Restoration of Israel (Part A)

The Church is the fullness of the Gentiles.

It's a good thing. So the contrast between the times of the Gentiles when Jerusalem and the Jewish people as a nation were subjected to the Gentiles. Even Jerusalem today, without God giving allies to Israel, she would not survive.

But God has given allies to Israel, and Israel is invincible because of that. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Isaiah.

Please stay tuned with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Isaiah chapter 52 with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. Chapter 52 Isaiah verse 1. Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion. Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city.

For the uncircumcised and the unclean shall no longer come to you. Well, of course, this day is coming, its future. It is at the end of the great tribulation that is coming upon the whole world. Jesus said, such tribulation such as the world has never seen. And when it does happen, when the Lord bars the unbelievers from Jerusalem, well, they don't come to Jerusalem, no longer will Israel and Jerusalem be a cup of trembling for all who would heave it away. There will be a formal celebration, a black tie affair.

He says, here, put on your beautiful garments. And look at what Israel has been through in the history of the world, and you just say, even so, Lord. You know, a lot of Christians want the rapture. And if I were a Jew, I certainly would want Messiah, and I would hope that I would fact check the things that I'm told about this Jesus, and I would hope if I were born in a Jewish home that I would become a born-again Christian. Now Zion here, of course, as we've been covering, encompasses the Temple Mount, Jerusalem, Judah, the Promised Land, and the people of Israel.

It has a broad meaning in the context, if it needs to, it will narrow it down for us. But where it says, Awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion, that's all of it. It encompasses the people of God. Eight times in Scripture, Jerusalem is referred to as the Holy City, in Nehemiah, in Isaiah, in Daniel, in Matthew, in Revelation, and yet this Holy City has been destroyed twice, and God is the one that has proved of its destruction as punishment. But when, when is this going to happen? It's awake, awake, put on your strength. The prophet is encouraging the people of God.

When is this going to happen? Well, Daniel is one of many prophets that ring in on this. Daniel chapter 2, this is, of course, when Nebuchadnezzar had the vision of the giant statue, and the toes were made of clay and iron mixed, and that doesn't bond well, and of course the statue collapses, but Daniel says, And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people.

It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. And so when does verse 1 of Isaiah 52 take place? At the end of the great tribulation period, that seven-year period of just three years, three and a half years of apparent peace for the Jews, and then the three and a half years of great tribulation, but there will be tribulation throughout the world that whole time.

In verse 2, Shake yourself from the dust, arise, sit down, O Jerusalem, loose yourself from the bonds of your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. Well, Jerusalem has a long history of being trampled by the Gentiles. As I've been saying, until Christ returns, Luke chapter 21 verse 24, and Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. Now the times of the Gentiles began with Nebuchadnezzar, and when he conquered and raised Jerusalem, that was the beginning of the times of the Gentiles. And it ends at that apocalyptic moment when Christ comes to rescue the Jewish people.

Now he should make a distinction between the times of the Gentiles and the fullness of the Gentiles. The fullness of the Gentiles ends with the rapture of the faithful church. And I think it's important to point out, apostate churches and the Christians that attend and support them will not be raptured. The rapture is for those who are born again and in love with the Lord Jesus and his word.

But those who are playing games will be left behind. The apostate church will survive, if you can say it that way. The rapture, and they will be left here, and this is seen in the woman that rides the beast in Revelation 18. In Romans 11, we read about the fullness of the Gentiles. Paul says, who I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come. And that is the church age, is the time of the Gentiles, and we'll see tribulation converts before Christ returns amongst the Jewish people, the 144,000 Jews, the two witnesses. But it's still, there will be many still, to be converted, and I'll get to some of that very shortly. But the church is the fullness of the Gentiles.

It's a good thing. So the contrast between the times of the Gentiles, when Jerusalem and the Jewish people as a nation were subjected to the Gentiles, even Jerusalem today, without God giving allies to Israel, she would not survive. But God has given allies to Israel, and Israel is invincible because of that. Israel will be rescued and restored. Zechariah talks about these great tribulation survivors of the Jews, and if you believe in, if you listen to some of the prophecies of these prophets and they've come true, you have no reason to doubt the future prophecies that remain to be fulfilled. Zechariah 13, and it shall come to pass in all the land, says Yahweh, that two-thirds in it shall be cut off and die, but one-third shall be left in it.

He's talking about people, Jewish people. I will bring the one-third through the fire, will refine them as silver and is refined, and remember silver is an emblem of salvation in scripture, and test them as gold is tested, precious to the Lord. They will call on my name and I will answer them.

So out of the dust that the prophet is talking about here in verse 2, shake yourself from the dust. They will. They will arise, no longer trampled or humiliated by the Gentiles. They were enslaved in Egypt once, no more. They were absorbed, the northern kingdom, by the Assyrians, never again, at this time that Isaiah is talking about, and of course they were captured by the Babylonians, and that will not happen. In all the centuries that have gone by with the suffering of Israel, the Spanish inquisitions, the Nazis, all the other things in between, how Russia has treated her, you know, it's all going to be gone.

And so he tells them to arise and then he says to sit, get up and sit, you know, kind of a, so it's certainly not as we would make, as I'm making light of that moment, you know, get up, sit, not that, but he's saying arise out of the dust, and the sit is metaphor for rest and peace, because the Lord is now coming to restore Jerusalem. No more Islam to hate the Jews, no more Gentiles to turn on them, and no more apostate Jews to trade on them either. They will be loosed, as he says here, Israel will be forever free from her haters.

And how we want that to come. Under the figure of captivity, as Isaiah has been using since chapter 49, he addresses the moral and spiritual bondage. It's again, as we covered briefly last session, it's more to the freedom from captivity that Isaiah has in mind than the Babylonian captivity.

And, you know, all the commentators go right to the Babylonian captivity when you speak of being free or held captive in Isaiah, and I covered that last week. I don't think that's, it's not uncommon for pastors and theologians and commentators to all just go in the same direction together without thinking it through. I'm sure we're all guilty of it at some point, but you've got to watch and see if, well, why do I believe this? Am I believing this because my favorite commentator has, believes that, or do I see it in the scripture?

And that's true for you too. I mean, because your pastor says it, or other passages you may have had, doesn't mean it's true. That's why we study to show ourselves approved, you're encouraged to bring your Bible and make notes and check these things. We're not trying to deceive, but the Bible is an intense, intense book, and anybody that thinks they can just, you know, wallow up to it and think that they're going to, you know, I'm going to get all this right, they're out of their mind. The Bible's not looking for deep thinkers, you're looking for anointed thinkers, and that's what John was trying to tell the church. You have no need that someone teaches you, and he wasn't saying you don't need Bible teachers, because he was teaching them when he said that. What he was saying with the Gnostics coming in and all their little secret junk, he was saying it's not deep thinking, which the Gnostics boasted.

They were the quintessential seekers of the knowledge Satan had to offer Eve. Well anyway, John was saying you don't need them. You need to be anointed. You need to be with the Lord, and that will bring you around those who the Lord brings into your life, who will teach you the Scriptures as Paul carefully lays out in Ephesians 4. God has given this to the church, and when you find a church without teaching, you find a church that's going to struggle. Anyway, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole right now.

Maybe later. So anyway, the prophet is saying that you will be loosed forever free, but there's more that the Jews needed than return from Babylonian captivity or anybody else's captivity. They needed to return to the Lord, and that's what Isaiah, all the prophets were trying to get the people to strengthen the righteous Jews and to reach the apostate Jews so they could get right with God, and that's what all of this is about. And this being loose from the bondage, putting off the prisoner garments and putting on the new garment is common in Scripture, and it's very special.

We read it about the prodigal son in Luke 18, but the father said to his servants, bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. You know, there was nothing monotone about that moment when that boy came home. The father was just so, he was ecstatic. You know, it's a beautiful story.

You've got to get misty just thinking about it. He looks up, he sees his son coming, he knows that walk from a mile away, and he just runs to him, and it's a picture of God running to the convert. And so Colossians, and there are other places in Scripture about the new garments, but Colossians, since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.

And so there Paul is saying to put on Christ, to wear the Christlikeness as your uniform. Anyway, Jerusalem is used by God as a timer counting down to the end of history, human history. Luke 21, but when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you know that its desolation is near. Now, you can read that alone and say, well he must be talking about the Romans destroying Jerusalem, but then he puts a time stamp on this.

He says, when you see, in Matthew 24, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken by Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, whoever reads, let him understand. So the first temple, of course, was Solomon's. It was still there when Isaiah was ministering. It was there when Jeremiah was ministering, but then Jeremiah also saw it destroyed. Well, when Christ comes along, it's not Solomon's temple, it's the one that was the second Jewish temple that Zerubbabel put up.

Herod, the wicked Herod, he expanded it, but it was Zerubbabel's second temple. Well, the Romans destroyed that one, and Jesus is talking about a third Jewish temple. Unless there's some nuance to it, there's going to be a Jewish temple built. I think Antichrist, as I mentioned last session, knows that no one can beat the Jews with the military, so he's going to try covenant with them. Sort of like Balaam, you know, Balaam could not curse the Jewish people for Balak, and so he said, well you can't beat them on the battlefield, send in the women, and seduce them into idolatry, which began, but Phinehas rose up and others and they put an end to it. My point is, the Jews want peace so badly, they have wanted this for years, and they let their guard down, they want peace so much, they project, you know, well, we want peace, eventually, surely our neighbors will want peace, and they don't. And Antichrist is going to come along and he's probably going to help build that third temple, that's where I'm going with all this.

He says, I can't beat them on the battlefield, I'll have to seduce them into vulnerability that they would otherwise not fall for. And he's going to pull it off almost, the only thing that's going to save Israel will be the coming of Jesus Christ. But as I already read, two-thirds of the Jewish population in the Promised Land will be killed.

So as the prophet Amos said, this day of the Lord is not a day of fun and laughter, it's going to be a tough thing. Well, verse 3, for thus says Yahweh, you have sold yourselves for nothing and you shall be redeemed without money. Well, anyone who departs from the Lord of creation is cheated, you know, self-sold for nothing. You get nothing from Satan. Satan's not the king of hell, he's not rewarded that. Hell is an awful place for him too, and he will be cast into the lake of fire, he and the anti-Christ and the false prophet of the anti-Christ and those who defy, you know, the salvation of the Lord. He's not going to rule in hell, but he does rule the underworld right now.

He is a thief and he stacks up victims and the only protection against him is through Jesus Christ, and the world is blind to this. They think that the alternatives are sufficient. Well, the alternatives are traps.

They are sealed exits and they, you know, they think when the fire, if a fire should come, they're going to go out those exits and they're not going to work. Well, man can do nothing to pay for their sin. Redemption from the power of sin is only achieved by God.

We know that. The difficulty is communicating this and with success, and for that it's a great dependence on the Holy Spirit. As Christians, we never can, we don't move without the Holy Spirit. Part of that is pictured by David taking the ark from the, you know, into Jerusalem.

They move six steps and they stop and they worship, you know, they feast. You get nowhere far without worship in the Spirit. So, Ephesians 1, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace, which is just the grace and mercy of God.

It's just immeasurable. 1 Peter, that not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. Well, the unjust death of Jesus paid the debt for us all. This is what Isaiah 53 is going to be all about. Now, I must point out, there's not the physical blood of Christ. There's no power in that.

We don't believe in magic. This is a spiritual issue. The words that I speak to you, Jesus, that are spirit.

I'm not telling you to engage in cannibalism. I'm telling you unless you take of my flesh and take of my body, the words I'm saying to you are spirit. If we were saved by the physical blood of Christ, we'd all be lost because there's no blood for us to have sprinkled on us.

These are spiritual issues and they are bigger than the physical issues. So, keeping everything spiritual, depending on the Holy Spirit, we're supposed to be a spiritual people. When we talk about being born again, that Greek word can also mean born from above, that we're in total contact with the unseen. The unseen to us is very real and it is not to the unbeliever or the unbeliever has a counterfeit that they have exchanged the truth for the lie. Verse 4, for thus says the Lord Yahweh, my people went down at first into Egypt to dwell there, then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause.

Well, there's a gap between the Egyptian oppression or captivity and the Assyrian enslavement of the northern kingdom by 600 years. Now, why point that out? It's critical for end time stuff. When the Lord comes and speaks about end times, he merges so much of it. He condenses it and leaves it for us to sort out the timeline because what's he supposed to do? The church wasn't even in existence when he preached on the end times.

The Jews would never have understood him saying, well, the Gentiles are going to flood into the church and they're going to preach that I am the Son of God and you're going to hate them. What's he supposed to do? So he just condenses end times things, just packs it in and it leaves it for us and some of it has a dual application, some of it is a single application.

It is very discernible. It just takes a lot of work and you say, well, how are we supposed? Well, you have the codes right here in the Old Testament and the New Testament develops those codes for us and then John, you know, in his apocalypse, he just says, well, let me just show you how this all plays out and he sort of runs this, you know, you remember when they used to show slides and click them? This is us at the beach, click.

This is us at the restaurant at the beach, click. Well, John is kind of doing some of that with the revelation. Well, verse five, now therefore, what have I, says Yahweh, that my people are taken away for nothing. Those who rule over them make them well, says Yahweh, and my name is blasphemed continually every day. Well, baked into that are these kings in Israel that were monsters and God is like, you know, hey, these are my people, but those who are my people as far as a nation goes are not saved as individuals just because they're of their ethnicity as we've covered that. It's going to take more than being a Jew to get to heaven and it's going to take more than being interested in the Bible to get there. You have to have that relationship, that born-again relationship, and you've got to maintain it because the wilderness of carnality will take back whatever it can. Just, you know, don't mow your lawn anymore and just see what happens.

The wilderness will take it back and the tree will grow through your living room, give enough time. Anyway, when verse five, the cruelty and the captivity of the Jews, how much they've suffered over the centuries, Yahweh's people enslaved because they disrespected God. There's nothing random with God. It's not like, oh, look at that.

I must have missed that. I did not see those armies on your border. Never. God is sovereign and I'm a true believer, when someone comes to church, whether they're a critic or just a soul in need or there to serve or worship, it's not by accident. God's all over it.

What you do with it is another story. So when his people persistently defied him, he ordered even Jerusalem destroyed. Twice so far, a third one is coming. So this perception of divine weakness or meanness is addressed in Ezekiel 36. We don't have time to go into all of that, just I'll take one excerpt from Ezekiel 36, verse 21. But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations wherever they went.

And that section, it keeps repeating that. You profainted. You messed this up. I wanted to bless you. You wanted to make me judge you. And so God is saying, let's get this clear. Anybody that conquers you has not conquered me. You're being judged and I'm using them to judge you.

And I'll deal with them too. Let all men be a liar. God is not mocked. Romans chapter 2, verse 24, we'll be getting this one Sunday in a few Sundays. For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you as it is written. Now he's talking to the fraudulent believers, the make-believers instead of the true believers. And he's saying, you know, this false testimony you have, you make unbelievers want to reject Christ.

They blaspheme Christ because of you. You know, why isn't the Bible enough? I mean, I'm not saying we can't read other materials on scripture.

We certainly can. But if those materials don't match the scripture, if they contradict the word of God, let them be anathema to you. Burn those things.

You don't need them. Don't go by, oh, but I felt so good. My heart, you're being deceived.

You're being suckered. Thanks for tuning in to Cross-Reference Radio today. Cross-Reference Radio is a ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel mechanicsville in Virginia. If you'd like to learn more about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com.

You'll find a number of teachings from Pastor Rick available there. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of new additions of Cross-Reference Radio. Just search for Cross-Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. We're glad we were able to spend time with you today. Tune in next time to continue learning from the book of Isaiah with Pastor Rick right here on Cross-Reference Radio.