In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of obedience to God's Word. He states that when we are obedient, something will break and something will give, leading to the manifestation of God's presence in our lives. The preacher also highlights the true evangelism of God, which is necessary to turn the world to the knowledge of Him. He urges the listeners to not be idle hearers but to be doers of God's sacred teachings. The sermon references Jeremiah 17 and describes the two ways of life - the way of God and the way of men, highlighting the basis for blessing and curse. The preacher also shares personal experiences and challenges faced by believers, emphasizing the need for a spiritual disposition and love for the Jewish people.

The day that I was saved, eight years ago, as soon as the Spirit of God entered my life, I instinctively or intuitively understood that I was being enrolled in a great conflict. I knew it. It was a war, a contest. And there's nothing that more reveals the nature of this conflict than bringing the Gospel to the Jewish people. Now you say, Art, why is that? Aren't the Jews merely another ethnic group? No, not so. They are a very special and distinct group. We know that God's, what can I say, His whole dealings with men began with the Jewish people. And I believe that His dealings with men will end with the Jewish people. There are significant people in all of the things that God has been working. They're an instrument of His revelation. They've been a kind of a barometer, as they are to this day, of the spiritual condition of Gentile people. I have only to know how a Gentile believer regards the Jew to understand where he is spiritually. In the same manner, for example, if you find an anti-Semite, you know exactly where he is spiritually. He's a despiser and a hater of God, no matter what religious vocabulary he employs. A man's real regard for the Jewish people is the most sensitive indication of where he is in relationship with God. And my experience in these eight years working with the Lord is this, that those Gentiles who have the highest regard for Jewish people are the most spiritual people. And that figures because in the natural, we Jews have little to commend ourselves to Gentiles. We rub you the wrong way. In the natural, we would move you to envy and to jealousy and to resentment and irritation. You break your necks in school to get passing grade, and there we sit without even batting an eyelash and lean back and whip out those A's, one right after the other. And we come back from the concentration camps with a tattoo on our arm and maybe a pair of gotgas on our back, long johns. And we start life anew in America, and our garage is crammed with beautiful new cars and our kids are going to the finest schools in the country, and you're still struggling along at 75 bucks a week. Of course, I'm exaggerating, but not too much. Not too much. It takes unusual spiritual disposition to rise above these natural considerations and yet have a loving regard for the Jewish people. So what I'm doing now is what I'm going to be doing for this entire time I'll speak this morning. You're going to be required to listen very intently. Not just for what I say, but for what shall be expressed between the lines. I've already expressed enough meat to ponder for the rest of this session, if we want to stay on this one point alone, of how God has raised up this peculiar people and the many purposes which they serve in his economy. Now, for example, this Jewish people is dispersed all over the face of the earth. There's not a community hardly over the face of this earth where they cannot be found. And I've been to Tokyo, and there's a Jewish community in Tokyo. And I think if you went to Shanghai and Timbuktu, you're going to find Jews there. And I've been in the Midwest, and in the most nondescript towns in Iowa, there's at least one Jewish family. All of this is an expression of the veracity of God's word that a judgment would fall upon this Jewish people, that they would be made a byword, a hyst and a proverb to all the nations to which he would send them. That's one aspect of his dealings. But our God is a manifold God. He's a Jewish economical God, and there are many purposes served at one time. And another purpose is this, that as these Jewish people are in every community, there's not one of us who is not challenged to the root of our being to bring to them the witness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And as Al may have mentioned the other night, it's one thing to witness to a Gentile. You tell some guy rolling in his vomit in the gutter that he needs the Lord, and he'll quickly acknowledge. And he's already had rudimentary training in the vocabulary of Christianity. He knows his need, he knows he's lost, he knows he needs to be saved. But you tell a Jewish man whose life is well-ordered, stable, cultured, refined, civil, ethical, moral, who has a greater seeming concern for the world than you, who palpitates for Vietnam and Biafra, and has on his wall two or three university degrees and awards from the B'nai B'rith and the Chamber of Commerce, who has never so much as barked at his wife, let alone struck her. And you're going to come to that man with your inadequate grammar, and you've barely gotten through high school, and tell that man in all his seeming solidarity that without Jesus he's lost. I tell you that if you're leaking spiritually, there's no confrontation on the face of this earth that will more quickly reveal your spiritual inadequacy than confronting such a Jew as this. Aren't God's ways best finding out? And that's exactly why he's placed him there. And that's exactly why you've shrunk from doing it. Now I say you. I don't mean you particular ones sitting here. I mean Christianity in general. Al is right. There's no more grievous, neglected ministry than a ministry to the Jewish people. And if you read the whole substance of the Scriptures, there's something that's very clear that's revealed. Jesus gave commandment when he came out of that tomb. That's a reason why a lot of people would much rather see a Messiah who's not resurrected. There's something about our nature that loves to adorn a body with spices and wrap it in rags and whine over it and have funeral processions and draped coffins and all of that jazz, and we're going to have melancholy tears over that one whom we thought was the deliverer of Israel. I think many more prefer a Messiah who will stay in his tomb than one who will be resurrected and who will say to us in his resurrection life, All power is given unto me under heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, into all the world and preach this controversial, despised gospel to every creature beginning at Jerusalem. Lord, isn't that the place where you just got killed? And isn't that the same city that slew... Exactly. You begin with the acid test. When we read in Romans the first chapter, Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first and also to the Greek. People, there's an order of God which we have grievously neglected. And I don't understand, and I don't think any man does, the beauty and the wisdom behind God's ordering, but I don't think that it's something that we should ignore because we don't understand it. God is speaking to us about a restoration to divine order and to his pattern and to his way and to his authority. And there's a reason why God says to the Jew first. And if this will be any kind of a helpful insight, I'll give you a little episode out of my experience as a high school teacher. I learned very readily at the very beginning of the year that when there were cut-ups in the class, that the first temptation is not to pick on the severest test, but on some lesser challenge. I would pick on some cut-up that I knew that I could handle, but I was afraid really to challenge that one guy who was the most obstreperous and who really contested my authority. Because what if I could not master him? And I realized that if I took the lesser troublemakers and didn't deal with him, I was going to have trouble all through the year. So I had to come to this, take a deep breath, and go to the severest troublemaker first. And when I handled him, I had the whole class under authority. I'll tell you that when you go to the Jew first and you can handle him, of whom then shall you be afraid? Who is there in the community that shall present you some case for foreboding? If you can handle the Jew people, you can handle anyone. The Jew is not another ethnic group alone. Here's why he is the most signaled challenge. Because the world is essentially Jewish. You say, Art, what do you mean by that? Do you mean we're all going kosher? No. I mean Jewish in its mentality and its spirit. Well, what mentality is that? Well, just look at the three great geniuses who have shaped the 20th century. Had they not been born and had they not expressed their particular insight, we could not recognize the modern world today for what it is. What are these three names? Who? Freud, Marx, and Einstein. Absolutely. Three Jews. Freud, Marx, and Einstein. And you may say, well, Art, I don't know a thing about Freud. Oh, is that right? Well, it shows with your children. You may not know about him consciously, but you'll be amazed to know to what degree your kids, their upbringing, their conduct, their attitude, their whole manner and way of life, what they're receiving at school and what they're imbibing from their culture is a direct, if you can trace it back to the contribution of this one genius. The whole of our understanding about child rearing, much of our aspect of education, our own relationships with each other in marriage, and the whole permissive nature of our society, it can be directly traced back to the contribution of this one great genius. Of Karl Marx, what must I say? His contribution has disfigured the modern world. And you know what the fantastic thing is? These aren't just men who have just woven fabrics of lies. That would be easy to put aside. Their genius is so acute that they have significantly laid hold of much that is true. But you know that it's not a lie that's so dangerous. It's the half-truths that are far more dangerous. What then about three-quarter truths and nine-tenths truths? Oh, I can go on and on and on. You can see I'm a peculiar character myself. Remember when Jesus said, Who do men say that I am? And who do you say that I am? I believe it's the most profound question for our generation. And what God has shown me in my experience is that it's true that he's a teacher. It's true that he was a prophet. And we can acknowledge all these truths. But until we've come to the full and whole truth, partial truth is a grievous lie and a distortion that will turn men from God's salvation. Do you understand what I'm saying? There are a lot of things that are true about the analysis of Marx, about our social conditions and our society. There are enormous truths in Freud's understanding of the human psyche and the subconscious. But until it's the whole truth and the total truth, a partial truth is a distortion and a lie and can seriously divert the lives and conduct of men and nations, which is exactly what's happened. You say, how about Einstein? He had nothing to do with psychology or with social systems or mass movements. But I tell you, it may be that his contribution was the more devastating of the three. Now, I don't have the slightest interest in science as such. And yet, as an atheist, I used to say that science will provide the answer. Isn't it fantastic that although I didn't like science, yet my confidence was in science, that whatever the problem, whatever the difficulty, that one day it would be resolved by science. I tell you, that's more of an infantile faith than the most simple-minded, literal, fundamentalist believer. Every man has a faith of one kind or another upon which his life is sustained and carried. And I would say that God's great purpose in our generation is to take the faith of men which are of no substance and bring them to correct faith. I had a faith as an atheist in science, in men. I had a very Jewish faith. And a lot of it was the Einsteinian contribution in that although I knew nothing about physics, I was a relativist. Remember the theory of relativity? Well, I don't know a thing about what it means in terms of physics, but I know everything of what it means in the intellectual realm. Here's what it means. A relativist is one who believes that there is no fixed place of understanding or truth. Who's to say that anything is right or wrong? Headhunting might be wrong in our civilization, but in the jungles of the Amazon, it's quite feasible. Who's to say that extramarital relationships are in themselves wrong? If certain circumstances are at work, if it's loving, if no one is offended and hurt by it, if it furthers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You see what I mean? It's relative. It depends on the circumstance. And therefore, the God that said, Thou shalt not. Well, he's all wet. Now, you can only intuit by the spirit to what degree the thought of these three great men has permeated the whole spirit of the modern world. The modern world is essentially a Jewish world. It has imbibed this spirit, and it's found its way and permeated even into the pores of Christian lives. If you could see as God sees, it's fantastic to what degree you've absorbed so much of this spirit, and it's expressed in so much of your conduct and your attitude and your way of perceiving things. And yet, it's completely inimical to the way of God. For example, Jewish people or Gentiles with Jewish mentalities will often quote this scripture. God helps those who help themselves. You'll take the grossest biblical illiterates are persuaded that that is in the scriptures, and that is one of the fundamental underlying tenets of the Jewish faith. It's a faith of self-confidence, self-assurance. It exalts man. Its confidence is in flesh, and be not deceived if it employs a religious vocabulary. Because is there a religious vocabulary in the world more becoming, more astute, and more impressive than Jewish religious vocabulary? I mean, you poor Gentiles have to carry on with mere English, but we have Hebrew. And your traditions are only a few centuries old. Ours goes back through the thousands. And we've got liturgy in Hebrew melody that would be the envy of all. And I'll tell you, when it comes to masterful human religion and conspicuously endowed ministers, you can't beat us. Intellectual and eloquent, we've got all of the trappings of religion that make for great impression. But at the heart of it, it has not the knowledge of God, and it exalts men. Now, let me just check and take your pulse. Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you? Praise the Lord. Now, if we had had three sessions, I wouldn't go on the way I'm going on now. But I'm throwing a lot of material at you that is so fantastically deep that you have to savor this and roll this on your tongue and really let this get into your heart. I want you to turn to Jeremiah, the 17th chapter. Listen, a few verses, I want to suggest what the whole issue is all about. Because this issue is coming to its head to a collision in our generation. There are two things being described in the verses that we're going to read. The basis for blessing and the basis for curse. There are two ways that are described. The way of God and the way of men. And first, it's the way of men that's described in the fifth verse of the 17th chapter. Thus saith the Lord. Now, let's hold it right there for a second. Oh, people, I'm really, my bowels are constrained. You know? There's so much that I want to express. Thus saith the Lord. You see, I have to speak in mysteries because we don't have time for me to expand beyond that. There are two Judaisms in the world. And I know this sounds strange to you. You say, what two Judaisms? There's one Judaism which encompasses all of the religions of men and I call the Judaisms of men. And you must not be deceived by the titles. There's a God who is calling us to maturity and to a perception and discernment by the Spirit which will raise us above labels. And I'll tell you that among the Judaisms of men you'll find such things as Presbyterianism, Methodism and just about every kind of Christian denomination. We mustn't be deceived by the name alone. We must see it to the reality. There are a lot of people who call themselves Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and you name it who are really practicing the Judaisms of men. Now you say, what do you mean by Judaisms of men? Well, all of these Judaisms have this in common. They are essentially religions of convenience. They require little or nothing from men and they are not in the position to give anything to men but a modicum of psychological and emotional satisfaction. They have not the power of God. They may employ a vocabulary of God but they know not God and they're mere religions of convenience who give men a psychic relief and all they require is an hour on Sunday or on the Shabbat or the high holidays the Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah or Christmas or Easter and that's it. A little buck in the collection plate. And that's the kind of religion that most men want. And in distinction from the Judaisms of men there's the Judaism of God and it has at its center a cross. It's a religion which is total. It requires all but it gives all and everything in our nature shrinks from such a religion as that. It's a call to complete severance from all that is in the world the flesh and the devil. And when God called Abraham to that Judaism we have the clearest expression of the totality of that call. Abram get thee out from nation kindred and father's house and follow me into the land that I will show you. How many of us who are sitting here this morning would obey such a call as that? I mean literally. A call to complete rupture and severance. And here because we're limited by time I can't expound on what this call means but just play it over in your own heart. Come out of nation, kindred and father's house. Now I'm a Brooklyn boy and I remember in times past when Ebersfield still stood and those hectic days when the Dodgers were quite a team and were fighting for the World Series that when they lost a game or a World Series do you remember that with the Giants in 1951 the brank of pitch that was at home Whitey Lockman and they lost in the last game I was ready to jump off a roof. Men were prepared to commit suicide. We had such an investment in the Brooklyn Dodgers. Our hearts were so attuned to the rise and fall of their estate and that's just a crummy ball team. What then shall we say of the totality of all that a nation represents in the life of a man? I tell you it's a deep and pervasive thing. It's so deep. I'll give you an illustration in modern history. In modern history Jews in Germany were so attached to their nation that when the dark clouds came over instead of leaving they said I'm more a German than a Jew and this evil shall not fall upon me and they looked with adoring eyes on their mantles and saw the pictures of their families and their bubba's and their zeta's with those German pot helmets and their iron crosses that had served the state so well through the generations. They loved Germany. It's culture. It's gemütlichkeit. They could not leave the nation. The hooks were so deep and they paid a bitter price for the inability to come out. What then shall we say of nation kindred? Mishpucha. The clan. The bubba's and the zeta's that dangled you on their knees and chucked you under the chin and stipped you with candy and with good things. Jewish people loved this family life. Very rich. And to be wrenched from that a total severance and a separation. Oh God what are you asking? And father's house? And all the things that are implied in looking to him as a hero and almost an object of worship and veneration and we look to him with great adoring eyes and God says get thee out from nation kindred and father's house. But that's not all he says. And follow me to the land that I will show you. This isn't just a one time thing. This is a continuous day by day and progressive walk with a living God through a wilderness into a land of promise. Without a map. Without a blueprint. Trusting that he who called you is also able. I tell you people it's a frightening proposition. Religion is so much more comfy and secure. Do you understand what I'm saying? Therefore when you challenge a Jew with this call and there's only one call there's never been any other. It's the same call by the same God 19 centuries ago when Jesus said to Jewish fishermen come out of your boats and away from your nets to whatever your vocation whatever your calling whatever your whatever hooks have implanted itself from the world into your heart and your father's house and follow me. The same call. And it's the same call today. When a Jew is challenged by the gospel of Jesus Christ by the power of the spirit of God he knows that he's not merely being suggested to embrace an alien Gentile religion or to contemplate a mythical Santa Claus that he can just laugh away. But he senses in his deepest heart of hearts a piercing challenge to all in which he has invested his faith his trust his confidence to all that he has looked upon as established as wise and right and proper and true to all to which he has given his energy and his life in a word to all that is in the world because there's a God who calls us to a total separation out of this present world and into the kingdom of God. The reason you haven't understood it as well as you ought is this because Christianity has become in modern times so groovy so much a part of the establishment life so traditional and so comfy and so well understood and recognized as a nice thing to have that takes the rough edges of our personality and provides a nice Sunday flourish to our lives that we've not seen it for what it is the radical call of God to separation from this world and to the following of him. People, the world is at enmity with God. We've not had to see this in times past but we're going to see it. Do you know why? Because the hour has struck for God to again turn his attention to the Jewish people. In 19th centuries we've not seen it but you know what happened 19th centuries ago when he did it? There was a screech and a holler and shrieks and persecution and violence and death. That was the response of bringing the gospel to the Jewish people. They gnashed their teeth at Stephen. Paul was five times beaten with stripes forty strokes save one. Left for dead, stone, beaten with rods. Have you ever had anybody gnash their teeth on you? I've had it. My mother who loved me with a passion and looked at me with great adoring eyes all through my young manhood and loved the adventurous intellectual son who flitted from cause to cause and ideology to ideology, philosophy to philosophy great intellectual seeker lost as all get out. But when he came home from Jerusalem eight years ago with a new face with a new peace and told my mother I have found him of whom Moses and the prophets spoke she slammed the door in my face and shrieked he's mad, he's gone mad. I've had people gnash their teeth upon me. Why do men react that way? Because they're threatened in the deepest aspect of their life and their being. When they understand that you're not just representing an alien religion or a substitute for their impoverished Judaism but that this is the fearful call of God to totality, to commitment, to separation. And you know what they know instinctively? And you know what my mother knows? That if she were ever to receive what I've received she would have to pay immediately a very fearful price. The loss of her Jewish friends. How would you like for people to call you traitor? How would you like that? Your closest and dearest friends whose opinion you respect looking at you with great burning hatred in their eyes loathing and shrieking at you wildly Traitor! You've forsaken your people you've embraced the religion of the enemy You know what my mother believes? That I've made myself one with the same religion that has persecuted our Jewish people for 19 centuries. The same religion that stretched us out on the stake and tried to convert us, quote unquote, to Christianity and the Spanish Inquisition that hounded us over the face of Europe that promoted the pogroms in Russia and in Poland during the Passover seasons that was responsible for the Holocaust that drove us in exile out of Spain in 1492 and drove us from England and all the other things we've suffered in the Crusades with men coming at us with crosses on their chests to loot and to rape and to pillage and now I've gone and joined the enemy's camp I've become, quote unquote, a Christian That's the way Jews will see it and Satan has seen through it Why? Because God says there's no other name given on the heaven or in earth whereby a man may be saved and to this name, Jesus Christ every knee shall bend and every mouth shall confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father You know what it takes for a Jew to speak that name? Listen, I'm a believer eight years but I would say very frankly it's only in the last two years that I finally come to a place that I can speak the name Jesus Christ with any kind of ease That's the work that Satan has done to poison the one name alone in which is the salvation of the Jews and all mankind You've got your work cut out for you and when I go on university campuses which is a principal part of our ministry and one, by the way, which I've never sought for myself as I've never sought anything else for eight years the fury that we face the anger and the bitterness of nineteen centuries of compressed frustration and prejudice and misunderstanding comes pouring out upon us as the convenient target and I know that there's no way to avoid it I've just got to stand there and take it and when they spit out their guts and their venom and their anger and they're finally drained then we can begin to transact real business for God I've seen the same students who have left meetings in disgust and rage and anger come back five minutes later because they couldn't stay away I've seen students come out of their seat and come within an inch of bashing me in the face and in disgust change their seat and the same guy that cried out and called me madman and fanatic were the first ones that night to call upon the name of the Lord and be saved I'm saying a lot of things now let's look at these verses the Judaism of God is not only a Judaism of power that requires everything and gives everything it's a Judaism of the scriptures which is utterly supernatural see we Jews are rationalists we just shrink from the idea of a supernatural God and I remember in the high school debate with some Jewish teachers one guy was a Talmudist deep in Jewish law and all of a sudden I realized something and I said say do you believe that God parted the Red Seas? and the guy began just to choke and sputter a little bit and he looked a bit embarrassed and he hemmed and hawed and finally he said well he said I believe it was a shifting of the tides and I began to dum-da-dum-dum I'm on to something here and he began to explain and it was really a natural phenomenon just a happy coincidence and I went on to ask him about other miracles and sure enough he denied every miracle in the book you see the idea of a supernatural God is an offense to the mind of men they don't mind talking about God as an abstraction as a higher power and an impersonal force in the universe but a God who is a living God who speaks to men who can touch and transform the character of men who can work miracles that kind of God offends men that's one of the differences in the two Judaism's you must not be confused because men speak the word God that they mean by that word what you mean that's why God was specific in Christ Jesus to separate the sheep from the goats my mother speaks the word God prolifically but as I said the other night when she says God what she really means is Yiddish kites, gefilte fish, matzah ball soup Israel bonds, Jewish friends and all the rest put together it's God gives her a warm, groovy feeling schmaltzy, it's nice and it sends up certain kinds of vibes and poor woman, what else that's the only God she's ever known but there's a God the Father who is seeking those who will worship Him in the Spirit and in truth and there's no way to come to that worship and to that knowledge and bypass and circumvent Him whom He has sent the very incarnation of the living God Himself who said if you see me you see the Father I and the Father are one a man's reaction to Jesus is the ultimate test of his real response to God Himself I hope you're taking copious notes and the Jewish problem people is not essentially the problem of Jesus it's the problem of the word of God we have been in flight from the word of God do you know why? because the word of God is specific it says thou shall not and we want a God whom we can keep at an arm's length that we shall do you understand what I'm saying? I remember a conversation once in a home with Jewish people there were two Jewish teenage girls sitting on the floor beautiful bright kids and they were telling me how dull high school was and as a former teacher I sympathized and they said the only thing that saves the situation is that one day a week on Friday they have their Zionist club and they have rip-roaring intellectual discussions so I said to these kids I said to what degree do you look upon yourself as American and to what degree Jewish? they gave me a very revealing answer I think an answer far different now than what would have been given ten years ago because there's a growing heightened interest and concern for our Jewishness and they said 90% Jewish 10% American and I said well as you survey your Jewishness what percentage would you say is made up of Yiddishkeit Jewish culture the Jewish holidays Jewish food Israel and what percent is made up by God? 90% Yiddishkeit 10% God see these kids were honest I said okay now on a 10% God does that to say that you don't really believe that he is? oh no Mr. Katz we believe that there's a God but who's to say he's a he? maybe a she you know this is a women's lib thing maybe it's an it we don't presume to be that specific it is somewhere up there in the stratosphere and it's comforting to know that it is somewhere around so I said to these kids I said how would you like for it to become a he? and that he should come into your life right now where you sit on this living room floor what do you think their answer was? not on your life no we like it where it is right out there at an arm's length we don't want him any closer people have you got ears to hear? God is not a God of convenience I told you I've heard from the first time I heard that little small voice in Jerusalem 8 years ago and every subsequent time that I've heard it he's never once called me to convenience and I'll give it to you straight because you're a small audience and I'm not being melodramatic if my natural life shall end in bed in a goodly old age I shall be among men most surprised and if I shall live through this life without bearing in my body the marks of Jesus Christ I shall be most surprised God has not called me to convenience he's called me to death he's called me to the way of the cross but it's the only place where I could have had an identification merging, joining, oneness with him who wants it? the flesh shrinks from it but it's God's call to total severance separation from all that is in the world the lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh and the pride of life we shrink from a God whose word so specifically calls us to so fearful a proposition as that and I'll tell you what the whole nature of our faith is it's not a morbid faith that centers in death it's a death which eventuates in a resurrection ours is a staggering resurrection faith utterly supernatural mind-boggling and contradicts all that the wisdom of men believe foolishness to them that perish but to them that believe it's the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first and also to the Gentile thus saith the Lord that's the Judaism of God a God who speaks and a God who has recorded it in the scriptures it's trustworthy you can stand on it and the first way that I ever knew that was when I first read the scriptures in my 34th year out of a New Testament aboard the deck of a tramp steamer on my way to Greece, mind you where I was more Greek than I was a Hebrew and in the very first reading of the scriptures I experienced a supernatural revelation and had to, even though it blew my mind realize that there's a God who speaks by His word and that somehow miraculously He has maintained the integrity of His word though it has passed to the hands of translators and made it available to us in our generation Jewish people do not believe this and if you think I'm afraid to speak to Jews because they have such a knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures nonsense! we are biblical illiterates who know a few scattered Bible stories and have never consulted the scriptures for ourselves it's a rare Jew who has ever consulted the Old Testament scriptures and has any knowledge of them at all and an even rarer Jew who believes that the scriptures are inspired of God the substantial understanding of modern Jews is this that the Bible is a cultural product of the genius of the Jewish people it's a compendium of stories and histories and narratives and poetries and psalms written by David they don't know what divine inspiration means because they've never experienced the Holy Spirit how then shall they know? and they don't even believe that you can understand the scriptures except it be interpreted by rabbis by men by the wisdom, the sagacity of the Maimonides and the great sages of the past they substitute flesh for the office of the Holy Spirit you say, are you anti-semitic? no! I love my Jewish people I'm just telling it to the way it is, people and you can understand that it's not only Jews who have this mentality but great numbers of Gentiles too thus saith the Lord not Jeremiah cursed be the man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm and whose heart departeth from the Lord I wish we had eons of time to contemplate that one verse alone there's a certain logic there which is inevitable and cannot be avoided to the degree that our confidence is in man and in flesh to that degree our heart has departed from the Lord and someone has wisely said that the cancer of modern Christianity is its lovelessness oh how he loves the Lord, people say yeah, he really loves the Lord a bunch of unctuous nonsense in most cases you know when we love him? when he's shown himself faithful to bail us out again and again and again love is essentially the response of gratitude to a God who is faithful but if you've never come out of the boat how shall you know it? if your love for him is only doctrinal but not experiential it's not the same thing your love is in direct proportion to your actual trust in God and your trust in God is in direct proportion to the times in your life in which you've allowed him to bring you to places of testing and extremity how many of us want to hear a God who says come in the midst of raging tumultuous seas how many of us even want to be in a boat in such circumstances as that let alone be called out of it how many of us shall like the disciples if we were in such a boat when we shall see him say oh it's the Spirit and not even recognize that it's the Lord you know what Jewish people say to me? oh cats, that faith business is a cop out anybody can believe it's doing that's manly and heroic and I belong to B'nai B'rith and I belong to Hadassah and I sell Israel bonds and I do this and I do that and I'm for the underdog and I say cop out listen man I've carried placards and I've distributed leaflets and I've been all that jazz the greater taxation for my manhood is not distributing leaflets it was bowing my stiff neck and going on my face before God prostrating myself in humility before him and crying out repentantly for his mercy see faith is not some innocuous thing people it's not a happy little feeling which some fortunately have as a gift and others don't have faith is trust and commitment and a cleaving unto him that yea though he slay you yet will you trust him so what do you do for example when affliction comes and adversity what did Abraham do who was called out when the great famine came the grievous famine he went down south into Egypt and it cost him not only did it cost him it cost us to this day we're still paying for the Egyptian bond woman that he brought back as a maidservant Hagar isn't that right it cost when you go down south into Egypt instead of trusting in the God who had called him he looked to the circumstances right instead of walking by faith he walked by sight and when the grievous famine came because he was off course he went down south into Egypt and paid a bitter price in compromise and concession in lying and equivocation in being humiliated before Pharaoh and bringing back a maidservant who was the mother of the Arab people trusting God is an enormous thing blessed is look at the 7th verse blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord and whose hope the Lord is he shall be as a tree planted by the waters and that spreadeth out her roots by the river and shall not see when heat comes but her leaf shall be green and shall not be careful in the year of drought neither shall cease from yielding fruit our fruitfulness people has not a thing to do with our natural striving our exertion our energies our intellect it's got to do rather with an existential place in God which is very real when Paul said I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me when he said for me to live is Christ he wasn't just a wolfen he was speaking the most awesome words of his life and if you've been paying Paul compliment and attributing to him and to his Jewish intellect and courage and character and person the mighty accounts of the establishing of the churches in Europe and the writing of the half of the New Testament you have got it all wrong it had not a thing to do with his natural endowments but it had everything to do with the fact that he more so than any man understood the meaning of the cross of Christ Jesus that at that cross there is an exchange of life and that there's nothing that we can do in ourselves the flesh availeth nothing but we can do all things in Christ who strengtheneth me God in Christ is made unto us power wisdom righteousness sanctification redemption in him was all the fullness of the Godhead bodily people this isn't patsy Christianity anymore this isn't anything like that boy scout nonsense of gritting your teeth and pushing your lips and trying to be like Christ and coming back at the end of the day frustrated and throwing yourself down with exhaustion having failed this is not trying this is exchanging your life for his it's an utterly fantastic supernatural transaction if we're willing to die unto ourselves there's a life that was made available to us that came up out of the tomb on the third day which shall be expressed through our personalities it'll sound when it comes through an odd cat like a Brooklyn accent and yet it is not he that speaks nor shall it be you nor was it Paul and that's what it's all about in the time of drought we shall not cease from yielding fruit because we are attached to the vine and he is the sum and substance of our life and I'll tell you that that thing infuriates the world because men want to do it themselves what's one of the pert phrases of our generation do your own thing the spirit of the world is at enmity with God can you see it there are two ways which are in severe opposition and God has given you the privilege of living in that generation when these two ways are going to come to their final and ultimate collision and resolution and it's not going to come without noise without fury without rancor without bitterness without gnashing of teeth without persecution without suffering and without death now how many people have been reading some of the statements in the press from rabbis and from Jewish authorities about key 73 raise your hands praise the Lord for informed people I tell you that if you have eyes to see this is the handwriting on the wall it signals the entry of the final hour God is turning again to his Jewish people and we're going to see again just as we saw in the book of Acts the great shaking that comes when these people are challenged because they are par excellence the spirit of the modern world and when you touch them you touch the modern world and there's going to be a shrieking howl that has its emanation and its origin itself the most civil cultured and refined Jewish people that were unperturbed by any other issue when you bring this issue to them a mask is going to be turned aside and fangs are going to be bared listen to the way some of these rabbis are expressing themselves Christian drive disturbs rabbi a top Jewish leader has urged Christians to curb fundamentalist evangelistic efforts aimed at converting young Jews to Christianity Dr. Maurice Eisendroth president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations said such efforts could damage the carefully cultivated roots of Christian Jewish relations in our society and destroy the fabric of pluralism and religious freedom sharp stuff cunning it plays upon deep seated American loyalties and understandings pluralism isn't that right? of course you know the three great faiths and I respect yours and you respect mine and maybe on Thanksgiving we'll exchange pulpits and don't we all get along people with all due respect the three great faiths is great hokum I'm telling it to you like it is there's only one great faith because there's only one great God one faith one God one way and this business of the three great faiths is a satanic delusion to deceive men and bring them to a kind a place of concession and compromise and miss the call of God and the world endorses and applauds the three great faiths or the 15 great faiths and even calls upon its representatives to begin the first sessions of congress and to invoke seemly prayers and other lovely sanctifying things to sugar coat the world system but the faith which is of God is at enmity with the world and the world shall never applaud nor establish it see there's a lot of stuff that's at stake in challenging the Jewish people and it's going to pull back a cover and reveal the naked issue as it has not been seen in 19th century who in all the world would want to destroy the fabric of pluralism and religious freedom not I say just what kind of a Christian are you you anti-Semite are you trying to persuade these poor besieged Jewish people to forsake their last vestiges of Judaism and Jewishness and become a Christian after what they've suffered in the Holocaust and now in persecution in Russia and now you're trying to persuade them to be a Christian you call that Christian love anti-Semite mark my words people that is exactly what you shall be hearing not only anti-Semite but un-American destroying the fabric of pluralism and Christian Jewish relations I remember sitting resting in Pat Boone's home waiting for a living room meeting with 150 to 200 Jewish film, colony, intellectuals writers, producers it was a glorious meeting went on till 4 in the morning and ended with 9 people being baptized in his pool it was a glorious night Paul, my brother, was one of them and while I was resting there I had my head on a pillow you know like this looking around there were his white buck shoes now coated in bronze and I thought well there was a time when I looked upon Gentile buck shoes you know the whole jazz praise God that God has gotten a hold of his life and made him Jewish not that but I mean true Hebrew spirituality the kind that David knew when he raised his hands before God and worshipped him and danced when and he said oh God he said depart not from me let thy presence depart from me and take not from me thy Holy Spirit that's true Jewishness and God is bringing all men to that who will have it both Jew and Gentile he's Judaizing the world but men prefer the other Judaism of intellect and culture and fabric of pluralism and blah blah blah and all the honorific nonsense like the kind of things that Pat Boone had formerly known because lo and behold as I lay there looking over his trophies and his golf awards and all that jazz my eye rested on an award from the B'nai B'rith the what is it the organization of the conference of Christians and Jews and in 1956 he won their man of the year award and I looked at that wistfully and said well that's the last one you'll ever get Pat Boone the world has stopped but God has heaped up honor and a crown for this this lovely man he's gone for broke and Jewish lives have really been touched by God because of his devotion but he's not going to receive the B'nai B'rith of the of the year award anymore now he says although this key 73 is not directed specifically at Jews nevertheless these denominations that are involved in this are putting unwanted and unnecessary pressure upon young Jewish people which both stresses and disturbs us and his appeal to mainline protestant orthodox and Roman the trend now what shall you mainline orthodox protestant and catholic bodies do when Jewish pressure shall come upon you let's face it people there's nothing that makes men quake more quickly than Jewish pressure I don't know why it is but we scare you guys like for example I was to speak at the Duke University Divinity School chapel there's not a single Jewish student that it was to be at that meeting and the protest of a single professor at that school canceled the meeting hours before it was scheduled to go on and that noon I had lunch with the professor a wonderful evangelical man who was responsible for the meeting and I said to this guy I said brother I said have you ever experienced such tumult and storm as this before in your Christian life he said never he said I just didn't know what hit me he said all of a sudden I was bowled over in the protest and the fury and the antagonism and we had no choice he said but to draw in and to retract what shall you do when Jewish complaints shall come to your denomination and say you're harassing our young Jewish people and we ask you to withdraw from key 73 you know that the same Jewish professor has seen to it that in Raleigh North Carolina excuse me that some churches have already withdrawn from key 73 so you can have a choice of one or two things your lord of whom you say he is your lord and he says if you call me lord why do you not do the things which I say and he has said for 19 centuries go ye into all the world and preach this gospel to every creature beginning at Jerusalem and unto Judea before you go to Samaria and the uttermost corners of the earth say didn't he know that they already had a very nice religion that's called Judaism of course he knew it but he knew also that there's no other name given unto heaven and earth whereby a man may be saved that we are separated from God by our iniquities but that God has sent one to be an atonement an atonement with God by the shedding of his own blood which is an offense to men we don't like bloody religions and if you ask rabbis today what sacrifice are you performing since the destruction of the temple they'll say sacrifice? eww why that was a primitive concept in early Judaism but in modern times we've become elevated we've progressed to more refined and sophisticated notion of Jewish religion we don't practice sacrifice indeed you don't but my God changeth not and his way changeth not and without the shedding of blood there is no remission for sin the soul that sinneth it shall die there's no man good no not one we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God if God were to mark iniquity who can stand the wages of sin sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Yeshua HaMashiach who's that art that's Jesus Christ now why do you persist in using the Greek name when you've got his original lovely Hebrew name which would be far more commendable to Jews than the Greek when I was a Jewish kid growing up in Brooklyn Jesus Christ how could that have anything to do with my Jewish life I don't know a single Jewish family by the name of Christ Cohen I know and Ginsberg and Katz but Christ I don't know single of Cohen don't a single by the name of Christ Cohen I don't know a single by the of Christ Cohen don't a by the name of Christ Cohen I don't know a single by the Cohen I don't know single by the name of Cohen don't know a single by the Cohen I a single by the I don't know a single by the name of Christ Cohen I don't don't know a by the they said, short of, by violence, destroying them. See, by subtle innuendo, they're saying, if you'll not knock it off, and not retract from our threats now, you're going to suffer violence. We just got a letter from North Carolina where our television program is shown, signed without a name but by a JDL member, Jewish Defense League, that if that program does not go off the air, we shall suffer violence. A month ago, one of our young Jewish colleagues was distributing literature in Manhattan and was encountered by another JDL member who said, you Jewish guys who believe in Jesus are a disgrace. You're no longer Jews. He said, but for you to seek to persuade other Jews to believe as you do, cannot be tolerated. And God has called us to silence you. Remember that scripture that said, the day will come when men shall kill you and claim that they're doing God a service? And he mentioned the names of two men who have been ticketed to be silenced this year. One of them was Moshe Rosen, and the other was Art Katz. People, this is a very, very real conflict. Are you going to be with us or against us? And I tell you, merely to be neutral and to look on from the periphery is to be against. God has called us to obedience, to go to every creature beginning at Jerusalem. And I know what tickles me so much, Christian people get so ecstatic about Israel and they get little tears in their eyes, the Holy Land and Israel, and have not realized that there's an Israel right under their noses, their next door neighbor, the teacher of their kids, their dentist, their lawyer, their doctor, their friend. That's the Israel that God has given you, to whom you shall bring this life-giving word. And when you shall bring it, don't think you're going to be necessarily applauded. You're going to be despised, persecuted. You're liable to jeopardize a friendship which you cherish and which means much to you. Jewish furor over Key 73, to suggest that Christianity and a particular brand of Christianity, this fundamental evangelical brand, that is a substitute for Judaism, is wholly insensitive, this rabbi said. That version of Christianity says Judaism is a footstool to stand on and then kick away. It's a venomous attack. They have a very intensified way of seeing the whole thing, which is of course distorted, but this is the way that they shall see it. This rabbi says that they would hope that there would be a Christian recognition of Jews and Judaism as valid sources of truth, rather than as objects of conversion. We call on the Christian conscience to recognize that a Christian theology based on the negation of Judaism, and that sees Christianity as a substitute for the Jewish faith, will seriously impact upon the existence of the Jewish people. These are tremendous words. Powerful, weighty words. They make a very seeming sense. What Jewish faith? How many Jews actually have a faith? That's a real question. The negation of Judaism, what is it? Is it really biblical? Does it believe what the prophets have spoken? Have they found him of whom Moses and the prophets spoke? Do they believe that God has spoken through the prophets? What Judaism is that? There really is indeed a conflict of Judaisms, and there's a God who is calling you to bring to the knowledge of this Jewish people that Judaism alone which saves. After the Nazi Holocaust, which destroyed one third of the Jewish people, and in the face of Soviet threats to carry out a program of enforced cultural and religious assimilation which could destroy another one third of the Jewish people, the whole question of efforts to convert the Jewish people out of their religious existence becomes morally an unconscionable position. The issue is joined people, and I don't have time to read this and I'm getting spent now. Bible missions are unwelcome inside Israel, and a Jewish brother that I know who is a precious man of the faith in Jerusalem has recently been attacked, and on the Mount of Olives where he has his bookstore and his literature distribution place in the chapel, they firebombed it and destroyed the literature and destroyed their mailing list, and Rabbi Kahane, who is head of the Jewish Defense League, said if someone had tried to burn down a church I would be appalled, but when it is committed against people who try to steal Jewish souls, I condone and praise it. The day will come when they shall kill you, and claim that they are doing God a service. I've got so much here. Let me just read something from a Jewish publication. What can a modern Jew believe? To answer the question what can a modern Jew believe presents difficulties which involve the limitations of vocabulary. The key words of the topic are generally not clearly enough defined to enable a speaker to get through. I refer of course to the word modern belief. By modern I mean not only those that are living at the moment, but those who have been influenced by the current of thought which have coursed through our culture during the past century or centuries, and those who have been infused with the scientific spirit, and who know how to distinguish between what is authentic and what is in the realm of imagination. I address myself to those today who frankly no longer believe in the stories which form so great a part of the law, L-O-R-E, of our civilization, which have come down to us in the biblical narratives, stories about God showing himself to men, speaking to Abraham or Moses or Jeremiah in the manner that men speak to other men. I mean by modern those who recognize that the traditional accounts of miracles are the result of the ancient notion that communication between deity and human beings were normal occurrences. Do you have ears to hear? This is the spirit of the modern world that cannot believe that there's a God who speaks to men. What then shall we say of the Ten Commandments? That was not God speaking to Moses, that was a shrewd leader of men recognizing that this primitive people who had been centuries in subjugation could not be disciplined to be brought to a wilderness trek except that they were powerfully impressed by some code that these were rules of order to be obeyed, that they were divinely given. But of course you and I realize that they really weren't. So therefore that one that says thou shalt not commit adultery, well, that was for primitive people. But of course what we do in the back of cars and in our hotel trysts, that's not adultery, that's love. After all, my wife doesn't understand me and how much I need the love of this choice relationship. It's by such innocuous beginnings as that, people, that a judgment of God comes upon a Sodom and a Gomorrah. There weren't ten righteous men that could have stayed the judgment of God upon that civilization. And it begins by men who turn from the way of God because they cannot believe, as modern men, imbued with the scientific spirit, those narratives and stories that God actually speaks to men. If they'll not believe that God speaks to men, what then shall they believe when we shall speak to them to persuade them to call on the name of the Lord Jesus? They'll look upon us as diabolical human instruments trying to make them to give up their last vestiges and join the majority. Can you see it? You say, oh, it's in the light of this. What can we do? I mean by modern those who recognize that the traditional accounts of miracles are the result of the ancient notion that communication between deity and human beings were normal occurrences. I do not believe that there are many people today who believe these stories, who take them to be literally historical. We live in an atmosphere of sophistication and most people have learned just enough about astronomy and physics and satellites to know that the miracle tales of long ago are not fact. There's only one answer for people like this. It's fire from heaven. You see how God is using last night's message with this to show us a pattern of the things which are needful. Here's another one, religious origins. Today, biblical scholarship and historical research offer us insights into the origins and development of Judaism and Christianity undreamed of only a few decades ago. The new facts and the new interpretations of the facts are important in the Reconstructionist understanding of Christianity as well as Judaism. It was with a Reconstructionist rabbi that I debated on the Larry... What's his name? Barry Farber. Who? Barry Farber, right. Did you hear that? What an interesting confrontation. It was nothing but sheer spiritual imperialism. We were backed into a corner and I tell you the way we were handled was adept. This guy was slick and there was one issue which outraged him more than any other and that was our biblical stand against homosexuality. He could not believe in a God who would condemn homosexuality. Such a liberal God could not be his God. Same brand of Judaism. And by the way, people, understand this. It hardly matters today whether men call themselves Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist. Essentially, this is modern Jewish understanding. The only difference in the other things are superficial about how fastidious one is in actually the dietary practices and other ceremonial ritual aspects of the religion but in the substance of their thoughts and their convictions and their life. The origins of each can now be accounted for partly in terms of the unique insights of religious genius. See, this is the result of men, not of God. And partly in terms of the acceptance and rejection of elements within the religions and cultures which gave them birth. Biblical Jewish religion took much from the ancient Near Eastern religions whose elaborate mythologies and orgiastic practices and excessive use of magic it invaded against. The myths of the Creation and the Deluge, for example, are essentially reworkings of earlier and cruder myths. The Christian religion begins with Paul, a thoroughly Hellenized Roman Jew with a rich imagination who was familiar with the Greek and Oriental mystery faiths of salvation and with Hellenistic philosophy. Paul went further than the Judeo-Christians. He identified Jesus with God himself, which is a pagan myth, and said that God had died according to his own foreordained plan. Paul taught that identification with the mystery of Jesus' death and resurrection spelled salvation. Oh, my goodness. He made of Christian Judaism a mystery faith in which belief in Jesus' divinity replaced study, the use of the mind, the exaltation of intellect and man, but cursed is that one who trusts in man and exalts the arm of the flesh. He made of Christian Judaism a mystery faith in which belief in Jesus' divinity replaced study and obedience to God and his Torah as a prerequisite for salvation. I could go on for so much, but something ought to be said. We ought in the face of these insuperable obstacles. When we see now that we're not merely contending with an ethnic group, we see that we're dealing not only with biblical illiterates, but people who have not even a respect for the scriptures as having been in spite of God. How do we begin to persuade such people? And Paul said, Knowing the terror of God, I persuade men. Jesus said, If you will not believe that I am he, you shall perish. Except you repent, you shall all likewise surely perish. How many people believe that what Jesus was saying is true? Now how about those Jews who not only do not believe Jesus, but have not considered the case? I want you to understand something about the anatomy of rejection. Rejection does not always have to be defiant and blatant. It does not always have to come with curses and would not exist. There are polite forms of rejection, which are rejection nevertheless. Now you're going to be hearing tonight about submission. Wives, submit yourselves in all things unto your husbands as unto the Lord. And there's no place where submission is more accurately and sensitively reflected than in the most intimate aspect of marriage, but sexual relationships. There are a lot of women who are technically submitted, but they merely grit their teeth and go through a painful ordeal, but it's not with a meek and quiet spirit, which is in God's sight of great price. In like manner, rejection has many forms. It doesn't have to be defiant with a knotted fist. It could be with grit teeth. It could be by indifference and neglect. It's rejection as well. How did the book of Isaiah begin? God calls upon the dumb elements. Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth. I have raised up children and they have rebelled against me. And God says that while Jewish religion was flourishing. The ox knows its owner and the ass its master's crib. Dumb, brute beasts. But my people do not know, nor do they consider. They refuse to know me, saith the Lord. There is a willful rejection of the knowledge of God. Because if a man's heart is questing for truth, and someone has so much as suggested that there's one who lays claim to having been the promised Messiah of Israel, he would make all haste to investigate the claim. And if there's one who knew nothing about the Messiah, but was really honestly living his life in the measure of light and truth which he had, the first thing he would recognize is his own terrible inadequacy and failure, and would know that he needs some transcendent solution to his life outside himself, and would rush to hear of someone who says, By God liveth, and he can be made known. Don't be deceived, people, by the things which Jewish people shall tell you or those who have Jewish mentalities. Oh yeah, I believe Jesus. I respect Jesus. He was a wonderful teacher. Wonderful. I really appreciate the Sermon on the Mount. You know what I say to such people? For you I tremble more than for others. For your eternal mortification and your wailing and your gnashing of teeth shall be all the more severe, for what the day shall come when you shall stand before him far more soon than you think, and then you'll hear your innocuous left-handed compliments played back. It's an insult to compliment Jesus as a great speaker, and to refuse to acknowledge the things which he spoke of himself. If you see me, you see the Father. I and the Father are one, and no man cometh to the Father but by me. This is a Jesus who was not merely a great speaker. This was a Jesus who forgave men their sins, and religious Jews murmured at him and said, Who is this who forgives men their sins? This is a Jesus who allowed religious Jews to fall at his feet and worship him, who took to himself all of the prerogatives of deity and exercised the attributes of deity. And if we think that we can get by by merely complimenting him for his speaking, far better that you gave him this than you should try to sweet-talk him with a few compliments. If he's so great a speaker, why haven't you respected all that he has spoken? He's either the most fearful blasphemer and lunatic who has ever walked, or truly the Son of God. There is no neutral ground between. And when God showed me that eight years ago, I knew I could not just compliment Jesus, but that this radical Jesus was bringing me to a radical commitment of one kind to another, and there's no neutral ground. I must either receive him for who he himself claims to be, or I must utterly reject him. I must either pick up stones to kill him for blasphemy, or I must fall at his feet and worship him. There is no neutral ground. And I'll tell you that I think it's utterly wrong of this Jewish missionary mentality. Oh, when you speak to Jews, speak to them out of the Old Testament Scriptures. Go soft. Walk on eggshells. How many Jews know the Old Testament Scriptures? I like to bring them right to the issue. Who do men say that he is, and who do you say that he is? Who do you think Jesus was? What's thinking of him? And I'll tell you, however intellectual Jews are, as I was, and however well read and informed on many other things, I had never once read out of the Scriptures myself. I had never gone to the source. I never knew what it was that Jesus spoke, nor said, nor did. But by hearsay, I rejected him, and yet called myself intellectual. You bring Jews to a confrontation. You bring Jewish people to the source. You make them to have a reckoning about the greatest Jew who ever lived. You have an obligation. I've got to stop soon. There's a message that God has given me recently, which it looks like you're not going to hear from me now, but it's got to do with the breaking of an alabaster box, and a certain fragrance which was poured upon Jesus shortly before his suffering and his death, which he said, when the disciples turned with indignation at this great waste, this woman has done it for my burial. My body is being prepared for burial. And I believe that there's a body being prepared for burial today, the body of Christ. But before there's a burial, there's a death. People, we're being brought to places of death. For us, a lot of us, there's going to be a death to our denominational loyalty, the allegiances which somehow have found a place in our heart, even above that of the Lord himself, and shall never be more clearly revealed as when this issue of the Jew shall break forth under our own noses. And other kinds and forms of death, when God shall show us that he meant every word he spoke, he intended that we should live by them, that we should not just be technically submissive, but be submissive with a quiet and meek spirit, that when he said to the Jew first, he meant to the Jew first. And in the obedience, we're going to find that obedience means death. The response to the word of God is always a call, again and again and again, to the cross, to a getting out of the boat, to fearful invitations to death, only to find that there's a resurrection. There's going to be a burial. There's a body being prepared, and there's an ointment that's going to have to be poured forth, a certain fragrant compound that are very costly ingredients, which ingredient we are, but it's all locked up here in these wonderful alabaster boxes. Oh, we love these boxes more than the fragrance itself. And we thought that by the impressiveness of the box, by our wonderful natural and human endowments, by our personality, our talent, our eloquence, that somehow we were going to win the world. But I want you to turn with me to conclusion to 2 Corinthians this morning. 2 Corinthians, the second chapter, 2 Corinthians 2.14. Now thanks be unto God, thanks be unto God which always causes us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the favor of his knowledge by us in every place. These are deep words, people. Let them seep into your soul. For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ in them that are saved and in them that perish. To the one we are the savor of death unto death, and to the other the savor of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? I tell you, I have the most interesting reactions with men, even with Christian men. There are some that I turn off instinctively on the spot. There are some people that just shudder at me, and I don't understand their reaction. And others, with the same suddenness, take me to their bosom. We have an instant empathy and identification. To some I'm a savor of death unto death, and to others I'm a savor of life unto life. I spoke a message at the full gospel convention in Washington a couple years ago that split that audience right down the middle. To some it was a savor unto death, and they were waiting for me to get off the platform to lynch me. And to others it was a savor of life unto life. And they told me that that convention was like a Coca-Cola bottle with the cap off. Until I spoke, the life came forth. They passed from death unto life in the hearing and the receiving of the same word that came off the other half of the audience. It depended on which side of the cross you were on, which kind of Christianity you professed and coveted. People, how do we reach this Jewish people? Because to reach them is to touch the modern world. The brilliant, intense, and zealous young Jewish men all throughout the world who are promoting rebellion and revolution and violence and obscenity and pornography in the camp of God and become ministers of light. And I don't believe that it's going to be just at the end of the ages that all Israel shall be saved. I have a sneaky suspicion that that old Israel is only going to be a pathetic remnant that will have passed through Jacob's trouble and great tribulation. But that there's an Israel now that God wants to save in every place. People, there's a God who's calling us to a real experiential knowledge of the cross of Christ Jesus. It's not enough just to dangle it around our necks or to wear it on our dashboards or to decorate the architecture of our church or the walls of our homes. We've got to come to a knowledge of a daily dying. And I'll tell you, if you've shrunk from it so far, there's no place that will make it more real than when you'll be obedient to be used of God to bring the gospel to your Jewish neighbor, friend, doctor, lawyer. Something's going to break and something's going to give. It always happens when we're obeying to his word. And when it does, that precious thing which is within, the ointment of God, that holy fragrance, the savor of him shall be made manifest by us, by us in every place. That is the true evangelism of God. And nothing less will do to turn a world to the knowledge of him. I think it's time to pray. Lord, bless these choice souls who have sacrificially extended themselves this morning to hear these things and let them know in their heart that you've not called them to be idle hearers, that you've spoken sacred things these mornings, choice and rare things not given to many to hear nor to understand, that they may be the doers of them. And we ask, Lord God, that we may see fruit as the result of having been joined with you this morning in this, that when we shall all be together with you for eternity, that we shall see the numbers of Jewish souls and other men and women, Gentiles with Jewish mentalities, who are brought to the knowledge of you because we receive this morning the precious things which you spoke to do them for Jesus' sake. In his name.