Identification: The Cost of Intimacy

by Stephanie Quick

Christian doctrine and covenantal rhetoric has long leaned on Jeremiah’s address just before the Babylonian invasion and destruction of Jerusalem. Difficult as the words were, the holy God kept distant from His people on account of their sin and treachery against Him made a beautiful offer of intimacy: “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”[1] Still more magnificent is the context in which this precious promise is given—a breath after He affirms their adultery against Him: “…My covenant which they broke, though I was a Husband to them.”[2]

     Never has this been distant from the heart of the Holy, and never has it rested near the heart of humanity. Yet though restlessness strives, the weight of sin bearing upon us builds barriers too thick for any effort we contrive to break them down and prevail. For this reason, the gift of the prophetic word from heaven carries incredible mercy upon it, and one man giving himself to the righteousness of the Law was invited into even greater righteousness, even greater intimacy, at even greater cost than any could fathom.[3] His name was Hosea.

    It would be easy for those familiar with the storyline of the first three chapters of the book of Hosea to dismiss this article and admonition, to their detriment.[4] The life and message of Hosea is a unique glimpse into the personality and character of God. Though the Law prohibited adultery and required stoning death of perpetrators,[5] a mandate was given to this man that he might shatter false theologies built within the walls of iniquity, shame, sin and depravity that would accuse the Lord of being faithless. Uncommitted. A liar.

    Surely sleepless nights plagued this prophet, and painful encounters in prayer when heaven would respond rather than release him from the bond would have both rattled him and subjected him to ridicule. Yet the words would resound in his heart and reverberate in his mind— “Go again.” “Go again.” “Go again.”—and unlike Jonah, he would be driven by obedience into an embrace of mercy unlike anything the nation of Israel had seen before. Hosea’s pursuit of Gomer—the prophet’s pursuit of the prostitute—assures us marriage is no mere contract in the sight of heaven; it is a covenant.

    Another Man would come, some centuries later, who would Himself be sold for the same price that He might purchase His own bride.[6] Justice would be achieved in the collision of two beams: judgment and mercy. Another adulteress would encounter the juxtaposition between protocol and Personhood, would see mercy’s Eyes look into hers and hear the word “Go” again, this time followed by “…and sin no more.” This grace that has saved the redeemed encourages and empowers us to believe and obey the same, living in the early guarantee of what Jeremiah foretold and Jesus called “abiding.”[7]

     A regenerate Gentile believer can absolutely lean on these passages through the grafting of the New Covenant. The relationship offered to us through the binding work of the Spirit and the blood shed at Golgotha allows us incredible fellowship and communion with our Maker. This is no small matter.

    The divine intimacy between the holy God and fallen humanity as displayed by Hosea and made possible by Jesus is a beautiful, costly thing. Relationships ravaged by betrayal require far more than thirty silver coins to achieve reconciliation, but “redemption” is a holy word invaluable in heaven’s courts. He has stopped at nothing. He will stop at nothing. Hearts “brought near” and redeemed by the blood of the “only begotten Son” take refuge in the self-disclosure of the LORD in Scripture, drinking deep from the wells of Hosea. The holy pursuit to redeem the profane encourages us; the selflessness of the King to yoke Himself to a whore and make her a queen disarms us. May we learn well from the man who learned to love “just like the love of the LORD for the children of Israel.”[8]

    This identification is neither convenient nor cheap, but it means and is worth everything.

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1. See Jeremiah 31:33-34
2. See Jeremiah 31:31-32
3. See Luke 9:23
4. See Hosea 1-3
5. See Leviticus 20:10
6.Jesus’ betrayer, Judas, sold Him to those who would incite His crucifixion for thirty pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15). Tradition holds that Gomer’s purchase price in Hosea 3, fifteen shekels of silver and one-and-a-half homers of barley is equivalent to the same cost.
7. See Ephesians 1:13-14; 2:11-22; John 8:1-11; 15:5; Hosea 3:1

The Impasse

   by Stephanie Quick

In any survey of the relationship between the Church and the Synagogue—their respective communities—through history, the report would declare a tumultuous history. Any case of graduated tensions mentions ambivalence, and those exceptions are rarely surpassed with friendliness. Though the suffering Savior “abolished in His flesh the enmity between” Jew and Gentile,[1] one is hard-pressed to find historical tranquility between Jew and Christian. Worse yet, as far as one party would be concerned, the other is always to blame. Jewish Pharisees murdered early Christian converts.[2] The city of Jerusalem unrepentantly bore bloody hands at Calvary.[3] The tectonic plates shifted violently in the bar-Kochba rebellion, creating a canyon between Abraham’s sons by seed or by faith.[4]

    This canyon has become the ‘impasse’ between the Church and the Synagogue; the dreadfully irreconcilable chasm between the resentful prodigal brothers. With a sordid history of mutual persecution between both parties, neither can stand upon any claim of innocence before the Judge of Heaven and Earth—with the exception, perhaps, of those “washed, cleansed, sanctified, and redeemed”[5] by the atoning work of the Jewish King.

    Therein lies the awful truth: no tongue washed by the Messiah ever had a right to lash out against His people, no matter their rebellion. No filthy hand cleansed in Emmanuel’s flood ever had a right to strike the people of the Synagogue, regardless of their stubborn obstinance against the Man from Nazareth. No heart purged in regenerating fire ever had a right to turn against the Jewish people in resentment, disgust, or hatred.

Yet that is what we have done.

    That Nazi politicians ever had a theological father to quote in support of their murderous and demonic atrocities alone is enough to indict Christian history and require investigation. It is not enough to say the Church has progressed or matured beyond Luther’s repulsive admonitions in The Jews and their Lies—the Bride is not so white to make such audacious claims. We have to ask why centuries allowed the anti-Judaism of Saint Augustine, the anti-Semitism of Luther, and now makes room for the anti-Zionism of Sizer, Wright, Chapman and Burge.[6]

    No disciple can responsibly ignore Jacob’s covenantal infidelity. No disciple should. Jeremiah stood with a condemned Israel in intercession, and against a wicked Israel in her sin. Yet since the terrible cry before Pilate, the Church has often held fast to Israel’s condemnation and refused to intercede. It is almost as if we resent mercy. The prophet reminds us to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly” before the God of Israel, yet we seem undisturbed by the blasphemy produced by Israel’s unfaithfulness. Further still, the Church has audaciously “redefined” terms so as to be free of responsibility towards the Jew. But Cain, where is your brother?

    The Pharisee who held the coats of those who stoned Stephen later wrote, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.”[7] Saul of Tarsus became a magnificent trophy of magnificent grace, and we love him for it. The Author of our faith saved the Apostle Paul from becoming a second Jonah, and conceived in him an incredible burden for Gentiles—for you; for me. He bravely brought the “mystery of Israel” before former pagans, and warned them—us—against the arrogance that would inevitably grow from ignorance.[8] The historical impasse condemns Rome’s disregard. The People of the Cross have spent centuries dancing with ignorance, arrogance, and irresponsible imitation.

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And bring found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore, God has also highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”[9]

    By grace, we’ve been apprehended by Jesus Christ the Righteous, who in innocence initiated reconciliation with His enemies. We were His enemies. We aren’t anymore. Jacob, hardened in part for our sake, remains an enemy of the Gospel yet beloved for his fathers’ sakes.[10] With reverent trepidation, we imitate Paul who bore chains “for the hope of Israel” and the Son of David who bore a cross so He could bear their—and our—curse.[11] We initiate a reconciled relationship. If that initiation is met with scorn, we don’t throw a tantrum about it like Martin Luther did. We don’t boast against the broken branches, sobered by Paul’s warning our own branch may be broken if need be.[12] “Is this not a reason, then, that the Gospel should first be preached to the Jew? They are ready to perish—to perish more dreadfully than other men. The cloud of indignation and wrath that is even now gathering above the lost, will break first upon the head of the guilty, unhappy, unbelieving Israel. And have you none of the bowels of Christ in you, that you will not run first to them that are in so sad a case?”[13]

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1.    Ephesians 2:12
2.   See Acts 7
3.   See Matthew 27:25
4.   The bar-Kochba rebellion was the initial divide between the Church and the Synagogue; Rabbi Akiva announced bar-Kochba to be Messiah and revolted against the Romans. The Judeo-Christians believed in Jesus as Messiah and were unable to participate in the revolt. When the revolt failed it only further distanced the greater Jewish community from the Jewish believers in Jesus who were unable to participate in the revolt while mainaining their convictions about Jesus’ identity.
5.  I Corinthians 6:11
6.  Worryingly, these men are all in vocational positions of church leadership, either in congregational or academic settings.
7.  1 Corinthians 11:1
8.  Romans 11:25
9.  Philippians 2:5-11
10. Romans 11:28
11.  Acts28:20; Galatians 3:10-14
12. Romans 11:18
13. M’Cheyne, Robert M. Our Duty to Israel, 1839. Read Here

A Blustery Monday

by Stephanie Quick

In the early dawn of the day after Quasimodo Sunday,[1] a man bent to his knees in prayer within the wanting walls of a concentration camp cell. Prison guards entered the room between the fifth and sixth hour of the morning, only to remove the praying man and escort him to a splintered gallows. His prison garments removed, he prayed again before climbing the steps of the hangman’s haunt and stood as the noose was placed around his neck.

“In the almost fifty years that I have worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”[2]

    It is important to know what brought this man to the German gallows, himself a native of the country which killed him. The year was 1945, just three weeks before Hitler’s suicide and a month before the end of the Second Great War. Why had the Fürher ordered the death of a German Gentile?

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer was no stranger to theology. Raised by a mother who taught him early to sing the psalms of Scripture and hymns of history, and a father who taught him to speak nothing of that which he knew not of, Dietrich gave himself at a young age to pursuing the knowledge of the Holy. By the time he entered seminary and began pastoral work in his twenties, he had distinguished himself as a rising star of the prestigious German theological scene.

    Disinterested in humanistic exaltation and too discerning to swim with the tide of the German church as it raged alongside the ideology of the Third Reich, Bonhoeffer spearheaded the Confessing Church and indicted his Lutheran country of apostasy. His students in the underground Confessing Church seminary he founded and led recalled his admonition: “Only he who cries out for the Jews may sing the Gregorian chants.”[3]

    Though much of his teaching and theology would endanger his life in Nazi Germany, it was Bonhoeffer’s participation in assassination attempts on Hitler’s life which would finally cause the leader of the Third Reich to order his execution. Because he shouted the prophetic word over the drunken stupor of the Nazi-influenced German church, he was arrested. Because he stood with Israel against Hitler, he was brought to the gallows. Because he attempted no retreat from Jacob in his troubles, Bonhoeffer was hanged and his body burnt to ashes in a pile alongside the comrades he had yoked himself to.

 “This is the end. For me, the beginning of life.”[4]

To live is Christ. To die is gain.[5]

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1. The Latin words quasi (“as if”) and modo (“in the manner of”) were joined to refer to the Sunday after Easter in Lutheran Germany, a tradition based on I Peter 2:2. Hugo’s character bearing this name was to have been born on that day and as such bore the name.
2. H. Fischer-Hüllstrong, as quoted by Eric Metaxas. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, 532. Thomas Nelson: 2011.
3. Having never been published, this statement was passed by word-of-mouth as his legacy spread. His friends and colleagues would later include it in written records of his life, noting he spoke this in the years before the start of World War II.
4. These were Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s last words to his traveling companions as he was escorted to Flossenbürg on Quasimodo Sunday, the day before his death.
5. Philippians 1:21

Why Every Calvinist Should be a Premillenialist

 by John MacArthur

This is a transcript of John MacArthur's sermon by the same title. It was originally preached in the Spring of 2007. Click the link below to read the transcript or listen to the sermon by clicking here.

Copyright 2007, Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used with permission. 

Why Every Calvinist Should be a Premillenialist by John MacArthur.pdf

Contention & Complexity: The Dangers of Zionism and Lack Thereof

by Stephanie Quick

    In late November 1947, the United Nations drafted Resolution 181 as a proposition to partition what had been British Mandate Palestine. Days later, the General Assembly voted by majority to accept the resolution. The Jewish state was but months away from reemerging on the geopolitical stage, and Jerusalem once again poised to confront the nations with “the controversy of Zion.”[1] Decades have passed, and Resolution 181 is no longer the only resolution the UN has lodged regarding Israel—but it is one of the few resolutions not serving as condemnations.

    For nearly seventy years, the world has been forced to grapple with the legitimacy of the modern state of Israel. Wars and threats of wars have nearly suffocated her. Politicians and theologians alike have drawn their swords for or against her supporters. The movement known as “Zionism,” birthed in the late nineteenth century, has driven an effective wedge into global culture, dividing Western and Arab nations alike.

    As with any divisive issue, the rage thrives on two sides: those who argue against the legitimacy of the modern State and those who support the State, often unequivocally. The argument has risen to so many decibels, it seems everyone stopped listening to each other a long time ago. “Never Again” has become the mantra of the modern Jewish generation, while accusations of “apartheid” and “occupation” have drowned out the cheers that erupted out of liberated camps upon the Allied arrival as the Second World War came to a close. The two political positions now in question both share a heritage in bankrupt theological foundations and bear toxic theological, ecclesiological and sociological fruit. With mudslinging on all sides, we believe it crucial to think critically and respond biblically to what is fundamentally a Gospel issue.

The Dangers of Anti-Zionism

    As the crucified and risen Jewish King was proclaimed beyond Jerusalem and His precious Name reached Rome, the growing Gentile-majority fellowship in this ancient city was admonished by the still-living apostle Saul of Tarsus to “not be ignorant” concerning the mystery of Israel’s place in God’s cosmic purposes, despite (and in light of!) her rejection of Yeshua and her corporate unbelief post-Golgotha.[2] We worry Rome didn’t listen. Far from a modern invention, the theological foundations for anti-Zionism are nothing new. The theological system almost consistently bleeds into politics since the emergence of the State (though the political position can and does well stand on its own). The system known as “supersessionism,” “replacement,” “fulfillment,” and—most audaciously— “covenant” theology is best described as a system of divestment, built upon a hermeneutic in which all of the covenantal blessings given to the houses of Israel and Judah are “transferred”[3] (read: divested from) to the mostly Gentile Church. To stay faithful to its self-devised hermeneutic, “covenantal theology” must necessarily redefine “covenant,” thus marring the very Name and nature of the God who makes and keeps said covenant.  

    Moreover, because divestment theology castrates the integrity of covenant, a bankrupt eschatology must necessarily follow. The consequences of this often include selling this unregenerate earth as already renewed, or identifying the prophesied millennial reign of the Messiah as “figurative,” with all the improvements laid upon the Church as her responsibility (nevermind that it goes without saying, unresurrected corpses cannot resurrect created order). With the covenantal purposes of God skewed and His commitment to make all wrong things right effectively robbed of potency, it follows that our ability to understand the Man Christ Jesus as He has revealed Himself is irreparably compromised.

    With these tenets in place, those who hold to divestment ideology (it can hardly be called a theology, such being a knowledge of God), have nothing in place to resist opposition to the modern, supposedly irrelevant, State of Israel. Because the “irrevocable”[4] election of Israel is compromised, mocked and redefined, so is grace. The political anti-Zionism of theological anti-Judaism has a long and sordid history, which has never once produced good fruit.[5] Our very simple litmus test is this: Judge a tree by its fruit.[6]

The Dangers of Zionism

    In the latter years of the nineteenth century, theologians began re-evaluating the long-standing tradition that the Church had “superseded” Israel in her covenantal standing as a nation, land and people elected by God. As they formed new conclusions, some swung the pendulum equally too far in the opposite direction; in a manner equally destructive to divestment of Israel’s covenantal peculiarity, she was then elevated beyond moral discretion and, sometimes, beyond the need for Calvary.[7] Irishman John Nelson Darby’s new theological system was transplanted to America by Charles Scofield and widely popularized by the latter’s study Bible. That which we know as “dispensationalism” was born, and not without its consequences.

    Darby’s construct brings division where Christ brought unity,[8] supposing not one kingdom, but two; not one salvific covenant, but two. Though dispensationalism affirms the future fulfillment of all prophecies and promises to the national, ethnic and geographic Israel, it also advocates a pre-tribulation rapture, accusing Israel’s Shepherd of removing His witness from the earth just before Jacob enters his “time of trouble.”[9] Consequently, the emphasis upon Israel as God’s “chosen”[10] divorced from any prophetic foresight breeds unbiblical nationalism and conceives naïve political support—which is particularly troublesome with the modern Palestinian controversy. Though both parties involved in the conflict have filthy hands, too many evangelicals (typically American) excuse or overlook any of Israel’s legitimate transgressions and funnel huge amounts of money to the Israeli government—not believers in the land, but to the secular political institution. Perhaps most injurious, however, is its logical deductive end: the ideological abortion of missional efforts to bring the “Gospel of the Kingdom” back to wayward Jacob.[11]

Why this is a Gospel Issue

If the arguments and mud swirling and slinging around Jerusalem were simply about soil—dirt—or a geopolitical tension in the Middle East along with every other war and fractured boundary line in the bleeding Arab world, we’d leave it well alone.

If the consequences of these ideologies hadn’t historically resulted in genocide and political partnership with a pagan nation, we’d leave it well alone.

If the Judeo-Christian Scriptures were silent on the future of this people, land, nation and city, we’d leave it well alone.

Trouble is, Jerusalem is not just any city. She is “the city of the Great King.”[12]

Trouble is, Luther was never quite rebuked for spouting anti-Semitic and anti-Judaic rubbish. Hitler quoted him centuries later to gain Germany’s support for the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish question.”[13]

Trouble is, the modern State isn’t the fruition of Abraham’s holy dream.[14] 

Trouble is, all of the prophets, all of the apostles and Jesus Himself looked to the Day when Jerusalem would be “established, far from oppression,” “majestic forever, a joy from age to age,” “a crown of glory in the hand of the LORD,” shining with “salvation as a lamp that burns” which all “Gentiles shall see.”[15]

Trouble is, this isn’t ultimately about Israel. This isn’t ultimately about Abraham. This isn’t ultimately about Jerusalem.

This is about the King who promised to rule and reign from her hill.[16]

This is about the Savior who promised to impute His righteousness upon her soiled soul.[17]

This is about the God who promised to crush the head of the serpent for all our sake’s.[18]

Ultimately, this is about His Name.[19]

If we misunderstand or misrepresent Jerusalem, we misunderstand and misrepresent her—and our—Messiah.

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1. Isaiah 34:8
2. Romans 11:25
3. This word, and its synonyms, is not uncommon amongst divestment theologians. NT Wright uses this word in The Climax of the Covenant [(Minneapolis: Fortress Press October 1, 1993), 25.] to say: “[Paul] has systematically transferred the privileges and attributes of ‘Israel’ to the Messiah and His [new] people [the Church]. It is therefore greatly preferable to take… “Israel” as a typically Pauline polemical redefinition…”
4. Romans 11:29
5. See Our Hands are Stained with Blood by Dr. Michael L. Brown, Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from antiquity to the Global Jihad by Robert S. Wistrich, Future Israel: Why Christian anti-Judaism Must be Challenged by Barry Horner, Semites and anti-Semites by Bernard Lewis. Where and when theological philo-Semitism is allowed to flourish there is health to the group that produces it. Likewise, there is death where the inverse is true.
6. See Matthew 7:15-20; 12:33; Luke 6:44
7. "I believe that every Jewish person who lives in the light of the Torah, which is the word of God, has a relationship with God and will come to redemption....In fact, trying to convert Jews is a waste of time. Jews already have a covenant with God and that has never been replaced by Christianity." John Hagee in the Houston Chronicle, 30 April 1988 (6) 1.
8. See Ephesians 2:14-18
9. Jeremiah 30:7
10. Deuteronomy 7:6; 14:2; 1 Kings 3:8
11. Matthew 24:14; See also Romans 1:16
12. Matthew 5:35
13. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Final Solution. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007328. Accessed 23 July 2015.
14. See Genesis 15:12-21
15. Isaiah 54:14; 60:15; 62:1-3
16. See Psalm 2
17. Isaiah 46:13
18. Genesis 3:14-15
19. Deuteronomy 7:7-11; 9:6; Psalm 23:3; 25:11; 31:3; Ezekiel 20:44; 36:22; Acts 9:16

Our Duty to Israel

by Robert Murray M'Cheyne
 

In 1839, the Church of Scotland dispatched a delegation of ministers to investigate the condition of Jewish communities throughout Europe and the land of Palestine. While M'Cheyne was away, W.C. Burns pastored M'Cheyne's parish in his stead, and the LORD visited their fellowship with power. M'Cheyne and his colleagues were convinced blessing had come as they blessed Abraham's sons, and convicted they should spearhead new efforts to honor the Jews with their Gospel.

He preached the following upon return,
17 November 1839.

The Scottish Mission to the Jews was subsequently established in 1841.

Most people are ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. The wise are ashamed of it, because it calls men to believe and not to argue—the great are ashamed of it, because it brings all into one body—the rich are ashamed of it, because it is to be had without money and without price—the gay are ashamed of it, because they fear it will destroy all their mirth; and so the good news of the glorious Son of God having come into the world a Surety for lost sinners, is despised, uncared for—men are ashamed of it. Who are not ashamed of it? A little company, those whose hearts the Spirit of God has touched. They were once like the world and of it, but He awakened them to see their sin and misery, and that Christ alone was a refuge, and now they cry, None but Christ—none but Christ! God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Christ. He is precious to their heart—He lives there—He is often on their lips—He is praised in their family—they would fain proclaim Him to all the world. They have felt in their own experience that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. Dear friends, is this your experience? Have you received the Gospel not in word only, but in power? Has the power of God been put forth upon your soul along with the word? Then this word is yours—I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ.

One peculiarity in this statement I wish you to notice: He glories in the Gospel as the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first, from which I draw this doctrine—that the Gospel should be preached first to the Jews.

Because judgment will begin with them

"Indignation and wrath, to the Jew first.” —Rom. ii.6-10. It is an awful thought that the Jew will be the first to stand forward at the bar of God to be judged. When the great white throne is set, and He sits down upon it from whose face the heavens and earth flee away—when the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books are opened, and the dead are judged out of those things that are written in the books, is it not a striking thought that Israel—poor blinded Israel—will be the first to stand in judgment before God?

When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, when He shall sit upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them from one another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats—when the awful sentence comes forth from His lips, depart ye cursed—and when the guilty many shall move away from before Him into everlasting punishment—is it not enough to make the most careless among you pause and consider, that the indignation and wrath shall first come upon the Jew—that their faces will gather deeper paleness, their knees knock more against each other, and their hearts die within them more than others?

Why is this? Because they have had more light than any other people. God chose them out of the world to be His witnesses. Every prophet was sent first to them; every evangelist and apostle had a message for them. Messiah came to them. He said, "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." The Word of God is still addressed to them. They have it pure and unadulterated in their hand; yet they have sinned against all this light—against all this love. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathers its chickens under its wings, and ye would not!" Their cup of wrath is fuller than that of other men—their sea of wrath is deeper. On their very faces, you may read in every clime, that the curse of God is over them.

Is not this a reason, then, why the Gospel should first be preached to the Jew? They are ready to perish—to perish more dreadfully than other men. The cloud of indignation and wrath that is even now gathering above the lost, will break first upon the head of the guilty, unhappy, unbelieving Israel. And have you none of the bowels of Christ in you, that you will not run first to them that are in so sad a case? In a hospital, the kind physician runs first to the bed where the sick man lies who is nearest to die. When a ship is sinking, and the gallant sailors have left the shore to save the sinking crew, do they not stretch out the arm of help first to those that are readiest to perish beneath the waves? And shall we not do the same for Israel? The billows of God's anger are ready to dash first over them—shall we not seek to bring them first to the Rock that is higher than they? Their case is more desperate than that of other men—shall we not bring the good Physician to them, who alone can bring health and cure? —for the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

I cannot leave this head without speaking a word to those of you who are in a situation very similar to that of Israel—to you who have the Word of God in your hands, and yet are unbelieving and unsaved. In many respects, Scotland may be called God's second Israel. No other land has its Sabbath as Scotland has—no other land has the Bible as Scotland has—no other land has the Gospel preached, free as the air we breathe, fresh as the stream from the everlasting hills. O then, think for a moment, you who sit under the shade of faithful ministers, and yet remain unconcerned and unconverted, and are not brought to sit under the shade of Christ, think how like your wrath will be to that of the unbelieving Jew. And think, again, of the marvelous grace of Christ, that the Gospel is first to you. The more that your sins are like scarlet and like crimson, the more is the blood free to you that washes white as snow; for this is still His word to all His ministers, Begin at Jerusalem.

It is like God to care first for the Jews 

It is the chief glory and joy of a soul to be like God. You remember this was the glory of that condition in which Adam was created. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." His understanding was without a cloud. He saw, in some measure, as God seeth. His will flowed in the same channel with God's will. His affections fastened on the same objects which God also loved. When man fell, we lost all this, and became children of the devil, and not children of God. But when a lost soul is brought to Christ, and receives the Holy Ghost, he puts off the old man, and puts on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. It is our true joy in this world to be like God. Too many rest in the joy of being forgiven, but our truest joy is to be like Him. O rest not, beloved, till you are renewed after His image, till you partake of the Divine nature. Long for the day when Christ shall appear, and we shall be fully like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

Now, what I wish to insist upon at present is, that we should be like God, even in those things which are peculiar. We should be like Him in understanding, in will, in holiness, and also in His peculiar affections. "Love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." But the whole Bible shows that God has a peculiar affection for Israel. You remember when the Jews were in Egypt, sorely oppressed by their taskmasters, God heard their cry, and appeared to Moses—"I have seen, I have seen, the affliction of My people, and I have heard their cry, for I know their sorrows."

And, again, when God brought them through the wilderness, Moses tells them why He did it. "The Lord did not set His love upon you, nor choose you because ye were more in number than any people, for ye were the fewest of all people, but because the Lord loved you."—Deut. vii. 7. Strange, sovereign, most peculiar love. He loved them because He loved them. Should we not be like God in this peculiar attachment?

But you say God has sent them into captivity. Now, it is true God hath scattered them into every land—"The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how they are esteemed as earthen pitchers?"—Lam. iv. 2. But what says God of this? "I have left Mine house, I have forsaken Mine heritage, I have given the dearly beloved of My soul into the hand of her enemies."—Jer. xii. 7. It is true that Israel is given, for a little moment, into the hand of her enemies, but it is as true that they are still the dearly beloved of His soul. Should we not give them the same place in our heart which God gives them in His heart? Shall we be ashamed to cherish the same affection which our heavenly Father cherishes? Shall we be shamed to be unlike the world, and like God in this peculiar love for captive Israel?

But you say God has cast them off. Hath God cast away His people which He foreknew? God forbid! The whole Bible contradicts such an idea. "Is Ephraim My dear son? Is he a pleasant child? For since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still. Therefore My bowels are troubled for him, I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord."—Jer. xxxi. 20. "I will plant them again in their own land assuredly, with My whole heart and with My whole soul." "Zion saith, the Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee."—Isa. xlix. 14. "And so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." Now the simple question for each of you is, and for our beloved Church, should we not share with God His peculiar affection for Israel? If we are filled with the Spirit of God, should we not love as He loves? Should we not grave Israel upon the palms of our hands, and resolve that through our mercy they also may obtain mercy.

 

Because there is peculiar access to the Jews

In almost all the countries we have visited this fact is quite remarkable; indeed, it seems in many places as if the only door left open to the Christian missionary is the door of preaching to the Jews.

We spent some time in Tuscany, the freest state in the whole of Italy. There you dare not preach the Gospel to the Roman Catholic population. The moment you give a tract or a Bible, it is carried to the priest, and by the priest to the Government, and immediate banishment is the certain result. But the door is open to the Jews. No man cares for their souls; and therefore you may carry the Gospel to them freely.

The same is the case in Egypt and in Palestine. —You dare not preach the Gospel to the deluded followers of Mahomet; but you may stand in the open market-place and preach the Gospel to the Jews, no man forbidding you. We visited every town in the Holy Land where Jews are found. In Jerusalem and in Hebron we spoke to them all the words of this life. In Sychar we reasoned with them in the synagogue, and in the open bazaar. In Chaifa, at the foot of Carmel, we met with them in the synagogue. In Zidon also we discoursed freely to them of Jesus. In Tyre we first visited them in the synagogue and at the house of the Rabbi, and then they returned our visit; for when we had lain down in the khan for the heat of mid-day, they came to us in crowds. The Hebrew Bible was produced, and passage after passage explained, none making us afraid. In Saphet, and Tiberias, and Acre, we had the like freedom. There is perfect liberty in the Holy Land to carry the Gospel to the Jew.

In Constantinople, if you were to preach to the Turks, as some have tried, banishment is the consequence; but to the Jew you may carry the message. In Wallachia and Moldavia, the smallest attempt to convert a Greek would draw down the instant vengeance of the holy Synod and of the Government. But in every town we went freely to the Jews—in Bucharest, in Foxany, in Jassy, and in many a remote Wallachian hamlet, we spoke without hindrance the message to Israel. The door is wide open.

In Austria, where no missionary of any kind is allowed, still we found the Jews willing to hear. In their synagogues we always found a sanctuary open to us; and often when they knew they could have exposed us, they concealed that we had been there.

In Prussian Poland, the door is wide open to nearly 100,000 Jews. You dare not preach to the poor Rationalist Protestants. Even in Protestant Prussia this would not be allowed; but you may preach the Gospel to the Jews. By the law of the land every church is opened to an ordained minister; and one of the missionaries assured me that he often preached to 400 or 500 Jews and Jewesses at a time. Schools for Jewish children are also allowed. We visited three of them, and heard the children taught the way of salvation by a Redeemer. Twelve years ago the Jews would not have come near a church.

If these thing be true, and I appeal to all of you who know these countries if it is not—the door in one direction is shut, and the door to Israel is so widely open—O do you not think that God is saying by His Providence as well as by His Word, Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? Do you think that our Church, knowing these things, will be guiltless if we do not obey the call? For the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

Because they will give life to a dead world

 

I have often thought that a reflective traveler, passing through the countries of this world, and observing the race of Israel in every land, might be led to guess, merely from the light of his natural reason, that a singular people are preserved for some great purpose in the world. There is a singular fitness in the Jew to be a missionary of the world. They have not that peculiar attachment to home and country which we have. They feel that they are outcasts in every land. They are also inured to every clime; they are to be found amid the snows of Russia and beneath the burning sun of Hindoostan. They are also in some measure acquainted with all the languages of the world, and yet have one common language—the holy tongue—in which to communicate with one another. All these things must, I should think, suggest themselves to every intelligent traveler as he passes through other lands. But what says the Word of God?

"It shall come to pass, that as ye were a curse among the heathen, O house of Judah and house of Israel; so will I save you, and ye shall be a blessing." Zech. viii. 13. To this day they are a curse among the nations, by their unbelief—by their covetousness; but the time is coming when they shall be as great a blessing as they have been a curse.

And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of many people as a dew from the Lord, as showers upon the grass, that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men."—Micah v. 7. Just as we have found, among the parched hills of Judah, that the evening dew, coming silently down, gave life to every plant, making the grass to spring, and the flowers to put forth their sweetest fragrance, so shall converted Israel be when they come as dew upon a dead dry world.

"In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you; for we have heard that God is with you."—Zech. viii. 23. This has never been fulfilled; but as the Word of God is true, this is true. Perhaps some one may say, If the Jews are to be the great missionaries of the world, let us send missions to them only. We have got a new light—let us call back our missionaries from India. They are wasting their precious lives there in doing what the Jews are to accomplish. I grieve to think that any lover of Israel should so far pervert the truth, as to argue this way. The Bible does not say that we are to preach only to the Jew, but to the Jew first. "Go and preach the Gospel to all nations," said the Saviour. Let us obey His Word like little children. The Lord speed our beloved missionaries in that burning clime. The Lord give them good success, and never let one withering doubt cross their pure minds as to their glorious field of labour. All that we plead for is, that, in sending out missionaries to the heathen, we may not forget to begin at Jerusalem. If Paul be sent to the gentile, let Peter be sent to the twelve tribes that are scattered abroad; and let not a bye-corner in your hearts be given to this cause—let it not be an appendix to the other doings of our Church, but rather let there be written on the fore front of your hearts, and on the banner of our beloved Church, "To the Jew first," and "Beginning at Jerusalem."

Lastly, Because there is great reward. — Blessed is he that blesseth thee; cursed is he that curseth thee. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love her. We have felt this in our own souls. In going from country to country, we felt that there was One before us preparing our way. Though we have had perils in the waters and perils in the wilderness, perils from sickness and perils from the heathen, still from all the Lord has delivered us; and if it shall please God to restore our revered companions in this mission in peace and safety to their anxious families,[1] we shall then have good reason to say, that in keeping His commandments there is great reward.

But your souls shall be enriched also, and our Church, too, if this cause find its right place in your affections. It was well said by one who has a deep place in your affections, and who is now in India, that our Church must not only be evangelical, but evangelistic also, if she would expect the blessing of God. She must not only have the light, but dispense it also, if she is to be continued as a steward of God. May I not take the liberty of adding to this striking declaration, that we must not only be evangelistic, but evangelistic as God would have us be—not only dispense the light on every hand, but dispense it first to the Jew.

Then shall God revive His work in the midst of the years. Our whole land shall be refreshed as Kilsyth has been. The cobwebs of controversy shall be swept out of our sanctuaries—the jarrings and jealousies of our Church be turned into the harmony of praise—and our own souls become like a well-watered garden.

___________

[1]  Drs Black and Keith were at this time still detained by a sickness abroad.

Anti-Semitism: A Little Considered Root

by Art Katz

From time to time one reads of how Jewish commentators are chafed by the world’s holding of Israel to a higher standard or account. Their irritation evidently stems from a secular and rational mentality that does not regard Israel as in any way exceptional with regard to other nations, and therefore not deserving of any criterion for judgment than that by which all other nations are held.  The following takes an entirely different biblical view, which if it is the nearer approach to the divine perspective is deserving of our consideration. Eugene Peterson, now retired, was a professor at Regent College, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, author of numerous books and is well known and appreciated in the evangelical community.  All the emphases are mine.

In the February 28 selection of Eugene Peterson’s devotional, Praying with the Prophets, his text is Jeremiah 12:9: “Is the hyena greedy for my heritage at my command?  Are the birds of prey all around her?  Go and assemble all the wild animals; bring them to devour her.”

He comments, “Judah…was intended to be a blessing to the nations—like salt, like leaven.  Under the conditions of her rebellion and disobedience [that very] difference is only [instinctively and intuitively] an offense that rouses her neighbors to anger and attack.”

My comment: This is paradoxically the inverse consequence of that which is intended for blessing. It underlies and compounds all grievances in those who should have been the recipients of God-intended blessings—grievances, conscious or unconscious, that can be kindled unto rage! That rage, I am suggesting, is called anti-Semitism.  It has haunted us as a people throughout our history [even prior to the advent of Christendom] to the present day. Can it, considering the text, be viewed as judgment? Judgment, not only in the punitive sense but in the redemptive, in that it should act as a spur to restore us in our call to the nations to “bless all the families of the earth”; to be that priestly nation that teaches the people the difference between the sacred and the profane; not only by our words, but, necessarily, by our example?

Can this be the real root of anti-Semitism? Can our failure to recognize or even consider this be the very evidence that our condition as a people [“incorrigibly rebellious” in the words of Norman Podhoretz, The Prophets, p.274] has not changed from Jeremiah’s time? Nowhere do we hear that we should look within ourselves, but rather the cause is always the ‘other,’ and we the victim! If God has not changed, what we construe as a global anti-Semitism, may well be the action of God that “assembles all the wild animals…to devour [us].” While this unpalatable thought might be dismissed as irresponsible conjecture, should we not, in view of our tragic recent past and threatening present, make it a first consideration before considering any other?

To sum up, I am suggesting, on the basis of this and other biblical texts, that what we construe as anti-Semitism, and attribute to negative references to the Jews in the New Testament and to other sociological and historical factors, may have their root in our own failed call. The underlying dynamic being the resentment of the gentiles for the intuited loss of blessedness that would otherwise have been theirs by divine intention, had we been faithful. These spiritual factors are operative even when not consciously understood and the consequences flowing from them are intended to bring us to a proper awareness of that failing and to renewed return. The fact is that even truth can be used for incendiary purposes, so that the cause lies not in what is employed but the underlying factors that provoke their use. The truer remedy then is not in safeguarding against the malevolent but in our repentance and return to a spurned call and the God who gave it.

This thesis seems to be supported by the account of the Millennial blessings which eschatologically follow that return, reversing the pattern of all the past, so that, “the sons also of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee; and all they that despised thee, shall [in gratitude] bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they shallcall thee, The city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated …I will make thee an eternal; excellency, a joy of many generations” (Isaiah 60:14-15).

Little wonder that suggestions for the solution of anti-Semitism are so sparse. If the root of the problem is spiritual, so also must be its solution. That virtually no mention is made of God in every public discussion that I have attended painfully reveals the truth of our Jewish condition, yarmulke wearing or no.  We are at best deists if not effectual atheists, and do not expect, or all the more desire a divine intervention. Hence we continue to misconstrue the problem even as it mounts.  For all our clever analysis and critique, only prophetic insight and prophetic proclamation offer the prospect of hope.

The Reformers on the Restoration of the Jews

John Calvin

"I extend the word Israel to all the people of God, according to this meaning, ­When the Gentiles shall come in, the Jews also shall return from their defection to the obedience of faith; and thus shall be completed the salvation of the whole Israel of God, which must be gathered from both; and yet in such a way that the Jews shall obtain the first place, being as it were the first born in God's family.

...as Jews are the firstborn, what the Prophet declares must be fulfilled, especially in them: for that scripture calls all the people of God Israelites, it is to be ascribed to the pre-eminence of that nation, who God had preferred to all other nations...God distinctly claims for himself a certain seed, so that his redemption may be effectual in his elect and peculiar nation...God was not unmindful of the covenant which he had made with their fathers, and by which he testified that according to his eternal purpose he loved that nation: and this he confirms by this remarkable declaration, ­that the grace of the divine calling cannot be made void."

(see Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XIX, Epistle to the Romans, Baker Book House, 1981, p. 434-440.)

Charles Hodge

"The second great event, which, according to the common faith of the Church, is to precede the second advent of Christ, is the national conversion of the Jews....that there is to be such a national conversion may be argued...from the original call and destination of that people. God called Abraham and promised that through him, and in his seed, all the nations of the earth should be blessed...A presumptive argument is drawn from the strange preservation of the Jews through so many centuries as a distinct people.

As the rejection of the Jews was not total, so neither is it final. First, God did not design to cast away his people entirely, but by their rejection, in the first place, to facilitate the progress of the gospel among the Gentiles, and ultimately to make the conversion of the Gentiles the means of converting the Jews...Because if the rejection of the Jews has been a source of blessing, much more will their restoration be the means of good...The restoration of the Jews to the privileges of God's people is included in the ancient predictions and promises made respecting them...The plan of God, therefore, contemplated the calling of the Gentiles, the temporary rejection and final restoration of the Jews...

The future restoration of the Jews is, in itself, a more probable event than the introduction of the Gentiles into the church of God. This, of course, supposes that God regarded the Jews, on account of their relation to him, with peculiar favor, and that there is still something in their relation to the ancient servants of God and his covenant with them, which causes them to be regarded with special interest. As men look upon the children of their early friends with kinder feelings than on the children of strangers, God refers to this fact to make us sensible that he still retains purposes of peculiar mercy towards his ancient people.

As the restoration of the Jews is not only a most desirable event, but one which God has determined to accomplish, Christians should keep it constantly in view even in their labors for the conversion of the Gentiles."

(Systematic Theology V.3, James Clark & Co. 1960, p. 805. and A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Presb. Board of Pub., 1836, pp. 270-285 passim. Now Published by Banner of Truth Trust)

John Murray

"To the Jew first, and also to the Greek...It does not appear sufficient to regard this priority as that merely of time. In this text there is no suggestion to the effect that the priority is merely that of time. The implication appears to be rather that the power of God unto salvation through faith has primary relevance to the Jew, and the analogy of Scripture would indicate that this peculiar relevance to the Jew arises from the fact that the Jew had been chosen by God to be the recipient of the promise of the gospel and that to him were committed the oracles of God...the gospel is pre-eminently the gospel for the Jew.

While it is true that in respect of the privileges accruing from Christ's accomplishments there is now no longer Jew or Gentile and the Gentiles "are fellow-heirs, and fellow-members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (Eph. 3:6), yet it does not follow that Israel no longer fulfills any particular design in the realization of God's worldwide saving purpose...Israel are both "enemies" and "beloved" at the same time, enemies as regards the gospel, beloved as regards the election..."Beloved" thus means that God has not suspended or rescinded his relation to Israel as his chosen people in terms of the covenants made with their fathers.

Unfaithful as Israel have been and broken off for that reason, yet God still sustains his peculiar relation of love to them, a relation that will be demonstrated and vindicated in the restoration."

(The Epistle to the Romans, John Murray, Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1984, Vol. I, p. 28 and Vol. II pp. xiv-xv and 76-101, passim.)

Geerhardus Vos

"The elective principle, abolished as to nationality, continues in force as to individuals. And even with respect to national privilege, while temporarily abolished now that its purpose has been fulfilled, there still remains reserved for the future a certain fulfillment of the national elective promise. Israel in its racial capacity will again in the future be visited by the saving grace of God [Rom. 11.2, 12, 25]....

Nevertheless such (Jewish) conversions remain for the present but sporadic examples, though at bottom expressive of a divine principle intended to work itself out on the largest of scales at the predetermined point in the future....

To the events preceding the parousia belongs, according to the uniform teaching of Jesus, Peter, and Paul, the conversion of Israel (Matt. 23:39; Luke 13:35; Acts 1:6,7; 3:19, 21; where the arrival of "seasons of refreshing" and "times of restoration of all things" is made dependent on the [eschatological] sending of the Christ to Israel), and this again is said to depend upon the repentance and conversion and the blotting out of the sins of Israel; Romans 11, where the problem of unbelief of Israel is solved by the twofold proposition: (1) that there is even now among Israel an election according to grace; (2) that in the future there will be a comprehensive conversion of Israel (vss. 5, 25-32)."

(Biblical Theology, Old and New Testaments, (c)1948 Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Tenth Printing, p. 79, The Pauline Eschatology, (c) 1979 Baker Book House, p. 88, and Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, p. 35, edited by Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., (c) 1980, Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co.)

Jonathan Edwards

"Jewish infidelity shall be overthrown...the Jews in all their dispersions shall cast away their old infidelity, and shall have their hearts wonderfully changed, and abhor themselves for their past unbelief and obstinacy. They shall flow together to the blessed Jesus, penitently, humbly, and joyfully owning him as their glorious King and only Savior, and shall with all their hearts, as one heart and voice, declare his praises unto other nations...Nothing is more certainly foretold than this national conversion of the Jews in Rom. xi.

Besides the prophecies of the calling of the Jews, we have a remarkable providential seal of the fulfillment of this great event, by a kind of continual miracle, viz. their being preserved a distinct nation...the world affords nothing else like it. There is undoubtedly a remarkable hand of providence in it. When they shall be called, that ancient people, who alone were so long God's people for so long a time, shall be his people again, never to be rejected more. They shall be gathered together into one fold, together with the Gentiles...."

(The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 1, Banner of Truth Trust, 1976, page 607.)

Matthew Henry

"Now two things he exhorts the Gentiles to, with reference to the rejected Jews: ­To have a respect for the Jews, notwithstanding, and to desire their conversion. This is intimated in the prospect he gives them of the advantage that would accrue to the church by their conversion, Rom. 11:12, 15. It would be as life from the dead; and therefore they must not insult or triumph over those poor Jews, but rather pity them, and desire their welfare, and long for the receiving of them in again.

Another thing that qualifies this doctrine of the Jews' rejection is that, though for the present they are cast off, yet the rejection is not final; but, when the fullness of time is come, they will be taken in again. They are not cast off for ever, but mercy is remembered in the midst of wrath.

The Jews are in a sense a holy nation (Exod. xix.6), being descended from holy parents. Now it cannot be imagined that such a holy nation should be totally and finally cast off. This proves that the seed of believers, as such, are within the pale of the visible church, and within the verge of the covenant, till they do, by their unbelief, throw themselves out; for, if the root be holy, so are the branches....Though grace does not run in the blood, yet external privileges do (till they are forfeited), even to a thousand generations...The Jewish branches are reckoned holy, because the root was so. This is expressed more plainly (Rom. 11:28).

The Chosen People: Chosen for What?

by Art Katz

As Jews, one thing that makes us recoil is being called “chosen.” It is something like the involuntary shudder that comes with the screech of chalk on a blackboard. After all, what has being chosen ever meant to us but trouble?

Better that the term had never been coined for all the good it has done us! Where does it come from anyway? Can’t we be left alone to live like other people without the ominous overtones that have always dogged us?Chosen for what? Why give to those who instinctively don’t like us yet further provocation and pretext for bitterness?

Perhaps you yourself, dear reader, are so reflecting even now. The litany of daily disasters with reports of suicide bombings and the increase of anti-Semitic episodes virtually everywhere in the world give us a heightened sense of dread. What will the end of all this be? Is this what it means to be a Jew? How long before we will be fearing for our children, or ourselves, that we will be singled out as Jews in the streets of America’s cities and suburbs?

Already, Jewish leaders in England, France and Germany are exhorting their communities to learn another language, pack their bags and prepare to move again! Is the answer to be more assertive, more insistent on our rights as citizens, demanding that public officials guarantee our safety? Or is it to be found in supporting Jewish organizations monitoring the activity of hate groups, who have access to policy makers in government and influence in the media?

In former times of distress, our more religious kinsmen would sigh, “When Messiah comes…” How plaintive, if not pathetic, to make that an appeal now! That frail expectation saved no one in the Holocaust? How much less now? Can even the Chasidim, who daily gather up into plastic bags the body parts and grisly, severed members of nail-torn bomb victims, sustain such a hope? What real defense do we have when America’s proudest commercial towers and, indeed, the very Pentagon itself are not exempt from attack? This vitriolic hatred, infecting even children, at first against “Zionists,” and now Jews in every place, threatens us all.

Chosen indeed! If there is a God, where is He now?

From the vantage point of our historic and present Jewish life, the evidence of a living God does seem painfully sparse. If there is such a God, how are we to interpret or understand His apparent, palpable absence? Perhaps from a biblical perspective, one might even suggest that He has a controversy with us, or has withdrawn His Presence, in proportion to our own indifference and alienation from Him. This is a supposition which the Scriptures, of which we have characteristically little knowledge or interest, seem to suggest.

The very first chapter of the Book of Proverbs sends the chilling message that “because we refused the call of wisdom, she will even laugh at our calamity and mock when dread comes upon us like a storm;” and it will be too late because: “they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord…But he who listens to me [wisdom] shall live securely, and shall be at ease from the dread of evil” (v.20-33).

By and large, are we not Torah indifferent, preferring to bury ourselves in literature of entirely other kinds, as in the copious folds of a Sunday Times and the like—all of which uniformly espouse views antagonistic to faith? The very idea of divine authorship, that is, Scripture actually inspired by God, is contrary and offensive to our incredulous, secular minds. We instantly, matter-of-factly and self-evidently dismiss it out of hand—no discussion necessary.

Though the Hebrew prophets proclaimed “Thus saith the Lord,” and Isaiah announced, in commencing his book, “The vision which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem,” we are persuaded, together with our more liberal rabbis, that such are altogether stylistic devices and quaint rhetoric peculiar to the Bible as literature.

A remarkably candid statement about this unbelief to which we have come is found in a recent article by conservative rabbi and scholar, Alan J.Yuter, Etz Hayim?—Torah For Our Times: Conservative Judaism’s Spiritual Response to Judaism’s Canon (Midstream, May/June 2002). Etz Hayim is the recently published Torah commentary by a panel of the best scholars and rabbis of Conservative Judaism. Yuter describes Etz Hayimas:

The most ambitious non-Orthodox Jewish Bible Commentary ever written for synagogue use in the history of Jewry, but framed in a modern world view that appropriates ancient ideas that are comfortably usable in modernity (p.21).

In commending this new work, Yuter informs us,

As modernists who reject pre-modern dogma, Conservative Judaism assumes that the Torah’s human language can, by definition, be no more than the work of human beings…creating stories that make religious statements. For Etz Hayim, the Torah is not history but pious, inspirational fiction…God as the hero of Scripture and as a mental and literary construct…God is no more than the power within us that makes for good, salvation, and redemption. There is thus a theological disconnect between the God of Hebrew Scripture, who “appears” as a real being in the Scriptural text, and the God idea of Etz Hayim’s elite community (p.19 Emphasis and italics ours, here and throughout).

He goes on to say,

For…Conservative Judaism, holiness and sanctification are a mental mood and not the consequence of obeying the Divine command…Etz Hayim exhibits intellectual integrity, but without the religious faith that the classical tradition mandates…The Torah informs but does not command the autonomous moral conscience of the modern liberal Jew…Its religion is not the religion of the Talmud or Bible, but a modern world view that appropriates ancient ideas that are comfortably usable in modernity (p.20, 21).

Evidently, autonomous man, in his mood and disposition, considers himself to be the measure of all things. This asserts the God of Israel to be a figment of Man’s imagination! It portrays the giants of our heritage as mere victims of delusion. What is staggering here is the “up-front” boldness, nay even a boasting, of these views. This is a proud, even arrogant, assertion of the primacy of man over God; of the superiority of an elite council of scholars whose intuited inspiration determines for us what is “comfortably usable” in modernity! As any even superficial assessment of Scripture will indicate—from the call of Abraham, the epochal suffering of Moses, to the Prophets and the Psalmists—not comfort, but obedience, if not sacrifice, has been the enduring motif of Biblical faith!

By making Man supreme, have we not laid ourselves open to assault on every side for the forfeiture of just that faith, inviting the very penalties of covenantal disobedience for which we were forewarned through Moses and the Prophets? How can we demand the protection of society from the anti-Semitic attacks that our own unbelief may have occasioned? Are we so thoroughly secularized as to be unable to see in our increasing calamities a divine cause? Can we not consider the fact that anti-Semitism pre-dates Christianity, and has haunted us in every place and time and nation as being perhaps the consequence of covenantal defection? Is it, in fact, the very evidence of that defection?

As Jews, the Chosen of God, the recipients of the tablets of the Law on Mt. Sinai, the descendants of the Patriarchs and heirs of the Prophets, should we not reasonably look first for an explanation for our distresses in a failed relationship with the God of our Fathers, before considering secular, social or political causes?

Are we aware of Moses’ warnings in the book of Deuteronomy (31:29; 32:18 and following) in regard to covenantal failure? If we will not heed God’s Word, must we not learn and be instructed, if it be true, through our bitter experience? As abiding as our distresses are, so evidently are the reality of God and the application of His word! What is this “modernity” to which all things must be submitted but the very golden calf of idolatry that has been our undoing from the very inception of our history as a people? Not only do we bow to it, but more so, are its creators and promulgators, corrupting others even as we ourselves are corrupted. Is this not perversely contradicting our call to be a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6) and a “light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6)?

Every analysis and critique of “the Jewish predicament” will fall short if it does not factor in this inescapable call to the nations. Our purpose from the beginning was to be a witness of the One, True, Living God and Creator King to all the nations, and in all the nations. Ought we not to suffer proportionate retribution from that God for our willful failure?

If the biblical principle, “As the priests, so also the people” is valid, can’t we then say, as Israel goes, so go the nations? Is it for our failure as a priestly nation that some measure of resentment, even unconsciously, is kindled against us among the nations? Only a biblically-formed mind could conceivably think this way! Contrary and offensive though it might be to our norms of thought, could such a view be closer to God’s? Could we be held liable for our failure to align our thoughts with His? As we read in Isaiah 55,

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord (v.8).

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts (v.9).

Our unbelief reiterates to the world the mocking taunt of Satan in the Garden of Eden: “Hath God really said?”

If denying His truth distorts reality, perverts life and damages all the processes of living, what judgment could issue from a God, so misrepresented, upon that nation privileged to make Him known? Certainly, God’s continuing controversy with us, the Jewish people, is an index and a piece of His larger contention with all mankind; but the wider conflict likely awaits resolution first between God and “Israel, His son, His firstborn” (Exodus 4:22).

Can it be that our ‘effectual atheism,’ reflected in a liberally-oriented Judaism, springs from the absence of an actual experience of God by the Spirit? Or that our inability to experience God is, in itself, a judgment of God? A condition held for so long that it is now considered normative?

Those who reduce God to a “concept,” have no God personally whom they can seek. One experience of God, as God, dissolves all our doubts! How shall we ever be able to understand, as did the Patriarchs and Prophets of our own faith, that which alone has rightly driven our entire Hebrew past: the actual, experiential knowledge of God as God?

What alternative, then, in its absence, but to reduce the God, who is Israel’s glory, to no more than primitive anthropomorphisms, syncretism, and the influence of “other Near Eastern mythologies!” The passage of a people in flight from pursuing Egyptians, through a Red Sea opened by God, becomes the mere confluence of a movement of tides! Miracles are “explained,” and predictive prophecy, robbed of its revelatory power, is dismissed through ingenious alterations in time-line dating!

If we are offended by the super-natural, how then can God be God?

Hadn’t we better confront these issues on this side of eternity rather than on the other? Will we learn too late our God-rejecting error, when it will be unalterably fixed—eternally and without remedy? How shall we not be unspeakably ashamed for the triviality of a lifestyle that pores over stocks and bonds, or their equivalent, but omits the question of God Himself? For, as the Scriptures say,

The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts. His ways are always grievous… (Psalm 10:4-5a).[1]

Such a disposition renders God a negligible object, making the knowledge of Him irrelevant.

The problem is pride, the unduly exalted opinion of one’s self!

A scholar of an earlier generation superbly comments on the above verses,

…[pride] is therefore impatient of a rival, hates a superior, and cannot endure a master. In proportion as it prevails in the heart, it makes us wish to see nothing above us, to acknowledge no law but our own wills, to follow no rule but our own inclinations. Thus it led Satan to rebel against his Creator, and our first parents to desire to be as gods. Since such are the effects of pride, such a Being as God, One who is infinitely powerful, just and holy, who can neither be resisted, deceived or deluded, who disposes according to his own sovereign pleasure, of all creatures and events, and who, in an especial manner, hates pride, and is determined to abase and punish it.

[Toward] such a Being, pride can contemplate only with a feeling of dread, aversion and abhorrence. It must look upon Him as its natural enemy…These truths torture the proud, unhumbled hearts of the wicked, and hence they hate that knowledge of God which teaches these truths, and will not seek it. On the contrary, they wish to remain ignorant of such a Being, and to banish all thoughts of Him from their minds. With this view they neglect, pervert, or explain away those passages of revelation which describes God’s true character, and endeavor to believe that He is altogether such a one as themselves.[2]

This commentator continues,

He [the unhumbled] never takes God or His will into consideration or consultation, to square and frame all accordingly, but proceeds and goes on in all as if there were no God to be consulted…no more than if He were no God; the thought of Him and His will sway him not. Such a God is not of their counsel, is not in the plot; nor is God in their purposes or advising; they do all without Him…all their thought is, that there is no God…[and] seeing there is no God or power above them to take notice of it, to regard or requite them, therefore they may be bold to go on.[3]

Hence, what issues from such an individual—and he is legion—is the inevitable contagion affecting all his conduct and life as the Scripture says, “His ways are always grievous.”

We have taken the liberty of inserting these lengthy quotes because they are so rare. Our own age is steeped in unbelief, so normative and unquestioned, as to taint the very air we breathe. To “seek after God” has rarely been commended to us. Indeed, who could do so? It would imply that there is a God who could be found, and who, being a Person, desires to be sought! Such a conviction would be enough to dismiss such an individual from polite society as clearly out of touch with “reality.”

Yet, is this not the very neglect of God that Israel’s own prophets have always protested to an unwilling nation? The covenant given at Mount Sinai, from which we have shrunk, is no icy piece of contractual formalism, but a covenant framed in love by the God who brought us out of Egypt, desiring to have us for His own:

Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’” (Exodus 19:3-6 NIV 4).

Pause for a moment and ponder this promise. By its very nature, it requires a vital knowledge and love of God to keep it, which is why He needs to be continually sought! Psalms 25:14 makes it clear that the fear of the Lord is the condition for having the covenant revealed to us. How great our need for the “new” or everlasting covenant spoken of in Jeremiah 31:31-33 and Ezekiel 36:26—a covenant promising “a new heart” and “a new spirit;” a covenant under which God declares that He will write His law on our hearts!

As our distresses mount, how much more should we seriously ponder the word of God in the Psalms, where we are told that:

The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you (Psalm 9:9-10 NIV).

At the time that this is written, Israelis are building a wall of separation between themselves and the Palestinian population, penalizing entire families of suicide bombers, re-establishing tight Israeli Defense Force governance over the territories in a powerful and dangerous military build-up. May we suggest that perhaps we, as a nation, ought instead to consider GOD?

To “know His name” is not a technical formula. It is to experience God in His essential attributes, an intimacy only available to those who seek Him! Can it be that the frustrating helplessness of a besieged Israel is the urgent wake-up call of God to an essentially God-rejecting nation?—who, according to His promise, will not forsake those who put their trust in Him.

However horrific the means, can our increasing predicament be understood as a mercy to save us from yet worse catastrophe?

As the Scripture has already informed us, the same writer tells us that when every other appeal fails, God’s severity is yet His love!

If we read this verse [Psalm 9:10] literally, there is, no doubt, a glorious fullness of assurance in the names of God…The Lord may hide His face for a season from His people, but He never has utterly, finally, really, or angrily, forsaken them that seek him.[5]

Lest we assume that personal, ethical morality can substitute for a relationship with God, this writer terrifyingly makes clear:

The moral who are not devout, the honest who are not prayerful, the benevolent who are not believing, the amiable who are not converted, these must all have their portion with the openly wicked in the hell which is prepared for the devil and his angels…The forgetters of God are far more numerous than the profane or profligate, and according to the very forceful expression in the Hebrew, the nethermost hell will be the place into which all of them shall be hurled headlong.[6]

“The wicked will return to Sheol [hell], even all the nations who forget God,” declares Psalm 9:17. As our writer concludes,

Forgetfulness seems a small sin, but it brings eternal wrath upon the man who lives and dies in it.[7]

Such a willful forgetfulness is, as the Psalm says, wicked,

…for where the God of heaven is not, the lord of hell is reigning and raging; and if God not be in our thoughts, our thoughts will bring us to perdition.[8]

The same “wicked,” according to verse 3 of Psalm 10, bless “the covetous, whom the Lord abhors.” And covetousness, this root of idolatry, which the tenth commandment condemns, serves to dull the conscience against God. At its heart lies the desire for riches and material acquisition, the desire to unduly possess and to obtain. Every reasonable observer of contemporary Jewish life will acknowledge that this is more descriptive of us than the desire for God—and has even become our distinctive. Indeed, truth to tell, it is likely its substitute or alternative!

Our Rejection of God

If Scripture authenticates itself in the heart of every reader who loves and respects truth, must not our history as Jews reveal the tragic story of so cataclysmic a forfeiture as the rejection of God?

How far will this yet continuing rejection pursue us as misfortune, as the baleful reports of grisly tragedies in Israel, and rising anti-Semitism among the nations, now suggest? Losing our covenant consciousness as a people has not relieved us of its responsibilities, or its stated penalties. Moses included us, as with all previous generations of Jews, at Mt. Sinai:

Now not with you alone am I making this covenant and this oath [i.e., its blessings in obedience and its curses in failure], but both with those who stand here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God and with those who are not here with us today… (Deuteronomy 29:14-15).

According to Scripture, God yet waits for a future recognition from us that will come in the Last Days when we will rightly view our calamities in this covenantal context:

So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you, and you return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion upon you, and…will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, in order that you may live (Deuteronomy 30:1-3a, 6).

God’s rejection of us can be remedied only by our return to Him.

It is apparent, considering our present condition, that this “circumcision” of our hearts is yet future. What is not apparent to us, and far removed from our secular consciousness, is the recognition of this word as actually being God’s word. It shows that our disasters issue from a rejection of God, remedied only by our return to Him in genuine repentance! To this, virtually all the prophets testify:

For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear to pieces and go away, I will carry away, and there will be none to deliver. I will go and return to My place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me (Hosea 5:14-15).

In the light of our predicament, are we now willing to look at that single most riveting Messianic prophecy, which gives every appearance of being rabbinically excluded, for obvious reasons, from all synagogue Haftorah readings: Isaiah 52:13-53:1-12? Should we not read it as if our life depended upon it?

Here are the words of the Prophet Isaiah:

Behold, My servant will prosper, he will be high and lifted up, and greatly exalted. Just as many were astonished at you, so his appearance was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. Thus he will sprinkle many nations, kings will shut their mouths on account of him; for what had not been told them they will see, and what they had not heard they will understand.

Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of parched ground; he has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face, he was despised, and we did not esteem him.

Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried; yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him.

He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet he was with a rich man in his death, because he had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in his mouth.

But the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief; if he would render himself as a guilt offering, he will see his offspring, he will prolong his days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand. As a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied; by his knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as he will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot him a portion with the great, and he will divide the booty with the strong; because he poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors (Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12).

Of whom does this speak?

Jewish authorities have insisted that it describes the redemptive suffering of the Jewish nation itself. Certainly it is suggestive of much of our historical experience, and perhaps more ominously, that which is yet to come. But who is the “he” who is despised and forsaken of men, and the “we” who have hid our faces from him? Who is the “he” who bore “our” griefs, who was pierced through for “our” transgressions, crushed for “our” iniquities? Are we not the sheep who have gone astray, turning every one to our own way? Has not the Lord caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him?

Do consider that this prophecy was written seven centuries before the advent of the Galilean, Jesus of Nazareth, and even before the formation of the Roman Empire, whose distinctive execution through crucifixion this sufferer is evidently bearing (a look at Psalm 22 confirms this[9]). Surely, in Isaiah 53, it could not be said of us Jews that we “…had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in his [our] mouth,” since it was because of “the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due” (v.8). Note the genius of the inspired Scriptures in that both the Prophets and the Psalms so plainly declare this event centuries before its time.

…when Thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall My Righteous Servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities…because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors (Isaiah 53.10b-12).[10]

He “shall be satisfied” evidently signals this servant’s life-after-death continuation! Indeed, everything hinges upon the resurrection of this Suffering Servant.

However unfamiliar this is to us, it is nevertheless, not “Christian,” or gentile per se, but indisputably and Hebraically Biblical!

The logic of what we have been saying so far brings us now to a place considered ‘out of bounds’ for us as Jews.

Could our difficulty be, not the consideration of what we think to be an alien, novel and “goyish” New Testament, but our failure to perceive what had preceded it, what had actually been foretold in our own Hebrew Scriptures? Having failed in the first, a failure that yet prevails, must we not necessarily fail in the other? The unbroken continuum of the two Testaments is lost to us because we have not adequately embraced the first!

Are we not still refusing, now as then, even to consider the exhortation of the despised Galilean to his rejecting contemporaries to search the Jewish Scriptures, of which he himself said, “it is these that bear witness of me” (John 5:39)? He declared that if we had believed Moses, we would believe him, for Moses wrote of him (John 5:46). Could it be that our mountingtzuris (trouble) is again a consequence of that very same stubborn inconsideration?

How may we now be better able to consider the unfamiliar opening statement of the Gospel of John:

For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus [the] Messiah (Christ in Greek, Y’Shua Ha Mashiach in Hebrew) (chap. 1:17).

Could it be that the Law’s demands, requiring our complete observance, and by that very process, is intended to bring us before God in an acknowledged, broken dependency? This recognition would necessarily then precede the enablement given by the same God as a “gift” (grace) to those few who seriously seek righteousness with God through the Law, but necessarily fail to obtain it. Therefore the New Testament says,

He came to his own, and those who were his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right [authority] to become children [sons] of God, even to those who believe in his name (John 1:11-12).

Paul, the Jewish apostle, brilliantly explicates the connection between the Law given through Moses and the grace that came through Jesus, in his Letter to the Romans,

…in order that the requirement of the Law [Torah] might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh [a rules-guided, human determination to fulfill divine commandments],but according to the Spirit…and those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Romans 8:4,8).

For Paul, as for Jesus, the Law is holy and is not to be abrogated or annulled. Rather, Jesus says,

Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill (Matthew. 5:17).

Unhappily, much of historic Christianity has lost, rejected, or never understood, its continuity with its Hebrew roots. This, tragically, has served to discourage us as Jews from even considering the place of Jesus in our Jewish heritage.

What we would suggest now, though it flies in the face of our deepest Jewish prejudices, is that though the Church that historically bears his name has shamefully misrepresented him, the issue of this “messianic pretender” is, more than we are presently able to realize, the very issue of God. Life and death decided by one’s own disposition toward him!

Never has so much hung, then, on the recognition of a single person!

The recognition of these truths, as well as their fulfillment to us, waits upon a bestowal of God’s Spirit, Ruach, promised to us by the Prophets—the very medium of Divine revelation and empowerment for which our scholarly and rabbinical elites are an inadequate substitute! Therefore, Jesus mystified a sincerely inquiring Nicodemus, “a ruler of the Jews,” when he said,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water [the Word of God] and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit… You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things?” (John 3:5-6,10).

Likewise, Jesus astonished the congregation at his own synagogue in Nazareth by reading the appointed text for that Shabbat from Isaiah 61:1,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me to preach the gospel [good news] to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord (Luke 4:18-19).

And he, astonishingly concluded by saying, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (v.21). With this, he proclaimed the very inauguration and authorization of his messianic call!

Consider, if you will, that if it is true, as he himself consistently affirmed,that he was “sent of the Father,” what must the consequence of his rejection be to a people who persist in rejecting him, as those to whom he was especially sent? What a slight to the Father whose voice, according to the record, came from heaven over the transfigured Messiah, “This is My beloved Son…hear ye him” (Matthew 17:5b). For what reason do we disclaim this account? Can this be a fulfillment of the inspired warning foretold us by Moses:

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him…and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And it shall come about that whosoever shall not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him (Deuteronomy 18:15,18b-19)?

What blessed provision have we also spurned in persisting in that same refusal to consider him who said, “I came that they might have life, and might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10b)

What true Pesach (Passover) can we have if he is, as John the Baptist proclaimed by the banks of the Jordan River, “Behold the [Paschal] Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29b). Could John have been considering that:

…the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement (Leviticus 17:11).

If there is no blood shed to atone for our sins, what valid Yom Kippur, required by the Law, remains to us after the destruction of the Temple, Priesthood, and Sacrifices?

This being so, can rabbinically determined “mitzvot,” fasting, and a day’s Yom Kippur synagogue attendance, be an acceptable substitute in the sight of God? Or are these merely expediencies, conceived by well-meaning men, upon the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, which seemed to offer coherence and continuation for a now dispersed nation? In this, they also avoided the only other option, already chosen by tens of thousands of Jews, who understood the sacrificial death of Yeshua Ha Mashiach (Jesus the Christ) as God’s once-and-for-all Yom Kippur. These same alternatives confront us today!

Jesus grieved, both as Messiah and Prophet, foreseeing the consequences that would befall us in our rejection of him. He foresaw prophetically not only the destruction of the Temple and the dispersal of the nation, but also the tragic events that would pursue us into the Diaspora.

And when he [Jesus] approached, he saw the city [Jerusalem] and wept over it, saying,

If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes…and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation (Luke 19: 41-42,44b).

This was the historical and critical point of disjuncture and departure from Biblical, Messianic Judaism.

Either the crucified Messiah was the once-and-for-all Atonement to which the Biblical sacrifices had pointed, and for which purpose he said he had come, or the Jewish nation is left with the cruel dilemma of the Mosaic requirement rendered inoperable by the destruction of the Temple and the dispersal of the priesthood. This continues as an unresolved issue to this day.

Surely, then, the Jesus who warned of our being liable for every idle word we speak would not lightly exclaim,

…for unless you believe that I AM He, you shall die in your sins [i.e., without necessary atonement] (John 8:24b).

Foreseeing the unspeakable anguish of such loss, as well as the prospect of terror of an endless torment, the divinely instructed apostle Paul proclaims,

The wages of sin is death [eternal and irremediable separation from God], but the free gift of God is eternal life in Yeshua Ha Mashiach Adonoi [Jesus the Christ, our Lord] (Romans 6:23).

Why, dear reader, if you have patiently borne with us thus far, should younot consider these things? What perceivable error do you find to justify rejecting them? However relativistic one’s mindset, can God in His divine prerogative not insist upon a scandal of particularity centering in this One? What if that same One specifically fulfills the over 300 prophecies that speak of His birth, its time and location (Micah 5:2), and His suffering, rejection, death and resurrection (Isaiah 53), and His yet future and imminent return when, “…they will look upon me whom they have pierced” (Zechariah 12:10b)? And learn that “the wounds between Your hands” were “those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends” (Zechariah 13:6b)?[11]

The New Testament confirms these prophetic themes when it declares,

…these [things] have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name (John: 20:31).

Yes, we know that “Judaism does not believe” that God has a Son.[12] But with all due respect, may we ask, what is this Judaism? Is it some sacrosanct entity greater than God, or rather, a compendium of rabbinical opinion framed for two thousand years in conscious opposition to, and repudiation of, the messianic claims of Jesus?[13] Let us be sure we do not invoke “Judaism” to sidestep our obligation as menschen (responsible individuals) to consider issues of truth for which we are eternally liable.

Are we so persuaded that our traditions’ concept of God apprehends the full richness of biblical monotheism? What of a possible composite tri-unity, whose definition by men, must always be less than its ineffable glory? Might God not be One [Echad], even as we are, made in His image—body, soul and spirit—and yet be One?

Many of us who are formed in the Jewish tradition will have to consider the words of Him who was also the author of the renowned Sermon on the Mount: “Don’t you know me…even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father…and I and the Father are One” (John 14:9). He spoke repeatedly of having come from the Father, and that “He should depart out of this world to the Father…that He had come forth from God, and was going back to God” (John 13:1b, 3f). Ought this not to give one, as it has us, sufficient reason to re-examine one’s conception of God?

Without question, if these things are true, it will turn one’s world upside down. All our trusted categories, will necessarily be challenged. Except we be willing to bear that consequence, how shall our allegiance be ultimately tested in the foremost commandment to “love the Lord, our God, with all our heart, soul, mind and strength”?

Will you yourself not ask the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob about the crucial claims Jesus made for himself? Will you not choose to rise above that instinctive, historically-conditioned enmity to His name should they prove true? Scripture soberly informs us, “There is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12b). Will you not trust and test the Word of God by acting upon it?

For as the Scripture says,

Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek [Gentile]: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him (Romans 10:11-12 AV).

Even the famous “doubting” Thomas, who said, “Unless I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of His nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe” (John 20:25b), upon seeing the resurrected Christ, let out the astonished gasp, “My Lord and my God!” (v.28b)! Jesus, forsaking a once-and-for-all opportunity to squelch a preposterous and blasphemous exaggeration, acknowledged it as being perfectly appropriate to Himself, adding, “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29b).

Someone wrote, “The climax of sin is that it crucified Jesus.” Think on it. We, a people, who have but a scant consciousness of sin (what need for atonement then?) ought to ponder that God, knowing how sin disguises itself, became Himself our victim, in order to reveal, as nothing else could, the inexorable truth of our condition! Is it not significant and revealing that the best of Roman Law, coupled with the best of Jewish piety, put to a cruel death the long-awaited object of our faith? Tragically, not only were we too blind to recognize Him, but as a nation were sufficiently offended and threatened by Him, making His removal by death a necessity! As the Scripture says, “Like one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

What person or nation can be absolved from such sin as this? If this be so, what passage of time can in any way mitigate our personal and corporate guilt? Our defiant declaration, “His [Jesus’] blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25), has haunted us throughout our history more than we can know.

If He be the Son of God, “very God and very Man,” as ancient creeds declare, we have committed an appalling sin. Not the sin of a failed moment’s error, mind you, but rather the summation of all sin, chronic and ages old, and repeated again in a Judaism that, to this day, prefersthe rulings of a rabbinical “elite,” and of “ideas comfortably usable in modernity.” Against this, ironically, stands the timeless Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4-6 that either defrocks Jesus as ultimate blasphemer, or shows Him to be the very One for whom, in the wisdom of God, the ancient creed was given! As our painful history testifies only too well, “Be assured your sins will find you out.” (Numbers 32:23).

Have we been the “Cain” to this “Abel”—moved to murderous envy of a “Son” of the Father more virtuous than we, whose greater, altogether righteous sacrifice, accepted by the Father, leaves our own sacrifice unaccepted and unacceptable? (Genesis 4). Ours, the inept product of our own sweat and industry; His, the ultimate, acceptable blood-sacrifice, satisfying the Holiness of God, which cannot be placated for the terror of sin by anything mankind can humanly or religiously provide!

Have we, like Cain, become fugitives and vagabonds in the earth, hidden from the face of God, marked, but all too often not spared? The comparison is altogether too close to be comfortable! Ought we not be stricken with sorrow, seeing our likeness to that first murderer? May we not bear, ever so remotely, any resemblance to Cain’s penalty! Better yet, “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered [saved]” (Joel 2:32a).

But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved (Romans 10:8-10).

Thus, the Apostle Paul, Hebrew of the Hebrews, did not forsake his Jewishness. Nor do we, in proclaiming the good news of our Messiah,

For it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek (Romans 1:16b AV).

A Prayer:

Lord, grant mercy to me, the reader in this once-and-for-all moment. You know well how every power in the world, the flesh and the devil have conspired against You. Grant me, in this moment, a respite from all that has barred us, as Jews, from calling upon Your Name. Give me some measure of the same humility that You Yourself bore nakedly in that public shame on the Cross. Thank You for making this crisis of decision possible for me. In Yeshua’s holy, and till now, untried name, I ask it. Save me. Amen.

A Final Prophetic Consideration

Some may ask, why must there be a soon-coming “time of Jacob’s trouble,” as prophesied by Jeremiah (chapter 30:7)—a global anti-Semitism threatening to exceed even that of the Holocaust? Because, truth to tell, are we not still Jacob (“schemer”), and not yet Israel (“prince with God” Genesis 32)? Is there not a Man waiting with whom we must ourselves wrestle till daybreak—in a night that must come, and hastens even now? Are we not barred from full possession again of the Land of our fathers by the inveterate “Esau,” who would again have our life? Is there not a final drama of reconciliation with a vengeful brother, which we must play out first by confronting God in a Man?

But, like our father Jacob, whose heel-grasping nature we yet painfully retain, for all our success in the Diaspora, our “pillowed head” is once again upon a stone! And yet, God is in that place, however “dreadful” it be, and though we know it not, it is the gate to heaven! Pour oil upon that stone though you will, and promise the Jacob’s tenth though you will, it is but a token of the total consecration that alone makes of a Jacob anIsrael. Is it not for this that God waits?

He waits at that threshold of blessedness as the Man we have too long avoided. But there is no entry into that blessedness till we shall say like Jacob, “I will not let You go unless You bless me” (Genesis 32:26). It is this stubborn specificity of God, coming in the form of His own choosing, with which we must grapple! Only recognizing the face of God in thatscandalous Man breaks, and is calculated to break, our inveterate, self-determining, self-affirming Jacob-pride. Yeshua alone, face to face, turns us into the Israel of God!

So “send over all” that we have, divide our substance into two bands, devise every Jacob scheme that we will; it will not save us from the outraged brother who brings his “four hundred with him”! That Man, whom we have struggled so long to avoid—only His touch at the hip socket of our Jacob self-sufficiency, power and confidence can “cripple” us and make us, for the first time, a worshipping, lame supplicant at his Altar—the altar of El-Elohe-Israel!

Out of “a broken and contrite heart,” which He will not despise, issues the authentic, self-surrendering worship that transfigures Jacob the usurper into a servant-son—now rightly named Israel! (Psalm 51:17). Reconciled to God, as a son to his father, we will, with Him, overcome every enmity, however ancient and bitter.

All the object of our Jacob-striving propensity to obtain by our wit and cunning is, ironically, what God all along intended as our inheritance—had we but known Him as we ought, and received it in all humility at His hand! Break, break, O sons of Jacob. The Father of our fathers, the Ancient of Days, the Lord of Glory, the Savior of Israel awaits our worship. And till it come, what possession of our inheritance, what priestly service to “bless all the families of the earth,” (especially of the kin of Esau and Ishmael), can there be? (Genesis 12:3). Our neighbor, with whom we have striven, needs now to be blessed by an Israel that indeed is Israel, and who has at last admitted, and is blessed in the admittance, that,

Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord (Psalm 118:26a).

That blessedness is worth our every present travail. Do you recognize the press of God in the anti-Semitism raised once again to haunt us? Our false, secular and non-biblical hopes have not, and cannot, save us. The sins of our fathers, being also our own, pursue us in every generation, awaiting their acknowledgment and repentant forsaking (Leviticus 26:39-42). Our sins have required Him to turn His face from us for the “moment” but with abundant mercy will He receive and restore us and make us His own—to the everlasting praise of His glory.

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1. Authorized Version of the Bible (The King James Version). All other Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible unless otherwise noted.
2. From Chas. H. Spurgeon’s The Treasury of David, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Mass., Vol.1, pp 117-118, A Commentary on the Psalms.
3. Ibid, p118.
4. “NIV” means The New International Version of the Bible
5. From Chas. H. Spurgeon’s The Treasury of David, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Mass., Vol.1, pp. 98-99
6. Ibid., pp.100-101
7. Ibid., p.101
8. Ibid., p.112
9. Consider the graphic details of death by crucifixion, astonishingly recorded a thousand years before the event, and described in Psalm 22.
10. Authorized Version of the Bible
11. (According to a literal rendering of the Masoretic text.)
12. This, in spite of the testimony of Psalm 2:7, “I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee;” Psalm 2:12, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him;” and Proverbs 30:4, “Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended? Who hath gathered the wind in his fists? Who hath bound the waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell?”
13. We are aware of, and deplore, the painful and forced confrontations to which our people have been subjected under “Christendom.” We appreciate the rabbinical defense of Judaism against the encroachment of what was rightly understood then as an apparent pagan idolatry. God forbid that this booklet be thus misconstrued as being in keeping with that ungodly coercion. Nevertheless, “God would have all men to be converted,” that is, to voluntarily and totally turn to Himself in spirit and in truth. Our effort here is to challenge and stir the reader to that consideration.

Three Addresses on the Jews

by Adolph Saphir
(Originally published in 1898)

"I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery." – Romans 11:25

It is the duty of every minister of Christ to explain the mystery of Israel. It is a part of our holy religion.

It belongs to the counsel of God. It is inseparably connected with the truth as it is in Jesus.

There can be no true and full preaching of the Gospel without explaining the mystery of Israel. The very "simplest form of speech which infant lips can try"—the most elementary expression of our faith—is, "Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah"; and who can understand what is meant by the word Messiah who does not know the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, that this is the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham? The sum and substance of all the declaration of the Church is this—that Jesus has come in humility and died upon Golgotha, and that Jesus is coming again in glory. And who can understand the first and the second advents of our blessed Lord, without understanding that people which, so to say, forms the link between the two, even Israel, whom God has chosen that through them should be made known His glory and His salvation?

A minister is a steward of the mysteries of God—things which no human wisdom, and things which no human mind by its own exertions, can understand, but which God has revealed unto us in the Scripture and by the Holy Ghost. There is the mystery of godliness, "God manifested in the flesh." There is the great mystery of "the Church which is His body." There is the mystery of Israel, the everlasting nation, chosen of God to be the centre of the earth, and to show forth His power and goodness to all nations.

Now in these three mysteries there is one side which is patent and intelligible to all men.

Jesus Christ is an historical character. The words of Jesus are read by all. It is a matter of history that there was Jesus, and that He exerted a mighty influence in the world. But there is a mystery of godliness—God manifest in the flesh; and no human analysis will be able to discover that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. We, then, if we are messengers of Christ, must tell every one we know that there is a person, Jesus; but who Jesus is can only be revealed to you by the power of the Holy Ghost. We declare to you the mystery of godliness. Likewise every person knows that there is a Church, that there is a community of people who profess to believe in Jesus, but what the Church really is, is a mystery—Christ the Head, and we the members.

In like manner, who is so ignorant as not to know the history of the Jews?

Who is so ignorant as not to know the Ten Commandments, and the wonderful revelations of God which through them have become the property of all civilised nations? And who does not know the fact that at this present moment there are twelve million descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, scattered among all the nations of the earth, and yet a people separate by themselves? But the meaning of Israel no one knows, unless the Holy Ghost has enlightened him through the Scriptures. There is a mystery about Israel: there is something which no philosopher will be able to discover. Their present existence, their present dispersion, and their future destiny, have all been revealed to us in the Word; but God's Word can only be apprehended through the teaching of the Holy Ghost. It is quite in accordance with this remark that one of the most acute philosophers—the greatest philosopher that Germany has produced—Hegel, a man who was very fond of showing the meaning of history, said, when he came to the history of the Jews, "It is a dark, troublesome enigma to me. I am not able to understand it. It does not fit in with any of our categories. It is a riddle." It is a mysterious nation—just as mysterious as Jesus is mysterious. His name is "Pâle"—"Riddle"—"Wonderful." A nation is known by its highest exponent. The Roman nation found its culminating point in Caesar Augustus. The Jewish nation has its culminating point in Jesus, and therefore it is a mysterious nation. "I would not have you ignorant of this mystery" (Rom 11:25)

And this is one great reason why God in these latter days has raised up a mission to the Jews, because Christendom has become apostate—because even Christians who believe in the Scripture in a certain way, and in the Holy Ghost, do not believe the testimony of the Scriptures, and that God, the Living One, is about to arise and to introduce a new era into this world—that the history of the world is coming now to its crisis, to its culminating point, and that the fifth monarchy, the kingdom which shall never be destroyed, is about to be ushered in by the appearing of the Son of Man. And, therefore, God is directing our attention to this wonderful nation, beginning with Abraham, but not ending until time shall be no more. Do not be astonished, and do not let it be a hindrance to your acceptance of the truth, that this aspect of God's revelation has for many centuries been hidden even from God's own people. When we look back into the history of the Church we find that the whole truth was preached by the Apostles, but that immediately after the days of the Apostles there was only a partial apprehension of the truth, so that in the first ages of the Church God's people dwelt chiefly on the Incarnation. Afterwards they dwelt on grace in the days of Augustine. The doctrine of justification by faith was hidden from the Church for nearly fourteen centuries, until in the time of the Reformation this bright jewel was brought forth to the light. And if this was so, why should we be astonished that this mystery of Israel has not been understood and acknowledged till in recent days?

In bringing before you very briefly this great subject, and only mentioning the culminating points, I want to view it in a threefold aspect. How does faith regard it? How does hope regard it? How does love regard it? There is a quaint inscription on an old house in a German city—"Faith lays the foundation, love builds the house, hope ascends the roof and looks into the joyous prospect." And so indeed it is. Let us take the Scriptural order, faith and hope before love, because love requires both faith and hope to sustain it.

Now what does faith say about Israel? Time does not exist to faith; so I do not care where faith takes up its position, it will always see the same thing.

Supposing we take up our position with Abraham. There we shall see the land, the nation, and the Messiah promised to Abraham, and the nations of the earth blessed in this central nation. Supposing we ascend Mount Nebo with Moses: we see the same thing—Israel redeemed out of Egypt on account of the covenant made with Abraham; Israel about to enter into the promised land; Israel chastised on account of their iniquity and unfaithfulness; Israel restored to show forth the praise of the Most High. Supposing we take up our position with David. There we see the same thing—David speaking to his son and to his Lord, and David in Psalm 72 beholding that universal kingdom of righteousness and of prosperity extending from the river to the great sea, the centre of which is the Son of David, the King of Israel. Or let us take up our position after the Babylonish captivity in the day of Zechariah. God's promises were not exhausted and fulfilled when the Jews were brought back from Babylon. Zechariah beholds the nation again, and above that nation the man—the man that was the equal of Jehovah—who is His fellow, and Israel looking unto Him whom they have pierced. And then he beholds this Messiah called the King of the whole earth; and from Jerusalem as the centre the streams of love and righteousness go forth to all the world. Or let us take up our position with aged Simeon. What does aged Simeon see? "A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of His people Israel" (Luke 2:32). Or take up your position with the Apostle Paul after he had experienced all the unbelief and hatred of the Jews. He is perfectly sure that God has not cast away His people, but that all Israel shall be saved. It is all the same. Wherever faith takes up its position it beholds the eternal counsel of the Most High, which must stand for ever. It develops; it unfolds; and nothing is able to withstand its progress. The very unbelief of Israel, and their very chastisement and dispersion among the nations of the earth, cannot make the promises of God of none effect. The Lord has chosen Israel, and this choice of Israel is rooted in the everlasting counsel of God, of which Jesus is the centre.

When we believe this, we who know Jesus as the centre cannot place the centre anywhere else but where God has placed it. Round Jesus are the people of Israel. That is the circle immediately round Jesus; and Jesus and Israel are perfectly inseparable. There we have election, God's own will to manifest His glory; and while the purpose of God is the manifestation of His glory, the inside of that purpose is nothing else but love. It is His glory that He wishes to manifest Himself to all the ends of the earth. It is this election which is its own force and its own motive—out of which comes the whole history of Israel, and out of which comes the whole history of the Church. Your salvation and the election of Israel are inseparably connected; and because God chose Israel, therefore He called Abraham, and therefore He made a covenant with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob—an unconditional covenant. Mark this, because upon this rests the whole Gospel.

This covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, which embraced the Messiah, our Lord Jesus, the nation Israel, and the land of Palestine, is a covenant which depends exclusively upon the faithfulness of God—not upon our faithfulness; not upon our works. It is an absolute election of grace. It is quite true that when Israel is unfaithful she is chastised and punished, just as we are chastised and punished when we depart from our Lord Jesus Christ. But the counsel of God, the plan of God, the thoughts of God, the election of God, cannot be altered. "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance" (Rom 11:29). He may suffer them to be afflicted for four hundred years in Egypt, but He will bring them out on account of the covenant. He may send them to Babylon for seventy years, but He will bring them back on account of the covenant. He has punished them for nearly 2,000 years on account of their rejection of Jesus, but He will bring them back because the covenant is unconditional, and His purpose is unchangeable.

Unconditional is the covenant, and the counterpart of that is the doctrine of grace. Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His own purpose and according to His infinite love, has He given us salvation in Christ. With regard to this covenant which the Lord God has made with Israel, and of which our blessed Savior Jesus Christ is the centre, in the whole history of God in all His dealings with Israel, He has continually to go back to His love, else He would have to give them up altogether; and so we find that to reveal Himself to Israel and to carry out His great promises, there appeared among the people of God two things, which do not appear among the other nations, and which are a great stumbling-block to all unbelief. Why do people find such great difficulty in accepting the Bible? There are two things which they do not like. The first is prophecy, and the second is miracle—prophecy and miracle. And when I speak of unbelief I am sorry to say that I have to include a great many people who think themselves Christians and Christian theologians. But faith they have not, whatever else they may have.

Prophecy is God revealing Himself to man and foretelling the future in a miraculous supernatural way. Miracle is God Himself interfering and showing His direct power and goodness to rescue His people. But if there is a living God there must be prophecy and miracle. Prophecy is the interference of God by His word; miracle is the interference of God by His act. The culminating point of prophecy and of miracle is the incarnation of Jesus. Jesus is the wisdom of God, when the world was not able to find out God. When all human reason and speculation ended in nothing else but ignorance and darkness, then God Himself came down from heaven, and we beheld the countenance of God in Jesus Christ, His Son. That is the incarnation of prophecy. And again, when we were perfectly helpless as sinners and under the power of death, God, by sending His own Son, took away sin and overcame death.

All the miracles that are recorded for us in the history of Israel lead up to the central truth. God redeemed His people Israel out of Egypt by miracle. God sustained His people in the wilderness by miracle. God planted His people in the land of Canaan by miracle. After He had done this, there was a pause—there was a quiet development until it became necessary again to interfere. So in the days of Elijah, when the people were well-nigh lost in idolatry, God interfered again by miracle. Then there came a long pause in which there was no miracle. Then came Jesus, and with Him the revelation of the power and goodness of God in miracle, and in the days of the Apostles.

And now there has been again a long pause, when there is no miracle. But God is still living, and the time is coming when there will be again a direct interference of God in miracle through Israel; for as He has not begun and continued His people Israel without the direct interference of His omnipotence, neither shall He consummate the history of Israel but by appearing in such a miraculous way that all nations shall be astonished, and the whole world shall exclaim, "The Lord is God!" and "The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!"

I have spoken of faith's vision of the past and of the future of this wonderful and mysterious nation; let us now cast our glance more especially at the present. In the whole history of Israel it is made evident that the real people of Israel, with whom God is dealing, are only a remnant, only a minority. And here there is a very important lesson for us all. God does not care for numbers; God does not care for outward power. On the contrary, He must make it perfectly plain that His is the power, and that ours is only weakness. Now look at the people of Israel. How many entered into the promised land? None but Joshua and Caleb. Look at Gideon. Thirty-two thousand were ready to go forth into battle, but God said, "I do not care for thirty-two thousand. They must be real godly ones that trust in Me, and who know that I am with them and in them." And the thirty-two thousand were reduced to three hundred. Oh, how different God is from us! We want to force everybody into the Church to make them Christians, whether they like it or not—to call them or label them Christians, although they do not believe, because we want to bring in, as it were, the whole nation into the Church. God's plan is to winnow, to sift—to separate the chaff from the wheat. Three hundred out of the thirty-two thousand! Look at the time of David. Who was it that acknowledged David when he was persecuted? Saul was a tall man, and had all the splendid and regal qualities that made him to be estimated a powerful and suitable leader. But it was a poor and despised people who flocked round David.

Look again in the days of Elijah. Poor Elijah thought that he was the only one left. There were seven thousand; but they were scattered and hid. Look at the days of our Lord. Who welcomed Jesus? Who believed in Jesus of the whole Jewish nation? Who gathered round Him? Not the Scribes, not the Priests, not the Pharisees, not the great or wise; because in those days it was just as it is in our day. There were the learned theologians, and there were those who were addicted to the ceremonial law, and to the priesthood; and there were the Herodians—those that took statesman-like views of things, and were always meddling with politics, and always studying the interests of the House of Herod. But none of these great men—none of these great parties—gathered round Jesus. Oh, no! it was a poor afflicted people that the Lord had left among them—a remnant.

So also there is a remnant now according to the election of grace among Israel. This idea of the remnant we must always keep in mind.

But now, after Israel has rejected Jesus, and has been scattered among all the nations of the earth, what do we behold? Faith enlightened by the Word of God is alone able to account for their existence. Nothing else can account for the existence of the Jewish nation, when so many of the other great and powerful nations have disappeared, or, if they have not disappeared, have altogether lost their vigor. Here is Israel. Why do they exist after all the persecutions which they have endured? Pharaoh tried to drown them; but they could not be drowned. Nebuchadnezzar tried to burn them; but they could not be burned. Haman tried to hang them; but it was of no avail. All the nations of the earth have persecuted them; but here they are, and more numerous at the present day than ever before. Why? Because God calls them an everlasting nation. Now, mark you, God says: "You who know the sun and the moon and the stars; you who know that every year there is spring after winter, and summer after spring, and autumn after summer—as surely as those ordinances exist, so sure is it that Israel shall be a nation before Me for ever." We see them among all the different nations of the earth, and yet they cannot be absorbed in them; they cannot be amalgamated with them. How does faith account for that? Faith accounts for it through the Word of God. Balaam already, in the fields of Moab, predicted that they would dwell apart from all other nations. We see them without a king, without a prince. They have lost their independence; they have lost their country. They are not even a tributary kingdom as they were in the days of our Lord. We see them still adhering to God, free from idolatry; whereas in former years, before the advent of our Lord, they constantly fell into idol-worship.

How does faith account for it? It is written in the Prophet Hosea, "They shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim" (3:4). These are exactly the features which characterize the Jewish nation now. Faith sees that they have rejected the blessed Savior; but has God rejected them on that account? The Apostle Paul asks you this question in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans: "Has God cast away His people Israel?" (11:1). And how does he answer the question? He says, "I also am an Israelite"—as much as to say, "If there is only one Jew converted after the crucifixion of Jesus, and after the stoning of Stephen, that one case proves the whole principle, namely, that, notwithstanding the fearful sin of Israel, God has not cast away His people." If God had dealt with Israel according to their merit, and according to what we might naturally and reasonably expect, no sooner had Jesus been crucified, and Stephen been stoned, than God would altogether, leave Israel to themselves.

But God has not totally rejected His people, and the conversion of even one Jew—so Paul argues—is a proof of it. This then is how faith beholds Israel now, in the apostasy. Great is that apostasy. They have crucified Jesus. They have made the Word of God void by the traditions of the elders. They have sunk into superstition and legalism; they have sunk into worldliness and materialism. Many of them have fallen even into unbelief. Oh! the state of Israel is one that should move our deepest sympathy. They are enemies for the Gospel's sake. Wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. Blindness has happened unto Israel; the veil is upon their hearts. But yet what does faith see, notwithstanding all this?

Brethren, let me speak to you freely on this subject. The apostasy of Israel is not as the apostasy of Christendom. The apostasy of Christendom is incurable; but the apostasy of Israel is curable. Although Israel have rejected Jesus, they do not wish to reject God; they still believe in His Word; they still invoke His Holy Name. They still remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. They still, as the Apostle Paul says, "have a zeal for God, although it is not according to knowledge" (Rom 10:2). There is still a godly remnant among them. There is still the fear of God and the acknowledgment of God before their eyes. Whereas, what is the history of apostate Christendom, as it is presented to us in the Scriptures, and the beginnings of which we can see already? First, people do not believe in Jesus as an atonement. They begin with that. They do not like the blood of Jesus; they like the character of Jesus very well. Then they give up Jesus altogether. Then they give up the Father too, and do not believe in a Creator. And then they become agnostics, and say that they know nothing about it—whether there is a God or not—the worst thing that this world has ever seen, and the most insulting to God. And then they give up morality, as necessarily they must give it up; and then they fall into the most abject pessimism, and look upon man as a flower of the field, which is to-day, and to-morrow is cast into the oven. This is the downward career of the Gentile apostasy. But in the Jewish apostasy there is still kept the connecting link, the golden thread—a spark dying, yet not dead, of a belief in God, however unenlightened, and in a future. So faith looks upon the mystery of Israel.

Now let us see what hope says of Israel. Hope is built entirely on the Word of God. We accept the future on the ground of what God has revealed to us in the Scriptures. And here I must repeat again that whether a thing is fulfilled or not fulfilled, has not the slightest bearing upon the attitude of faith and hope. Why do you believe that Jerusalem and the temple have been destroyed? Because it is written in Josephus and in history, or because it is written in the Word of God? Jesus said that the temple would be destroyed, and all the prophets announced the judgment that would come upon Israel. And God fulfilled it. And just as we believe the destruction of Jerusalem and the judgments which have come upon Israel because God foretold them, so do we believe the restoration of Israel simply because God has told us—because it is written.

Our hope is built upon nothing less than the Word of God. It will require the omnipotence of God to raise the dead out of their graves. But so it is written in the Prophet Ezekiel that the dead bones shall live. It will require all the attributes of Deity to bring about the wonderful things which God has promised to us in the Scriptures. But God will do it. In the Word of God the restoration of Israel is always based upon the power and love and the unchanging character of the promises of the everlasting God. And just as God says, "I, even I, have created the world; I, even I, have redeemed sinners"—so it is only God who Himself is able to restore His people Israel. "For My own Name's sake I will do it." And how will the Lord do it? The Lord is an holy God; and Israel having departed from God there are these two principles which seem to be conflicting—the holiness of God and the sin of Israel. But God is able to subdue their iniquities and forgive all their sins, and renew their hearts, and to put a right spirit within them. Do not imagine that any temporal glory or power will be entrusted by God to Israel as an unconverted nation. That would not be for the glory of God, nor would it be for the welfare of Israel and the world. They must be led through deep waters. They must be brought through fearful judgments. They must experience the wrath and the indignation of the Lord. They must be led into the valley of humiliation. Then will the Lord appear unto them, even as Joseph appeared unto his brethren, and the spirit of grace and of supplication will be poured out upon them; and there will be weeping such as this world has never heard; and there will be repenting and contrition more profound than the angels have ever witnessed upon earth, for they shall mourn over Him as over their only child; and then God, having cast them into the fire of His indignation, and having by the Holy Ghost worked in them repentance and granted to them the remission of sin, shall fit them for the wonderful work that is before them in the future; for a nation that has come through such repentance and through such faith—a nation that has so tasted the bitterness of sin, and the sweetness of the infinite love of God, which is stronger than death—will then go on for a thousand years without ever looking back. In the Old Testament you always read, "Oh, backsliding Israel." They are always backsliders; they have always to be restored. But there are so many passages in the Prophets which tell us that after Israel has been brought back the second time they will never look back. There will be no backsliding any more; but for a thousand years Israel shall go on in the fear of the Lord, and in the love of the Lord, and from Israel shall flow forth blessings in all the world.

Notice this. It is nowhere said that Jesus died for any nation, except for the Jewish nation. He died for that nation, and for that nation only. He died that all the children of God should be gathered in: but you see there is a difference. He died for the nation, and He died for the rest as individuals. It is nowhere said in the Bible that any nation will exist for ever; but it is said of the Jewish nation that they will exist for ever. This nation has God chosen, and when He divided the world unto mankind, it is written in the Book of Deuteronomy that He planned it all in relation to the central nation of Israel, who are to be the point from which all His blessings will radiate. And therefore this is the remarkable thing about Israel. "All Israel shall be saved" (Rom 11:26)—the nation as a nation, that is to say, that godly remnant that shall be left after all the judgments which shall come upon Israel; and then they shall be a blessing to all the world.

And as Israel shall thus be truly spiritually brought unto God and endowed with His grace, there shall be restored unto them their land; there shall be restored unto them their sanctuary; there shall be given unto them more abundant harvests than ever they had before. There shall be a more joyous, prosperous, national life than Israel has seen even in the days of Solomon. And this will be the wonderful thing—that in Israel as a nation there will be then presented that of which we hear so much talk, but of which we see so little reality, namely, that there will be nothing in the national life separate from the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. We hear a great deal in this nineteenth century about Christianity penetrating and pervading everything. We hear a great deal about "religion in common life." There is plenty of common life, but I cannot say that I see the religion in it. I do not see how religion is now penetrating and pervading our whole national life. I cannot say that our literature is Christian. I cannot say that the greatest poets and authors and philosophers which England and France and Germany have produced this century are Christian. Far from it. Most of them are anti-Christian. The culture of the present day is not Christian. I cannot say that art is Christian. I do not know whether it has even a high standard of morality. I cannot say that politics are Christian.

What is Christian? Oh, we are a poor, poor minority—strangers and pilgrims here upon earth, very much as we were in the days of the Apostles; and the world, even with that which is great and powerful and beautiful in it, lieth in the wicked one. Still, the idea is perfectly correct. Christianity, godliness, ought to pervade everything that God has created. The world—the whole world—shall be full of His glory. "Holiness unto the Lord" shall be written even upon the bells of the horses (Zech 14:20). Politics will be Christian; science will be Christian; poetry will be Christian; everything will be Christian. In their seed-time and in their harvest, in their journeys and in their commerce, in their work and in their recreation, in their garments and in everything about them, from one end of the year to the other, there will be no branch of life, there will be no branch of knowledge, there will be no branch of activity, there will be nothing, that will not be sanctified unto the Lord, for they shall walk in the name of the Lord, and the light of the Lord shall be their light, and the glory of the Lord shall be their beauty, and all the nations will follow their example.

Oh, we pray every day, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." And this is what I hope, and what every Christian must hope—that, through the intervention of Jesus Himself, and through the mediation of the Jewish nation, there is a time coming when God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Talk of drunkenness; talk of profligacy; talk of all the crimes and vices which now pollute the earth: they shall be done away. But that is only the negative side of it. How is God's will done in heaven? There is no drunkenness there; there is no profligacy there; there is no war and bloodshed there. True; but how is God's will done? It will be an angelic world. As the angels above, so will men be here upon the earth, "for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." Then the promise, "In Thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blest" (Gen 22:18), shall be fulfilled, and the Son of David shall rule over all the world, and righteousness shall flow as a river, and the knowledge of the Lord shall cover all the earth as the waters cover the sea. That is what we hope about Israel, and all because of Jesus.

Now let me ask you what love says to the mystery of Israel? Faith, hope, love.

Do you love Israel? I wish to speak to you first about what is said against Israel; why people do not love Israel. They have crucified the Lord. Ah, dear friends, that is true, and no one feels it more than an Israelite who believes in Jesus; and you know how ultimately Israel will acknowledge their sin, and weep on account of it. But I want to ask you this question: Have not you crucified Jesus? If you have not crucified Jesus, then Jesus has not saved you by His death. If you have not wounded Him by your transgressions, and if He was not bruised and pierced on account of your iniquities, you have no salvation. Look at it. Have you any feeling of hatred to Adam because Adam was our representative, and because Adam did not stand the test? It is just in the same way that Israel was chosen to be the representative of humanity and mankind. They were put to the test in order that blessings should come unto all ends of the earth through them. And will you therefore remember that wherein you also are like Israel, and forget all the suffering which they have endured on your account, and all the labour with which they have toiled in fulfilling and in holding fast the promises before your time?

Remember how God loves Israel; and, here again, I wish to appeal to your experience. You read such passages as "I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. The mountains may depart and the hills be moved: but My lovingkindness shall not depart. My thoughts are thoughts of peace concerning you." And you apply them to yourself. Why do you apply that to yourself? You are quite right to apply it; but why? What right have you? Oh, these promises were given to Israel. Now, listen to me. God says to Israel, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Although the mountains depart I cannot change My love to you. I will plant you in your own land." With My whole heart and with My whole soul; and even during the time of their banishment and captivity He calls them "the beloved of My soul." If God does not mean this to Israel, how much less does He mean it to you! You apply the assurances of love which God has given to Israel, and argue by analogy that the Lord will also be faithful and loving and forgiving to you. Ah! therefore you must believe the first to be true. Oh, God loves Israel! Jesus loves Israel, and wept over Jerusalem. The Apostle Paul loved Israel, although he had thousands of converts among the Gentile nations. Love Israel, because God loves Jesus, and because Jesus loves Israel.

Oh, remember how Israel loved you. Remember how David and all the Prophets knew no greater joy than to think of the time when the idols shall be abolished, and when all the Gentile nations should rejoice in Jehovah as their God and as their portion.

And if you thus love Israel, then it is for you to show mercy to Israel, and to labour for Israel, that through your instrumentality there may be gathered the remnant according to the election of grace.

I notice that when speaking about the Jewish Mission to some people, a kind of painful resignation comes over their countenances, as if it was a very disagreeable duty that had to be performed, and one in which there was no encouragement and no joy. Oh, pity their ignorance, and pity also their lukewarmness; for if their heart was in the right spot, they would soon know what has been done among Israel during the last fifty years. I may mention to you the testimony of one who had the greatest knowledge of mission work in the world, the late Dr. Barth, of Calw (Germany). His work was in connection with the missions among the heathen. There was scarcely a mission among the heathen with which he was not acquainted, and with the missionaries of which he did not correspond, and about which he did not collect most carefully the information and spread it throughout Germany. Now, this eminent man of God said shortly before his death, and said it repeatedly, "God has greatly blessed the mission among the heathen, but nothing in comparison with the blessing which has attended the Jewish Mission. The result of the mission among the heathen in China, India, Africa, and wherever it has been, has not been as great as the result of the mission among the Jews. In proportion to the number of Jews, there have been a far larger number of converts during the last fifty years brought to the knowledge of Jesus from amongst them than from among the other nations."

You do not see them. They do not live in one country. They do not live in one city. They do not stand out conspicuously. They have their different spheres of usefulness where God has planted them; but this simple fact alone will show you that the Jewish Mission is unparalleled, not only in the Scriptural importance which God has given to it, but also in its result—that during the nineteenth century, as far as we can compute, three hundred thousand converts have been brought to the Savior, and that this very day there are about three hundred ministers of the Gospel, Jews, who by the grace of God have been brought to the knowledge of Christ.

Therefore faith believes the testimony of God; hope cherishes the promises of God; love loves where God loves, and love rejoices that God has blest us, and that His power and His Holy Spirit are with us in this work. In all humility, and often in sorrow, this work must be carried on. In the Jewish Mission more particularly, this is the dispensation where we must sow in tears, but it is the blessed assurance that we shall reap with joy, for as sure as the mouth of the Lord has spoken it, all Israel will yet welcome Christ, and Christ shall yet be the glory of Israel.