In this sermon, the speaker highlights the distorted reality that exists in the world today. He mentions the acts of violence and terrorism committed by individuals who believe they will be rewarded in the afterlife. He also discusses the limited vision and lack of understanding of God's grandeur in certain African communities, where people live in poverty and see themselves as mere merchandise. The speaker emphasizes the importance of aligning oneself with God and seeing Him in His true reality, as this will lead to a life free from fear and petty ambitions. He concludes by stating that our worship is lacking because we have lost sight of the awe and fear of God.

Well, I'm still looking at yesterday's selection from Oswald Chambers about seeing, the phenomenon of seeing, and I looked it over again this morning. The scripture that he uses is from Isaiah 6.1, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord. And it's going to take a special grace of God to explicate the enormous portent of that statement. But there's a conjunction between a death and a seeing. He saw the Lord high and lifted up. He was already the Prince of Prophets. He does not commence his ministry at Isaiah 6. He was already in his prophetic call from chapter 1 right through to 6. And breathing out remarkable oracles of impending judgment and indictment against Israel. But something happens that commences Isaiah 6. A vision of the Lord high and lifted up, which is so transfiguring by its very nature, that the man himself is undone. Here's where language betrays us. Undone doesn't begin to touch the depth of what was registered upon his soul at this vision. So when he says high and lifted up, his train filled the temple, it's God enthroned. He's seeing the Lord in the majesty of his rulership. He's seeing the Davidic glory, a glimpse of it, and it's so shattering, so ultimate, so consummate, that he cries out, Woe is me, I am undone, I'm a man of unclean lips. Can you picture that? An oracle of God, the Prince of Prophets, to whom is entrusted more insight and statement on the coming Messiah than any other, cries out, I'm a man of unclean lips. And the people are people of unclean lips. And he's totally devastated. In fact, unless the Lord does something of a miraculous kind, he can no longer continue. Something has got to touch those unclean lips, and it's the call from off the Lord's altar. The apoplexy and trauma and depth of devastation morally and personally has got to come to the Prophet before it comes to the nation, because the Prophet has got to experience his message. So the Lord gives it to him in a single devastating moment, but the effect upon him is altogether in proportion to what will befall Israel itself, which is fitting, for the Prophet is no antiseptic messenger just bringing a tiny little statement. He is the thing in himself. So if he's undone, he's got to be redone. We can almost say that Isaiah 6 is both the death and the resurrection of the greatest oracle of God called the Prince of the Prophets that takes 66 chapters to express the sweep of his vision and of his seeing that waited on a death. You think it wasn't a happenstance, a concurrence, that this thing happened at the same time, or is there a conjunction between the death of King Uzziah and the release of the vision of God high and lifted up by which the Prophet himself sees himself anew, because to see God as he in fact is, is to see oneself as we in fact are. There's no true seeing of ourselves except in the light of and the comparison with the seeing of God as God. So we're suffering from an inadequate seeing. We see only in part and if death was the key to this revelation, why, what was represented in Uzziah's death? Uzziah was not one of the apostate kings of Israel. He was one of the best and one probably in whom the Prophet had invested great hope, something not unlike the Christian Zionist expectation for the present state of Israel. Here the plot begins to thicken where I require a grace to communicate. It requires a death of something hoped for that is short of God's ultimate provision in order to begin to see rightly the magnitude of God and ourselves as nothing else can reveal that truth. So I'm saying by that, that if this kind of a death to that which was hoped for in Uzziah released the revelation of the Lord high and lifted up in the majesty of his rule enthroned whose train filled the temple, what kind of a death will be necessary for the church in order to see the majesty of God enthroned in the things pertaining to the destiny of Israel. Because the dealings with Israel, the last day's judgment as we read yesterday that requires an uprooting and a sifting of an entire nation through the nations is in its magnitude so sweeping, so cosmic that it eclipses the coming out of Egypt. You no longer remember me as the God who brought you out of Egypt. Henceforth you remember me as the God who brought you out of every nation where I have dispelled you. This is massive. But it's in that revelation, it's in that conduct, it's in that act depicted before the face of all nations, visible to all of God's severity and judgment that does not hesitate to bring down a nation which we had hoped would succeed. That nation is King Uzziah for many of us. Our hopes are pinned to its success as I'm surmising and suspecting that Isaiah's hope was pinned to this man. It required the death of that hope that released Isaiah into the greater seeing and the greater speaking of the thing which would eclipse what he had hoped for. Something like that happens to the disciples with Jesus. It took the death of Jesus to release the disciples to a greater vision than what they had hoped for. Remember that the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, they were crestfallen, they were dejected and Jesus comes up alongside them in his resurrection form and they do not recognize him because their eyes, it says in the King James, was beholden. They could not yet see. And he just, you know, the way that he has, well what are you guys looking so sad about? Are you estranged from these parts that you've not heard? That this Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet, mighty in word and deed, was the lack of the last taken by the hands of wicked men and crucified and died. Are you estranged that you don't know these things? And so he went on with them and it says that he made as if he would have continued and they constrained him to come in because night was approaching. So, see the way we prophetic men read night is approaching. The Lord would have allowed himself to go on and kept them in that stage of concealment but because they beseeched him to come in because the night was approaching that when he broke bread in their home their eyes were opened and they beheld this is very Jesus whom we saw on the cross dead, cadaver, pitiful, stricken and with him our hopes were crushed. We had thought it had been he who would have restored the glory of Israel. And then Jesus begins to tell them of the things written of him in the Psalms and in the prophets as their eyes are opened to behold and to consider a greater glory. Lord give me grace. Can you see? Are your eyes open to behold? There is a profound pattern in all this that requires a death before there is a true seeing. And that death has got to be in the thing hoped for. Jesus had to be a dead cadaver and the expectancy and the hope of men that it had been he who would have restored the glory of Israel had to die with him. So that their eyes could be opened that were closed to behold now the Lord in his resurrection form and the glory of things yet to be fulfilled by the church that would emerge out of his riven side and receive the spirit of his ascendant life to fulfill a mystery of Israel that would be a glory that would so eclipse what they would hope he might have restored had he lived. There's a death that precedes the true seeing and the true glory. So I'm saying that it's going to take the death of present Israel. Present Israel, the state of Israel is the Uzziah of the contemporary evangelical and charismatic church. And they will be as stricken and as crestfallen and dejected as the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Because they had hoped that that Israel would have been the fulfillment of the prophecies and the nation hoped for. But alack and alas it will suffer as devastating a death as Jesus himself. And they will be plunged into as great a depression as the two on the road to Emmaus. Some will not survive that depression. Some will be bitter and angry against a disappointed God who failed to come through according to their expectancy. But others because of the death and the removal of the thing that was only given momentarily will see and glimpse the larger destiny and glory. They'll see the Lord high and lifted up. Not in actual vision. They'll see the Lord high and lifted up in the fulfillment of something that required the death of the state of Israel. Mainly the restoration of a people who will fill the earth with its fruit. And out of whose nexus and locus the word of the Lord will go forth to the nations and the law of the Lord out of Zion. They'll see the nations coming to Jerusalem on the Feast of Tabernacles. They'll see a priestly nation restored and bringing the benevolence of the kingdom to the Gentile nations and that there'll be righteousness in the earth and that God will judge with equity between the nations. It's a much greater vision and of the glory of God than to believe for the present state. Can you see that? But it requires the death of that earlier seeing. That earlier attachment in order to be open for the greater revelation. There's a pattern here that's unavoidable. I'm so struck with it. I'm just gasping Lord grace to communicate this because there's going to be massive disillusionment massive dejection massive depression and the failure for believers to see the thing for which they had hoped. Not only the restoration of Israel but even escape from tribulation in a pre-tribulation rapture. What if both of those things fail to materialize and one on the heels of the other and they're stuck not only with a failed nation but with a presence in the midst of tribulation in the world their disappointment and dejection will be insurmountable and inestimable. But for those who can receive it and understand the pattern and the divine logic that requires a death to the lesser thing in order to behold the greater you will not be taken up in that disillusionment. In fact you'll be rejoicing because you'll understand that this is following the pattern established in Isaiah chapter 6 and Jesus in the New Testament that he himself had to die in order to disappoint the expectancy of his disciples. Listen to the way the two on the right who may speak we had thought it had been he who had restored the Lord Israel. Who's the he? A prophet mighty in word and deed. Well is that not true? Of course he was a prophet, mighty in word and deed but he was much more. They never saw the much more because it takes another kind of seeing to see the Lord high and lifted up and you'll know when you have come to that seeing because you'll be stricken instead of exulting look what I found and wait till I tell my friends about this and now I have an understanding of God in much greater dimension the effect of this seeing is to bring you down as undone you're stricken because you're seeing yourself now in the light of that greater glory and what a pitiful thing you are. We are if the prophet the prince of prophets has to cry out I'm undone and the place where he's undone is his mouth he's a mouthpiece for God and he's undone in his speaking, what shall we say? And somehow if he did not suffer that if he did not bear that indictment and death, we would not have from chapter 6 to chapter 66 which is the oracle from 40 on of Israel's restoration that the prophet of doom and judgment then receives the grace to be the oracle of the coming restoration which we've hardly looked at because we've not had time but he would not have been that at all unless chapter 6 had happened to him that King Uzziah's death was the key to a prophet brought into another dimension as the death that waits for us to come into another dimension but we have to die to the thing that is so desirable and gives such a prospect of hope, namely the present state or it may be for you something else, it may be for you your identification with a certain ministry or a certain man in ministry or your own estimation of yourself as being that man you've got to die to that one thing that keeps you from true seeing but there's got to be a death it had to be for the disciples it had to be for Isaiah it has to be for us so present Israel's necessary demise, downfall in judgment reveals the Lord anew how does it reveal him? high and lifted up because to see God in judgment is to see God you have an inadequate view of God until you behold him in judgment you'll have a patsy God of your own making and you'll call him Jesus and he's just one who brings you good things and boyfriends and girlfriends and health and prosperity an errand boy I'm of course exaggerating to make the point we will have a view of the Lord tempered and tailored to our own carnal and limited desire and interest until we see him high until we see him in the expression of his utter sovereignty and kingship expressed through judgment where not with the least of peoples but with the greatest and the foremost when God will judge the house of Israel when God will judge the apple of his eye, when he'll bring again another devastation to this people that exceeds the Nazi holocaust it's either got to utterly depress us or open us to a new perception of him high and lifted up for nothing reveals God so much as his righteousness through judgment exercised through sovereignty on the throne this is not a little fanciful vision high and lifted up, we see it as a poetry but what is the poetry saying if we don't see God this way, we don't see God and I can't think of anything more devastating than to have an inadequate view of God J.B. Phillips when he wrote the revised New Testament, the title was your God is too small and if your God is too small, your life is too small your life is inadequate it's been reduced if you've trivialized God what then will be left unaffected by that, you cannot trivialize God without trivializing life got the point the seeing of God as he is is the issue of everything but it requires the death of King Uzziah whatever that king is for you I'm just reading from today's selection from Eugene Peterson it's remarkable how the devotional materials so often coincide with the theme that the Lord makes alive on a given day he writes, there's a plenitude in God that great fact must never be lost or obscured we must not exchange this immense graciousness for a few scraps of human morality or a few chapeau proverbs, God is a vast reservoir of blessing who supplies us abundantly, if we lose touch with the reality of God we will live clumsily and badly I always write if we lose touch with the reality mark this you prophetic people the issue of God is the issue of reality that's what the whole ball game is about and we have a sick world that is deranged we have people blowing themselves up and sending their children to be blown up utterly persuaded that their death will earn them some eternal bliss with a harem of virgins, deception of a kind that completely contradicts what the scripture says is the fate of those who die in sin committing murder there's a world that is living in la la land and unreality and we're paying a price for it God is reality but not to see him rightly and to see him inadequately is to have that reality distorted and to live as he says clumsily and badly I wrote to live poorly and shabbily you can't live greater than your knowledge of God so when we came to Kenya and stumbled into this congregation on an afternoon who looked like one day was like another, who had no expectation and I was sitting in my shorts, not wanting to be called on but evidently there was something that needed yet to be said, the Lord got me before them as I've shared this with you and my first word, can God anoint the man in short pants? because these Africans, the formality of the gospel, the dignity requires a proper attire and then the Lord quickened as I got up out of my seat the injunction to Ananias to Paul Saul now become Paul having seen the Lord high and lifted up did he not die by the way? did the Pharisee not die because of the magnitude of the vision of the Lord high and lifted up a vision so great that he was made aware that the persecution of the church is the persecution of the Holy One of Israel, of every God himself if that will not kill a man, I don't know what will when it says that he lay for three days, neither eating nor drinking it's a picture of Paul going down into death everything died in those three days Talmudic Judaism Rabbinism the prize student of the Rabbi Gamaliel his zeal for God that made him a persecutor and a murderer his life went before him he had as severe a death as Isaiah in chapter 6 for the same reason, he saw the Lord we're yet alive, you know why? alive to the flesh, alive to ambition, alive to lust alive to subtlety of things because we've not yet seen the Lord high and lifted up we've seen him inadequately, we're living inadequately, and we're thinking inadequately, and so my message to those, that was the word go tell him what great things he must suffer for my namesake and so I said to them, if he has to suffer great things what are the things, if they are not themselves great, don't you know that you're called to greatness, imagine telling that to Africans in Kenya, who live in remember the picture I showed on the slide the guy wearing seven hats and belts around his neck and merchandise, he was a walking store his vision is so narrow so limited, he sees himself as an object of merchandise, he has no vision beyond eking out a living by selling something that's hanging off of his body, pitiful specimen, no vision of the grandeur of God you don't have to live this way brother, if you seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, all things will be added unto you God will supply if you make him a first priority that thought was so alien to this African but he allowed me to take his picture that we would pray for him that he would be freed from merchandise and catch the vision of God and of the kingdom and trust that God to supply, that he doesn't have to demean his humanity by becoming a walking piece of merchandise, got the picture he's living inadequately and unrealistically well, it's realistic in terms of Kenya because they don't have a unemployment program, there's no social insurance if you're unemployed if you don't eke out a living you die unless you have a vision of a God who says, if you seek me first you'll not die seek first my kingdom, my righteousness all things else will be added unto you your food, your substance your clothing, your life, your dignity but reverse this unreality and come into the reality of my word, which is totally in opposition, contradiction to that reality in which you've lived and had your being from infancy to this present moment in Kenya that's unreality present Kenya is unreality the kingdom of God is definitive reality God is reality and for the want of reality there's a sickness in the souls of men you go berserk, you divorce your wife, you entertain fantasy, you found a new woman who looks attractive and will supply you what your wife never did every kind of fantasy and notion can come into that void of people who are unrelated to God and are not in the place of reality so I'm appreciating what he's writing here God is vast don't make him small because if you make him small you'll be limiting yourself and this isn't an invitation for carnal ambition to think big and build a glass cathedral that will seat 10,000 and God will fill it that's a perversion, that's a cheapie of a hokey faith and a lot of those 10,000 seat auditoriums are going to remain empty and will be on the market for sale in the world of real estate to the disgrace and shame of those whose faith was more presumption than it was faith I'm not commending that, but I am commending the knowledge of God as being vast, high and lifted up much higher than simply restoring a nation for Israel as a homeland however humanly desirable that is, and historically desirable that God has an intention greater than that yes and that it cannot be fulfilled except the lesser thing first die in the imagination and hope of men yes and that is ever and always the pattern that Jesus himself had to supply in his own death because he was a prophet great in word and deed, true but not true enough not an adequate and full truth of who he was it took the cadaver on the cross and the depression of failed expectancy to receive the word and the breaking of bread to open the eyes to see the greater glory and then a band of disillusioned disciples who were studded with fear locking themselves in behind closed doors, break out, open the lock and come out into Jerusalem and sing the praises of the resurrected Christ and the vision of the kingdom that is now within the realm of possibility and are fitted for the glory of the spirit that shall come and are so bold that they cannot be restrained what happened? something died but something was made alive, the church came into being and full boldness in view of the Lord high in the floor but the Lord had to be dead first to a lesser expectancy though they were ready to promote him as king got the idea so if we lose touch with the reality of God, we will live poorly and shabbily we will live in fear and intimidation and petty religious ambition but if we see the Lord high and lifted up in his vastness then comes awe of God, the fear of the Lord, the very things that are missing from our contemporary Christianity and from its expression in worship that's why our worship is so shabby that's why it's performance that's why it's instrumentation that's why it requires amplifiers or overhead projectors because we've not seen the Lord high and lifted up and how does the Lord give us that vision in these last days one way only that his majesty his deity his wisdom his love, his righteousness will first be expressed in a cosmic massive judgment coming upon his own nation and out of that expulsion will be a global sifting and return through all nations so that the redeemed of the Lord shall return to Zion and be completely transfigured in the process to become the priestly people who will bring light to the nations and become the locus of a theocratic rule, the tent of David being restored and all Edom coming under its authority Isaiah chapter 2 will be fulfilled let's take a look at that just for a moment we can't go through this in same scripture in Isaiah chapter 2 as in Micah chapter 4 not that one copied the other but both received it independently by the same spirit the word of that Isaiah the son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem isn't that interesting how the Lord these last couple of days is speaking to us nothing other than the issue of seeing there's seeing and seeing right so you can look at me and you can see sweat graying hair protruding gut other aspects that are not commendable or you can see through the veil of the flesh the chosen the anointed the called in an age of false prophets hey there may be something here that's the true thing how are you seeing brothers saw me yesterday as an object of fear others see me as an object of fatherhood the same one who saw me one day as fearful the next day sees me as benevolent in fatherhood something happened to his seeing something broke there somewhere that enabled another perception seeing is the name of the game because we shall not live and serve greater than the extent of our seeing if we see God less and limited we will live less and limited we see God majestic high and lifted up we will live transcendently and the things that we prayed this morning that we will not be confined by natural limitation we will be transported we will be brought to the the chariot of the of the Ethiopian or where so ever it pleases him or we'll be in one place bodily but by our spirit we'll be at a brother's bedside or we'll be with Anna in Chile encouraging her in the spirit or even seeing her condition in the spirit we'll come into a transcendent place because we have a transcendent God and so I'm saying well listen this again what is the vision for us in these last days that will correspond to the necessary vision that came to Isaiah or else we would not have had the full expression of the prophet on which so much of God's restoration is predicated for our faith to believe through his word not the least of which is chapter 2 the word that Isaiah saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem it shall come to pass in the last days just exactly where we are and for which we have been called how do we know it's the last days because it has to do with the fulfillment of this prophetic seeing that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills and all nations shall flow into it the word mountain and hill is the the code word for government in Old Testament scripture mountain is government and rule Zion is the locus of God's theocratic rule it's a hill it's the holy hill of Zion hill is government mountain is government and that's why the false powers of darkness and the gods of this age always want to go up on the high places that's why they build towers of Babel that's why they worship their false gods and their pagan deities in high places because there's something about height that has to do with looking down and over presiding over that which is less which is rule and that the Lord's house the ultimate house the Zion of God shall be established no ifs ands and buts in the top of the mountain above all other things that are elevated United Nations security councils the government of individual nations of dictatorships the top the mountain of the Lord shall be established in the last days wish I had a hypodermic full of this I would stop speaking and just ask you to roll up your sleeve and I would give you a dose my temptation is not to give it to you in the arm but in some other place which I think some of you need okay and it shall be exalted above the hills how much so? all nations shall flow into it Babel the tower of Babel is the rebellion of nations from the very beginning of the book of Genesis and they were establishing it in the place that God never designated they were assuming an autonomy above God and they were going to build a tower of false worship above God above the heavens this is man, this is the nations and you know what? that arrogance in nations exists to this day look at Iraq when it got stormed and America actually invaded they discovered 45 palaces for this one jerk 45 palaces that were not even occupied and they were so exquisitely furnished with gold faucets and trappings and fixtures that the American Marines that came were stupefied and gasped they had never seen such luxury and lavish expenditure for one man who was bilking the oil revenue of a nation to feed his own fatuous desire that's nations that's nations and you suggest anything else about the use of funds or justice or education or a program against AIDS or something like that as is needful in Africa where these self assumed dictators have built vast fortunes in Swiss banks didn't I tell you I was driving in Switzerland and we passed a mansion an estate the wall was so high but you can just look over it was sumptuous, the buildings and we're driving and driving and never coming to the end of that wall and I turned to the Swiss brother whose place is that oh he said that belongs to the president of Zaire who died of cancer and didn't take it with him and then he said and this is only one of several of his estates in Switzerland only the lord knows what they had bankrolled, they stripped nations they sucked up its wealth they left their people despairing in poverty and lack of education, elementary diet, dying of disease while they live sumptuously like barons you'd like that kind of government to continue? they would like it to continue and the powers of the air would like it to continue and they'll give these men every gratification so long as that's through them they will really be pervasively in control and exhibiting their kind of perverse wisdom which majors in death, destruction, devastation disease, violence power, rule ambition, lust until the kingdom comes until God's house is exalted over every other mountain and hill when is that? when Israel shall be restored, for where is the hill? it's in Jerusalem and unless it's established there, it's not established you are defunct in the faith you're hanging on by your teeth if you have not this expectancy and this hope to animate your entire Christian life if you have not this if you do not desire his kingdom come in earth as in heaven and if you're not chafed by the false rule of men in earthly kingdoms that are self-aggrandizing and voluptuous and sick even to consider in their excess, you're out of the faith your God is too small and your life is too small your life is petty and restricted and limited because you've not seen the vastness of God in his in his theocratic intention that requires first the death of the lesser thing to obtain the greater he takes away the first to bring the second but you've got to die with that death if your own hope is falsely pinned to the lesser thing as it is in fact pervasively today through charismatic and evangelical Christians and who oppose this word fiercely, and that's why I'm unwelcome in Israel, they don't want to hear this they want to cling to King Uzziah who already has leprosy and is destined for death and many people shall go and say come ye, let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob he will teach us of his ways and we will walk in his paths for out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem and he shall judge among the nations and shall rebuke many people they shall beat their swords to plowshares their spears into pruning hooks nations shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war anymore O house of Jacob come ye, let us walk in the light of the Lord Church, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord let us really walk let us walk in a way that's congruent with this expectancy and we were praying for that very thing this morning that's why Singapore, Malaysia Indonesia, all those places Holland, Germany and everything in between from Panama to Argentina is part of the Lord's present program in the attainment of this great design it's a vast undertaking and how do we dare assume it because we have a sense of the vastness of God in his intention and the vastness of God in his supply we've got to see the Lord higher lifted up and the only way that is given to us to see is the death of our Uzziah you ask the Lord Lord what is my Uzziah is it Rick Joyner, is it such and such a ministry is it my own expectation for myself what is it in which I have linked my hope that is less than your intention and I'm unwilling to let go we prefer to see that prophet now enthroned and to be the deliverer that of which God spoke would come through a son of David and restore the kingdom kick out the Romans and restore the glory of God that once we knew in the time of David that's what we want right now and God says that's what you want, that's not what you're going to get you're going to have to die to that expectation however impressive because what I have in mind is so much more vast so much greater that it touches my glory as my apostle Paul said forever you only want what will satisfy you you want the glory of Israel restored we're not going to take this guff anymore that these gentiles who worship Caesars and pagans are going to tell us what to do we're going to have the glory that we once had under David and we'll have these guys under our subjection that's what we want that's got to die until we see God in judgment we have not seen God and have we seen God in judgment in our own lives broken marriage failed ministry, bad health accident, are these accidents or are they already either preliminary judgments do we look to understand misfortune as a first consideration as being the expression of God's judgment do we see God in judgment is David's broken marriage a judgment is homosexuality and lesbianism a judgment not for that moral sin but for an earlier sin of the rejection of God for which the moral thing and the sickness and the disease is its symptom and not its cause that homosexuality is a judgment for an already existing sin not the sin in itself of course it is a form of sin we are not schooled in interpreting adversity and calamity as being the expression of God's judgment and therefore we are not seeing God and if we're not seeing God in the accident and circumstances of our own life how shall we see it in the world how shall we see it in nations and how especially shall we see it when it comes to Israel that God is going to bring calamity to his own people he's going to bring them from Ethiopia and from Russia and then allow God will never do that who are you hot shot to say what God will do, do you know him that well how far he will go kindness is the mercy and grace that comes after the severity must precede it you cannot know God if you factor out his severity if you think that his judgment is not in keeping with his character and it offends you even to think it you want a God according to your lesser understanding and vision that suits your purposes for when they had to take the garment of Jesus off his back when he was crucified they found out it had no seam they could not parcel it out it had to go to someone who won at the gambling because the garment of Jesus is seamless there's no beginning no end his judgment is his mercy his severity is his kindness his wrath is his goodness he's one thing he's indivisible and until we see him and know him like that we've not seen him and if we've not seen him rightly we're not living rightly and we can't be for him what we ought ironically to Israel itself if we have an inadequate notion of vision of God we'll be apologizing to them we'll be condescending and making nice because we've not understood and therefore we cannot communicate what they need to understand and only that understanding can assuage their pain and give them an expectation of the joy of the Lord when they return to Zion when mourning and sighing will fall away so present Israel's necessary death in judgment reveals the Lord anew in a way and a dimension that we could not otherwise have seen him that new Zion must die as it was necessary for Elijah as it was necessary for the disciples on the road to Emmaus as it was necessary for us and the church of the last days to see him anew high and lifted up that we would cry out holy, holy, holy when the seraphim around the Lord cry that out because they've seen from the celestial, the heavenly place the magnitude and vastness of God holiness is not it's not a little appendage it's not a little aspect it's God in his righteousness in his beauty of holiness the perfection of his will he'll go that far? he has this so glorious an intention oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God then you can say holy, holy, holy to say it before is only to play with a word and even to cheapen it and to lose its meaning and that's exactly the indictment of our charismatic age we sing it but we don't know it we don't know his holiness until we know his judgment and we'll not know his judgment until we understand what he's going to bring in the earth as we read yesterday I will sift you through all nations hey you think this will be convenient? they'll have their little kit bag with them and a change of clothes and there'll be showers along the way and places of refreshment hey they're going to be staggering they're going to be filthy they'll be bloodied and beaten they will have lost their children along the way the elderly will have died by the roadside they will have just escaped the clutches of maniacal Islamists who want to tear the flesh from their bones and drag their carcasses through the streets and hang up their body parts on telephone wires they're going to be broken shattered, filthy upset, unkempt undone God will go that far with Steven Spielberg and Norman Porharitz and Henry Sherman and men of such dignity and bearing who have won Pulitzer prizes and awards and are the distinguished emissaries of the highest expressions of culture and refinement that's exactly what befell German Jews who could not believe that this should come upon them hey, maybe some of the gutter snipes, the guys who have never made it but we, we're in the places of government the Minister of Finance in the interim period of German history what was that called when they had the Republic of Government before it came down with Hitler Weimar Weimar Weimar How do you say that? Weimar That's right, Weimar Republic Weimar Weimar and the Minister of Finance was a Jew, he was assassinated many Jews sat as judges in high courts they were professors they were the genius of literature of philosophy, Martin Buber how about in physics and in science, Einstein how about in music there are three or four of the greatest composers were Jews, German Jews how about in psychology Freud Jews were at the highest echelons of the German speaking civilization who could believe this shall not come upon us, listen you dear saints, that's a prefiguring of a devastation that will eclipse the Nazi time and who of us is prepared for this in our souls for as much as I'm privileged to perceive and communicate as a Jew when it comes will I be able to take it will I be crunched will I sag, will I collapse will I freak out will I lack the moral stamina to actually bear and see the judgment being enacted before my eyes will I see my Rabbi's seven children Rabbi Blumenthal everyone, one is more precious than the other as beautiful as Merman's children and watch them killed and his wife raped will I be able to take that it's one thing to speak now but when it comes will I be able to bear it I know this if I'm not aligned with God, if I'm still in some kind of fantasy place of my own if I'm still saying in my own secret heart this shall not come upon them I'll not be able to stand at such a time and be to them what I must and the only stability that can come when they themselves will be panic stricken, we're not talking about a length thing here, this is critical for the future, we've got to give up our Uzziah's and know what holy holy holy means and not reduce God to a common place for even our commission as the church is altogether relative to the degree to which we know God as God and make that knowledge known to Jews in a saving way to be able to represent him in a salvific way as the very issue of Israel's restoration because our lips have been purged and we've seen the Lord high and lifted up and we can say send me so the death or the collapse of present Israel like the failure to be raptured is God's greatest provision for the church itself a necessary sacrifice of Israel to bring out of that death to false expectancy the reality which makes the church the church and the agency of Israel's final redemption you need a book like this when you read Oswald Chamber in order to find room to put your own notes, that's what I've just read I'm going to read it again it's choice and I want it to be on the tape the death of present state of Israel the Uzziah of our Christian time like the failure to be raptured or the failure of Jesus to the disappointed disciples on the road to Emmaus is God's greatest provision for the church itself a necessary sacrifice of Israel to bring about that death to false expectancy the reality which makes the that opens the reality which makes the church the church and the agent of Israel's final redemption oh the depth of the riches both of Louis and Roger God it takes the death of present Israel to save Israel? yes, because the church that is living in La La Land and its own fantasy and inadequate expectancy and inadequate notion of God can never be the salvific agency of God's mercy to Israel when it will come into the tongue of Jacob's trouble the sacrifice of present Israel is for the salvation of future Israel but it's a sacrifice that we need as the church as much as anyone for it alone is calculated to save us from an inadequate notion of God it alone brings the Lord high and lifted up so this is analogous to what Christ's crucifixion ultimately became for his disappointed and disillusioned disciples who had thought it had been he who would have restored the glory of Israel there is an efficacy of disillusionment there's an efficacy there's a value in Uzziah dying or else we have illusions that will betray us and keep us in a lesser place about marriage about fellowship how many broken and shattered marriages are the result of romantic notions of expectancy that had no basis in fact and in reality or in God and had to be a disappointment and a collapse how many fellowships were idealistic and romantic and thought that they were on the cutting edge and their man was the anointed guy of the hour and then it collapsed how much failure tragic failure is the result of distorted expectancy that must lead to disillusionment the same thing with present Israel there's a value in God bringing down Uzziah and massive disillusionment is proportionate to the degree of our unreality if we're living in Lala land in charismatic land, in Christian Zionist land the disillusionment and the devastation to our false hope must be in proportion as great as the unreality itself that's why we have to keep current, that's why we can't let for a moment the truth of the gospel to escape, that's why we can't allow a deception or a way of understanding something that we hear the same thing and we just nod and let them go on we've got to attend to reality we've got to be current with it or else there's a cumulative growth of a kind of thing imagined that is unreal and it will take a greater thing to bring that down that our massive disillusionment is proportionate to the unreality we have allowed in our Christian lives if we've made Jesus a buddy buddy and one who runs our errands and finds us a girlfriend, boyfriend, health and happiness what will it take to bring down that fiction that myth, that self serving inadequate vision of God in order to receive a vision of the Lord high and lifted up by which we will cry out woe is me, I'm undone that will be painful the more painful the more that we are living in some place of illusion and in today's devotional yet another source from again another English writer he's talking about being real with God and speaking really with God and not in some kind of feigned King James beatific kind of a language that really disguises what's the truth that God prefers us to be real rather than to pretend what we are not how many people wanted to solve my marriage and counsel me about bringing in a box of chocolates and a dozen roses and they all have syrupy counsel of the most they don't begin to estimate the depth of the thing that God has got to heal and for which counsel like that is water off the duck's back it means nothing and that's where how do they give you counsel like that? because they're living at a level like that they can't give you a counsel greater than their own knowledge and their own understanding shallow, guarded, superficial lives and that's why he's counseling hey, get real God prefers us to be real rather than to pretend what we are not but one day when we're going through a time of spiritual confusion a man forgot himself and in his language he was stripped of all pious phrases and told God exactly what he thought about him in the way in which he was handling the world. The man actually got right with it, truthful with God and expressed his disappointment instead of gilding it over with pious phrases, he expressed the truth of his heart and the only remarkable thing was that God was not offended and he received that man's cry, though it was no longer in pious phrases and just came out in spurts and gasps and he met this man in a new way, when the man met him in the face of truth and it came out of religious illusion and nice sounding things in which we don't want to see aspects about God that disappoint us well if we're not seeing small things now then how will we react when he brings devastation on Israel when there's a day of awakening, of comeuppance that we cannot avoid that we cannot swallow down, that we cannot bury if we've lived in illusion up till then what a crash that will take in that day, because we didn't know God as we ought and the Lord met this man when he opened up his heart honestly and received him with understanding I understand your disappointment and I'm glad that you're speaking to me truthfully now and not as a pious fraud and the man was so overwhelmed by the love of God to receive him in that way that was not pious that it broke the man and brought him to new depths in the knowledge of God whose love is acceptable of us in our painful expression so long as it's real if we're not real what can we do to Israel and what is the Jew but the producer and the distributor of fantasy Marlon Brando has just died are you guys old enough to know who Marlon Brando was? one of the greatest actors I love this man atheist and filthy in his own moral life I believe but he was discovered by Jews he was trained by Jews in the art of theater and drama he had Jewish girlfriends he was into the intellectual Jewish life of New York City coming from Omaha Nebraska was like wow where has this been all my life I'm just a bumpkin on the log and the way these people speak and write and know there was a whole introduction his whole life was raised up in a remarkable Jewish context and in some interview with Larry King when the movie industry came up he said well the Jews own it the movie industry is totally Jewish the fact of the matter was that at that time every single studio every single Metro-Golden-Mayer 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers were all Jewishly owned and in origin and conducted that's where we Jews are we're in the fantasy business maybe it's an escape from the pain of our own life and we have to find humor to save us out of distresses that we can't understand because we've not recognized God's judgment in it and there's not been a church to explain to us we're the masters of illusion Houdini, you know the name Houdini? Harry Houdini nice Jewish boy from the east side of New York and could come out of any kind, lock him up with chains, throw him into the East River, the guy comes up alive and smelling like a rose in the art of, what do they call it? Escapism Escapism, literal escapism and that people are being ready for a fall and they'll be the most dejected, you think the disciples are brought to their knees from bad shape? you ain't seen nothing yet an entire Jewish world is going to be brought down into massive collision with reality and who's going to heal their hearts? who's going to continue and complete the messianic ministry that Jesus began with the words of Isaiah, the spirit of the Lord is upon thee, for he has anointed thee to heal the broken heart if that's not our ministry, I don't know what our ministry is, but the continuation and completion and fulfillment of that which the Lord himself commenced when the spirit of the Lord was upon him which spirit, by the way in case you need reminding, is the spirit of truth and if you're living in a la-la land yourself, the anointing that you think you have is hardly anything more than your own personality revved up you don't know what true Davidic unction is for it has not yet come upon you until you're in the place of truth and in that place you can heal the broken heart of it there's one thing about my Jewish people, God bless them I love this about them they know a phony when they see it because maybe we've been phonies ourselves so long and so theatrical that when there's something real comes it's unmistakable and so they discovered the phony televangelist before you did and I remember, you've heard this episode in London at a college I spoke on Jesus or Barabbas and that two thousand years later the same choice is before us and David invitation at the end for people to choose the one or the other, Jesus or Barabbas and some woman came up off the first floor she had been shooting daggers at me with her eyes from the moment I opened my mouth and she came up, she was Jewish I'm an actress she said and I know a phony when I see one she said you're an actor beauty is in the eye of the beholder and as she's talking to me like that I'm seeing past and through, in the back of the room there's a man trembling like a leaf and I, and he's talking to some of the believers, bring this guy up here and he comes up, here's the woman still standing and I said what happened to you he said Arnie said in that moment when you said choose Jesus or Barabbas it was so live an option for me that I chose Jesus and in that moment something happened something has come in I can't describe it the guy was beside himself I said to this lady, you see that you both heard the same thing you'll leave thinking you heard an actor and you'll mutter with disdain and contempt he heard the same thing and he reserved it as the word of truth and look at the result you'll leave murmuring and he'll leave rejoicing because he saw what you were unable to see you're Jewish and you thought you saw an actor someone once told me you sound like Hitler because of the anointing and the way you come on with that unction because that's the only way they could equate it it was an unsaved Jew they didn't know how to even understand what the phenomenon means the spirit of the Lord is upon me for he has anointed me to heal the broken hearted and then to give sight to the blind and to open the prison doors and to set the captives free that's our last days ministry that the redeemed of the Lord might return to sight so Lord we're asking a mercy to save us from illusion from the King Uzziah's of our age whatever they may be Lord, each one of us may have a different idol, a different king in whom our hope is riveted it may even be spiritual or religious for he was indeed a king so there was a certain validity in Isaiah's identification but it kept him from seeing the Lord high and lifted up seeing God truly that he might serve him truly and it had to be a seeing that killed him that made him undone, that could be redone and be the greater oracle not only of the coming judgment but of the restoration that follows seeing both the severity and the goodness and Lord I'm pleading with you for this people that are sitting before me I'm not persuaded or even encouraged to think that they're understanding what you're giving us as maybe a concluding word but I'm asking a vast grace from a vast God who despite our dullness despite our unwillingness despite our doldrums despite where we are in our own inadequate understanding of God and of ourselves that you'll break through and you'll understand the mystery of Israel and the church that is going to take a devastated Israel to save the church from its own charismatic Christian Zionist illusions that it might be to that devastated people one that can heal their broken heart and open their prison doors and give sight to the blind and bring them my God into the place of a return to Zion that the mountain of the Lord's house will be above all the hills and the mountains and all nations will come unto it Lord precious God words encompass the vastness of what you're saying to us in conclusion and we're asking you to search us by the word and that we'll be honest and truthful before you Lord wherever we have a Uzziah by whatever form it has taken, you'll identify it and we'll be willing for its death that we might be released to the greater faith thank you Lord, bless these children bless the church through the tapes of this let this word break in Lord, if we'll not come to a death by the word must we then have to wait for the devastation itself so we thank you Lord that this is upon your hand, your love for us your jealousy because you're a true God, you're the very God of truth, you are reality itself and any deviation from you is a deviation from reality into unreality and that's a contradiction of terms for what the church is called to be a standard, a plumb line from heaven of what is real so we thank you Lord, search our hearts Lord, give us a heart for what is real thank you Lord and we're willing for you to search us purge us thank you Lord, that we would rejoice for your judgments and not just grit our teeth and bear it as somehow unnecessary preliminary before the restoration for your judgments are as glorious as your restoration, your judgments have everything to do with mercy for what is mercy without judgment oh may we love you for the totality that you are and be in awe before the vastness of what you are as God high and lifted up or we will miss being the prophetic generation my God that alone can be to Israel what it was thank you my God thank you Lord, let your word be the hammer upon the rock whatever lasting remains and you've been hitting us, hitting us, hitting us but if there's anything you remain so hard so obdurate in which we have such vested interest, let this be the last blow that finally cracks that hard thing open and we go down before you as dead and cry out with Isaiah I am undone I'm a man of unclean lips as I've never seen myself before, I see it now because I've seen you as you are high and lifted up in Jesus name do it Lord we pray