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The Mystery of Israel and the Church
Art Katz

Chapter 12 - Israel's Devastation and Restoration

Chapters 36 and 37 of Ezekiel reiterate and confirm this most remarkable and devastating Last Days' dealing of God with His ancient people Israel.  Unless we have an understanding of Israel's millennial destiny and calling, we are going to be offended by the lengths to which God will bring that nation down into the utterness of death.  It is imperative for us, as the Church, to gird our loins, and to bear the shock that is going to come, both in disappointment and disillusionment, due to an inadequate apprehension of the Cross and the cruciform character of Israel's restoration.
The prophetic scriptures have a peculiar character, like the weaving of a tapestry.  There is a blend of encouraging statements followed by horrendous proclamations of judgments and apocalyptic gloom, and then again, a verse of hopeful restoration, and so on.  The Lord knows our frame and remembers that we are but dust, and that the grit of the things that we have to face has got to be broken up and interspersed with moments of encouragement before that final, comforting fulfillment comes.  It is like the rhythm of breathing, in and out. 
For I will take you [Israel] from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land.  Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.  Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances (Ezek. 36:24-27).

We need to ask whether the 1948 establishment of present Israel has brought Jews to this condition of having the indwelling Spirit resulting in the true fulfillment of the Law.  According to the first principle of biblical interpretation, which is to take scripture in its literal, grammatical sense, these scriptures clearly imply that this is a yet future condition at a time appointed by God, and not to be confused with anything that political, humanistic Zionism has yet sought to establish.  There is a final re-gathering, but with it comes this change of heart.

And you will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God.  Moreover I will save you from all your uncleanness; and I will call for the grain and multiply it, and I will not bring a famine on you.  And I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field, that you may not receive again the disgrace of famine among the nations.  Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and your abominations (Ezek. 36:28-31).
The world has not yet seen the depth of contrition, brokenness and repentance that will be exhibited by the nation Israel when this shall be fulfilled: when He brings them back from the nations wherein they have been scattered; when He restores them to the Land; when He puts His Spirit within them; when He is their God, then and only then can they fulfill His statutes and be His Messianic people, through a totally undeserved mercy that comes to them in their most desolate condition. (21)  They will break and remember their transgressions, and confess the sins of their fathers as their own, (22) and loathe themselves in their own sight for their iniquities and abominations. That is future.

We need to realize that Jewish self-esteem is essentially free from any sober understanding of the concept or consideration of sin.  Our self-celebration is famous; we see ourselves as virtuous and ethical.  We look down our noses at the Gentiles as not having our moral sensitivity, and yet God is saying here that the day is coming when we will loathe ourselves for our iniquities and our abominations.  For this to happen, something has got to come to our notice of such a radical kind that it absolutely contradicts present Jewish self-perception.  The nations can only be blessed by those who come to them out of an utter brokenness and devastation, those who have experienced the mercy of God, and to whom it has come totally undeserved.  This is the scenario that God is setting.

"I am not doing this for your sake," declares the Lord God, "let it be known to you.  Be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel."  Thus says the Lord God, "On the day that I cleansed you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the wastelands will be rebuilt.  And the desolate land will be cultivated instead of being a desolation in the sight of everyone who passed by.  And they will say, 'This desolate land has become like the Garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate, and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.'  Then the nations that are left round about you will know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate; I, the Lord, have spoken and will do it" (Ezek. 36:32-36).

Is this past, present or future?  After all, there has been a rebuilding of cities since 1948.  So how do we know that this described occurrence has not yet taken place?  We need to remember that this rebuilding is in conjunction with the nation that first has been repentant, given God's Spirit, and has been restored to the Land before it rebuilds the waste places.  At this present moment, Israel is surrounded by nations that are hostile towards her, and who are bent on her annihilation.  The only thing that holds them back is somehow the fear of Israel's nuclear ability to retaliate.  In that, what did we notice? "Then the nations that are left round about you..." (v. 36).  This is devastation, not only for Israel, but also for the nations that are left and remain around about them.  After suffering this tremendous attrition, they "...will know that I, the Lord, have rebuilt the ruined places..."  It is clearly a future description, so much so, that even the surrounding nations will know that this is the testimony of God.  Right now, Israel's neighbors attribute the present-day state of Israel to Zionism, not to the God of Israel.  Only such a future restoration will be acknowledged by them as clearly the work of God.
Thus says the Lord God, "This also I will let the house of Israel ask Me to do for them" (Ezek. 36:37a).

In all of Israel's present calamities, we know of no time when any of her Prime Ministers have called on the nation to fast and entreat the Lord for supernatural intervention.  As an essentially secular nation, Israel's deepest crises have not been sufficient for them to turn to the Lord, to consult and ask Him to 'do for them.'  They much prefer to do it for themselves, and that is why calamity must come.  We might just as well be speaking about the United States, France, Germany or any modern nation that is predicated on liberal and secular lines.  To such a mindset as this, it is an offense to think that God could even be asked.  If Israel will ask, it means that they have no hope of any possibility that they can 'do it for themselves.'  That is what it means when the scriptures use the word desolate.  It is a condition of being bereft of any hope in oneself.
Why must God go that far?  Why has God got to reduce Israel to such a condition of desolation and ruin that they would finally ask Him to restore their nation for them?  We believe that it is because of the Divine jealousy that no flesh should glory.   What, then, does this say about Israel, or to put it more accurately, what does it say about man and the human condition?  We have not understood the depth of what it means to be man in his self-sufficient pride.  Our self-justification and independence from God's justification is so deep that it takes this much to obtain this turning to God.  As it is for men, so is it also for nations, and especially this nation.

Like the flock for sacrifices, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed feasts, so will the waste cities be filled with flocks of men.  Then they will know that I am the Lord (Ezek. 36:38).
Does Israel know that 'I AM' is the Lord?  It is the name God gave to Moses out of the Burning Bush, when He said, "This is My name forever, and this is My memorial name to all your generations (Exodus 3:15b)."  And here is God saying through Ezekiel, "Then they will know that I am the Lord," and that the Lord is I AM.  Israel will know that the God who spoke to Moses out of the Burning Bush is the God who will deliver Israel in that day.  It is going to be a very expensive knowledge, but a knowledge that is imperative for Israel, for how shall they bless all the families of the earth except out of this true knowledge of God?  It is the knowledge of Him, not the knowledge about Him, and evidently, it can only come out of devastation and ruin.

The deepest kind of repentance comes from having both a sense of one's sin, but equally, a sense of unutterable unworthiness, of the realization of my utter helplessness.  It is true for individuals as well as for nations, and this is the question that we are going to be discussing, namely, Israel coming to the end of herself, to the end of any sense that she can perform, or be for God what she assumes she should be.  God must, of necessity, bring that nation down into a repentance of this kind, having now a sense of complete unworthiness or inability to do or be anything for God.  Can anyone be entrusted to serve the purposes of God and the issue of His glory and not come to this poverty?  Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who have no confidence in themselves.

The fulfillment of Israel's call to bless all the nations of the earth can only be the result of the Lord Himself being that blessing through her.  It will have nothing to do with Israel's own natural ability to be impressive; indeed, it will require the death of that very impressiveness, her natural ability, in order to release the blessedness of God.  If we cannot understand this, it is likely because we have not experienced it in our own life personally.  If we are to be a blessing, then it is not merely our defects and vices that need to be crucified, but also our virtues, our abilities, our talents, and all the things with which we think we are going to impress or bless people.  They are, in fact, an obstruction to the flow of the Life of God, and they are the last things we want to relinquish.  But there is something about death that is total.  God's statement of the human condition is that "in us there dwells no good thing," and what is true of us is true of nations and true, first, for the nation Israel.

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21 See Matt. 24:15 together with Jer. 30:7; Daniel 12:1 and Rev. 11:2
22 Implied in Lev. 26:40