I am the crew. Harvest, right?
My dear friends, some people tell me I have to run for time, but I want to get there because I want you to see what all this is about. You say, “Oh, well, quickly—the fellow’s got a bee in his bonnet. You know, he’s got to bring this thing in somehow, then have a conference without him getting some word in on this.”
It’s not—that’s not the reason. I want to tell you why.
To know Jesus as the King of the Jews means that the absolute accuracy and relevance of God’s Word improves before your eyes.
Suddenly, you discover that, in this nation, things are being literally brought about according to the actual words of the prophet uttered thousands of years ago. After all this lapse of time, the whole thing is being worked out; and if God is so faithful to work out His Word with such accuracy, how much more all the other things He said about the Church? How much more all the other things about the coming Kingdom and the glory that is to be?
What a comfort it is—what a comfort it is.
When people tell me that there is nothing in the New Testament about the Jewish people in the future, I always turn them to one word, and I catch them on this. There is no way out of it normally.
I turn them to Romans 11:28. There is no way you can spiritualise this:
As touching the gospel, they are enemies for your sake:
but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake.
For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.
Now, you cannot say that is the Church. It is quite clear that it is the Jewish people. As touching the gospel, they—that is, the Jewish people—are enemies for your sake.
But as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake.
This word election is one of the most mysterious and marvellous words in the whole New Testament. It has something to do with the predestinating power of God, the foreordaining power of God, the marking out by God beforehand of things—the invincible, irreversible outworking of the will of God. Election: it is the most marvellous word.
I know people in democratic days cannot quite reconcile themselves to it. “Do you mean to tell me that—?” Well, all I know is this: I am not going to get into the arguments for it again. I am simply saying that the word election has something to do with the irreversible, invincible will of God.
Now people tell me that God is finished with the Jew. He turned away from them for no more time. Hold on. How come the word election is used in connection with them? The only other place in the world where election is ever used, it is used of the Church. How come the very same word is used for the Jewish people?
As touching the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. For your sake, they are enemies. Think of that. But as touching the election, they are beloved. What? They were beloved? They are beloved—for the fathers’ sake.
For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. I have heard many messages on that in connection with the Church, but in the first instance that statement, made by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has to do with the Jewish people. The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
Oh, my dear friends, it has no other word in the whole New Testament. Here is a word that gives you a key to the purpose of God. Jesus is the King of the Jews. The election of the Jewish people has not been cancelled. It has not been nullified. It has not been annulled.
In fact, the purpose of God to bring in a people for His name from every corner of the world has been fulfilled, not by the success of the Jewish people, but by their fall.
And the grace of God is so tremendous that the apostle goes on to argue:
For as ye in time past were disobedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their disobedience,
even so have these also now been disobedient, that by the mercy shown to you they also may now obtain mercy.
For God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all.
Oh, my dear friends, I find this so exciting. It is so exciting. Now, at the same time, I will not keep you here till midnight—fear not, I will not.
The fact of the matter is, you see, that there is a tremendous amount more than what I am saying. If only we really had a full understanding of this thing, our whole attitude to the Word of God—its authority, its inerrancy, its inspiration, its relevance—would undergo a tremendous change.
We would realise that when God says something, He means precisely what He says. He does not play with words. He does not exaggerate. He does not understate. He means exactly what He says. And when some prophet, by the Spirit of God, has said something concerning this people thousands of years ago, it is going to be fulfilled exactly as God said it through the prophet.
Oh, my dear friends, whenever I touch on this matter, I know that there are people who—I am not malicious—but they do not see this matter at all, and get quite hot under the collar about it. I always ask them one simple little question. I cannot say it makes them less hot under the collar.
Why does Jesus return to Jerusalem?
Well, someone says, “Because it is in the Word. It is in the Bible.” No, but why? Why does He return to Jerusalem? If the Kingdom God is bringing in is a spiritual kingdom, a universal kingdom, and an eternal kingdom, and has nothing else ever to do with the Jewish people, why does He return to Jerusalem, the representative of an ancient, glorious past, with no relevance to anything present or future?
Why does He not come to Washington? I am not joking. Take the capital of the free world. Why does He not go somewhere else? Why does He not come somewhere neutral and set out His Kingdom from there to take over the whole earth? Why does He return to Jerusalem? It is a good question. It is a very good question.
Because He will return to Jerusalem, whether we like it or not—the capital of a recreated Jewish state.
It sounds to me as if something will have happened to the Jewish people. He actually, literally, returns as King of kings and Lord of lords. He has visited the Church, but He returns as King of the Jews to His own capital.
That is where it all began. That is where it all will end, and that is where a new phase in God’s dealings with mankind will be initiated.
My dear friends, I find again this all very exciting. I think of the word of the Lord Jesus in Luke 21:24:
And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles,
until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
I have never been able to understand people who interpret this as meaning that Jerusalem will be trodden down by unbelieving people until the Lord Jesus returns. Why did He not say that, if that is what He meant?
In the previous verse, He said:
And there shall be great distress in the land,
and wrath unto this people.
And they shall fall by the edge of the sword,
and shall be led captive into all the nations.
Now, everybody has understood that “this people” is the Jewish people, and “this nation” is the Jewish nation. Everybody understands “they shall fall by the edge of the sword” to mean the Jewish people in A.D. 70. And they shall be led captive into all the nations—everyone has understood that as the Jewish people. Nobody has been able to apply that to the Church.
In fact, it is a very interesting thing that the whole Church escaped this siege because of Luke 21. When they saw the armies laying siege to Jerusalem, they all got out in A.D. 66, when they saw the trenches being dug, and went over beyond the Jordan into what is now the Hashemite Kingdom. So the Church actually escaped.
Then Jesus says that they shall be led captive into all nations—the Jewish people to whom He is speaking now—and then Jerusalem, the political, economic, and spiritual capital of that nation, will be trodden down of the Gentiles, non-Jews, until the times of the Gentiles—the times of the non-Jews—are fulfilled.
Now you might wonder why I spoke about Jesus as King of the Jews. But this is how we know that we have passed into the last days: by what is happening to the Jewish people.
You know, Luke again gives us the clue in Luke 21:29. He interprets the words of Jesus, “Learn the lesson of the fig tree,” by putting it this way: “Behold the fig tree, and all the trees.”
When they now put forth their leaves, you see it and know of yourselves that the summer is now near. People say that this fig tree is only a ministry of stuff: then you see its leaves coming out, and summer is coming. But the interesting thing for us in Israel is that the fig tree is the last of the trees to put its leaves out. It is not the harbinger of spring. The blossom comes first, first, first.
When the fig tree puts its leaves out, which it can do in twenty-four hours, you know that the hot, dry summer season is only a few weeks away. Very little time indeed. We have not got a long spring to go through before summer comes; we really have only weeks to go before summer comes.
But we need to understand this twofold significance here. First, when you see these things coming about—nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom, wars and rumours of wars, earthquakes in many places, famines, shortages, plagues, diseases, and persecution—you will know that the beginning of sorrows has started. It is the beginning of the last phase, but not the end.
Then we think about the abomination of desolation that will mark the actual last stage of the way. But I want to ask you something—the right reverend: can you tell me any time in the last eighteen hundred years when there has not been nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and wars and rumours of wars? Can you?
If you look at history, there has not been a single year in the last eighteen hundred years that has not been marked by war, a rumour of war, strife, nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom. We did not have television, we did not have telephones, we did not have satellites and all the rest. When something happened in China, it took us sometimes a year or two before, in the West, we even heard about it. Now something happens, and we shall hear about it within ten minutes.
But that does not make any difference to the fact that there has always been war. So what kind of sign is that? I mean, the very nature of a sign is that it is exceptional.
“Oh, come on, just wait. Jesus did not mean just wars and rumours of war; He meant world war.” But then how did any one of the generations in the past eighteen hundred years know that the wars they were experiencing were not the worst thing that could ever happen?
Suppose you were in a hundred years’ war which made the whole of Europe a death trap. Could you not imagine that that was the biggest war ever, and it must mean the Lord’s coming?
Can you tell me any time in the last eighteen hundred years when there have not been earthquakes? In China, there was an earthquake which killed close on a million people. Can you tell me any time in around eighteen hundred years when there have not been famines? There have been famines so colossal that whole areas have been devastated; there has only been a tenth of the population left alive.
What about plagues? Supposing you were alive in the period of the Black Death, which put eighty-seven per cent of the population of Europe and the Middle East into death. Then there was famine because there was nobody to sow the fields. When the whole economy of the world broke up, the professions and crafts—there was nobody in them to carry on.
The material world was in the grip of plague. Jesus must be coming. You know, we are so superior. We think that these poor saints and preachers were so stupid: they thought Jesus was coming, but we would not fall into that trap. I have the greatest sympathy with them.
What about persecution? Can you tell me any period in the last eighteen hundred years where believers have not been persecuted? If you want to write, I can give you a marvellous list—names you have never heard of: Bogomils, Paulicians, Albigenses, Waldenses—these little names given to believers in different generations before the Reformation; murdered, martyred, drowned, hung up.
What about the Reformation period? What about the Inquisition? There is not an era that you can think of where there has not been persecution of believers. So what I am saying is this: it makes mockery of the words of the Lord Jesus. He said, “These are the signs,” but these are the signs by which you could be misled.
Then someone clever says, “Well, no, just wait. They have to be not only universal war, but a conjunction of all these things together.” But there have been conjunctions of these things together.
No, my friends, what I am trying to get out is this: Dr. Luke gave us the clue—“Behold the fig tree, and all the trees.” In other words, when you see these signs on a universal scale in conjunction with something happening to a particular tree, to the Jewish people, then know that you have entered into the last phase of world history.
Now, in the whole last eighteen hundred years, nothing has ever happened to the Jewish people that could be called the re-creation or rebirth of a Jewish state. Never in those eighteen hundred years had Jerusalem become the capital of a reborn, recreated Jewish state.
Now, my friends, in this generation the whole thing has happened. On the fourteenth of May, 1948, the Jewish state was reborn. Then, on the seventh of June, 1967, Jerusalem was reunited in the lightning move of the Israeli Defence Forces and was declared to be, by an act, the indivisible and eternal capital of the Jewish people.
It sounds to me as if the words of Jesus have been fulfilled: “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”
Now, my friends, I think our time has gone. Why have I spoken about Jesus as King of the Jews? Some of you must say, “Why did you not stay on King of kings, Lord of lords?”
Because you will never know where you are—we will never know where we are—unless we know Jesus as King of the Jews.
This Lord Jesus has in His heart a passion and a love for the Jewish people that caused Him to break into uncontrollable tears again and again in His ministry. He has never left them.
Like Joseph, there must be times when tears course down His cheeks. He loves this people.
It is not that He does not love you. This is a strange thing about Christians of Gentile extraction: they assume that if they are not produced in Rabbinic stock, they are second-class citizens. You know, we are God’s kind of leftovers; we are the sort of cut-out. No such thing. No such thing.
No, my dear friends, not like that at all. You are the fulfilment of the aspirations and longing of the patriarchs and prophets.
But there will come a day when, out of the cities of the Gentiles, ten men will come and take hold of the skirt of him who is a Jew and say, “We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”
It has happened. They have taken hold, I know so reverently, of the skirts of the Lord Jesus—a Jewish Messiah, the King of the Jews—and said, “We will go with You.”
Oh, God. God, work that out.
I think then it becomes a great comfort for us to know where we are. And secondly, I believe that if God so loves this people, whom He is going to reconcile, then we ought to make sure that in our hearts there is a real love too. Now, that is another subject.
Let me close. I want just to close by quoting on the conflict over the King.
This King—this King of Israel, this King of the Jews—there is tremendous conflict over Him. Never at any single time has the conflict ceased. Right from before He came into this world, the conflict raged over Him.
That is why the psalmist asks:
Why do the nations rage,
And the peoples meditate a vain thing?
And then said:
He that sitteth in the heavens will laugh:
The Lord will have them in derision.
I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son;
This day have I begotten thee.
Yet have I set my king
Upon my holy hill of Zion.
This conflict is not going to grow less. It is going to grow more and more as we come near to His appearing. The battle is going to become ever greater in its ferocity as we come nearer to the coming of the King.
Everything that can be shaken will be shaken. That is not just political and economic and moral; it is spiritual as well.
My dear friends, we need not be afraid. The Book says, “We are receiving a Kingdom that cannot be shaken.”
This is how it puts it in the Hebrew letter:
Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken,
let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God.
You know, this unshakable Kingdom is unshakable because of the King. It is the King who is unshakable.
That is why you and I need to know the King. We need to know who has control over all the forces in this world, visible and invisible. We need to know Him as Lord over every single force in the world—whether it is demonic, whether it is political, whether it is economic, whether it is moral, or whether it is spiritual.
King of kings and Lord of lords. We need to know Him as King of the Jews, working out the purpose of God for the nation, step by step, vindicating the Word before the eyes of the nations.
There are going to be some major conflicts in the future, and in those conflicts God is going to vindicate the absolute accuracy and trustworthiness of His Book.
That is why we need to know Jesus.
You and I will never be preserved in purity unless you and I know that Jesus has all authority and power and inherent honour. We shall compromise.
You know, when people become afraid, when nations become afraid of a superpower, they start to compromise. When individuals become fearful in circumstances and situations, they start to compromise. It is a natural thing to do.
It is only when we know One who is King over the nations and King over all these forces—working out the purpose of God according to plan, on time—that we will not compromise. We are on the winning side. There is no need to compromise. No need at all.
So, my friends, do you and I want to be saved from having our minds corrupted from the simplicity and purity which is toward Christ? The only way is to know Jesus as King.
Thank God, He is working His purpose out. Ah, my dear friends, let me say it again: the King is coming.
The Lord Jesus is returning. He is going to take you and me to be with Him.
Some little while ago—last year, actually, when I was not very well—a person sent me a snippet of a poem. It meant a tremendous amount to me. I felt as if I was failing, as if somehow or other the enemy had got on top of me.
You know, we are all so silly—and I am in particular—that we think that if we fail, “Oh, my word, the whole purpose of God is going to grind to a halt.” You know, it is an amazing thing: we think we are indispensable.
This was the poem:
On the far reef the breakers recoil and shatter home,
Yet still the sea behind them urges its forces on;
Its chant of triumph surges through all the thunderous din:
“The wave may break in failure,
But the tide is sure to win.”Almighty sea, Thy message in changing spray is cast,
Reading in God’s great plan of progress, “It matters not, at last,
How wide the shores of evil, how strong the rocks of sin;
The wave may be defeated,
But the tide is sure to win.”
My dear friends, that is how I see it. You and I do not want to fail. We want, by the grace of God, to be overcomers. But should we sadly fail, the purpose of God, in the hands of this King, is going to win.