We're going to look at Matthew chapter 23. And we're going to consider what Brother Sammy's just been introducing to us this morning. The spiritual significance of the rebirth of the state of Israel. Want to read a verse out of Matthew chapter 23. Verse 33. the Lord begins his public ministry in the gospel of Matthew with eight blessings and he ends it with eight curses directed against the nation of Israel verse 33 ye serpents ye generation of vipers how can you escape the damnation of hell? wherefore behold I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes and some of them ye shall kill and crucify and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues and persecute them from city to city that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zechariah the son of Bacchus whom you slew between the temple and the altar let me pause there just for a moment That verse probably doesn't say very much to the average Bible reader, but it would have said a great deal to the Jew listening to Jesus. If you were to look at a Jewish Bible, you would see that they have the same books in their Bible that we have in our Old Testament, but they're not in the same order. the last book in the Jewish Bible is not the book of Malachi although it's in there the last book in the Jewish Bible is the book of Chronicles and you see that's what gives the significance to this statement because the first martyr in the Jewish Bible was Abel the last martyr was Zacharias the son of Barakias and what the Lord Jesus is saying here to these Jews he is saying the crime you are about to commit of murdering your Messiah is so horrendous that if God were to take all the righteous blood all the martyrs of the Old Testament and if he were to heap all that blood upon your head you would be less guilty than you now are. And then he made this statement. Verily, I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation. I want to read that because you see in the next verse he describes the coming destruction of Jerusalem. and what the Lord Jesus was actually saying was that it's all going to happen he said within this generation and it did it was a literal generation and within the lifetime of people who were actually living when Jesus said that the destruction of Jerusalem took place it was the most terrible event in all of ancient history when the Roman army finally drew its compass around the city of Jerusalem every time they caught a Jew they crucified him and all around the city of Jerusalem the hills were black with crosses and on every cross a Jew the only reason the Romans stopped crucifying Jews was because they ran out of wood and when they took the city they massacred a million people and they took so many Jews into captivity and sold them as slaves and shipped them off to the arenas that they glutted the slave markets and the arenas of the Roman world Jesus said these things are going to come upon this generation it was a literal generation people were living then who lived to see what Jesus said now let's look at chapter 24 verse 32 now learn a parable of the fig tree when his branch is yet tender and put it forth leaves ye know that summer is nigh so likewise ye when ye shall see all these things know that it is near even at the doors verily I say unto you this generation Same expression. If it means a literal generation in chapter 23, it means a literal generation in chapter 24. In fact, the expression occurs sixteen times in the Gospels, it occurs nine more times with an adjective such as a wicked generation, an adulterous generation, an evil generation. It means a generation, simply and solely that, nothing more, nothing less. A generation. I say unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled or begin to be. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. But in case, you know, we might be tempted to try and fix a date for the second coming of Christ, he says of that day and hour knoweth no man. In other words, we're not to fix a date, We can know that we've arrived at the time period by looking at the signs, the budding of the fig tree. You can't set a date for the coming of summer. You can't say summer this year is going to take place on such and such a date. You see, spring merges into summer. It's not a dateable event. Some years it comes early, some years it comes late. But you see, you can tell you've arrived at the time by the budding of the trees. And you know that while you can't set a date for it, it's just around the corner. And I take it, you know, the Lord is referring to the rapture here when he says, of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven. Because the Lord's return to set up his kingdom His actual return at the end of the great tribulation to set up his millennial kingdom, that's a dated event. You know in the Old Testament God was always setting dates for the Jews. He said, Abraham, he said, your seed. He said, they're going to be strangers in a foreign country. And he said, they're going to stay there for 400 years. And he said, they'll come out in the fourth generation. Well, you know, a biblically literate Jew living in the land of Egypt, when Moses appeared upon the scene, he could have done a countdown. He could have said, it's the fourth generation. Levi, Kohath, Amram, Moses. He could say to himself, it's the time. Time's come. It's going to happen. 400 years. And God set a date for them, you see. He intended them to figure out when it was going to happen. Exactly the same with the Babylonian captivity. When the Jews went to Babylon, God set a date. He said you're going to stay there for 70 years. And at the end of 70 years, you're coming back. That's why you have Daniel, in the book of Daniel, down on his knees, pouring out his heart to God, praying to God, reminding God that time's up. You see, behind the return from the captivity, the days of Cyrus the Persian, you have a man upon his knees, by the name of Daniel, reminding God, time to keep his promise. He could actually count down to the very time of the return. And you know a biblically literate Jew, living in the days of Jesus, he could have figured it out. In the book of Daniel, God set a date. He says, it's going to start from this date. It's going to run for 69 sevens, for 483 years. And at the end of 483 years, you watch it, Messiah's going to be cut off, had that not of himself. You see, a biblically literal Jew with a Bible in his hand, when the Lord Jesus rode in triumph into Jerusalem, he could have figured it out. God set a date. And it's the same after the rapture. After the rapture, when the beast sets up his image in the sanctuary, that you'll be able to count down 42 months, three and a half years, 1260 days. the dates given. He'll be able to say it's only another 1260 days to the coming of the Messiah. It's only another 960 days. It's only another 312 days. It's only another 49 days. It's only another 16 days. It's going to be the day after tomorrow. It's going to be tomorrow. And he'll come. They can set a date. You see, so when it says of that day and hour knoweth no man It can't possibly refer to his coming to set up the kingdom. Because that's a dated event. We don't know the date, it doesn't concern us. But people living during the tribulation will be able to set a date for the coming of Christ. That's a dated event. But the rapture is not a dated event. You see, the church doesn't belong to time, it belongs to eternity. While God sets dates for the Jews, He doesn't set dates for the church. So I take it, when it says of that day and hour knoweth no man, not the angels of heaven, but my Father, only that's referring to the rapture. Now the Lord says you can't set a date for that, but you can know that you've arrived at the time. And the clue that he gives is the budding of the fig tree. Now you know there are three trees in the Bible that symbolize the nation of Israel. There's the fig, and the olive, and the vine. And these trees do not symbolize the nation of Israel in the same way. The vine represents the nation of Israel as it was in the Old Testament. From the time Israel became a nation until the time the nation rejected Christ. Israel was God's vine. He picked it up out of the land of Egypt. He carried it across the sands of Sinai. He planted it in the promised land. He hedged it about. He let it out to husbandmen. and as the Lord told in that great parable of his just before he was going to the cross down to the Old Testament God again and again in Old Testament history he sent the prophets he sent people looking for a return upon his investment last of all he said I'll send my son and him they murdered Now you see, that was the vine. The nation of Israel from the time it became a nation until the time the nation, as a nation, rejected Christ. Then in the upper room, the Lord Jesus gathered his disciples around him. He said, now men, it's quite different from now on. From now on, I am the true vine, and my father is the husband man. That's the vibe. Now the olive represents the nation of Israel as it will be in a coming day when the nation finally accepts Jesus Christ as its Messiah. Remember in Romans chapter 11 the Apostle Paul is writing to the Gentiles in Romans chapter 11. Makes that perfectly clear as he says I speak to you Gentiles. Now he said look here you Gentiles God has taken the natural branches of the olive tree, the Jewish people, and he's broken them off for their unbelief and he has scattered them to the ends of the earth. And he has taken you wild olive trees, and he's taken you wild olive branches, and he's grafted you in to the place of spiritual privilege that once belonged exclusively to the Jew. You see, for two thousand years, if God had anything to say, He said it to a Jew. If God had anything to say, He spoke in Hebrew. But see, after Pentecost, if God had anything to say, He said it in Greek. He began to speak a Gentile language. That's why the New Testament is written in Greek. What God has done, he's taken the wild olive branches and he's grafted them in to the place that once belonged to the Jew. Now then he says, you Gentiles, he said, God has put you into this place of privilege that once belonged to the Jew. But don't you boast against the natural branches. Oh no, he said, the day is coming when God is going to take those natural branches that have been broken off, he's going to graft them back in again. Oh, says Paul, if the breaking off of those branches have been such a blessing to the Gentile world, what's it going to be when he grafts them back in again? Well, we know exactly what it's going to be. It's going to be the millennial reign of Christ. And so you see the olive represents the nation of Israel as it will be in a coming day after the nation accepts Christ. Now in between, between the time the nation rejected its Messiah and the time soon to come when the nation will accept its true Messiah, that period in between Israel is the fig tree. The Lord says, learn the parable of the fig tree. Now you remember of course that just the day before he'd given the miracle of the fig tree. He'd been coming into Jerusalem. He'd been out to Bethany for the night, spending the night, I expect, with Martha and Mary and dear old Lazarus. I don't know whether Martha overslept or what, but they didn't have any breakfast that morning. And coming into Jerusalem, and the Lord Jesus' disciples were hungry, there was this lovely fig tree standing by the side of the road. It looked like a healthy tree. And the Lord says, come on, let's get some breakfast. And they go up to that tree, and instead of there being any fruit on that tree, there was nothing but leaves. It was absolutely barren. That tree did not have a single thing. Nothing. No fruit. Nothing for Christ. And then the Lord did something very extraordinary. He did something that he had never done before. He cursed that victory. And he performed a judgment miracle. It was the only judgment miracle that Jesus performed. and he cursed the fig tree. When they came back that way that night, the tree was dead. It could not exist without the blessing of its creator. It had simply withered up and died. Now that was the miracle of the fig tree. Now the Lord says, learn the parable of the fig tree. Because quite obviously the cursing of that literal fig tree by the side of the road was not a vindictive act on the part of the Lord Jesus, it was a symbolic act. And by cursing that actual literal fig tree, he was symbolically doing what he did in Matthew chapter 23 when he cursed the nation of Israel. And the nation of Israel withered up and died. Now says the Lord, what's that fig tree? When the tree puts back again its leaves, that's the sign that I'm coming back. And you know that's exactly what's happened. You see, the nation of Israel is putting forth its leaves. The Lord didn't say when you see the tree bringing forth fruit. He said, when you see it bringing forth, leave. When it once again exists in exactly the same state, it's back in the land, it's functioning as a nation, it's handling its affairs, it's recognized as a nation among the nations, but it has been regathered as a Christ-rejecting nation in total and bitter unbelief. Nothing but leaves. That's the sign that I am coming back. And you see we of all people are the most privileged of all generations. For we have lived to see the budding of the fig tree. Now that confronts us with three things. It confronts us first of all with a very great mystery. It confronts us with a very great miracle. and it confronts us with a very great message. Now here's the mystery. It is a law of history, it's known as the law of assimilation, that when a people is uprooted and scattered, and its homeland destroyed, That nation disappears. It is simply assimilated into the other nations amongst which it's scattered. That is a law of history, and it works for every nation except the Jew. But it don't work for the Jew. When I first came to North America, I was with the large Canadian bank. and they sent me out to the province of British Columbia and up into the interior. And up in that northern frontier town, my wife and I became acquainted with some German Baptists. Now you see, the old people had come out to Canada right after the First World War, and they'd settled in Canada, they'd taken out Canadian citizenship, and they were really Germans living in Canada. They spoke the German language. They ate German food. They talked nostalgically of the fatherland. And of course, they had to have a German church. They wanted to worship God in the German language. So they sent over to Germany and brought over a German pastor who could preach to them in German. Germans living in Canada, first generation. Second generation, The children were already in the process of being assimilated. They were bilingual. They spoke German at home, but they went to Canadian schools. Everybody else spoke English, they spoke English. They were very rapidly assimilating Canadian culture. And by the time they were teenagers, they were saying to the old people, why do we have to have all our services in German? Why can't we have some of our services in English? And the old people said, all right, and they brought over a new pastor, one who was bilingual, and he would preach to the old people on Sunday morning in high German, and he'd preach to the young people on Sunday night in appalling English. But at least, you see, they were in the process of being assimilated. And the third generation, the grandchildren, I mean, they were totally assimilated. They didn't even speak any German. They were young Canadians. They had been assimilated. And that's with the homeland still there. By the time the third generation was about five or six years of age, the second generation was saying to the first generation, why do we have to have any services in German? Our kids don't even speak it. And so they formed an English German Baptist church. And that's the law of assimilation. You see it in the United States. People come into this country from all parts of the world. They maintain some of their national culture, but they really are Americans. You have all kinds of Americans in the United States. You have Irish Americans, you have German Americans, you have Polish Americans, Chinese Americans, but they're Americans. But you know you don't have any Jewish Americans. Now Sammy just told you you got six million Jews in this country. But they're not Jewish Americans. You know what they are? They're American Jews. Now can you explain to me by why everybody else is an Irish American or a German American or a Polish American but a Jew is not a Jewish American? He's an American Jew. That's because he's a Jew. He may, and his ancestors may have lived in this country for 400 years, but he's still a Jew. And it's the same in France. You don't have Jewish-Frenchmen, you have French-Jews. It's the same in Russia. You don't have Jewish-Russians, you have Russian-Jews. That's why the Russians hate them. They can't assimilate them. The Jew remains a Gulf Stream in the ocean of mankind, and he can't be assimilated. And that's a very great mystery. If you want to know more about that, you have to go and buy a book called Exploring the World of the Jew. I shall be glad if you go and do that. So will I. Help both of us, and help yourself in the process. I mean, don't help yourself, go and buy it, but help yourself. Now we not only have a very great mystery, we have a very great miracle. Because the Jew, you see, has not only never been assimilated, he's never been exterminated. And all down through the long history of the Jewish people, they have been the objects of persistent and unremitting persecution. You see, when God called Moses to go down to Egypt and deliver the children of Israel from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage, Moses was arrested by a burning bush. And that bush burned and burned and burned and burned with fire, but was not consumed. Moses said, I'll turn the site and see this great site by the bush is not consumed. And he soon found out that bush was the children of Israel in the fires of persecution, but they could not be consumed because God was in the bush. And you see, God will not allow this people ever to be exterminated. He's got a plan and a purpose for this people. We have just come through one of the most horrifying periods in human history. when one of the most enlightened, gifted, cultured nations of Europe harnessed all its national resources to the extermination of the Jewish people of Europe. And they did manage to exterminate six million Jews in cold blood and under conditions of almost unbelievable barbarity. After the Second World War, they convened the Nuremberg Trials to bring at least some of the culprits before the bar of justice. Summing up for the British delegation at Nuremberg, Sir Hartley Shawcross described how human hair was baled for commercial purposes, how tattooed human skin was made into lampshades, how human fat was rendered into soap, how the gold teeth was extracted from the corpses of the victims and melted into ingots and shipped to the Reich Bank. and he said mass murder had become a state industry with byproducts. But you know Hitler failed to exterminate the Jews. The Jews probably have a greater power and greater influence in the world today than they have ever had in all of history. There is no congressman, there's no senator in Washington today that would dare introduce legislation that displeased a Jew. Your God has got his hand upon this people. They cannot be assimilated. They cannot be exterminated. When I was in my early twenties, late teens, early twenties, I was in the British Army. Towards the end of the Second World War, I was stationed for two years in Palestine, as it was then called. That's two years of the British mandate over that country before it became the state of Israel. And I had a Jew work for me in my office on Haifa docks. He would never tell me about himself, but one day, one day he did. His whole family, his mom and dad, his brothers and sisters, his aunts, his uncles, his cousins, had all been liquidated by the Gestapo. He was the sole surviving member of his family. And he told me how as a young lad growing up in Germany, like so many other European Jews of his generation, the thing he wanted more than anything else in this world was to be assimilated. He wanted to be assimilated. He didn't want to be a Jew. He wanted to be a German. And he said, you know, he said, I was born in Germany. I spoke the German language. I graduated from a German university. I worked for a German corporation. And I can still see him as he raised his finger, standing there in the office that day, and he said, I was a German. Hitler taught me, I was a Jew. That's all Hitler did. He taught the Jews of Europe that they were Jews. They wanted to be assimilated. And God used Hitler. And that horrible Holocaust, God nevertheless overruled it. He used it to bring about the rebirth of the State of Israel. And so you have a very great mystery. You have a very great miracle. And you have a very great message. The Lord Jesus said this generation shall not pass till all these things begin to be. Now what generation? Well obviously it's not the generation to which he was speaking. That's the generation you have in Matthew chapter 23. That's the generation that he cursed. That's the generation that saw the curse of God fall down upon that fig tree. There was a generation that saw Israel uprooted and scattered. So if it was not the generation to which he was speaking, surely it has to be the generation of which he was speaking. The generation that would witness the budding of the fig tree. And I submit to you, and I may be wrong, I hope I'm not, but I submit to you that that generation is our generation. I mean, what other generation can it be? If this has to do with a rapture? And if a rapture is an undated event? And if the Lord Jesus says you can't set the date, but you can know the time, you can know the season anyway. And the thing to watch is the budding of the fig tree. If that's the sign, then surely that generation has to be our generation. You ever stop to think of what it meant for the budding of the fig to just take the Hebrew language? Can you think of another case in all of history when a dead language has ever been brought back to life again? Spoken in everyday conversation was not Hebrew, because most people didn't understand Hebrew. It was Aramaic. It was a kindred language, but it wasn't Hebrew. The only people who understood Hebrew were the scholars in the synagogues. And then it was biblical Hebrew. Hebrew is a dead language. It's been a dead language for thousands of years. And here's a dead language come back to life again. There was a man by the name of Israel ben Yehuda. And he was on his way to Palestine between the two wars. And he said to his Russian-born bride on board the ship, he said, when I get to Palestine, I'm only going to speak to you in Hebrew. And he was so impatient, he began right then and there on board the ship. His kids were the first kids since the days of the Romans that were born into a home where Hebrew was the spoken language. He wanted to have 12 kids, one for each of the 12 tribes of Israel. He was furious because he only had 11. He told his kids he had absolutely no use for them, that he had begotten them for one single purpose, to disseminate the Hebrew language. And he used to send his kids out into the streets of Jerusalem to pick fistfights with other Jewish kids in Hebrew. People thought he was a nut. He had an absolute fixation. Here were Jews coming back to Palestine from 50, 60 different countries, speaking a whole babel of languages. He said, we've got to have a common language. Well, they had one in English. He said, we don't want to speak English. We want to speak Hebrew. And in the end, he won, you see. They resurrected the Hebrew language. And do you know what that meant? Here was a language that had been dead for 2,000 years. Absolutely no word for automobile, for spark plug, for electricity, for light bulb, or anything in modern life. No words for any of that in Hebrew. Been dead for 2,000 years or more. So they got scholars, philologists, and linguists together, and they sat down and they went back to the ancient Hebrew roots. Because Hebrew is a root language. Something you can find out for yourself just by looking at the back of a Strong's Concordance. And you see, they would take a Hebrew root, and they would say, well, here's the Hebrew root for chariot. Now let's add a prefix to it and come up with a word for car. And let's add a suffix to it and come up with the word for bus. So they went back to those old, dead Hebrew roots that had been dead for 2,000 years, and the language came back to life and began to put forth its leaves. and a language was brought back to life again. Now then, here's the message. Jesus said, watch the victory. This generation shall not pass till all these things begin to be. As I was thinking about this some years ago, the Lord showed me something. I think what happened in the first generation of church history. On the day of Pentecost, God injected a new entity into a time known as the church. And what you had for one generation was a very remarkable thing. You had the nation of Israel in the land in unbelief, Christ rejecting, carrying on its national affairs, and coexisting with it, reaching out to the world, was the church. That went on for a generation. At the end of that generation, God said, I'm going to make a change. And he took the nation of Israel and he uprooted it and he scattered it. And left the church to carry on alone. Now we've arrived at the other end of time. And what have we got? Why think for yourself? You've got the same thing. You've got Israel back in the land in unbelief, Christ-rejecting, carrying on all its national function. And you have the church still here in the world reaching out with its mission to mankind and that has gone on for about a generation My friend God is about to make a change Only this time he's going to take out the church And leave the Jew in the land to face the final countdown to the setting up of the kingdom. I say, I'm glad I live today. Aren't you?