Last Words to Israel
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 29 March 2013
This morning we are examining one of the saddest scenes in Scripture because it pronounces doom on the nation of Israel. They are condemned because they have rejected the Lord Jesus Christ and in rejecting Him, they have rejected God Himself. And now on this Good Friday they are about to murder Him.
And they were led by their scribes and Pharisees. Jesus attacks and pronounces judgment on these false spiritual leaders. For centuries, the Jews waited for the arrival of their Messiah. The hope and the heart of the Jew was that when the Messiah would arrive and establish His kingdom, blessedness for every Jew would come with that kingdom.
But when the Messiah came instead of believing and receiving, they rejected and despised Jesus, and ultimately they had Him executed. And along with Him they sought to kill all those who represented Him. And so this is the climax of the ministry of the Lord Jesus to Israel. He has articulated the gospel to them. He has given them many opportunities to repent and to believe in Him but they refused. Now their punishment is coming.
It is also the last sermon Jesus ever preached publicly. This does not mean that Israel would not hear the Gospel anymore. After Jesus is crucified and rises from the dead and ascends back into heaven, there still will be preachers of the gospel who will go through Jerusalem and the land of Israel. And if the people will listen to them, there is still hope for some individuals.
And Jesus, who has been talking to a great gathering in the temple court at the Passover celebration on Wednesday of that week, now turns to the Pharisees and the scribes who are standing with the crowd and gives them a series of seven curses which start with “woe.” This is a very bold and dramatic act in front of the whole crowd.
All the woes in Matthew 23:13-29 can be summed up as follows; first He cursed these false leaders for keeping people out of heaven. Secondly, He cursed them for turning people into children of hell. Then He cursed them for undermining truth and substituting lies. Then He cursed them for making rituals more important than justice, mercy and faith. Then He cursed them for robbing from the people. And finally He cursed them for pretending to be pious and holy and better than all who preceded them when in reality they were the same if not worse.
And now in this section our Lord says in verse 32, "Fill up then the measure of your fathers." Fill up is a term used often in Scripture in connection with sin and judgment and wrath. It is the image of a cup being filled with God's divine wrath. Revelation 16:19 talks about the cup of the fury of His wrath. In Matthew 26:39 Jesus says "let this cup pass from me," it is the cup of divine judgment.
God allows only so much and when the cup is filled up, judgment comes. And so our Lord, in a command says to them fill it up, finish it off, do the rest of the evil that has to be done. It is similar to what He said to Judas in John 13:27, "Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.”
Now notice what He calls this cup. He calls it “the measure of your fathers.” Fill up the same cup your fathers were filling. The history of Israel has been a history of filling their cup with sin. Generations of Israel have been sinning and sinning and just filling the cup until finally judgment comes. And now Jesus says that the cup of man's wickedness is almost filled up.
In verse 30, they said, “if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have participated in taking the blood of the prophets.” And Jesus says in verse 31, “Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.” Why? Because He looked into their hearts and they were plotting His death. They were filling up the same cup full of murderous sins which their fathers filled up.
They are like poisonous snakes that are hard to detect and are deceitful and deadly. That's exactly what John the Baptist called them back in Matthew 3:7 when he said "Oh you brood of vipers, you snakes." Here we are several years later and they have not changed. The ministry of John the Baptist and the ministry of Jesus Christ had no effect on them.
And then Jesus says in verse 33, "How are you to escape being sentenced to hell?" And the answer is, no way. He's talking about their spiritual leaders and He says there is judgment coming real fast. Notice verse 34, “Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town.”
Why is Jesus sending more preachers and teachers and writers? There would be some who would be converted. There were 3,000 on the day of Pentecost right? And there will be many thousands more after that. But you leaders and this nation will not receive them, you will kill them and persecute them and you will pile more guilt upon your head and thus have greater judgment.
God is not all love, grace, kindness and mercy. He's a God of holiness, justice and judgment and wrath and a God of vengeance against evil. And if men choose that, He will be glorified in their condemnation as much as He is glorified in the conversion of those who believe. God will be glorified either way.
These are the last words in Revelation 22:11, "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still. He that is filthy, let him be filthy still. He that is righteous, let him be righteous still. He that is holy, let him be holy still." In other words, as it is at the end so it will be forever. God will be glorified through it all.
I hope we can see this too in our own nation, either in America or in Indonesia, because we are right now also filling up the cup of God's wrath. And this generation alive today is guiltier than any generation in the past, because we have the accumulated testimony of God's truth in this culture and we also have the accumulated lessons of why we should not act against a holy God.
Now notice in verse 35, He says, “so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.” The cup of wrath is going to take only so much and it's going to spill on you.
From the beginning of the Old Testament, Genesis 4, the first murder of a righteous man. Cain could not tolerate the purity of Abel, so he murdered him. And murdering righteous men happened all the way through history, until the last Old Testament martyr, Zechariah, son of Barachiac, who wrote the prophecy Zechariah.
You are as guilty as those who slew Zechariah and everybody in between those two. Verse 36, "Truly I say to you all these things shall come upon this generation." All these things, all this guilt for righteous blood is going to break on your heads. But the heart of God is grieved as ours ought to be.
This is the guiltiest generation in the history of Israel, because it rejected the light that had accumulated through thousands of years of divine revelation. And it's all going to come on you. You have filled up the cup and now it's going to poured out. And it started in 70 A.D. in that terrible destruction of Jerusalem and it is still going on right now.
Look at verse 37-38, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate.”
He says, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” that repetition is the repetition of grief and emotion. And He characterizes the city not as the city of peace, not as the holy city. He characterizes the city as, "You who are killing the prophets and you who are stoning them who are sent to you,” that's the city you are.
It is the climax of great emotion and compassion. The Lord Jesus is saying Jerusalem; nobody is going to plow your ground anymore. Nobody is going to cultivate your field. No one is going to plant the crop. No one is going to water you. No one is going to prune you. No one is going to protect you. You are left on your own now.
Privilege was given to Israel unequal to any privilege ever given to any nation, but with it came tremendous responsibility. Now there are 23 chapters of the gospel of Matthew, of the coming of Messiah, His birth, His ministry, His message, His miracles, His call and His cry to Israel. The Messiah has come in human flesh and He demonstrated all that God is, yet they reject it totally.
For nearly 2,000 years the nation Israel has had to live its life without God and without His protection. The difference is because God has left them unprotected from all the holocausts that the world could bring to bear. Why? Because Jesus came and said that He wanted to protect them. He said: “I wanted to bring you under my wings and you would not.”
And do you know that their situation will get worse? The persecution of Israel isn't over. The hand of God protection is off and Satan continues to attack. There's a time described in the Bible as the great tribulation. It's also called the time of Jacob's trouble. The worst is yet to come. The cup is still being poured out.
In fact, in Revelation 11:8 God calls Jerusalem Sodom and Egypt. It's not the holy city. It's not the city of peace. It's not the city of God. It's important to note that Jerusalem here is a symbol for the whole nation as it was very often in the ministry of the prophets. When Jesus says, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem," He is talking about Jerusalem's symbolic use which means all the people and the nation Israel.
Jesus said, "How often would I have gathered your children together?" In fact, all the time of His ministry, He wanted to gather them. He wanted to call them to Himself. Matthew 11:28, "Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Even as He dies on the cross, He still gathers a thief who is willing to believe. That's the way it was until they silenced His voice in death.
And finally, verse 39, "For I tell you, you shall not see me again." Stop for a moment. Jesus says, My mission to you as Savior as a nation has ended. But what's the next word after again? “Until,” now there's hope in that. "Until you shall say blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord." Now what does that mean?
Well, in Matthew 21:9 when Jesus rode into the city of Jerusalem they were praising Him as the Messiah, while shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David," and they quoted Psalm 118:26, "Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord." That was to identify the Messiah. Jesus says now, “Until you recognize me as your Messiah” Israel's history is going to get worse and more tragic. We can read about it in Daniel, in Revelation and in Matthew 24.
But God promised in Zechariah 12: 9, “It shall come to pass in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem." 10 "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on Him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over Him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”
God is going to destroy the nations that come against Jerusalem. And one day He will pour out on Jerusalem the spirit of grace. And they're going to look again at the one they pierced meaning Christ. And they're going to mourn as for an only son. Yes, because there was only one Messiah and they're going to recognize oh, now we see, we have killed the only son, the firstborn, the Messiah.
And Zechariah 13:1-2 continues, "On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.” God's going to wash the whole nation clean. 2 And on that day, declares the LORD of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, so that they shall be remembered no more. And also I will remove from the land the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness.”
Zechariah 13: 8-9, when it is all done, “In the whole land, declares the LORD, two thirds shall be cut off and perish, and one third shall be left alive. 9 And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.”
Further in Romans 11:23-27, talking about the end of Israel it says, “And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. 24 For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.”
“25 Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob; 27 and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”
So what does it mean “all Israel will be saved.”? Is that not in contrast to Zechariah 13:9 we just read and knowing how many Jews did not believe and still do not believe now in Christ and have perished through the centuries?
Let us look at Romans 9:6-8, “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, 7 and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” 8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.”
Not all Jews are called Israel, but the people who believe in Jesus Christ, they are called Israel, the children of Abraham. So what does this have to do with me? If God has chastened and punished by abandoning His own beloved people, what do you think is going to happen to you if you ignore Jesus Christ? Today we remember His sacrifice for our sins on the cross!
The principle is the same for a nation or an individual. You make a choice everyday whether you believe Him or not because by your deeds God knows whether you serve Him or not. Are you a child of Abraham now, really? What are the last words for you from Jesus on this Good Friday? So whatever your decision may be this morning, we offer His invitation to believe, and we pray that you will respond to it. Let us pray.