The Gospel to the Jew First
Art Katz

Arthur "Art" Katz (1929 - 2007). American preacher, author, and founder of Ben Israel Fellowship, born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York. Raised amid the Depression, he adopted Marxism and atheism, serving in the Merchant Marines and Army before earning B.A. and M.A. degrees in history from UCLA and UC Berkeley, and an M.A. in theology from Luther Seminary. Teaching high school in Oakland, he took a 1963 sabbatical, hitchhiking across Europe and the Middle East, where Christian encounters led to his conversion, recounted in Ben Israel: Odyssey of a Modern Jew (1970). In 1975, he founded Ben Israel Fellowship in Laporte, Minnesota, hosting a summer “prophet school” for communal discipleship. Katz wrote books like Apostolic Foundations and preached worldwide for nearly four decades, stressing the Cross, Israel’s role, and prophetic Christianity. Married to Inger, met in Denmark in 1963, they had three children. His bold teachings challenged shallow faith, earning him a spot on Kathryn Kuhlman’s I Believe in Miracles. Despite polarizing views, including on Jewish history, his influence endures through online sermons. He ministered until his final years, leaving a legacy of radical faith.
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Sermon Summary
The sermon transcript begins with the speaker expressing a desire to start from verse 1 of the book of Romans but instead starts from verse 16. The speaker discusses Paul's salutation and introduction to the Roman congregation, highlighting his affection and desire to visit them. The speaker then focuses on verse 16, where Paul declares his lack of shame in the gospel, emphasizing its power for salvation to both Jews and Greeks. The transcript also includes a personal anecdote about attending a Jewish service and facing hostility for preaching the gospel.
Sermon Transcription
So we just bow, my God, before you at the commencement of our opening of this great book. It's not for the casual. It deserves, my God, the deepest, most earnest attention and respect. And we trust we come, my God, with that attitude that is fitting in your sight. And look to your spirit, my God, to exposit and to open the unsearchable riches, my God, of the glory of this book. Lay foundations through it, my God, that are overdue in our own consideration, and that will affect our present and our future. And through us and beyond us, my God, to touch the lives of many. So thank you, Lord, for this privileged time, your presence, your spirit with us, Lord, to teach us all things. Thank you, Lord. We bow in respect and admiration and reverence for yourself, for your book, for the great apostle, my God, for the rich inheritance which is ours as saints. Come now, my God, and instruct our souls in our understanding. Require of us what you will, for to whom much is given, much is required. We're asking that much be given and we're willing that much be required. So come, my God, in an unstinting way and draw forth what you will and receive now our gratitude yet again in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, the Lord did not allow me to open the book in advance. Today. We've looked at this earlier. It began with some sessions with Ben Israel. But sensing that this was the subject, the Lord did not allow me to open it until now. Why that is, I don't know. Maybe just that there will be a sense of fresh discovery together with you. I wish we had all kinds of time. We would start right from verse one. We're actually going to start from verse 16. Because the initial verses are Paul's salutation and introduction, which we did examine here at Ben Israel together. And it was rich in the way in which Paul even expresses himself to the Roman congregation, explaining his necessary neglect of them, that we had hoped to visit and his affection and esteem, his desire again to come to Rome. And then having finished that salutation, he leaps in in verse 16 with that remarkable statement, like the great theme of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who has faith or who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed through faith, for faith, as it is written, the one who is righteous will live by faith. That's a remarkable blast in one statement that we need to examine. So I've already suggested in the prayer time this morning, what a strategic thing to sound to a church at Rome, inhabiting the city that glorifies those things that pertain to man. Because Rome is the adoption of Greece. Roman civilization is the assimilation and the translation of Greek civilization. They were the inheritors. They were not original in themselves, something like the Japanese today. But taking what was original, they marketed it so that all roads lead to Rome. And Roman civilization is the high watermark of all that men could admire in that generation. So when you live in the shadow of it, as the church, you're continually intimidated by its evidences. And the gospel is more foolish to you than it would be to those who are in the boondocks and are not intimidated by the signs and the presence of this overarching civilization. What then must it have been in Rome, for the church at Rome, in the shadow of the great architecture, the Colosseum, the culture, the literature of Rome, the Senate, the Caesars, their military exploits, marching through the Arch of Titus. Have you seen where they carry the menorah and the other loot that they got from the temple in Jerusalem before its destruction in 70 AD? Marching triumphantly into Rome, bringing captives and the loot from a devastated and defeated Israel is inscribed right on the Arch of Titus. To this day, the ruins of it yet remain. And the Romans were privy to all of this great spectacular chariot races and athletic events and great pomp and ceremony. So when Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, he's making a remarkable statement. And I'll tell you what, you dear saints, you'll never know how foolish the message of the gospel is until you have first to bring it to a Jew. Because the Jew is the epitome of that which is revered by men as civilization. The epitome of what is rational, what is cerebral, what is cultural, what is ethical, what is moral. And the gospel is a piece of foolishness. Think on that. What is its essential message? God lay aside his deity and took upon himself the form of a man by being conceived and born out of the womb of a virgin in a little nothing place of a little nothing nation living an obscure life for 30 years and then after a brief three year period of message and ministry suffering the death of a criminal. The most disgraceful form of death which every Roman knew. Paul was not crucified, he was beheaded. Why? Because crucifixion was reserved exclusively for criminals or for people in rebellion. But if you had any kind of status as a human being the dignified way for you to pay the capital punishment was beheading. Paul was beheaded. Peter was crucified upside down at his own request. So that this Jesus whom you are proclaiming has suffered the greatest indignity known to Rome through this death at the cross. And you are saying that this was very God, the son of God and very God and that in fact his death was necessary and voluntary and that his blood shed in that suffering and death has an efficacy to remove sin and that by calling on his name a salvation is obtained which is valid eternally. Have you ever thought how foolish that message is? Yet Paul says I'm not ashamed of the gospel it is the power of God unto salvation. The message itself is the power of God because God chooses the things that are foolish to confound the things that are wise. The message is the statement of the genius of God who could have conceived and have obtained eternal salvation in perhaps other ways that would have commended itself as a message with which we would have had greater comfort to present. But this message is contrary to all that is reasonable, rational that commends itself to man's intellect. It's a piece of foolishness and weakness by design and yet God honors it to those who proclaim it by faith as being the very power of God unto salvation. So that's how Paul begins his great statement and the reason is to encourage the church in the realm that is the seat of civilization that this message however foolish is God's power and not to be ashamed but rather to rejoice and to exult because you yourself are the recipients of that word and therefore constitute the assembly of God that the church has saved. So God saves through the message of the gospel that it's power is operative unto salvation and it's through the gospel alone. It is the gospel that is God's power unto salvation and that this word of God is powerful and living though foolish. So I'm saying and he says to the Jew first and also to the Greek why that priority and why that order? Any thought that this is not some arbitrary thing on God's part that there's a divine logic to the Jew first the Greek would not be as intimidating as the Jew and nothing makes you more conscious of yourself as a Gentile than to stand before the Jew who is the epitome of those things that are cerebral mental, intellectual, formidable and opposed to the message of the gospel itself and that their history insulates them against receiving it because the very name of Jesus, the word gospel is like waving the proverbial red flag in a bull's face so God is saying if you're going to see the power you're going to see it in the place where it must be demonstrated because the forces against its receiving by Jews are most adverse for the Jew to receive this is totally uncommon everything militates against the Jew's consideration his history, Satan's misuse of the word, of the name Jesus the church's conduct which is a stink throughout history toward the Jew everything militates against the Jew's consideration but you're not absolved from your responsibility because of that you still have an obligation to observe the priority of God to the Jew first though it will mean your death you'll taste death you'll have a door slammed in your face you'll be mocked, you'll be shredded by their superior intellect and their power you'll never feel yourself more weak and frail and shallow than to stand before so imposing and intimidating a people but for those reasons you're not absolved in fact it's for those reasons that you're called because if you're not faced this test at the very inception of your obedience what then can be expected from you thereafter I won't ask how many have actually confronted a Jew with the message of the gospel but I can tell you as a Jew confronting Jews I am intimidated right through to my boots my bootstraps I've had doors slammed in my face and shredded with the absurdity who do you think you are to dare have the impudence to bring that name to our consideration and to come on the Shabbat with a Gentile Bible under your arm to my door where the mezuzah is hanging you know what the mezuzah is that Jews kiss before they go in when they come out and in it is a scroll from Deuteronomy that thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and you're going to pass through that and bring this Goyesha Gentile message is the height of impudence and arrogance but only a son will bring it because it's a death to face this backlash so if I'm experiencing that as a Jew with Jews what would you experience as a Gentile with Jews and yet you're called to experience it and have you noticed that there's a sufficient proliferation of Jews in virtually every community so that we are without excuse there were Jews in Rome at the time of which Paul spoke that and there are Jews everywhere in the world I have found them in Asia in Yugoslavia in places where you would think that there would not be again any presence there's always a minimal presence as if to maintain attention by which this cannot be dismissed as academic but actual and still being required we went to the synagogue in the capital city of Bulgaria which is Sofia and in a corner room is the congregation the Jewish population of Bulgaria has been so reduced that their service is conducted in a side room but we went into that room and sat in the back I was with a few brothers and my eye surveys the room and fell on one man who is especially dark and prominent and when we left about a half hour later he follows us out onto the sidewalk wanting to know who we are and why we are in his synagogue in this capital city and so as I could explain he invites us the next day to visit his new building, his Jewish community center, he's a Lubavitcher Hasid 25 years old sent from Jerusalem to establish an outreach in Bulgaria, we went the next day, he had refreshments on the table, he gave us a complete tour of the building and when we sat with him at the end we spent hours with this dear man in which he confessed that for the first time in his Jewish life he has experienced anti-Semitism he grew up in Israel, a Jewish nation, but when he came to Europe and Bulgaria and was walking by one of the schoolyards when the kids spotted him with his black hat, his black coat and his black beard they began to chase him and pelt him with stones and call out names and so he's sharing with us this new experience by which we could say you're only at the beginning, there's going to be woe for the Jews of Bulgaria and all over the world in the time of Jacob's trouble and we bear that message to alert you and the believing church to anticipate it and would you receive our prayer? Yes, and so we pray for this dear man and so there's a relationship that has been occasioned that's waiting on the shelf for the believers in Sophia to follow up with this dear man who was so receptive with us, so I'm taking Brian to that same movement in Brooklyn its headquarters 777 Eastern Parkway and we came down to a thousand men with their tallis and their prayer shawls on bowing, facing the the ark where the Torah is and taking it out and walking around the room, men kissing it touching it with their sitzes with their prayer shawls and here we stand like two conspicuous lumps I'm dressed in black but I don't have a beard and I'm wearing the hat that I've got in Yugoslavia which is close enough to what they wear but a much cheaper edition and there's a man who's looking at us and he comes over, Brian will remember, an older man, can I help you? We're evidently strangers and we said yes do you have the service in English that we can follow what is being expressed and he found us a Hebrew English book and we were trying to follow and from time to time he would come and explain to us what's going on as we came to the end he said and where are you men eating at the conclusion of this service? I said we have no plans, he said I would be delighted if you would be my guest and we came across the street where he has his apartment and had the midday meal, the Shabbat meal at his home with twenty others at his table, three of whom were rabbis, young rabbis and it was a remarkable time of fellowship and of sharing because he's asking Brian, you a gentile, what are you doing here? and he's trying to explain with me so right away questions are raised that a Jewish man brings a gentile and so as much as we could it was our initial visit, the man is a teacher in that movement his name is Greenberg remember his first name? and then I left him my phone number I don't know what I did I wrote him a little note I couldn't give him my phone number, how come? because you can't write on the Shabbat writing is broke didn't you know that? There are things you need to know elementary things I could not write my phone number but I sent him a little card expressing our gratitude for taking us in as strangers how grateful we were and how blessed we were and leaving my phone number in the event that you would again like to extend fellowship, we would love to see you again and bring the book that I promised you of my initial experience in God without telling him what it was about and sure enough, a couple of months later I got a phone call after the longest silence in which I thought we had been dismissed inviting me again to be at his table and this time I brought the book Ben Israel and shared my testimony and he was hearing and his wife, fewer people than the first time, but it was an extraordinary opportunity for witness and he wouldn't take the book, I had to carry it out with me because he said, is there any reference to the New Testament in your book I said of course, my first revelation was in the reading of the Gospel of John and that book records that episode I cannot receive it then anything that alludes to let alone the New Testament itself, I cannot have in my possession or in my house I didn't know that so there's a remarkable what's the word, not just an antipathy, but a principle in their movement maybe throughout the whole of orthodoxy that is opposed even to so much as looking in that book or having it in their possession it is for them more reprehensible than for us the Book of Mormon or some new age kind of thing that we know is satanic, for them that's what the New Testament represents why? because it's the account of a deceiver, a magician there's another word they use, a sorcerer a sorcerer who learned from us his practices and performed them so as to turn Jews away from the law and to follow himself so there could be nothing more reprehensible than a man bringing people in devoted attention to himself and away from the law and for that reason he is detestable and he's an enemy to this day of Jewish people Judaism and the God of our fathers himself the man is a sorcerer and I was attending a Saturday morning discussion of one of the principal books of the Hasidic movement called Tanya and I was, one day as I came up into the floor with a room, one of the two teachers who was a financier two men taught financier and a doctor and it was brilliant the way they relate one to the other and I enjoyed thoroughly those sessions and never once opened my mouth I never even so much as asked the question I never took opportunity to say well yes but the New Testament says nothing like that but I was met at the door and forbidden to enter because they had discussed it among themselves that though this man has not utilized an opportunity to in any way bring his dissension he's still too dangerous to be allowed to remain because he believes in a sorcerer and is deceived and therefore will be an instrument for the deception of others, so sorry Mr. Katz but we will not allow you to continue to attend I'm saying all that I'm being asked what recent episode these are the recent episodes very instructive for me because I did not understand how deep is the enmity and hostility toward Jesus that yet remains, though I should have remembered that when I spoke at that college in upstate New York the girls school begins with a V Vassar that that day as I'm walking through the building some Jew, now as co-ed some Jewish student looks up at me and says you'll get yours tonight, I thought whatever does he mean and that night I'm speaking before a Christian congregation, Christian students and those who have come from the outlying communities and the doors burst open and in came a dozen Hasidim, Lubavitcher Hasidim, black suited, black beard black eyed, black fedoras the Jewish Mafia and they came into that building with a bang and people stopped breathing, they were terrifying talk about intimidation they never sat down they placed themselves strategically around the building and people just were overwhelmed and overcome by the fright and one guy was as close to me as our sister here and looking at me with deadly eyes, if looks could kill, that this Jewish man, this traitor he's got to be a traitor what is he being paid for this because what reasonable Jew would ever subscribe to this noxious Greek pagan religion and seek to persuade Jews that it's true, so he must be a flunky, he's got to be paid, for what other reason would a man do this and he's using a Greek pagan Gentile Bible to convey and my message was about Abraham and circumcision, I'll always remember that and I had to finish my message with this man standing right in my face, try that sometime it prepares you to speak to Christian congregations that are a little bit hostile I finished that message and my practice was to open for questions and the moment I opened these guys took over and they just they rioted and I'll always remember this man how dare you come with this Gentile Bible you ignoramus you who do not even speak Hebrew and seek to persuade Jews to subscribe to your noxious pseudo religion and went on like that and then he said if your Jesus was alive today we would do to him what our fathers did but he said we know that you love us cats and that's the last thing I remember because when he said we know that you love us cats, I said I never told you that, I never knew it myself, where did you get that so that was a remarkable episode that again shows this deep grained hostility that indeed is capable of doing again to Jesus what it did before and if it can't get its hands on Jesus, it will get its hands on those who represent him so it may well be that the thing that will conclude the age and will communicate Jesus to those who will not be able to kick against the pricks will be the persecution of Jews themselves against believers as it came against Stephen unto the death of martyrdom alone by which Paul, then Saul was pricked at the observation of a man dying with such tranquility and such magnanimity as to forgive his murderers and to see the heavens open and Jesus as a man standing at the right hand of the power of the father it may take again the same demonstration because Paul could not swallow that down, there's something released in suffering and death as witness for which there's no substitute, it's one thing to say are you saved brother and have you received the blood of Jesus it's another thing to be a witness with your blood in fact the word martyr means witness ultimate witness is ultimate death, so when Michael said to come before a Jew to bring the gospel is a death no question about it, it's a form of martyrdom of a willing and voluntary kind, you know you're not going to survive the occasion, if not physically at least spiritually and emotionally but it may take a very literal martyrdom again at the hands of outraged Jews and the way in which we received that suffering from them because they opposed themselves in their ignorance as they did with Stephen though he had demonstrated the power of miracles though his face shone like an angel though he was able to confound the darkness of the law with a greater wisdom it still did not dissuade them from stoning him to death but it was in the way in which his death was received that Saul obtained a witness from which he could not turn and he could not kick against the pricks and he was prepared by that for the revelation of the Lord who confronted him on the road to Damascus, that may be a paradigm, that may be a pattern of the final last days witness to the Jew when nothing less than the sacrificial death of martyrs will persuade those to believe who have been hostile to the last moment as Saul himself was because they laid their garments at his feet who took Stephen as their first victim so we have to know the depth of the intransigence of Jewish hostility to the gospel when I read Isaiah 53 to my mother here some years ago, she had never heard it she said, where are you reading in the New Testament? I said I'm not reading from the New Testament at all, I'm reading from the greatest of the prophets of Israel, Isaiah she said, I've never heard that because it speaks so clearly about a suffering servant who was marred more than any man that we had he had no beauty that we should desire she knew of whom it was speaking she said, I've never heard that, I said you never will she said, I've never heard it in the synagogue you guys know that every Shabbat morning not only is the selection from the books of Moses read but a selection from the prophets that in one year's reading all five books of Moses have been chanted rather than read the speed of it is remarkable because how can a one hour reading one day of the week one morning of the week cover all five books so they read large they chant large segments of course those who are bobbing and weaving with the reading are familiar with the text and they have read it themselves at their own leisure and have studied it but what is being rehearsed now is more ceremonial than instructive but what follows the reading from the Torah is the reading from the Haftorah this is what we Jewish kids do when we are bar mitzvahed we read or we chant that portion from the prophets appropriate to the day of our bar mitzvah I wish I could know what my portion was that I chanted in my ignorance so that my mother could cry because she had seen her son through Hebrew school and through bar mitzvah who was himself a pagan and never again darkened the doorway of a synagogue it did my duty but in these selections from the prophets Isaiah 53 is omitted so they'll come to a certain reading 52-12 and the next week they continue from 54 and completely omit that section it's hard for me to believe that more modern day rabbis, post Christian rabbis have not consciously seen to it that that segment would be omitted if it was not already omitted because of its clear Christological emphasis you need to know that the councils of the rabbis carries the same weight and authority as Moses himself in fact even a greater authority that can actually controvert anything that Moses may have spoken and in fact even God himself that the council of the rabbis is the supreme statement of God himself even to supersede scripture and so by that means Jews are denied a hearing and a consideration of the most profound statement of Messiah and the shedding of blood by which salvation is to be obtained the promulgators of the gospel themselves have to be the demonstrators the living actualization of their own message as Paul himself was but for us for the gospel being reduced to a formula and our own lifestyle and character is not in keeping with it, that word falls to the ground it loses its cogency its authority and its power so there's an obligation for character and life in keeping with the word that we're called to exposit of course for Paul the New Testament was not even available to him so what did he employ when he says that sums up the gospel as being somewhat healthy Corinthians died and was raised on the third day according to the scriptures according to what scriptures? Old Testament scriptures so he was able to glean from the repository of the Psalms, the prophets and the books of Moses sufficient testimony to establish the case for Jesus and his witness to Jews and we ought also to have that same ability so it requires of us to do our homework and find what he found by which he presented the case for the Lord so in fact after my own first encounter with Jesus in the revelation that came in the first reading of the New Testament, I went from Greece to Egypt where I contracted Hepatitis and was twice in the hospital with that and an ear infection but in the hospital I'm reading for the first time the five books of Moses that came into my hands with the Jewish community of Cairo where I was living and relating, in fact they paid my hospital bills and so I'm seeing for the first time how Christological the five books of Moses are and how in the commentary by Rabbi Hertz in that first edition how careful he is to alert the reader to avoid the Christological implications to be found in the Old Testament readings so we have our work cut out for us but there is a basis for an appeal to Jews the thing is that most Jews are as ignorant of Old Testament Scripture as they are of new in fact their secular mentality is opposed to Scripture itself and perhaps the most begrudging thing they can allow is that the Bible is a piece of culture it's something written by men over a span of time that may have curiosity and interest but no way is it to be understood the word of God because that would offend their rational categories that God can inspire a word to be conveyed through men and so registered that it's veracity can continue uninterruptedly throughout the generations without loss that the Bible itself is a mind boggling contradiction to the secularly minded men which is of the kind that I myself was until that day on that Greek ship en route from Italy to Athens which was for me homage because I was more Greek than I was a Jew and had up at the blackboard of my classroom in California go Greek because Greek was the celebration of man know thyself man is the measure of all things all came from Greece which Rome then adopted and so I'm reading a Greek book on a Greek ship on my way to a Greek capital destination which was for me homage because I'm a Jew by birth but I'm a Greek by conviction I'm rational, I'm cerebral and then the Lord reveals himself in the Gospel of John and then gives me opportunity in the subsequent weeks in Egypt to ponder how this revelation could come from a God who is the only God and yet in a figure and name that has been made reprehensible for Jewish consideration through history I'm wrestling how could God ask me a Jew to subscribe to that name and become a Christian with those who have historically opposed us and been our murderers throughout the ages so this is a great travail and struggle which Jews will face in the last days so we need to know that they're not only hostile to the New Testament they are calloused against all scripture because their categories, their cerebral categories, their empirical categories do not permit for anything supernatural that even when I find myself engaged with an Orthodox Jew not the Lubavitcher Hasidic the more modern Orthodox with their Van Dykes and their Yarmulkes I find out that in the exchange that they themselves do not believe that God parted the Red Seas, that it was a confluence of tides, that they have to find a naturalistic explanation even for supernatural events though they are fastidious in their practices in their orthopraxy they are not as careful in their orthodoxy because their secular minds cannot permit them to believe in the supernaturalness of God you see why it is that he had to send his only begotten son to be that very demonstration and to raise him from death and why the issue of his resurrection is contested to this day and remember that when the report came from those soldiers who were posted to see to the security of that tomb and told the authorities what had happened supernaturally, they were bribed to say that his disciples had stole his body away and that that story is believed to this day so that we are responsible for what we believe and secular Jews would prefer to believe that the body was stolen than that the body was raised because the issue of resurrection is the issue if Jesus is a presumer and a man himself deceived and suffering from a megalomania of some absurd thing that he is not only the Messiah but very God then the issue of whether he is resurrected is the issue of the truth of those claims so where is his body? Well the disciples stole it away. What else are you to believe? That the power of God broke through a sealed tomb and raised a dead body and ascended it up on high and imbued it with a newness of life that continues still and is imparted to believers by the Holy Spirit poured out from the throne of heaven when he hasn't ascended? You guys need to know just how absurd this whole gospel is if you're going to make peace with it and make it your own and communicate it as the very truth of God and the nub and nexus of very reality itself that makes everything that purports to be true, false and gives us a prism of seeing by which everything that is celebrated by man in the world is rendered in ipso facto in one fell swoop as false in view of this greater truth. Got that? You have to be nearly insane to subscribe to this and make this the buttress and principle of your own life and being which of course most of Christendom has not done it does not understand the gospel, it does not proclaim the gospel but they use the word gospel as if they have a familiarity with it but they have never pondered or understood what in fact it is and I'm saying that they never will understand what in fact it is until they're required to bring it to the world in its most intimidating expression, the Jew. When you touch the Jew you touch the world, you touch the world in its wisdom, its mentality its categories, its pride and its power that's why there's a fierce reaction that is more than just human there's a rage, wherever you see rage and fury you know that this is more than man, this is the powers of darkness themselves who have taken this people captive and employ them because who are the foremost architects of the modern world? Karl Marx Sigmund Freud, Steven Spielberg the guy who was the head of the Time Warner Corporation, Jerry got his last name Jewish, they're all Jews prominent in industry in commerce, in advertising in culture, in publications the New York Times was founded by a Jew, Ox, OCHS a German Jew and German Jewish civilization is the predominant form and authority and power of what yet prevails in world Judaism today it is formidable formidable you have no idea but you need to have an idea because you're called to this very confrontation and very conflict because to communicate this to the Jew and to break through with the Jew is to pierce the world at the very crossroads of world civilization, power and prestige by which millions are held captive the world, let's put it this way, the modern world is essentially Jewish New York City is essentially Jewish and its influence is global to break into that and to reveal that as being false and predicated on false assumptions and lies given by the father of lies by the power of truth is a remarkable penetration that can only come in the power of God, in the power of the word, in the power of the spirit by those who believe it and will obey God as sons to the father who says go ye into all the world and preach this gospel to every creature beginning at Jerusalem to the Jew first and if we will not obey that first command and that first priority what are we signaling to the principalities and powers of the air but that we are a disobedient people and we take our own liberty about which of God's requirements we will observe and which we will shuck off as not being serviceable out of whatever reason, see what I mean? If we miss God at this point, we miss God and that's why the powers of the air hold the church in contempt and can say Jesus we know and Paul we know, but who are you? You presumer? Just because you have adopted the vocabulary and do this or that, we are totally unimpressed, we yawn in your face you have no persuasion that makes us to fear because you yourself say Lord but you do not acknowledge him in truth in the first call to which he has given you, to the Jew first you got that? That's how critical disobedience is and who explicated and demonstrated that more than Paul himself in whatever community he came he went to the Jew first and even after saying after he was beaten and left for dead or whipped or rejected I go now to the Gentiles, no you have refused so now I go to the lowest of the low but what did he do when he came to his next destination? He went again to the Jew first, he preached in the synagogues and what did he do in his last days in Rome, in the place that he was given to occupy? He received Jews, he received the Jews in Rome and spoke to them of the things pertaining to the kingdom with virtually his last breath from his first breath to his last breath, he exemplifies exactly what he is exhorting the church to do because that's what an apostle is he doesn't just give a series of injunctions that others are required to hear and observe, he himself explicates the demonstration of that very thing in the reality of his own life, though it cost him greatly, how many times was he stoned, left for dead, beaten with rods all because of his obedience to the Lord, to the Jew first and the reasons need to be examined not only because Jews will be the essential promulgators but because to them was given the covenants, the promises the oaths when Paul later on in Romans says, what value has a Jew? Much in every way, and then he lists the various things that pertain uniquely to that people but to say this in Rome is a piece of apostolic courage because the Romans the church is essentially Gentile and part of the issue is the Jewish community that opposes the church that is recognized by the Roman authorities as being licit or legal it was the one religion outside of Roman paganism that the Roman authority recognizes as legitimate that's why when Jewish Christians were kicked out of the synagogue they were put in the unenviable position of losing the status of a legitimate religion recognized by Rome then they were outside, they were atheists and therefore deserving of whatever penalty Rome would care to inscribe and the Jewish authorities knew that when they cast the Jews the Jewish Christians out of the synagogue they were making them candidates for persecution and death so Paul is speaking to the church at Rome where these Jews exist and if he were politic and playing his cards right, he would have avoided the subject altogether and just spoke to the Gentile church about things that pertain to their own understanding, but from the verse chapter 1, right after his introduction and his salutation and his greeting BOOM! I'm not ashamed of this gospel it's the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first the last thing that he ought to say because my rub here is raw is the first thing that he says this is the same Paul who at the end of his career said, you know I never withheld from you the whole counsel of God I never just gave you the good parts and withdrew the difficult parts I gave it to you straight from the beginning the whole counsel and they knew it and hung on his neck and wept when he said you'll not see my face again this is the genius of what is apostolic, it does not withhold the difficult or the dangerous parts, even to a Gentile congregation that has no disposition to hear it, but if they don't hear it, how shall they be the church how shall they be the witness in a pagan Rome if they void the consideration of the Jew by which the church's own identity is connected and it's authority and it's witness so right from the beginning he lets them know yes they are temporarily fallen as we'll read later on in Romans 11 but the God is able to graft them back in again if he grafted you in, you Gentile dum-dums, you wild vines that were not capable of bearing any fruit will he not be capable of grafting them back into their own tree you were wild were grafted in how much more shall they be grafted into their own tree, so there's a destiny that yet awaits them and in fact they'll not obtain it except through you the reason for your salvation is not your own enjoyment of it but that through their fall salvation has come to the Gentile so as to move them to jealousy you dum-dum, it's not for you to enjoy, you have with your salvation a responsibility, a mandate to that same people for whom you have no natural disposition, because in the natural you distrust them you're envious of them, you're suspicious they're different from you and you have always felt inferior to their Jewish superiority and yet except that you have a particular relationship and mandate to them of a kind that is more than just mechanical or perfunctory excuse my language minimal they will not be grafted back in, you're the key to moving them to a place by what you express to them that though they are presently hostile to the gospel, they will in time turn and receive it unto salvation there's a mystery of which you should not be ignorant because if you're ignorant it destroys you as the church then you become an entity unto yourself the kingdom is the petty kingdoms of men, their denominations and their ministries, and you lose the glory that God intends for the church which can only be yours in the fulfillment of this remarkable mandate which is antithetical to you as Gentiles in every point in particular that the only way you can succeed is through the glory of God, through the power of the Holy Spirit and the knowledge given to you in your relationship with his son in union with him, that's remarkable staggering and our problem is we have not been sufficiently staggered but the beauty of the apostle is he begins with this why? not by calculation, but just a natural thing that issues out of his apostolic heart because his apostolic heart is so in union with the heart of God that it expresses what is intrinsic to God's deepest heart and the priorities of God which are expressed as first to the Jew first take it or leave it, you don't like it you would rather have avoided them no, no, God says to the Jew first, and then also to the there's a priority and there's no explanation for the priority he doesn't then give the reasons why you should agree with this priority because of this this and this, he just states it as a priority given by God for which you don't need explanation and God is not obliged to give you explanation, he just is only obliged to state it, if you're a son you'll obey it without requiring an explanation but an erudite Jew accomplished, educated moral, ethical tell him that he's as lost as that gentile and is as much in desperate need of that savior is a remarkable impudent assertion but with what spirit do we say it? If there's something that is yet in our gentile hearts that wants to do them in a little bit and needle them we'll make it like a provocative thing but if we're broken in our own hearts and know that we ourselves were pulled up out of a mire, we'll bring that word with a brokenness dear men, I know you don't understand, I know you think yourself righteous, but you don't know the righteousness of God because as Paul goes on to say here, the righteousness of God is demonstrated in the gospel itself, and your righteousness is of a lesser and other kind, which God holds in contempt, and you're still under the wrath of God as a sinner however exemplary you may think yourself to be, by your present conduct, by world standards but by the standard of a God who is holiness, who is holy you are in error and in a grievous place because the scripture says that God is angry with the sinner every day and he who hath the son hath life, who hath not the son hath not life, and the wrath of God abides upon him, so I'm under obligation to tell you that I know you subjectively do not see it, you don't experience it, but I would your blood would be on my hands if I withhold from you this biblical statement of truth as God sees it and desires you to understand it well, he'll think you mad but I'll tell you what your very courage and faithfulness as a son to bring this noxious message has got to penetrate this morally superior Jew and say I don't understand these guys they're crazy what could God want anymore from me I donate to Israel, I donate to charities, I do good works surely with this God I'm more than acceptable, what is this guy saying I'm a candidate for eternal hell but that he's willing to say it, and that he's saying it with a broken heart and compassion compels me to consider what seems to be at its face totally absurd and maybe that's the beginning of a jealousy that this Gentile knows he's going to be blown away by me a few of my erudite words and the power of my personality I can dismiss them like nothing and chew him up and spit him out and he's willing to suffer that indignity and that humiliation at my cost to bring me this ridiculous message of hell death, salvation I've got to consider this, if that man is willing to go that far, but how many Jews have ever been confronted with that predicament of Gentiles willing to go that far, where they go is not to the Jew but around him and circumvent him, and they'd rather go to Bali and some other exotic place in the world and there to communicate the message that omit this Jew who is right in their midst I think we can safely say and it's been true in my experience that those believers, Christian Gentile believers who have a propensity and a sensitivity to the Jew, this kind of discernment, perception and heart are those that are markedly spiritual I received my baptism in the Holy Spirit not in my Pentecostal church or in any other place where I sought it I received it on a farm room floor in Northern California in the fellowship of a band of Gentile saints who were distinguished by their love of the Jew the study of Hebrew, their visits to Israel and their continual prayer and intercession on behalf of their people. In that environment I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, but never in the Pentecostal church where I was part so my observation over the years, in fact I said to this people why is it that you have this affection for me, and this willingness to be sacrificial, and this love for the Jew? Their answer was something like they're God's people, and to the degree that we love God, we love what He loves and so they express it so when I was in Spokane, Washington on my way to Canada from conference the woman at whose home we were staying, precious saint, said we have a beautiful synagogue in our community would you care to see? Oh yes I'd love to she drives us up and into the parking lot and around and out as if we had seen the synagogue. I said sis what are you doing? I want to go in and we went in and spent hours walking through the hallways and on the wall are the pictures through the years the bar mitzvah group of 1915 the feast of Esther and the costumes they wear against Haman in 1923 and the rabbi's class and the women's fellowship and you went around the room looking at the whole history of the Jewish community of Spokane, Washington then you come into the sanctuary and you see the precious beam of a platform and the ark where the Torah is kept and the architecture, the beauty aesthetically is touching and then you start talking to the secretary the rabbi is out and one word leads to another. Finally I left him a copy of Ben Israel before I we left the community the following day and when I came into Canada and my first message was have you considered the Jews of your own community? Have you visited their synagogue? Have you sought to establish a relationship? Have you shown yourself friendly? Have you begun to make them just the initial and elementary contact by which the message of the gospel can in time be expressed? The next day I was called to a special hearing by the founder of the conference and other of the leaders and charged with a lack of brokenness and anointing for the first time in my history because the subject with which I opened was the obligation of the Christians to take a significant active witness in and know their own Jewish community. They thought that that message was so irrelevant and so uninspired and so out from God that I was being confronted for the want of brokenness and anointing and that's the same conference in which the lord at the end brought the message on the tent of Shem that God is waiting for Japheth the Gentile European peoples of the world to humble themselves to enter that tent and they cannot enter it without bowing to the centrality of the Jew Shem that God in his wisdom has established by which the Gentile is to receive the redemptive blessedness that can only be communicated by this a special people and this was so offensive a message that it triggered the worst backlash I have ever known in my 41 years in the lord by responsible Christians. I was struck in the chest by the same man with his Bibles in his hand as I left the building that day after that last message and he cried out cats you arrogant Jew he was so offended by the requirement to bow to enter the tent of Shem and came back to Ben Israel thinking here I would refine a cordial reception and understanding of the prophetic thing that had taken place and found there was as much marked hostility here as there was elsewhere because there was something intransigent in the Gentile about the necessity to bow and to acknowledge the priority of the Jew of Shem in the ordination of God and in his wisdom so one last thing before we break my most recent message in Germany where Juergen is from and he may actually have been there when I spoke it at Bad Nauheim was the issue of the gospel to the Jew to the church of Germany because the issue of the gospel is the issue of the church the church that relegates the gospel to the dustbin and doesn't actively know and promulgate it loses its character as church the church's function and form is tied in with this unwelcomed message that's foolish but in Germany to bring the message to the Jew where there's now an influx of Jews one to three hundred thousand which is one of the astonishments of the last days that Jews would come back to that nation that has been there undoing and come back in such remarkable numbers largely Russian Jews because of the great benefits that they obtain in housing and other allowances that in fact makes the average German envious that such special consideration is given them but it charges the church in Germany with a new obligation to promote the gospel to the Jew in Germany but as a German how dare we bring this offensive message to Jews having so recently been the instrument of their undoing and talk about death if it's a death for a Gentile to bring the gospel to the Jew it's a double death for the German Gentile to bring that message in view of recent German history against the Jew and my message was if you'll not bring it however much however great the requirement you forsake the issue of the church itself, the church will decline by your unwillingness and the vacuum that will be created by the failure of the church to be the church will invite again the same dark forces that came in the 1930's as Nazism and perverted the entire nation and made it the engine of Jewish annihilation and a threat to world civilization itself. You'll see that same thing reenacted maybe in double measure if you'll fail now in your first obligation to the Jew even in Germany as Germans. That was a searing radical word if you want to hear it I think that we have the message on tape so the issue hasn't changed the issue is in fact made more radical because of recent history but it doesn't in any way lessen the remarkable mandate and priority of God spoken at the first by Paul and as valid now as then though more difficult now than then but still the issue of the church and an issue that can only be met by those who are sons so Lord break us up my God we've nodded in agreement but that's as far as we have gone and the depth of Paul's statement Lord has never really penetrated our depths it certainly has not activated us so as to do it and for what other purpose is the word given but it's doing and so the church has lost much by its indifference and its neglect it's fearful and easily intimidated it has no confidence that this message is indeed the power of God unto salvation it has been unwilling to test it with that most radical test that the Jew is now and in every generation so Lord if we're going to be the church that glorifies God for which creation is groaning and waiting this cannot be omitted bring it to our attention my God as we have never before considered it and not one of us is absolved because we come from Dinky-Doo Iowa or some other place where there's hardly a Jew in existence if you look carefully enough you'll find him and if you pray fervently enough God will provide him so that it's not an abstract issue but a real bless your servants Lord and as they take your word to heart as you lead us into the depths of this remarkable book seal this Lord and let nothing fall to the ground we thank you and give you praise in Jesus name, Amen
The Gospel to the Jew First
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Arthur "Art" Katz (1929 - 2007). American preacher, author, and founder of Ben Israel Fellowship, born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn, New York. Raised amid the Depression, he adopted Marxism and atheism, serving in the Merchant Marines and Army before earning B.A. and M.A. degrees in history from UCLA and UC Berkeley, and an M.A. in theology from Luther Seminary. Teaching high school in Oakland, he took a 1963 sabbatical, hitchhiking across Europe and the Middle East, where Christian encounters led to his conversion, recounted in Ben Israel: Odyssey of a Modern Jew (1970). In 1975, he founded Ben Israel Fellowship in Laporte, Minnesota, hosting a summer “prophet school” for communal discipleship. Katz wrote books like Apostolic Foundations and preached worldwide for nearly four decades, stressing the Cross, Israel’s role, and prophetic Christianity. Married to Inger, met in Denmark in 1963, they had three children. His bold teachings challenged shallow faith, earning him a spot on Kathryn Kuhlman’s I Believe in Miracles. Despite polarizing views, including on Jewish history, his influence endures through online sermons. He ministered until his final years, leaving a legacy of radical faith.