The Fall of Jerusalem
January 14, 2009
I have been considering the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The siege and the ensuing conquest stands out as one of the most painful and graphic events in history. In taking Jerusalem, it is recorded that the Romans killed nearly 1.1 million people. The Jews were so starved that Josephus says they staggered around looking for anything to eat, even chewing leather. It is even recorded that at least one person ate their own child. Escaping Jews were crucified all around the city to the point that the Romans ran out of crosses. The Jews, though bickering among themselves, desperately fought the Romans to the end in a losing battle. It is said that the Romans, when they finally broke through to the temple area, were in such a passion of anger against the Jews that they did not even follow Titus’ orders but brutally slaughtered anyone and destroyed everything. In the heat of this passion, a soldier threw a flaming torch into a room around the temple which started the temple burning. Though Titus apparently did not intend to destroy the temple, the fire grew out of control and the temple was soon completely destroyed. In the process, man, women, and children were burned to death and those that did escape were slaughtered by the Romans. It is recorded that Titus refused to accept a wreath of victory for the conquest, saying that there was “no merit in vanquishing people forsaken by their own God.”
When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” – Luke 19:41-44
After solemnly considering these events, I believe this event has grave implications for us. Consider just for a moment all the brutality, death, and destruction during the fall. Consider that the area around Jerusalem, previously lush and desirable, was left practically a desert. Why did Jeruslaem fall in such a dramatic way? According to Jesus the city was going to suffer tremendously because it did not know the day of its visitation. The city that rejected God in the flesh and condemned Him to a cross, just 40 years later was surrounded by a multitude of men on crosses as the Roman war machine steadily tore down the Jewish resistance. They rejected one man on a cross and so were surrounded by the death of the cross. Some translations in verse 41 show that Jesus wept audibly. His heart was in pain because He knew what was coming.
What we must realize is that this event is a graphic foretaste of the end of the age. One reason why we struggle with various prophecies in books like Revelation, Daniel, and the other prophets is because of the extreme nature of the events the prophet foretells. The events seem so far beyond what we are accustomed to and so we tend to discard what the text actually says trying to ascribe symbolism to the text. The fall of Jerusalem stands in contrast that that method of hermeneutics, instead demanding that we take prophecy literally. In the fall of Jerusalem, God is gave us a foretaste of what the entire world will experience due to the global rejection of His Son. If Jerusalem suffered so violently because it did not know the day of its visitation, how much more will the entire world suffer having not known the last 2,000 years of visitation?
We must realize that violent days are coming upon us. The Scripture tells us that the earth will stagger like a drunkard. If Jerusalem suffered so terribly for rejecting Jesus in their day, what is going to happen when God calls the entire world to judgment for the rejection of His Son? What are the days going to be like when God unleashes the destruction, not just of one city, but of the world? If one city could suffer so much for rejecting 3 years of ministry, it should cause us to tremble at what the world will endure for rejecting 2,000 years of light.
We must begin to prepare out hearts for what is to come. I do believe the Lord will keep us in the day of His wrath, although we will suffer to an extent just as Jeremiah suffered along with the others in Jerusalem in His day. That being said, we must begin to trumpet a wake up call because the earth has no idea what is coming. The earth has been lulled to sleep. Humanity is in the same position as they were just before the great deluge. The idea of such a flood was beyond their comprehension and so they ignored it until the rains finally fell and it was too late. Let us not be like those that ignored Noah’s pleas, but rather let us be like Noah a preacher of righteousness preparing for the days ahead and warning men that they might be saved.
The best way to prepare our hearts is to begin to take the Word of God literally. We must begin to read the Word and realize that there are things to come and those things are not exclusively symbolic, but rather are real events that must come to pass when God chooses to call the world to accountability for their treatment of His Son. Yes, God is rich in mercy and even now calls men to repentance, but there will come a day when the fruit of the earth is fully ripe and God will swing his great sickle into the harvest of the earth. Those that are His will welcome that day, but the earth though will experience the wrath of God against the great rejection of His Son. What happened in Jerusalem in 70AD is merely a terrifying foretaste of what will come all over the earth in that day. Let us live our lives in light of that day and let us warn others to throw themselves upon the merciful arms of the living God while He still delays His final days of reckoning with the earth.
One thing is for sure: God is going to vindicate His Son, and I don’t think we have the slightest comprehension of what it will look like when God decides to vindicate His Son on a global level.
The Law – Part Five – Christ is Supreme
January 7, 2009
In the last post we attempted to put some definition around the New Testament law. We are now brought to the climax of the law, which is the person of Jesus Christ. As we have seen in these last installments, God’s requirement of mankind in the New Testament, far from being minimized, is actually filled up and maximized in the revelation of Jesus Christ. As God has now indwelt man, He now has every legal right to make inner requirements of man that far exceed the Law of Moses. We have seen how this dramatically affects our evangelism and our understanding of our own calling.
The Great Need of Mercy
You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. – Matthew 5:48 (AMP)
As we consider the requirements of God’s morality upon the inner man, we see that absolute need of Christ. We see that there is no way any living human being will ever be able to assert any measure of morality against the standard of God, for we are all left completely helpless before His requirements. When we finish the words of the Sermon on the Mount, if we have truly understood it, our hearts cry out, “What shall we do?”
The requirement of God is so deep, so vast, and yet so just that you and are are left without excuse and without hope before the judgment bar of God. This is not without purpose however, for we are left in this great place that God may be all in all. God Himself, in His own perfect love for man in our predicament, brings salvation through His own right hand in the person of Jesus. By understanding the law, and its present application, we can understand more than ever the great need of the person of Jesus. Jesus said, “those who are forgiven much love much,” and as the law of God penetrates our heart, our inner man should sing the highest praises to the One who has made a way for us to be redeemed from the just and proper condemnation of God’s law.
Let us now see that great paradox that God uses our very violation of the law to bring us into the demonstration of its requirements. As the gospel is proclaimed in truth and power our hearts become heavy under the weight of condemnation and conviction. This condemnation is just and true for we can never fulfill God’s requirements on us. Many avoid this pressure point by lessening God’s requirements, but the solution is not to lessen God’s requirements, but to come into the reality of our spirit’s situation and then receive God’s solution.
While we struggle under the weight of our own condemnation and the black hell of hopelessness closes in on our hearts which have been awakened to God’s law, God comes in like a shaft of light and presents Himself as the ultimate sacrifice and rescue from our own black heart. We see Him in that instant as the liberator from all that we are and all that we have become. This experience is slow for some and quicker for others, but for all there is that moment when light dawns and we see that the very One who has condemned us by making just requirements of our heart, now offers Himself to us as the very redeemer for our blackness. At this moment, we are born again as we grab onto the glorious hope of God whose love is so vast that He is, in that moment, both the One who condemns and the One who rescues.
God’s plan is so glorious though, that it continues from there. Being liberated by His glorious love, the natural response of the human heart is then to love Him desperately, passionately, and completely for His act of redemption from our own condemnation. In the wisdom of God then, it is the pressure of our condemnation that forms in a heart a love for the God who rescues us and this love then naturally begins fulfilling the first great commandment of God’s law to love God with all our hearts.
You see, it is the knowledge of the depth of our depravity and condemnation that leads us to the heights of love. We become those with the capacity to fulfill the law only once we have been awakened to our birth position as those under the condemnation of the law. Only the wisdom of God could take the very thing that condemns us and sets us at odds with Him and use it as the seed of eternal love and holiness in His redeemed people. Once again, we find that God is all and all and that Jesus is worth of supreme adulation for His great redemption. He alone provides mercy for our sins as we stand helpless before the judgment bar of God. Let us love Him desperately for the mercy He provides and then vigorously share that mercy with others understanding that God uses the tool of condemnation as the key to open the door to divine mercy. Continue Reading The Law – Part Five – Christ is Supreme »
The Law – Part Four – The New Testament Law
January 6, 2009
In the last post, we discussed how a proper understanding of God’s law affects our evangelism and saw that our evangelism is a strong indicator of our theology and also has serious implications for the future vitality of the church itself. As we have discussed the New Testament law in this series, we have made a few observations. One is that Jesus extended the reach of the law by pressing it past man’s outward behavior into the thoughts and intents of the heart. We have also noted that Jesus came to complete God’s law that it might accomplish the thing that He gave it to accomplish.
In addition, the point has been made repeatedly that it is critical that we live in light of the fact that we are still under a divine law and in light of that, we must acknowledge that God continues to have the right to place demands upon on. While we have examined these characteristics of the New Testament Law, we have not examined what the declarations of the New Testament law are. We have seen clearly that the scope of the law extends to all things, and we have seen that the depth of the law presses it deep in the heart of man, but is there a clear list of the directives of this law? Well, though it receives little attention, Jesus clearly details for us the requirements of the New Testament law.
The Definition of the Law
In a very real sense, the Sermon on the Mount could be seen as a law giving moment. Just as Moses ascended a hill and descended with the written requirements of God, so to Jesus ascended the hillside and clearly spoke forth the code and law He came to bring. In that sense, we should see the Sermon on the Mount, not just as a nostalgic ideal, but as the present requirement of God. God does not simply give us instructions and values that we might then live “under grace” in the commonly understood meaning of the term. We can never discount grace, and we will address it in the final post, but God desires that grace become something that empowers us to live within that which He demands. To understand the New Testament law, the Sermon on the Mount then is the proper starting place so long as we can begin to see it as Jesus’ parallel to Moses’ directives given from Sinai and not just as an idyllic sermon that is not actually binding on every day life.
While the Sermon on the Mount is perhaps the foundational passage for the New Testament law, there are a few other passages we should examine. These passages are all familiar, but we have not considered these passages to be as weighty as they truly are. Consider Jesus’ answer to one seeking salvation:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. These two commandments sum up and upon them depend all the Law and the Prophets. – Matthew 22:37-40 (AMP)
Notice that just before the cross, Jesus affirms this requirement to His disciples:
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love and live on in it, just as I have obeyed My Father’s commandments and live on in His love…This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than to lay down his own life for his friends…You are My friends if you keep on doing the things which I command you to do…This is what I command you: that you love one another. – John 15:10, 12-14, 17 (AMP)
Again, we are familiar with these Scriptures, but we must ask ourselves if we see these passages as Jesus’ requirements for His people or do we see them as cute phrases and New Testament ideals? I fear that because of a misunderstanding of grace that we do not consider the full weight of these passages. In these passages, Jesus is putting a requirement on us and defining the way that He expects His people to live.
No one would deny that believers often fail to experience the full materialization of the promises recorded in Scripture, but could is be that we fail to obtain some of the benefits of the gospel because we have not esteemed the requirements of the gospel as such? Perhaps if we saw these commands as just as binding upon us as Moses’ Law was on the nation gathered around Sinai, we might become a radically different people.
The Weight of the Law
We began by pointing out that Jesus filled up the law and turned its requirements inward that He might deal with the very root of sin rather than merely prescribe good behavior. That consideration alone has the power to greatly alter our understanding of Jesus’ statements. After coming into that understanding, we have now considered some of the direct commands that Jesus gave to believers.
Now, we must ask an honest question which is who can fulfill such a law? While we are rightfully grateful that Jesus freed us from the outward bondage of Moses’ law, we fail to consider with much gravity the requirements of the law Jesus instituted. While Moses’ law was full of outward obligations that one might follow in some measure, Jesus law completely supersedes all outward observances and leaves men under greater condemnation than before.
If we honestly examine what He required, we must say, “who can fulfill such things?” for Jesus’ law is all encompassing. Can we not honestly say that every mode of life comes under the requirement to love God with all that we have and then extend love to others just the same as we would love ourselves? Beloved, this is a weighty requirement indeed. Moses’ law at least had specific requirements and limited scope, but Jesus’ law decrees that every thought, every desire, and every action are to be with regard to the supreme love of God and love of one another.
Can anyone among us have the audacity to declare that they could fulfill such a law? Can you see now that when the Spirit gives unction to preach such a law that there is no man who can stand in smug, self-righteousness? Saints we need to pray that God puts power on us again for the proclamation of this gospel. We have awkwardly proclaimed, at the same time, both the conviction of the Mosaic Law and the freedom from it, but we have not pressed men with the Law of Christ.
The reality is that God has not changed His demands upon man; He has only now intensified them in the revelation of Jesus. In the revelation of Jesus, He reveals what he created man for all along. You see, God does not intend to have a people that can merely follow a few moral axioms or fulfill religions ceremonies, He desires a people that are a physical display on earth of Himself. This is what it means that man is made in the image of God.
We are made in His image and so He presses upon us the same law that He Himself demonstrates in all that He does. He makes a requirement on us that no man can possibly fulfill, and yet He has every right to demand it because He made us in His own image that we might live as a physical demonstration of Himself and spread the knowledge of God by our very living. This requirement should crush all our righteousness and drive us to Christ both for forgiveness and for transformation to live in this manner, but tragically our gospel proclamation seems to have lost the weightiness of both of these values in its rush to declare us free from Moses’ prescribed diet and ceremonies!
Because we have lost these values, our evangelism is weak and anemic and our proclamation to the saints is hollow. We are content to gaze horizontally at our own righteousness and not gaze upwardly that we might demonstrate Him; the very thing to which we are called! We are content to demonstrate something a little better than other men rather than putting on display the glory of God and that is the fundamental issue. Continue Reading The Law – Part Four – The New Testament Law »
The Call to Dunkirk
January 2, 2009
Saints, why do we continue to send Christian children to schools that are dedicated to challenging our values? Honestly, I do not believe there is any way we can keep our kids short of taking drastic measures with their education and socialization. We must begin raising children in Christ infused greenhouses or they will all be lost.