Art Katz emphasizes the vital importance of 'speaking the truth in love' as a foundational practice for the church, drawing from Ephesians 4. He argues that this practice is essential for the perfecting of the saints and the edification of the body of Christ, enabling believers to grow into the fullness of Christ. Katz highlights that true community is not merely a social experiment but a divine calling that requires vulnerability and honesty among believers. He warns against the dangers of individualism and the need for a corporate expression of faith that reflects God's wisdom and love. Ultimately, Katz calls the church to embrace this truth in love to fulfill God's cosmic purpose and demonstrate His manifold wisdom to the world.

Chapter 4 of Ephesians, and he gave some apostles, some prophets, and some evangelists, and pastors, and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. What a mouthful that only a Paul or his equivalent could compose, but the same spirit that inspired that has got to aid us now in unpacking that, that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. If we can unpack that, which I think is a clear call for community, not as a hobby, a novelty, or a social experiment, but the very statement of the kingdom that has to do with this rudimentary thing, speaking the truth in love. Can you imagine that everything in the last analysis for the fulfillment of the mysteries boils down to the last analysis to a mundane everyday practice between saints who are rightly related in proximity to one another and access on a frequent, if not daily basis, is the whole issue by which the stature of the fullness of Christ is formed into a body, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him, in verse 15, in all things which is the head, even Christ. We need to be staggered by this, or we haven't grasped it, that God would, after giving us this remarkable statement that defies even language, that is so compacted in meaning, in the last analysis is reduced to a single practice, but that single practice is everything, speaking the truth in love, one to another. We talked about that yesterday, the correction that keeps us in the Davidic place, that keeps us in the priestly place, that we cannot obtain or maintain independent of one another. So here, everything comes down to this operation of what an operation it is, to speak the truth in love. We've even had a little taste of it in the course of these days, and especially this morning, in some of the things for which we've prayed, that we could not have prayed or taken up as burdens, except that we can bear the truth, because the truth is painful before it's glorious. The truth of broken marriage, the truth of a delicate and threatened relationship of newlyweds who have been banged about in the world, and are joined together out of a desperation and a need not to be alone, but are hardly equipped for the most demanding of all relationship marriage, and except that the grace of God intervened, there are almost likely to be another statistic that would yet be more tragic at the end than it was at the beginning, that a body can come to a place where it could consider things like that, without embarrassment, and enter into it, not in some kind of antiseptic way, as if, you know, we're condescending to the aid, but that you join them, you're one with them in their infirmity, their weakness, their debility, because we've also been banged up, we've also been products of the world, we've also come through broken marriages, and all those things, or come out of homes of broken marriages, so it's a remarkable thing that the the macrocosm of God's ultimate purposes that are mind-boggling, that only a poor can can form by the Holy Spirit into the language of Ephesians, requires in the last analysis the enactment between saints and its ordinary everyday life together, so I just feel to state that, but let's go back over this, because it begins with, and he gave some apostles and prophets, evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, and that's the advancing of their ministries, or the attainment of their reputation, and certainly not for the accumulating of lifestyles of a kind that are contrary to what Paul and Jesus himself knew, in apostolic poverty and simplicity of life, he gave some, maybe until he begins with this, there's no continuance, there's no further enactment or fulfillment of this great resolution, that the measure to which we are called is nothing less nor other than what was established in Jesus, the Son of God, a perfect man, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, there's that word, fullness, again, we could hardly perceive what that means, it needs to be intuitive, but we have enough of the life of Jesus, his speaking, his teachings, suffering and death, that this is the standard to which we are being called, that begins with even the vision of it, and the call of it, to be proclaimed and set forth before us by those men whose office is designed for that very purpose, and until that is come, the whole thing is not set in motion, and I'm just saying that I believe we are at that historic point in the history of the church, where God is reviving and restoring these initial and foundational ministries, to begin through them to set in motion the vision without which they can't even begin an enactment and a fulfillment, it begins with it, and he gave some apostles, some prophets. Okay, jump in you saints, what about this glorious text, what strikes you as it's on your lap and you're looking at it, for the perfecting of the saints, till we all come, because we don't all come, we don't come at all, it's an all or not at all, not a remarkable thing, it's not individual virtuosos, it's all till we all come, into one thing, a composite corporate man in the stature and fullness of Jesus Christ himself. Can I just pause to ask, believest thou this? Understandest thou this? Is this a fiction, is this a little verbiage, a little mystical cloud of fine sounding lofty words, or is this nuts and bolts statement of God's intention from the first, for which he did not think it extravagant to give his only firstborn begotten son to suffer and die to obtain? Do you believe this? Do you understand the design of God? Do you see yourself in that design? Can it be obtained without some measure of the same sacrifice, suffering, and even death by which Jesus fulfilled his role in that, and are we willing? If we dismiss this, and I believe the church has, because they've the book of Ephesians as if this is some rhetoric, this is some highfalutin language, sounds good, but let's get on to the more practical things. If we miss this, we miss all. This is the fullness that will cast out from their usurping governmental place that has adversely affected all mankind and seeks to corrupt the church, will cast them out and into the earth and set in motion the final antagonism against God's people, both Israel and the church, called the time of Jacob's trouble and finally end in the sifting through it of a restored remnant to be the nation of God's intention to which he can come as king and out of whose locus the holy hill of Zion in Jerusalem. Can the law go forth to the nations in the word of the Lord from Jerusalem? The kingdom come. See that? It all goes back to this. If they're not ousted, if this fullness does not come, neither can the deliver come out of Zion. To take transgression from Jacob according to the covenant that I've made with them as it is written. God is waiting for a fullness. This is that fullness and the heck of it is, how is that fullness obtained? Essentially by an everyday practice of a kind for which the world has not fitted us to speak the truth in love. You know what truth is? To speak it, not just to acknowledge it, but to speak it and not to speak it critically or in a way as to deprecate or bring down or to show our superiority over another to whom we are addressing or using as our subject, but the truth in love. So not sentimentality, not light affection, but the love of God. Both truth and love are ultimate statements and ultimate conditions and the world despises and cannot understand them. Jesus said of the spirit of truth that would come, which the world cannot receive. It's impossible. It's alien to the world because the world lies in the wicked one who is the father of lies from the beginning. The world is habituated to the lie, to advertising, to exaggeration, to misuse of language. But God says no, truth, speaking the truth, not just acknowledging, but commending the truth that we might be perfected, that we might be made whole, that we might come into the stature, into this fullness by such a process. Speaking itself is a holy, what's the word, gift, a privilege, not to function in it, to remain silent, not to be able to summon thought in words and to express it to the benefit of others, is to fall short of your humanity. It's to begin, it's not to take first steps to the coming in stature. You'll not come to maturity except through speaking. If you'll not exercise that function that no other aspect of creation has been privileged to perform, one thing more than anything other reflects the very nature of the creator himself, who in the beginning brooded over the chaos and spoke and said, let there be. God speaks, speaking is a divine function, it's an enablement, it's a glory. If we will not speak and not speak the truth in love, the entire mystery remains in limbo and unfulfilled, and it comes down to us in settings like this and those to which you will return, where the whole mystery will have its enactment, its fulfillment or its failure, and the issue is with your mouth. The word is near you even in your mouth, the word of faith which we preach. If you will confess with your mouth and believe with your heart that Jesus is Lord thou shalt be saved, not just once and for all but continually, it's a saving process that begins with the confession of your mouth and the believing in your heart. So, whatever it is, fear, intimidation, insecurity, self-consciousness, the concern for self that you're protecting and don't want to venture anything forth, lest it would be an object for criticism or it would sound peculiar in the ears of others, you're forestalling and shortening the process because you're included in the all. If so much as one member fails to speak and to give through speaking what is intended for the nourishment of the entire body as each joint supplies, we remain malfunctioned, malnourished, and some atrophied, crippled up expression of a body for which God is waiting a full stature. Can you see that? So, to speak is to die. To speak and take the risk of speaking is to come to the cross. It's to expose yourself. It's to be open to the humiliation of failing or not being understood or being misconstrued. Faith is a risk. Faith is an act. Speaking is an act. And to speak the truth in love is an ultimate act. And when the church will come to that ultimacy, we will have arrived at the fullness for which God waits and that sets in motion the whole process by which the whole cosmic purpose through the ages is consummated. And it rests upon our mouth, our speaking, our love of the truth, our searching for the, seeking the truth, expressing the truth, but not clinically, but in love. In fact, isn't that the issue of the dry bones when they will be addressed by a son of man who commands breath to come into them? He speaks a prophetic word, but he does not speak it clinically. He speaks it prophetically in love or else it will not work. It's a faith that works by love. And love is more than sentiment. Love is more than condescension. Love is more than just being a nice guy. Whatever love is, and I'm not sure, it's more than what the world defines and what we have known to know. Truth and love are ultimate requirements, but we'll not attain to it unless we're earnest about it and pursue it and seek it and express it. And maybe our first expression and early expressions will be faltering and lacking and inadequate. But how shall we attain to the fullness if we don't begin at the beginning? If we're unwilling to take first steps and suffer the embarrassment of being choked and spluttering and trying to express our hearts, we've got to begin with the beginning. It's not going to come, boom, full-born at some miraculous moment as if a magical wand has been waved over us. We've got to begin where we are and the ability that we have to come to a deeper, day-by-day apprehension of truth and a deeper expression of the divine love that we've got to become. What am I saying? Maybe one of the first things we need to recognize is that one of the characteristics of evangelical contemporary Christianity is the isolation of doctrine from life, as if it's a compartment where you have it in your suitcase or your briefcase and you can articulate it as if that is the reality, when the fact of the matter is when you separate doctrine. Doctrine only means teaching, but teaching for what? I remember that the first year of my Christian life was lost. I was sharing it at one of the breakfast tables because I brought my academic background to the Bible and thought that I was being required to critically analyze the Bible as I did Shakespeare or some sociologist. It was a wasted year until somebody said to me, Artie said, do you know what it is that the Bible is about? I said, no, what? He said, it's to teach us how to live. So, speaking the truth in love is not the truth of doctrine per se as some isolated thing that we want to keep clean, but it's the wisdom of God and the substance of counsel given through scripture and applying to the reality of life together that defeats the powers because it demonstrates another wisdom that can only be demonstrated corporately or not at all. Like love and faith and truth, sincerity, compassion, mercy, patience. This is the wisdom of God, the willingness to suffer, the willingness to be misunderstood, the willingness to bear humiliation, even shame. This is the wisdom. This whole great mystery is not for the super elite, but for babes, for the weak, for the lame. It's the lame who take the prey. We need to understand the context of this whole great cosmic drama is a conflict between wisdoms, between moral systems of powers of darkness who stress power, prestige, fame, lust, intimidation, threat, and that's how control has come over nations and their manipulation. That's what Nazism was when the powers of darkness took over the apparatus of state and set in motion a particular wisdom through the conduct of a nation whose first task was the annihilation of Jews and its last task right to the last moment of its being. It's a wisdom that hates God's people. So what is the wisdom of God? Paul in the same book of Ephesians, maybe we need to read it, chapter 3, Paul talking about his commission to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery. Here's the precious word from which the beginning of the world has been hidden. God who created all things by Jesus Christ, that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places where they exert control and influence and jerk and intimidate and threaten and destroy mankind or encourage mankind to destroy one another in genocidal sweeping deaths, ethnic group against ethnic group and race against race and race within race, black against black. That's the wisdom of these powers that something might be made known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus. There's a contest, a conflict of an ultimate kind as to what shall prevail over creation that shall guide men in their living. Is it the wisdom from below that says take care of number one first, see to your self-interest, you've got any time left over, you might afford to be a little bit generous, but if you'll not take care of yourself, who will? It's predicated on selfishness, self-interest, self itself and will use intimidation, threat, or ambition or lust. So as to control and influence men to misspend their lives and ultimately to distort if not destroy the image of God who made them. As against that wisdom is the wisdom of God that can only be made manifest through the church and in love and growing up together, together, that we might all come into the fullness and stature and as we said before the break, great grace was upon them all. It's a great grace that God holds to himself and will not lightly dispense until he finds the condition by which it can be received and not be misused. Namely, that a diverse body made up of Jews and Gentiles, male and female, age and gender gaps, the very things that the powers of the air exploit to separate children from their own parents who will kill them in their sleep if they can't get the car keys. God wants to establish his wisdom, his moral way, which he demonstrated in his own earthly life by walking the path of humiliation, suffering, rejection and death and not answering in kind at the ultimate moment of provocation, hanging on the cross in the anguish of body and soul to hear the thorns of his own people come down and we will believe you and bearing that and not railing against them who railed against him and in that demonstrating in his suffering, which is the greatest demonstration, another wisdom. Forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. Patience, where Stephen exhibited the same thing and it did Saul in to see a man in his extremity of death being more concerned for those who are pelting him with stones unto death than for his own death, laid not this into their charge was his final cry. This is another wisdom. It's contrary to the wisdom of this world and when that wisdom shall have defeated the other wisdom, the end will have come. The powers of the air have got to be cast out because how shall they continue? They were disarmed at the cross and made a public demonstration, but they still continue to function through intimidation, through threat, through playing upon fear and lust and inducement and enticement and seduction, but when they can no longer manipulate men by those devices and men are impervious to their own ambition, are impervious to seduction, are not looking for gratification of lust or ambition or fame or acquisition of fortune, how then shall the powers of the air work? They're defeated because there has been raised up in the earth communities of men and women, Jew and Gentile, diverse in age and background, who are living by another wisdom. Not a wisdom of mentality, but in practice and the very evidence of it defeats the powers. It's to make manifest the manifold wisdom of God, not just to subscribe to it, to demonstrate it that can only be demonstrated corporately or not at all. How is a single individual to demonstrate patience or patience with himself, love for himself? It can only come out in the intensity of relationship one with another, all the more profoundly if the one and other are different from yourself. Black and white, Jew and Gentile, male and female, younger and older. It's in the diversity of everything that would be more likely to reflect the powers and wisdom of darkness, that when the wisdom of God can be demonstrated in that diversity, and that's exactly what happened at Antioch. When he found them ministering unto the Lord in worship, he said, separate unto me Saul and Barnabas for the work unto I have called them. What was God waiting for? Why did that call come at Antioch and not at Jerusalem? Because at Jerusalem they were all Jews, but at Antioch, the scriptures give us in detail, one was called Niger, he was evidently black, that's what the word means, and one was Menaian, was of a Roman, one was of Mediterranean, Cyprus, I forgot where, Cyrene, there was Saul himself, he was a Hebrew as was Barnabas. What a motley crew in all of the ancient enmities of the Mediterranean world that ended in threat, fear at each other's throats, no trust, murder, mayhem, distrust, suspicion, anger, fear. In that very environment, God took those same elements and brought them to a place where they could minister unto the Lord together. It wasn't just an accommodation in singing from an overhead projector, they were worshipping the Lord in a true worship that was not in any way detracted or minimized by unspoken fear, resentment, suspicion, they were free hearts and you know to ventilate yourself freely in worship has got to come in an atmosphere where you're not threatened or intimidated or made even self-conscious. Why? Because the other saints are in exactly the same place of abandon before God. You don't care if you start weeping, you don't care if you fall out of your seat and you're on your face and on the floor, or whatever form your worship takes, you're perfectly at home in an environment conducive to it because you've come to a place of understanding and agreement together. How have you come to that, seeing that you were black and white and Jew and Gentile? The scripture does not tell us, God is discreet, but what took place before Acts 13? How did these men come to a place where they're worshipping God together despite their racial, ethnic differences? Because they spoke the truth in love. Because they said, you know, I have to tell you that I've always been suspicious about you Jews. My mother told me that never trust them, they'll always outdo you in a bargain. Even John Mandel had to say that he would out Jew me. I said, no, you'll out Hutterite me. He was joking, but he was expressing an ages old fear that lurks in the deeps of many Gentile hearts, that there's something very crafty and mischievous about Jews. They're shrewd and they'll take you apart in any transaction. And what did the Jews think about the goyim? You should hear my mother. The goyim, they are a people to be feared. They don't know how to live. They're a bunch of dumb dumbs. They get their money and they spend it right away or they gamble it away or they drink it away. They don't know how to save. They're not thrifty. They hate Jews. They'll look for any opportunity to do us in. These are the historic enmities that have divided men and the powers of darkness play upon these fears. Can you imagine a society that has transcended above them? Not by looking away or being polite and letting the fear, but hey, brother, I have to tell you that I've taken something in with my mother's milk, the very air that I breathe that makes me apprehensive about you as a Jew. Can you help me? I mean, and only through face to face and through laboring together, fellowshipping together, struggling together, sacrificing, they come and their identities are no longer Jew and Gentile. They are in Christ. There's something that has to be worked here. There's a reality that needs to be made manifest, another wisdom. And when it is obtained, those powers are displaced never to rise again for how shall they manipulate? They found the people who are, who cannot be seduced, tempted or threatened or intimidated. They've broken through into another wisdom, another reality, which will be the transcendent and eternal millennial glory of a kingdom come. The Jew by nature, by definition, by history is antithetical. He is a square peg in a round hole. He is the essence of offense to man in his character and his being to love someone like that. Who's not only offensive in his essential makeup, but threatening to our own self-interest has got to be a statement of another wisdom, another kind, another attitude, another transcendent way of perceiving the enemy as an object of love. That's what Jesus said is the word. So love thine enemy as except your righteousness exceed that of the Pharisees. And here's the test. This Jew, not only now, but especially in the last days, when they'll be uprooted, disfigured, unkempt in their worst temper, and then love that and they come ungrateful and demanding and full of complaint about Christianity, which they'll see as the cause of their new Holocaust. How we relate to them then, what kind of face we show them then is the whole mystery of the age. I'll meet with them in the wilderness of the nations face-to-face. Whose face would they see? Some self-conscious prig of a Protestant, charismatic Christian Zionist who liked them in their best form when they were cute, but now that they stink, literally stink, and are angry and bitter and malicious in their spirit and full of antagonism and are ungrateful for you when you're imperiling your life and your family to help them and caught doing so, risking your death, and they're ungrateful for that. Well, if that's the way they're going to be, then forget it. God says, no, love your enemy. Don't demand and don't expect gratitude. You don't need a payoff. You don't need to be gratified when someone applauds you for being a heroic Gentile. You love them even in that despicable condition because you love them in the unconditional love of God that makes no requirement. And how are you going to come to that with Jews when you've not come to it with your own brothers and sisters in the faith? See what I mean? That's why the church is the laboratory and the workplace and the working out of these elemental things that when this thing comes upon us suddenly, and it will, we have been fitted and prepared for it by the sanctifying work of God in the church, that we can be to them the very face of God, the love of God that does not make requirement and can bear every offense against it and receive it. That's the mystery. So they got the enemies of the gospel for our sake. Remember that? This is the enemy. Their school, their calculated, their nature, their history is all geared together to make them the most formidable opponent to the gospel, to our message. That means we've got to be saints who have more than a bag of doctrines and the gospel step one, step two, step three. We've got to be the thing in ourselves, the very grace of God, the fullness and stature of Christ who can bear that offense against himself and love those who are bringing such onslaught against him. Where is that obtained? In the church that is the church, which is to say the community of the saints who have daily opportunity in the intensity of their relationship and the things that necessarily will go wrong because of that. And the conditions for misunderstanding, for abrasive conflict are there and can only be there to fit us and ground us into the reality to which we're called and that will have its payoff in what we show Jews in their final hour of extremity. See how it all comes together. The rise of love will not exceed the rise in truth and the rise in truth will not exceed the rise in love. That the two things are in tandem and are related to one another and will either grow up together or not grow up at all. So it will be a remarkable phenomenon to see. It takes love to speak the truth. Maybe it takes love to see the truth. The love of God that is because self-love will tend to turn us away from truth that is painful but the love of God will enable us to bear hard truth and so that will encourage us to bear what we must while we're growing up into the fullness and the stature of Jesus Christ unto a perfect man. Otherwise we'll be overcome. Otherwise it will be too painful, too difficult. We'll want to flee and I'll tell you what, if you saw the history of Ben Israel for 30 years, it's a history of people coming but also going. They could not take it. It was too hard, too demanding. They came apart at the seams. They were perfect saints until they came. They were charismatic darlings and within a week this little girl was throwing her shoe at Inger and men were coming completely undone because of the intensity of the life. They thought they were coming to some cutesy Jewish-styled ministry but they were coming to a place of the cross. Like the Lord is giving us truth and not fainty truth or respectable truth but the grip of truth of a kind that saints till now have not been able to consider without a loss of esteem or their illusions being shattered of a lofty kind that they have for ministries and ministers. He's bringing us into truth and shredding illusion and I've boasted on David and said David would still have composed Psalm 51 even if he had not fallen into the adulterous affair with Bathsheba. Yes, he wrote it out of the pain and humiliation and collapse of that terrible sin that led to murder as well as lying but I believe that the essence of what a David is that he can perceive the issue of sin and redemption and God's desire for truth in most part without having to come to it through a failed collapse in sin because he has a Davidic heart to understand and to appropriate. You know who has such a heart? Abel. Abel did not come to blood sacrifice out of remorse or contrition for failed life. He came to what Cain could not see or provide, a sacrifice of blood because he intuited and understood the holiness of God that made that the essential requirement. He was Davidic. Abel was Davidic from the beginning and what God starts in the beginning is that with which he ends. So that's why he's been speaking to us. What is Davidic? What is this Davidic kingdom? This priestliness? Anything from this text? We've got to burrow into the text. This is the heart of it. Paul's great heart which is the heart of God for the perfecting of the sin. Verse 12, for the work of the ministry. Notice that ministry whatever that means is not the first consideration but the second and one of the characteristics of our present evangelical age is the celebration of ministry as being first. We've made of ministry an idolatry and the young people that come to us are so ministry oriented that that has become an idolatrous diversion. Ministry grows out of life but if you put ministry before life you'll have a stunted professionalism of a religious kind for which you'll find opportunity and can even climb the ladder of success beginning as youth leader, worship leader, associate pastor and you can make it up to the top because ministry itself has been elevated beyond God's intention and it's corrected here in the text. First the perfecting of the saints, first the dealing with their character, with their life, with their fears, with the apprehension of the cross, being the men and women of the spirit, then ministry. Ministry flows out of the truth of the reality of the life. We put ministry before the life we will have a stunted and perverse thing, an idolatrous thing for the edifying of the body of Christ. Paul speaking in the genius of the corporate-ness of the church of which we need to be reminded is contrary to the whole spirit of our age which is totally individualistic, private and selfish. This corporate thing of the body is at complete odds and in violent opposition to the individualistic self-interest that permeates and is the governing principle of life in the world as it is guided by the principalities and take care of number one. Everything is rooted in the individual so to break that framework, that vortex and to see ourselves in the reality of God's intention as a body and function and come into the fullness only in the corporate way, never individually, we'll never come to it individually, is itself a breakthrough of a remarkable kind. In fact, nothing is given of God that has the potential to break the power of self-interest than the vision of the thing which is corporate, to be a many-membered man, the fullness and stature of Jesus Christ, the perfect man, but it's a corporate man. So individualism is the root principle of the world, it's the driving principle of the world and we are all affected by it. Even when we come into a situation like this or a Bible school, we are atomic units wanting to derive the benefit that requires us to be in close proximity to other students who share the facility that they might receive the lectures and obtain the credential, but our binding interest is self, that I will receive the credential, I will be graduated, I will be set on the way to the attainment of my ministry, see what I mean? It's powerful, and yet we watch this as the body of Christ, the corporate thing which Paul labored that Christ be formed in them, we need to struggle to attain. I will not begin to attain it unless we recognize realistically the environment that is totally alien to that which is corporate and wants always to underline and to root in us self-interest as an individual atomic entity seeking its own ends. To break the power of that is necessary for it to come into the formation of the other. That's what I mean about dwelling on this text. There's not a word here that is in any way haphazard. This was given by the Holy Spirit. This is the statement of God's very heart, the mystery of the faith, the mystery of the church, the intention of God who has given us a template, a model, Jesus himself in that fullness, that stature, that maturity, that selflessness, that single-eyed devotion to the glory of God the Father is God's template for us, and it's to that to which we ought to be formed. That all began with the spirit that was sent down from the throne of heaven that required first the death and resurrection of Jesus, that he might be ascended and send forth the promise of the Father to those who waited below for ten days in the upper room and were told to tarry before they commence their witness unto him in the nation beginning at Jerusalem and then Samaria to the outskirts. Wait till you receive from on high, not just an empowerment, but a certain quality and character of enthroned life that is the statement itself of the genius of the Godhead, that when they receive that spirit, which is the spirit of God, the triune God who defers the Father to the Son, the Son to the Father, the Spirit to the Son, each one deferring and accommodating the other and yet one in their diversity and yet oneness, that spirit is poured out so that all of a sudden Jews who are known to be so self-aggrandizing and acquiring and possessing, no man thought that the thing which he had was his own. They had all things common, they went from house to house daily breaking bread, they were steadfast in the apostles doctrine and in prayer, and great grace was upon them all. They were beginning to replicate and express in the earth what is the nature of God in heaven, that is to say a unity and agreement in diversity that is expressed economically. It's one thing to hold it as a vocabulary and as a doctrine that can be verbal, but to demonstrate it in life that those who had properties and lands sold them and laid the feet at the apostles for distribution, and a complete confidence and trust that these guys were not going to line their own pockets with what had put at their feet, but they would make distribution to all who need, that there was not one among them that was in want. The early church is a remarkable statement of the very character of God, which is corporate. I forgot the name of the speaker who said, made this statement, Jesus, he said, the Godhead himself is a sweet company. You ever think of the Godhead as corporate? This is the offense to the Jew. Here or Israel all you got is one Lord, but what kind of one? Is it a solitary, unitary one of the kind that we will be because we reflect our concept of God, or is it a one of a composite kind made up of diverse, but submitted elements who are as much concerned for the other as oneself and defers one to the other. It's also one, but it's another kind of one. It's the kind that reflects the mystery of the Godhead himself, explicated and demonstrated in the earth by Jews and Gentiles together and black and white and all the diversity found in God's body have become one. So you can believe that the powers of darkness will do everything to contend against the fulfillment of such mystery as that. They'll play upon fear, they'll play upon suspicion. Gospel, have you heard? Have you seen? How's this guy an elder? You think he's a prophet? I spoke at a convocation a couple of summers ago on the Davidic government, which David describes as a gentle dew settling upon the grass. I mean, he uses such a poetry to show that it's not a heavy handed bludgeoning, an exercise of authority as the Gentiles. And don't you think that a man who was present, that was one of the speakers at that time, internationally known, was taken aside by one of the brothers whom I've known for years and whispered to him, yes, it's easy for art to say that, but what about his family? What about his marriage? And sowed a seed of suspicion in this man that when we were together in Germany, seeing this aristocratic evangelical family, he was so bruised and so weighted by what had been gossiped to him that before we could speak to this family that could affect everything in Germany, we had to take a walk and he would have to ask me, Art, I heard that, is that true? You spoke about government, but this brother said to me, well, what about art? See? And this, the one who did the gossiping and sowed that malicious seed, is no bump on the log. He's a man in very conspicuous ministry. And I've known him for years, but that did not hold him back from enjoying the delicious, the delight of gossip, especially when it's over and about a man who is public and celebrated. There's a deeper, subversive satisfaction when you can gossip about one like that and raise a question about his credibility that shakes someone else and exalts you as the one who have seen the weakness and the fly in the ointment of the clay feet. That is such a powerful temptation in the church. It's not speaking the truth in love. It's not speaking the truth. It's not even understanding the truth of the conditions that you see only externally and superficially and employ for your own self exaltation at the expense of another. So you see that this is what we're fighting against in order to come to a place both of truth and of love. Now, what awaits for me is to confront that brother in truth and love and say, how did you take that liberty to poison and corrupt a relationship that had such portent for the work of God in Germany and in the world by sowing the seed of doubt and suspicion? I always remember this when you're tempted. I forgot who said this. Was it Oswald Chambers? One of those great saints. There's always one thing more about a person that had you known it would have altered the whole way in which you would have perceived their life and their situation. There's always one thing more, but you're not at liberty to know that one thing more, but you ought to at least be humbled by the knowledge that you cannot know and therefore you cannot conclude or judge, let alone communicate to others that suspicion that you enjoy celebrating. There's always one thing more the Lord will not allow you to know. If we had that temper, that humility, how would we be to each other? How low would we be even to raise a suspicion? How disposed would we be disposed to see the better thing? And that if we are allowed the privilege to see something of need, it's not as a basis for our criticism, our reproach, our gossip, but for our intercession, for our prayer, for our counsel, for our help. Until the church comes of age like that, how are we in the stature of Jesus Christ and into a perfect man? And it's by these very issues that we are brought to that stature. How will we respond when we see a weakness or a defect, especially in a leader? I wish I could, I had a dollar for every instance in which some guy has come here and thinks that he's the appointed deliverer of Ben Israel and that he has perceived and discerned what no one else has been able to see and he's going to identify it and even change it. And the guy's been here only two weeks. I said, you dear man, you want to keep your mouth shut for at least the first six months. You have no right to evaluate, let alone to think you're bringing solutions. We have had to put up with that. And I can't, it's more than just indignity. It just, you want to spit your guts out. Again, Lord, another self-assumed savior. How long, Lord, must we suffer this and be the object of these self-appointed ones? But you know, we suffer it. You know why? Because how will they come to maturity? Unless they act out these adolescent things. That same guy who was here two weeks and subsequently left and we never shut him up. He was free to circulate that kind of poison throughout the entire community, trusting God to watch over what he has birthed here. And subsequently went to, I want to say where you may identify him, with youthful immersion and split with his own wife. Their own marriage suffered a brokenness and near divorce because what you have, by what means you will judge another, you'll, will be mean, need it out to you. Maybe not the least of David's condition is because of his superior peacock arrogance in the evaluation of the marriage of his father and mother, to which he thought himself superior and is now acting in a lesser way than he's ever found to criticize in me. And he'll never be healed from it until he acknowledges that. So this couple has gone through something and the last time I saw them, they were doing the cooking at a fellowship where I was the speaker and they were full of apology. I didn't come to dinner one night. I was seeking the Lord. They, he brought me my dinner in a plate wrapped with cellophane and loving condescension.