In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of preaching and proclaiming the word of God to bring about spiritual transformation in communities. He highlights the need for repentance toward God as a prerequisite for Jews to come to faith in Jesus Christ. The speaker also emphasizes the significance of the grace of God in salvation and the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. He encourages believers to study the Scriptures, particularly Leviticus and Deuteronomy, to understand the condition of the Jewish people and the need for repentance.

You all look so spread out. Maybe it's already a sermon illustration more than you know. Hallelujah. Precious God, we desire again to hear from your heart, and we're all well along in the faith to know that to whom much is given, much is required. It's a dangerous thing to ask to hear from your heart. It's not a little curtsy, it's not a little genuflection, not a little, excuse the language, obsequious condescension to God. It's a thing that invites requirement. And we're coming of age, Lord, where we desire to be required of. We know that the hour is late. These are the last days. And perilous times have come. And we know that your love, my God, requires. And we thank you for that. You're perfect in all your ways. And we ask that you would insert now, Lord, a word in keeping with what you have been unfolding in these days, appropriate now for this hour, for this people and beyond them. Be with this mouth. Be triumphant over this bodily and physical condition. And we thank you and give you the praise for the privilege of hearing and considering and responding to your Holy Word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I'd like to start this morning with a very brief examination of Deuteronomy 30, right from the beginning of that chapter. I think periodically we ought to read Deuteronomy 28 through 30 just as a kind of salutary thing, very sobering to read the blessings and the curse that God spoke to Israel. I still recall the one time I had an occasion to hear Elie Wiesel. How many people know who he is? The outstanding Jewish Holocaust authority. I think most of his family, he's probably the only survivor of the Holocaust in Auschwitz. He gave a talk in which he told about the spiritual renaissance taking place in his life and that he was seeing a rabbi twice weekly for the study of scripture. The Lord would not allow me to ask the question publicly when they had the public question and answer period, but privately I went up to him and I said, in so much as you're reading and studying the scriptures now twice weekly, to what degree would you acknowledge that Jewish calamity, past and present, is altogether the fulfillment of the scriptures spoken in Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26? I think I said the concluding chapters of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. He looked at me for a moment, somewhat startled, and then he said, and the words reverberate still, I refuse to consider that. If ever I heard a death knell sounded by a supreme authority in Judaism to whom even Christian theologians look for the interpretation of the Holocaust, I heard it in that statement. I refuse to consider that. Do you understand what that means? I exalt myself above the word of God. I will determine what I will consider appropriate from that word and what I will reject. But what you're suggesting is unthinkable. If you're suggesting that our calamities are proportionate to our Jewish sin, that's not a thesis that I'm willing to consider. For what is our sin? We're a notable people. We've won more Nobel Prizes out of proportion to the population than any people on the face of the earth. We're known for virtue. We're philosophical. We're moral. We're ethical. That's as man sees. That very statement utterly discredits any pretension to be either moral or ethical. For if you have exalted yourself above God by determining what you will accept as his word from God, you have destroyed any basis for spirituality, let alone morality or ethicality. Thank you, Lord, for that statement. We need to be sobered by it lest there's yet something lurking in our own hearts about Jewish preeminence. It's a deep, deep-seated thing, and it may be more unconscious than we know, both in those of us who are Jewish and even those of us who are not. There's something very powerful in all that is implied in the word Jewish and all that's implied in the word Judaism. And that's why I have always, with reserve, touched those things and have always been somewhat cautious, if not apprehensive, about their use. I remember the first time I heard the phrase that what we represent as Jewish believers is the fourth branch of Judaism, and something in my alarm system went off like gangbusters. We are not a fourth branch of their system. We are the continuum of the Abrahamic faith from its inception. We're not some little novelty of the contemporary age that has a little Yiddish kite thrown in and also makes allowance for Jesus. This is the faith of the fathers. This is the faith that was once given, that for which we need again earnestly to contend. And in fact, the burden on my heart this morning is to elevate a faith, if you'll understand me and not think that I'm being picayune or petty, that is even above messianic, however precious that is. And I respect it, and I understand the identification and the witness that you're seeking to establish by it. The irony is that there's a faith beyond that, and I believe, and you can weigh my statements, that except we come to it, our witness is vain. And that faith is the ultimate faith and the apostolic faith. And I hope to show to you today, in essence, what that faith is. And only in its power and its credibility and its witness can we touch and penetrate our own Jewish kinsmen in these last days. Oh, it's true. Peripheral Jews will be brought into the kingdom. There will be an attractiveness. There will be a winsomeness that a Jew that would have reservation for the word Christian and would feel ill at ease in a Christian church setting would find himself much more comfortable in something like this, and it might well be a factor toward his salvation. But my jealousy is much deeper than that. My burning intensity for my kinsmen and to save them from the eternal wailing and gnashing of teeth that will be theirs requires something more than providing a winsome and attractive cultural setting in which they can safely become Christians without forfeiting that which is Jewish. I'm wondering if anyone is ever a Christian unless he's willing not only to forfeit what is Jewish, but to forfeit his life, period. And maybe the fact that we're still operating at another and lesser level is the statement, more than we know, of our own unwillingness to forfeit. So, dear saints, it's pleased the Lord to bring the strange men before you these days who, if ironically enough, may be more Jewish than us all. That this is Jewishness, this utterness toward God, this singular, single-eyed intensity that is willing to throw everything on the scrap heap and call it done, as Paul did, is the condition alone by which the apostolic glory comes. It was so for him, and it needs so also to be for us. That the very thing that we're wanting to retain and have every reason to justify and to employ is the thing that keeps us both from the apostolic glory and the apostolic power. I'd love to see this tape circulated through the entire messianic movement. In Deuteronomy 30, verses 1 through 9, we read, And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among, notice how carefully I'm reading now, among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shall return unto the Lord thy God, and shall obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day. Thou and thy children, with all thine heart and with all thy soul with them, the Lord thy God will, the Lord thy God will, the Lord thy God will, you'll see how frequently that comes up. In fact, I think it comes up exactly seven times in this text. The Lord thy God will turn thy captivity and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee, if any of thine be driven out unto the uttermost parts of heaven. From thence will the Lord thy God, will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee, and the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed. You know, when you read a text like this, it makes you very sympathetic to the perspective of a segment of Jewish orthodoxy that is even living in Israel that has never recognized the state of Israel as being the messianic state. They're a kind of a canker and a saw to a Jewish nation because they stubbornly insist that this secular, socialistic, and Zionistic entity is not the messianic fulfillment. And I wonder if they're closer to the truth than we know when we read, the Lord thy God will, the Lord thy God will, the Lord thy God will. They're insisting upon the Lord thy God, that he will. He who scattered will return and will gather, and he will establish them in the land, and when he does it, there'll be no controversy as to whose land it is and who has brought them. Our problem is that we're not sufficiently supernatural in our orientation. Our problem is that we're so desirous of the expedient result that we're not too careful about how it's obtained, which is exactly the formula for last day's deception. One of my other concerns, you'll not be hearing it in these days, is the increasing interest in power that the church seems to have now. Without a too careful attention of the source of it, if you're just concerned for a result and not too concerned for the source by which the result is obtained, you are a candidate for deception. The Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it, and he will do thee good and multiply thee above thy fathers. And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord God with all thine heart and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. I think it's clear that what is acknowledged today as the state of Israel is not a people whose heart has been circumcised. Either it's yet to come, or there's yet another gathering in which it will come, according to this text. And I don't want to examine this text this morning, I've got other things to say to you, only to say this, that the whole drama, according to this ponderous text, does not begin in the land, but in the nations. I've always been suspicious, now that I'm sharing everything, and letting everything hang out, because if you're going to stone me, I'll give you every reason. I've always been suspicious about those who have such a fascination for Israel, and are completely indifferent to the body of Christ at home. It doesn't add up to me. I can't reconcile it. That if you're authentically concerned for the glory of God, through that which is the people of God, you would be giving yourself with as much zeal and intensity and as love, and love to the local expression of that work and that body in the locality where you are, as you would be to trip off to Israel and attend the Feast of Tabernacles conference. I'm suspicious of the one, independent of the other. And by the way, I've noted also that those who are fascinated with Israelis, don't seem to have the same preoccupation and concern for the local Jewish community, who are also the Israel of God, the outcasts of Israel, and there are more of us in the diaspora than there are in the land. The greater action, I'm not some great scholar, but I think I can realize this much, that the greater saga of Israel's redemption and restoration in the last days has its activity in the nations rather than in the land. It culminates in the land, and there's a final episode in the land when they shall see him whom they have pierced. But the greater dealing of God is through the nations where most of us yet remain. And I rejoice for that, because that gives the church in the nations, where they are, the supreme opportunity to be the church as nothing else will require it. Because if everything begins, when thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whether the Lord thy God hath driven thee, and shall return unto the Lord thy God, and shall obey his voice, etc., and with all thy soul, then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, have compassion upon thee, will return thee, gather thee from all nations, return thee to the land, circumcise thy heart, give you the Holy Spirit, and so on. But it all begins in the land with this one thing, when thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whether the Lord thy God hath driven thee. And here's my thought this morning, saints. Why should we expect that, if it has not yet taken place, except that something comes to a community dead in its own spirituality by something external to itself from without? Namely, a witness and a preaching and a proclamation and a demonstration with the word that turns its attention to the Lord their God. Paul, in the summary of his apostolic ministry, spoke about not withholding himself day and night, both from house to house and in public places, proclaiming this message, repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you want to know why it is that you cannot seem to be successful in bringing Jews to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? Because it must be first preceded by a repentance toward God. It's repent and believe ye the gospel, not make some bookkeeping calculation of what the omission of the Messiah has meant and then include that into your Jewish orientation and call yourself a Messianic Jew whose whole walk is often nothing more than the rising and falling of carnality and shallow consecration and commitment. There's a depth of conversion that God is wanting that must begin with repentance toward God before it admits of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We Berkeley grads know that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is patent absurdity for modern consideration. I can't think of anything more absurd for any intellectual evaluation, especially Jewish evaluation, than the foolishness of the gospel. It's a scandal. I mean, have you realized how foolish it is? God lay aside his deity, was born as an infant in a stable, that this is our God. It's beneath Jewish dignity even to consider. Thirty years of obscurity and a short three and a half year public ministry where he's rejected by his own people, he's an off-scouring and an itinerant preaching bum and a few dubious miracles that even to this day Jewish authorities say was from the power of Beelzebub, the powers of darkness, that he was a magician with an illegitimate birth and was finally done in on the cross for the political danger that he was out on the dung keep outside of town between two criminals and that's your God? That pathetic wreck on the cross, so mangled that you could hardly recognize his humanity, let alone deity? It's a statement of absurdity. It's a scandalous gospel. There is nothing to commend it to modern sensibility and to intellectual appreciation. It's totally a supernatural work of God that anyone should believe it and be saved. For which none of us receive credit. It's a grace that's given. But it begins with a repentance toward God. And if any people have voluminous reason to be repentant toward God, it is we. You need to bone up a little bit on Leviticus and Deuteronomy and see what Moses said would be our condition in the latter days and was our condition historically. In the most vile apostasy, in such flagrant things performed before the very face of God, even in the house of God, as would be scandalous for Gentiles, let alone for Jews. I remember once spending some time in Phoenix area and the local synagogue was giving Thursday afternoon talks by local rabbis. I went to several of them. And on one occasion, the rabbi spoke on the prophetic heritage of Israel. You imagine, I came with bated breath. And he did a pretty good job. And he showed what was the singular and universal cry of the prophets. How does the book of Isaiah begin? If our critics say that the New Testament is anti-Semitic, what shall they say about the book of Isaiah? Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth. Why does it begin that way? Because my people will not hear and they do not consider. God has to appeal to the insensate elements themselves. For I have raised up a people and they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner and the ass its master's crib. But my people do not know and they don't even consider. Sinful nation laden with iniquity from the top of your head to the soles of your feet. Bruises and cuts that need to be mollified and bound up. The city of righteousness has become a city of murderers. Corrupters, not just corrupted. Corrupters. So in the question and answer period, Kit Katz raised his hand and said, Excuse me, can you tell me when it has ever been historically that we as the Jewish community have ever acknowledged the indictment of God against us through the prophets? When is it that we have repented for the charges, the indictments, the cry of God about our condition that has been registered through every prophet? And I can't remember what his answer was, but it was not impressive. I think it's fair to say that no such acknowledgement has ever yet been made. And that's why when the Lord appears, and we shall see him whom we have pierced, we shall mourn every family apart. Husbands and wives apart. The depth of this racking, sobbing and convulsive breaking will be unlike anything the world has ever seen. It'll be a schmerz. You know that word in German and in Yiddish? It'll be a pain unspeakable. It'll be a grief unspeakable. It'll be a sorrow and a lamentation, not only for our present sins, but for the sins of our fathers, for which we are called to acknowledge, or he will not remember his covenant with us. I'd like to save my mother from that racking experience. I don't think that her mortal frame can bear it. If only the grace of the knowledge of the Lord could come before that final revelation of him that will leave an entire nation, that is, that number which survive of it, utterly shattered. And all of that brings me to this. If this beginning work that releases the Lord to return to captivity of a nation, while they're yet in the lands of their dispersion, begins in those lands, when they begin to turn their hearts to God, and shall call to mind these things, I want to say that it cannot begin with them, but with us. They're going to have to hear a preached word. Because it pleases God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe, not the foolishness of Yiddishkeit. But there's preaching and preaching. And I have a jealousy for a kind alone that when it comes, it's more than informational on how to get saved. It's not the four spiritual laws with one more added for us Jews. It's the kind of word of which Paul speaks in Romans 10, for which a Danish theologian whom I admire says, it is this apostolic preaching, it is for this apostolic preaching that the Jewish community yet waits. Verse 13 of Romans 10, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard, not really properly heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent? Underline that word sent. As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel, the foolish, scandalous, absurd, and intellectually offensive statement of God, alone by which a man can be saved. To preach that, the gospel of peace, and to bring the good tidings of things to come. Verse 17, so then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, and not some patsy formula. I'm saved today, and have been saved for 27 years, little thing that I am. I once described myself as a little potato in the kingdom, and some brother came up after the service to be quick to remind me, you may be a little potato, Art, but you're an authentic potato. And you know, dear saints, that that's the key and the heart of the word apostolic. What is authentic is apostolic, and what is apostolic is authentic. And if we Jews are anything, even in our unsafe condition, we are ultimate critics of that which is authentic, and that which is faint. That which is indisputably real, and cannot be gainsaid, however much it vexes us, and that which is amusing, and causes us some slight consideration, but does not disturb our sleep. We're tough, and God has made us so, for the church's sake. They are the enemies of the gospel, for your sake. Hallelujah. We needed that, lest we ourselves would have become patsies, and a bunch of shallow religionists, not making an impact on their generation in these last days. Content with mere succession of services. Dear saints, there's a cry of God, that is a call, and an ultimate call, to apostolicity. There's a preaching of one kind only, in the hearing of which, it creates faith. To believe, despite centuries of historic unbelief, and opposition to the gospel. And my Jewish people are in their graves today, right here in Cleveland, Ohio, 60,000 of them, waiting for a preached word, and a power and authenticity, that raises the dead. For it creates, for it is the word of God, and not the word of men. And it can only be spoken, by him who is sent, for that word sent, is at the root of the Greek apostolos, meaning, sent one. But sent from where? Dum-da-dum-dum. That is the question. Now, have you ears to hear? Turn to Acts 13, and we will just briefly examine, the first apostolic sending. Do you like things that are first? I think watchmany and all good exegetes know, that the first expression of anything in the scripture, is almost invariably, the purest and most authentic expression of that thing. And I want to encourage your hearts, I want to make you jealous, for the word apostolic. If you don't salivate over it, you don't have it yet. If it's an enigma and a conundrum, and does not evoke any special juice, running through your mouth, you've not yet come alive to the true faith. And it might be that your Yiddishkeit, is the very obstruction. Because the former things must pass away. The lesser must bow to the greater. We cannot have all this and heaven too. All this might be comely, might be attractive, it might give us a little warmth, and enjoyment in many ways, but the thing that is ultimate, and the thing that is authentic, and the thing alone that will raise the dead, the heavenly thing and the apostolic thing, can only come as the requirement of that, which has been surrendered and yielded up unto death. You know what God might be calling for this morning? And what he might be testing? The depth of the sincerity of your profession, to be concerned for Jewry. Would you be willing, as Paul was to count all things as dung, and to bring into death the very thing that you cherish, and is the very distinctive of your congregation? Namely, it's messianic practices. And go for broke and pull out the stops, and be with your faces sticking out, with no outward adornment or thing to wear, or to have, or to be, and you'll be weak and feeble. God will test you, until you come in increasingly into apostolic verity, apostolic authority, apostolic character, apostolic power, till the day comes when God can speak into this congregation by the Spirit of God, and say, They separated unto me Walter and George and Joe and Jim for the work unto I have called them. And it doesn't have to be Jewish work. Because we're not called to a work, we're called to Him. And it's only in response to Him that the authentic work to the Jews will take place. But when they become explicitly out of focus, they get something less than they would have received had it been a sending us unto God, separated unto Him, for the work unto which He has called us, for we're separated unto Him, and not the work. That's priestly! And except it be priestly, how shall it be apostolic? For Jesus Himself is the High Priest and the Apostle of our confession. Acts 13, the first apostolic sending. You know what the interesting thing is, dear saints? It does not take place in Jerusalem, in a totally Jewish congregation. It takes place with a mixed bag, polyglot, bunch of believers in a kind of a city outside the pale of Jerusalem, Antioch. A great cosmopolitan and commercial center, something like Cleveland. And I think I can say with authority this morning in Yeshua HaMashiach, there's a God who loves you and appreciates what you're about and the desire of your heart. But He's yet waiting for the first Antioch of this city, out of which He can call men and women who are sent in apostolic power to preach a word that raises the dead, for it is a creative event and brings faith to those who cannot otherwise have it. Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers. Notice, not at the church, not those who come casually for a service and are separated rows between each group of believers. I think that the church of Antioch was clustered right here, right there by the Word of God, right by the pulpit. And their mouths were open and they were cleaving to the Word of God and to each other. None of this casual air of coming for a kind of service and enjoying a little Yiddishkeit and some lovely music and enjoying a good biblical word and going home. There was an intensity. They were not at the church, they were in the church. And that's costly. I don't know of any more exquisite form of suffering than being in the church. Can you believe that right to my face I've had people call me an enemy of the gospel with whom I live in community, sharing my hard-earned income through gospel labors with them and sustaining them and being called by them a gospel... what did I say it was? You're going to have to take us by the ankles and shake out a lot of stuff that is subjective, rebellious, self-willed and opinionated which will never take place so long as you're sitting like this in this congregation. Never. You're going to have to start coming forward and clustering here for your life. And it'll be more than the succession of services. It'll be going from house to house daily breaking bread. It'll be finding out that when you knock on the door and you haven't called in advance of your coming that those that you thought spiritual have their feet up on the coffee table watching such vile stuff on TV that you stagger. But that's where they are. And that's where we need to know it and where we need to deal with each other and speak the truth to one another in love and bring the sanctifying work of God to bear that brings us from faith to faith and glory to glory until the day comes that we're more than just a casual conglomerate of souls but an intensive band of believers who are the family and community of God that the Spirit of God can say separate unto me and send. There were certain prophets and teachers there at Antioch Bonibus and Simeon who was called Niger and Lucius of Cyrene and Menaion which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch and Saul. How redundant and unnecessary to give us all of this detail. Who cares, I mean, what their names were. Well, you can believe there's not a syllable in this book that's mere happenstance. Why does God give us trite information? Because it's profound. A guy by the name of Niger? He's evidently black. And another one from Cyrene, he's a Mediterranean type and Bonibus who was a Jew and Lucius and Menaion who may be of a Roman extraction. My God, what a mixed bag of Jew and Gentile and black and white. And here comes the punchline, guys. Ready? As they ministered unto the Lord the Holy Ghost said separate unto me not unto the work Bonibus and Saul for the work were unto I have called them. And if we had time to read on you'll find out that when they were sent forth where's the first place that they end up? In the synagogue of the Jews. It's still to the Jew first and into the Jewish community. I'd have second questions would I allow you to lay hands on me as much as I need to be prayed for this morning. Because what were you doing last night up till 12, 1, 2 o'clock in the morning? Twiddling the TV dial? Or something else that's equally as dubious or maybe worse? And you're going to lay hands on me? Forget it. Because anyone who lays hands on you imparts what he is in himself into you. And I don't want that conveyed anywhere let alone to afflict me. I want to know who's laying hands on me but how well do you know each other? And are you willing to pay for the price of knowing each other as you ought? And the pain of some of the revelation and realization of what knowing each other means and even of the knowing of yourself as will come out in such an intensity of fellowship as was theirs at Antioch. It's easier to be messianic than apostolic. It's easier to put on the talasim and a yamulka than to be in this kind of relationship despite in fact all the more because of your diversity and to be found ministering unto the Lord together. There's something more than the singing of Hebraic choruses that delight our hearts. I wouldn't be surprised if there was no singing at all. That the ultimate worship to God is a people in their diversity who have been so knit and so wrought as one in God that they can minister to the Lord in silence. I think one of the greatest statements of all scripture that the Lord has not revealed to me that there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour. And people weren't going looking at their fingernails and bored and twiddling their thumbs. A deep waiting on God. A hushed waiting on God. The quiet of the clamor of our own natures that has to have some novelty and something to see and something to hear and something opulent before us. No longer there. And it is He and He alone who is the object of our attention and our worship. And when God will have that from Jews and Gentiles and black and white as one ministering unto the Lord we can expect again to hear His voice saying, separate unto me. For we are separated from culture, from ourselves, from our ambitions, from the subtlety even of Jewish preeminence and the kind of thing that we think is our distinctive even unconsciously. That's how deep that separation must go. And it will only take place in one environment. An apostolic setting and an apostolic body. Apostles who are sent who can preach a word that is a creative event for those who hear it need to be sent forth from an apostolic place. The issue of an apostle is not something that is some chance happenstance that happens to come around but is the product of an environment that is itself apostolic. That those who go and those who send are made of the same stuff. And that the laying on of hands is an impartation of the very power and the vitality of God that moves through that corporate body and then is conferred to those who are sent. And something is established before God in the principalities and powers of darkness in the identification between the sending body and the sent ones. That's a little bit more than Sunday charismatic Christianity or the Saturday variety. We have either all sin saints or we have fallen short of the glory of God. And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them they sent them away. So they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost What? They laid hands on them, they sent them away and so they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost went? God, what are you trying to say? That you're equating the laying on of the hands of men and women as being the same as being sent by the Holy Ghost? And the answer from heaven is exactly. When we will have men and women whose hands can convey the pure life of God who have not whittled the TV dial to the late hours of the night and come sleepy the next morning to the service waiting for some kind of spiritual roulette and novelty that will awaken their interest we'll have again apostolic sendings. Apostolic preaching. And the hearing of which faith will be created to believe. To seek God. To acknowledge the truth of Deuteronomy 30 and call to mind among all the nations where the Lord thy God hath driven thee the things that we need to recall that he might return unto us and return to turn us from our captivity and have compassion upon us and gather us from all the nations wherein we have been scattered. The issue of Jewish restoration the issue of the establishment of the nation which is the locus and the setting for the millennial kingdom that shall bring peace in the earth is the issue of the church and not the issue of the Jew. God will see to it that they're too helpless to do anything of themselves or for themselves. That was last night's message. This morning's is the punctuation and the practical filling in. And if we had all kinds of time, do it at your own leisure. Read on in Acts 13. Not only are they brought to the synagogue of the Jews but they are encountered by a sorcerer at the very inception of the first apostolic ministry the two most ultimately demanding things in earth confronting Jews and confronting the powers of darkness. Your Talas and your Yarmulke will not go far in that day but your apostolic authority will. And the question that God is putting before you today and maybe he's not even requiring it but to see the willingness of your heart would you be willing to bring to the death of the one in order to see the resurrection of the other? I like Walter. He's a mensch or I wouldn't be here. I don't know of another messianic leader who has been willing to touch me with a ten-foot pole in the last ten to fifteen years for exactly the reasons that you've been hearing in these days. And yet it might be the most Jewish preaching that you've ever heard in the truest sense of the word because it springs out of the jealousy of God which if that's not the definition of Jewish then I don't know what Jewish is. Keep your pastrami and your lox and your bagels however much I myself enjoy them. Oh dear saints have you ears to hear what the spirit of God is saying to the church? And if there's any justification for messianic celebration as I believe there profoundly is of the kind that we have been enjoying in these days it belongs to all the church. It belongs to all the Antiochs of God for it is the inheritance of the saints. But let's be careful not to admit by that the things that are rabbinical and humanly traditional that have emanated from the same class that crucified our Messiah. And think that it has the same sanctity as the things that are biblical in their origin. Are you jealous for apostolic glory? Are you jealous for the apostolic faith? Are you jealous for the only kind of preaching and witness that will bring a nation from its death? They need to hear a word an ultimate word by sent ones out of ascending congregation who can lay hands upon them and not confer filth and compromise and worldliness but the holiness of God for they are a people who know one another and have been perfected in sanctifying truth and power in the assembly of the saints which is more than a succession of services. I want to invite you to that today. It'll cost you everything. Everything! And if you're not willing to begin by the laying down of your yarmulke and talasem I have little hope that you'll give the rest. Lay it down, bring it into death and if God would have you to employ it receive it from the resurrection side only. Where all of the social the soulish elements and even perhaps demonic elements that adhere in these accoutrements will be safely removed. Lord Jesus we love you. What a God! What a jealousy over your people that will not let us go. And you've let us have a little season of Yiddishkeit and a little enjoyment and pleasant things and you've seen our hearts my God, we have been earnest we have so wanted to serve you and to touch our Jewish community. We know that traditional missions have never succeeded in any great conspicuous way. We're grateful for every labor that has been generated over the centuries in the church to try and touch this imponderable and resistant people. But we know that the time is short and the hour is late and the night soon comes when no man can work. And something needs to go forth my God that was at the beginning and shook the earth. These are they which turn the world upside down and they were only two of them. Return us my God to apostolic reality apostolic power apostolic glory apostolic being apostolic preaching and we're willing for whatever the sacrifice is that's required. Lord I bless this congregation for all of the blessings that have been spoken from this platform for the varieties of churches that have been here in these days now it's my turn. And I think I've got a little authority with you and I bless this Tikva Israel that it will be a hope not a vain hope not a cultural hope not a shallow hope but a profound powerful hope that cannot be resisted nor gainset without the risk of eternal embarrassment and shame. I ask my God for a testimony that might rattle and shake and cause perhaps a bit of confusion or disagreement because he sensed it was God and because it's an hour whose time has come. Bless him for his faithfulness and bless his people who will be with him and who will be brought in obedience from faith to faith and from glory to glory in these days because of the yea and amen that they are giving to the speakings that you're bringing to them. I bless them I bless them Lord may they be the first may they be foremost in bringing forth in this city an Antioch of God in all of its diversity a people who can minister unto the Lord together separated from the world its culture its logic its reasonings unto him even from its own religious aspirations and ambitions as much willing to remain in the place of worship as to be sent to the place of service for only that kind of a sent one is safe to be given the power of God that can raise the dead by speaking. Bring forth out of this people Lord apostolic men and women let there be ascending again in these last days not only into Cleveland but beyond it my God and into the nations and into the earth that will shake it as it needs again profoundly to be shaken. We thank you and give you the praise for the high calling in Christ Jesus and we receive it. Whatever the cost whatever is dear to us whatever we have wanted to clutch and to retain and thought not only harmless but of service to you. We're willing to be brought into the place of death that there might be a greater resurrection unto life by a people who are dead and wait for that word alone. Are you saying amen to this prayer? Hallelujah! Glory to God in the highest! Lord put a seal on these amens put a seal on this morning put a seal on this transaction put a seal my God on this consecration on this agreement on this divine and holy transaction once and for all. We bless you and we thank you for the high calling of God in Christ Jesus to which we give ourselves this morning without let and without hindrance counting all things as done that we might know you in your sufferings and in the power of your resurrection for Jesus' sake for his kinsmen's sake for his name and for his honor's sake in these last days in Yeshua's holy name we pray and God's people solemnly said Amen and Amen and Amen. Kipper is from Kippur which means covering you know that and we already have one by his blood. As Walter was speaking I thought of one last thing that God wants to say to you. No apostle ever died in bed. With the possible exception of one each was brought to a violent end. It's the very nature of the thing. Apostolicity invites opposition, persecution, and death. I think I have an obligation to tell you that. I'm not expecting myself to end my life in bed. And this is not some melodramatic thing for the saints to cause you a little faint titillation. It's just utterly realistic that we can well expect a last days collision with powers of darkness in which there will be casualties and fatalities especially for those who will move into the realm that God is putting before us today. The invitation to which you've responded in its full truth is an invitation to martyrdom. And indeed whether or not it's required we ought to live as one. And I'm wondering if any lesser witness to the Jewish community will move them to jealousy. As I said to the ministers when I first arrived in town and we had that luncheon that the Lord ended for me a 14 month sabbatical silence where I was not allowed to preach for 14 months which could have gone on for 14 years and would have been all the same. But he ended it by allowing me to speak for a first time on the mystery of Israel and the church in the last days. And I was a creaky old gate that had not spoken for 14 months and I wondered whether God would be with me but he anoints what he appoints. And when the smoke cleared that first night the Lord had raised the question what kind of a church will move Jews to jealousy? And he gave no answer. And it went on for six messages without an answer. And I went to bed the last night in the motel where we were put up without knowing what the final seventh message would be. Seven is the number of completion like the Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month. Three o'clock in the morning the Lord wakened me with the word martyrdom. And my final and seventh concluding message was that the church that will move Israel to jealousy must of necessity be a martyr church. Do you still want to say yay and amen? Do you still want to have hands laid on and for you to be sealed in this consecration and in this calling? Yeah, amen. Hallelujah, because though it's for Walter you all share in this dedication by virtue of your relationship with him. Precious God, I'm an honored man. I'm a privileged man. To bear a holy word before your people and a true word and a requiring word that our eternal reward might be the greater. That we will have authentically crowns to lay at the feet of the Holy One of Israel and not some faded piece of Yiddish kite. And your son and servant here has asked for me to lay hands upon him and to bless him as an older brother in this most holy faith. So I'm going to invite Gary to come up. Come on Gary and stand with us. This is a brother you've not heard anything from in these days but I can tell you that these days would not be these days if he were not here. We have been fighting a battle against powers of darkness of which my cold is only a slight expression. Terrible discouragements and grinding oppression in these very days in Cleveland just for the getting out of this word. It's been a battle saints and I praise God that God sent them out by twos or I would have crumbled under the weight of it by myself. This is an apostolic brother who knows all about martyrdom for the community which he gave his life for eight years ended as martyrs, hacked to death with an axe. Only three years ago in Zimbabwe, Africa and when I heard that news in Minnesota I was in New York City as a matter of fact at that time looking, casing the joint for future ministry to my own kinsmen, my own hometown and I said to the brother with me the next reports of martyrdom will not be that distant. We'll have them from New York itself and any place where there's a real earnest confrontation between light and darkness and the promulgation of the gospel and the power of the spirit apostolically given. So Lord in Jesus name let this be your hand the hand of the high priest and the apostle of our confession calling a son up to a higher place a greater requirement not just for Yomulka and Talas but the whole life. Thank you for so exquisite a sacrifice thank you for the preparation of it thank you that you have honored the obedience by which he has been brought from faith to faith to this very hour and moment and now my God we separate him unto you and seal him unto yourself for a high priestly an apostolic and prophetic service courageous, full orbed, powerful uncompromising to lead this people from faith to faith into the depths of antiochal reality and sending glory into this community and beyond. Bless him with a wisdom bless him with a courage bless him with a wife of like mind and heart and soul and spirit and a people who will stand with him who will not be offended who will go all the way in the obtaining together of precious eternal reward grant an anointing my God with this laying on of hands beyond anything our brother has ever known an unction my God of the holy anointing oil from the throne that you'll not discriminately give to those who have lesser intentions than his reserved for this intention holy apostolic work in the last days that will surely require of him his life we bless him and we seal him in it and ask the release of every requisite thing for the hour that has come for his life and with this people to the utter glory of our father and our God in the holy name of Yeshua HaMashiach we pray, Amen Hallelujah for the things he has done with his blood he has saved us with his power he has raised us to God be the glory for the things he has done let this burn in your heart saints from this day forth to God be the glory this is the apostolic distinctive this alone is the only ultimate cause that will enable us to be fools for Christ's sake to die for him if it's required it's more even than our devotion to Israel and to the Jew himself to God be the glory the whole issue of Israel's restoration is not the nation in itself but to God be the glory shift from a messianic orientation to an apostolic and let there be a thump as this thing falls into its right pivotal order the glory of God as the central animation pursuit and jealousy of this people or Israel will never be moved to jealousy