As pointed out in our introduction last week, here is an indication of a future ‘spiritual dawning’ amongst Israel.

I want to explain that we do not find the truths of God set out in a chronological order in Scripture. In prophecy we often find the final things set out before events that will take place before the end.

As God has placed in the soil of the earth, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, gold and silver in a very ‘haphazard manner’, so He has scattered truth throughout His Word. As men are required to dig in the earth for the treasures hid there, so the Lord would have us ‘dig out’, by diligent reading, the treasures of the Bible.

We need enlightened to find such treasures for few of us would recognise a diamond in its unpolished state and think it only a stone!

In the first verse we have:

1. Israel’s realisation that they are cast off. “O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever?” It is a strong term meaning ‘spurned’, ‘rejected’. Furthermore, they have come to an awareness of the length of this ‘casting off’ — it feels like ‘for ever’.

Man by nature does not realise his lost condition. He is content in his sin. There is the beginning of an awakening when he becomes conscious of his lost condition.

2. They are aware of God’s anger toward them. “Why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?” It is a great anger —‘smoke against’. It is ‘furnace like’. It was most severe.

3. They are yet blind to the reason for God’s anger. ‘WHY?’ True repentance is always accompanied by a full awareness of our sin. Psalm 51:3-5.

Here Israel is yet blind to their spiritual state before God.

In this verse it is clear that there are those in Israel who have awakened to the favour they have enjoyed from God of old. “Remember thy congregation, which thou hast purchased of old etc.”

I do not believe that there are many, if indeed any at all amongst the uncovered Jews today, who are truly aware of the privileges they were favoured with in the past. Such knowledge belongs only to the spiritually stirred soul. Here is the beginnings of an awareness of the goodness of God to the nation. A mere reading of the Old Testament would provide this.