This sermon emphasizes the importance of understanding the depth of God's sacrifice through the crucifixion of Jesus, highlighting the need for true surrender, moral clarity, and the prophetic role of the church in preparing for the end times. It calls for a deep contemplation of the cross, the necessity of judgment, and the significance of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, both in the past and as a foreshadowing of future events involving Israel. The message stresses the need for a mature and prophetic church that can rightly discern and fulfill its role in the restoration of Israel and the culmination of God's purposes at the end of the age.

Jesus. And we see the beauty of their lives, and their character, and their integrity. And we hear them speak their many languages, and see their intensity, and their passion, and their character, and their nature. And our hearts call upon them for the kingdom of God, that they might be an end-time people of God, proclaiming His salvation throughout the earth. The issue of history. The issue of television. The issue of the church. ...descending into suffering implies and suggests that there are issues of such depth, of such an immeasurable moral kind, that nothing less nor other than this remarkable suffering and death could requite it. If it were not for that, we would be left to our own subjectivity, to our own thoughts, to our own moral and ethical measure of what we think righteousness is, or right is. God has made a statement, for time and for eternity, the crucifixion of His Son. And it's an inexhaustible thing to meditate upon, to contemplate, and to fall before. So, the prophetic man, maybe a teacher, has another way, more systematic and outlined, but the prophetic man has got to assimilate and in fits and spurts bring forth, for himself as well as for his hearers, an approach, an appropriation of so great a subject. We've not seen the end of it, and the heck of the matter is, we've not yet had a true beginning in it. The cross has lost its efficacy and has suffered from shabby mistreatment or neglect to become sentimentalized. The best of evangelical saints can recite the formula, that by it and the blood shed they're saved, and true enough, that's true, and it works, and they receive the benefit. But that falls so short of a true appreciation, as well as appropriation, of what God wrought in that single act, for which Jesus coming down was already a statement of the like kind. It is the central pillar of all reality. It is the pivot around which all things turn. So if it is marred or distorted or misunderstood or failed to be appreciated and apprehended, to that degree we will suffer dislocation. The world, I think, is profoundly dislocated. It's out of joint, morally, ethically, righteously. Because this central thing has not been rightly appreciated, and by what people most especially, has there been a gross neglect and even a rejection of the whole subject. But my kinsmen, Israel, the Jew, who look upon the crucifixion of Jesus, if they look upon it at all, as some kind of historic minor mishap of some character who ran afoul of Roman authorities, suffered an unhappy consequence from which he could have been saved if he was not subject to such delusions about himself, this megalomania about being Messiah and King. So it's a pitiful thing, rather than an object to be crunched by. And so my people have suffered the consequence of this terrible setting aside of the single most important event in time and history given of God. And they will not be restored and cannot take their place and cannot be a nation of priests until they have not only fathomed but apprehended this same act which they have till now renounced. The question is, how will they have opportunity? How will they consider what is already historically past? There's no way to go back and to apprise and sense something of that reality. It's faded from historic view. And any attempt even to depict it, like Gibson's film, falls short. So here's what I think. There will be a reenactment. There's a necessity for the reenactment of the cross, not only for Israel, but for the world. Because as we read in Isaiah 52, a cryptic, mysterious reference that I think has vibrations for the future, where it says, in the last verse of chapter 52, where the statement on the crucified Christ begins, not in 53, but 52.13, which, by the way, is the place where the synagogues cease to quote Isaiah. You know that there's a haftorah reading, a portion from the prophets, read on every Shabbat, appropriate to the text from the five books of Moses, which needs to be read every single year. The rabbis, the rabbinical councils, have determined each reading and the appropriate selection from the prophets to fit that segment from the Torah. So they come to 52.12 in Isaiah, and the following week they continue with Isaiah 54, and omit this whole most powerful, single, most eloquent, concise, revealing picture, prophetic picture of a suffering servant who not only suffers a cruel death, but is resurrected from it, and he shall see the fruit, the progeny, the reward of his sacrifice. So Judaism has wisely omitted it. And when I shared with my mother, bless her soul who is now in heaven, ten days before her death in her 96th year, calling upon his name, she had never heard it. And when I read to her Isaiah 53, she said, in the New Testament is that found. I said, I'm not reading to you from the New Testament, I'm reading to you from the Old. I'm reading from the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, Isaiah. She said, I never heard that. And I said, you never will in the synagogue. I'm going to ask my rabbi why it's omitted. She never did, but it would have been a wise move. So... That's right. That's why something has got to happen of the profoundest kind to bring present Jewry into a reappraisal and consideration of what we have for generations rejected and swept under the historic carpet. Or we cannot come into the fulfillment of our own destiny and call as it pertains to the nations. A nation of priests and the light unto the world requires not only the acknowledgement of this text, but its appropriation. Yet there's another thing that we read in this verse 15. Well, let's back up from 13 where this begins. My servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. So here's the introduction to a servant who at the end of his suffering will earn through it an exaltation. He will be extolled and be very high. It's the kind of language that is reserved for God. And it's more than that that is bestowed even upon faithful servants. And many were astonished at thee. His visage, his face was so marred more than any man and his form more than the sons of men. So shall he sprinkle many nations. The king shall shut their mouths at him for that which had not been told them shall they see and that which they had not shall they consider. So here's my suspicion that there was a partial fulfillment of this at the advent of the cross 2,000 years ago. Some modest measure of the communication by which men were astonished and were sprinkled as nations and kings was told them. But the greater majority of kings and nations today stand in ignorance of this remarkable sacrifice. It has not yet, they have not yet heard that they should consider and it has not been told them what they shall see. So there's a necessity at the conclusion of the age for this cross and its sacrifice to be made manifest for nations and for kings. And I believe that Israel is fated to perform that demonstration in its own future suffering in a road to Calvary reserved for the nation that it must tread. So when we read Isaiah 53, as we will tonight and tomorrow, however long it takes us, we need to read it with a deep reference for describing the sufferings of Jesus as past but also a foreshadowing of something yet future and yet unfulfilled in which be marred more than any man and they shall have no beauty that any should desire them. I believe that the time of Jacob's trouble and the uprooting of Jews worldwide and being pursued and chafed unto death will very much give them an experience like unto the cross. Not that they volunteered for it or that like Jesus they're experiencing it in their innocence. The fact is that they're experiencing it as the consequence of their sin. But nevertheless, as it takes place through all the nations globally, it is a demonstration and a reiteration of that which Jesus had suffered 2,000 years before. And as I hope to show you, not only will kings and nations look up and understand that which they have not been told, but Israel itself in the midst of that suffering will come to a revelation of suffering suggests of him who came before them to their own discovery of Jesus as the crucified Lamb of God and the suffering servant. So hold tight. We've got to feel our way through this. And in conversation this afternoon, a little informal chitchat, a little circle of souls there in the dining room about the necessity for New Zealand's revival. If New Zealand is to be a wilderness of the nations for Jews in flight, not just a segment or the more rustic remote parts of New Zealand, but as I suggested some years ago, the statement just came out of my mouth completely unpremeditated, the whole of New Zealand will be a wilderness of the nations in the midst of the nations. So if numbers of Jews are to pass through New Zealand and its place of refuge, healing, restoration, revelation, the nation itself needs to be saved. The nation itself needs to be in a spiritual condition to receive them and to communicate the kinds of things that interpret their suffering for them that they might rightly understand it and receive its benefit. So that mourning and sighing shall flee away and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads as they return to Zion. It could be that New Zealand has a distinct place in the whole program of God for Israel's redemption in its sifting through the nations. In other nations, it will be a segment, a wilderness of the nations. In New Zealand, as I heard out of my mouth unpremeditated, the entire nation will be a wilderness, which will require a very real revival, a very real spiritual knowledge of God, his ways, and we know unhappily how the faith has suffered loss in New Zealand almost of having fallen. It's as if the nation had never heard, never seen. It needs again to be sprinkled. Its kings need to shut their mouths. Its princes need to be instructed of things which they had not rightly heard. But have heard and not heard because they've gone to Sunday school and they've been indoctrinated and they've learned a catechism and a little formula for salvation that doesn't really save and they think they know but they don't know as they ought to know. And that's why I believe the final stroke of God in history is the reiteration of the cross. Not that Jesus himself will a second time have to pass through his once and for all suffering, but the nation that is also called to be the son of God. The first use of the word son in scripture was for Israel in Exodus chapter 4. I've called my son out of Egypt and the servant Psalms and the references to a servant nation are very descriptive of Israel and of Jacob, of Isaiah. So there's a remarkable parallel and harmony between Israel and Jesus where the rabbis have debated about our Christian interpretation of Isaiah 53 and say no that's not him, it's us. We are the suffering servant and we're suffering for the nations although it's clear from the text that the one for whom the sufferings are being performed is Israel itself. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have all of us turned our own way. It's clear who the we is and who the he is. But nevertheless their greatest rabbis Akiva and so on have suggested this interpretation because it is that close where you can almost interpret the historic sufferings of Israel as being some kind of benevolence from God for the nations. But I believe that the future suffering will in fact be what they suggest past sufferings have been. The whole nation will pass through a road to Calvary so that those who have not heard will understand. And that which they have not seen they will see, literally see. There will be an enactment and you'd have to be utterly dense and lacking in any kind of sensitivity not to see the suffering of the nation who will be marred more than any man and have no beauty should desire them and not think that this is an echo and a picture again of the suffering of the Lamb of God 2,000 years before that we had passed by too shallowly and inadequately and are having opportunity now historically by the suffering of Israel to consider what we had not adequately understood nor received. That might be the key to New Zealand's revival. That in one act, simultaneously the suffering of Israel in New Zealand's midst is also the factor by which it comes to a fresh appraisal and reception of the cross which is the key to revival in the deepest sense of the word. So judgment and restoration come if I'm not missing the Lord too gravely in a single act. What is judgment for Israel in its suffering is the revelation of the Lord for the redemption of a nation that has fallen away and has reduced it to something less than other than God intends. So that's my basic thesis. Now how to express that will require a special mercy throughout New Zealand now. I sort of feel that's a foreshadowing of the time when Jewish people will be... There's a program in New Zealand where Israelis are hosted through the... Oh, I know of it, yeah. That's a good warm-up. That's a foreshadowing. Yeah, that is good. I very much endorse that and encourage that. Whether New Zealanders will do it when it comes to the issue of the peril of this and not just a little happy episode with cute Israelis is another question. And that will be the question in the last days. It would not be too much to say that many now who are sentimentally sympathetic toward Israel will be its first betrayers when Israel betrays their naive and shallow sentimental expectations and hopes. There's a lot of romanticism about the Jew and about Israel and like a woman scorned will the Christian be whose hopes are not gratified when Israel shall collapse and in that collapse and sifting through the nations exhibit the seemiest side of its character and be totally unpleasant and have no beauty that any should desire them not only because they're marred but because the crisis reveals the truth of their condition because we Jews are deceived about our own selves we have no concept of sin we have no awareness about the truth of our condition we think ourselves morally culturally, intellectually superior to Gentiles when really in our secret hearts unbeknownst to ourselves we're vicious and loathsome and it's the cross that reveals the truth of the condition. I don't know how to say it that not the least of the functions that Jesus performed not only in providing the atonement but providing the necessity in seeing how far God would go in making such a provision. How awful must sin be? How great a moral catastrophe and a devastation for mankind how great an offense against the holiness and righteousness of God that it required this and this stubborn piece of facticity Christ crucified who is more than just a self deceived man but himself the son of God and God so that he is God crucified the judge himself bearing the judgment is the provision in God's mercy to instruct us about the truth of our condition and the moral condition of the world that only this act can meet if it were not for that men would be left to their own subjectivity which will always find them coming out smelling like a rose we will always justify ourselves we will never see our sin as sin it is only an accident a circumstance every day I pick up the New York Times there's another scandal of corruption at Wall Street, some CEO some head of a corporation bilking billions, millions without a blinking of an eyelash this Graham what's her name Martha something Stewart went to prison for six months came out smelling like a rose her stocks rose on the market and she's in a happier place now with greater prospect for profit because she had a six month prison term which was a vacation and even when these guys are caught and pay penalties running to the many millions which does not begin to touch the billions that they made through their illicit practices they are willing to pay the fine so long as they're not required to acknowledge guilt and the best that they can say is they made a mistake a boo-boo an error everybody's making mistakes but nobody's sinning so we need to understand the and magnitude of the cross not only in its provision for sin and for unrighteousness but the revelation of what unrighteousness is and what the moral crisis is at the heart of the world and of man that God knows in his holiness that must be met in reality and in truth and power or else men would be left to their own devices and be in the last analysis their own judge and if they judge anyone they'll judge and condemn him and exonerate themselves which is exactly what my Jewish people have done with God over the holocaust they have him in the box and on the witness stand and he's the one who has failed because how is it that he could not extricate and save us out of this terrible devastation and why did he allow it to come to pass to begin with there must be something wrong in the very structure of Christ's self that permits that evil so in the last analysis it's God at fault and not the sins of Israel that required that horrible judgment so if we will not be judged we will find ourselves judging God and when you judge God you put yourself in a place superior to God and that is the very essence and nature of sin itself I'm just saying I'm feeling there's so much more you dear saints that needs to be probed and understood and God has given us some precious literature of men who have labored and struggled and wrestled with this great event to extract its greater meaning lest it be lost upon us one of them is the guy that I've been commending to you P.T. Forsyth who portioned he talks about the genius of all philanthropy that is to say all that men will do to make things right and to make nice short of the necessity for a cross, a suffering a shedding of blood and an atonement if we could doctor up the world and put on a cosmetic face and make nice that would be our human preference but he says that charity, nice acts, sentimentality does not reconcile only justice does it has not the element of sin, righteousness, judgment it has not the holy searching sanctifying love which made the cross of Christ, it has not the ethical note of judgment indeed there's no weaker feature in much current kindness or affection than its impatience of judgment, its unwillingness to conspire and to be offended by judgment you'll know that you're a saint when you not only acknowledge that the catastrophes in the world and in history are in the first expression the judgments of God but love his judgments not merely tolerate them as if they are necessary evils because when judgment is in the earth the world will learn righteousness and when Babylon is judged in Revelation we read of the great celebration that came with that judgment judgment is righteousness and the mark of a true saint is one who loves God's judgments not only in the abstract not as it affects and afflicts others but even as it comes upon themselves and their own experience and their own family, their own relationships their own marriages, their own body in whatever form it pleases the Lord to employ it we don't debate with him let God be true and owe us God's judgments are at the heart of his righteousness and his holiness and nothing less than the crucifixion of his son which is to say himself because in all of our afflictions he's afflicted it was God who was in Christ reconciling the world to himself so can we ever examine this enough can we ever brood over this enough, can we ever wrestle with this enough, can we ever appropriate this deeply enough and only a church that does and will can be to Israel what it must and be able to explain this Isaiah 53 type suffering when it will be required to pass through it and show them that whatever they're experiencing is a only a less reflection of what their own Messiah and God had suffered before them he in his innocence and they in their sin they involuntarily being compelled instead he voluntarily so we're moving toward a great conclusion of the age and is it any accident that it should center in the cross that's how great that single event is so this philanthropy, charity, human kindness that wants to make nice has not the ethical note of judgment we need to develop a taste for judgment not in some malicious sense where you enjoy the devastation but in a moral sense that inwardly you know righteousness requires it and it would be a disservice to God to allow the issue of sin and rebellion to pass without this kind of action against it, it would make him casual, it would make him indifferent to righteousness he would lose his cogency he would not be to mankind and to the world and the whole world then would fall into a Sodom and Gomorrah condition if it had not the knowledge that there's a God who prevails whose creation this is, who is in fact righteous and holy he's got to defend he's got to keep his honor his name, his essential character or mankind itself will suffer for the loss of the knowledge of God as God all of that is involved in the issue of the soft son who had to leave heaven to bear this unbelievable travesty against his body and his life who was marred more than any man devastated, wrecked pummeled, if we're seeing now Islamic hatred ventilated on just men who happen to be in Iraq who don't have a cotton picking thing to do with anything political wanting to make a few extra bucks and are kidnapped by them and terrified and terrorized and tortured and beheaded by sawing a time so there's an anguish all the way until your head falls off, you're feeling the excruciating pain of being sawn asunder this is evil this is the hatred of the enemy this is the prince of this world, and what would he do then if he would get his hands on the son of the living God who will yield himself to him in complete defenselessness and innocency and say kingdom is not of this world if it were my servants would fight, but my kingdom is of another kind that requires as its expression my yielding even to this evil in whatever it will perform upon me and it did we have an obligation to be familiar with the greatest masterpiece on the crucified Christ that the Holy Spirit has ever inspired in painting called the Eisenheim Altar by a man of Gruenwald of what is today Belgium in the 1500s he did a work for the church triptych, three parts the center part is Jesus crucified, the wings show Mary and John and the back shows the resurrection when you read Ben Israel as you ought you'll read where as a hitchhiker I met a German art teacher and when he heard that I was Jewish he said art, you must not leave but you need to go out of your way and see this masterpiece at the museum at Colmar France on Jesus crucified, so I had seen pictures before Jesus on a cross, looked like a ballet dancer, so what was this, but I went and the book records the shock looking at this masterpiece I didn't know if I was looking at a man or I was looking at an animal it was so twisted the body was so drawn out and stretched and the jaw was open in death the lips were white, there was clear look of anguish of suffering the face had fallen in the flesh, things impaled from the flagellations and the body was already turning green from gangrene it was a horror to look upon, we need to contemplate that horror we must not beautify it and Goethe the German poet who felt he was a humanist that the cross is too too too coarse, it needs to be beautified with roses and for his influence we can understand the betrayal of the faith in Germany that made it a candidate for Nazism the loss of the cross was the loss of the faith and opened the door to spirits that not only devastated the nation, devastated the world and took six million Jewish lives, so we dare not tamper with the cross we dare not soften it or remove its splinters or make it less than what in fact it was, it's a horror it's the enemy it's evil, having an unrestricted opportunity to ventilate its deepest hatred against God, upon God imagine what it would do to the church if it had opportunity, to anything that in any way is related to God even the Jewish people even in their unbelief and apostasy are hated by these powers because they are even in their unbelieving condition, the people of God and that explains the suffering that will fall upon Israel and is already beginning to take place in parts of the world where till now they've known uninterrupted assurance comfort and security France, England, modern Germany, United States even are about to experience a measure of troubling and graffiti and swastikas and overturned gravestones and kids beaten in the street and store windows smashed and other minor acts that before it's over will be the crucifixion of the Jewish people at the end of the age I just have to read you this very few even Christians of those who love the people and would not see them wronged love in such a way as implies courage to tell their clients to their face of the things in them which are more fatal to their progress than all disabilities it's a false love that holds back and withholds a necessary knowledge that would save people from the consequence of their disabilities because you want to be nice and not offend and not hurt this sentimentality this deference to men is another instance of the degree from which we have shunned the cross and are unwilling to walk in its light and in its power in our own relationships and not the least of the casualties are our own children my own boys, my own sons are suffering the consequence of having been spoiled and what's the word? placated not confronted about truth and issues of their life and their growth so when they come to a place of maturity they're incapable of being husbands and are easily angered if things go wrong that will not accommodate them because they've not been told the truth about themselves the deadly effects of parental weakness in this way have long formed a moral commonplace in fact if you're not an indulgent parent you'll find yourself in jail in some countries if you spank you're earning a jail sentence so indulgence is verified and made official in societies in this world to be a parent who disciplines who rebukes, who chastens is to find yourself in jail and even if they were not that threat how many of us will will chastise which is the deepest statement of love it was God's deepest statement of love to chastise us for our sin by letting it fall upon Jesus the wrath of God against sin, against immorality, against unrighteousness against unholiness had to come as judgment it had to be expressed or God would not be God. His own moral character would have been compromised. He had to stand for righteousness by exercising judgment and wrath against sin but instead of allowing it to come upon us he allowed it to come upon him the judge himself became the judged but he did not withhold the chastening against his own son which is the deepest act of love and I believe that many of our young people today who are in rebellion are expressing through their rebellion a cry for an expression of love that has never come to judgment and chastening though they don't understand it they organically know that they have not been adequately loved though they've been spoiled and indulged a father who loves his son chastens him all of that is the issue of the cross and our failure to see that and understand that in the character of God toward his own son is reflected in our inability to perform it without him and that the whole of society rests on a indulgent soft and easy character in which the moral condition is collapsing because righteousness has not been upheld in judgment so this act of Jesus on the cross is intended for the redemption of all mankind to the uttermost ends of the earth from shore to shore from one corner to the other the world will in the last analysis pay homage, bow its knee, confess with its tongue that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father this atonement was universal it was for all mankind and the once and for all act that alone could perform it that in which most of mankind is presently ignorant or indifferent and even in the church that supposedly has this as its central doctrine there is not a sufficiently deep understanding respect or appropriation if we let it slip and sentimentalize it and just allow it to constitute a doctrinal position a catechism, what can we expect of the world? we went for a pizza in Auckland at a late hour and we stumbled into a shop that was called hell and they were celebrating it and every pizza has a demonic name and a combination of the things that make it vile so that which is vile is celebrated as good darkness is celebrated as light there's a whole reversal of values and the world is spiraling downward because the single central act of God has suffered neglect or indifference or actual outright rejection and needs again to be brought to the consideration of the world for many who have not heard have not yet been told and those who have to whom it has been suggested have not understood it needs not academic lecture what it needs in the last analysis is a reenactment and the people fated to perform it is Israel why? they are my witness nation and what greater witness to me can Israel be than to reiterate the cross of its own Messiah and God not willingly, reluctantly but actually later on appreciate what they have been required to pass through and to experience because all the world will receive the benefit they will see in this people passing through the nations a people chastised, marred, broken, having no beauty that any should desire them and if that doesn't kindle an interest in the Messiah whom that reenactment suggests there's no hope for them it's God's last statement and if that statement is refused then the final act is the day of the Lord's wrath and his judgment in which men will be without hope think on the mercy of God think on the love of God who is not willing that any should perish and knows that the contemporary world has lost its sense of God if it has ever indeed known it that his great act has in two thousand years been reduced to a non-act it has been made a non-event, it has been sentimentalized shallowy been mishandled and mistreated so that it has lost its cogency, its power and its meaning what can he do then at the end of the age that he would not that any should perish while there are yet kings and princes who have not believed in nations who are still in total unbelief and have gone after false gods but give them one more statement of the central revelation of God as it was profoundly performed by Jesus at the cross for the revelation of Jesus at the cross is the revelation of God as God nothing more reveals God than the suffering servant because God didn't just take upon that form of himself for the purpose of the cross he is ever and always before and presently a servant our God is a serving God servanthood is the nature of God Jesus depicted that the cross reveals the righteousness of God and what had to be performed over the issue of righteousness through judgment so it shows God in his character it shows the mercy of God because he didn't allow the wrath and judgment to fall upon the sinful mankind but upon himself it shows the love of God for he so loved the world that he gave his begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life the cross of Christ reveals God as God as no other event in history has or can and that's why it needs to be reenacted as one last opportunity to persuade the world and to save it that the praises of God might go forth from the one ends of the earth to the other and that every knee shall and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord the glory of God the Father God has not yet received that tribute and the expenditure of his son was so great that he deserves the fullest return of that investment it's not enough that there just should be a remnant church in the world that believes the magnitude of God's sacrifice, the cost to himself morally requires a return much greater than a remnant, it requires that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father and that's exactly how Paul in Philippians sums up the wisdom of God in a Jesus who emptied himself who being in the form of God thought it not rather to be equal to God made himself of no reputation took upon him the form of a servant which was in fact what he is in character and was made in the likeness of men only the power of God could form that and do that and being found in fashion as a man and he humbled himself became obedient unto death even the death of the cross even the word even shows how far God would go allowing his son to be the propitiation for sin by the cruelest form of execution that mankind had ever devised it had to wait for a Roman empire in all of its cruelty and it was cruel to form a capital punishment of a kind that mankind had not conceived till that time and that was the way that Jesus was to be brought to his death even having humbled himself loathed himself to suffer death but even the death of the cross wherefore because of that God also hath highly exalted him did we just read that in Isaiah 52 that there is someone a servant who is extolled and exalted and made very high but that same one has a face and a visage that is hardly recognizable as human the same one who is beaten to a pope is the same one who is extolled and exalted and made very high because he was so abased into the paroxysms of death and cruelty and suffering God hath exalted him and extolled him and made him very high and given him a name above every name both in heaven and earth the father has acceded to the son and given him a dignity and an exultation almost greater than himself that to this name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess of things in heaven, things in the earth things under the earth that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is to the glory of God the father what a revelation of the father he certainly is not a jealous deity he certainly is not an egoist who says ok son you've done well but keep your place, remember who's senior here father comes before son and always remember that however faithful and dutiful you've been in obeying the requirement you need to be reminded that I am the father and the foremost aspect of deity by your mystery of the godhead but far from that God is glorified it's to the glory of God the father that Jesus is extolled and exalted and made very high so here among other things we have a revelation of the father in his remarkable magnanimity and generosity and you know what if you go on like this you can almost fall in love with God you can almost appreciate him within that borders on adoration and if you'll not come to it through this appraisal you'll not come to it the cross deserves the deepest contemplation or we will not come to the place of worship and true bowing of the knee and the confessing of the mouth that is the foundation of reality itself anything less than that is a formula for delusion for self-deception self-gratification even as a Christian if we have not submitted and surrendered in the true bowing of the knee and the confessing with the mouth we are in a place of unreality all the more because we purport to be Christian this is total surrender which the cross demands requires it's the only response that is appropriate and right in view of it and all the world will one day give it that will survive the judgments of God as will so if the father is that magnanimous to extol the son and exalt him and make him very high and give him a throne like unto his own in fact his own throne that he was at the right hand of power remember when Stephen saw him he was standing at the right hand of power he's at the throne he's been enthroned all authority Jesus said in his resurrection the word to his disciples has given me both in heaven and in earth and here's the visible proof of it he's at the throne he's an enthroned resurrected and ascended Messiah if he'll do that for his son having been abased unto death what will he do for his son in the same logic by which he's extolled the son who suffered unto death what will he do for an Israel who also will have a road to Calvary and a suffering to experience that will benefit the nations and bring them the final revelation of the cross which they till now have avoided so that many will be sprinkled and those that have not been told them shall see and they shall understand the nation will be exalted and extolled it will be central to all nations if you'll not go up on the feast of tabernacles you'll suffer curse if you're unwilling to honor what God has honored what God has extolled what God has made very high not because they deserved it it's not a reward for their virtue it's the counterpart to having been abased and brought very low God will exalt and make them very high you say isn't that dangerous you know Jews give them an inch they take a mile and if they're exalted like that aren't they going to become imperious and high minded and superior how can they be to the nations priestly if they're going to be given such a place of distinction and elevation above nations good question glad you asked that and the answer is that they will bear millenially and eternally their own wounds that the brokenness of their own experience of the cross even though it is involuntary will always linger and remain as a resonance corporate personality of Israel that fits it to be a nation of priests and a light unto the world got the idea God's wisdom is past finding out his ways who can be his counselor Paul says New Zealand needs the reenactment of the cross I'm just saying that by faith encouraged by your own sense that you have communicated to me that you're unhappy with the fallen condition of the nation's Christianity that the nation that I glimpsed 20-25 years ago in my first visits that I could boast on and say in all my travels in the world if I would be asked what nation could you say is a Christian nation I would instantly have said New Zealand but it's been a long time since I've been able to say that and now you know how the nation is in a spiraling place downward and yet it's to be the place of refuge for Jews in flight as a total wilderness of the nation to accommodate to receive them because they're not going to be easy to be received in the condition in which their faces marred more than any man and they would have no beauty that any should desire them those Christians now who trip off to Israel to plant trees and go to Feast of Tabernacles conferences and think Jews are so cute will be the first one away in horror at the ugliness not only of what they will look like physically stinking and unbathed and wounded and beat up and pulverized but what they will reveal of the truth of their condition when the veneer of civility is removed and their brutalizing will show their anger, their mean spiritedness and they will ventilate it freely and who can receive them and bear that and absorb and take that unto oneself and not be reactive and say if that's the way you're going to be, if you're going to be mean like that, then tough on you I was willing to extend myself but now when I see your ingratitude and your ugly spirit, that's it you pull that and you will have forfeited your destiny where the whole movement of God now is to bring together in a point of time an Israel that is broken and a church that knows the cross and has been conditioned and sanctified so as not to be offended even by its rudest conduct but to love it in its unloveliness how are we doing now presently? with each other let alone with Jews in that condition and if there's something lurking in your Anglo-Saxon souls that goes back for generations of that enmity toward the Jew that resentment, that jealousy that envy, they do so well in school, they do so well in business what Gentile is free from that hidden disposition that all it needs to do is be touched and triggered and given opportunity to be expressed, to be ventilated who has received a work so deep in the sanctifying power of the cross that they're free from any disposition of taint against the Jew a remarkable and transfigured, sanctified saint and that's the church that must receive them if they are to receive from them not only physical safety and survival but the issue of salvation because the Lord says in Ezekiel 20 I will meet with you in the wilderness of the nations with a fury poured out he mentions it twice, with a fury poured out I will meet with you in the wilderness of face to face and there I will engage you, there I will converse with you there I will speak to you of the issues of life and of salvation and that's how you shall return to Zion with everlasting joy because in the wilderness you met me, you saw my face you saw the truth of me in those who picked you up and took you in and were not turned off by your ugliness physically or morally they loved you with the love of God that does not require any condition you didn't have to be approved and on your best behavior to be found lovable in your ugliness in your stink, in your rebellion in your being marred more than any man they were especially touched because you suggested to them something of their Lord's own suffering and if the opportunity 2,000 years before to succor him and to wipe his face and to give him a drink of water and help him in his hour of brutality, they would have but now in doing this for you, they're doing it for him that's why Jesus said what you have done to the least of my brethren you have done unto me you righteous, my God, and you think that I'll be in a better position to relate to my own kinsmen if I should be here at that time because I'm Jewish? No I will be just as subject to irritation and resentment and anger as anyone. Being Jewish does not absolve or save me from being human I need as much as you the deep sanctifying work of God to purify his heart as pure and not to be offended by men when they're ugly and whose language is abusive and who don't appreciate me as I'm extending to them not only hospitality but mercy at the risk of my life. How does God prepare you for that? He gives you an anger appreciator who doesn't appreciate you, doesn't understand you Jesus went down to Nazareth with his parents who didn't understand him and there he grew in grace has ways and those ways are presently operative in many of our lives if we but recognize it and be blessed by it kiss his hand for it, kiss the instrument of his use who in their ignorance don't even know that they're playing a role for your sanctification who are loveless and hard to bear and ruthless and angry and unjust what will those Jews be? Are we going to come magically to a place where we will be able to receive them so that it can be said that in seeing us they are face to face? When does that preparation begin if not now? Because this event is at the door we're at the end of the age this is the eschatological end and the conditions for Israel's uprooting and sifting is already at work the only thing that restrains God from allowing the boom to fall is the church is not ready and he's only got one odd cat promulgating this message praise the Lord for tapes for messages that are being groomed and prepared to bear this word into their own nations and into the world beyond me somebody asked me at the dim table who else do you know Art? Even David Wilkerson precious servant, he doesn't know anything about this it's great for what he does know but he doesn't know this, he will one day and when he will, if you'll not think it boasting, he'll know it through me or not any other rare word rare messenger not a welcomed message because even believers in Israel and leaders in Israel don't want to hear it who has a stomach for an apocalyptic scenario that requires the uprooting of Jews not just in Israel but worldwide and being sifted through the nations and being reduced to being marred more than any man and having no beauty that any should desire them who wants to see Israel crucified with Christ didn't they suffer enough recently in the holocaust must they yet again within the same generation virtually, suffer yet a worse devastation yes who has the moral stamina to bear this, not alone to be a participant in it as brave as I am my wife says that you're afraid I've never seen you fear only when those red blinking lights of a police car come up behind you and even then it's the fear of the fine that I'll have to pay but you know what I have no assurance that when the calamity comes I'll be able to bear it if I see precious Jewish girls being raped wholesale ravaged as we'll find when he comes to Jerusalem in that day that the women have been ravaged and two thirds have perished what then will happen in the world if that happens in Jerusalem that will be the universal experience of Jews how will I take it to see my kinsmen decimated and in flight torn to pieces won't there be the thought of where is God how is he just where is his mercy all of those thoughts that the enemy knows how to play upon to weaken your faith we'll have to have stature saints as sons we'll have to have moral stamina to bear hard things because now we're able to bear hard words and if we flinch at the hard words how shall we bear the hard reality of which the words speak when it comes we're soft, we're indulgent, we're sentimental we need the work of the cross that's the way it's viewed even the view of mankind as being totally depraved and needing salvation and a new life a new character given by God is distasteful for Jewish or Judaic consideration dismiss it as a Christian doctrine when it's right out of the Old Testament Scriptures there's no man good nor not one if God were to mark iniquity who can stand and yet they dismiss it as a Christian doctrine, why? because we Jews are the foremost humanists that celebrate man and don't want to see man negated we would rather see God negated and man extolled especially Jewish men so points up all the more reason why mere instruction of an academic bookish kind will never suffice they need an experience in the moral realities of life that revealed the truth of their own condition and that will come to them through their own experience of the cross on the road to Calvary in their last days time of Jacob's trouble and tomorrow Lord willing we'll go over the text of Isaiah 53 you can read it in advance yourself and see how the voice shifts first it's Isaiah narrating then there's another voice it's the people themselves oh for our transgressions he was stricken like sheep have gone astray the nation itself is coming to a place of acknowledgement which has not yet historically happened so there's a remarkable way in which a prophetic text written 700 years before the crucifixion of Jesus which it so describes also stands for yet something future that is not yet it serves to describe the crucifixion of Jesus in the past and it also speaks of yet a future thing that is yet ahead that's a remarkable capacity that the prophetic texts have if we rightly interpret them and to be assured that we're more likely to rightly interpret them God gives us men to whom he gives in a special ability to interpret even the prophetic scriptures in a way that he desires they be understood and therefore the issue of who in fact is the prophetic man is the issue of how the scriptures are understood whether it's yet a future suffering for Israel or it's already past that the valley of dry bones is already the Nazi time and not some future statement of a suffering unto death for world Jewry. How is Ezekiel 37 to be interpreted? How is Isaiah 53 to be interpreted? Who is giving us the prophetic interpretation in view of the present and in view of history and in view of the end? Who in fact is the prophet sent of God? A sent one and not one who sends himself and does not bear the words of God but his own machinations and the thought of his own carnal heart which people like to hear because he says peace peace when there is no peace. So the maturity of the church and its ability because of its own integrity to rightly assess and recognize who it is sent of God who is not can be a decisive factor in what it hears and receives that promotes its own growth and the fulfillment of the role it is yet to play as the salvific agent in Israel's restoration. See how everything comes to a head? So we've been playing games prophets, apostles, the body of Christ. It's a vernacular. It's a play on words. It's a new novelty. Who's the first in the neighborhood to have it? Who submitted? Well now the rubber is hitting the road. Now we've got to be a real people. Now we need to know submission. Now we need to recognize and esteem what is in fact authentically apostolic and prophetic because the issue of our role in the future, the destiny of Israel, the climax of the age rests upon it. Who's praying? Who's discerning? And is this a magic of discernment that we can pull out of the hat if we have not been progressively coming to a place of increasing maturity and sifting the issues of our own life rightly and interpreting them rightly and being able to consider hard words and truth and growing in the knowledge of God and in his way, in the word and coming to that corporately, corporate discernment? The church is not a Sunday society. It's not a place for Sunday services. It is the axis of God's movement and the provision for the consummation of his purpose at the end of the age. But what a church! Prophetic in its own character, in its own propensity, in its own ability, in its own maturity. Not just appreciating the prophetic man, but itself taking on prophetic credibility and stature and maturity to be what it must at the end of the age to this people who have no beauty that any should desire. Shall we pray for that church? In this country? This New Zealand? It's New Zealand's destiny. That's why you're here. That's why you have this geography, your placement, where you are with regard to nations. Lord, what shall we say to you? Masterful God, the creator of the heavens and the earth and all that in them is. Who has created land not for vacation resort, not for any of the purposes of commerce or trade, though it's needful of course for the subsistence of a people, but created for a destiny. A destiny for the people Israel. That they should be lovers of that people as they are lovers of you and will not be turned off and turned away by that ugliness that will characterize them before they're made beautiful. So Lord, I bless the church in New Zealand. I bless its men. I bless its leadership. I bless its young men. Bring it of age, my God. Let them wrestle and fight through the issues that you put before them that they face now presently.