How do you measure anything? Do you measure from the internal depth of the reality of your life which is in your spirit or do you measure from your soul? From what you see, what you feel what the impression is by the psychological and emotional kinds of things that are moving upon you. I was totally unmoved and finally they noticed it and they didn't say we're driving home, the meeting is over and sure enough they turned to me in the car and said Art, what did you think of tonight? I said here's what I think I think that God was profoundly missed and that had people waited on the spirit of God for the real thing we might have seen an authentic repentance and turning but because the stage was set for a soulish orgy of cathartic relief and release through emotion and that we acted hastily on that basis we missed the better and the truer work of God and they said how come you were not impressed? How come you were not sucked in? I said well I think it's because of my position on Israel. What do you mean? What has Israel to do with the American Indian? and I said you know sometimes you say the best things when you don't predetermine I said because I have been willing to surrender to the truth of God's inevitable judgments, something has come into my spirit of a kind that preserves and saves me from deceptions that would otherwise have sucked me in or seduced me from my soul. There's something about the embrace of the judgments of God that is a very provision for God for the church not only with regard to Israel but any issue at all. That's how much we have lost by our ignorance of God's prophetic view of Israel in the last days and the substitution of our own agenda and programs because of a natural and human desire to see a people blessed that's very natural but it's not scriptural so even our best well meaning prayers are ineffectual if not in keeping with the carefully delineated statements of the divine will given in scripture if our prayer is going to be effectual it's got to be in keeping with the word of God to spurn therefore the prophetic testimony of ultimate judgment before ultimate restoration is due likely to a sanguine sentimentality concerning not only Israel but human nature itself. What the issue of Israel is revealing is not just our attitude about Israel but our attitude period where we have substituted a sanguine you know what that is? S-A-N-G-U-I-N-E a kind of happy we want a nice ending a sentimentality that wants a happy ending for the carefully delineated word of God itself this was always our condition but it's the issue of Israel that has revealed it and so what happens in our life our families, our relationships our disappointed marriages our divorces the kinds of things where our expectation was disappointed our sentiment was bruised are all part and parcel of the same thing and it was unrecognized by us but the issue of Israel reveals it their sentiment shows itself for what it is in a desire for a happy contrary to the clearly articulated word of God if you're going to defy the word of God and insist on your feelings you have made yourself a candidate for deception not only about Israel but about anything and about everything the issue of Israel is the issue of the church much more than we have ever imagined and that's why I can say in some charismatic fellowships when I catch the spirit of their relationship with Israel, that schmaltzy thing where you want to pinch the cheek of a Jew and run to plant the tree or so on you know what I say to them what you're exhibiting here is as much opposed to the purposes of God for Israel as if you were an anti-Semite only to be prophetically aligned with God is to be in the true place and to be allied with God in his purposes why must God be that severe with Israel? is he being cruel? only if you understand Israel's eternal, millennial and eternal destiny will you not think God's judgment is too severe he's chastising Israel, the son the servant son to serve the nations not only in proportion to her past sins but to her future glory only a broken nation can be to Jordan and Saudi Arabia and Iran and Iraq the emissaries of God without the proud contempt and disdain that Jews presently hold for Gentiles it will take a severe breaking and chastisement to bring us to the place where we will go in the spirit of the lamb to Iraq and Iran and be able to present God, the God of Jacob in a way that they can be turned from Allah to the truth of the living God can you see that? unless you understand Israel's destiny you will be offended by how far God will go to prepare the nation for that destiny so to understand Israel's destiny is to understand millennial things, theocratic things, eschatological things so you're brought into the place of the consideration of the end that is presently as much lost to the church as the fear of God and all of the other things that have been omitted the issue of Israel remarkably is the issue of the church so once again it is the issue of Israel that uniquely reveals the secret heart of the church this is true not only for those who reject any future for Israel but those also who persist in expectations contrary to the revealed will of God you know what I said to a brother on the way up? I said you know why we have a lot of trouble with the church and find ourselves unhappy and looking for greener pastures elsewhere because we have never understood and made our peace with the fact that the church is first a place of suffering before it's a place of glory it's not intended for our convenience or for our enjoyment it's first exercised a place of suffering. I don't know about you I have suffered more in the church than anywhere being opposed by Jews in street meetings where I've been kicked in the shins or spit in the face or called names. There's nothing next to the insult, the indignities the digs, the humiliations that come to you in the church from other believers not because they're necessarily malicious it's because that's what we are in the condition that we are as we constitute the church and it's because we're soft because we thought it should be a place of relaxation or ease or the end of a hard work week and not a place of pain of confrontation, of difficulty of chastisement of dealings and of judgments that we run elsewhere what if we did the same thing with our wives or wives with the husbands if we proved the disappointment and it didn't turn out to be the happy thing we thought we were entering and instead we came into a whole new dimension and breadth of problems of difficulties, of heartbreak of painful consideration that is in the very nature of the truth of real relationship whether it's marriage or the church we have been idealistic vain, romantic, imaginary deceived the church that is intended as the ground and pillar of truth is the most flabby out of shape soft and undisciplined entity in the world what can we hope for then from the world itself if we are not able to love and embrace truth righteousness, justice judgment and we ourselves are sugar coating or devising a way of faith that is soft the issue is not the success of the church or the success of Israel what's the issue the glory of God and there is a suffering that precedes a glory if we only want a successful church we don't have to go through this kind of pain if we only want to see a successful homeland for Israel, they don't have to go through this kind of chastisement but if we are talking about the millennial and eternal glory of God for which all nations shall come up to Jerusalem to celebrate the God of Israel who has revealed himself in judgment and in mercy suffering must precede the glory let's get real folks because if we are not real with Israel we are not real period the issue of Israel uniquely reveals the secret heart of the church that is true not only for those who reject any future treasure but those who persist in expectations contrary to the revealed will of God both need to be broken upon the rock of Christ Jesus that is upon the irrefutable centrality of the issue of the suffering and the glory not only for Jesus as Savior but also for the nation Israel as for ourselves and the fact that we are humanistic and sentimental and resist the subject of judgment shows that we have not come to that cross our very sentimentality, our very humanism our insistence on an agenda or a solution other than what God says in the word, shows there is a flesh there that has never been brought to the cross talking with our brother today our older brother and he gives me the email from another Israeli precious brother, he says isn't this what you believe, they also speak about a suffering I said but my dear man there is suffering and suffering, there is trouble and trouble they think it's a thing that will come but will pass, I'm talking about the defeat of the nation I'm talking about the loss of Israel as a political entity, I'm talking about captivity, expulsion into the nations, I'm talking about such heartbreak and sorrow and distress as cannot be imagined and that they are unwilling to swallow whole and I doubt if they have received the cross in its full meaning as well because the hope for something other than what God says in a nicer ending betrays and reveals the absence of the work of the cross in the person that continues to hold that kind of expectation for Israel and in my 35 years as a believer I think I can say that every issue in the last analysis when you scratch deeply enough is the issue of the cross and if anything could be said for the church today even in its best charismatic form, it has been a cross avoiding as our resistance to judgment reveals even to receive the issue of judgment begrudgingly is not enough saints, well I guess I got to it says so in the word you know when you have really met the cross when you love the judgments of God because you know it's the statement of his righteousness, you love him in his judgments, you desire his judgments even for yourself you don't count it an horrific thing but a precious thing the alternative if we are unwilling for this is to elevate Israel to the place of idolatry whose very condition makes judgment inevitable and to be offended by the God through whom the judgment comes in the last analysis there is no middle ground either we have agreed with God's prophetic declarations of irrevocable judgment or we will find ourselves offended by him, opposed to him and opposed to his dealings and out of the faith judgment needs to be restored to the church and the issue of Israel is compelling it when it is rightly seen by unsparing exegesis in the scripture the drawing out of the meaning despite the implications of that that are painful to our own hearts so Lord to whatever degree this was your heart tonight to sound a theme like this for which we are not fitted nor prepared our culture does not prepare us for this it's an Alice in Wonderland culture