In this sermon, the speaker reflects on his experience with technology and his initial suspicion of computers. He shares a personal moment of loneliness and abandonment, which led him to weep and sow precious seeds with tears. The speaker then describes a recent visitation from the Lord, where he was instructed to make a choice between prophets, mentalities, and spirits in order to understand the faith. He concludes by emphasizing the importance of sowing seeds with tears and trusting that they will bear precious sheaves, bringing eternal joy to the Creator.

After this afternoon's session, I was ready to secede from the Union. I was going to submit my resignation as being superfluous and out of keeping with the tenor and the atmosphere that had been struck, and anything that I could say would be some pipsqueak minor note. But I'm in that class that the brother described as those who read and study and speak the word, that pitiful, pitiable class of Christian ministers who don't perform great works of miracles and wonder, so tolerate this little thing. And in fact, should the Lord succeed in what's in my heart, it will be a greater wonder and a miracle than any of the things that were described to us of healing and deliverance that we count as power. So Lord, lest I go already beyond what I should, enable my mouth to be impeccable and prudent, restrained but not evasive. And if I have to be explicit, for the church's sake, let it be. Because this people, in my understanding, do not realize what in fact was struck this afternoon and what I represent afterwards. And so far as I can understand it, and I may be wrong, it's a choice between prophets. It's a choice between mentalities. It's a choice between spirits. It's a choice between how to perceive and understand the faith. So my God, who is sufficient for these things, come in your great jealousy for the church, for the faith, for truth, and for those precious words, apostolic and prophetic, that you God more jealously than we could ever know, and rightfully so, being the high priest and the apostle of our confession, and also that your testimony is itself the spirit of prophecy. Come and instruct these children, and beyond them, through the tape, the church at large. We thank and give you praise in Jesus' name. Amen. You can turn with me to Psalm 126. Very brief. When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing. Then said they among the heathen, the Lord hath done great things for them. The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Amen. Well, in the first computer that I ever owned, and I did not turn on for three days, looking at it suspiciously, and knowing that it operates by demons, and not wanting to be compromised by its technology, I finally began. And I asked whoever was the technician in those days to insert this verse that we have read tonight, so that every time that computer comes up, I would read, They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goes forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Why did I ask that? Because I had experienced that. After three years of exile and banishment from our own property, our own Ben Israel in northern Minnesota, more than I want even to go into the detail, but after 10 years of remarkable community life, and weathering much of its storms, and all of their travail, and aggravation that can only be compounded and experienced within the church itself. The Lord made us to forsake the property, to abandon it. And the one brother who refused to receive my prophetic interpretation that God wanted everything brought into death, persisted in remaining. I had already gone, the other elder had gone, many had gone, but this one elder remained, who always wanted to live in a rustic environment, and had a little nucleus of souls yet remaining with him, that he could have continued in the property. And so we had numerous discussions, and I poured my soul out. The Lord did not tell me why this exile and banishment had to take place, why we had to abandon the property to the vandals and to the severe elements of northern Minnesota, why we had to lose our 501c3 status and identity, and the ministry itself. My marriage was threatened, so many things. My children vowed never to return, and I pleaded once more with this brother, but no, he couldn't see it. And so we had a final elders and wives meeting, and we went to our beds. The next morning was the final breakfast and departure, and when this brother came to the breakfast table, he was white as the proverbial sheet. And I said to him, what happened to you? My memory is the least of my faculties, and none of my faculties are that impressive, but my memory is the worst, and yet I remember every word of this moment of conversation. What happened to you? He said, when I went to bed, he said, I prayed and said, Lord, if I'm mistaken, you show me. But I think that he wasn't expecting to hear from God because he was a man so confident in himself that he was really mistaken. And the Lord said, if you'll not leave, I will kill you. He left, and the property was abandoned, and we didn't know for how long. We gave it over to another Christian organization. We left. We lost all control, and the Lord, of all things, had me in that remarkable season of death to attend a Lutheran seminary, a liberal Lutheran seminary. 65% of the faculty being women, and I think 100% of them were feminists or witches. I actually heard a talk brought by one of them on witchcraft, not to alert us to its dangers, but to commend it to us as being acceptable and, what's the word, and conformable to the Christian faith. I went up to the professor afterwards, and I said, if Luther knew that an institution bearing his name had been given over to what we have heard this afternoon, he would turn over in his grave. Oh, he said, well, we need to be informed. I said, that's too high a price to pay for information. So for two years in that institution, I was bloodied and knocked about and picked upon and threatened with expulsion because I dared call God he, which, according to these women, was sexist language, and that they were going to correct Christianity and the Bible itself because the Bible had been written under male dominance, and therefore they had it all wrong. God the Father has to be preceded by Mother Goddess of the earth. Can you imagine what an Elijah man would suffer from those Jezebels day in and day out? There's a brother with us here today who visited me while I was at that school, and as we came into the room, you could feel the tensions rise, and it was electric. And sure, it was not long before these women broke out in their threats, and I don't think I had yet opened my mouth. And when we came out, he said, of course, Art, you know what this is. This is the old conflict, Jezebel and Elijah. Well, I didn't plan to tell you all that except to say that out of that season of suffering of an exquisite kind that can only come to a man like me in an environment that is totally hostile and antithetical to all that is truly prophetic, in its institutional configuration with these women, having lost the property, lost the ministry, lost my wife, lost my children, in that great season of death that was tasted and experienced, the Lord began to open the revelation of the distinctive message that we bear for the church all over the world, namely, the centrality or the significance of Israel's redemption in the last days through the church. Well, the Lord, on top of everything else, had me on a sabbatical silence. All of this was without explanation. I just knew that I was not publicly to speak, and I had to honor that. It lasted 14 months. Can you imagine a man who lives by his mouth being compelled to a silence? And people would ask me, why can't you share? I'm forbidden. Well, here's how the silence was broken. After the first quarter in the seminary, and the Lord began to reveal to me the remarkable depth of this mystery lost to the church, I thought, what is the implication of the issue of Israel for the church in the last days? And I had no sooner come to that thought than the phone rang. It was a pastor from Sacramento, California, saying, Art, you don't know me, but we have been praying here at Thiel that God wants you to speak to us a seminar on Israel and the church in the last days. The exact phrase. And when that phrase came, I knew that I knew my sabbatical silence was over. I'm only asking you to consider how sacred is the subject that God would require that much of depth, not abstractly or academically or doctrinally, but in actuality to precede the first expression of a mystery that has been lost to the church in modern times and until now. That he would not allow any speaking of any other kind until this virginal word would first go forth. So you know what it means not having spoken for 14 months and feeling like a creaky old gate that needs to be oiled and wondering whether God would be there? Would I enjoy the kind of unction and anointing that I've known in times past? Because I'm not a teacher. I'm a prophetic man. And I was, what shall I say, charged and overflowing with remarkable sense of this mystery that I had never publicly have been required to express. I didn't have neat notes or an outline. I just had to stand before a congregation that paid $35 each, I believe, to come and all had their tape recorders poised to catch every jewel that would fall from my lips. And then to begin by beginning. Prophetic function is an anguish, and I'm suspicious of anyone who enjoys it. It's death, multiple deaths. And the matter that makes it so painful is that silence is not an option that you can choose when God requires your speaking. Like tonight. Tonight, I wish I were any other place. Tonight, I wish I had any other subject, but I have no choice in the matter. The Lord himself has set the stage and he's wanting something from me that I'll not know what it is in substance until I hear it out of my mouth. So don't desire to be a prophet. It's anguish, death, suffering. But here's the scene that I want to describe for you. 14 months not having spoken and having just now recently returned to the property by myself. Note it means to come to 160 acre property where 55 souls had lived in the intensity of daily community and to have the property totally abandoned for three years and suffering neglect and waste and vandalism. I painted my house yellow. Two brothers came and sprayed my house in a yellow bizarre paint that I found in some return of a mixture at Kmart. You never can imagine an uglier yellow than what I chose. It was bizarre, but it was bold and anything to relieve the grayness of a property that had sustained 55 souls and was now abandoned into death was a welcome relief. So I'm living in this house by myself and it's time now to go to Sacramento. I had my suitcase in one hand and my attache case in my other with notes and things from my reading and study. It was about 6 p.m. and the sun was coming down in that eerie light that is almost indescribable. I had left the house and I walked to the barn and for some reason I turned and I looked at the house. It was so melancholy. It was so pitifully sad. The emptiness of it, the haunting sense of the lack of life, the family that departed and deserted, the ministry gone. Who knows what this speaking would be. I can't sum up the strange sense of loneliness and desertion and all the kinds of things that a man could feel in a critical moment like that who's especially Jewish. Norwegians would not have experienced it. I looked as I looked at my house in that pale yellow light of dusk, the eeriness and the melancholy of the whole abandoned property and the mystery of God bringing us to these deaths without explanation broke upon my soul and tough Brooklyn boy that I am, I wept. I broke and I wept and as I wept the Lord quickened this very verse to me. They that go forth bearing precious seed and I had precious seed and sowing it with tears shall doubtless return bearing their sheaves with them. Well I'll tell you the sheaves that I'm about to gather. Just 10-12 days ago in a visitation from the Lord as profound as what happened at Antioch in chapter 13 of the book of Acts, the Lord came down in a morning prayer meeting at our revived restored resurrected community and made clear and he repeated it two days later that I was to diminish all activity to the church. Don't expect me back and I've been telling saints don't expect me back but I thought because of other commitments or old age but now don't expect me back because the Lord has made profoundly clear I'm to go to New York and live there and confront the Jewish community of New York City full time. That's a call I don't know how much you can understand it when I shared this only a few days ago in Phoenix. If I could tell you where I have been just these recent days and in how many countries, how many places and with what intensity you would wonder that I didn't yawn more this morning. I've been to every country that my brother mentioned in Africa, Zaire, Uganda. I've had adventures in all those places. Most recently I've come back from Chile and Brazil and 12 days in Israel, three days in New York City and before that Albania, Germany, Holland, Austria, Innsbruck where Jacob Hutter was burned at the stake whose name you don't know, know what he represents but whose tradition I'm consciously in union with, an Anabaptist persecuted by both the mainline Protestants and Catholics. I went to the very place where he was burned at the stake. So I've been busy and traveling and tired. I know what it means three hours and four hours sleep and waiting in planes and nine-hour flights and four or five-hour layovers until you're 24 hours going from the place of ministry to the place of home and then arriving with choked up, what do they call it, nasal passages and bronchial inflammation, something then that lingers for weeks and weeks and weeks and just as you're about to recover it's time for the next trip. I'm not saying any of this as an appeal for sympathy of any kind but just to know you, to let you know that when a brother yawns who wants to be polite it's because of a chronic exhaustion for past trips that will not be made up because future trips will yet bring new dimensions. So what's the significance of this going forth sowing seed with tears? One thing we need to understand that the tears cannot be self-pity. They cannot be indulgent commiseration for ourselves of what we're sacrificing for God or we're rejected or we're not understood. Any tear of that kind will never eventuate in harvest. It's tears of another kind and I would say they are the tears of the Lord. It's not something that we raise up or affect emotionally or sentimentally but as some identification with the Lord, the sense of his own sorrow, his own grief as he looks over the condition of the world and of the church and of the people Israel and knowing that even though you're going to confront them in New York City, don't expect results. Don't expect gratitude. It's rare enough to find it in the church. You're not going to find it from your embedded kinsmen who have been turned off historically for centuries against Christianity as some kind of noxious Greek philosophy of a God in three persons that is patently wrong and that Jesus could never have been the Messiah because he did not honor the Shabbat and beside the conditions that would come with the Messiah of peace and reconciliation, the world has not yet come. So in every hand and in every estimation, he's false and you're going to come to New York and proclaim him? Not only am I to come to New York but the Lord more recently said, while you're there, why don't you work on your PhD? You'll be calling me Dr. Katz one day. But that's not because I need some prestigious addition to my name but because to seek that gives one a legitimate function and allays the suspicion who is this man? He might be a missionary but to be a doctoral candidate at Columbia University and accessing other seminaries that are in consortium with that school is a very legitimate thing and a renowned and respected thing especially by Jews. And who do you think are the heads of these departments with whom I will have to do? To penetrate the academic world of New York City is to penetrate the Jewish community and to penetrate the Jewish community in New York City is to penetrate the world. We're not just talking about a little ethnic minority, we're talking about the seat of power and influence under the domain of principalities and powers of the air that have never been arrested, challenged, threatened, or recognized. I'm going right into that thing but I'll tell you what, I would not be going into it if it did not start 15-20 years ago with the abandonment of the property, the forms of death, and all of the pathetic things that began with looking at a yellow house with the sun going down on it and breaking and tears and weeping. The harvest now has got to do with the tears that were sown and I would say this, every harvest has to do with tears that are sown. Harvest that is eternal so long as the tears are not self-pitying but the very sense of God's own sorrow knowing that you're going to go to a people and who will oppose themselves in their own ignorance, will reject your word and knowing what the consequence of that rejection will be for them in suffering and in death. How long will it be before suicide bombers will be going off in New York City and in places that Jews frequent and institutions and banks and maybe the very school that I'll be attending, Lord willing. Don't think that this is a phenomenon confined to the state of Israel. There are fanatical Muslims everywhere in the world and well placed in the United States that will one day bring Jewish terror and fear to such a pitch that they'll not be safe in any place. So that's the environment that I'll be going into but I better not go into it dry-eyed. I better not go into it clinically. I better not go in being correct and having it all laid out and telling them step one, step two, step three, are you saved brother? What do you think of Jesus? If someone had approached me 37 years ago in exactly that way, I would have turned on my heel in contempt and walked away and be dead. Praise God that when it came time for my salvation, the men that God put in my path and the women were not dry-eyed, clinical and correct. They had not reduced the gospel to a formula, are you saved brother? But they spoke in such a way I was pierced through because they had seed to sow that was holy and you can't buy it in a five and ten cent store as a little packet. It's holy seed, not a formula for salvation and it has to be nurtured in the vessel that bears it. God forbid that we become so slothful, lazy and mechanical that we have reduced the holy gospel that Paul says my gospel. It is like a love affair with a message but it's more than some formulaic reduction on how to get saved. For Paul it was the the cosmic breath of God that that eventuates into salvation to the uttermost that that he jealously nurtured and brought forth in love both to the Greek and to the Jew appropriate to his audience and to his hearer in the wisdom of God. That's if we need seed and we need tears and may well be that the seed is not just the message but the messenger himself. If he's brash, a hot shot, meets the Jews on their own ground, likely to be without effect but let them meet the meekness of the Lamb. Let them meet the Holy One of Israel who comes in a unsuspecting frame who has also his origin in Brooklyn but the way in which the man speaks conducts himself. His demeanor, his mode is altogether other than they have ever seen in Jews of any description. It's the Lord. The seed itself is the man. The man is the message and that kind of thing is incubated. Is not formed in a day but comes through a process of God of suffering, of requirement, of obedience, of things passing into death, of wives threatening divorce and suicide, of children leaving, of all the kinds of things that the Lord knows how to orchestrate in order that when you go out with the precious seed you go out weeping. So if we go out in any other manner we ourselves need to have our captivity turned. If we go out in the manner that is Babylonian, that is brash, hot shot, arrogant, super confident, we ourselves need to come out before we can go forth. We have to wait until the Lord turns again the captivity of Zion and there's nothing that alarms me more today than to see the sudden rise in popularity of apostolic and prophetic entities or ministries that have an overnight success and have it all reduced to a formula, to mode, to methods, and to system centering usually in a conspicuous personality who does not in any way appear to me to have the stature, the weight, the breadth that one expects in an apostle or prophet. They're not just sharp characters who have learned to extrapolate verses from the Bible and make application to show churches their error or to correct them in their way. What they bring more than anything else is the sense of God himself. That's the foundation of the church. God as he in fact is and not as men think him to be. For if we are in error about God, we're in error about everything. If we can be appealed to on the basis of soul, soulishness, or manipulation, where are we and what in fact then can we communicate? So the most foundational thing that only these men can bring because they have a special schooling in God that's not a quickie and an overnight but a long process of multiple deaths is the knowledge of God as he in fact is as they know him in the fellowship of his sufferings. So I'm very jealous, not so much jealous as God himself for the great words prophetic and apostolic and to see that there seems to be a new novelty of men now taking up that vocabulary and that language and seeking to institute it and having whole systems. So I recently got something in the mail from a young man who purports to be a prophet in Minneapolis advertising his prophetic program and in the corner of the mailing is approved by the dash dash dash international something or other apostolic ministry, the seal of approval. He's kosher because he bears the name of this renowned figure who has been acknowledged to be somehow the apostle of our time. It's frightening. So I like the Lord turns to captivity when the Lord will as much as we desire it we know that it has to issue from him and if we seek to ourselves initiate something in advance of the time by our own well-meaning activity and conduct what are we doing but deepening the whole issue of Babylon itself instead of delivering we come more deeply into the Babylonian elements that are brash that are human that are self-initiated that are egotistical and vain and it doesn't deliver anyone. So those who doubtless come again with shouts of joy bearing precious sheaves with them must first of all as the scripture says have gone out. He that goeth forth weeping bearish precious seed and this evening just looking over the text a thought occurred to me this going forth and going out is not only the issue of leaving Minnesota to go to New York City but it's a coming out and a going forth from ambition from concern for your ministry for acceptance and success for all of the kinds of things if they become central to our interest become forms of manipulation adjusting our voice taking on certain manner of delivery knowing how to affect response among God's people how to build and how to employ which is itself all of the essential elements of Babylon there's got to be a going out and a coming forth out of one's own ambition not that the the ambition is wicked it's ambition for God but we are subtly insinuated in that ambition also before the Lord can send you to sow seeds with tears by which you'll reap with joy a harvest and achieves there has got to be an expelling and a dealing and a coming out of those subtleties that remain that most Christians can't even detect because they are in some measure still in it ambition pride voice as manipulation soulishness artifice manipulation in a self-conscious way that's why God had to wait before he could say in Acts 13 separate unto me Saul and Barnabas for the work went to I have called them because they had first been separated from their own Jewishness from their own ambition from their own desire you'll know that you're separated that you've come out and come forth when you have no desire to go when it's all the same to you whether you remain in Antioch or Minnesota or go God has dealt with those subtleties of soul that if they still linger and remain will bring a corruption and a defilement with you and not bring an eternal sheave you might see some responses you might see some result but not the sheaves that are groaning with fruit of an eternal kind so please consider that that those that so in tears that go forth have gone forth even from themselves even from their own ambition even from the subtlety of their own hearts and that cannot take place except in the true fellowship of the saints there's got to be in Antioch there's no amount of critical self-analysis by which you're going to finger and touch those subtleties of soul that compromise you it's only it's the work that takes place in the authentic relationship of saints one with another where you're free to adjust to correct to raise questions in love about the manner the voice the the style of a brother style is a no-no style is already something self-affected something employed for effect and it's a calculation anything that's calculated is babylonian we have got to be artless we have got to be as as innocent as the lamb as mindless about how we speak on the one occasion as we will on another and you know what we will find that if we truly the lords there are times when we will bleep like a lamb we will be the most inoffensive of men and other times we will come on like gangbusters with such severity and confrontational boldness that you wonder it could issue out of the same vessel the thing that prevents the lord's total possession of the servant is his own design for himself of how he thinks he ought to speak conduct and be in order to obtain what he thinks are justifiable ends so long as we're in that frame we're still in babylon and we need the deliverer to come to us and we could be assured that in that condition even if we go forth it will not bring eternal sheaves it's probably more a self-originated sending than the call of god himself he knows when we are separated from race from ethnic identity from religious ambition from ourselves and maybe not the least of the weeping is the recognition that it's in this very area that we have been presumptuous and premature and arrogant and have failed for those very reasons and we repent and we were tearful at misplaced energies and presumed presumption upon god of which we were fully confident that it was he and now know the better that it was something was self-initiated and self-activated so these tears can have complex origin so the man is the message the seed that to be sown and it's to be sown onto a hard ground i don't know if you can imagine what new york means what do they say it's the graveyard of evangelists david wilkerson has been a conspicuous success but he himself has said to me that new york is a jewish city it is the jewish city it is the effectual jerusalem of the world the writers the thinkers the media men the bankers the financiers all of the things that influence uh our society and our civilization has its nexus there he says it's a jewish city and we'll never take new york by circumventing this people but we don't know anything about them you teach us this is going in to the heart of the matter this is ultimate confrontation and we've got to go in the auspices of god in the moment of god's choosing which came only 10 12 days ago and has been confirmed again by the lords since that time but only because there's a preparation of a long-standing kind he's not going to send you as a novice into the lion's den and that preparation included as i've shared with you those seasons of heartache and heart brokenness and dismay without explanation that god requires us to experience that we might bear the precious seed and indeed be it so it's not the matter of how gifted we are with our mouths or how carefully and scripturally formulated our messages are or how stylistic but the tempered and engrafted word and the out of the anvil of real life situation in the body in the corporate life a history with god and with men and it's out of this that i believe the precious seed is formed it's interesting that those many today who are purporting to be prophets and apostles have not this foundation or this history they have come out of the blue there's no history in the body of christ there's no formative thing by which they could have been tempered and and passed and been sifted and refined before being released and sent out into significant places so i see this as critical this seed corn this holy seed can only be formed in that earnest life which is corporate and with god's people and humbling because the man himself not only his word is that seed that needs to be sown into a very hard and inhospitable and adverse earth and the lord does not give us some grand machinery to break it up but our hands our own weakness it's remarkable that the world has all of the marbles i was recently visiting a hutterite colony and they had john deere equipment that cost hundreds of thousand dollars a year to lease so electronic so remarkably sophisticated that they set the dials and make the readings and sit back in an air-conditioned and air-cushioned cabin and the thing will plow the straightest lines that have ever been seen and know exactly when to stop to turn the whole thing is remarkably technologically formulated but the work of god bare hands brute tools nothing sophisticated but sweat labor and no apparent success can we labor in a field where we're not going to see gratifying results but angry stares or angry words or worse but god says and this is our basis for hope but nevertheless you shall doubtless return you'll go back again to the very place where you thought your labors were vain and there you'll garner the harvest and there you'll come back bearing sheaves with rejoicing over the singing jesus himself is a wonderful example he labored for three and a half years with his own nation and crucified in his own capital city and mocked with the sign over his head jesus of nazareth king of the jews listening to the scorn of those he came to save while he's dying in agony on that cross and taken in death but soon to come as king of the jews and in the very place where he was despised and mocked and ridiculed in that place he will rule out of zion from the from the throne of david as a son of david and the word shall go forth out of zion and the law of the lord out of zion of the word of lord out of jerusalem to all nations he's going to reap in the very place where he has so his his sowing of the seed seemed fruitless only a remnant but out of that investment of tears and anguish of soul he wept over jerusalem there's going to be a harvest that will affect all the world and in fact the psalm itself that we're reading says so because the remarkable thing about this psalm is that the heathen in verse two say the lord has done great things for them the heathen means islamic nations it means superficially christian nations it means hinduistic and buddhistic and and native american and every other kind of variety of religious themes the heathen are going to say the lord has done great things for them why will they say it because they cannot help but deny the greatness of what god has done he has come out of zion to deliver the captives to turn the captivity of israel after 2 000 years perhaps in response to those who have gone as sent ones to break up that ground and sow that seed but the nations must acknowledge it the lord they don't say god they say the lord has done it's an acknowledgement of the identity of the one who has so conspicuously revealed himself in israel's deliverance that they have no alternative hereafter but but to acknowledge that the god of israel the god of jacob is a lone god with all due respect to what was shared this afternoon about nations and government and yes but the true turning and acknowledgement of god waits not on individual ministries but rather what god will have done for israel before the face of all nations then shall the heathens say the lord has done great things for them and when they acknowledge that the lord has done it how do you come to that kind of an acknowledgement without yourself coming to the conclusion that it requires how do you make that recognition about the lord having done and not accept him as lord this is not an idle acknowledgement of the nations this is their salvation and it'll only come in this way and this way along it waits for israel's deliverance and israel's deliverance waits for those who go forth like me and others like me and the church itself in weeping for this people knowing that our word will be rejected that they'll oppose themselves in their ignorance and we'll get back our word in our teeth we're not going to have the gratification that is to be desired when you give yourself in ministry and yet we're willing to go because the lord has says doubtless you shall return to the very place where you seem to have been defeated where the very place where there's been no acknowledgement no hope of success in that place you'll come back with rejoicing with sheaves of eternal fruit god has said so so one who goes forth rests everything on the word of god because he says doubtless thou shalt return no doubt about it and because he says that we can labor now incessantly and fully without having to see a gratification that would sustain us and enable us to go on this is an unusual kind of service but it's the kind that eventuates in a harvest of an eternal kind i'm jealous for the church for such a calling it's the calling of us all when we ourselves shall be delivered out of our babylon spurgeon and his comment on this psalm reminds us that after having cast our precious seed into the ground weeping we have to allow it to submit to a winter of dark cold something will come over it you're not going to see an immediate fruitage but the thing that even deadens and minimizes your hope and and would discourage you from continuing is to know that even after the ground has been broken and the hard labor that it requires after two thousand years of prejudice and resistance against the gospel and the seed sown in tears without any visible response or encouragement there's yet a cold winter that lays over that ground waiting for the warmth of a sun to break that seed out and have it to shoot forth and i believe that that warmth is going to come from the heat of persecution that's coming upon the people israel all over the world the time of jacob's trouble wherever jacob is we need we have to sow the word that when the heat comes there's sacred holy seed already invested that seemed to us fruitless without without encouragement but the heat itself will make it break forth out of that winter of confinement and death and become something precious and fruit bearing to the lord all of these metaphors are in the agricultural realm that are not familiar to us city slickers but it's clear with what god is speaking about we have to be faithful husbandmen breaking the ground sowing the seed and not expecting immediate consequence or result but we know that our labor is not in vain for we shall come back bearing precious sheaves with shouts of joy when the sun of coming persecution the heat of it will bring that seed to fruitfulness for us why is it a great thing because for us who's the us the covenant breaking the god rejecting the gospel resisting paul is not exaggerating when he says of us jews that we are the enemies of the gospel for your sake and when when we recognize it when god turns our captivity when we will shout with laughter for joy because we didn't expect such a deliverance and it comes at the least expected moment and when it comes it comes suddenly and when it comes it comes because of the lord and he's done it for us the least deserving the most apostate the most opposing we're not just indifferent to the gospel we ourselves are the authors of alternative gospels called marxism freudianism and every kind of ism that has a jew at its origin and he's done it for us that spurgeon says the meanness of those who receive from god so graciously gives greater glory to the greatness of the god who performs it because he's done it for us he has done the lord has done great things for them he has done great things for us and it's this great thing that will save the heathen and nothing less or other everything else is the finger in the dike the hopeful touching of individuals but the sweeping of nations into the kingdom in the acknowledgement that the lord is the lord who has done this great thing waits on israel's redemption and israel's redemption waits on those who will go forth bearing precious seed weeping if anyone ought to be circulating an application for intercessors it's me but i'm not going to do it let let the spirit of god stir you to remember art in new york that babylon that hardest of all places that has chewed up and spit out a well-meaning evangelist since time immemorial how is he going to make it and he's going to be right into the thick of that academic community that intellectual theological seasoned resistant the the skill of these men their ability their erudition their hebrew all of the kinds of things that i lack it's like a babe being sent forth before wolves are you going to pray for that babe your prayers and your your prayers that are not just mechanical or obligatory but are with weeping will open the heavens and give me grace and favor with men and bring a word out of my mouth that they cannot gainsay for all of their sophistication and erudition he can bring a word of a kind that will leave them aghast and their mouths a gap it'll be in proportion to your prayer you'll be sowing precious seed through the sent servant in your identification with him the lord will have done great things for us whom we have provoked by our sins worse than our fathers that that recast us into captivity covenant breakers time without end that he should do this for us who are so very unworthy this will be a font a fountain of eternal remembrance and a humbling tempering for ourselves as a priestly people oh i know i'm over your head but listen to this we're called to be a nation of priests and a light unto the world and a lot of your condition is the statement of the absence of the kind of ministration that would have come to you if we jews were fulfilling our own destiny the world is suffering the world as our brother described the horrors the genocidal things the the wholesale death of infants and every other kind of horror i was taken to a gym to get some exercise and here are these beautiful middle class girls tattooed it's a horror of a declining civilization for the want of priests who could teach the people the difference between the holy and the profane but we jews proud religionists that we are what is to save us after this so great redemption from looking down our noses at these goyim these gentiles who are still knocking about with tattoos and and putting things in their tongues and belly buttons and all of that what what will temper us to really be priests to identify with the goyim and not exhibit a jewish spiritual superiority that would negate our priestliness and this is what it will be we will bring into our millennial and eternal destiny the remembrance of our covenant breaking history of our opposition to god of our hardness of heart how we persecuted the apostolic church after crucifying the lord of glory having stoned the prophets that were sent unto us and having done to art in in new york with what they'll be pleased to do he has done great things for us all the more great because of what we have been until he has done the great thing and we will take the remembrance of that great thing despite our unworthiness into our entire millennial future and it will temper us as an entire priestly people you'll not recognize us we'll be jews of another kind and it will bless all the families of the earth for in that day the lord will be one in his name will be one for even the heathen will recognize that the lord is none other than the god of jacob and the god of israel and the god of all creation and that his salvation has been so real to israel that those who ascribe that salvation to go to the lord must subscribe to the lord himself as their savior to subscribe is to subscribe to acknowledge something is to surrender to that something in lordship and so all the heathen shall be saved the nation shall come to the lord israel will be central to all of these redeemed nations and the nations themselves will be the eternal wreaths of fruit that will be gathered by those who have sown in tears for it this is the this is the grand sweep of god this is the great redemptive program of god to a redeemed israel but what is the condition for that israel's redemption after so long an apostasy in opposition to god that there are those who have gone forth out of themselves out of their ambition out of manipulation out of religious stylistic things to go forth in brokenness and simplicity and humility in the character of god himself and sell themselves into that hard earth now when the lord comes when the season of persecution that proceeds is coming all of those things god can quicken that holy seed that was sown and a nation will be saved in a day and the heathen will see it and marvel so may this be an encouragement for us all that this hope of harvest of consummation will encourage our own present and weary hearts who have been discouraged about the condition of the church what what what shall how shall i say this lord it's critical that we acknowledge the truth of the church's condition without allowing ourselves to become embittered over that condition what to see ourselves as superior to it or condemning of the babylon that it represents we have somehow to have a benign gracious attitude even for babylon or else we cannot be its deliverer if we have a superior spirituality there in that condition we are the come outers we will not affect anyone's ultimate redemption there's something required from us who sow seed of a brokenness even for the babylon which we understand only too well and from which we ourselves are being brought out that's why david could not kill saul though his his own soldier said hey this is the thing that the lord has said take advantage of it you got this guy at your mercy he's in the cave he's a threat to your whole davidic future as the king of israel you have every right and justification to do him in he'll never reform he'll he won't be grateful that you've spared him he'll cry his crocodile tears but within a day or two he'll be resuming his pursuit of you but david would not so much as touch the man and when he had to cut just the corner of his robe his conscience was stricken the sensitivity even to a man out of the anointing of god even to an apostate king who is bent upon killing him is a remarkable statement of the attitude that god waits for us toward the existing church and all of its fault and all of its shambles and all of the things that we can so easily ridicule and oppose and bitter bitterly criticize there's an attitude of heart and spirit that god has allowed that babylon to remain not so much for its sake but for ours because it tempers us if we would understand it rightly and have god's compassionate regard for it and even weep for it in its era yes i'm not happy for these supposed and self-authenticating apostles and prophets but my heart breaks for these men for their own deception for their naivety for their superficiality for their shallows for their ambition so if unless we have this kind of identification with the lord that weeps that is compassionate that identifies they'll not be harvested so may this word to us today be an encouragement to allow the full process of god to have its work and to know only the lord the lord turns the captivity of zion in the set time that he chooses to favor it when his people are identified with him not in some spiritual superiority or brash uh determination of what they're going to do out of their own ability but a recognition that even with our best and well-meaning intention unless the lord nurtures the holy seed some uh will they'll not be harvested the lord turned to captivity the lord has done great things for them the lord has done great things for us the lord the lord the lord hallelujah let's pray for the spirit of this psalm to come into our hearts and for our own willingness to know uh exile abandonment if we're going to go to a people and speak a message of their coming calamity we need in some measure to know in our own experience what it is that they're going to experience and also to give them a note of hope that the lord will return restore zion we are back on that same property in the place where i left weeping with with my suitcase in one hand and my my notes in the other we are now back on that property on the resurrection side and after going through a struggle again with the community with their souls and all the complexities of life and issues that people god's own people generate when they live authentically and intensely together not with the staff not with paid employees but with those who are voluntary voluntarily in it with you even in their well-meaning intention the struggles and the differences were only within two months ago the whole community was threatened again with dispersal one family told me they were about to leave god restrained them and that same brother came to the prayer meeting when the lord broke in and gave the revelation of the call to new york though he should have been at work two days later the lord came again the brother was there a second time the lord impressed them to be there for the prayer meeting that the very places where we were strained almost the breaking is today the very strength of this community that is sending now its chief brother and leader and founder in to the babylon that new york is knowing it's the lord's call and that we are identified together in it as the antioch of god that is joined in an authentic unity that has come through struggle suffering and the resolution of differences by the spirit of god in the pain that that requires got the picture no shortcuts but that's the real thing a real sending or the lord would not have sent it waited for this so lord in jesus name blessing upon your church blessing upon your servants blessing upon our well-meaning intentions if it in any way my god is at odds with the mode and means by which your great redemption is to come to nations in the earth by that which first is made visible to them in the redemption of israel itself that comes at a time when they least expect it when they least deserve it when they themselves are so astonished by their deliverance that they laugh they can't hold it back it's not a giggle it's it's beyond words it's beyond emotion the lord has done this there is a lord is a deliverer and he's done it in proportion to the holy seed that was sown by those who went forth weeping with tears so lord break us up in the deeps deal with anything in us that is brash that is mechanical that is human that is religious that is uh manipulative temper your body temper the church bring us out of babylon in full that we might be sent forth my god to the sowing of the precious seed that we ourselves will bear formed in us in the reality of our true life together in the church and not just a little patsy formula or a way of saying something that's clever or attention-catching it's a holy seed it's not something from the five and ten cent store in a packet it has a history it comes out of a suffering it's in our entrails and in our guts we are the message bless the church lord bring us of age we pray bless this word in the day that you've given us and the things that have been set before us help us to see my god what you're wanting us to see wanting us to understand a church coming of age send forth lord even out of this audience into places my god that are hard those that will break up that hard and inhospitable soil not with a clever technology but with the natural things my god that are our hands and the grace that you give to those who labor that those seeds my god may be sown with tears for doubtless they shall return bearing precious sheaves with them to the eternal joy of their creator and their lord we thank you give you praise for the so great calling and the reminder my god of its constituent elements lest we veer from it in jesus name and god's people said amen