OH JERUSALEM! OH JERUSALEM! 

Extremity of the times we are going in will cause many, even the unbelievers to dust of their Bibles.  Something about the atmosphere has the essence of the apocalypse to it.  The control, but also the weather, financial, political and religious climate is at a heightened state.  The house of cards has been built and all it takes is a gush of wind and the whole house will come down.  Who then will come and rebuild and what will they rebuild?

It is at this time that they will cry “My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”  To this He will reply, “Depart from Me, I know thee not!” (Matthew 7).

Have we placed ourselves in their shoes?  Have we given ourselves sufficient time to consider the dynamics of such spiritual devastation?  What it would mean to those who thought they were right with Him, Jew and Gentile, only to find that their present devastation means that He has indeed forsaken them.  A destitution of all security.  Naked and as ones who are already dead!  The dead bones of Ezekiel 37 comes to mind.  Have we considered the devastation?  Physically, emotionally and especially spiritually?  How many will commit suicide because dying would be the only way out?  There will be no confusion as to whose wrath is upon them.  They will know that God has put them away in anger.  But know this, there will be those who will curse God and those who will cry out to Him in that time.

Where will those be who will say to them, “Fear not, do not be afraid. The Lord your God with His mighty arm, He will come and save you” Isaiah 35:4.  In Psalm 102, we read:

In Psalm 102, especially read in the context of the haulocast, we read the following in verse 14,

¹⁴ For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favor the dust thereof.

This pleasure and favor speak of setting your affection on and to show mercy and pity.  Who are these servants?  Those whom He has prepared for such a time as this.  This is something they are as servants and not something they merely do out of obligation…they ARE a compassion for stones and a pity for dust.  We know that the apostolic dispensation that will come during the start of the tribulation will be from those stones that have been built in Him.  Their capstone, Jesus Christ, the stone the builders rejected.  And He will through His living stones lay the foundations that has been broken down and brought to dust.  They will be the builders of the foundation.  For is the heavenly Jerusalem then not a city and a wife?  Does the Word not say that the church is built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets?  These will be living stones.  Stones that will be laid down to build a foundation that cannot be shaken.  They will have compassion on the stones and pity on the dust laid in ruins.

We are told that not one stone will be on top of each other…just rubble and devastation.  The true Master Builder will come and He will again lay her foundation.  The Son of Man that will once again cry out…"Jerusalem, oh Jerusalem, if only you knew the day of your visitation!”  He is indeed preparing a city to dwell in.  And her foundations will be built up again by those living stones built up in Him. For He is ultimately the foundation of this city of God.   In Isaiah 6 we read that the land is made desolate and the people is cast far and away.  He promise that He will bring them back from the various places from where He has scattered them.  This is the heart of God that afflicts pain.  The One who wounds so that He may heal.  For those who receive these wounds of chastening and wrath will call on Him, but those who refuse it, will curse Him!

The stones built up in Him, that are vitally connected to the true Capstone, the Stone the master rejected, will go where they are sent to these various  places that He has scattered His people.  Both Jew and Gentile.  Not only because of a mission, but mostly because they are united to the broken heart of God.  For God takes no pleasure in the destruction of man. This is the reason for the sending of His servants…the broken heart of God.  For even as the cities lay in ruins, His heart has been broken even before the foundation of the worlds.  He saw the end from the beginning.  The living stones will have compassion on the ruins of Jerusalem. 

Let me ask you.  What is the purpose of the Church?  Surely we cannot think that our purpose is just to go to heaven?  No, our God came for the Jew first, and now desires to use us to bring her to jealousy, so that she may look on our unveiled faces and behold His glory.  Just as Moses were veiled and is a type and shadow of Judah, who is veiled, so now, the word says that we behold Him as unveiled.  He is greater than Moses and He is the builder of the House of God.  Through our unveiled faces He wishes to provoke them to jealousy so that they may return and cry out to their Messiach!  Up until now they are not the least jealous or threatened by us, but rather a pure hatred has been coming from the various sects of Jews.  But there will be a remnant of them that will be dispersed into the wilderness.  There He will send His Beloved to feed her. But even so, when the tribulation starts, are we to ignore them?  Are we only to plead with the Left Behind church?  Surely not, for this is our ultimate calling in Christ Jesus, as their Messiah.  That we may go as a corporate Body, the Body of Christ and once again with Him cry out…Oh Jerusalem, oh Jerusalem!” 

The reality is that we are not building our own kingdom, but the Kingdom of God.  His Kingdom constitutes both Jew and Gentile, for the two shall become one.  And yet, they themselves who will also be persecuted, will persecute us as the Goyam, which they hate to the core.  Unless our hearts are broken for the lost, even the angry lost, how then will we be able to be a light unto the nations?  Mental agreement and tolerance to this reality will cause us to fall short.  But a heart that beats with His heart that beats with the compassion of God, will cause us to shine with His glory on our faces.  To have compassion on her broken walls and dust.  For as the Bridegroom so the Bride.  As the Head, so the Body.  A nature compatible with His nature.  Not that we will all run to Jerusalem, but that He uses His servants to bring her in from wherever she has been scattered all over this world.  He has placed each of us where we are for both the Jew and Gentile.  Am I a “Jew lover” who have some sentimental religious affiliation with them?  No.  For longer than 12 years He has spoken to me about His heart for her.  And it is broken. 

Both those who will gladly receive us and those who persecute us are those whom He will send us to..  God sent His Son to gather unto Him a people in these last days from out of His Body that He through them may build up the House of God, a city in which to dwell in.   The New Jerusalem, both an actual city that will be rebuilt in Jerusalem and a heavenly one, the Bride of God.

How will we be for them what He intended unless our hearts are broken for both Jew and Gentile?  Unless we see as He sees, we will not attain to what is required to lay our lives down.  One do not hear about this preached from the pulpit or any teachings of the end time purpose of the Church concerning Israel.  And yet we are right at the very door of her destruction!  A clear mandate is to be owned that we are saved to provoke her to jealousy.  Left to ourselves we will shake off the dust from our feet and move on.  Let those who love them so much to this job!  But God has not forgotten His people.  And He never will.  He is not interested in our David stars or Israeli flags and menorahs we take out during feast days.  He is not interested in our identification through the upholding of the feasts if we in fact in heart have no identification with the broken heart He has for His people.  Have you consider that He was born a Jew? 

Although He has not forsaken them, they have indeed forsaken Him.  He is the Husband scorned and forsaken by His first love.  Like Jacob who loved Rachel, but was given Leah, so He has had pity on us and made us His own.  But He has not forgotten Rachel as Jacob did not, and demanded that Laban give her to him.  Two wives, Jew and Gentile becoming one in Him.

His heart is broken.  The question I ask myself and you is why is my heart not broken?  Will we have this broken heart if we do not seek it?  Shall we have it we do not see the ultimate value and imperative that it is?  If we do not see the hardness of our hearts toward them, even though some refuses to acknowledge their matter of fact attitude towards them, how then are we walking with Him in fulfilling His purpose for why He came?  As if it is God’s problem how He will cause them to turn to Him.  He chose us!  We are His instruments.  If we do not go, who will? 

The reality is that our hearts are not broken for the lost, even for the Gentiles, neither for the Jew.  Secretly we feel that they will be getting that which they rightly deserve.  In our eyes judgment and wrath poured out on them during Jacob’s trouble is well deserved.  What hypocrites! Have we forgotten that if it was not for the grace of God where would we be? 

Our identification with the Jew is ultimately our identification with the broken heart of God.  Not only for the Gentile, but for the Jew.  We will find ourselves amidst destitution and we can either enter into their destitution or we can stand aloof and pride ourselves that we are not like them.  Will we be like Jonah and feel these people do not deserve the salvation of God?  Will we choose Tarshish rather than Nineveh?  Will our going be out of obligation or out of the identification with the Father’s broken heart?

The issue of Jerusalem is the issue of the Church, which is the issue of the nations, which is ultimately the issue of His Kingdom.  Will you be a Leah that hates on Rachel and pride yourself on your many children? Or will you mourn with her, because Rachel is crying and her children is no more?  Paul did not anguish for his people because he was Jewish.  He anguished for his people because he was an Apostle!  Christ was his life.  In Him he moved and lived and had his being.

Will you allow Him to break you in the deeps that passes mere sentimentality?  Facing the hardness of your heart and confess it before your God?  Your mourning will not be because you have no faith and are hopeless, but you mourn because He mourns.  He is still a man of sorrow and grief.  The danger lies in us thinking that all this does not apply to us.  This devotional will testify against both you and me when we stand before Him soon.  The motive is not to guilt you into this particular disposition, but rather that your eyes will be opened to the glory He intended - the church as He intended her to be.    

I can only cry, “Lord, let me not go on as if You have not spoken!  Let me not go on as if your heart is not broken.  Let me cleave to you like Jacob, until you touch my hip and I walk in your brokenness, identifying with your heart.  Break my heart O God!  What good is my correct doctrine when I do not embody the substance of it?  Rent my heart O God, rent my heart!  Move me from this place of indifference into identification.  Let me have compassion on her stones and pity on her dust!  Do what only you can do!”

 

Please Read:

^{Jeremiah 17: 15 - 27}

¹⁵ Behold, they say unto me, Where is the word of the Lord? let it come now.

¹⁶ As for me, I have not hastened from being a pastor to follow thee: neither have I desired the woeful day; thou knowest: that which came out of my lips was right before thee.

¹⁷ Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil.

¹⁸ Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let not me be confounded: let them be dismayed, but let not me be dismayed: bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction.

¹⁹ Thus said the Lord unto me; Go and stand in the gate of the children of the people, whereby the kings of Judah come in, and by the which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem;

²⁰ And say unto them, Hear ye the word of the Lord, ye kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that enter in by these gates:

²¹ Thus saith the Lord; Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem;

²² Neither carry forth a burden out of your houses on the sabbath day, neither do ye any work, but hallow ye the sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers.

²³ But they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear, nor receive instruction.

²⁴ And it shall come to pass, if ye diligently hearken unto me, saith the Lord, to bring in no burden through the gates of this city on the sabbath day, but hallow the sabbath day, to do no work therein;

²⁵ Then shall there enter into the gates of this city kings and princes sitting upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they, and their princes, the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: and this city shall remain for ever.

²⁶ And they shall come from the cities of Judah, and from the places about Jerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, and from the plain, and from the mountains, and from the south, bringing burnt offerings, and sacrifices, and meat offerings, and incense, and bringing sacrifices of praise, unto the house of the Lord.

²⁷ But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the sabbath day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.