In this sermon, the speaker shares a personal testimony of a profound encounter with a young girl that challenged his preconceived notions. He emphasizes the importance of a radical departure from one's past and culture when coming to Christ. The speaker also highlights the need for the church to have a consciousness of Jesus as a Jew and the significance of an Abrahamic relationship with God. He warns against a superficial connection with God and emphasizes the importance of being rightly engaged with other believers in order to attain spiritual growth and understanding.

Well, just now that the recording machine is on, just to identify this article. I've never heard of the man myself, but he was a student of Karl Barth, and that's enough to recommend him to me. Here's what they say in italics. Friedrich Wilhelm Marquardt, M-A-R-Q-U-A-R-D-T, studied under Rudolf Boltzmann and Karl Barth, and did his doctoral work on Israel in Barth's thought. Imagine that this one aspect of Barth's thought on Israel, which should encourage me to say, that there's more to be said about Israel in Karl Barth as an afterthought in fine print than others have said in total books. If you've ever read Karl Barth, he makes statements, and then he goes on in finer print to fill them out. And you need a lot of patience to follow him in the fine print, but it's always rewarding. And what he says in fine print about Israel is so remarkable that I wondered that no one had ever cut that out from the body of his main work and made just books alone on that subject. And maybe someone now will, because now I'm reading for the first time that this man got his doctoral degree on the study of Karl Barth and his thoughts on Israel. Isn't that remarkable? In 1972 he succeeded Helmut Goldwitzer. You've not heard that name, I'm familiar with it. In the Lutheran Chair at the Free University of Berlin, this article is a translation of an unpublished lecture Marquardt gave of the Hamburg Church Day in 1981. It appears here with permission of the author, which means that he's alive. And I hope to look him up and find him and introduce myself in her fellowship. So, Lord, we just thank you that this just happened to come yesterday. Out of all the things that are stacked up that I've not had time to look at or to read, whole issues of the Jerusalem Post and other things that have come, I somehow just flipped through this and saw this in the table of contents and had to go through it immediately. And it was rewarding. So may it be rewarding, Lord, for our little group here. And give us, my God, fresh insight, understanding of this enormously sensitive, complex matter of how the church ought to regard Israel and the Jew, particularly with regard to its testimony and witness to the Jewish people, and that the German believers are more sensitive on this subject than any other, and likely so. So, my God, we thank you for this privileged time and for this dear man who's devoted his life to this study and that we have the opportunity to hear his lecture through this transcription. It pleases you, Lord, I ask as a bonus the privilege of meeting him and having a time to get acquainted. And just before he passes this life, that we might touch spirit with one who has this kind of rich background. Thank you for this privileged time, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, just to leap in here, talking about Jesus, he could not be an Athenian, a Parisian, a Muscovite, or a hamburger. That doesn't mean something on a bun, but someone who comes from the city. Not a Gentile, but a Jew. Not a man as such, but a man of this people. He cannot be understood from the perspective of general humanity, only from the life of the Jewish people. If we wish to remain true to the old Christological dogma and to understand Jesus in essence as from the true God and to the true God, then we can continue to do this today only if we understand him within the framework of the life of his people. This is why it has to be so important to us that our Lord Jesus Christ should be a Jew by birth. His unity with God depends on it. Stop me at any time if this triggers any thought or question. If he becomes apparent to us, nothing familiar becomes apparent to us, there is then a completely different world understanding, a completely different self-understanding, and a completely different God understanding. Isn't that remarkable? If you miss the Jewishness of Jesus, you're not only missing that, you're missing a whole continuum of things that issues from that understanding. And boy, if that is not true in the contemporary church, I don't know what is. To have missed that is to have missed something so critical and so intrinsic to the understanding that God would have us to have for Jesus, for the understanding of Jesus is the understanding of God. So it would lead us to a different world understanding, a different self-understanding, how we perceive ourselves, and a completely different God understanding. As non-Jews by birth, we are indeed without God in this world, strangers to the covenants of promise and without citizenship among the saints, the Jewish saints. It is first of all through Jesus that we are torn away and placed in a history that is not ours. Any of you who are astute and remember this morning's quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, he made the exact same statement that immersing ourselves in the Hebrew Scriptures tears us, he used the same word, we're torn out of our Gentile context. In fact, it's the only provision given of God by which that radical separation can take place. Here he's saying the same thing. It's through Jesus, that is the Jewish Jesus, that we are torn away and placed in a history that is not ours. It's not ours by virtue of Gentile birth, but it becomes ours by virtue of spiritual inheritance. But it's something that should be coveted and esteemed or you'll not have it. It does not come to the Gentile believer automatically. In fact, I have been bold to make the assertion that unless we consciously see ourselves as grafted into their tree, we do not receive the benefit of the life that issues through their root, which is God. And that there are Gentile branches that have been grafted in, but they still remain wild, which is to say, nonproductive. They cannot issue fruit unless the life of the tree that comes through the root flows through them. And that requires a conscious acknowledgement of the privilege of being grafted into a tree that was not initially yours. And an appreciation for that grafting. The church lacks that today, and therefore the church today is denuded. It's impoverished. It's wanting in real fruit for which reason it has had to turn the amplifiers up and go into all kinds of programs and frenetic activities to compensate for what they don't even understand is their loss. Namely, the life that would have issued if they were consciously and gratefully recognizing themselves joined into the tree that was not theirs by the grace of God. And it's this fruit that would have issued that in turn moves Jews to envy. So he's saying the same thing. He recognizes that in another way, and I'm so grateful for that. For us, the recognition of Jesus is an estrangement from parental home and friendship, a break with an innate way of life learned in a pagan culture. That's courage. That's a German not talking about somewhere in darkest Africa. He's talking about the pagan culture of Germany. Though it's an impressive culture and has given rise to celebrated figures of literature, philosophy, ethics, music, and so on, it's still pagan. We ought to look up that word in a dictionary. Pagan is not just beating with a tom-tom around a totem pole. Pagan is a concert or an opera or going to a museum that is celebrated as culture but is separated from God. And he's saying what has saved us and taken us out of our native pagan environment is this estrangement that has come by being joined into the life of Israel. We are transplanted spiritually and psychologically. What happens to us is what we express in baptism, something that we do not reach with our own reason and strength. So as to understand this God, the God of Jesus, we are made Abrahamite through Jesus. I've never heard that before, made Abrahamite. I would say Hebraicized, same thing. Snatched from the power of the primal, P-R-I-M-A-L, myths of our people, culture, and politics that Germany was not snatched from it is the whole tragedy of the rise of Nazism. It was a return to paganism. It was a return to torchlight parades. It was a return to book burning. It was a return to racial superiority and racial myths and the use of violence and the emphasis upon brute force. It's a reversion. It's going back into paganism because its Hebraic roots were not identified because the church had so long separated itself from those origins that it was a pushover to the powers of darkness that brought it again into paganism. So we are made Abrahamite through Jesus, snatched from the power of the primal myths of our people, culture, and politics. Belief in Christ is for us non-Jews a break, a revolution. We do not just recover our true selves. For how many non-Jewish Christians can this statement be made? That your coming to Christ and your continuing life in the faith was a break, a radical departure from the origins of your life and the culture and civilization of which you were part and that you have been brought into an Abrahamic relationship with God. That is God's definitive intention in conversion that the church has so notably fallen short of it is because it lacks the consciousness of Jesus as the Jew and what is represented in that context and has lost it. So this is the whole sum of his lecture. I wonder how that went over with his German heroes. Again and again a bad conscience grows through in the history of Christianity because of our domestication of the God of Israel. Interesting. To translate that I would say German Christianity assimilated or processed the Hebrew faith into the German national culture. I mentioned that earlier today and removed those kinds of things that were not compatible with that desire. They consciously wanted a Christianity appropriate to their German culture and civilization and therefore were required to eliminate either deliberately or unconsciously those aspects of the Christian faith that were Hebraic. He uses the word domesticated. That makes me think of the word tame to try to tame them. It takes the heart out of it. It makes it a thing that you can control and put on a leash for your purposes. If ever you get a chance and you might inquire of Simon or Heather to get a copy of my statement of a message given in Nuremberg on true and false German repentance toward the Jew in which I suggest by the Lord's inspiration that the German sin never acknowledged is the same as the Jewish sin never acknowledged namely that both were culprits in domesticating the radical faith of God and fitting it into their cultural, commercial, and imperial purposes. They made God a Sunday phenomenon and the Jews made the God of Israel a Saturday phenomenon but equally subservient to their primary purposes business, commerce, culture. And the judgment of God is the holocaust on both the German and the Jew. And when they heard that, they went down like dead. The depth of that breaking, that night will always remain with me and the word of the wife of the pastor who was the worship leader I never quite got along too well with her charismatic type of woman she said the moment you open your mouth it was a sword and the believers went down they were proliferated all over the building on their faces with such depth of groanings like you've never heard they were repenting not only for themselves but for their nation because I think one of the things I said was what has changed since the holocaust? What has been altered in your contemporary Christianity even at its charismatic best that has really recognized the sin of the past and has rectified it and the answer is nothing nothing has changed they're repenting for the wrong things and out of the depth of that brokenness finally there came such a worship to the Lord in the spirit that was totally unprompted that when I heard that I said now the powers of darkness over Nuremberg are terrified to hear this authentic praise that has come out of this authentic reconciliation that has come out of this authentic repentance that has come out of this authentic word of God terrifies the powers of the air for they're only required to recognize what is authentic and if they're not dismissed and broken in their orbits by this authenticity they'll only wait their next opportunity to come and to influence and seize the organs of power yet again so this issue of the church in Germany is very critical that word was inspired by four days of anguish sitting in a conference in Berlin on Israel and listening to all of the schmaltz and sentimentality and the various kinds of conventional wisdom propagated by men who publicly denounced me from platforms and I looked upon adoringly by the German believers and I couldn't bear to hear their conventional wisdom that Israel is not going to suffer loss and the last night was a repentance for the sins of the German to the Jew and it was such a cathartic psychologically structured evening that I was not only turned off I was agonizing in the inner man because it will give momentary relief to these Germans for their guilt conscience but it will need again to be repeated because it's not a recognition of a ground for repentance and it's only a device by which a momentary relief is obtained Israel is not benefited nor the German Christian himself I left that meeting that night just done in and went to the apartment where I was staying which was the former Jewish neighborhood in Berlin I also wrote another paper imagining turning the clock back and imagining the former occupant of that apartment beautiful high ceiling bookcases just the kind of thing that a middle class Jew would enjoy before the Hitler time and I've never written imaginary things like this that the man is hearing the pounding on the staircase of these German storm troopers coming up to get him and he has to make hasty last minute decisions what do I do with the memorabilia, the photographs of my deceased wife the tickets to the State Opera my favorite book the various kinds of things that a Jewish man would collect in his lifetime knowing he has only moments and that in the end he can't take anything with him anyway it's in that apartment I came back that night I sat down at the computer and by faith I typed in true and false German repentance toward the Jew and when I finished I had about a page of statement put it in my Bible went to Nuremberg the next day and on the second and final night the Lord said take out that paper and I just spoke from that paper and down they went so pray again for that October 10-13 conference in Braunschweig and the other days of activity that I received on my internet today showing the various places we'll be also in Austria in those days and Austria has a more deadly anti-Semitic heritage than even Germany the Jews in Vienna really caught it and Vienna was the city of the father of psychiatry Freud what's his first name? Sigmund Freud Viennese Jews were the high water mark of German speaking Jewish culture and civilization and there was a day of comeuppance that fell upon them so both Germany and the Jew domesticated God maybe that's a real name for Reformed Judaism you guys know that there are three branches? Orthodox Conservative Reform Orthodox of course is the most biblically conformed conservative is like half way house Reform is the most stripped down form of Jewish religion that has that saves from embarrassment educated and erudite Jews from having to subscribe to a God who is supernatural in his power and yet have some form of that which is Jewishly identified that their Jewish identity can be maintained Reformed Judaism was born in Germany so was Zionism Theodor Herzl was an Austrian Jew you see how this insinuates itself in history and still remains so we dimly begin to see that the God of Jesus and Israel has truth only in the journey that we begin when we follow as disciples in which we are led where we do not want to go to follow Jesus is for us Gentile Christians what the exodus story was and is for Jews liberation from the house of slavery he's saying that German culture and civilization is Egypt and the exodus out there's only one exodus out that is identification with the exodus of Israel and seeing yourself in joint participation with them for the same reasons or else there's no exodus therefore your religion is still in Egypt still using the vocabulary but it becomes corrupted Egyptian and Babylonian unless you have come out and the coming out is to the proportion to the degree that you recognize the Jewish content of the faith or the Hebraic content of the faith and embrace it in such a way that it has the power to bring you out you might ask yourself if you've been brought out not from Germany but from Missouri or where so ever you are in culture and in origin but the way out is what he's describing and it's not that he stumbled upon something inadvertently this is God's design this is God's normative intention this is salvation salvation is of the Jews and it must necessarily be of the Jews if it is to be of any benefit for Gentiles to lose that connection to fail to remember to recognize that salvation is of the Jews distinctly is to lose the value and to have a conversion that is not really conversion but only a domestication of God that still keeps you in Egypt to understand this we do not need to spend long time looking back at antiquity in the Middle Ages we Germans have experienced it in National Socialism when I tell you this isn't some kind of Ivy Tower theologian this is a nitty gritty guy who's got his head screwed on right and he's speaking truth we don't have to go back to our pagan origins to prove my point he says National Socialism is the evidence in itself that we had never come out it was a system that developed into a nature and blood idolatry into the legality of sin as Luther understood it an order that did not allow that the true God of Israel should be God because we wanted to make ourselves God that's it right there when we will look at Japan and Germany later on next week this is exactly the point why Japan crucified literally crucified Christian missionaries 16 or 26 of them were actually hung on crosses they were Catholic Jesuits before the advent of Protestant Christianity and by edict they were rounded up their noses and ears were cut off and they were forced marched from where they were into Nagasaki where they were crucified in mass Japan has always repudiated what has been sent them from God and why have they repudiated the God of Israel which is the God of the faith that is alone saving because of their own national idolatry and own national purposes their Shintoism is a state religion that supports the aristocracy the nobility the samurai the warrior class and the emperor it's a way in which men who are on the top of the social pile continue their dominance through the implementation of a religion that suits their system and the priests of that religion are toadying figures who are paid off and accommodate them there are some statements here about the Jewish law I'll not read that now but it's of particular interest for Reggie that may come to us later how should I be able to recover a belief in Jesus Christ on the part of Israel I would have to sue for the Holy Spirit for something to be obtained that I cannot fulfill because of this misuse of God historically in German Christianity it's confusing because I'm jumping here and not giving the background to some of these statements I believe that I cannot by my own reason and strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him how then should I be able to sue for the recovery of belief in Jesus Christ on the part of Israel how can I make a claim for that I would have to sue for the Holy Spirit in order to fulfill that need Jesus is the Messiah and in that he deals with us Gentiles first but with him the salvation of the Jews comes to us his messianic work begins with that he tears us out of our Gentile darkness out of an existence without God in the world from falling into the legalities of goyish, Gentile, stamped outer and inner reality that knows nothing either of the covenants or of the pledges of the true God and he calls us to be fellow citizens of God if Jesus gains the Gentiles for the God of Israel this fulfills something of the purpose for which the Jewish people were called it confirms Israel in the mission percuted to it on the ground for its calling and election he is genuinely the Messiah of Israel in this respect if we want to state that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel then we must attest him messianically the confession of his Messiahhood implies exactly as much truth as we ourselves seriously appropriate and live out here he is talking about how do we German Christians relate to Jews today how do we evangelize them what is our message because we have a lousy track record and there has been much injury perpetrated against Jews in the name of Christ what he doesn't say and what we all know is that Jewish blood has flowed in the streets of every German city in Hamlet all through the Middle Ages and particularly in the Passover Easter season when the myth of Jews employing the blood of Gentile children to make their matzah was a well-known libel and the plagues that took place in Germany and Europe the Black Plague in the 14th century was attributed to Jews poisoning the wells why should they be accused because they were the only ones living in Europe that were not dying by the plague so therefore they must have been the perpetrators in order to get rid of Gentiles why weren't they affected because they didn't eat pork because pigs were the garbage disposal system of Europe you tossed your garbage out the window and roving bands of pigs consumed it that were later butchered and eaten rats and every kind of thing only Jews boiled their pots and pans and dishes only Jews kept certain kosher hygienic practices that somehow insulated them from these plagues but what did the unbenighted Gentile think we're dying by flies these Jews are not even affected they must be the culprits and so there'd be another mass murder so my favorite town in Germany is Esslingen in the Stuttgart area and the state church formerly Catholic now Lutheran stands over the former location of the synagogue that was burned to the ground at the time of the Crusades when the Crusaders went through Europe on their way to the Holy Land they financed their pilgrimage by looting Jewish communities because the Jews were infidels and they were doing God's service by recovering the Holy Grail and all of these kinds of things victimizing Jewish communities all the way so the legend is that the Jews locked themselves up in their synagogue for protection and the Crusaders burned it to the ground and the entire Jewish community of Esslingen was finished in that one act and over the ruins now lost to history when you go to Esslingen today and go to the information bureau and tourist there's not a word of this they give you the information from 1200 and something on but it was in 1100 somewhere that this devastation took place and as a G.I. in Germany if you can picture this before some of you were born 1952-53 walking the streets of Esslingen I had such a haunting sense of identification I could not articulate it I felt more bonding more affinity with this German town still retaining its Middle Ages complexion it was never bombed in either World War I or World War II than I had ever felt in Brooklyn in Brooklyn I was a man without a country in Germany I was a man in his country so long have we had a 2000 year existence in that part of the world and then to learn later when did I learn it? when I got back to the States on the G.I. Bill and was in college I stumbled onto a reference on Esslingen and some encyclopedia that gave the information that I've just shared with you but I never learned it there and every time I've been back there and go to the official tourist information services they know nothing about it it's lost to history but it's in the bloodstream you had affinity for it before you even knew that it transpired there yeah I intuited something it sounds very mystical I don't know how to explain it but I had an eerie strange sense of identification as if somehow I had lived there myself or that my forebears had come from that I don't know how and maybe that's true and the God whom I did not yet know was already so disposing me to be touched by the melancholy strains of this mystery of the Germany and the Jew you can't separate them you can't understand Germany without understanding the influence that Jews have had in that civilization and you can't understand what is Jewish without understanding its dramatic roots Yiddish which is lingua franca the international tongue of Jews before the advent of Israel is German when I read the sermons of Luther in German it was like reading Yiddish the German of Luther's generation is today's Yiddish it's a middle ages expression of German that Jews picked up and made their international language so you can understand the sensitivity of this scholar he's a believer and there's an obligation to the Jew but how do you present it in a history like this that they can consider and receive what we as Gentiles have received that has been for us a saving grace and yet unknown to them they don't have it by virtue of being Jews they need to come out of their own Egypt by the faith in their own God centering in the faith of their own Messiah but that Messiah has never been depicted to them as being Jewish when you see the portraits of Jesus and the middle ages with the halos over the head and the aquiline features and the middle age backgrounds middle ages settings there's nothing Jewish nothing Hebraically identifiable to which a Jew could respond I myself felt that way growing up in Brooklyn, New York but who is this Jesus? who is this Christ? I don't know any Jews with that last name so the church has failed to communicate the Jewishness of our own Savior and therefore he's an alien to us outside of the compass of our experience and why has the church failed? because it itself has lost this connection and this appropriation Jesus is Messiah of Israel to the extent to which we Christian believers actually affirm his kingdom for the people of Israel listen to this statement protect it and give thanks for it to them we cannot establish it for them let me read that again Jesus is Messiah of Israel because what does Messiah mean saints? Messiah is the English word for Christ Christos but what does that mean? Moshiach is Hebrew what does that mean? anointed, king Jesus of Nazareth king of the Jews was the mocking statement above the cross but at the same time the most profound statement of the truth of the man who was impaled there so this man says Jesus is Messiah of Israel to the extent to which we Christian believers actually affirm his kingdom it's not that we make him Messiah but we make him known as Messiah to his own people to the degree that we affirm the kingdom of which he is king if our Christianity is not in this context in the context of a kingdom if we have extrapolated the faith and made it only a religious convenience that is domesticated and suits our national purposes there is no way we can communicate to Jews the messiahship of their own Messiah for messiahship is anointed king and what does that mean outside of the context of a kingdom but why has the church failed to apprehend this? because the kingdom of God is necessarily at odds and in opposition to the kingdoms of men the word Reich Hitler instituted the third Reich R-E-I-C-H there were two Reichs before him and I would not be surprised that before the age ends there will be a fourth Reich more fearful than the third the word Reich in German means kingdom Kaiser is the German form of the word Caesar or ruler there is another English word Emperor so this imperial ambition of kingdom is intrinsic to Germany has been a powerful threat to its whole history it explains the origin of World War I which World War II is but the continuation and it is still a living strand why wasn't it cut? why wasn't the nation freed from the tyranny of those who have these imperial kingdom ambitions because the Christianity that has been historically established even in the Germany of the Reformation failed to apprehend the kingdom aspect of the Christian faith and that Jesus is a king and a coming king and is a distinct and literal kingdom that is going to be established but the catch is be established where? not in Berlin but in Zion in Jerusalem and proud Germans for them it would be a bone in their throats it's humbling to think that another people are the locus of the glory of God's rule in creation over the earth and not the German themselves naturally and humanly speaking the German would seem to be the greatest candidate and the Jew the worst but isn't that exactly the wisdom of God and what we were talking about God choosing the foolish thing and perfecting his praise out of the mouth of babes, infants and sucklings why? so as to stop the mouth of his adversary because what is the adversary saying? you'll never succeed by choosing the foolish and the weak thing kingdom requires power, force, credentials authority, threat, intimidation and your kingdom is of another kind remember Jesus said all I have to do is call upon my father and he would provide 12 regions but my kingdom is not of this world I'm not going to extricate myself from the fix that I'm in and save my skin and my hide as any man would who had access to superior forces but my kingdom does not play that game my kingdom suffers the humiliation unto death but if I wanted I could call my father and 12 regions would be at my disposal in a moment but my kingdom is not of this world but there is a kingdom and so we need to realize that the whole conflict and struggle in the world and with the nations is the resistance and the unwillingness to receive the kingdom of God and therefore to reject the faith itself or to accept it and to so mutilate it as to domesticate it and make it to serve one's own national purposes got the picture? but God is not finished so to the extent to which we Christian believers actually affirm his kingdom for the people of Israel that is to say we know it's theirs it's Davidic it will be centered in their land and in their Zion protect it and give thanks for it to them we cannot establish it for them but if we spend our time in criticism of Judaism in theological liquidation theories which to this day are obstinately maintained in theological faculties does that not in the end make it impossible for Jews to see their Christ and our Lord? we engage them in debates you know that Jews have to sit in Easter seasons in the Middle Ages in churches and listen to debates between a representative of the Jewish community a learned rabbi and some converted Jew disputing with them over the messianic scriptures and if they dare doze off and not listen they were poked with a long rod as people paroled the sanctuary to make sure that the Jews were listening and they were going to learn what's right and learn in this debate where the truth really lies so this is a history and the Jews still remember that and so he's sensitive to that and says that's not the way in which we're going to reveal to them their Christ our confession of Christ is then nothing but an ideology thank God it does not have to be like that any longer our Lord Jesus Christ was and is a native born risen and living Jew whenever we praise him we praise in him his people Israel we change from being enemies to being friends of Israel's God we join this people spiritually and psychologically we struggle politically and socially for this people we profess our faith in Jesus Christ and make the earth habitable for Israel down for the count would to God that this would be a proclamation of the church in all nations let me read this again I know you don't get it look there's a wonderful masterpiece in Geneva one of the reformed churches an inspired artist painted a fresco on the wall of this Geneva reformed church showing Jesus bright illuminating his light and he's circled by his disciples who are looking like huh? what did you say Lord? unless we eat of your flesh and drink of your blood? I was so struck by the contrast between the brightness of the Lord and those to whom he was going to entrust the faith after his passing sometimes I get a little catch a glimpse of that of course everyone here is exempted to listen to this we talked this morning about being good readers now we can talk about being good listeners really to actively be engaged and hang on and catch what's being said here we join this people spiritually and psychologically how many of us can say that we have joined this people spiritually and psychologically and I'm not talking about some Yiddish kite I'm not talking about some schmaltzy external thing of wearing a yarmulke or a star of David around your neck God bless you ladies who have it but let's not give it any greater value than it deserves but I have been in congregations where I've seen Gentiles davening you know the way Jews do in the synagogue they bob and weave and I look to see the guy has this blond and freckled face he's from Kansas but he's become thoroughly Judaized and has given to the yarmulke and the talit, the prayer shawl a certain mystical value that there's a power and a valence of something in the the paraphernalia of the synagogue that needs to be touched with great caution but if we embrace it too zealously we can actually be corrupted and adversely affected by the negative if not demonic nuances that in here in that whole synagogue anti-Christ culture but what is this man saying? he's not commending that he's after something much deeper something much more difficult to obtain and few there be who are non-Jewish Christians who have obtained it in fact I would say few there be that are Jewish Christians who have obtained it because we ourselves do not have it by virtue of being born Jews we ourselves must acquire it and obtain it the same way as yourself by our own immersion into our own Biblical culture into swimming in our own songs and getting into the genius of the faith that's a great content maybe we do have an advantage as Paul says when they are grafted back into their own tree how much more? there is a much more but the way in which it's obtained is the same way as yourself but it needs to be obtained and I believe that this German scholar has obtained it or he could not write what he's writing and say what he's saying it's a profound statement we join this people spiritually and psychologically you know that if we have really made that joining and we're talking to a Jew you know how my ministry in Kansas City began to the Jews? at the laundromat I took the bundle of dirty wash and with my great mechanical ability I didn't know how to get the machine started and so I turned to a woman to ask her how to put the wash in and she was Jewish and that's how I began in Kansas City over the wash we got into a conversation and she found me so fetching and so compelling she said you need to speak to my husband he's an orthodox Jew I said gladly I said when shall I come? well he's home on the Shabbat I remember coming up the steps of their quite substantial home with my Bible under my arm bushy tailed and ready to go and the guy opened the door saw me coming he said how dare you come to me with this on the Shabbat and wham that door slammed right on my Jewish nose which was more prominent then than it is now subsequently I don't say that that man was saved but that woman remained in relationship with me and whatever nucleus of Jews were touched they were touched not because of any expertise that I had or even that I had something going for me of being recognizably Jewish but to the extent that I had appropriated what this man is speaking of I was psychologically and spiritually joined with this people you know even when you're speaking a hard word and even when they believe that you're an enemy and that your message is a threat to their Judaism and Jewish identity they cannot controvert and easily put aside something that lies too deep for words if it's there so I remember another occasion in New Jersey where I brought an Orthodox Jewish boy because the limousine service was not running on that wintry night out of the Newark airport where I come to pick up some people coming to me from Kansas City and this Jewish boy with his side curls and his yarmulke came up to me and he said Mister, can you tell me how to get to I forgot the name of the city, the town in New Jersey I said well I don't know I said but there's a limousine service why don't you inquire he came back to me he said they're closed he said there's no limousines running can you take me? I said you want me a Mishumit to take you to your Lubavitcher Hasidic seminary your yeshiva he said a nice man like you? because a, what did I say the word was? a Mishumit a Mishumit traitor he said you want this traitor to take you to your seminary? he said a nice man like you? my friends arrived at about two o'clock in the morning I had an old Volvo the windshield wipers had not been working it was a whiteout it was a blizzard I turned on my windshield wipers and they worked and I got to that place two o'clock it was the one night of the month they were having an all night celebration of the Torah they were all up the lights were blazing there was a table set with schnapps and booze and fruit and nuts and they were and in I came within five minutes we were at it sparks were flying and I still remember the one guy that looked into my face who said we don't know what spirit you have but you have a spirit I said you know what that spirit is and the last thing a red haired guy with an afro a new convert to orthodoxy out of the Jesus movement who spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese born in China raised in Latin America speaks Castilian Spanish and an intellectual now converted to Jewish orthodoxy he said I know what you're about he said he went to the rabbi to rat on me and the rabbi said get rid of this man right away so he said that they invited me out I was there for about two hours in the most intensive engagement I left him with a copy of Ben Israel and I left about three days later telephone call Aaron? who's this? this is Ephraim Ephraim? I can't even recognize your voice the last time you were spitting blood at me well I read your book he said and you have a Yiddish you have a Jewish soul yes you may be a Christian you're all wet you've been indoctrinated into this Greek nonsense but you have a visibly notably Yiddish in the Shema you have a Jewish component there's something that comes through your book and radiates from you that I cannot disclaim I went to that man's wedding at the Lubavitcher Hasidic community in Brooklyn I got up to go to the bathroom and about 30 people men got up with me thinking I was going to leave and I remained in relationship with Ephraim Lehr you're intercessors L-E-H-R who's originally an Austrian Jew his father fled Austria to avoid Hitler lived in China lived in Latin America and then he comes to New York and now he's still in this community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn Ephraim Lehr but what I'm saying is that what he saw and discerned is something available to you to put it in a cheap way has Jesus made you Jewish? have you become an Abrahamite? have you fully come out of the Egypt of your national pagan culture? have you taken into yourself the Hebraic content of your faith? have you recognized the distinctiveness of Jesus that requires the recognition of himself as the son of Israel and the ultimate Semite? or is there something lingering in your Gentile history or nature that is offended by those things? it will take a conscious search and application to appropriate this and I'm not talking about Jewish culture I'm talking about the Hebraic content of the faith and the identity of Jesus as that kind of Jew it goes back to this morning's talk on vicariously coming in to the scripture and making it your inheritance and as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10 speaking to Greeks as your fathers were baptized unto Moses in the Syrian cloud so also Paul talking to Greeks speaks to them in a natural matter of fact way that their fathers are Moses and the saints of that generation and what does Paul say in Ephesians that you who are far off have been brought nigh by the blood of Messiah into the commonwealth of Israel and into the existing body of believers the body of Christ is not an innovation but a continuation of an already existing body of faith subscribing to the Messianic faith not all Israel rejected that Jesus and the Gentiles that were added in did not constitute an innovation but a continuation and an enlargement in their inclusion but what happened with the advent of the Holy Roman Empire and Constantine and the politicization of Christianity it lost its Hebraic content the Jewish believers were repelled and cast out of it they were made uncomfortable Easter which is derived from the Greek goddess Histar became the Christian celebration rather than Pesach Passover so there was a conscious and deliberate removal of the Hebraic content of the faith and the incorporation of pagan and other Gentile and cultural features into the Christianity to make it eclectic and syncretistic excuse my language what does that mean? in order to consolidate the empire in all of the diversity of the racial and ethnic groups that constituted it Christianity was the perfect modus operandi to unify the empire by having one religious system and so the the Christians who were formerly persecuted were now celebrated taken out of prisons and given garbs and cloaks and become official statesmen in the religious system and in order to win the Gentile world you had to remove the Hebraic content of the faith that would have been too exclusive and so whole groups of people were baptized into Christianity and so the Jewish believers were felt increasingly out of place their Hebraic content was being consciously dismissed they were not welcomed in their synagogues and now they were being booted out of the Catholic universal church and so in time dissipated away and we saw no continuation that was visible of a remnant of Jewish believers from the early apostolic time until this century when I was saved 37 years ago I did not know that there was another Jewish believer never heard of it there was no such thing 37 years ago as a messianic movement I just happened to stumble into the one congregation in Jerusalem that was composed of Hebrew Christians and was absolutely astonished that there were Jews who already believed in this so this is a profound statement and I suppose that this is a man who has a long history in God and has wrestled over these questions we change from being enemies to being friends of Israel's God when we join this people spiritually and psychologically and that's not an easy put on or take off this is not as we said putting on a yarmulke or a prayer shawl this is a much deeper identification but there's a way to obtain it and Jews will recognize into it that though you are in an exterior way a Gentile there's an interior component that they cannot disabuse nor reject that they find compelling because in fact it's more Jewish than what they themselves are it's more authentically of God it's more authentically Hebraic than what they themselves possess and that may well be the real key to the winning over of a remnant of this people while at the same time bringing dimensions into your own spiritual life for which you have no end of gratitude as you read Ben Israel or heard my testimony the profound impact of that little teenage girl that I met outside of Zurich who was on vacation having graduated high school who externally was the epitome of all that we New York Jews despised and called a WASP White Anglo-Saxon Protestant in her exterior life that's what she was but in her interior life young girl, teenager half my age exhibited a guilelessness a trust, a fearlessness a love, a patience a willing to walk with me around the woods of the city that was for me a revelation of what kindness is I had never seen kindness I was an ex-Marxist and communist but I'd never I've seen ideologically committed men but I've seen them in murderous relationship with other Marxists and communists here's kindness no strings attached being exhibited by this precious girl and when I finally put the $64 question you've been talking about God, I'm sick of hearing this stuff how do you know that he is? she looked up without a moment's hesitation Archie said I know that God lives he lives in me and when she said that I went down like a bludgeoned ox I was smitten by the power of that statement and when I finally recovered I thought what gave that statement its power? it's not intellectual it's not theological then I realized it's true and she has the face to prove it and what was in her face was the light that lightens the Gentiles and the glory of the people I was made jealous on the spot and I knew that what I saw in that little wastrish face was nothing that could ever be obtained at a university I've been there at Marxist institutes I've been there yet she had it and that's how the Lord was fitting me for my conversion and that's how he will fit others and that's why Ezekiel 20 is so critical a key to the salvation of the lost sheep of the house of Israel in their last days sifting when God says I will meet with you in the wilderness of the nations face to face and when I share this in the places where I go I say nothing more powerful than the revelation of the glory of God in the face of a Gentile the juxtaposition of these irreconcilable things visibly before us just stops our mouths how can you argue against that there's the visible demonstration of the glory of Israel in the face of a Gentile and the light that has lightened him but if it's only a religious face under obligation they'll not see it and your face is that intractable statement of the truth of where you in fact are in God you're responsible for your face someone has said by the time you're 40 certainly beyond that so why is God speaking this now if this drama is yet maybe who knows how many years hence because we need to attend to it now and we'll not come to that illumination that light as independent spiritual virtue also as living in isolation we'll only come to it in the context of the body we'll only come to it by the correction and disciplines and various other workings of God that come when we are really rightly related and rightly engaged with other believers in the same enterprise but if our connection is only a Sunday service and just a trifle giving God an hour or two we'll never attain to it so you can see how the issue of our last day's witness is the issue of the church and that's no accident that God sends an intention so that even an unbelieving Israel is God's provision for the church to bring it to the place we would not otherwise have sought nor obtained and that this German theologian sees that we join this people spiritually and psychologically remember when I said there's nothing more fearful than an unregenerate journey it will chill your blood at 50 yards the visible cruelty of what they are capable the issues from them and yet conversely there's nothing more impressive nor melting than a spiritual journey so we join this people spiritually and psychologically we struggle politically and socially for this people we profess our faith in Jesus Christ and make the earth habitable for Israel maybe we would say and provide refuge for them in their last day's flight and return them to Zion as the redeemed of the Lord rejoicing for the discovery of their Messiah in the revelation that comes to them through us in the time of their greatest extremity we convert mankind to friendliness toward this people Jesus becomes Messiah of Israel in that the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob receives us as outposts among the people of the world what a way to look at the church an outpost of this messianic reality everywhere in the world advocates of the shalom that will encompass Israel and all peoples already presaging already giving advanced notice of the great reality the millennial reality to come now whether it's Cairo, Darmstadt or anywhere in the world an outpost of the reality that will one day cover all the earth and it will happen only because of this kind of church we are neither competent to judge nor responsible for the acknowledgement of Jesus as the Messiah on the part of the Jews we are however very much responsible for his recognizability I don't know if I would say amen to that whole statement that we are not responsible for the acknowledgement of Jesus I think that we are but I like the second part we are very much responsible for his recognizability that is to say that they can recognize him because we have conveyed to the Jew the Jewish component of their own Messiah because that's the way that we ourselves know him and have appropriated him and it's not by just saying something it just issues out of our pores once you have come to this reality and are nurtured in it luxuriate in it it will be exuded and expressed even when you're not explicitly speaking it that's an expensive witness so that's the end of the statement here's the summation after Auschwitz without changing their confession of Jesus Christ Christians have to remove their Christology what is that disturbing sound? fan is that the fan? how come it doesn't bother you guys? it does good ok see how technology is always wanting to insinuate itself we assert our authority so lay low don't exceed your limits don't try and interfere and be distracting after Auschwitz without changing their confession of Jesus Christ Christians have to renew their Christology what does he mean by that? they have to renew their own way in which they understand Jesus as a Jew Jesus who rules us today is a Jew his present Jewishness has not been lost nor dissipated away his own people have fetched him home I don't know about that he is seen in various ways by them we can no longer understand him according to the measure of our non-Jewish tradition which strives for a unified conception of Jesus enthralled to a Western rationality that would gain control of everything to systematize to make methodize to implement to can that's what he's getting at a can Jesus that is a formula we have to confess Jesus as Messiah without condemning others so that Jesus may be recognizable to Jews as Messiah this is the ultimate task and mandate of the church and it's a mandate of so ultimate a kind that it can only be fulfilled by a church transformed in the process of fulfilling it this is not a little thing that we can perform step one, step two this requires our transformation to persuade them of their own Christ and so it makes us as it saves them oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God who has been his counselor so this is our labor you prophetic men this is the call to communicate this mandate and challenge to the church that has been historically resistant to that message and would much rather find a cheaper and easier way for surely it will not attain to this reality independent of the cross coming out of our own culture to be Abrahamites is as radical for us as it was for Abraham there's no more radical demonstration of the cross aside from the crucifixion of Jesus than Abraham getting out of nation, kindred, and father's house we are the Lord Lord thank you my God for a call that we cannot ourselves fulfill thank you that you've given us a summons and a mandate