Welcome back friends to the Line of Fire broadcast, listener-sponsored radio. Thanks so much for joining us.
This is Michael Brown. As we stand together in the Line of Fire on the front lines, we are here to help you stand strong, to infuse you with faith and truth and courage. Every day we want to equip you. We want to empower you so that you can engage because you are in the war, living in this world, raising families, being single people, in the workplace, in school, online. We are in a war but we're in it together and we are overcomers through him who died and rose from the dead and with him we die to sin, we live to God. Here we are Lord.
Send us, use us. All this month we are focusing on the Jewish roots of the faith. We are asking the questions why should Israel's salvation matter to all the church? Why is the Gospel to the Jew first?
What do these things mean? Does modern Israel have significance in God's sight in a prophetic way? We're going to be opening up all those topics. We've been talking about Jewish background to the faith. Our textbook outside of Scripture is Our Hands Are Stained with Blood.
We'll tell you about that book a little bit more later in the broadcast. Today, instead of delving deeper into Jewish background, we've been doing that through the week, I want to step back and talk about God's heart for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Let me say again as I've been emphasizing every day, God's love for humanity is the same. He loves rich people. He loves poor people. He loves old people.
He loves young people. He loves Jews. He loves Gentiles.
He loves people of all color, all ethnicity. And Jesus, Yeshua, shed his blood for the salvation of the world indiscriminately. In other words, he didn't say I'm dying for the Jewish people only. I'm dying for Gentiles only.
I'm dying for this race or this group only. No, he shed his blood for the sins of the world. At the same time, God called Israel to a particular purpose. We saw in Genesis 12 that through Abram's seed, the whole world would be blessed. So Jesus is the Savior of the world because he's the Messiah of Israel. He's the one who fulfills what was promised to Abraham and to Moses and the prophets. He brings those things to realization for Israel, for the whole world. His name is called Yeshua. In Matthew, the first chapter, the angel tells Joseph his name is called Yeshua because he will save his people from their sins. Yeshua in Hebrew is short for Yehoshua, which means that Yahweh, the Lord, is salvation. So he comes to save his people, Israel.
By extension, he comes for the entire world. And yet because Israel's been given a distinct mission and then the nation that was chosen to be a light to the world rejected the very light of the world when he came, the leaders turned against him and ultimately turned the people against him. So, as a result of that, those given the sacred mission have missed out on a special calling of God.
There's been much accountability. Amos chapter 3 verse 1, God says to Israel, You only have I known, meaning have I chosen, singled out, out of all the families of the earth. Therefore, I will punish you, I will visit you for your iniquities. There's the Jewish saying that goes, Why not choose someone else? Because you think the people of Israel are as ancient as the people of India or the people of China. Both of those nations have about one and a half billion people. The people of Israel, they're not a tenth of that. They're not 150 million. And there may be one hundredth of that.
Maybe 15 million. What happened? We've suffered in dispersion. We've suffered in exile. We've suffered under divine judgment.
We've suffered under satanic persecution and attack and the hatred of man. Because of that, there's a unique pain in God's heart over the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And Paul, the apostle, reflects it. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, listen to what he writes in Romans chapter nine, verse one.
And on this broadcast, we will go through all of Romans nine through 11. Paul writes this. I'm speaking the truth in Messiah.
I am not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit. Now, Paul could have just written something. He's an apostle and just writing.
He could have just said, I want to share my heart with you. But in five different ways, he emphasizes, I'm telling you the truth. I'm not lying.
I'm not exaggerating at all. Look at what he says. I'm speaking the truth.
That's number one. I'm speaking the truth in Christ. Okay, Paul, that's even more clear.
Get to your point. No, I'm not lying. Number three, my conscience bears me witness. Number four, in the Holy Spirit. Number five, in five different ways, Paul is saying, I'm not exaggerating. What I'm about to tell you is absolute gospel truth, God as my witness, that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. Paul, the one who wrote, rejoice always, said to the Corinthians that he was sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
Why was there sorrow there? Think of it, maybe you're a married woman, your husband's serving in the military, and he's taken as a prisoner of war, and he's languishing in a prison. You don't know day to day if he's healthy, if he's sick.
You don't even know if he's alive. And you have to live your life. You've got a child between you, and the boy's about to have his third birthday, and you get the birthday party, and everybody's happy, and you're happy, but you're hurt. You're always hurting because of this. Or it's like you have a child in the hospital. You've got several children, and it's the graduation for one, and you're all excited for the graduation, but the other's in the hospital in critical care, and you're happy, but you're sad at the same time. This is Paul saying, I've got a wound, and it doesn't heal.
I've got a pain, and it doesn't go away. The mighty Apostle Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. He's saying, I'm not exaggerating. I'm not exaggerating at all. This is the absolute truth. He lived with this unceasing anguish.
Why? He said, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Messiah for the sake of my brothers. He's in that much agony of heart, unceasing anguish, great sorrow because his people, the chosen people, don't know the Messiah because the ones who were fashioned and prepared for 2,000 years to welcome the Messiah and make him known to the world, Yeshua's own people, Jewish people, they rejected him.
The nation rejected him when he came. Ultimately, only a remnant followed him, and that to Paul was the utter heartbreak, and that to Paul was cause for him to say, think of this, if it were possible, I would cut myself off from Messiah. I would lose my salvation. I would never be with God. I would suffer the punishment of God's wrath, eternal judgment.
I would do that if my people could be saved. What love! But then notice the description. Who's he speaking about? My kinsmen according to the flesh. So it was Jewish people according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption.
This is present tense in Greek. Currently, to them belong the adoption. In other words, they are still called sons of God, children of God. The glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. The promises that God gave to Israel in the Old Testament, Israel after the flesh, those promises are still theirs. They've only been enjoyed right now by a remnant, but they belong to the whole nation, and we're going to go through every word of Romans 9, 10, and 11 in this series, so there can be no doubt about what Paul was saying. Their promises are still theirs. To them belong the patriarchs, not previously, but currently, and from their race according to the flesh is the Messiah, who is God overall, blessed forever. Wow!
Wow! Paul's heart broken. We come back on the other side of the break. I want to talk to you about God's heart. God's heart for Israel. God's heart for Jerusalem. God's heart for Zion.
We've heard Paul's heart, which obviously reflects God's heart, but I want to talk to you about God's heart and what God calls on all of us to do as believers because of that. Just one quick reminder, if you're not getting my cutting-edge, life-changing, front-line newsletter, by all means sign up today. It's free. It comes your way once a month. Go to TheLineOfFire.org. TheLineOfFire.org. Sign up today right on the home page.
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Call 1-800-771-5584, 1-800-771-5584 or online at TriVita.com. Welcome back, friends, to the broadcast. Michael Brown here. We pray daily that God would enable us to help you, to strengthen you, to nourish you, because we are in a real battle in this world day and night, and we as friends, as co-workers, want to say you are not alone. We're in the Line of Fire together, but we want to infuse you with faith and truth and courage. Yeah, and courage is something we often need, and courage is something God put in me, and hopefully, something He put in me can rub off in you, just as things that God put in you and others rub off in me.
Let's strengthen one another. All right, we're talking today about God's heart, God's pain for the lost sheep of the House of Israel, and the book we're using as a textbook after the scripture is Our Hands Are Staying with Blood, The Tragic Story of the Church and the Jewish People. And I want to read some scripture about God's heart in a moment.
But let me tie this in together with the book as we talk about Jewish roots through this month, and why Israel's salvation should matter to every Christian. So when I came to the Lord as a brand new believer, my dad was thrilled that I was off drugs. I'd been a very heavy drug user. Instead of getting high at the age of 14, shooting heroin at 15, got radically born again at 16. And my dad said, Michael, I'm glad you're off drugs, but we're Jews.
We don't believe this. So he introduced me to the local rabbi who befriended me. We were actually in touch again, oh, probably a couple years back. So he would be now, oh, he'd be approaching 80 years old, because he's about 11 years older than me, and I'm about to turn 69. So we've known each other for well over 50 years.
And one of the first things he did was gave me a book about anti-Semitism in church history. It's a subject we're going to open up in weeks to come. It's going to be painful, but it's eye-opening. It's something we just have to know. We have to know, we have to understand, and then we have to know how to respond to it and how to counteract it as it seeks to raise its head again in our day. Everything we'll talk about on the air is not abstract. It's practical.
It's real. It's important. So he gave me this book to read, and it basically laid out the horrors that Jews have suffered at the hands of professing Christians over the centuries, and why Jews resisted converting over the centuries, feeling they were being loyal to the God of Israel, and appealing to me to remember the blood that was shed of our own people, of my own Jewish people, rather than bow down to what was often an apostate and even corrupt church that was preaching to them. And over the years, as I studied this more and interacted with more Jewish people and read more of the history, I began to feel the pain even more, the pain of our people.
And I felt moved on by God. As I started writing a lot of books in the late 80s, this release to write things had been building in me for years, and it was the beginning of the flood tide of almost 50 books written now since then, and I felt acutely the church must feel the pain of the Jewish people. And that's what happens as people read Our Hands Are Stained with Blood. I remember getting a note as the book was being translated into Chinese.
I got an email from the Chinese translator who said, I'm translating your book wailing and screaming, wailing and screaming. And of course, the book will fill you with hope and fill you with vision and fill you with purpose. And we get into a lot of scripture, a lot of the controversial doctrinal issues and who is Israel and who is a Jew. We get into that.
We have whole chapters dealing with these. So I want to encourage every one of you get your copy of Our Hands Are Stained with Blood. I want to remind you that in Luke 19, Jesus, Yeshua wept over Jerusalem. He wept and said, if you only knew what you're going to suffer because you didn't recognize the time of your visitation, you didn't recognize the time of God coming to you. And that's been a pain that God's had in his heart for the Jewish people over the centuries. When the Jewish people are in slavery in Egypt, their cries come up to him in Exodus 2. He hears the groans and cries of the people. There's even a fascinating passage in the Book of Judges in the 10th chapter because of the suffering of Israel.
And I want to read this to you. This is in Judges chapter 10. So Israel is guilty of sin and Israel is suffering because of it. But because of God's heart for the people, because of his love for them, it says, so they put away the foreign gods from among them and serve the Lord.
And his spirit grieves, pained over the misery of Israel. God says in Isaiah 63, in all their affliction, he too was afflicted. So I want to take you directly into the heart of God in Isaiah the 62nd chapter. Now, at first glance you might think that it's the prophet speaking through the whole chapter until a certain point where it's God speaking.
That's possible. But many commentators on the Book of Isaiah, many scholars believe this is God speaking throughout. So it's either the prophet sharing God's heart or God speaking throughout. Isaiah 62 verse 1. For the sake of Zion, I will not be silent. For the sake of Jerusalem, I will not be still.
Till her victory emerge resplendent and her triumph like a flaming torch. Who's it speaking about? Zion, Jerusalem. This physical city to which Jesus Yeshua will return at the end of the age. He's not coming to Rome. He's not coming to the Bible Belt in the United States. He's not coming to some other part of the world where the Spirit's moving. He is returning to Jerusalem and his own Jewish people must welcome him back.
Another topic that we will unfold in the days and weeks ahead in this special equipping series. Nations shall see your victory. So the nations of the world will see the victory that comes to Zion and Jerusalem. And until then God says I will not be silent. Every king your majesty and you should be called a new name which the Lord himself shall bestow. You shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the palm of your God.
This has not yet happened. The temple has not yet been rebuilt. The glory is and even putting the temple aside you say well is there going to be a temple let's not even debate that. The promises of the glory. The promises of the whole nation turning. The whole promises of the nations of the earth streaming to Jerusalem to learn from the God of Israel. That has not yet happened. Much has happened on spiritual levels in terms of the people of the world coming to worship the God of Israel. That is beautiful.
That has happened. And we can worship God anywhere. John 4. Not just in Jerusalem but anywhere. We can worship him in spirit and in truth and yet there are promises that remain for Jerusalem and the city is still set apart as the place to which the Messiah will return and from which he will rule and reign.
It says this. Nevermore shall you be called forsaken nor shall your land be called desolate but you shall be called I delight in her. And your land espoused. For the Lord takes delight in you and your land shall be espoused. As a youth espouses a maiden your son shall espouse you and as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride so will your God rejoice over you.
Now look at this. This is clearly God speaking. Upon your walls O Jerusalem I have set watchmen who shall never be silent by day or by night.
So God has appointed people who are praying. God has appointed people who are putting him in remembrance. O you who put the Lord in remembrance. In Hebrew it is Maskere Adonai.
It is literally that. You put the Lord in remembrance. You who are the reminders of the Lord.
Take no rest. And give no rest to him until the established Jerusalem and make her renowned on earth. Wow!
Wow! This is God himself saying give me no rest. Obviously metaphorical that God does not need to rest.
Right? He doesn't oh I'm tired. I think I better rest.
Take a nap. No he doesn't slumber. He doesn't sleep. The one who watches over at Israel doesn't slumber. He doesn't sleep. We know that scripturally.
But it is metaphorically speaking. Give him no rest. Keep knocking. Keep asking. Keep knocking. Keep asking. Keep knocking. Keep asking. Keep praying.
For what? That he will establish Jerusalem as a praise of all the earth. And when will that happen? When Jerusalem welcomes back her Messiah.
This is when it will happen. And this is when the other nations of the world will recognize God being with Israel and God fighting for Israel as laid out explicitly in Zechariah 12 which has not come to pass yet. And Zechariah 14 which has not come to pass yet. I've read interpretations that to be honest are some of the most twisted bizarre interpretations I've ever read or seen trying to show how these passages have already come to pass. And I've talked to scholars well we're kind of figuring this out. In other words we've got to figure out a way to show that they already came to pass because otherwise it means there's still a future for Jerusalem.
Yes there is. That's why friends that the whole world is an uproar about Israel. That's why the whole world is an uproar about Jerusalem. That's why there's far more pressure on Israel everything it does scrutinized by the world than any other nation on the planet. You know here America was bombing Houthi rebels in Yemen and because of their attacks on ships in the Red Sea as I believe we should rightly do. And I haven't heard anyone wondering about civilian casualties.
I haven't heard anyone talking about that. And in wars that we prosecuted over the years it's unfortunate you try to avoid civilian casualties but you know to take down the Nazis there are massive civilian casualties in Germany and that's it's tragic but it happens with war. Israel does everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties and gets condemned by the world for committing genocide. Why the double standards and why is it that only a handful of nations even after America's example have moved their embassy to Jerusalem which is the capital of Israel.
Every other capital all around the world we recognize whatever the nation says except Jerusalem and Israel. Why? Because there are still prophetic plans and purposes and Satan resists it with all his might. Let us open our eyes to spiritual realities.
Friends this series will be an eye-opener. I can't wait to resume again with you next week. If you're not getting my frontline newsletter go to thelineoffire.org. Sign up today on the home page and take advantage of the thousands of hours of free resources waiting for you there. You've been listening to The Line of Fire. Be sure to sign up for Dr. Brown's faith-building frontlines newsletter at thelineoffire.org.
This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the word and prayer and your own walk with God through this broadcast then stand with us so that we can reach many many more and bless many many more. Together friends we're making a difference. So go to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org and click donate.
