Holl-07 Israel's Final Chastisement — Art Katz

Good morning Saints. Shall we say Shabbat Shalom to the Lord? I'm going to make that my prayer. Because I want to speak to you out of the rest of God.

Because I did not get any practical rest to speak of last night.

So this is a necessity to speak out of His rest.

Living by Resurrection Power

Because we prophetic men are not only called to proclaim something, but to demonstrate something. Not only to give you the challenge of the word, but to demonstrate the means whereby it will be fulfilled.

That's why I am sleepless. And weak. That it might demonstrate to you that there is another energy and another power, another life. The one that was raised from the dead. And by which we are called also to live.

We are the people of the resurrection, or the Jews have not a chance. Well-meaning intention will not save them. Only the inexhaustible life of God, which is also the unconditional love of God. You see what the Jews do for us?

They compel us to become the church. That we would have been too lazy to have obtained. We would have been content only with success. Good meetings. How was the speaker? Did you like him? You are the center of every consideration.

Did you like him? Did you enjoy the service? We are the center of our own consideration. It's called egocentrism. And we are as guilty of it in the church as those that are in the world.

And we are as guilty of it in the church as those that are in the world. And only one thing can save us from this power. The cross that has been brought back, which is seated on the root of the past.

And a greater motive than our own enjoyment. The glory of God. Forever. As we say in Yiddish, Mamma Mia! I am beside myself. For your sake and for the Lord's sake. I had not a thought to speak any of the things that I have already mentioned.

But my life is not my own. My thoughts are not my own. Excuse me, I made a mistake here, sorry. My life is not my own.

One more mistake and she's out. Okay, I'm sorry. Don't look at this. Every morning I ask the Lord for His thoughts which are above my thoughts. He waits only to be asked. Because His thoughts are so much greater.

And His ways also. So Lord, we say Shabbat Shalom to you. The great God who has given us peace. The Shalom that is more than the absence of conflict. It's something positive and given. The rest of God.

Which we labor to enter. Lest we fall short of the rest.

As was Israel's mistake.

So Lord, let your labor, your work today proceed out of your rest.

I'll tell you how ambitious I am, Lord. For more than a message.

However much I love messages. I'm asking more than a message. A work. Even a work that was established before the foundations of the earth were laid.

Let it be fulfilled this morning.

By the inexhaustible power of your life.

That has full consequence for the church. And the people of Israel.

Even the issue of life or death. Eternity itself. Who is sufficient for these things. So show yourself strong, Lord. Take us by surprise. Beyond our expectation. That we will be privileged participants in an act of history.

An event. Given in Holland. On Saturday morning, April 22nd. But it will resonate to eternity. And have consequence for all nations. And I'm not ashamed to ask this. One, because the time is short.

The issues are great. And nothing is too difficult for you. And God's people said, Amen.

Isaiah 53 and the Suffering Servant

Well. Would you turn to Isaiah 53? So the Lord brought Philip up to the chariot in which the Ethiopian eunuch was reading from the scroll of Isaiah.

This very text. Ethiopian. I want to say it in English. Ethiopian is in his cart and he is reading from Isaiah. Excuse me. And where does the prophet speak about this?

About himself or about another.

And Philip steps into the chariot. And shares with him the things pertaining to Jesus.

There's been a controversy between Judaism and Christianity as to the interpretation of this text. I showed this text to my Jewish mother. She had never heard it. Who is faithful in her synagogue attendance.

And she said, where in the New Testament is this found? I said, it's an Old Testament prophet. Why then, she said, did I not hear it in the Haftorah readings on the Shabbat mornings? I said, you never will.

It is omitted from the synagogue. You know what the Haftorah is. That's the reading out of the prophets. Selected by the rabbis. In keeping with the selection out of the five books of Moses.

And this text is studiously avoided.

It is too evidently Christological.

Because it is too Christological. But all theology points out that this speaks about the Messiah. Until Rabbi Rashi.

Who was reacting to Christian controversy. And gave it another interpretation. He says, no, this speaks of suffering Israel.

It describes the nation's suffering.

Although we can see from many places in the text. He was wounded for our transgressions.

That he was wounded for our transgressions. And that does not speak of a nation, but of someone else.

And yet this morning. I'm going to take my inspiration from Rashi. And say that there is an application also. That is yet future for Israel. Because I believe in the view of Israel's call.

Because I believe in the future and in view of the call of Israel. Because like its Lord. That it will be a suffering servant. And that they also have to walk this way to Calvary, to the cross. If we carefully read this text.

There are three voices.

One is the prophet who is the commentator, the narrator. And one place it's God himself speaking directly. And in yet another place. It seems to be a people coming to a certain recognition. That is breaking upon their consciousness for the first time.

That he was stricken for the transgression of my people. That all we like sheep have gone astray. We have all turned to our own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. So here is what I am suspecting.

Jacob’s Trouble and Israel’s Weakness

The Jacob's trouble of which I spoke last night. Which will not be confined to Jews in Israel only.

But wherever Jacob is to be found in the world.

Though surely there to be found in Israel. For Israel more rightly ought to be called Jacob than Israel. Because it has not yet encountered the Lord.

Because it has not yet encountered the Lord. And received his indelible mark in its thigh.

So that it will walk lame for the rest of its days.

And to the recognition must come that the Lord is its strength. For it has been made weak.

In the very nexus of its humanity.

In the joint here.

Where I understand the blood cell itself is formed. Where the cowboys keep their six shooters.

Where the cowboys keep their six bullet revolvers. And where the businessmen keep their portable telephone. We like to have something on our hip.

It looks very masculine. It gives us a sense of power.

And therefore God touches that place. And cripples us.

And then our name can be changed. From Jacob to Israel. Then we'll build an altar in his name. And sacrifice to the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac.

And the God of Israel also. That encounter is coming. And then that encounter comes. That night of wrestling will come.

When we have given everything. All our Jewish trust. In the gods of this time.

Our own ability to do things. Our technology. Our culture. Send everything over.

And then he'll meet with us. And we'll not let him go until he blesses us. Because only as Israel. Can we bless all the families of the earth.

And never as Jacob.

However much Jacob is attractive to you. There must be a road to Calvary. You see the way the prophetic mind works. It brings together certain texts. Isaiah 53. Marked more than any man. He has no beauty that any should desire him.

Someone who is just ground to powder.

Robbed of all human dignity.

An outcast.

Despised and rejected of men. Was the Messiah's experience. And must be Israel's also. When they will become the least of these his brethren. Steven Spielberg. The great movie producer. With his billion dollar dream factory.

We Jews are entertaining the world. With fantasy. And unreality. Who have called to be a light to the nations. Will find himself somewhere in northern Minnesota. Or some remote place in Holland. Or Africa.

In some dirt road. With nothing more than the stinking shirt on his back. Broken and rejected. Suddenly uprooted. Everything lost. Despised of men. Hated. Beaten. And that's how they will come to us. The least of these his brethren.

Isaiah 52:13–53:12 and Israel’s Future Suffering

This text really begins in chapter 52. From verse 13. See my servant shall prosper. He shall be exalted and lifted up. He shall be very high. Just as there were many who were astonished at him. So mad was his appearance beyond any human form.

And his form beyond that of mortals of men. I just want to change one pronoun. From he to they. So shall they startle many nations. King shall shut their mouths because of them. For that which had not been told them they shall see.

And that which they had not heard they shall observe. When they see the sufferings of Jesus reiterated in his people. King shall shut their mouths. Because of them. And what mankind had not recognized 2000 years ago.

And have dismissed from their consideration. Or made it an Easter egg and chocolate bunny thing. God will again demonstrate. The profound meaning of that suffering. For the consideration of all nations.

Through another servant's son. Israel. In its last day sufferings. They will have no form or majesty that anyone should look at them. Nothing in their appearance that anyone should desire them. They will be more despised and rejected by men.

A people of suffering acquainted with infirmity. As one from whom others will hide their faces. When did we see you naked and thirsty and hungry and in prison? Is hiding their face. From an afflicted Israel.

Because there will be no beauty that you should desire them. The romantic aura that you now so much appreciate. The heroic way in which you like to envision them. Will be lost.

And you will see them reduced. Without any beauty that you should desire them.

Suffering, Wilderness, and the Revelation of God

In verse 4 the voice changes. Someone else is now speaking. Someone upon whom a new realization has come. Out of the kindred experience of that kind of suffering. It opens a new vista. A new way of perceiving.

There is something about suffering. That reveals things as they in fact are.

There is something about suffering. That opens our eyes to new revelations. And that is why we have to go through the deserts of the nations.

Have you ever been lost in one?

Is there a desert in the Netherlands?

Terrified. Alone. In dark fearful circumstances. Stripped of everything. Reduced from all the amenities of life. Face to face with ultimate reality. Man and God.

What is it about? There is a reason for this wilderness exodus. Is to reduce men.

And to strip them from all their categories. That they might be confronted with the God that we have so long been avoiding.

Even in our orthodoxy. Something in that time.

And in those circumstances. In the suffering of those days. The scriptures say about three and a half year period of time. Will give Jews ample opportunity to reflect. On the meaning of our existence.

And why we have so suddenly experienced this. Another dispersion. Cast out. Rejected. Suddenly. Imagine them saying from verse four. Surely he had borne our infirmities and carried our diseases. Yet we had accounted him strict and struck down by God and afflicted.

We had practiced revisionism on Jesus. The kind that is being practiced today against the holocaust. A big trial going on now in Great Britain and London. Of a historian suing a critic. For ruining his reputation.

Because he has written a book critical of the holocaust. Saying it was greatly exaggerated. The numbers of the casualties are exaggerated. It was used as a political instrument to obtain the state of Israel.

It was to dismiss the historicity of the holocaust. One of the most documented and detailed events in time. Men want to dismiss as not having taken place.

Something that is precisely documented on paper. All the events of the holocaust.

And the Jewish community is outraged. After all they have spent millions on museums. Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. And the holocaust memorial in Washington DC.

They want to keep the memory alive.

And there are men saying it did not take place. It's called revisionism.

Whatsoever a man sows.

That too shall he reap. We made a revisionism of the crucifixion of Jesus. We dismissed it as a non-event. It was a minor note in history. It did not come into our Jewish consideration. It was not convenient that it should.

And now we are suffering the same upon our own holocaust.

And now we see the same thing happening with that whole holocaust. We have dismissed the first holocaust of the Holocaust. And now they are trying to dismiss us. But this is not a holocaust that you want to dismiss.

Because suffering reveals.

And nothing has revealed God more profoundly than the cross. The righteousness of God is revealed at the cross.

The mercy of God is revealed at the cross.

The son of God is revealed at the cross. And the father to whom he cries. And the giving up of his Holy Spirit. All three persons of the Godhead are profoundly manifested in the crucifixion of Jesus. That to dismiss that is to dismiss God.

As God. Or you can talk about the monotheistic God. But the God who is monotheistic is not God. It's a Jewish construct. It's a God of convenience. But it's not the God who is God. Demonstrated at the cross.

Profoundly as in no other place. So to miss that is to miss everything. That's why we have ourselves to experience His suffering.

Are you keeping eternity in view?

Israel’s Eternal Calling and the Necessity of Judgment

We have a millennial destiny. That goes beyond history. It will be an everlasting call. The gifts and callings of God are irrevocable. They cannot be taken back. God is not fitting us for some short term assignment.

But that which is eternal. And for that He will invest and require much. You do err. In your consideration of Israel. Because you have only considered Israel in the context of time. But you have not considered Israel in the context of eternity.

This is not too extravagant. To require this suffering. This is not some arbitrary God. Deciding to be mean. This is a judgment. It was for Jesus. That was the righteousness of God. Paying for the sin of mankind.

Because man could not himself pay it. Only God could. And suffer the judgment. That a righteousness God must require. For our road to Calvary. Our suffering. Our time of Jacob's trouble. The past holocaust.

The future holocaust. In exact proportion to our sin.

To a people who have no concept of sin.

Because sin by its nature disguises itself as sin. And only the magnitude of judgment reveals it. Do you want to know how great our Jewish sin is? And the sins of our fathers. Which are our sins also.

Because we have never severed ourselves from their sins. Our silence condemns us. To their rejection of Jesus. And makes it our rejection also. It's not God penalizing us. Because we missed it in one historic moment.

The rejection of Jesus is the sum total of all our moments. It reveals the truth of our apostasy. In our failure to recognize Him. To hear the Father in His speaking. To see the Father in His countenance.

Because we did not know God. Nor could we recognize His Son. We were too long apostate. Even in the continuation of our religious practice. The rejection and the crucifixion of Jesus. Is not some momentary lapse.

It's the statement of our long standing and historic apostasy. Brought to its final expression. In a historic moment of time. If you will not believe that I am here. You shall die in your sins. No man spoke as this man spoke.

And to consent to the decision of our fathers. Is to make it our own decision. That's why God says. When you will confess the iniquity of your fathers. And of your own. Then I will remember my covenant to adhere.

We are implicated. With our whole history and past. Sins that we have not so much as acknowledged. Let alone made any attempt to repent. And what does God do in His mercy? He sends preliminary judgments.

The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. A great catastrophe. That Jews could not believe could happen. And dispersed again into the nations. And there to suffer in every nation where we have been cast.

Where the Passover season was a time already of fright. Because it will be followed by Easter. And the cry of Christ killer. And the ravaging of our communities. So that blood would flow through the streets of every German hamlet.

God's judgments are not cruel.

And God's judgments are not free. They are saving.

They are calculated to bring us to an awareness. Of those things that we would not otherwise have considered. Why do we continue to suffer?

Why do we continue with this suffering?

Why does God allow this? Have we offended Him again? Is there a sin that He calls us to?

That question is not even asked. And that's why we have to suffer in the end. But in the end the question will be asked.

Maybe we made a mistake in rejecting that one who suffered 2000 years ago. Was he suffering for himself? Was it his own sin and his own transgression? Who said to his accusers, which of you can convict me of sin?

He was a lamb without spot and without blemish.

Israel’s Recognition of the Crucified Messiah

Surely he had borne our infirmities. And carried out diseases. But we thought of him as being stricken and struck down by God and afflicted. But now we are willing to reconsider. Maybe he was wounded for our transgressions.

Maybe he was crushed for our iniquities. And maybe with his stripes we were made whole. And he has healed our bruises. Because all we like sheep have gone astray. We have all turned to our own way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and he was afflicted but he didn't open his mouth. He went like a lamb to the slaughter like a sheep before his shearers as silent he did not open his mouth. But we? Full of complaint.

Full of murmurs, full of indignation. How come? Why? Where? But he? As a lamb to the slaughter silently. He was cut out and off from the land of the living.

Stricken for the transgression of his people. Although he had done no violence.

And unlike us there was no deceit in his mouth. Suffering reveals and absolute suffering will reveal absolute suffering. Where we have not learned from the word we will have to learn from the experience of our own suffering.

It's a chastisement of God. It will break us as a nation.

In a brokenness that will never heal. It will be a perpetual disfigurement that we cannot again be a Jacob people grasping grasping the land rather than inheriting it.

We will be another people.

And we will bless all the families of the earth. In my holocaust book I speak of this chastisement.

Of a kind for which a father does not spare his son. Not the kind of fathers that we are who are condescending. Look the other way avoid encounter. We don't want to be cruel we don't want to threaten the affection of our children for ourselves and so they go wild.

Because they have not experienced the kind of love that can only come through chastisement. We don't love them enough to punish them when they deserve it. And their spirits intuit that. So they put nose rings in their tongue and in their belly button and tattoo themselves in defiant rebellion against a generation that has not loved them enough to chastise them.

Chastisement, Sonship, and the Knowledge of God

But God is not a man his love chastises and in all our affliction he is afflicted. He is not looking down from some ethereal height.

Indifferent and untouched. In all our afflictions he is afflicted.

But it does not withhold the affliction because an eternal destiny is at stake. So in the book I quote from another author.

Who describes Israel as the chastised son cruelly dealt with.

Recognizing that in that chastisement is the righteousness of God for our own good and the father is weeping because he has to afflict it. And something happens in that moment between an afflicted son and an afflicting father a bond of love of an ultimate kind that shall never be broken the knowledge of God in the depth of his father's love that Israel will communicate to all nations for all posterity because its knowledge will not be Talmudic or academic but real through its sufferings.

If you don't understand this you are going to be offended by God. Where is he? To allow this to happen a second time in the 20th century? Haven't they suffered enough? Haven't we had enough? Where are the promises?

The scriptures can't be trusted. And where is God's kindness?

Rightly did Paul say one of the great signs of the end of the age.

Is the great falling away of the church in disappointment at a failed Israel a failed rapture a failed God. Because they didn't understand the central principle of God intrinsic to all reality. There is a must and an ought that the Messiah must suffer.

That the servants of God must suffer before they ascend to their glory. So to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? Who has believed this report? Those who have understood the centrality of suffering as being intrinsic to sainthood.

The very thing that we have shunned the very thing that we avoid the very thing for which we carefully defend ourselves is the very thing given of God.

To bring us to sainthood to Christ-likeness.

To sonship. And as we will not receive suffering for ourselves and carefully insulate ourselves from it we don't want it to fall on Israel either and the arm of the Lord will not be revealed.

But then the honor of the Lord will not be revealed we will have to come to the realization.

That God's greatest love.

Have you never experienced it? Have you never experienced the chastisement of God?

Are you then a bastard or did you not desire to become a son? When Jesus said, who do men say that I am? Peter said, thou art the Messiah the Son of the Living God from that time forth.

From that time forth Jesus began to tell them that he had to go to Jerusalem.

And that he had to suffer and that he had to die. And the moment that the recognition of himself as son was the recognition of the necessity for suffering because there is no sonship without suffering.

Humanistic Compassion Versus the Power of God

What will cure us from this humanistic mentality? Lord, let this be far from you this deep humanism that the world applauds.

It seems so honorific it seems so wonderful so sweet and so tolerable but it is the stench of satan.

What breaks this about our life?

That makes us polite.

A polite society and renders us non-apostolic controlled by the world but offensive to God and will never recognize his purposes and will always be offended by them because we celebrate what is nice.

Because we prefer to keep ourselves busy with the earthly things.

Let this be far from Israel. It is the same kind of sentiment to be sensitive.

It will break the power of God. No, the only thing that will break this power of being sensitive is the power of God.

And the power of suffering which makes us sons of God. And dear people if you can understand this.

Then we will become the sons and daughters of God.

How else will we comfort Israel in her final affliction. God says, I will meet with you face to face in the wilderness of the nations and there you will come into the covenant. There you will receive a revelation of who I am as God in mercy that is given unstintingly in a love that is unconditional.

And that you can never be offended against even when you are rude and ungrateful. God's face will still be revealed.

By sons and daughters whose life is in Him and not in their humanistic assumptions.

And the values of the world. Let this be far from you.

The Church’s Prophetic Responsibility Toward Israel

Israel's suffering is calculated for us. It's a crisis that requires us to become the church because God will not speak to the dry bones only a son of man and a son of God who can be commanded.

To prophesy to those bones.

In a faith that works by love and not well-meaning intention.

Only a word of resurrection can raise the dead.

And if we are not in that prophetic sonship place we can say every kind of well-meaning thing those bones will not live. It's going to take a resurrection word a resurrection power a resurrection authority by a people of the resurrection who have suffered multiple deaths that they might know Him in the power of His resurrection.

And make Him known.

Resurrection is more than a doctrine to approve it's a reality to obtain. Have you done it? Consistently? Why should you? What requirement do you have? A Sunday service? A conference? You can do that in your own humanity.

Tell me one time in all your Christian years where you had to pray as I have prayed this morning because I had only three hours sleep and I knew the magnitude of what was before me this morning. A work that is going far beyond you.

That I have to say again and again. Who is sufficient for these things?

Is yours a Christianity that requires you to say that? continually? Or are you living outside the faith? and beneath the glory of God? Christianity has become a culture whether it's practiced on Sunday or Saturday and it's leaving the Jewish community totally unimpressed.

We are not moved to jealousy perhaps to contempt foolishness for a Gentile to wear tzitzis an affectation, an externality.

They are not impressed.

Even the imitation of their culture will not impress them. Only heaven and heavenly reality by those who have obtained it at cost and maintain it consistently. Are you beginning to understand the mystery of Israel and the church.

How we are locked in with this people in the genius of God that they without us cannot obtain to their calling. They without us can never obtain to their calling nor we without them. They compel us to be the church of an apostolic and a resurrection kind where nothing less will impress them or save them.

In the ultimate crisis of their last days.

I am speaking to you out of resurrection power in life not human ability because God is wanting to impress upon you that the means by which this message has come is the means by which it shall be fulfilled.

By a people by a people who can say in truth.

For me to live is Christ. Israel could not recognize Jesus could not understand his suffering. They had a human anticipation of what a messiah should be a military hero who will overcome Rome and restore the glory of Israel.

And we the church desire the same for present Israel a heroic nation with the Entebbe exploits.

People who as sailors set people free we love it as Christians we idealize them.

In their humanity and want to see them to succeed in that. We have come full circle and we don't understand that the issue is not the success of a nation state but the glory of God forever.

There is something greater than Israel.

There is something greater than the church it is that for which both the church and Israel have been given to reveal and to establish.

The glory of God forever.

If we have any motive that is less than that there will be no room in our heart for suffering. We will not understand it we will be offended by it. But the prophets of old they searched for what manner of time the spirit of Christ that was in them did prophesy concerning the sufferings of Christ and the glory that would follow.

Peter, Christ’s Suffering, and the Church’s Calling

Who wrote that? Peter the one who betrayed Christ three times before the cross. He said that after ought not Christ to have suffered and then enter his glory, Jesus said there is a must and an ought for the nation as a son as well as the initial son of God himself.

And what about us? How does the church fit into this pattern? What kind of requirement is there for us with suffering? Only to the degree that we are identified with Israel not sentimentally that will fail us but in truth as ourselves being the Israel of God with them.

If they are the least of his brethren what are they to us? If not also our brethren. Even in their sin even in their apostasy even in their shame even in their judgment. When is the set time to favor Zion come?

When has the set time to favor Zion come? Psalm 102 tells us when my servants have mercy on her stones and compassion on her dust.

When my servants have mercy on her stones and compassion on her dust God is waiting for something not in Israel but he is waiting for what is going to happen in the community the church and identification.

Beyond sentiment beyond romantic imagining beyond the idealizing of their supposed heroism. Not when they are at their best when they are at their worst.

When they are the least of his brethren God waits for your identification.

When all the world will despise them you will have compassion upon her stones and mercy upon her dust. The stones and dust of what? Not antiquity. God is not talking about archeology. He is talking about Tiberius Haifa Tel Aviv Jerusalem.

Modern Israel reduced to stubble, stone and dust in the judgments of God that must come.

That will not offend you that you will identify with them.

Even when the judgment is in proportion to hurt their sins.

Even when the judgment is in proportion to hurt their sins that is the moment that we will have to show mercy to Zion. The church does not look down on them from some superior height.