Israel in Galations

well good morning bucket of I'm ashamed to have to tell you that my country is becoming a hot bed of anti-zionism that is tragic considering that Britain was the country most used by God to establish the State of Israel in the 19th and early 20th century but now in the 21st century Britain is becoming anti Zionist and the minority of us in Britain who support Israel come in for severe criticism one of the most basic criticisms was that we Christian Zionists are stuck in the Old Testament well the Old Testament happens to be 3/4 of my Bible but I'm not stuck in it and that's why for the last 7 years I have taken as my subject here Israel in the New Testament and focused on the unfulfilled prophecies of the New Testament concerning Israel and I'm going to stay with that theme this morning my theme this morning is Israel in Galatians we have looked at Israel in Romans Israel in Revelation Israel in Hebrews Israel in acts Israel in Matthew but a new criticism has come my way after putting all those talks together in a book called Israel in the New Testament I'm sorry it's not on sale here but you can get it on amazon.com that's the commercial over but when people read this book they said David you have particularly selected the books of the New Testament that are sympathetic to Israel why don't you choose one of the books that replacement theologians love so I've done that this morning and their favorite book in the New Testament is Paul's letter to the Galatians so this morning I'm speaking about Israel in Galatians and I'm going to deal with the passages that the replacement boys love to teach of which there are four in Galatians I believe the best form of defense is attack and therefore we're meeting the criticisms head-on and this morning I don't apologize for making you think the most common comment I get after preaching as well you gave us something to think about and it's always said in a tone of mild reproach as if the last thing Christians want to do is think and as if we don't come to church with our minds but listen we're to love God with all our minds as well as all our strengths and I don't apologize for making you think indeed the greatest unexplored territory in the whole world is between your ears and so we're gonna love God with all our minds and I will be arguing fairly tightly this morning from scripture for the support of the people of Israel now having said all that Galatians is probably the earliest letter of Paul and certainly the hottest it should have been written on asbestos paper because Paul is surprised even shocked and angry he always began letters with commendation of his readers thanking God for something good in them this time for the only time he goes straight into rebuke not one word of something good in Galatia why is he so disturbed and so upset now when you read a letter in the Word of God you must realize you're only listening to one side of a correspondence do you get annoyed like I do when somebody near you is on a mobile phone and you can't hear the other end and your brain tries to put together a picture and you hear comments on the phone from the person using it and you you just don't know what's happening at the other end let me give you an illustration hello hello is that you has it arrived oh good congratulations what weight is it what color is it is it petrol or diesel now you see what I mean you're all trying to construct the other side of the conversation and probably getting it wrong you can do that with a letter of Paul you need to listen carefully to what is happening at the other end Paul only wrote a letter once when it was needed because it wasn't cheap to find someone to deliver it and so he was dealing with a crisis and a big one and one that made him very angry and very disturbed his language is extraordinary in this letter but your polite English version may not tell you the real language he used he is cursing people in this letter in fact he actually says I wish they would castrate themselves strong language he's saying I wish they would rub themselves of their ability to reproduce themselves now why would he wish such terrible thing on believers the answer lies in a bit of history the early church was entirely Jewish especially here in Jerusalem and that was a root problem the biggest issue for the early church was circumcision it's not an issue for us today we don't take it as seriously as Paul did in fact we make jokes about it and I'm gonna tell you one I have Malcolm's permission to do so I did try it out on him first but he is the story a Gentile man was looking for a faith for himself and he studied all the world religions but came to the conclusion that Judaism would suit him better than any and so he found a local rabbi and said I'd like to talk to you about converting to Judaism and they talk for a long time and the rabbi said well you seem very sincere I think we should go ahead but he said I think I should warn you there is a small surgical operation involved and the gentleman said is it very painful and the rabbi said well he said I don't remember but then I was only eight days when it was done to me but he said I do know this he said I couldn't walk for a whole year afterwards which rather put the gentleman over jokes over Paul took circumcision very very seriously and so did the early church and the issue was whether Gentile believers in Jesus should be circumcised should become Jew after all Jesus was circumcised all the Apostles were circumcised all the members of the earliest church were circumcised and it seemed quite logical to believers in Jerusalem that if you're going to follow a circumcised Messiah then to be like him you should be circumcised as well and this could have split the early church from top to bottom it was the biggest issue which called the first council here in Jerusalem to debate debate and decide on this crucial issue now Jews didn't mind people becoming like them in fact Judaism was a missionary religion the trouble is that if you get circumcised then you are accepting the law of Moses all of it or 613 commandments you are tying yourself in to the law and the law state that if you break in one single point you've broken the whole law that's the law if I'm driving my car in England and I stop at every red light and I observe the speed limit and then just once I ignore a red light and drive through it and I'm stopped by a policeman I can't say to that policeman but I stopped at every other red light this is the only one i i've not stopped at and he will just say you broke the law it reminds me of a day when a an evangelist from singapore called john hagee i came to london and spoke at the london city mission which was headed up by a man called roy Jeremiah and they both set off on Sunday morning to go to the church and they were late so they were breaking the speed limit and the policeman stopped them and he said to the driver what's your name and he said Jeremiah and the policeman said to the passenger and what's your name he said Haggai I and the policeman said well I'm my name is Moses and you just broke my law but it is a it is a fact that if you break one law just one out of 613 you've broken the law of God and you've put yourself under a curse because there is a curse on those who don't keep all the laws all the time that's what the children of Israel agreed to at Mount Sinai God told them his laws and he said will you keep them all continually and they said we will but the trouble is there's not one of them capable of doing that nor have I met one Jew who has done well now what was happening in the early church was this because the Jewish believers in Jerusalem were all circumcised like Jesus and believed that every follower of Jesus should also be circumcised and keep the law of Moses which Jesus did then they were very worried when Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles told Gentiles you don't need to keep the law of Moses you don't need to be circumcised believe in Jesus trust and obey Him that's all you need and this really upset the Jews in Jerusalem the Jewish believers in our Lord Jesus and so they would send missionaries because the Jews were very keen on missions Jesus once criticized them he said you you travel land and sea to get one convert and they did they were keen on missionary work but there was a butt and the butt is that when they made one convert Jesus said you then make him as much a son of hell as you are they were sending missionaries out from Jerusalem to follow Paul around where ever he preached the gospel of freedom from the law they would follow up and say Paul is not telling you the whole truth he's telling you part of the truth which is to believe in Jesus but he's not telling you the whole truth which is to be like Jesus and be circumcised and keep the law of Moses and so they were undoing his work they were not only doing that they were actually robbing Paul's converts of their salvation because Paul believes you can lose your salvation makes that quite clear in his writings and his converts were coming to Christ his Gentile converts and were then being told you're not fully converted you're not fully born-again and then they would be put under the law which puts you back under a curse if you don't keep all of it all the time and so he said you should curse them because they are putting you under a curse he said you have fallen from grace in other words they were following him everywhere he preached and rubbing his converse of salvation making them as much a son of hell according to Jesus as they were themselves now that's a very serious crisis and it explains everything in the whole book and certainly explains Paul's deep feelings which come out again and again in this book now to give you a very simple outline of the book there are six chapters chapters 1 to 2 chapter 3 to 4 and chapters 5 to 6 in chapters 1 to 2 which are largely historical Paul says I went up to Jerusalem and I took with me and called Titus deliberately took him because he's not circumcised and I took him as my colleague in evangelism and I have presented the church in Jerusalem with myself a circumcised Jew and Titus an uncircumcised Gentile and said we are both preaching the gospel to the Gentiles and he said Jerusalem accepted our mission but he said there was a group in Jerusalem called the circumcision party a group of Jewish believers who were still convinced that a Gentile had to become a Jew in order to follow the Jewish Messiah and Paul faced that party and the elders of this city agreed with Paul the next part of chapters 1 to 2 he describes how he faced Simon Peter himself with inconsistency over kosher meals and Peter was giving way to the circumcision party by not eating with Gentile converts and Paul publicly and deliberately rebuked Simon Peter for not being consistent with the gospel so much for chapters 1 to 2 which are historical chapters 3 to 4 are doctrinal where Paul deals with the theology with the scriptures that were being quoted and it's in that section three to four that I'm going to concentrate this morning chapters 5 to 6 deal with something quite differently the danger when you tell Gentiles you are not under the laws of Moses is that they can assume were not under any law we can behave as we like I've just come from South Africa where there's a teaching that's rapidly spreading from a place called Hong Kong as it happens and it's called free grace and they are deliberately teaching Christians you don't need to repent and when you come to Christ all your sins are forgiven future as well as past so it doesn't really matter if you sin now that you're saved that's a deadly teaching we call it license and the two dangers confronting Christian fellowships are legalism and license and so having dealt with legalism in chapters 3 to 4 he turns to the other problem of license where he teaches Christians are not free to sin they are free not to sin can I say that again that's one of the most important things I will say this morning Christians are not free to sin we are free not to sin and that's real freedom were the only people who are free not to everybody else has to we're free not to and therefore through throughout the letter Paul is saying don't go back into legalism the law of Moses is legalism but don't think you're free to go into license on the country to be led by the Spirit is to be filled by the fruit of the Spirit well now all that simply introduction there are four passages in Galatians which replacement theologians love to quote I'll just mention all four in summary the first is in Chapter three where Paul is talking about Abraham and seems to be saying that there's only one seed of Abraham who can inherit the promises made to him and he quotes that the promises were made to Abraham and his seed and the word seed is in the singular and so replacement interpret that as meaning only Christ is qualified to inherit the promises of Abraham which means that the Jews are not that god intended only one Jew to inherit Abraham's promises and that Jew is Jesus and therefore Jesus is the only Jew who can claim the promises of God to Abraham if that is true then the whole Old Testament is based on a misunderstanding because every time that God promised something to Abraham and his singular seed he was promising the land to Abraham and his seed now if he was really meaning that only Christ can inherit that then the Jews have no claim whatever to the land it means that all the prophets of the Old Testament mistaken in thinking that God had promised the land to the Jews to the seeds of Abraham actually it's a very simple misunderstanding the word seed is what we call a collective noun it's the it's like the word sheep if I said to you I must go and look for my lost sheep that could mean either one lost sheep which you probably would think of following the parable but it could mean that I've lost many sheep and I must go and look for my lost sheep it's a collective non it other means one sheep or many it can mean both and similarly when God promised to Abraham and his seed though it was a singular word it was nevertheless a collective noun that could mean many and in fact God didn't mean many because he said and your seed will be more than the dust of the earth so that if you can count the dust you can count your seed so a mountain is being made out of a molehill here and that singular word seed can mean many just as easily as it can mean one the second passage which the replacement make a lot of is in the same chapter chapter 3 where Paul says that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek male nor female bond nor free but all are one in Christ Jesus and again the replacement theologians say that Christ came to abolish all distinctions between people whether they are racial social or sexual we are all one in Christ Jesus again it sounds impressive but in fact Christ did not come to do away with those distinctions in Christ yes they are gone but even in Christ the distinction between male and females still applies my wife is female and I'm male and were both in Christ and she can do things I can't and I can do things she comes what I can't do that she can I cannot conceive sorry you missed that one think about it and you'll get it but you see why should Paul tell husbands their duty is one thing and wives their duty is different if cret in Christ there is neither meaning of male nor female what's wrong with homosexual marriage if there's neither male nor female in Christ and that verse verse 28 of chapter 3 has been seized on by the feminists by the homosexuals and seized on to cancel everything else Paul said about the different roles and responsibilities of male and female similarly when I came to be in Christ I didn't cease to be British and if I tried to tell the income tax authorities in Britain in Christ is neither Jew nor Greek I'm no longer British I'm gonna get in trouble applying for a passport you see that verse doesn't mean that Christ has come to do away with all distinctions between Jew and Gentile for example that verse is dealing with our vertical relationship to God not for the horizontal relationships with each other our horizontal relationships we are still Jew or Greek we're still male or female we're still slave or free as the letter to Philemon underlines when Paul sent a runaway slave back to his owner but in Christ in my vertical a ship with God we are all one in Christ Jesus and the word one there means we are one person we're not many people anymore in Christ we are one person and he's Jewish and he's male and he's free and we have adopted his identity as far as God is concerned I'm in Christ and so is my wife and therefore my wife is a son of God not a daughter because we have been baptized into Christ we close ourselves with Christ we are in Christ and therefor we are in God's sight one person in Christ Jesus we have adopted his identity therefore in Christ I'm a Jew and in Christ a male and in Christ I'm free because he wasn't Gentile and he wasn't female and he wasn't a slave so that's the meaning of the verse we have put on Christ and that's why when I pray I can pray in his name when you say at the end of a prayer in the name of Jesus Christ what are you saying you're saying this isn't me god this is your son asking I'm adopting his name for this prayer that's why it's such an incredible privilege that we should not reduce it to a formula at the end of a prayer you're saying God this is Jesus praying I'm in Christ and I'm using his name to pray what a difference that would make to what we prayed for well now that's the second passage but it's the third passage that I want to spend time on and if you have a Bible please open it at Galatians chapter 4 and this is perhaps the second most important passage in Galatians to the replacement theologians beginning at verse 21 tell me you who want to be under the law are you not aware of what the law says for it is written that Abraham had two sons one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman his son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise these things may be taken figuratively actually in the Greek Paul says allegorically for the women represent two covenants one covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves this is Hagar now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai to the present in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem because she is in slavery with her children but the Jerusalem that his above is free and she is our mother for it is written bit lad o barren woman who bears no children break forth and cry aloud you who have no labor pains because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband now you brothers like Isaac are children of promise at that time the son born in the ordinary way persecute the Sun born by the power of the Spirit it is the same now but what does the scripture say get rid of the slave woman and her son for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman son therefore brothers we are not children of the slave woman but of the free woman now what's all that about first I want you to notice who he's talking to he's talking to Christian believers who want to live under the law of Moses you may think that's strange and yet today I meet Christian Zionists who want to do the same thing put yourself under the law of Moses and you put yourself under a curse but there are Christians who want to do it why should anyone want to live by the law of Moses when you've found the liberty of the Spirit in Christ there are two big reasons one is that it's an attractive thing to do it's an appealing thing to do it's far easier to be told what to do by laws than to be led by the spirit much easier to be able to go to the rabbi and say what should I do in these circumstances and be given the law then it is to find out what the Spirit would want to do it's much easier easier to tithe your income according to the law of Moses than be led by the Spirit as to what you give much easier to live by law than to live by the spirit and so people want to know exactly what they should do in each circumstance most of the questions I get asked I'm being treated as a lawyer and people want me to lay down the law for them as to what a Christian should do in these Constance's I usually refer them to Hagee at 3:16 or whatever it is which doesn't exist but we we want the law to tell us exactly how to live but we are called to be led by the spirit and that I find is much harder much easier to be told what to do that's one reason why people are attracted to a religion of legalism to a religion of law the other reason is that you can do it yourself because it hints that if you do this then you will inherit eternal life and that feeds our pride we'd much rather have a do-it-yourself religion than one that's done for us much rather it feeds our pride every religion in the world except Christianity is based on what you should do for God Christianity is based on what God has done for us that's a big difference it's the difference between law and grace but human nature prefers law we'd rather do it ourselves we'd rather achieve our own righteousness than have God give his righteousness to us that's that's human nature and that's the biggest problem for God because that one thing God cannot stand it's self righteousness and it was the Pharisees who were most in conflict with our Lord Jesus over this very thing and he told his own followers unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees hue won't enter the kingdom so the Jewish religion and the Jewish laws appeal to human nature many would rather have that and so Paul addresses those in the churches of Galatia who are listening to these Judaizers from Jerusalem and who are adopting Judaism who want to live under the law who prefer to do so I mean Christians today prefer to worship on the Sabbath than on Sunday what a terrible error this Sabbath looks back to the old creation sunday is the beginning of the new creation it's the day when God went back to work quite different but we are drawn to behave like Jews there's something in us admirers Jews and would like to be like them please I beg you if you're a Gentile praise God that you're a Gentile you don't need to become Jewish and praise God that he didn't tell you to be circumcised or to keep any of the laws of Moses we only keep the law of Christ and his reinterpretation of the law of Moses is binding on us but we'd lad ly submit to that it's because we love the Lord Jesus that we keep his Commandments he said go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father the Son the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you that's where we stand we are free from the law because Jesus died to the law and in Christ we have died to it as well the law can't touch dead people but Christ can and does well now let's move on Paul begins with facts and he goes to the Torah for these facts like Jesus before him he appeals back from Moses part of the Torah to God's part at the beginning he goes back to Genesis when Jesus was asked about divorce and remarriage he said Moses allowed it but I don't I go back to Genesis I go back to God's intention and what God has joined together let no put asunder Paul is doing exactly the same thing he's appealing from the mosaic part of the Torah back to God's part in the book of Genesis and he says Abraham had two sons actually he had eight but were mainly concerned with the first two the first was Ishmael and the second was Isaac Ishmael was Abraham's firstborn son but by the wrong mother and Abraham tried to hurry up God's program what a mistake or rather I think it was Sarah when God promised a son to Abraham Sarah said I'm years past childbearing you'll have to do something else to get that son I can't produce a son for you she genuinely thought that she said go and take one of my female slaves a fertile young woman can produce a son for you and she did but that son was not God's promise it was a human birth achieved entirely by humanity Abraham was still able to impregnate her and he did and she was still able to have babies and she did now these are the facts on which Paul is going to build an extraordinary teaching this is Abraham had two sons one by a slave woman one by a freewoman by Hagar and Sarah and then he says we can treat this allegorically now we sauna service scared of allegory that's mainly because the replacement theologians have allegorized the unfulfilled promises to Israel and change them from a literal meaning of coming back to the land to a spiritual meaning and blessing Church so we've got scared of allegory but there is allegory in the Bible some of it is allegory I don't take the whole Bible literally and I've never met anyone who does if you do you've made a big mistake I take literally what the Bible intends to be literal and I take allegorically what the Bible intends to be an allegory for example I don't believe for one moment that there will be a Scarlet woman riding a dragon it's in the book of Revelation it's in the Word of God but I don't take it literally nor I hope do you it stands for a city in the grip of Satan the city of Babylon and so that's an allegory and the important thing is where you draw the line and you cannot take the whole Bible literally otherwise there are only gonna be animals in heaven and hell' sheep in one and goats in the other but you don't take that literally do you of course you don't the sheep and goats stand for people it's an allegory and here Paul is saying those facts I've just told you our an allegory those two women a slave and a free woman Hagar and Sarah represent two covenants one Hagar represents the Covenant made at Sinai with Moses and it leads to slavery you become bound to Moses laws all of them and I'm breaking some at this moment while I stand here there's a label in here that says this is mixed cloth and the law of Moses says you mustn't wear mixed clothes so you've got a preacher this morning was breaking the law of Moses it doesn't worry my conscience because I'm free from that law and many of the others if I had a rebellious son I wouldn't kill him but Moses said I should I try every other way well now Hagar stands for the law given it's an EAJA whereas Sarah stands for the freedom of a supernatural promise and those are two covenants I've already given them character one covenant emphasizes what you have to do for God the other covenant emphasizes what God can do for you Hagar and Sarah Hagar could do it herself and she did she didn't need God's help to do anything she produced a son for Abraham in the natural ordinary course of events as anybody else could Sarah couldn't do that you know when I will read through Genesis 11 it seems that if people did nothing but begat in those days some so big that's own so big at Sun so begot sons all they did was begat for long long time and then suddenly at the end of the list but Sarah was barren she was infertile she couldn't produce a son for Abraham not possible at 19 years of age no way but she did because God enabled her to do so because God had a promise to keep and he kept it now Hagar stands for the natural man who loves the Covenant of law because he wants to do it himself and because he thinks he can but the Covenant of Sarah is what God can do for you one is a covenant of self righteousness the others a covenant whereby God gives us his righteousness not only that but here comes the reason why I'm majoring on this passage he says Jerusalem belongs to Hagar now the implications of that are so profound that I almost dare not tell you in the context of this week focusing on Jerusalem but according to Paul and this is the Word of God this present Jerusalem belongs to Hagar and we must explore the implications of that in a moment he's saying that spiritual DNA is important now the replacement theologians use this as a basis for criticizing Christian Zionists they say we are far too concerned with the earthly Jerusalem and were not concerned enough with the heavenly Jerusalem for the two woman's stand not only for two covenants but for two cities and both have the same name one is on earth and we're in it at the moment the earthly present Jerusalem the other is the Jerusalem that is above there's another city up there it's going to come down here one day but it's up there at the moment and it's that city to which I belong and to which you belong and the replacement people criticize us for putting too much focus and attention on the wrong city and I'm going to say in a moment there's truth in their criticism but not the whole truth and I want to tell you what is wrong with their criticism and then tell you what sorry what is right about their criticism and then tell you what is wrong with it we need to listen carefully to our critics otherwise we're living in our little world listening only to ourselves now I'm afraid I have to confess that I have given more attention to the earthly Jerusalem than to the heavenly one but she is my mother not this one I don't owe this city anything I've never heard anybody healed in the name of Jerusalem have you I've never known anybody saved by the name of Jerusalem by the name of Jesus yes by Jerusalem no this city Paul said this present City belongs to Hagen what did he mean by that he said it's a city of slavery now is that still the truth the answer is partially it is still true that the vast majority of the citizens of this city are in slavery in Paul's day they were in slavery to the law that is not true in our day a minority of Jerusalem is sillens Saver to the law of Moses if you want to meet them go to the mayor She'arim or go to the western wall on friday night but the majority of citizens of this country are no longer in slavery to the law they still may take a day off for the Day of Atonement but they're not in slavery to the law what are they in slavery to the answer is the same slavery that we used to be in slavery to sin slavery to themselves and they need libery liberating tomorrow you will go on the march through Jerusalem I beg you don't be deceived by the wonderful reception you will get I remember my first march through rusa l'm behind the israeli defense army the soldiers were the front of the procession we came in the back in those days and the Welcome we received we were delighted with people's faces lit up but I want to tell you the truth they will not be welcoming you as ambassadors for Jesus they are welcoming you as supporters of Israel and they're glad to have that support they are a very lonely people and it looks as if it's boiling down to Christians as the only supporters of Israel outside Israel that could be the final end of the present trend but when you see their faces just remember spiritually they belong to Hagar they're born of a slave woman they belong to that Old Covenant Mount Sinai you see even Christians can be deluded deceive themselves into letting the physical factors override the spiritual when we look at this physical DNA of the people in this land we see two people we see the descendants of Israel the Arabs of Ishmael the Arabs the descendants of Isaac the Jews but that's not how God sees them God looks on their spiritual ancestry and when we do that we find there are seeds of Sarah among the Palestinians and we had one speaking here from this lectern yesterday morning 19 from Bethlehem he his spiritual mother is Sarah most Israelis are children of Hagar spiritually but there are children of Sarah and Israelis and just as Paul said Ishmael troubled Isaac so the descendants of Hagar and of Ishmael on both sides of the israeli-palestinian divide caused trouble for the children of Sarah and we need to recognize this to say simply Arabs are children of Ishmael and Israelis are children of Isaac is a mistake most Israelis are children of Hagar spiritually and still though one day God has promised to lift the blindness and bring them into one fold with us and we look forward to that day but you see it makes a total difference when you no longer see the Israelis as children of Sarah all the Palestinians as children of Hagar the majority on both sides are still children of Hagar so don't be deceived you may ask a very simple question and I'm going to answer it why go on a march sir Jerusalem there are a very profound reasons why it's a good thing to do first you are undoing the prejudice of 2,000 years Jews have long memories and they cannot forget easily the anti-semitism of the Christian Church over centuries we are marching to show them that some Christians love them some Christians are not like those who kill them some Christians want to love Israel and the biggest thing we are going to tell them is this even if you are enemies of the gospel for our sake you are still beloved by God for the patriarchs sake I'm quoting Romans 11 so you are going to say we love you and you are going to say god loves you but you're not going as evangelist indeed it would be wrong for you to be giving out gospel tracts or putting the name of Jesus on your banner you're not going to evangelize the March isn't about that it cannot be indeed if you went through Jerusalem with Yeshua HaMashiach on your banners you're asking for a riot but you're not going for that you're going for what I call free evangelism you're going to soften hard hearts you're going to prepare them to think again about the Lord Jesus Christ that's why you go but don't be under any illusions they're welcome to you they're not welcome you as evangelists they're not welcome you as ambassadors for Jesus they're welcoming you as friends of Israel because they desperately need support and a third land to find it anywhere and surprised to find it among Christians in view of our dreadful history of anti-semitism over the years so there is truth in the replacement criticism of Zionists we do get too excited about the present Jerusalem and we do tend to be naive in the Welcome they give us when we march and we do tend to get mixed up between the earthly Jerusalem and the heavenly we belong to the heavenly we owe our salvation to Jesus who is in heaven and we are citizens of the Jerusalem that is above we're not citizens of this Jerusalem one day this Jerusalem will be replaced by the one that comes down from heaven and I look forward to the New Jerusalem so having said there is truth in their criticism let me now say there is Error in their criticism the replacement attitude to the present Jerusalem is neutral the only reason that would bring them here is the past to see where Jesus was where he was crucified where he was buried where he ascended that's all past and we need to remember that Jesus wept over this city we may smile and laugh but as I march through Jerusalem for the first time my heart was breaking I was weepy inside I was laughing outside and smiling outside but inside I was weeping how often he said what I've gathered you as a hen gathers her chicks beneath their wings and you wouldn't you wouldn't and they still wouldn't actually I believe that Jesus has even more to weep over this city now with all the multitude of denominations that we've introduced what a picture of Christianity we give to this city it's enough to make Jesus weep all over again but he still weeps for his people his holy spirit is still grieved by the inhabitants of this city they still live in slavery to themselves they still reject his liberation his freedom so don't be deceived and thank God for the heavenly Jerusalem to which we belong she is our mother now let me come back at the replacement I accept their rebuke I think there is truth in it and we need to entertain notice of it but there is also error they have little or no room whatever for the Jerusalem the earthly Jerusalem of the future and this is what makes the total difference for me I do not come to Jerusalem for its present its present state is Grievous but I do come for its future this is central to the Lord's plan for the whole world it is here that Jesus is coming back to Planet Earth and you know I was in debate public debate with the leading anti Zionist in Britain and I asked him do you believe that Jesus is coming back in his resurrection body and he said yes of course I do I said then where is he coming back to because if you were in a body you can only come back to one place you can come back to the whole world at once you've got to come back to one place and he didn't know had no idea that Jesus was coming back here his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives and that makes the future of this city very important to me there's a a church in London called the temple it's in the Strand in London and there are effigies marble statues on a whole lot of tombs of the Knights who came to fight the crusade in Jerusalem I'm not proud of the Crusades but I'm very glad to see that every marble effigy on the tomb is 33 years old no matter what age those Knights died their tombs represent them as 33 in the resurrection and I'm going to be 33 again hallelujah for that and it's here it's here in this old city that I will receive my salvation from Jesus notice I said I will receive it I'm not saved yet I'm on the way of salvation the New Testament uses the words save in three tenses past present and future you have been saved you are being saved and you will be saved but the emphasis statistically is on the future our salvation is not ours yet it's coming and it'll come to me right here now you've gone quiet notice clapping nobody sing hallelujah so I better explain no don't do it because the preacher says so Amen let's listen to Paul Paul says in Romans our salvation is nearer than when we first believed in that lovely text did you ever hear it preached on our salvation is nearer than when we first believed I'm looking forward to being saved it's nearer than when I first believed 60 years ago or more listen to the letter to the Hebrews Christ will appear a second time not to deal with sin but to bring salvation to all who are waiting for him and I'm waiting for him to bring me salvation and he's going to do it right here in this city thank you for listening

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Keywords: David, Pawson, Galations, New Testament, Replacement Theology, Israel, Zionists, Jerusalem, Feast, Tabernacles, Embassy

Id: KR6IuqrMl4c

Length: 60min 58sec (3658 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 16 2012