“Woe: Part 3” Matthew 23:31-39

Michael, could you put the first verse of that song up for me, please? On Sunday mornings, we have a pastoral prayer. Sunday nights, we don’t always because this is a little bit less formal and we’re not following as strict a liturgy, although that’s a word not many Baptists use, but it’s still true. Everybody follows a liturgy. That, but tonight, as we sang that, when trials come, no longer fear. We do have some people, some families in our church that are going through some really hard times. Not everyone knows all the details or knows exactly what’s going on, but there are some real struggles that are going on that eventually will be revealed, but not for now.

And so as I sang, as we, as I sang it, as we sang it together congregationally, when trials come, No longer fear, because when trials come, we often fear. We fear the results. We don’t know what the results are. For in the pain, our God draws near. We’re never told that you’re not going to have problems in life, that families and illness and things aren’t going to happen. We’re not told that’s not going to happen. But in the pain, God draws near to fire a faith worth more than gold, because in the problem, his faithfulness is told. And in that, we have the promise of God.

Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, this evening, we just make a bold approach unto you. And I would pray for those families that are going through some hard times. Some have been hit up with several things that have just come up this past week. And Father, there is sorrow, there is turmoil, there is a brokenheartedness, but you are in control. And that in the trial, you do draw near. Sometimes, Father, if we let the trial become too big, we do not experience your nearness. But Father, we know that you are near. And that it is in those days when Life seems to be pulled apart, and when things just seem to be stretched, you still hold all things together, for in Christ all things consist. So Father, tonight, we just pray your special blessing upon those in times of trial, in this time of just brief instruction as we would contemplate these things, and to realize that you’re a God who is transcendent, You’re a great and holy God above all and beyond all. And yet you are a God who draws near to your children in special love. And it’s in that reality that even the passage that we look at tonight, that after Jesus pronounced these woes, it gives us just how much worse it is for them that withdraw and are told that they will never come. So Father, tonight, we pray that you would bless our time together. May we, as we go from this place, rejoice because we have a great God who is transcendent, and yet he is near. As we rejoice in Jesus’ name, amen.

I’m gonna start off with a comment, or a statement, rather, that’ll sound a bit mundane, but it’s just thoroughly true and stands. God has a special love for the nation of Israel. One man put it recently, and it’s been stated before, that one of the strongest proofs of the existence of God and the veracity of the Bible is the nation of Israel. I mean, what do you do with this? just like we have a candidate running for president that there is a beyond rationality hatred for this individual.

Now there’s a lot that we don’t like, but it’s not rational on how he’s treated or those kind of things. But you put that on steroids and apply it to a nation, that’s what you have in Israel. Anti-Semitism is not fully rational. It goes beyond anything. And I’m not equipped because I’m a science math person, not history. But I’ve done a lot of reading in history this week concerning how Jews have been treated over the years. And it’s just simply not rational. Oh, we all know the Hitler stuff. Six million Jews. And there’s people that’ll just say, oh, that didn’t really happen. The blindness of mankind is really unbelievable. But then yet, if you go back, and because of where we’re gonna be at, the destruction, well, the destruction of Jerusalem was terrible. And the things that they did, Josephus, the first century historian who wrote things down, went out of a hatred for Jews and that these people are below human. They’re substandard humanity. You kill a Jew, it’s not that big of a deal because, you know, they’re just nothing. And the things and the atrocities that they would do.

I’ll mention only one. They, during that time, because of their hatred for Jews, that they would if they would not submit to the Roman government, for the zealots were the ones that rose up in the rebellion, and it started, if I’m not mistaken, in 66 AD, but it was 70 AD, four years later, that the whole place fell apart. They did not expect that to fall, for the temple to come down, but it did. And the destruction of the Jews. But just if you did not submit, you were tied to two horses that were sent in opposite direction, and then the remaining body parts were posted in public to remind the others.

Is it any wonder, at least while in our country, we have this thing, cruel and unusual punishment, because the darkness and the hatred and the depravity of the human heart is so bad It can make up ideas like this to do to humans that you just despise. This is the year 2024, and Jews are still here. Go figure. That is an act of the grace of God, truly. It is also, I believe, one of the marks, although there are many, that God is not done with them yet. And we read in, and this is the positive side that we need to keep in mind for in what we’re gonna look at tonight.

But in, you don’t need to turn here, but I’m gonna read from Jeremiah 31. And listen, the 31, verse one says, and at the same time, saith the Lord, I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. Now that was stated after Israel was already corrupt in judgment. I remember the book of Lamentations soon to follow. God is going to whoop them and he’s going to whoop them bad. He’s going to take them to the woodshed. He’s going to scatter them for their unbelief and everything that he’s going to said that he’s going to do. But it does not mean that God does not have a love for them for whom the Lord loveth he chastens and scourges every son and daughter whom he receives, not only those of us that are believers in his son, but also in the nation of his people, of which they have a corporate or a national election.

We have a personal salvific election, but they have a national election. He continues to say, and thus says the Lord, the people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. Israel, when I went to give him rest, the Lord appeared of old to me saying, and here it is, yes, I have loved you with a temporary love. I have loved you with an everlasting love. Now this is God, our God, the father of Jesus Christ, if we want to think of it in that way, but it’s also Christ and it’s also the Holy Spirit. Because here, O Israel, our God is one. I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness, I have drawn you. Again, I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel. You shall again be adorned with your tambourines and shall go forth with the dances of those who rejoice.

And I’ll just pause there to say there is passage over passage over passage. about a future blessing for the nation of Israel like has never been seen. Ezekiel’s temple and other places, things that when we get into the areas of eschatology, how all that’s going to work out, I don’t know. It appears that the 12 tribes will be reestablished. How is that going to happen? I don’t know. Are those records lost? Yeah, I think. I don’t know how it’s going to do that. But I also know that the Son of God walks on water. How did he do that? I don’t know. That’s why you call them miracles.

So I am not going to limit my God in being able to accomplish his will and what he wants to do for those people that he loves. He took me, a dead sinner, and gave me new life. And so how fully does that all happen? I don’t know, but I know it’s real. And I’m not gonna say that God cannot do that.

Now, those are things that we need to be reminded of because we are looking at in this particular passage, the last words that Jesus is gonna utter to the nation of Israel per se. Now, there’s gonna be other things that are gonna kinda transpire, but this is the last of the public teaching and preaching. Back in chapter 23, verse one, it says he spoke to the multitudes, and he spoke to the disciples. When we get to chapter 24, we get verse three, and it says, now he sat on the Mount of Olives, The disciples came to him privately saying, tell us when these things will be and what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age.

Now, I was raised in a church that had a particular view of eschatology and the doctrine of last things, but and also was taught that there are some things that are family truths. Some things are, you know, only those who are truly born again and in the family of God can we fully, can we even begin to fathom their greatness and to understand what that is.

What Jesus is gonna give us in Matthew 24, that’s family truth. But what we have in these woes and what we’ve been looking at in chapter 23, that’s public truth. Woe to you hypocrites. God despises hypocrisy and he’s going to judge Israel. And then this morning we did get there’s so much more that could be said. But in that last woe the last woe that had to do with them and the prophets. Verse 31 of chapter 23 and it says therefore he’s wrapping it up. This is going to be an application or therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. In other words, you are part of the problem in unbelieving Israel. Israel today is in a state of unbelief, and that is what makes our position, and when we talk about Israel sometimes, we gotta be careful.

While I believe wholeheartedly that God loves Israel, and while I believe that God, I believe wholeheartedly that God has a future for ethnic Israel, That’s ethnic Israel and their good future is when they believe. And they’re not believing right now. And so what that means is I can’t say that I always agree with everything that Israel as a corporate nation does. I can have disagreements there. And just because they’re God’s loved people, look at all the mistakes they did in the Old Testament. My stars, just like everyone walking through the wilderness and all the complaining and bickering and then everything and then they get a nation and then they get the land and they do and they only do partial obedience and all that kind of stuff.

Well, we want to got to be careful. We’re not the, you know, people of without sin. So when I say this, I want us to avoid the kind of thing that sometimes people practice today in. Well, if it’s Israel, it’s got to be right. No. No, that’s just not true. But there’s going to be a future for him. He’s not going to totally wipe him out and so forth.

So take a look. It says, therefore, you are witnesses against yourselves. Verse 32, fill up then the measure of your father’s guilt. And then he called him and I made that distinction between the two names for snakes. You are, as it were, of the old serpent or of Satan, your serpents and your brood of vipers, which are poisonous snakes that are highly camouflaged. And that would be that you’re a bunch of hypocrites with a bunch of poison, and people aren’t always going to see it. How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Answer, you can’t.

Therefore, he concludes again, indeed, I send. And this is where it now goes from looking at the past. You hated the prophets. Oh, we wouldn’t have killed the prophets. We would live back then. Oh, yes, you would have, he says. You’re a witness to yourself. And I’m sending. I send to you. Prophets, wise men, scribes, some of them you will kill and crucify. And by the end of the week, he’s gonna be one of them. And some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth. Now that’s a you. the nation of Israel thinking of that, but it’s upon all who are the hypocrites, those who stand opposed to God, those who do not accept Christ. They are guilty of the righteous blood.

I cannot read verse 35 there and not be reminded of the revelation passage where the souls are under the throne crying out. We were martyred for the faith. And he’s, you know, how long, O Lord, faithful and true will it be? Calm down just a little bit. I got all things under control. You’ve got some more that have to die yet. That is always profound to me. There’s some more that’s going to have to die yet, but there’s an end. And once the last one of those dies, oh, judgment is coming. And that’s in a sense what he’s saying here, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakai.

Now this one’s limited to the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar, assuredly or truly, truly, amen, I say to you, all these things will come to pass upon this generation. After words like that, what is Jesus going to say?

To spare my time, because I’m so upset with all the agenda of television and so forth, and except for a few things, either keeping up on a little bit of news, or when the Hallmark Channel is on, and you see some things on there. Pretty much, I don’t watch TV. But to keep up with things, I do have an Instagram, and of course, a lot of animal channels and some things like that. And then because of my son-in-law, Daniel, who flies airplane, I have some airplane Instagram accounts that I follow. And so you get a diversity. I mean, you know, two minutes here, three minutes here. And you can bounce around and accomplish a lot of things in a short period of time. And so they have these aviation things. And one that is always kind of interesting are those airplanes that are flying, usually small, but not always.

Sometimes there are, you know, several passenger kind of planes and things like that. And they’ll say the most dangerous airports in which to land. They’re usually on an island or in the mountains. And they have really short, you know, landing strips. And like if you don’t get the brake on enough, or if you don’t power down enough, oops, you go off into water or off the ledge. And so they talk about, and they’ll bring up the stats, how many airplane accidents they’ve had there, or just, you know, and then you watch them come in. And you always wonder, how is he going to land it? Well, when we come to a passage like this, How is Jesus going to land this baby?

This passage with such pathos, such emotion, so powerful, so condemning, how is he going to bring it to a close? One of the marks of oftentimes young preachers is not so much what they preach, it’s how do they end their sermon. You know, is it, do they actually have an application? Do they do application throughout the sermon? Did they bring it up or they say, well, that’s it, goodnight. And then you just stop, do you leave people hanging? And public speakers have different kinds of conclusions that you kind of strive for.

Woe to the preacher who doesn’t have a, doesn’t know how he’s gonna wrap it up and he just keeps on talking. One has to be very careful that you don’t do that. In this passage, and of course Jesus being the world’s perfect preacher, how is he gonna land the airplane? How’s he gonna land this message? And that’s what we have in verses 37, 38, and 39. How is he gonna bring this down?

Tonight, what I wanted to do is I have an approach. I want to approach, but I want to approach the pathos. In these three verses, there is such deep emotion and there’s pathos, a passion in all of it. There is a gravitas, there is a heaviness that is here, but there is also a wonderful and strong and extremely powerful proclamation that’s gonna carry Jesus through. And so I want us to consider the pathos of this passage in three different ways. First of all, verse 37, there is intensive compassion. There is the pathos of intensive compassion.

Notice after, I’m gonna read verse 38 so we get the flow assuredly, amen. I say to you, all these things will come to pass upon this generation. Now, that has to do with what he’s already said, but what he’s about to say. And and so there’s maybe a pause. Maybe not. And then Jesus says this. In the Greek, it’s a do. That’s the Greek word. It is the same one, the same word. Only the translators decided to take just the word. Oh. But to do. What that is the word, behold. And I’ve said this before in other messages because Matthew likes to use the word. He’s quoting Jesus who obviously liked the word. And it has this idea of behold, the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world is what John the Baptist would say. Behold. And what does that mean? Deep theological concept here.

Look at. Behold it. Take a deep, intense, understanding, rational, pay attention to what I’m about to say. Behold. But in a passage like this, the translators, and I would tend to think they did a good job, because sometimes you can take literary license, sometimes they do that way too much, but there can be a literary, when you consider what the context is and everything, how are you gonna translate this? The translator said, oh, Because the heart of Christ is in this statement. He’s grabbing attention. Oh. Now we also know that this is extremely profound because of what follows. He’s saying pay attention. This is really important. That’s why I didn’t want to tag it on as a tail end of a morning message. It’s worthy of a message all its own. Oh.

And then he says. Jerusalem. But that’s not all. He said it twice. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. That is called a double statement of emphasis. And that is a Hebrew method of interpretation or of expression that grabs the attention but also is for sake of emphasis. Jesus would say it, like for example, many will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord. He wanted them to get it. There’s emphasis.

There’s a lot of people that call me Lord. Yeah, they really think I am their Lord. And the double statement of when you have like Lord, Lord, or when Jesus say Martha, Martha, Or whenever it’s stated as emphasis, but now you’ve got this with the pathos of oh, and then you’ve got Jerusalem stated twice. Pay attention, Jerusalem. That’s why I started off tonight’s message. God really loves Israel. And the antisemitism that is seen in this world since the conception of Israel, since basically Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, the hatred against the Jews and antisemitism is thoroughly satanic.

You see, because God loves Jerusalem, which stands for Israel, a nation, because it was Jerusalem that fell, but a nation, a judgment. God loves Israel. God loves Jerusalem. And Satan hates whatever God loves. And so, I think that this is all put together and that what has to be a part of our eschatology on how we figure out all those difficult passages and how we piecemeal these things through. So, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. And that is a statement of lament a statement of brokenheartedness.

But one thing I think that oftentimes we come to this passage and we just think that he just loves Jerusalem and we tend to think that love looks beyond all blemishes and we get the Disney perception of and to live happily ever after and all that kind of stuff. But read the text closely. After we have in this pathos of intense compassion through, oh, the double statement and the term suggest intimacy.

Notice what it is that he continues in. He identifies Jerusalem. The one who kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to her. God loves a nation, and because of his love for the nation, he has sent, and Jesus says, and I’m still sending, and I’m being sent, and you’re gonna kill me in four days. And you kill him. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, what on earth are you thinking? Why are you doing this? So there’s the profound, intense compassion, which is only emphasized and uplifted more because of their constant rejection. They’re killing the very people that God’s sending to help deliver them. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets. You kill prophets, you stone, those are sent to you.

Now, lest you think that there’s a misinterpretation, that this is a lament out of the heart love of God for Israel, that’s the only way then the rest of this statement then makes sense. How often, and some of that would be very often, I wanted to gather your children, the children of Israel together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. The picture, obviously. I’ve had a couple of chickens as pets. I never had them so that they were actually laying eggs and that sort of thing. But I think we know pretty much the picture of what it is here, that a hen, once the eggs are hatched and the little chicks are going around, and chicks are so cute, but then when she wants to protect them or if there’s a shadow that overglows, flies over and she lets out a certain cluck, they will flee to her, she will do this, and she will go to the death to protect her chicks.

Now, to say that’s out of love and everything, okay, that’s going a little bit far. She’s doing this instinctively, but it’s a picture. It’s a picture of protection, a picture of desire to prolong the life of and to take care of. And so notice what he says, Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. The one who kills the prophets and you keep doing these wrong things that I sent to you. I wanted to redeem you. I wanted to protect you. I wanted to to keep you from the false way. But you would not. You would not. You were not willing. This really shows, if anything, what total depravity is. When, you know, does a man have a complete free will that he can do things that he ought to do? by God’s standards? Answer, no, they don’t want to.

Even though God’s actively involved, until God does a preemptive work in a salvific way that brings them, removes the scales from the eyes and so forth, they will continue in ignorance. They will continue to rebel. And the same thing is true of us in salvation. That’s why grace is irresistible. when God has set his mark on you. That’s why it doesn’t say that all that the Father has given to me, most of them will come to me. No, they will come to me, why? Because of the irresistible grace of God.

But here, I sent them to you. That only shows the fact that God in his overall plan and purpose and providence for a nation, he wanted to preserve them and they are gonna be judged because of their sin, their rejection. And so it isn’t that they were predestined to be judged because of this. No, while their destiny was predetermined, they weren’t chosen for that because God provided a way escape and they chose to reject it. And that’s going to come out here in just a little bit and just a little bit in the next verse.

So how often I would have gathered the as a hen gather their chicks and you would not. There was a willingness to save and protect, but there was no willingness to change. the intense compassion and the pathos behind it. We cannot lose that to go into the next verse and the next pathos. So now we’re gonna step two steps back and come to the pathos of intense judgment, verse 38. See, now again, that term see is to behold, pay attention to, look at this. Behold the judgment. See your house and the house that be the house of Israel, a reference to the collective people of God in the nation of Israel. Your house is left to you desolate. That’s all he says.

Behold judgment, desolation. Jump down to chapter 24 verses one and two. Then Jesus went out, departed from the temple, and his disciples came up to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said to them, he said, put in your mind, he’s out there, his 12 disciples now, they’re going outside, they’re looking at the beautiful temple. Do you not see all these things? And they would say, yeah, obviously, our eyes are open, we see this beautiful temple. Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another that shall not be thrown down. Can you imagine how that hit the disciples? In the gut? What do you mean this magnificent temple? We were brought back to the land. I mean, yeah, we messed up in the Old Testament. We came back and yeah, we got the Romans now, but look at this temple. And Jesus looks at them. Not one stone upon another is coming. Your house, the house of Israel, the house of those of whom were given the spiritual leadership and the scribes and in the Pharisees, those hypocrites that have kept you. And he pronounced those woes. And he says. And the payment. Though the spanking, the the discipline, the penalty for the nation of Israel as this glorious temple, gone. It’s gone.

Those poor disciples, no wonder they were so confused. And by the end of the day, Jesus is dead, which only proves he was right. And they were testifying of themselves that they are these wicked guys who need to be judged. There is just judgment upon those who rebel against God. That’s the pathos in verse 38, the intense judgment. Go with me to the gospel of Luke. I have tried not to go to other synoptic gospels throughout our time here, but this one is maybe a good time to do this. But in the gospel of Luke, chapter 19, And verse, I think this will work. Yeah, the order that Luke uses is different than the order that Matthew uses. So we have the triumphal entry beginning at verse 28. But what I want us to do is just go down to verse 39. And the triumphal entry says, some of the Pharisees called to him from the crowd, teacher, rebuke your disciples. But he answered and said unto them, I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out. Oh, they’re going to in destruction. But notice verse 41.

Now, as he drew near, he saw the city. That would be Jerusalem. And he wept over it, saying, If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for you peace, but now, and this is part of the plan and purposes of God and secret councils, but now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you, close you, in on every side and level you and your children within you to the ground. And they will not leave in you one stone upon another because you did not know the time of your visitation. Do you get that?

Now Matthew just chooses not to reveal that to us in his gospel, but Luke chose and we have it. Jesus wept for Jerusalem. He wept at their total rebellion and their sin. Repent! If we apply that to salvation, God doesn’t derive pleasure from the death of the wicked. But the wicked die and they’re judged because of his justice. Don’t you ever dare make God, who is sovereign, who has the elect that he has chosen unto salvation, don’t ever use that as some excuse to accuse God of some heartless view towards humans. He’s looking at a bunch of Jews that deserve to die, killed the prophets. And he wept over them, the pathos, the gravitas of this. their judgment, and it just grips you, and they will not leave you one stone upon another, which he does have a version of that in the Gospel of Matthew, because you did not know the time of your visitation. This is Jesus talking. The Son of God is talking. This is the spotless Lamb of God that fulfilled all righteousness, the one that even as they went to condemn him, said, which one of you convinces me of sin?

Well, he makes himself out to be the, you know, the king of Israel. Well, he is. They said questioners, they tried to catch him in his words, did they catch him? No. And then he gives them the warning. And then some truly scary words. When he says back there in Luke and blindness will cover their eyes. Isn’t that exactly what Isaiah said? Seeing, they will not see. Hearing, they will not hear. Doesn’t that describe every sinner until God opens the ears and removes the scales? Praise be unto our God who saves and we participate in that.

The pathos of intense judgment. The pathos of intense compassion. But then thirdly and lastly, we have in verse 39, the pathos of profound proclamation. Notice what he says now in verse 39. And this ought to get anyone’s attention, the Son of God speaking. For, I say to you. That is like shooting a person between the eyes. That is like the proverbial, don’t you two see the white of the eyes? He is nailing this. He’s landing this airplane and it’s going to stop right where that front tire is supposed to be. You know, there’s guys that are doing this. I don’t know. I think that’d be kind of a fun job, maybe for a week, but not for real long.

But, you know, I think that’d be good. And, you know, to see how those pilots, they just put that right on that little, this gigantic plane. Jesus nails it. What does he say? For I say to you, you shall see me no more. The blindness is gonna come.

Now, they will see him because remember, they were the ones crying out, crucify him, crucify him, let his blood be upon our children. They physically saw him. And the idea isn’t that they won’t just see him physically like that. You shall see me no more. And the you has an immediate and I think a far context that when he says you, you Pharisees and you the judge and where this judgment is going to come, you will see me no more.

But also no Jew will see me savingly until. Because notice what it says, and this is something that is so easy to miss, you shall see me no more until. You see, that points to a future when they will see him. That’s why I said there’s Hinton. I have all kinds of reasons why I believe there’s a future for ethnic Israel. But right here is one of them. Because there is a day when the Jews will see him. And ethnically, because this is a national context, ethnically, nationally, they will see him and they will believe in him for they shall see him as if they shall look upon him whom they have pierced. Isaiah 53, in the setting of the jewel, which starts in 52. They will see and they will believe one day, but they haven’t yet.

Oh, praise be unto God that there are some Jews that have come to the saving knowledge of Jesus. We say they’re completed Jews, that they are saved Jews. And we’ll praise God for them. They saw. But notice what he says. For I say unto you, you shall see me no more until. you say. What are they going to say? Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. They will get Jesus right. Finally! The Jews just collectively, ethnically, nationally, were promised the Messiah. He sent prophets about the Messiah. He told him exactly how the Messiah would come, where he’d be born, what he would do, how he would die, how he would redeem. Nope, I don’t see it.

But one day, until, they shall look upon him whom they have pierced. And I cannot help, in my little bizarre mind, it’s the corruption, Here it goes. I think that how they’re going to see him and this may come when he comes in the clouds and when a Jew sees this and everything and all of a sudden they go. Oops. That is like the most major statement of oops, this. Wow, I just made up a word that cannot be in the dictionary of oopsness ever. We missed it. We did not see him until. And then the until hits. And then what happens? Blessed be the name of the Lord. This is Messiah. And I just want to say, and I know there’s all kinds of eschatological schemes out there, but if you don’t have this somewhere fitting into your eschatological scheme, you’re missing it. Because there is coming a day of future restoration because God loves Israel.

Seems like that’s how I started the message, wasn’t it? That’s how Jesus landed the big airplane. That’s how he landed it. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. But Israel’s gonna have to be destroyed. Israel’s gonna go out into the nations. And then John, or I’m sorry, Paul is gonna pick up on that in Romans chapter 11, when all Israel shall be saved, and he’s been talking about ethnic Israel, when he talks about how that they were cut off, and then we are grafted in, and he can graft them in again. There’s all, until, until. Details are gonna maybe vary and differ, and we’ll have to wait to see how that all works out, but I will say this. I do firmly believe there is a future for ethnic Israel because God has a special love for them. But enough are on Israel, for except for maybe one or two in our congregation, I don’t know of any Jews here tonight. But I do know that most, if not all of us, profess to know Christ as Savior and we are part of the spiritual seed of Abraham.

Praise be unto the God when the scales were removed from our eyes and we saw him. And up to that point, even if you were a child up to that point, you didn’t get Jesus right. And then. You saw him for who he is. And you have your salvation experience of Oops. I didn’t ask him to save me now, I must Jesus save me, wash away my sins, God, I repent, I turn, save me for Jesus’ sake. That’s how he lands the airplane after the woes, the heavy judgment, a passage full of pathos, because our God reigns. And it’s here on earth, but it’s also in heaven. I trust you know him as your personal savior and that you have the love of Christ which constrains you and you walk by faith.

Would you stand with me tonight as we close? Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the literalness of your word and how every little word seems to count points to important things. Father, we also, though it’s hard to say yet true, your sternness in judgment against sin. Father, may we hate sin as you do. But Father, we rejoice in your tenderness and your love as viewed in this passage. Even when the Jews were unwilling to repent, you brought judgment against them. but also you always gave them in your word the vision of hope when they look upon him and be able to say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Father, thank you for sending your son and we can firmly say Jesus came. But even more so tonight with hearts rejoicing, we can say He’s coming again. Even so come quickly, Lord Jesus. We pray this in his name, amen.