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Israel, a Cup of Trembling
3 talks given at Calvary Chapel of Chapel Hill, NC on the evening of December 6, 2023
DEC 7, 2023
What About the Jewish People?
Hi Folks. Many of you know that I’m Jewish, the son of two Jewish parents. In view of the October 7 massacre of many Jewish people in Israel, I want to share several things with you this evening.
I want to talk with you about the root cause of antisemitism, about the root cause for the Jewish people's resistance to believing in Jesus, about whether the Law of Moses applies to Jewish people today, and about the future for the Jewish people as a Nation and for individual Jews today.
I. What is the Root Cause of Antisemitism?
Remember how in the Garden of Eden the Lord gave Adam one commandment? The Lord said to Adam “You may eat of any plant or tree in the Garden except for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the day that you eat of it you will surely die”. Adam communicated this knowledge to Eve and she was tricked by the serpent who was inhabited by Satan and Eve ate of the fruit and shared it with Adam who also ate. Right then, sin entered the entire human race and with sin came death. Everything changed and everything was corrupted. Right then God spoke to the serpent, the Devil:
Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall crush your head, And you shall bruise His heel."
The Seed of the woman was and is the Deliverer. He is the Messiah and this prophecy makes it clear that one day the Messiah will crush the head of the enemy of humanity, Satan. That will be the end of him.
As the story unfolds through Scripture we are told that God chose Abraham and his physical descendants including the 12 tribes of Israel to be His special people and we are told that the Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah and from King David. As the enemy learned that the Messiah was to come through the Jewish people, the enemy tried to prevent Messiah from coming into the world through the attempted killing of all Jewish babies in ancient Egypt. He was unsuccessful however. Moses was born and survived to lead his people out of Egypt as a Nation. Later the evil Haman in Persia tried to annihilate all the Jewish people and he also failed. This is celebrated in the festival of Purim which Jewish people still celebrate today. Later yet, in about 175 BC, a Syrian king named Antiochus tried to destroy all the Jewish people and he committed something called the abomination of desolation in the temple. He too failed and the victory of the Jewish people over Antiochus is celebrated in the festival of lights, Chanukah. And there were many more attempts, all of which failed.
So the Messiah was born of the virgin Miriam, a direct descendant of King David, in Bethlehem, and He was crucified in about 33 AD. The Messiah was born to die, to be the ultimate blood sacrifice for His people and for all people, that whoever would accept Him would never die but would have eternal life. He fulfilled the Law of Moses – by obeying it completely – and He promised that one day He would return. Then Satan’s head would be crushed. The Messiah was and is Yeshua of Natzeret, or Jesus of Nazareth.
So, Messiah came and He died. What could the Enemy do to prevent the return of the Messiah? Jesus said something to the Jewish people, from Jerusalem, several days before He went to the cross:
Matthew 23:37-39 (NKJV) "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! [38] See! Your house is left to you desolate; [39] for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'BLESSED is HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!' "
So before the Jewish people can see Jesus again, before He can return, the Jewish people must say Blessed is He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord, a Messianic verse from a Messianic Psalm, Psalm 118. The enemy knows this of course and so, ever since the cross, he has been systematically trying to totally annihilate the Jewish people, so that there would be not even one single Jew who could say this. This is the root cause of antisemitism. This has been brought into reality through many literal attempts to kill the Jews. Hitler’s Holocaust is a major example of this and all the wars against Israel since 1948 up to and including the massacre by Hamas on October 7 are examples caused by Satan trying to fulfill his strategy of total annihilation of the Jewish people. He has not succeeded, and he never will succeed.
We hear today of a New Antisemitism. What is that? The person or people who practice this new antisemitism say something like this: We hate Israel. Although I’m not crazy about Jewish people, I wish them no harm, except for the ones in Israel because their country is oppressing the Palestinians and stealing their land. The Jews have no right to Israel, and they are practicing apartheid. What Hamas did is understandable!
Folks, I believe that Satan has goals, strategies, and tactics. I believe that his main goals are to be like God or even above God, to seek revenge against God for throwing him out of heaven, and to prevent the Messiah’s return so that his, Satan’s, head won’t be crushed. One of Satan’s major strategies is to destroy Israel and all the Jewish people, for reasons we just discussed, and the October 7 massacre was Satan’s latest tactic. I don’t think that Satan’s goals and strategies change, but his tactics constantly change. And he is relentless. When one tactic is defeated, he comes up with 3 more. We must fight him with all our strength, but this is a spiritual battle – we wrestle not against flesh and blood, Ephesians 6 - and only the Messiah can bring the final victory and He will.
II. What is the root cause for the Jewish people's resistance to believe in Jesus?
The cause is supernatural. Let me read you two Scripture verses from the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans in the New Testament:
Romans 11:25-26 (NKJV) For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. [26] And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "THE DELIVERER WILL COME OUT OF ZION, AND HE WILL TURN AWAY UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB;
Folks, that is the reason, spiritual blindness. A partial spiritual blindness has happened to Israel. A better translation is temporary blindness. It is temporary and it has happened to the entire Nation except for a small number of people, the remnant. Why has God done this? So that the full number of Gentiles to be saved will be saved. When this full number of Gentiles is saved, through the Messiah, then and only then will the entire Nation of Israel be saved – all at once. It will be like life from the dead! But please be very much aware that Satan is quite interested in killing Gentiles too, although they are not as high a priority for him as killing Jews is.
If the Jewish people, as a Nation, had accepted Yeshua when He first came, He would have died then to pay the price for sin, He would have set up His Millennial Kingdom and perhaps the great mass of non-Jewish people would never be saved. But this was never God’s plan. Let me read you another 2 verses:
Romans 11:28-29 (NKJV) Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. [29] For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
These verses explain why Gentiles are spiritually indebted to the Jewish people.
Now, how does this work itself out? Two examples:
Rashi (1040-1105) – a very famous French rabbi, revered by many Orthodox Jews today including members of Chabad, proclaimed that the famous Isaiah passage (52:13-53:12) describes a suffering servant, but not the Messiah. Let me read part of the passage to you:
Isaiah 53:3-5,7-10 NKJV
He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. [4] Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. [5] But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. [7] He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. [8] He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. [9] And they made His grave with the wicked—But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth. [10] Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
Rashi taught that this Man, despised and rejected, was the Nation of Israel. He was not a man, according to Rashi. He was not the Messiah. Instead, he was the Nation of Israel. To this day this faulty exegesis by Rashi leads Jewish people away from seeing that Yeshua is the Messiah.
Maimonides (1138-1204), a very famous rabbi, philosopher, and physician, was born in Spain and had to leave, lived in Morocco and later in Egypt. He was a leader of his people, and he suffered much persecution because he was a Jew. He came up with The Thirteen Principles of Faith. According to Maimonides, a Jew who denied any of these principles would be denied a place in The World to Come. Principle 2 says God has absolute and unparalleled unity. Principle 3 says God is incorporeal – without a body. Principle 2 rules out a God who is One but is comprised of 3 persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Principle 3 rules out the incarnation; there can be no God in the flesh. Therefore, Maimonides principles rule out Jesus as Messiah and God. Maimonides is revered by Jews all over the world today. If Maimonides’ principles say there is no Jesus, then for most Jews there is no Jesus, even if the Bible – including the Torah – says otherwise.
A great number of rabbis today stand on Rashi and Maimonides as pillars of the Jewish faith and they mislead their people. I’m not saying they’re doing it intentionally, but they are doing it, and it’s a reason that Jews reject Yeshua.
III. Are Jewish People, or Any of Us, Under the Law of Moses Today?
It was Maimonides, mentioned just a moment ago, who codified the commandments in the Torah, the 5 Books of Moses, and counted 613 commandments. These are the commandments given by God and therefore found in the Torah. Failure to keep these commandments was punishable by death. No one with a sin nature – meaning all of us – could keep all these commandments. That’s why God provided an elaborate system of sacrifices, including blood sacrifices, to provide temporary atonement or forgiveness for sins. God told the Israelites this through Moses:
Leviticus 17:11 (NKJV)
11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.'
The life of an animal became a substitutionary sacrifice for the life of an Israelite. These sacrifices had to be repeated over and over. They provided no permanent forgiveness. This sacrificial system was administered by priests who came from the tribe of Levi.
Through the prophet Jeremiah, long after the time of Moses, God told the children of Israel that He was going to replace the Covenant of the Law, also known as the Mosaic Covenant, with a New Covenant:
Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NKJV) "Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— [32] not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. [33] But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. [34] No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
This word from Jeremiah was a prophecy of a future covenant to replace the covenant that the people continually broke. They couldn’t keep that covenant. Nobody could. This New Covenant would require a blood sacrifice that was perfect, unlike the blood from an animal. A new priesthood would be required. There would be one Priest and He would be from the tribe of Judah. In fact, this Priest would also, Himself, be the Sacrifice. This Sacrifice was Jesus, Yeshua, God in the flesh, and His sacrifice on the cross was enough to pay the debt for every sin that would ever be committed, past, present, and future. Yeshua, the Messiah, God Himself in the flesh, and His sacrifice, was and is the basis of the New Covenant. When Yeshua was crucified the curtain in the temple separating the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place was miraculously torn in two from top to bottom, symbolically opening the way for every believer to enter spiritually into the Holy of Holies. Several decades later, in 70 AD, the Temple was destroyed. Never again could a God ordained animal sacrifice ever be made. God requires that His people worship Him through the New Covenant. He loves His people, the Jewish people. God restates the New Covenant in the New Testament in Hebrews exactly as He did in Jeremiah.
Now what I’m going to say now is super important and very hard to grasp, especially for a Jewish person. Please listen to me. The Law of Moses shows us God’s character and that’s a very valuable thing. And the Law is Scripture and all Scripture is profitable. The Law is good. But the Law of Moses cannot provide salvation – it never could. The Law is no longer your master. The New Covenant does provide salvation.
The New Covenant has replaced the Covenant of the Law and with a New Covenant there must be a new priesthood. That priesthood consists of only one Priest, Yeshua, Jesus. He is our High Priest now. How does a person access the benefits of that covenant, permanently? You confess Yeshua, Jesus, as your Lord and Savior and you follow Him all the days of your life. He will make you a new creation by filling you with the Holy Spirit, who will help you to keep the New Covenant. If you are a Jew, you will still be Jewish
IV. What is in the Future for the Israel and for Individual Jews Today?
Daniel chapter 9 is a very pivotal chapter. Daniel at this point is an old man, having been taken to Babylon as a teenager. He is a very respected and very godly man. He has been reading the scrolls of Jeremiah the prophet through whom the Lord said that the time of exile would be 70 years. That time of 70 years is only about 2 years away. Daniel must have thought that at 70 years, the Messiah would return and set up the Messianic Kingdom and bad things would all be over, because God sent the angel Gabriel to give Daniel understanding that this would not be the case. Gabriel explained that it would not be seventy years until the time of restoration of all things for the Jewish people but seven times seventy years until this would happen. After 69 sevens of years (483 years), the Messiah would come and would be cut off, killed, but not for Himself. Then the final 7 years would come but only after a gap of time. At the present time we are in that gap which is now about 2,000 years. The final seven years, Daniel’s 70th week, is what is known as The Tribulation. It begins when the Coming Prince – the Antichrist – signs a 7 year peace treaty with Israel. At the midpoint, 3.5 years, the Antichrist reveals that he is not a man of peace, he commits the abomination of desolation at the rebuilt temple – the Tribulation Temple or Third Temple – in Jerusalem, as did his predecessor Antiochus in 175 BC in the second temple. That’s the Syrian king who was defeated by the Jews led by Judah Maccabee and is celebrated at the festival of Chanukah. That’s past. The Antichrist is future. This second half of Daniel’s 70th week is referred to by the prophet Jeremiah as The Time of Jacob’s Trouble. It will be a Second Holocaust, worse than Hitler’s Holocaust. Two thirds of the Jewish people will die, killed by the Antichrist. Jesus spoke about this time:
Matthew 24:15-21 (NKJV) "Therefore when you see the 'ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION,' spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place" (whoever reads, let him understand), [16] "then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. [17] Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. [18] And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. [19] But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! [20] And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. [21] For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.
Folks, God is in control of all things. Why would God allow this? Here is why. There are six purposes that God must accomplish for the Jewish Nation for things to be put right and for the end of the age to come. Let me read them to you from Daniel 9:24:
Daniel 9:24 (NKJV) "Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy.
What are these 6 purposes?
Arnold Fruchtenbaum in his Commentary on Daniel helps us here. Here is a summary of what he says:
1. The first purpose of the seventy sevens is to finish a specific transgression of the Jewish people, namely, the rejection of the Messiah.
2. The second purpose is to put an end to daily sins.
3. The third purpose is to atone for the sin nature of man by accepting the sacrifice of Yeshua on the cross.
4. The fourth purpose is to bring in the age of righteousness which is the Messianic or Millennial Kingdom.
5. The fifth purpose is the final fulfillment of all revelations and prophecies. With the second coming of the Messiah, the function and purpose of prophecy will be completed.
6. The sixth purpose is to anoint the Millennial Temple.
These 6 things are going to require the entire Jewish Nation to accept their Messiah, and plead for forgiveness of their sins, the sins of the Nation in rejecting Him 2,000 years ago. God will pour out a spirit of repentance on them and they will be humbled more than ever before. Daniel 12:7 explains this:
Daniel 12:7 (NKJV) Then I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand to heaven, and swore by Him who lives forever, that it shall be for a time, times, and half a time; and when the power of the holy people has been completely shattered, all these things shall be finished.
The Jewish people will do this at the end of the 7 year Tribulation. They will cry out to Jesus as their Messiah and plead with Him to save them, and He will, right then, as prophesied in Zechariah:
Zechariah 12:10 (NKJV) "And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.
What about Jewish people NOW, individual Jewish people. What about YOU? You might be in Israel, you might be here in Chapel Hill, or you might be someplace else. I am speaking to both Jewish and Gentile people who don’t have a relationship with Yeshua, with Jesus. If you desire forgiveness of sins and you want to have eternal life now, Pastor Vince is going to give an invitation after he speaks. Please accept it, tonight. If you do this you will be placed by God into what is known as the Body of Messiah, the true Church, and you will not enter The Tribulation or The Time of Jacob’s Trouble. You will Raptured or resurrected to heaven before that time.
There’s one more thing I want to say tonight, primarily to those people who lost loved ones on October 7 and to those whose loved ones are still hostages. What about them, you ask. What is God doing about them? Where is God?
Do you remember Job in the Bible? God allowed Satan to kill his children, to take away his material possessions, and to take away his health. It was a series of terrible blows. But Job never lost his faith in God. He complained plenty and he criticized God, but he never lost his faith. Then, after a period of time God spoke with Job and Job remembered just how great God is and Job said this:
Job 42:6 (NKJV) Therefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes."
And the LORD blessed Job:
Job 42:12-13 (NKJV) Now the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke of oxen, and one thousand female donkeys. [13] He also had seven sons and three daughters.
Job 42:16-17 (NKJV) After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children and grandchildren for four generations. [17] So Job died, old and full of days.
Now, somebody may say this: Well, that’s just great! God allowed all of Job’s children to be killed and He replaced them with other children? Does God think that’s righteous?
Folks, God is always righteous. We don’t always get to see that but we have to believe it. And God loved Job and his children and he loves you. So whatever happens to you or your loved ones, have faith in God and believe that he will make everything right in the end.
Thank you for listening.
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Dec 8Liked by Arthur P Wolinsky
Dear Dr. Arthur,
A few thoughts thrown together here, from a septuagenarian cradle Christian.
I heeded your advice and listened last evening to all 3 Calvary sermons. Yours, on the reason for anti-semitism really struck me. As making sense. Flipping through my Bible to follow you as I listened.
From April to August I read the Torah in entirety--not just a verse here, a verse there, as always before. And found these books to be a really good read. Then on beginning Joshua, realized I had to read the first 5 again (a good thing too, as I must have slept through many verses). Much is much clearer now--and currently stuck in Leviticus 17, I'd been wondering what was behind all the required sacrifices? Before this last year or so I had not considered 'evil' to be more than an abstraction. Sed tempora mutantur, et nos in illis mutamur.
Many thanks to you for what you are doing--and so very very very happy that you have accepted Yeshua.
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Israel, A Cup of Trembling. Part II. Art Wolinsky, Calvary Chapel of Chapel Hill, NC