In this sermon, the speaker reflects on a small conference they organized with a musical group for worship. They emphasize the need to wait patiently for resurrection and not rush to alleviate suffering. The speaker acknowledges that they are not a flashy preacher but believes that a word spoken quietly, if it is from God, can bring about resurrection. They also discuss the importance of having a face that reflects and reveals God's glory, as well as the ultimate purpose of God meeting with Israel in the wilderness of the nations.

I encourage you one day to come up and stand here and look at yourselves and understand what a phenomenon preaching is. I think several times in the course of this trip, I quoted—I don't know who made the phrase, but he deserves credit—that every true preaching is a raising again from the dead. It's a resurrection phenomenon each time that it's true preaching the true word. Otherwise, we slip into deaths of which we're not even aware. It's a kind of a daily, weekly, cumulative thing that takes hold of us. And if it were not for the word of God, the preached, proclaimed word, we would sink into that death and it would hold us fast. We would be dead even while we're alive. So I'm believing for resurrection, not because I'm anything. In fact, I'm a piece of death myself, except the life of God prevail, not by any sleight of hand or Jewish ability, that life will come this morning, but only from him who raises the dead again and again till there'll be a final raising and death will be no more. So Lord, God of resurrection, who yourself was submitted unto death and was raised up by the glory of the Father, we ask some faint resonance of that phenomenon with us here this morning. Give us a measure of it, so much as to startle us and awaken us to life and to real faith and to the real purposes that can only be accomplished on the basis of the resurrection life. Lest we find ourselves out of your purposes, even while we conduct services. It's a mercy that we're asking, more desperately necessary than we know. And I ask that you would take the occasion, Lord, this morning now through me, because it pleases you when you've arranged it to bring that life from death by the word that is spoken. Thank you for it, Lord, and we look to you. Change us. Give you the praise and the glory in Jesus' name. Amen. So having said all that, guess what my text is. No, I'm not going to try Ezekiel 37. One death is enough, but I will try John 11, which is an adumbration of the same thing. There's something remarkable about resurrection. There's something very ultimate about it, because we know when the Lord comes, those that are asleep in Christ are raised out of that death. Those that remain, that have barely survived, the last day afflictions of an antichrist age will rise with them. So the great power of resurrection consummates the age. You can almost say it began the age in the death and the resurrection of the Lord himself. Resurrection is an ultimate affront to human sensibility. The world might make some begrudging acknowledgement of lesser miracles if perhaps they could be medically interpreted. If there's some room for doubt of how to explain a healing, they might make some condescension, but resurrection is an ultimate miracle for which there's no explanation at all. It is purely and utterly and entirely the act of God, the ultimate act, because when you're dead, you're dead. And I think a certain writer by the name of Schoenfeld has even published a book that raises the issue whether Jesus really was dead, that maybe he was under the influence of some drug and feigned death and gave the appearance of death, and so that his resurrection was not a real resurrection, but a similitude or some kind of affected thing that gave the appearance thereof. Resurrection is going to come into great question in the increasing skepticism and antichrist spirit of the last days. In fact, I can tell you flat out, resurrection will be the issue of the church of the last days as against the false church. And don't think if you're charismatic that the issue is safely resolved. I think the false church will include great numbers of charismatics in some kind of phony baloney appearance of the spirit of God and praise and worship and hallelujahs and amens and tambourines and bangings and all the rest, but it's dead. And the false church, the apostate church, will subscribe to the correctness of the doctrine of the resurrection. There'll be no distinction between the false church and the true remnant church with regard to subscribing to the truth of the doctrine. The issue that will distinguish the one from the other is that one eminently and consistently lives in the power of the resurrection and the other only accedes to the truth of it as doctrine. If I said no more than this this morning, you already got your money's worth. Of course, I'll just add a question to punch home the point. How many of us this morning think that we're living in the power of the resurrection presently and are already more apostate than we know? If you're not living consistently in the power of his life, you're more apostate than you know. Don't think that apostasy means a clenched fist in God's face that doesn't want to and doesn't believe. The vilest form of apostasy is that which is polite and comes every Sunday and sits in the pew, puts the dollar in the collection plate, sings the appropriate courses, and goes home. No more change than when they came and not desiring any change, thank you. Apostasy isn't a last-day phenomenon. It's already working since. The issues are already before us and we need to be aware. We need to contend for the faith once given the same, once and for all. It's much more than the matter of maintaining the correctness of its doctrines. It's maintaining the life, the reality of the life, the truth of the life. I'm a strange character. Well, you know that already. I feel much more comfortable with people who are in doctrinal error, whose spirit is right, than I do with people whose doctrine is impeccable, whose spirit stinks. I think there's more hope for the former than the latter. So don't feel comfortable because you're kosher. That is to say, correct. Insist upon, demand, fight for, and contend for the reality of the faith once and for all, given the same. It's a resurrection faith or it's an imposture. What's the word? When you appear to be something that's not. So let's look at this phenomenon of Jesus raising Lazarus. There might be some instruction for us and realizing that nothing more set in motion the crucifixion of Jesus than this miracle. Somehow he was contentious and an object of controversy, and men fumed over him and contemplated getting him away. But when he pulled this, this was the last straw. This raising of Lazarus from the dead settled the issue. He became intolerable and he was not fit to live. Because there's something of the demonstration of the power of resurrection that the religious community cannot abide and tolerate. And I'll tell you what, if you'll not be apostate but apostolic, you will be subject to death by those who will not be able to abide you. There's something wrong with the absence of persecution. It's not a phenomenon reserved only for iron curtain countries. It is the, what shall I say, the consistent and unfailing testimony of those who are living in the apostolic life. They will always constitute an offense anywhere in the world by those who are satisfied with some modicum of religion that is less. Because if only the resurrection people were not around, those that are playing the charade of religion could go on safely. But the very presence of people who are authentically in the life of God and constitute a radical threat by that life blows the whistle on all that is fraudulent and make-believe. If you know anything about church history, I've just given you the whole nexus of church history in one statement. It's a persecution of the religious against the remnant. And that's the way the age is going to end. What you need to ask is, on what side of the issue will you be? Those that suffer persecution or those who inflict it? There's something about resurrection that raises such an opposition to itself, unto death. They cannot abide the phenomenon. So, a certain man was sick named Lazarus of Daphne, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. Therefore, his sister sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. When Jesus heard that, he said, this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. Now, Jesus loved Martha and his sister and Lazarus. When he heard, therefore, that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was. Then after that, he said to his disciples, let us go unto Judea again. Let's pause there. The scriptures make it clear that Lazarus was not just a casual acquaintance, but one whom Jesus loved. He loved the sisters of Lazarus as well. You would think, knowing that, that upon the first hearing that his friend is sick and sick unto death, he would hasten quickly to his bedside and do for him what he's done for countless others. Raise him out of sickness. But Jesus remained two days longer where he was. You know why? It was sufficient time for his friend to die. The wonderful instruction in this for us who are moved by sentiment or need, which will incapacitate us to be God's people in the last days. There's a beautiful obedience here that is very instructive for saints of the remnant kind who are not moved by circumstance, sentiment, or need. They're moved by one thing only, obedience to the Father, not to alleviate illness or distress or human suffering, but to promote the glory of God. You taking notes? You've already gotten more this morning. If you know it, then you can imagine. God's remnant last days church, opposed by the apostate church, will have this preeminent distinction, a profound singular jealousy for the glory of God that will lead it to be misunderstood and make it an offense to those who move by sentiment, reason, logic, and need. Here's a friend in bed writhing in a fever, an anguish of sickness, waiting for his friend Jesus to come and deliver him out of it. But he doesn't come. How'd you like to die in that condition? How many of you have died in that condition? Oh, there's a mystery. What? You've never languished in a sick bed of affliction? You've never struggled through an irreconcilable marriage or some other stubborn condition of life that is totally inexplicable? Though you've sought God and you've done everything that men have commended, it still is not resolved? And you're waiting for God to intervene and he doesn't come? What kind of a God is that, who's not jolly on the spot to alleviate our distresses? Because there's a greater measure of glory in suffering them unto death, then comes the resurrection. Now, cats, why do you say that? Because we are going to be witness in our generation to this very phenomenon as it pertains to an entire nation, Israel. Israel presently, whether you know it or not, is sick. And it's going to get sicker, much sicker, and it's going to be a sickness unto death for the very same reason that the Lord allowed Lazarus to languish in his sickness, God is going to allow Israel to languish in hers. Why? Because the issue is not Israel's restoration. The issue is Israel's restoration from the dead. For that alone reveals the glory of God. You know why you don't understand it? You know why you might even be offended by it? Because you're not that jealous for God's glory yourself. And you don't understand how far God will go to obtain it. He does not think death too extreme a requirement. He allowed his son to languish unto death. He allowed Lazarus and he'll allow Israel and the church also. Here's what I'm predicting, saints. This is being taped, I hope, because you won't understand this in the first period. Just as Jesus is going to find himself standing by the cave where Lazarus is by this time stinking and will bring him forth out of that death by one exclamation, come forth. So also a time is appointed when God's remnant church will stand by Israel's cave and call her out of her death by the same power of proclamation as Jesus himself exhibited that broke every fetter of death by a word which is spoken. The fact of the matter is that the very thing that I'm describing is at work this morning. Because God sees you holed up in a cave. You're wrapped, your face and your hands and your feet in a shroud unto stinking. In terms of the ultimate purposes of God, we are as good as dead. If we could, let's see it. That's the way I feel right now. This isn't Mr. Vim and Vinegar who has leaped out of his seat at the invitation and has got a hot message to go at any moment. This is one who has been taken out of the tomb and except that God is my life and my speaking, we are of all men most to be pitied. I love the service till next Sunday. I think that God wants not only to instruct but to demonstrate that a word spoken at a conversational tone without any genuflections and any kind of drama, without any schmaltz, without any hype, spoken quietly. If it is God's word given by God in the moment of his appointment, it can raise you from the dead. He wants to encourage your faith because we're moving toward a climax of history where what you're going to experience this morning and what Lazarus experienced must be the experience of Israel or the nations of the world have had. They'll continue in their incest, their abominable perversions, their filth, their muck, their abortions, their criminality, their violence, their filthy tastes and habits and all of the kind of thing that is just making the world a horror. The very fact that your university could call itself its team the blue devils makes me want to puke and I'll bet that there's not one soul in a hundred thousand roundabouts who has ever taken objection with that. It's all harmless fun, right? What a way to dull one to the faith. What a way to lose the significance of God by allowing the world to cheapen the faith and the categories of it in a kind of a cultural kind of thing that's harmless and after all they're number one. How many of you are incapacitated this morning for staying up last night to watch number one and join in all of the whatever the thing that follows the victory, not knowing what a price you have paid. That in fact unless the word the morning that follows is a resurrection word, there's no prospect whatever of any significant accomplishment for God. We condemn the service even before we arrive. May God give you such a taste for resurrection glory. See the two words are inexorably co-joined. No resurrection, no glory. Resurrection is a glory and the only glory. Anything less is beneath the glory of God. You know what the scripture says? We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and when you begin to smart for falling short of the glory of God as much as having sinned, you'll be on the path to repentance and to redemption. We need to be as seriously stricken by the absence of glory in our midst as we are by the avoidance of the most blatant and conspicuous sins. In God's sight the one is as bad as the other. But you know the catch is even the jealousy for the glory of God cannot be humanly and religiously prompted. It itself is a resurrection phenomenon except God himself breaks forth in this apostolic and prophetic jealousy in us. We can stand on our heads and we cannot fabricate or manufacture it. In a word, saints, we're dead. We're utterly trust upon God and dependent for everything and the moment that we think that we're not in that moment we degenerate into religion. In the moment that we think we can perform it and strike up the band and create the atmosphere and the worship and all the rest and think that we have it, well we may have produced something that makes the morning a little bit more pleasurable and acceptable but it falls pitifully short of the glory of God. Now I've got a witness in this room who was at our conference at Bemidji State University. You say, where's that? So remote that's not worth talking about. And such a little two by four conference as only a shoestring operator like me could put together. But we had a musical group come who volunteered to do the worship and they sure did it. So much so that at the last session by the inspiration of God we asked them to cease fire. And that somehow we would trust God without instruments and they're leaving. If you want resurrection phenomenon, you've got to wait two days longer where you are until it's a sickness unto death. Don't rush to alleviate. Have you got the ability to suffer the tension of unreconciled things? You have to have an answer now. I'm not America's number one favorite preacher because there are a lot of pastors who want to send their people home happy. And everything's got to take place in the same service. So even if it's a heavy word, it's got to end on a happy note. How about if we went home in tension? We went home unresolved. We went home agitated and somehow had to wait on God and wrestle something through and let the issue have its final effect unto joy and glory. Look what God did with Nicodemus. What a plum that would have been to have been converted. Why didn't Jesus tell him about the four sprues he was in that God has a plan for his life? Why did he have to mystify and perplex him and talk about except you'd be born from above? How's a ruler of the Jews to understand terminology like that? The man was whacked out of his skull, a complete perplexity and confusion, and Jesus left him in that condition. That which is from above is above. That which is of the spirit is the spirit. That which is of the flesh is flesh. Categorical, uncompromising, absoluteness to completely mystify a religious man. And Jesus left him in that trembling condition. But you know what? I know that I know that I know I'm going to meet Nicodemus in heaven. It may have taken a little time to break through. And the words that Jesus spoke were not out of the evangelical guidebook for witnessing to Jews. But every syllable of it had its origin from heaven to a man who could speak it because he was dead to any clever alternative in himself. Well, I'd love to see a witness like that going forth today to my Jewish people or anyone. Lest John 3.16, I mean, I love the scripture, but it's God's not, it's not his convenient little thing to save us the agony of having to seek him and to be in union with his spirit to find out what the exact word is from heaven for the soul that's before us. In fact, if someone had quoted John 3.16 to me 28 years ago, you wouldn't be listening to me this morning. I would have been dead long ago. John 3.16 is a cliche, unless the resurrection life of God has quickened it for your use, because you yourself move and live and have your being in that life. Jesus was that kind of a man. He didn't allow himself to be ruled by circumstance, by impulse, by sentiment, or by need. He was so attenuated to the Father, so jealous for the glory that he intuited and understood he was not to move. Two days later came the release on the third day. That's what it says in Hosea. You don't have to turn to it, but it's a wonderful kind of corollary to what we're speaking about in chapter six of Hosea. Come and let us return unto the Lord for he hath torn and he will heal us. He hath smitten and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us. In the third day he will raise us up and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know if we follow on to know the Lord is going forth as prepared as the morning and he shall come unto us as the rain and as the latter and former rain on the earth. On the third day he will raise us. We're getting close to that third day for a nation that has been not 2,000 years in the grave, but 4,000. Jewish alienation from God does not begin with Jesus. The rejection of Jesus was the consummation and the visible expression of an already long-standing history of alienation and apostasy from God. There were four days, if you take the day for a thousand years in the grave, and by this time they stinketh. They have to stinketh. You know why? Because we're so good. Because we're so impressive in our own natural ability. We've impressed you. You were ready to dance horrors around us in 1988 at the 40th anniversary of the State of Israel and thought that this was the messianic fulfillment because you're not all that discriminating. It looked good. I mean, 40 years to establish a nation, that's impressive, but not less. The destiny of Israel, the millennial intention of God, and the glory that he intends to bring to the nations through that restored nation is so great that Israel cannot perform it, even though it is so humanly impressive. Only his life can, as expressed through a nation raised from the dead, to their own life. Kind of a mystery. But the thing is, as much as Paul says, what shall their return be but life from the dead, which gives another intimation of the resurrection theme, there'll be no resurrection for them any more than there would have been for Lazarus, except someone stand by the grave and give a cry. Have you got that in you this morning? I'm not talking about some kind of vocal activity. We can all get hyped up to say something and shout. I'm talking about a cry, a faith, a true word that performs an event that is more than just a hopeful, a hope, a hope it works. It's got to be an absolute faith. It's got to be charged with love. It's got to be a cry that is waiting for the glory of God and has waited this long and believes that the Father will answer it. Only a son of God can perform it, a son of God who is obedient to wait two days longer than he is. Few of us have that kind of discipline. We want it now. Right? We don't know how to wait because waiting itself is dying. And while Jesus was waiting, what do you think his disciples were thinking or saying among themselves? Look, he's afraid to go to Bethany because it's too close to Jerusalem. And the last time he almost got stoned there. So he's got cold feet and he's shrinking back in defense of his own life of who unwilling to risk his neck even though his friend is sick unto death. Don't think that Jesus didn't know what they were thinking. You see, saints, obedience brings reproach. Obedience brings misunderstanding. And if you're a man pleaser, which most of us are, until we're brought into death, you'll not be able to bear what people think or how they look at you and you'll respond to the cues that they give. Isn't that how the whole of the religious thing is conducted? We're responding to cues and the expectations of others rather than to God. Jesus waited, no matter the reproach, no matter the misunderstanding, until two days later. Then after that, he said to his disciples, let us go unto Judea again. You believe that every word is inspired by the Spirit of God? You think it's significant whether it says Judea or Lazarus? Why didn't the scripture say, now let us go to Bethany? Let us go to Lazarus. What does he mean, let us go to Judea again? Was he speaking prophetically, more to just the moment, but resonating something that looks ahead 2,000 years later to our generation when God will again return to Judea and raise up a Lazarus people after they have been four millennia in the grave unto stinking by a shout and a cry that does not come directly out of the mouth of God, but through a son of man who has learned obedience through suffering of reproach and misunderstanding and whose word is an event unto life for those who hear it. If I am not that son of man this morning, you're only hearing preaching of a sermon. But if I am schooled in the same school of obedience as the one of whom we're speaking this morning, you stand in the prospect of not just hearing the sermon, but experiencing an event, and God knows you need it. Let's turn to that. When Jesus came to the grave and they met the two sisters and they said, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. That's true. My God has been absent, so to speak, and has hidden his face from my people for the four millennia and especially the last two. If he had been there, we would not have gone through Auschwitz. But he set in motion the course of things that will eventuate in the death of the nation. Until they cry out out of that death, we are cut off, we are without hope, we are his dry bones. He's only waiting to hear the acknowledgement of death in order to raise them from that death. When a Jew will acknowledge he's without hope and cut off, he's dead. Or you don't know Jews. And when the church will acknowledge that it is without hope and cut off and has dry bones, it will experience resurrection life also. You've got a choice. Turn up the amplifiers, strum the guitars, play the keyboard, hit the old things that you know will get the reflex actions and go on in a death which appears to be life. Or acknowledge as far as the purposes of God are concerned. For his church in the last days, we are as good as dead. We are dry bones. You know, that's what I felt when I was sitting in the seat before I came up this morning to preach. I thought as far as the need of this congregation goes and my ability to say anything that would be in any way a blessing, I'm as good as dead. The need is so great that in terms of my being able to fulfill it, I am as good as dead. All I know is this, that somewhere in the early morning hours, 5 a.m., whatever, on my knees, John 11, Lazarus, came into my spirit and I knew that that was somehow to be disrupted and that's all I know. Right till the moment of being called up. The rest is all utter dependency and trust in the God who makes those things to be which were not and brings to life that which is dead. So they took him to the tomb and verse 33, when Jesus therefore saw her weeping and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled. Boy, what a schmaltzy scene, all of that weeping. What a pity, a young man too. Too bad he was cut off in the prime of his life and really enjoying the sentimental bash. But I want to tell you that the weeping of Jesus and the sorrow of Jesus was not in spirit with them. After all, shouldn't there be rejoicing if someone is cut off from this life and can be fully with the Lord? Or to be absent from the body is to be present with God. What the heck are you mourning about? What are your crocodile tears about? What are you slobbering about? Shouldn't there be rejoicing that he's had an early exit from a world that is hostile and at enmity with God and to be with the Lord forevermore? Their phony tears revealed the fraudulence of their Judaism. Their lack of the knowledge of God or the desire to know him and to be with him. He was troubled and groaned in the spirit. And I'm sensing that now for the church. Where have you laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Isn't that wonderful? The shortest verse in the whole of the Bible, two words, Jesus wept. His weeping was not small. There was a deep groaning sorrow for the failure of his people Israel, for what was taking place in the commotion around the tomb of Lazarus and all that it signified. And he's weeping still for the corresponding failure of the church today. Every bit as much a picture of what Israel was in that day and needing every bit as much their resurrection. If we are not ourselves first raised from the dead, how shall we speak a resurrection word to a nation that is in the grave and in the tomb? For anything less than a resurrection word will not succeed in bringing them up out of that death. Well-meaning intentions, sentiment, affinity for Israel will fail. This is a word of an ultimate kind that raises the dead. It's not wishful thinking. It's not hopeful speaking. It's ultimate prophetic constituency. It's saturated and steeped through in the life of God. It is his very own cry emitted from a vessel who is utterly obedient and brought to the place of commission by the ordinance of God, standing for God and speaking for God as God that will raise the dead nothing less. Well-meaning, charismatic, hopeful, forget it. Only union and fusion, one with God, his heart, his intention, his purpose, his obedience, his speaking. Your word has got to be as very God's or it fails. Does your faith balk at that? Because this is the faith sense and the one to which you are called and from which you are so miserably falling short. That's why our homes are bereft of glory. That's why our marriages are mere truces and accommodations. That's why the whole of our Christianity is some makeshift slapdash getting by. If we think of it's the absence of conflict or the absence of difficulty and it's workable, that's it. God wants resurrection in the bedroom and every other aspect of our life and our being to transmute what is mundane and ordinary and to transfigure and to make it transcendent. Could not this man which opened the eyes of the blind have caused this? Even this man should not have died. And I don't want to sell Lazarus short sense because I wonder being the friend of Jesus that he was especially appointed for this death, how many others would have railed in their last feverish thoughts against a Jesus who had failed them and would have said where is he I thought he was this and this and what's the use of believing and heck with it and blah blah blah if he can't come and he came to Gentiles and he'll not come to me and I'm his friend. You know I think that Lazarus was such a friend that he didn't have to be instructed on what purpose his death was serving. He merely submitted to it without a requirement to understand. Never dreaming he was going to be resurrected but if his death would glorify God he was just as willing to submit to that as to continue in life by being healed. How many friends of God do we have here this morning who would submit to that? Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave in verse 38 it was a cave and a stone lay upon it. What does that suggest? Not only is there no hope for resurrection but there's almost something in humanity that wants to see the dead remain dead and ensure that they'll not come out of the grave because the Jesus that comes forth from the grave brings a new requirement. All authority is given unto me in heaven and earth. Go ye therefore into all the world and preach this gospel to every creature. Wouldn't you have liked it better if he had just remained dead and then we could all have cried big slobbery tears about what a wonderful thing the father had sent and how Israel had refused him and crucified him and those terrible people and if he had lived my what could he have done and all these other things. I'll tell you that a Jesus that is resurrected is threatening. Brings requirement of an ultimate kind. Go ye therefore. We want to pile the stones up and make sure that he doesn't come out as the Lord of Glory who requires. Take away the stone Martha the sister of him that was dead saith unto him Lord by this time he stinketh for he's been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her said I not unto thee if thou which believe thou should see the glory of God. Don't you dare be satisfied saints without seeing the glory of God. Don't be satisfied with the terminology about it. That's our undoing. We are a phraseological Christianity that thinks that if we can speak the appropriate words and proclaim that the doctrines we have the reality. It's a glory that God wants you to see because it's the glory also he wants you to make manifest because as I said last night where some of you should have been and were not who chose the foot in the basketball game that the ultimate issue of God for Israel is his meeting with them in the wilderness of the face to face and if we have not a face that reveals the glory of God the whole cunning stratagem of God is failed. How's your face this morning? Is it reflecting and revealing God's glory or the kind of shabby sleepiness that is waiting for the service to end and go on to eat or humdrum and our faces are the statement of our lives. We're responsible for them especially when you get to be 50 or 60 years old but some of you who are half that age here this morning have already faces that virtually condemn you. What will it be when you get to be my age if you keep up like this and not insist on resurrection glory? It's only waiting for you to cry out. I'm without hope. I'm cut off. I'm as dry bones. I'm a sham. I'm a pretense. I'm going through the motions but this is the last day that I will Lord. If you give me the grace of your life I will do everything that's in me. I will seek by that grace to go on from face to face and glory to glory and make my life to come to your kingdom and not eternally regret that my Christianity was a mere succession of services. If thou wouldst believe thou should see the glory of God then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said father I thank thee that thou hast heard me and I know that thou hearest me always and because of the people which stand by I said it that they may believe that thou hast sent me and when he had thus spoken he cried with a loud voice Lazarus come forth and he that was dead came forth bound hand and foot with grave clothes and his face was bound about with a napkin as some of the faces here this morning Jesus saith unto them loose him and let him go then many of the Jews which came to Mary and had seen the things which Jesus did believed nothing encourages the faith to believe out of hopeless dejection and unbelief and cynicism and all of the reasons that Jews have to reject Christianity and the testimony of Jesus than the demonstration of someone raised from the dead especially if you are that demonstration the Jew is the acid test of whether you only subscribe to the doctrine or you're living in the reality they can tell the thing that is famed and the thing that is real they have always been the church's test of authenticity many believed on him when they saw Lazarus raised from the dead by a shout and a cry and a word come forth and out he came death could not hold him God had spoken the same God that had abooted over the face of the deep and over the chaos and said let there be and there was and you believe for such a word that will raise Israel from its death for what will its death coming out of its historic alienation from God mean to the nations but life from the dead a nation of priests and a light into the world no more Karl Marx's and Sigmund Freud's and and Oppenheimer's and Steven Spielberg's and all these brilliant Jews whose works and culture and gifts have not fostered and facilitated the things of God but the things of man now imagine that same brilliance under the employ of God by the animation of his life and power coming into the nations my God you cannot believe what the effect will be why why there will be 10 Gentiles clutching the skirt of one such Jew and saying we're with you you know God that God has reserved one nation among all nations for one exclusive purpose priestly and the light it's for the want of that light and want of that priestliness that we are profane and not sacred for the priests shall teach the nations and the people the difference between the sacred and the profane they would never have allowed you to use the word blue devils it would be a mitzvah when that nation is raised from the dead I can tell you but here's the catch and I'm going to conclude they'll be waiting for a word they'll be as holed up in the rock and in the cave with a rock on that tomb and bound up in clothes and hands and and face and feet every bit as much as Lazarus only one thing will bring them forth cry corporate permeated with the life of God on time spoken by a people as one voice at one moment in God's a son of man company obedient to wait and to be available for such a speaking who do not give their mouths to lesser things to cheapy talk and small talk and and filling the air with this and that and the other and blah blah blah blah blah where that will surely debase any speaking when God will require a people who themselves will speak in resurrection authority and power for they have been raised from their own death by the same power and by the same God let there be a shedding of grave clothes from faces and hands and feet that can do and go now for God and make him known I ask Lord and I believe that it's free from any vanity that this word this morning that you have been pleased to send will be altogether foundational will sink to the deeps of the foundation of the corporate life of this people that it will have consequence come my God let there be in these last days again the manifestation and the revelation of your glory by a people who are jealous and are willing for the death and deaths that must always precede it obedient I bless them and ask my God for a new lease on life a new vigor a new release my God of the same power that raised Lazarus from the grave and raised you knowing that if they move in that power and in that life they'll bring upon themselves the same hatred and opposition that came upon Jesus who after this was not fit to live because if he continues in this it will threaten our place and our mission bless this people Lord and give them the full understanding of what you've spoken however long it takes to bring it up from their spirits to their consciousness from their consciousness to their life from their life to their conduct from their conduct to their service that you might be glorified thereby because you've sent a word and raised us out of our lethargy out of our death out of our indifference to glorify God Jesus made me pray and God's people said