(Isaiah 48:10) “See, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. For My own sake, My very own sake, I will act; for how can I let Myself be defamed? I will not yield My glory to another.”
Reconciling a God who is perfect love in every way and full of mercy and grace that at the same time is a righteous judge who punishes evil and rebellion against His laws and commandments He gave to Israel, and to the Gentile nations for their own spiritual and physical wellbeing, is not easy to come to terms with.
Why the Ten Commandments?
In His love for Israel His covenant people and for men and women in the Gentile nations our Triune God gave us the Ten Commandments and the Law of Moses in the Torah found in the complete Canon of scripture in both the Old and the New Testaments for our spiritual and physical well-being.
Without the Ten Commandments, which are the foundation of all just laws given for the welfare of man and for order in society, chaos would abound.
Just think of those governments and educational institutions in the western democracies today that want to remove the Ten Commandments from government buildings, schools and educational institutions and are promoting alternate lifestyles that go contrary to the Word of God.
These nations are ripe for judgement unless there is spiritual revival and a return to the Word of God.
The terrible events happening today in our world are the result of man’s rebellion against His maker (Isaiah 24:19-20).
God’s righteous laws, when exercised in any nation, will bring His blessing and prosperity to that nation and exult it before other nations. However, when sin abounds in any nation it is a disgrace in the eyes of God and that nation comes under His judgement.
As it is written; “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).
When you consider the wickedness of man and their rebellion against their maker in light of His righteous character and nature, it is clear that He must punish evil (Isaiah 13:11) (Isaiah 3:11) (Psalm 91:8) (Psalm 34:21) (Psalm 11:6).
As it is also written; “The LORD is known by the justice He brings; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands. The wicked will return to Sheol (Hell), all the nations who forget God” (Psalm 9:16-17).
We are also told in the Bible that “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne” while at the same time “loving devotion and faithfulness go before Him” (Psalm 89:14).
He is righteous and just and at the same time full of loving devotion and faithfulness. He is a Triune God who loves but who also judges.
No nation has suffered more
No other nation in history has suffered as much as the Jewish people. One would ask why has these tragedies been experienced by God’s covenant people down through the long centuries, and more so in the Holocaust where six million Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis?
Words cannot express the terrible atrocities of the Holocaust and the terrible things still happening to the Jewish people today at the hands of Islam.
Today in Israel we see rockets and missile attacks, suicide bombers, stabbings, car ramming Israelis at bus stops, Muslim Arabs in Judea and Samaria seeking to kill Jews and perpetrate terrorist acts, not to mention Israel’s war on seven fronts, and now with Egypt gathering its forces in the Sinai Peninsula near the border with Israel.
Then you have the hostility against Israel in the EU and the UN and throughout Europe and in Great Britain, in Canada and in Australia, always bringing sanctions and untrue accusations against Israel.
How many of the mainstream media and news outlets today are twisting the facts concerning Israel, maligning Israel and turning people against the Jewish people. What about the rise of replacement theology within wider Christendom?
The Divine Refiner is still at work
Malachi the prophet writes…
“But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He will be like a refiner’s fire, like a launderer’s soap. And He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver. Then they will present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. Then the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will please the LORD, as in days of old and years gone by” (Malachi 3:2-4).
Make no mistake concerning God’s dealings with Israel. He is the divine potter and the refiner. He is the divine potter and Israel is the clay on the wheel of the circumstances the Jewish people find themselves in today.
In Bible times just as the potter never took his eyes off of the clay on the wheel, so God the divine potter never slumbers or sleeps where Israel is concerned (Psalm 121:4).
Make no mistake God is watching over His covenant people as He refines them in the furnace of affliction for their own spiritual well-being and for his own glory which He will never give to another.
This refining process He is also doing today with the Body of Messiah spiritually grafted into Israel. Oppression and persecution and maligning are also being perpetrated against New Covenant Bible believers in Messiah.
The potter in Bible times had to remove the lumps of resistance in the clay to the moulding process of his hands because he knew how the finished product would turn out. The potter would have to slap the clay hard to dislodge the lump but then smooth the clay again.
Of the clay did not mould he would reshape it until he had what he desired.
Likewise, the LORD knows how the finished product will turn out where Israel and the Body of Messiah are concerned and this is what He is doing with Israel today as a nation. God is removing the lumps of resistance to His will and purposes. (See Jeremiah 18:1-10).
Consider the one who refines gold. The refining fire removes the dross when gold is being purified in a cauldron with a fire underneath causing the impurities in the gold to rise to the surface.
Once the process is completed the refiner scrapes off the dross from the surface of the gold and after this he can see his image and likeness in the purified liquid gold.
God’s ultimate purpose in His refining process for us who love God and have been called for His purposes is that we might be conformed to the image of the Son of God, Israel’s Messiah (Romans 8:29-31).
God does this for His own sake so that He will not be defamed or have His glory veiled. At present Israel as a nation by and large are aliens and strangers to their own covenants of promise.
However through God’s refining process a surviving remnant in Israel will come forth radiating the glory and the greatness of the Messiah and the whole world will know it (Isaiah 10:22) (Romans 9:27-29).
As the LORD spoke through the prophet Zechariah;
“In the whole land, declares the LORD, two thirds shall be cut off and perish, and one third shall be left alive. 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.’” (Zechariah 13:9).
For the remnant in Israel in that day it will be “Life from the dead!” (Romans 11:15b).
In the end of the refining process in Israel and the Body of Messiah spiritually grafted into Israel God gets the glory and we get the blessing beyond anything we could ever ask or imagine because He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us (Ephesians 3:20).
Added to this, that refining spiritual process God starts in ones’ life He intends to finish, being the author and perfector of our faith (Hebrews 12:1-3) (Philippians 1:6).
As a Messianic New Covenant believer who loves Israel and believes in the national and spiritual restoration of Israel Biblically, I wrestle with the conflict I feel within when it is clear that God is fighting for Israel while at the same time He is spiritually refining Israel as a nation.
God’s spiritual refining process will continue with Israel until the Messiah our Lord Jesus reveals Himself to the Jews as their Passover Lamb when He returns to save Israel and to reign on David’s throne at Jerusalem as Israel’s rightful king (Zechariah 13:8-9) (Zechariah 12:11-13:1).
After all He is the King of Israel!
As we read in Luke’s gospel; “Behold, you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end!” (Luke 1:32).
This refining process concerning Israel will culminate with the time of Jacob’s Trouble which ultimately will see Israel as a nation saved out of it (Jeremiah 30:1-10) (Matthew 24:21-22) (Daniel 12:1, 7b).
We do know from God’s Word that Satan, being the god of this world’s attitudes and values and the author of all wickedness and rebellion against God, hates Jews and Christians and everything that is righteous and good.
From his fall in the beginning he was a murderer refusing to uphold the truth because no truth was found in him.
He is the ultimate liar and the father of all lies and spiritual deception just as the Lord Jesus said of him…
“He was a murderer from the beginning, refusing to uphold the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, because he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44b).
Satan is the one who kills, steals and destroys, whereas the Messiah our Lord Jesus is the one who gives spiritual life in abundance and physical well-being as well (John 10:10).
Today Islam is Satan’s death cult seeking to eliminate Israel and the faithful Body of Messiah spiritually grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel.
However, when you consider the perpetual suffering of God’s covenant people, and these atrocities He has permitted to happen to them down through history even to the present day, we need to turn again to the scriptures.
Why has Israel suffered so much?
The Torah (Blessings and Curses)
In the Torah (the first five books on the Old Testament) we see that the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, our forefathers in the faith through His servant Moses gave Israel blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience (Leviticus 26:1-39) (Deuteronomy Chapter 28).
The curses far outweigh the blessings because sin is a very serious matter with Him and all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory whether they are Jew or Gentile (Psalm 14:1-3 ) (Psalm 53:1-3) (Romans 3:10-12) (Romans 3:23).
As Rabbi the apostle Paul, the Jewish scholar and apostle writes…
“God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honour and immortality, He will give eternal life.
But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.
There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honour and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favouritism” (Romans 2:6-11).
As God says; “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).
Down through Israel’s history God sent His prophets to call His people back to Himself when they strayed from Him and rejected His Word. He sent foreign armies against His people who had rebelled against Him and violated their covenants.
The terrible suffering and devastation perpetrated by these foreign armies upon Israel were terrible and ruthless to say the least, yet God had actually sent them (Joel 2:11, 25).
Also it needs to be said that once these armies had served God’s purposes He got rid of them big time!
After sending many faithful prophets who were rejected by Israel God’s final word to His people Israel was His one and only eternal begotten Son, the Word Himself who became flesh and tabernacled among us to bring salvation to Israel, and to the whole Gentile world (John 1:14).
Tragically Israel rejected the Messiah our Lord Jesus, the one who loved them dearly and who grieved for His wayward brethren the Jewish people.
We see Him sitting on the Mount of Olives overlooking the city of Jerusalem and saying out loud with a deep sigh and grief in his heart…
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling! Look, your house is left to you desolate” (Matthew 23:37-38).
The desolation occurred in 70AD forty years later. The desolation will end at His Second Coming to destroy all opposition and to establish His Messianic Millennial Kingdom and making His headquarters at Jerusalem.
The great tragedy for the people of Israel, and for their decedents, was when they brought a curse down on themselves and their children at the trial of the Messiah our Lord Jesus, a Jew from the Tribe of Judah (Matthew 27:25).
In 70AD Jerusalem fell to the Romans and the Temple completely destroyed that saw not one stone left upon another as prophesied by the Messiah Himself when He walked this earth (Matthew 24:1-2).
The curse of the Law today not only rests upon the unsaved in the Gentile nations but also upon the unsaved Jewish people who reject the Messiah.
This is why Israel has suffered so much. However, the story does not end for Israel as a nation. Our Triune God has not finished with Israel, “the apple of His eye” (Deuteronomy 32:10) (Zechariah 2:8).
A Nation Reborn in a Day!
The prophet Isaiah writes…
“Before she goes into labour, she gives birth; before the pains come upon her, she delivers a son. Who has ever heard of such a thing? Who has ever seen things like this?
Can a country be born in a day or a nation is brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labour than she gives birth to her children.
Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery?” says the LORD. “Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?” says your God” (Isaiah 66:7-9).
In 1948, after the terrible atrocities of the Holocaust, Israel was reborn as a nation. It was a partial national restoration in that they still to this day do not possess all of the land the LORD gave to them through the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Genesis 15:17-19).
As it is written in the Word of God;
“…the covenant He (the LORD) made with Abraham, and the oath He swore to Isaac. He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree, to Israel as an everlasting covenant: ‘I will give you the land of Canaan as the portion of your inheritance’” (1 Chronicles 16:16-17).
The land of Israel was to be for the people of Israel “as an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:7-8).
Today Israel as a nation are still labouring under the curse of the Law, and the Orthodox religious Jews who reject Messiah are relying upon a works based righteousness which saves no one.
It is by God’s grace through faith alone in Messiah as Saviour and Lord that anyone is saved, not by good works or by trying to keep the Law (Ephesians 2:8-10) (Galatians 2:16).
There is nothing wrong with the law of God because the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12).
The problem is with us and not with the Law.
As for the secular Jews they are like sheep without a shepherd and strangers and aliens to their own covenants of promise.
Satan and his wicked demonically controlled henchmen are perpetrating the atrocities we see against Israel today. The terrible atrocious butchery perpetrated by Hamas and Arab citizens of Gaza upon Israelis on October 7, 2023 was Satan’s handiwork.
Satan has other instruments through which he is working. It is Islam but also the EU and the UN and those non-Islamic nations whose governments “have it in” for Israel.
God is allowing this tragedy, not to destroy Israel, but to bring them back to Himself and to the Messiah, their Passover Lamb who has been sacrificed for their sins (1 Corinthians 5:7).
God in no way has finished dealing with Israel!
The Curse of the Law has been broken
What the unsaved Israelis need to know is that the curse of the law, being sin and its power to send people to hell was broken at the cross by the atoning cleansing blood of the Messiah. Satan experienced his defeat at the cross and was stripped of his power (Colossians 2:14-15).
At Jesus trial before Pilate the curse that the Jews had pronounced upon themselves and their generations to follow was removed at the cross.
As it is written; “Messiah redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree” (Galatians 3:13).
As Isaiah the prophet writes; “But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him (Messiah) the iniquity (rebellion) of us all” (Isaiah 53:5-6).
No longer does any unsaved Jew, or unsaved Gentile for that matter, need to remain under the power of the curse of the law hanging over their lives.
At the cross there was an exchange that took place in that “God made Him (the Messiah Lord Jesus) who knew no sin to be sin (a substitutionary sacrifice for sin) on our behalf (in our place), so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
God treated Him as a sinner, even though He had never sinned, in order that God might treat us as sons and daughters, who by nature and birth are great sinners in the sight of God, as if we had never sinned at all.
Through the blood of Messiah redemption and forgiveness of sin has been provided for all who repent, and by faith believe that He is the Son of God and received as Saviour and Lord (Ephesians 1:7) (John 1:12-13) (Romans 10:8-13) (Ephesians 2:8-10) (Acts 2:38-39).
This provides the righteousness that comes from God through faith in Messiah as one’s sin bearer and saviour from sin and its power and eternal consequences in the lake of fire (Romans 3:21-26) (John 3:16-18).
God justifies those who repent and believe in Messiah on the basis of His shed blood that has fully and forever atoned for their sin and which also protects them from the wrath to come (Romans 5:9).
The Blood of Messiah received by faith in Him settles everything for time and for all of eternity.
Whenever a Jewish man or woman turns from their sin and repents and believes in Him who shed His blood to atone for their sins and recognise that the power of the curse that hung over their lives has been broken, they realise how great a privilege they have as a Jewish person to have their saviour and true Messiah as a Jew.
They do not lose their Jewish identity but come to realise what it means to be truly Jewish in every way. Rabbi the apostle Paul understood this when he wrote…
“For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God” (Romans 2:28-29).
After all salvation is from the Jews! (John 4: 22b).
The New Covenant
The New Covenant in the blood of Messiah was not made with a Gentile Church but with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah (Jeremiah 31:31).
Gentiles who come to faith in Messiah are spiritually grafted into Israel and share in the blessings of Abraham (Galatians 3:13-14) (Romans 11:17-18) (Ephesians 2:11-22).
Israel as yet is to pass through the Time of Jacob’s Trouble and this will bring a remnant of Jews to faith in Messiah. These will be rescued out of this terrible time that will come upon all flesh (Matthew 24:21-22) (Jeremiah 30:1-9) (Zechariah 12:10-13:1, 8-9).
At present Israel is being attacked on every side and God is using this adversity to bring them back to Himself and to the foot of that old rugged cross.
It is a tragedy to see the atrocities being perpetrated on Israelis and humanly speaking it makes me want to see Israel’s enemies destroyed out of hand, especially the Hamas ‘butchers.’
Retribution against Israel’s enemies is coming big time when the Messiah returns to deal with Israel’s enemies (Isaiah 34:5-10; 63:1-6).
Even now the LORD is fighting for Israel, not because they have merited it but because of His great and glorious name, and for the honour of His character, and for the fact that He never goes back on His Covenants sworn in sacrificial blood.
As the psalmist writes;
“He is the LORD our God; His judgments carry throughout the earth. He remembers His covenant forever, the word He ordained for a thousand generations—the covenant He made with Abraham, and the oath He swore to Isaac” (Psalm 105:7-9).
Our Triune God is a covenant keeping God!!!
Not for Israel’s sake
It is not for Israel’s sake, but for His own glory and excellence that He is going to bring about every blessing He promised to do for Abraham and for his decedents the people of Israel and for the offspring of the woman Israel, namely, the faithful Body of Messiah (Ezekiel Chapter 36).
While the curse of the Law is still out there its power to keep men and women in slavery to Satan and sin and on the highway to hell has been broken!
If a person really wants to be saved and is willing to receive the means to be saved through repentance and faith in Messiah and in His atoning blood there is nothing that the devil can do about it!
Satan’s power to stop a person who wants to be saved has been removed by the blood of Messiah shed for the sins of the world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
There is power in the blood of Jesus and Stan knows it and it terrifies him and all of his cohorts in the atmosphere and in hell!
Epilogue
Let us remember that Israel’s hardness of heart is a partial hardness.
As Rabbi the apostle Paul wrote to the Gentile New Covenant believers in Rome who were entertaining a condescending manner towards their Jewish brothers and sisters in Messiah.
“I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:
‘The deliverer will come from Zion; He will turn godlessness away from Jacob. And this is My covenant with them when I take away their sins.’
As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” (Romans 11:25-29).
In that day when Israel receives its complete national and spiritual restoration in the Messianic Kingdom on earth the Jewish people (whom are called the Israelites Biblically) will be the head and not the tail of the nations that have survived the Second Coming of the Messiah our Lord Jesus (Isaiah 2:1-5) (Micah 4:1-5).
Having been tested in the furnace of affliction the refining process for Israel will be over and in that day for every Jewish man, woman and child living on planet earth it will be for them “Life from the Dead” (Romans 11:15).
