Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith. As the killings near Gaza remind us, many ask: Is peace with Hamas even possible? The saga of hatred runs deep. It all began with Isaac and Ishmael thousands of years ago, and continues today. Still, Israel's rebirth is a modern-day miracle.
Today, why the return of Jews to their land means that Christ is coming soon. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Irwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Erwin Lutzer is in a series on seven signs of Christ's return. Today we're looking at sign number one: the rebirth of Israel.
Pastor, one thing seems certain: God gave Abraham a promise he would never break. Yes, Dave. God said to Abraham, "I'm going to give you this land as an everlasting possession," and that's why it is that we believe that Israel's existence in the land today may indeed have very important prophetic significance. We'd like to emphasize the fact that God keeps His promises. I want to express my thanks to the many of you who support this ministry.
Because of people like you, running to win goes around the world. Of course, by radio, but also in podcasts and other means. Thank you. This is your ministry. I would like you to consider the possibility of supporting this ministry consistently.
Or more regularly, here's what you do: you go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com, and when you're there, you click on the Endurance Partner button. Click on the Endurance Partner button, and there you will learn how to become a partner in this ministry. But for now, let us go to the pulpit of Moody Church and listen to God's word. You know, if God was saying that their obedience or disobedience was dependent on whether or not He'd keep His side of the bargain, He could have cast them off long ago and said, "I'm not going to put up with these people.
I've had it up to here. I let it be. I'm going to give my blessings to somebody else if this is the way they're going to act." Remarkable thing is he hangs in there with them.
Now listen to Jeremiah's words in chapter twenty-three, and when I read this, I want all of you to be thinking of one question: Has this ever been fulfilled? Has this happened yet? Jeremiah twenty three verse three. Then I myself shall gather the remnant of my flock out of the countries where I have driven them, and will bring them back to their pasture, and they will be fruitful and multiply. I also shall raise up shepherds over them, and they will tend them, and they will not be afraid any longer or terrified.
Nor will any be missing, declares the Lord. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land. In his days, Judah will be saved, Israel will dwell securely, and this is his name by which he will be called, our Lord. Our righteousness—it's a reference to Christ ruling. Over the territory in the land, verse seven.
Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when they will no longer say, "As the Lord lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt," but "As the Lord lives, who brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the north land and from all the countries where I have driven them." Then they will live on their own soil. What a promise! It's not been fulfilled. The Jews have been scattered. They've been brought back, but they're not accepting Christ as righteousness and and Christ like that.
And they're not living securely in the land. Just go to Israel today.
Soldier on every street corner.
Now I have to pause here because you've been so kind to listen to all that I have to say, and you know what? I've still not finished all that I'm going to say. There are some folks, and many of them are very fine Bible scholars, who believe that God is finished with the Jews as a nation because all of those promises of the Old Testament now are applied to us, the Church. And these fine people, I believe, are wrong. I just needed to throw that in.
Listen to this. Listen to Jeremiah thirty-one.
Now, listen up, all those of you who think that Israel does not have a future because God is finished with them. I think He wrote this text for people who might think of things like that. You'll notice what he says, Jeremiah thirty-one, verse thirty-five. Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the seas so that its waves roar. The Lord of Hosts is his name.
If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then the offspring of Israel also will cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus says the Lord: If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out below, then also I will cast off the offspring of Israel for all that they have done. Declares the Lord. God says, "I'm hanging in with the nation. I will not cast them off at the end of time.
I will fulfill my promises to them." Now. The prophets keep saying the same thing. In the evening service, I'm doing a series on the book of Amos. But before we get to Amos, let me just read some words from Ezekiel. And I'll give you the reference after I have read it, so that you just listen carefully to what the prophet Ezekiel says.
Therefore, say to the house of Israel, "Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went, and I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then." The nations will know that I am the Lord," declares the Lord, "when I prove myself holy among you in your sight. For I will take you from the nations and gather you from all of the lands and bring you into your own land. And then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from your filthiness and from your idols, and I'll give you a new heart.
And remove the heart of stone from your flesh, from you, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I'll put my Spirit within you.
Well, the text goes on, but notice what God is saying: I'm going to bring you back into your land, and then you're going to be converted. You are going to accept the Messiah and the power of the Holy Spirit of God in your life. I mentioned prophets such as Amos. They all say essentially the same thing. Amos said, and by the way, that passage of scripture was Ezekiel chapter thirty-six.
But Amos says in chapter nine, also I will restore the captivity of my people Israel, and they will rebuild the ruin, the cities, and live in them. They will also plant vineyards and drink their wine, and make gardens and eat their fruit. I will also plant them on their land, and they will not again be rooted out from their land, says the Lord God.
Well, we've talked about the Old Testament covenants. We've talked about the prophets. What about the New Testament? Jesus said, in the book of Luke, he said that Jerusalem. He says, will be trodden down by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled.
The key word there is until. Until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled, clearly. I believe that in his mind, he was thinking that then again, the Jewish era will begin in the city of Jerusalem. The Apostle Paul confronted by people who said, "Well, you know, the Jews rejected Jesus, and because they rejected Jesus, God is finished with them. God is taking the promises of the Old Testament and just giving them to the church." Paul.
Meets that opposition directly in chapter eleven of the book of Romans. He says, "I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be, because I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin." He goes on to say that not all Israelites are going to believe, most assuredly, but he's saying that there is going to be a remnant. There are going to be some people who are going to be alive at the return of Jesus Christ.
Some people from that nation, and they will believe on Jesus. He says in verse twenty-six, and thus all Israel shall be saved, as it is written, "The Deliverer will come from Zion, and he will remove ungodliness from Jacob, and he will make a covenant with them." That means that there is going to be a generation of descendants of Abraham. Who are going to be saved because they recognize Jesus Christ to be the Messiah in fulfillment of the Old Testament promises? What are some conclusions that we must hurriedly come to in light of all that I've read? And of course, there are many, many other passages.
Isaiah devotes chapters to Christ's rule in Jerusalem. First, God promised the nation Israel the land as an everlasting possession. God says, "I'm giving you this land, and it is going to be yours." And that promise was unconditional. God says, "I'm going to do it. You are going to be disciplined when you're disobedient.
There are going to be times when you're going to be out of the land. You're going to be scattered all over the place. But I will bring you back from all of the different countries where I've scattered you. and And the time has come when you're going to dwell securely and accept the righteous rule of Messiah. And the time is going to come when that is going to take place." That's number one.
Number two, and now listen carefully: the present regathering of Israel is in unbelief. That is to say, that they are not accepting Messiah Jesus at all over in Israel. It is a scandal beyond irony that one can be an atheist and be a citizen in Israel today, but one cannot be. A messianic Jew. You cannot be a believer in Jesus as a Jewish person and be a citizen in Israel today.
In fact, because of some of the extremist groups, there is persecution in Israel today. The gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be freely and openly proclaimed. Laws are being enacted to restrict it. You say, well, the Jews are still religious. They still pray at the Western Wall.
In fact, you can actually fax your prayers, and someone will put them into the stones at the Western Wall for you. You know that that's possible today. And they're praying to God all the time. They are praying to God all the time, but they are not being accepted by God because they are not coming through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Nobody can approach God on his own.
That's the great lie in America. It's not just a reference to to Jewish people. It's of all different religions, and and no matter what your denomination might be in terms of your Protestant upbringing or whatever, the fact is that nobody can come to God without Christ. Because Jesus Christ died on the cross, and it is His shed blood by which we must come. And you can put all the prayers you want in a wall, and still not have God's acceptance.
Jesus said, "He who honors me honors the Father." But if you dishonor me, you dishonor the Father.
So, present Israel is in unbelief. You know what that means? That means that not everything that Israel does today is right. Doesn't mean that they're on the right side of every issue. The Arab believers, the Christians.
Tell us what a great stumbling block it is for them to to try to witness to other people about Jesus Christ, and then to have the Arabs, their friends, say to them, "I refuse to accept Jesus as your Messiah because your Messiah and you Christians are on the side of the Jews in the disputes," and some of the. Arabs have said that Christians have gone to Israel and they have put their hands on Jewish tanks and prayed for them, that God might grant great victories in the battles. How would you like to be an Arab believer trying to witness to one of your friends about the wonders of Jesus and see that go on? Folks, we must we must recognize here that not everything that Israel does today is right because they have rejected the Messiah. The promises that we read, all of them, have within them the messianic hope that they will accept Christ as Messiah.
Third, the present regathering, the present regathering, however, might be preparation. For the predictions and the conversion of the nation, when the nation turns to Christ, you see that's the thing. Repeatedly, God says, "I'm going to bring you into the land, and I'm going to set the Messiah over you." Well, they're in the land, but the Messiah isn't here yet.
Now, keep in mind that when Jesus does return to the Mount of Olives to rule. And he is going to rule over the earth for a period of time, probably a thousand years. Before that kingdom is swallowed up into an eternal rule, when Jesus Christ returns. You remember, I believe those of us who know Christ as Savior will already have been raptured years before that time.
So the coming of Jesus Christ could be at any moment. We don't know when that is, but isn't it interesting that after centuries of struggle and grief all over the world, that God should bring the Jews back in the land, even if they haven't believed on Messiah yet, but they are in the place where God said they would be when Messiah comes. One day, Jesus. As he was on the Mount of Olives, was going to ascend to heaven. You remember, and the disciples asked Jesus a very interesting question.
They said, "Will thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" You know, by the way, if if their interpretation of the Old Testament was wrong, if it was not God's intention to ever restore the kingdom to Israel again, Jesus had a marvelous opportunity to straighten them out, but he didn't. He simply said, "Look, that's not for you to know. The times and the seasons are in God's hands. That's why it's so important that we not set dates, that we not say we know when Jesus is coming back. The times and the seasons are in God's hands, but you shall receive power after that.
The Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses. And we have the responsibility of being witnesses today." To Jewish, to non-Jewish, no matter what religion or background people have, and and to present the gospel of Jesus Christ, because the day is going to come when Christ is going to return to the Mount of Olives, and the Bible says that the Jewish nation shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and they'll recognize him to be the Messiah, and they'll say, "He is our brother. He is the Messiah for whom we." Have been watching, and so all Israel will be saved, and those who are living during that period of time, the bulk of them, the most of them, will say Christ is Messiah and God, and the Old Testament scriptures will be fulfilled. You say, "Well, Pastor Lutzer, but Jews do not accept Christ; they consider Christ to be their enemy." Yeah, that's true. Many of them do, but thankfully, even in our day, before the return of Christ, there are Jewish people receiving Christ as Savior, and I am sure that we have many, many of them with us today who are examples of the fact that there are Jewish believers accepting Christ, and they become the prototype of the many, many that shall accept Him.
In the future, one of those who has accepted Him as Messiah is Pastor Schwartz, who is sitting here on the platform and who is going to come and share with us a little bit about what it is for a Jewish person to believe on Jesus as Messiah. One of the things the Talmud writes about, and the Talmud is the commentary on the Scriptures by the sages of Israel, the rabbis of Israel. And as they looked at these prophecies, they they recognized there appeared to be two messiahs described. One who would be king and lead Israel in all of her glory, the Messiah who will return and rule and reign, the Messiah Pastor has just spoke of. But also, they recognized from prophecies like Isaiah fifty three that there is going to be a Messiah.
Who's going to suffer? Who will be betrayed? And so, in the Talmud, the rabbis wrote about these two messiahs, and they named one Messiah Ben Joseph, and they called him Ben Joseph because he was like Joseph, the beloved son of Jacob. Do you remember the story? He was betrayed by his brothers.
Sold for the price of a slave. If he had been over twenty-one, it would have been thirty pieces of silver that they betrayed his brother. But because he was under age, it was twenty pieces of silver. And through a chain of events, this one whom they betrayed, the rabbis go on to write about this Messiah Ben Joseph. Like Joseph, he would become savior of the Jewish people.
First to Egypt, first to the Gentiles, and then ultimately to all Israel, as it's written in the last chapters of Genesis, when the brothers come before Joseph, who they don't recognize because he looks and acts like an Egyptian, very foreign to them, and then he reveals himself to them, and they weep and they cry. And they fear retaliation, and they ask for forgiveness. They look upon him, whom they betrayed, and he begins to weep and comfort them, and says, "Brothers, what you did, you did for evil, but God, God meant it for good to save us all, a multitude alive." And so the rabbis go on to see Messiah Ben Joseph, the one who would be betrayed by our own people, who would ultimately be our deliverer. And I praise God that in His grace He showed me that Messiah Ben Joseph is Jesus, whom we as Jewish people betrayed, whom we sold for thirty pieces of silver. And by His grace, opened my eyes.
Even as the day is coming, as Pastor spoke of, that Zechariah the prophet wrote in Zechariah chapter twelve. In that day, I will pour out upon them Israel the spirit of grace and supplication, grace and prayer. And they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and mourn for Him as one mourns for an only son, and weep bitterly for Him. That's the day that Paul wrote about, when the Spirit of God will come upon Israel, a day yet to come, a day I believe is soon, when all at the end of a great battle called the Great Tribulation, and Pastor's going to be talking about that, when we shall look upon Him whom we have pierced and mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son. I thank God that in His grace He opened my eyes, that I looked upon Him, and I pray that today, as you hear and understand how prophecy is being fulfilled in our day, that the Spirit of grace and prayer might come upon you, that you too might look upon Him, whom we have pierced.
This is Pastor Lutzer. I'm so glad that we have an opportunity to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ around the world. Of course, we witness to Jesus Christ personally, but thank God also for technology. And because of people like you, the gospel of Jesus Christ is indeed going around the world through this ministry, and you are a part of it. Let me ask you a question: Would you consider and pray about the possibility of supporting this ministry consistently, say even monthly?
You need more info. Here's what you do: Go to rtwoffer dot com. Click on the Endurance Partner button or call us at one eight eight eight two one eight ninety three thirty seven. Very recently, as a matter of fact, about five days ago, I met a man from Romania, and he's been listening to the ministry of running to win for many years. I was so encouraged.
But why is it that we can minister in various languages of the world? Again, it's because of people like you. I like to emphasize that we're in fifty different countries in seven different languages. Thank you very much for your support. Once again, here's what you do: go to rtwoffer.com, click on the Endurance Partner button, investigate what it would mean if you were to give monthly, and of course, the amount that you give is entirely your decision.
Or you can call us at one eight eight eight two one eight ninety three thirty seven, and when you go to rtwoffer dot com, click on the Endurance Partner button. Thank you so much for helping us as we spread the gospel through podcasts, through radio, through other means, and we deeply appreciate your prayers and your support. You can write to us at Running to Win, sixteen thirty-five North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, six zero six one four. Pastor Erwin Lutzer concluding the rebirth of Israel, the first sign in his series Seven Signs of Christ's Return.
Next time we meet a powerful king, a strange dream, and a road map of history in the form of a giant statue of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay. Don't miss our next program, Europe Reunited. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Irwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
