By the we come before you together as a church, as a as an
assembly, as a congregation of your people.
Lord, our heart this morning is to worship you.
Thank you for who you are. Thank you that you are Jehovah
Jira, the, the Lord who provides.
Thank you for everything you've provided to us.
Thank you for this building that we're sitting in in the middle
of stormy weather where we can together worship you and thank
you for all your provision. Lord, we don't take it lightly.
Lord, we, we present our offering to you this morning as
a token of, of that understanding that it all comes
from you anyway. And the show that that is our
trust as we put this offering to you.
We, we, we have this understanding that that every
good thing we have comes from you.
And we thank you for that this morning.
Lord, we thank you that in the beginning was the word and the
word was, was with God and the word was God.
Lord, we thank you for Jesus Christ, the living word.
We thank you for your written word.
Lord, we thank you for Jeff and his his love for you, his love
for your word and his deep insights into it.
And we just pray as He brings your word to us this morning,
Lord, that we would all be transformed by it, that we would
be changed by it, that we would lean more towards Christ because
of it. Lord, thank you for our church
family, for the way we can love and support each other and build
each other up. Lord, again, thank you for a
chance to be here this morning. We pray these things in Jesus
name, Amen. Okay, well, good morning church.
We're taking a break from Luke. And so for the next two weeks,
they're just open topics and then we're gonna go back into
Luke. So the trouble with an open
topic has it's open. And so I found lots of things
that I thought would be really interesting and I thought, ohh,
I could go this way and I could do that.
But something kept coming back, which just, you know, some
sometimes things can get like you feel a burden or a,
something that God's doing. And so I try it actually to get
away from it. I tried to do other things, but
I keep coming back to this. So that's what we're going to to
go through this morning. So what I'm going to do this
morning is something maybe a little bit different, but we're
going to go through a topic and I'm going to use it as an
illustration to see what I see as part of the plan of God.
Now that can be quite spirit scary to speak on.
There's a guy called Jobin the Bible, if you remember him, and
Jobe has much positions God through Satan will Satan would
allow the allowed to remove all of the positions that he has.
He takes everything from him and then he takes his family.
Only his wife was left with him, and then he'll take his health
and the rest of the chapter. The books as it goes through as
a conversation between Joe and his three friends and the three
friends is Eliphaz, Bildad and Sohar.
And the whole part of the Bible is this back and forward
speaking on behalf of God. And at the end of the book it
gets to the place where God will actually speak.
And he would say of these three friends, he said they didn't
speak for me. They didn't actually know my
plans, my purposes. They didn't speak on my behalf.
And so Joe will actually be asked to do a sacrifice for his
three friends so that they will be forgiven in front of God.
But there's a fourth guy and his name is Elijah, who which means
he is God. And he turns up in the chapter
at the exhaustion of the three friends trying to understand
what Job was going through and and trying to get it.
It's exhausted. And so Ellie, who will speak and
he will just speak about Job's wrong and that he's being
self-righteous. But also he sees the problems of
the other three friends that they're not speaking on behalf
of God of the speaking on their own thoughts about how God
works. And so this morning that's why
it's a little bit of fear is because I'm presenting or trying
to talk to you about is what I think as God's plan and his
purposes. And that can be scary.
And my speaking on the side of Ali who or Ali Fez Bill dead and
so far or am I speaking on the side of the Lahu and you'll have
to weigh these things up. But my speaking about the plan
of God and his purposes because it's coming from God or is it
coming from maybe my own just knowledge of the Bible and
things that I think of and you're going to be able to
wrestle with these things this morning.
So what I'm wanting to do is to walk through the plan of God,
but I'm wanting to do it in two relationships.
The first relationship is Jehovah or God with his wife,
the nation of Israel. And then look at the second
relationship with this, which is Christ and his bride, which is
the church, and see how the stages of the relationship has
walked, walked or towards transversed through history so
that we can come to this place in which we Live Today.
There's so much about this topic that is in the world's news and
everything that's going on. So we're going to try and go
through a through it in this sort of way.
So the first thing that we're going to go right back to the
time of the OHH. Sorry.
What I want to do is walk through the various stages of a
relationship between God as it relates and and the church as
well. So we're gonna go right back to
the time of the flood. So God does a reset.
We all understand that the great flood, he resets this world.
He starts eight people in the boat, the reset happens and then
God will do something quite miraculous, which is different
to previously because he's going to draw out a people for
himself. And that people will be known as
the tribe or the nation of Israel.
But primarily it comes from one person whose name is Abraham.
He was Abraham. He will have his son who will be
Isaac. Isaac will have his son who will
be Jacob. And Jacob's name has changed to
Israel. And from that point on, we have
this idea of this, this Jewish nation, the nation of Israel.
And so the idea is that what I really want you to to grabs or
get to grips with is that that the covenant that we're talking
about was called an unconditional covenant when it
comes to Abraham. It's found in Genesis chapter
12, Genesis chapter 15, Genesis chapter 17, Genesis chapter 22.
It's the promises of God, irrespective of what Abraham is
going to do or what Isaac or Jacob will do and has nothing to
do with what they are going to do.
It's all to do with God's plans and his purposes.
And he makes the covenant so much if you can remember what he
does when he actually comes time to making the covenant is he
gets animals. He they cut them in half and
they put them beside. And then the usual practise is
that you would walk through together as you make the
promises of the covenants that you make.
What God does is something very different.
He puts Abraham to sleep, if you remember the story, he puts him
to the side. And God will walk through the
pieces himself as a torch, showing that no matter what
Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob will do, God will keep his promises
because he promised to keep them.
And so that's what we call the Abrahamic covenant.
So from there, and in the Abrahamic Covenant, you remember
that he says that through Abraham, all of the nations of
the earth will be blessed. That's part of what's there.
There's many other things that are in there as well.
I just wanted to highlight that point.
So from there, God does something else.
He goes, you know what? Because of that covenant, I'm
gonna even further something and I'm actually going to make
myself connected to you in a way that I am going to call you my
wife. And so if you've got your
Bibles, if you turn with me to Jeromy Chapter 5, we're going to
start there. So God furthers this and he says
because of the promise that I made, I'm actually going to do
something else as well. I'm actually going to make this
covenant. Have you ever thought of the
first five books of the Bible? Genesis, What's it about?
Beginnings. That's the word Genesis makes.
Okay, fine. Exodus is about exiting
Leviticus about the Levitical priesthood, Numbers about the
numbers that were travelling in. What's Deuteronomy?
It's like a different word, right?
All the others you know Jude. Aeronomy literally means second
law. That's the meaning of the word.
You know what the problem with the Judah like we often don't.
We find it quite as a boring book.
I get that, but due to aeronomy. The reason that has the name
second law is it's because primarily it's a repeat of
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. Know if you've realised that all
the content that's in Deuteronomy, there is a little
bit that's different, but primarily it's all from Exodus,
Leviticus and Numbers. But it's rearranged.
Rearranged is what? It's rearranged as a marriage
covenant. That's the purpose of the book
of Deuteronomy where God will sit out to his people Israel, a
marriage contract. So Jerome chapter 5, this one
says, and Moses summoned all Israel.
If you can just grab that, understand what that's saying.
All of Israel, the covenant that God will make is not just with
the believers of Israel. You need to understand that it's
with all of Israel, whether you're a believer, Jewish
believer or an unbeliever. The contract, this marriage
covenant is with all of Israel. Okay, so Moses summoned all
Israel and said to them, hero Israel, the the statutes and the
rules that I speak in your hearing today and you shall
learn them and be careful to do them.
The Lord our God made a covenant with us in hort and whore, which
is the same as Mount Sinai. So this is the what we call the
second covenant. We have the Abrahamic, which is
unconditional. This covenant is something
that's called conditional, and the picture is a marriage
winning where there's two groups, there is the Lord and
there is the nation of Israel. Again, it's all of Israel and
they are seen as his wife and and this there's going to be if
you do this, then you will get these blessings.
If you don't do this, you will get these curses.
It's different to the Abrahamic covenant.
It's a relationship based on if you then you'll get this.
If you don't, you'll receive this.
Jeromy Chapter 7. Have a look at what God says
when he's calling them. So Jeromy Chapter 7, verse 6, he
says, for you are a people wholly to the Lord your God.
The Lord your God has chosen you as a people for His treasured
position. So out of all the people who are
on the face of the earth, it was not because you were more a
number than any of the other people that the Lord has set His
love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all
peoples. But it is because the Lord loves
you and is keeping the oath, okay, The covenant that He swore
to your fathers, OK. And now what I want you to do is
go to me with me, please. Ezekiel chapter 16.
Majority of the time now we're going to stay in Ezekiel, move
there other passages. But if you hold your fingers in
the sequel, we're going to go back and forwards as we look up
this thing O Ezekiel chapter 16 and I'm going to read for this
from verse 8. This is seen like the marriage
night. This is what is Ezekiel 16 is
pictured as. And we're just going to show you
what God says in relation to this covenant that he makes,
which we call the Mosaic covenant.
So Ezekiel 16 verse 8 says when I pass to buy you again and saw
you the whole you were at the age for love, and I spread the
corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness.
I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you,
declares the Lord God, and you became mine.
Judah, Romy, the whole book of Jude, Aeronomy is the marriage
covenant that God would make with the nation of Israel.
All of them, not just the believers, it would be with that
nation. And so that's the first stage of
the marriage. It's the marriage that God would
have that's separate from the Abrahamic covenant, separate
than the unconditional promises, but it's an agreement between
the two groups, the wife of Jehovah and the Lord himself.
Stage 2 is where Israel or just if I pause there.
Just imagine if, if I was to say if God made the covenant with
New Zealand, with us in that way, like, how would we stand?
Remember, it's not just with the believers, but with the whole of
New Zealand. How would God see us?
And we often think when it comes to God's dealing with Israel, we
think of it as numbers or percentages.
If 80% of Israel were following God, then God is pleased with
Israel. And if 10% were only following
God will God would do all these judgments and things like that.
That's biblically not true. You know what the percentage is.
Remember what happens with the nation of Israel?
They go from Egypt. They go towards the promised
land. God is angry with them because
of their unbelief of not going in the land.
There will be only two people that will be over the age of 20
when God makes their promise to them, which will be Joseph and
Caleb. The rest of all of the Jewish
people will die in the wilderness.
God will refresh them and bring them to himself, and then they
would go into the promised land. As they go into the promised
land, they have this great victory against Jericho.
You might remember the story The walls fall Down.
Fantastic victory as God goes in there.
But there's a sin of one man less than 1% ascend just from
one man out of all of the nation of Israel.
And his name is Aiken, and he takes something that he's not
supposed to take. God promised that you shouldn't,
will sit to him that you shouldn't take certain things.
He takes it and hides it for himself.
The very next battle that they go into, which is against I, I,
I, they go there to try and take it and as they move towards it,
they get defeated. 36 of them die and they face a real big
defeat. God would judge the nation of
Israel for less than 1% of a people.
That would not be righteous. What if God did that to New
Zealand? What would our percentage be?
How would he deal with us? That's how we dealt with in our
nation of Israel. That's what we have to grab as
Christians, that God made a covenant with Israel, the
nation, believers, unbelievers. It's never on percentages or
numbers. It was on the entirety of the
nation of Israel, something that's really important.
Second stage, what did Israel do with this with this position as
the wife of Jehovah? What did they do with it?
So we're going to go back to the just read one verse before we go
there. Jeremiah 320 is surely A
treacherous wife leaves her husband.
So you have been treacherous to me.
Ohh. House of Israel declares the
Lord. The whole summarisation of what
happened where the God would send judges, whether he would
send kings, whether he would send prophets is that Israel
would be an adulterous nation. Even if it was less than 1%,
they would still be considered an adulterous nation.
So Ezekiel chapter 16 going to read from verse 23.
I had to find a place in the passage that's that I could read
from because the, the language is so strong.
And this part of Ezekiel, it's so strong in fact, that, you
know, we, we have the situation which is the Bible translation
from the Hebrew into the Greek. It was done by Jewish people
when they came to Ezekiel 16. They won't.
They haven't translated it as actually Ezekiel 16 says.
Do you know why? Because the language in this
chapter is so strong that even the Jewish people recognise.
And so that's one of the rules. Even today in Israel, they don't
translate this passage because they get the meaning of it and
it's so strong. It's watered down and the
situations and in most of our Bible translations come from
that. And so this is where we get
ours. But even even for in English,
you'll see the words are so strong, but it's even stronger
in Hebrew and we're not going to go there at all.
So I found a passage where I can read from and this, so it's
hopefully a little bit more tangible to your ears.
So a sequel chapter 16 and read from verse 23 and it says, and
after all your wickedness, woe, woe to you, declares the Lord
God. You built for yourselves A
vaulted chamber and made for yourself a lofty place in every
square at the heart of every street.
You built your lofty place and made your beauty and
abomination, offering yourself to any passerby by multiplying
your harlotry. You also played the harlot with
the Egyptians, your lustful neighbors, multiplying your
harlotry to provoke me to anger. Behold, therefore, I stretched
out my hand against you and diminished your allocated
portion, and delivered you to the greed of your enemies, the
daughters of the Philistines, who were ashamed of your Lord
behaviour. You played the harlot also with
the Assyrians because you were not satisfied.
Yes, you played the harlot with them and still were not
satisfied. You multiplied your Hartree also
with the trading land of Chaldea.
Even with this, you were not satisfied.
You know, the countries that he's naming here, it's the
countries that God would send on judgement or for judgement
against the nation of Israel because of the idolatry.
So Egypt, God would bring them there, they would get puffed up,
and then God would change it so that they would have become
slaves. You know what they were supposed
to do to make them turn to the Lord.
But instead of turning to the Lord, they worship the gods of
the Egyptians. The next one, the Philistines,
that's when they went into the land.
That was where the Philistines were.
They were supposed to go there. And because of the disobedience
of Israel, God said that I'm going to leave them in the land
to be a thorn to you because of your disobedience.
What it Israel do in return? They didn't accept the
acknowledgement of what was going, what was done as a
punishment, but instead they followed the gods of the
Philistines, who was the nation that took away the OR the empire
that took away the northern 12 or 10 tribes of Israel.
It's the one that's mentioned here, the Assyrians.
God says I sent them to judge you and I removed you out of the
land, but instead of being coming back to me, you actually
worship their gods. And then the last one that's
mentioned here is the Chaldeans. That's the Babylonians, exactly
the same. The Babylonians, they were taken
because of God's judgement on the people were moved to
Babylon. And instead of recognising what
God was doing, they worship the gods of the Babylonians.
That was the the problem. And so in verse 30 of chapter
16, we have like really, it sums up the whole thing.
He says how sick is your heart? That's how God sees the nation
of Israel at this particular time.
How sick is your heart? That's who you are.
And verse 32, he says adulterous wife who receives strangers
instead of her husband. That's God speaking, this is his
wife. And he says you're adulterous
wife. That's who you receive.
You receive the Assyrians, you receive the Babylonians, the
that the Egyptians were full of things because they are too just
quickly will say upon the children also, I have no mercy,
he says, because they are children of harlotry, for their
mother has played the harlot. So she who conceived them has
acted shamefully. For she said, I will go after my
lovers who gave me my bread and my water, my wool and my flex,
my wool and my drink. That is the sin of Israel, a
Dollar Tree and adultery. And so we move on to the third
stage. What happened in all these
periods of time? The judges, we move into the
third stage. If you tuned in with me, but
keep your fingers in the Q, When I come back to the air, I want
you to have a look at Isaiah chapter 50 and we're going to
read from verse one with the idolatry of Israel.
God does something else and now He's going to separate Himself
from Israel, and this is the separation.
So Isaiah chapter 50 verse one, and it starts off by saying,
thus says the Lord, where is your mother's certificate of
divorce with which I have sent her away.
At this stage in Isaiah, God has not given Israel the certificate
of divorce. Okay, but He is separating
Himself from her. I want you to recognise the
difference. So He goes, where is the
certificate of divorce that I gave you?
Where is it? And he says, well, which of my
career says is it? To whom I have sold you meaning
who is God and debt to that He actually sold the nation of
Israel to someone else. And then he says what actually
happened? Read the verses.
It says, behold, for your iniquities, for the iniquities
of the the Jewish nation, for your iniquities you were sold,
meaning you sold yourselves to the other lovers and for your
transgressions your mother was sent away.
And that's the idea. The picture is in Ezekiel
chapter 10. God's presence, if you remember,
was in the first Temple, and he's stayed there until Ezekiel
10 sees that God's presence is removed from the temple.
That's the separation of God from the people of Israel.
He hasn't yet divorced them, but he has separated himself from
them, which is why His presence leaves the temple.
We come into the fourth stage after the separation, which
lasted for about 100 years. We now come into something that
gets serious, which is the bill of divorcement.
And so if you turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 3, I'm going to
read from verse 6 to 10, and then we'll go back to equal.
So still hold your fingers there.
And this is the bill of divorce, you know, and Deuteronomy, it
steps out the four ways of what you're supposed to do in a
divorce. This is how you're to do it
according to Jeromy. First of all, there's some,
there's a problem or there's some iniquity.
That's step one. The second step is that you're
to write out a divorce certificate.
So you actually write it out. The third step, according to
Judea irony, is that you would take that divorce and you would
place it physically into her hand and then on the foot.
The last step was that you would then send her out.
That's the four steps that's listed in Deuteronomy.
Now when we get to Jeremiah, you're going to see these things
played out. So Jeremiah chapter 3 verse 6.
And it says, the Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah, have
you seen what she did, that faithless one Israel, how she
went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and
there played the harlot? And I thought she has done all
this and she has after she has done all this, she will return
to me. But she did not return.
And who? Treacherous sister Judas or it
she saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one
Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce.
What God is saying in, in the history of it, we had the one
nation, the nation of Israel, but inside there, there was a
split where we had the 10 tribes of the northern Kingdom, 10
tribes of Israel and one in the South.
Now the, the northern one kept the name Israel.
But Israel, and we talk about it biblically, it's, it's the whole
12 tribes. But sometimes in the Bible
you'll see it was only talking about these ones, the tin in the
north. And then you had the predominant
one in the South. There were two tribes, but it's
called the tribe of Judah. So just be aware of that.
So when we're talking about it, it's a portion of Israel in this
in this context. And he says and diversity again,
she saw that for all of her adulteries, that faithful one
Israel I sent away. I sent her away with a degree of
divorce. Who is the prophet?
At the time of when the northern 10 tribes get removed from
Israel and they're taken to Assyria, guess who the prophet
is? It's Josiah.
What does the book of Hosea about someone that is a husband
to his wife? The book of Josiah is the
written degree of divorce that he hands to the northern tin
tribes and says here is your divorce document.
And so with that, the northern 10 tribes are now divorced from
the Lord, according to the Mosaic covenant that he had made
in marriage. But it's not just with him.
Keep reading. So and verse 8 halfway through
it says you too treacherous sister.
Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the Hallett
because she took her harlotry lightly.
She polluted the land, committing adultery with stone
and tree. She committed idolatry,
adultery, this teen. Yet for all this who treacherous
sister Judah did not return to me with their whole heart, but
in pretence to clears the Lord, which is the book of divorcement
for the night tribe of Judah. Who was The Who was that the
prophet at the time when Judah got removed to Babylon and she
was sent out? It's Jeremiah.
Why do you think we call them the weeping prophet?
It's the divorce. It's a writing of divorce.
Josiah is the written divorce for the northern Israel.
This is the divorce, Jeremiah, for the southern part of Israel,
and they are removed and sent out.
God has now divorced Israel and those don't know if you ever
considered that what these books are actually about and why He's
got them in this in this way. So with the divorce they removed
out, now comes the amazing part of how God works things.
They're divorced. Why then would God bring back
Zerubbabel to build the temple? Why would he then bring back the
people through Israel, from Babylon to the back to the
nation of Israel? Or he would give Nehemiah, build
the walls of that period. He's divorced from his wife now.
He's sent her out and it's only a portion of the Jewish people
that actually come back at that time that it's it's coming,
coming back. But this is where for me that
interesting or where it gets or sorry.
Let me get to the stage first before we go.
So once that's sent out, that's the divorce.
The next stage is God's punishment.
Now want you to understand, I've been divorced.
The punishment for the nation of Israel, including Judah, is from
the time of Babylon all the way through to the present time in
which we live now. That is the punishment that God
would do. It's called biblically the time
of the Gentiles. The book of Zechariah is
completely I know some of you are going through that BC if the
book of Zechariah is that book, which is what it's what it's
about. It's about Israel and the times
of the Gentiles. That's how the book is
presented. That's why it's so starts where
it doesn't finishes also where it does.
So Zechariah, is this this grouping of understanding of
where Israel is, but Israel are under punishment.
So with Israel under punishment, what does God do next?
And this is the amazing thing that he does.
He's divorced his wife at this stage.
So Ezekiel chapter 16, verse 58 is the the idea of the
punishment. I'm just going to read that
verse. He says you bear the penalty of
your loudness and you're abominations declares the Lord
for thus says the Lord, I will deal with you as you have done
and you are you have been you have despised the oath breaking
the covenant. He's talking about the marriage
covenant. You've broken it.
I separated from you. I've divorced the northern
tribes. I've now divorced the southern
tribes. What are we to do with all this
information? Have a look at the next verse.
So from this Israel gets punished.
Just again, to be clear, it's from Babylon all the way through
to the present day is where this punishment is sitting.
But there's something that's amazing and what God will do
next under this punishment is Ezekiel chapter 16.
And I'm going to reverse 60, he says.
Yet I will remember my covenant with you after he's divorced
them. Yet I'm gonna remember my
covenant with you and the days of your youth.
What shall we talking about? It's not the marriage covenant.
He's divorced them, but remember there was a previous covenant to
Abraham which wasn't conditional.
And he says in the Abrahamic covenant, through you all of the
people of the earth will be blessed.
And that's what he's saying. Yet I will remember my covenant
with you in the days of your youth.
I will establish it as a what? Recognise the words everlasting
covenant image. John 316 For God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son, and whoever
believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal
everlasting life. The same words.
This is where the covenant starting to come in.
That you know of term with me to Jeremiah chapter 31 and we're
going to read from verse 31 with Israel being divorced.
God in his mercy and in in his grace, is gonna do something
absolutely miraculous and he pulls these people back.
Zaruba Bell comes back from Babylon to build the temple, and
this is mentioned. Thermia builds the walls.
Israel brings the people back. Why does God do this when he
divorced Israel? It's because of his covenant,
the Abrahamic 1, not the Mosaic. He pulls them back and a
Jeremiah 31. He says, Behold, the days are
coming, declares the Lord, that I'm going to make a new
covenant. With who?
The House of Israel and with the House of Judah.
Can you please recognise what that's saying?
The New Covenant in your hands, if you have the Bible, not the
electronic one, but if you have the Bible, you have two
portions, the Old Testament and what's the new one?
The New Covenant, the New Testament.
That's what you're holding your hands.
This is where the new covenant comes from in the Bible.
It doesn't come from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
It's actually found in Jeremiah 31.
Read the verses again. Behold, the days are coming,
declares the Lord. Then I'll make a new covenant.
With who? Not with the church.
Now that might be hard for some of you to hear.
It doesn't say I'm making the new covenant with the church,
but he says I make it with who? With the House of Israel and
with the House of Judah. Okay.
And he says, not like the covenant that I made with their
fathers in Egypt, the covenant that they broke, though I was a
husband to them. Again, you can see now the the
language, what it's saying. He's divorced them through the
Mosaic Law, but now he's creating something new.
The new covenant, he says, for this is the covenant that I will
make with the House of Israel after those days, declares the
Lord. I will put my law within them,
and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God
and they will be my people. The New Testament is Jeremiah
chapter 31, and it's not made with us.
It was made with the House of Israel and with the House of
Judah. In all the differences, when God
made the marriage covenant with the nation of Israel, He
included all believers, unbelievers.
That's who he made the covenant with.
The new covenant is not so. The New Covenant is only made
with those of faith. Whether you're Jewish or whether
you're a Gentile, you're pulled in because of what God has done
with the New Covenant. But he didn't make it with us.
That's what we have to realise. And it's based off again, the
Abrahamic covenant that it was. So the real thing is we we know
for us as believers, it's all about faith.
It's our putting our trust in Jesus Christ and his death and
his resurrection. That's 100% true.
You don't need to know all of this theology or the nuts and
bolts of how it works. So Steve was fantastic this
morning. He said like when you get to
these emblems, he can be lots of depth, but it can also be so
simplistic, just trusting it's a faith.
But what we do often as Christians is we take the
surface level and we stay there. It's just about the surface.
But there is so much more in God's plans and purposes.
And So what he did is that he, because of the promises that he
made to Abraham as he drew some people back, which were there.
And then God says, I'm going to do something new in your eyes,
and I'm making a covenant with Israel and with the House of
Judah. And he made the new covenant.
That's the covenant that Jesus says when he's at the Passover
table, Do this in remembrance of me.
This is my body. This is my bread for the new
covenant. It's all the reference to what's
there in Jeremiah. And so the real question then is
the nuts and bolts of it. We just come by faith to God.
And it's absolutely true. It's it's the gospel
understanding that Jesus died, that he was buried.
He rose again the third day for our sins and that he lives and
one day he's coming back again. The gospel can be really simple.
So in this relationship we have something else that now happens.
We have the pause on Israel, on their punishment.
Well, that's still from Babylon all the way to the current time.
But what happens now is that we as Gentiles for the first time,
how do we connect to this? Well, that's what a Romans are
living. I'm just going to read Romans 11
verse 13 so that you can actually see how this works.
This is the Jewish person that went out to the Gentiles to tell
us about the covenant that you hold in your hands.
It's Paul writing and he says in Romans 11 verse 13, now I'm
speaking to you Gentiles. That's what he wants us to
understand. That's us.
I'm speaking to you, Gentiles. And as much as I am an apostle
to the Gentiles, that's his purpose in what he was called to
do, He said. I magnify my ministry and order
somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of
them. For if the rejection means the
reconciliation of the world, give what he's saying here.
If the rejection of the Jewish people about Jesus as being the
Messiah resulted in salvation to the whole world, what would it
look like when the Jewish people, if, as we go through
another stage, would actually all accept them as an all, Not
just in part, but all of them? What does he say?
That it's his? If this is the result, salvation
comes through the rejection of Jesus, What will their
acceptance be but life from the dead?
And then he goes on. If the dough is offered in the
first fruits as wholly, so is the lump, and if the route is
wholly, so are the branches. But if some of the branches were
broken off, and you? This is talking about us as
Gentiles, although a wild olive shoot were grafted in among the
others, now sheer in the nourishing root of the olive
tree. And he says this.
Do not be arrogant toward the branches.
If you are, remember it is not you that supports the root, but
the root supports you. If a Jewish person comes to
faith today, what we often will think in the Christian circles
is that they would come to faith and they'll get folded into the
church. Isn't that usually what your
thoughts and processes are, that Jewish people, if they come to
faith, they get folded in the church?
And that's how it works. Biblically, it's the opposite
way round. It says that the covenant was
not made with the church, but it was made with Israel believing
Israel with them, that they were there.
And then we as Gentiles by faith have been grafted in that way.
So they are the branches. And then because of their
unbelief of who Jesus was, because what Jesus was doing,
and this is the amazing part of it, he had divorced his wife,
but he had not forgotten his wife.
And he made a covenant to the Jewish people through Israel,
through Judah for the believing part of the Jewish people, not
the unbelieving. And then he said, now I'm going
to invite all of us as Gentiles to be pulled into the thing that
God had made, the covenant. And that's what it's about.
It's actually about us being grafted in or pulled into the
root or the prices, the route or the cornerstone.
The trunk fills up, goes out on the branches, some of them are
broken off, and then we are grafted in.
I honestly believe that is why we struggle so much and we're
gonna struggle even further as we get on in the church age
because we doctrine is so important.
And if we think that we are the main ones and God speaks to me
and I'm the I can tell you because God speaking to me and
we don't understand the theology of Harold actually works that
we're grafted and pulled this way.
We we say that's all separate. That's got nothing to do with
me. God speaks to me and I'm the one
that's going to tell you about who God is.
And that's for me really scary because that's what I think
Joe's friends did. They speak on behalf of God
without knowing a depth of what is actually is to work inside
the the the plans or the purposes of how God has got this
working. So we as Gentiles are grafted in
verse 18 again just said do not be arrogant toward the branches.
If you remember it is not you that supports the root, but the
root supports you. You will say to me branches were
broken off that I might be grafted and and that is true.
They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand
fast and faith. So do not be proud, but fear.
So now we go into the next relationship which is the Lord
Jesus Christ. You know we as believers with
your Jewish will Gentile, we go into the same body which is the
Church of Christ since X chapter 2, the so again Jesus would give
us the symbol of the bread and the wine saying this is the new
covenant. But it doesn't start until X
chapter 2 in the Holy Spirit comes from that point on.
It's the age of the church. Jews and Gentiles believers will
be in this part. And what are we called now?
We are called betrothed Christ. Do you recognise that we're not
actually married to Christ yet? We are betrothed to Him.
We are the bride of Christ, but we aren't actually married to
Him yet. O when do we get married?
And the and the Romans live? And it also says that a personal
hardening has come to Israel until the fullness of the
Gentiles comes in at the time when God will bring the fullness
of the church to himself, being Jewish and Gentiles in this one
body. At the time when he's got all of
the all of us in this one body to the full number that he's
predetermined or that he has, then we're going to be with him
and go where he is and we will celebrate what the marriage
supper of the Lamb, which is the actual marriage.
That's where we're going to be as the church actually married
to Christ, and that's the picture that's presented.
O this is the age in which we live.
We're in the time of the church from ex Charter 2 to the time
that God will cool the fullness of the church then, and then the
church will be removed and taken up and to be presented with Him.
So what about Israel? Again, like now we've got this,
we know how things work, but what happens to Israel?
So I'm going to go now into the the seventh stage of Israel's
relationship. There's going to be a
realisation of what Israel got wrong, and that's found in
Jeremiah as early as Jeremiah. Of the three, I'm just going to
read one verse 3 of Jeremiah 3, verse 11.
And this season the Lord said to me, faithless Israel has shown
herself more righteous than treacherous Judah, even though
God had divorced her. He said, go and proclaim these
words toward the north and say, return faithless Israel,
declares the Lord, I will not look on you in anger, for I am
merciful, declares the Lord. I will not be angry forever.
Only acknowledge your guilt. You know the the requirement for
the Jewish people to be grafted and back again as a nation is
that they will acknowledge their guilt.
What is the guilt, the rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ?
That's the guilt that the Jewish nation are going to have to
acknowledge. So Kariah says they will look on
me whom they have pierced, and they will mourn as one mourns
for their only child. And when they finally as a
nation will go, yes, God divorced us, but he did
something way more miraculous than that.
He gave us the new covenant. But we rejected that and so God
has gone and grafted in the Gentiles until the fullness of
the Gentiles become in. And then after that happens, the
church is going to be removed and God is going to then deal
with the nation of Israel until they will acknowledge His guilt.
And so we finally have the eighth stage is the the
remarriage of the nation of Israel to God the Father.
It's an amazing thing. So the church is removed.
It's taken out of the way, God went to judgement and it ends up
in the tribulation. Didn't know that's what the
tribulations about. Where God will pressurise the
Jewish people so strongly that 2/3 of them will perish, 1/3
will be ready to acknowledge their guilt.
And it's only at that point, when they will finally, after
all this time from Babylon all the way through to the end, that
they will acknowledge this sin and call for the Messiah as the
timing of the Messiah to come back.
And so in stage 8, I'm just going to read from Isaiah 54.
It's the last was I 54 and verse when I start from verse 4, it's
after Isaiah 53, the actual words that the Jewish people are
gonna acknowledge about Jesus being on the cross.
So after that we have Isaiah 54 and verse 4.
It says fear not, for you will not be ashamed or be confounded,
for you will not be disgraced, for you will forget the shame of
your youth and their approach of your widowhood.
That's because of what they've been pushed out from.
You will remember no more. Your Maker is your husband, the
Lord of hosts is his name. The Holy One of Israel is your
Redeemer, the God of the whole earth, as he is called.
For the Lord has called you like a wife, deserted and grieved in
spirit, like a wife of your youth when she is cast off, says
your God for a brief moment, This is from Babylon to where we
are today. For a brief moment.
It's how God describes it. I've deserted you, but with
great compassion I will gather you in overflowing anger.
For a moment I hid my face from you.
Okay, But with everlasting love, again, that's the word we're
looking for, everlasting love. I will have compassion on you,
says the Lord. We'll skip down those verses,
but all I was trying to get you to recognise is that God will
remarry the nation of Israel again after the Tribulation
period. The fault of the Mosaic Law when
God made that marriage covenant with them, as it was with all
Israel, whether they believed in God or not, it was with all of
them. You know what God's going to do
in the end after the Tribulation?
It's through pressure, it's through judgement.
He is then going to take them. 2/3 will die, but the third
remaining will acknowledge their guilt.
And then we're going to have the marriage, the remarriage, but
only in faith. They're going to acknowledge
Jesus and he's gonna marry all of them.
That's what Romans live and actually says.
I'm just going to read the verse and live in 25.
He says, look, I want you to understand at least your eyes
and your eyes and your own eyes. I want you to be.
I do not want you to be unaware of this mysteries, this mystery,
brothers, a partial hardening has happened upon Israel until
the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, meaning that's when
the the church has come to its full number.
And in this way, what does it say?
All Israel will be saved. You recognise that all, every
single Jewish person at the time of the tribulation there will be
pointed out for this last third. Mildly 2/3 have already gone,
but they will all come to faith and that's where God will again
remarry the nation of Israel. So just as we close, it's just
like, what are we supposed to do with what you see in the world
today? There is a nation of Israel.
God is putting Israel in our faces more and more, and it's
going to become more and more prominent in our in our world so
that we'll have to deal with them at some stage.
You're going to have to do something.
Now, these are the options that you can have.
First one is to let the world dictate who Israel is to you.
Do it through social media, through it, through YouTube.
Do it through whatever tickles your ear.
But listen to the voices and make that judgement on the
nation of Israel. That's one option that you have.
A second one is that you're to recognise that.
What about if you could say why you believe what you think God
is doing with Israel from the Bible?
Remember the God of this world is Satan.
A Satan is the God of this world.
He influences all of the decisions that are in the
Airways that is trying to get you to see Israel in a certain
perspective. The alternative is that you
would know the plan of God for Israel because you know your
Bibles, you know the doctrine, you know what it says regarding
the nation of Israel, not based on XYZ that you see.
The other thing to recognise is the day of our visitation, God
is doing something miraculous. The nation of Israel and Ezekiel
chapter 36, remember, I'm talking in the context of God,
the nation of Israel, as the nation is still under
punishment. It's still under the judgement.
Q 36 days. God says that I'm gonna grab the
Jewish people from the four corners of the earth, and I'm
gonna bring them back into the nation of Israel.
And he says with my Roth poured out and with my anger, I'm going
to draw the Jewish people back into the land of Israel.
And I do this not for their namesake, but for my name's
sake. You know why Israel exists
today? It's for God's namesake, not for
Israel's namesake, it's for God. God is doing this, but it's in
the context that they're still under punishment.
But we're supposed to recognise that God is drawn them back for
the plans and purpose that he has.
So that's something also to consider.
CQ36 That's what it talks, the wrath of God drawing them back.
37 The dry bones were God would make life.
And who has ever seen such a thing that a nation would come
back again? Then we lead into hard chapters
38 and 39, which I believe is where we're sitting right now in
the Bible. We're in this time in the Bible.
We're actually, it's irrelevant to us.
It's actually right there. The other thing to remember is
that, yeah, again, Israel is in the time of punishment as a
nation and to remember also that that we're grafted into them.
Don't make that mistake. Don't think that your your pride
and your position is higher than what God has ordained by them
and we're not talking about Jewish people.
So please make me get understand what I'm talking about.
We're only talking about the believing Jewish people and the
covenant that God has made with Israel and we're grafted into
that. The Jewish people there there as
a nation are still under this judgement.
And remember, it's not on percentages, It's on the
totality of them entirely. Okay then finally it's what I
would you really just to close with is the way we should deal
with the nation of Israel. Israel that exists today is
because God is doing it, not because mankind are doing it.
So what should be our relationship to Israel?
Israel do not do everything right.
If you the pendulum, if it's sitting here, if we go too far
on this one, we say everything that Israel is, everything that
they do is because they're God's people and there's nothing that
they can do that's wrong. You've swung their pension on
way too far to the side. You've gone in the wrong place
because you're not listening to the scriptures that says that
God is judging them and he's doing things with them.
You'll pendulum is sitting here. You can call them out.
Guys like Yuval Harari, who was a Jewish like academic, sort of
considered very high up in World Economic forums, he actually
despises God. Should we court not call them
out because he's Jewish? Course we shouldn't.
We should say yes, what he's doing is absolutely wrong.
So that's the side. But does that mean you wish stay
over here and say, ohh, this is what we should do?
We should just absolutely hammer away or we can come over to this
side and we say, you know what's happening in the Bible today.
Even like passages like Ezekiel 36 or God dealing with Israel.
It's got no relevance at all in the Bible.
Means nothing in that way. We swing the pendulum this side
and we say no, they have nothing to do and there's no mention or
purposes for God. The centre point is right here,
and the centre point is this, acknowledging that God is one
day going to marry his wife again, which is the nation of
Israel. Do you want to go against the
Lord's anointed? Remember Saul.
Saul was called from God and he was anointed, and he wasn't a
good king. Israel has called back to the
nation of Israel. They're there right now.
They're called back, but they're not necessarily in a believing
state. In fact, it's the opposite.
But God has called them back. So that's the the picture.
Like of Saul, the next king is King David.
What was King David's relationship like to us all?
What did he do? He said.
I'm not going to go against the Lord's anointed.
That should be our position as a church.
We're not for him that everything that Jewish people do
is 100%. That's too far.
We're not totally against them because that's again too far.
The pendulum that sits right in the middle is that we go, yes,
we recognise that God is dealing with them, but I am not going to
put my hand against God's anointed.
Just like David would not put his hand against Saul.
He would call out Saul, so he would say, so why are you trying
to take my life? There's no problems calling out
people that you see that Jewish people are doing something
that's wrong. No problems at all, but don't
put your hand against them. Don't go too far where you swing
that pendulum. All I can say is in these coming
days, in these coming years, Israel is going to be what God
is doing is He's putting them up, up and up more in our face
so that you will have to make a call sometime of where you stand
with them. And with that pendulum is going
to swing. You can be over this side, you
can be on that side, or you can set, I think where the Bible
sets, which is right in the centre.
And so that's the way that I think we should do that.
We should deal with them is do the things that God says it's
recognise their future plan. Don't curse them, but neither
should we do it. You know the thing that I prayed
for like was amazing when all the nations were they going
through this process. Should we recognise the
Palestinian, the separate state and all those things.
I remember seeing all the other countries going that way,
Canada, Australia, many other countries, UK all going for that
way. Remember specifically praying in
the night to the Lord on my knees and saying Lord, please
just make if if we could make New Zealand pendulum sit in the
middle. I didn't think that it could
actually happen. I thought they would just swing
with every other state and nation had gone, would just
automatically go there, but that's what I prayed.
Lord, please let us stay in this middle.
Let us not be for Israel that everything they do is perfect.
That's not correct. It's not biblically correct, but
neither let us put our hand against them.
Let us just be neutral and let the Lord do something.
Isaiah 6211 says the Lord has declared to the end of the
earth, which is where we are in New Zealand.
He says, say to the daughter of Zion, that's the Jewish people,
your salvation is coming. It's exactly what's going to
happen in the future. And we need to know our theology
on some of this stuff. We're going to be taken.
We're going to get swept. And the more we get swept away,
the lesser we're going to be able to stand on the principles
of God. Sorry, I know it's a long time,
but it's been something that's been burdening on my heart for a
long time. And I just, yeah, I pray that I
won't be speaking on the other three friends of Job, but maybe,
Lord, if you're willing, may I speak on the side of Allaho.
It's close. And Priya, Father, we thank you
for your plans and your purposes, your arrangement and
marriage. Lord, what I just pray that we
might be able to. We thank so thankful all that
the simplicity of the gospel and what it actually means to come
to faith is just accepting you, Lord Jesus, the with sinners
that you died for us, that you rose again and you live, Lord,
and you're seated at the right hand side of the Father.
And Lord, that we just have to, we can accept you for what
you've done. But Lord, I also pray that we
might also know deeper things of your word.
Lord, leave us not on the milk. Let us not sit on the surface.
Lord, help us to understand the deeper plans and purposes of
you. Help us to rightly divide the
word of truth. Help us to see your plans and
your purposes and how we can be part of that even in a far away
country like New Zealand. Lord, I thank you for our the
people or the leaders that are in New Zealand.
I pray for our government, Lord. I do pray, Lord, that we will
stay in a neutral position. Would help us to keep the
pendulum where it should be, Lord, and help us to see the
opportunities that you're presenting to us.
But Lord, we do pray for the peace of Jerusalem as you've
asked us to do in sounds. Lord, I pray that you would help
our eyes to be opened, Lord, to recognise that you grafted us
then as Gentiles into the promises of God.
We're so thankful for what you were willing to do for us, Lord,
when we were so far away from you.
But Lord, I just thank you for this time, the opportunity,
Lord, and the burden that's been on my heart.
So just thank you for all of these things in Jesus name,
Amen.