In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of understanding the concept of life versus religion. He highlights that many Christians are living religious lives instead of embracing the new covenant based on God's life. The preacher shares a personal encounter with someone who is living a lavish and materialistic lifestyle, but deep down is lost and unsure of their purpose. The sermon concludes with the preacher acknowledging the need for a genuine encounter with God's life, rather than relying on clever words or strategies.

He wants to demonstrate an enormously important thing tonight, unknown by most believers, and it's the key to the kingdom. And there's no way to speak of it through preparation, because if you come prepared to speak of it, you're contradicting the very thing that God is about. It's a little four-letter word, L-I-S-E, life. The alternative to life is religion. And you would be amazed at the number of Christians who are living Judaic lives. And Judaism would be tremendous or inspiring and compelling and impressive if it were not for the fact that God has given a better alternative, a greater covenant, a new covenant, based on his life. But the tragedy is, for God to have given it that great price, and for people to call themselves by the name of that covenant, and yet to be living in the other. How many people are mystified already? You're not? Well, if that's the way you're going to do it, you're going to take off my jacket. I'm going to continue. Let's pray together, okay? Precious holy God, Lord, we ask that tonight you would set forth in such a glorious way what is your great gift to men, and what it is to which we are called, and how it is that we might appropriate it, Lord, move in it, and demonstrate it, and set it forth. Thank you, Lord, that it pleases you to express this through a piece of clay and dust. And if there's anybody in this room who thinks, Lord, that that introduction, that talk about not being prepared, was a device, set them straight. And through the awkwardness, Lord God, of putting this together, show yourself forth. Mighty God, smite our hearts with the glory of the new covenant way, and forever ruin us for anything less. And we'll thank you and praise you, precious God, that you have offered to us the great tree of life. Speak from it tonight. Demonstrate it tonight. Be it tonight. And in these days, and we'll thank you and praise you for this now, in Yeshua's holy name. Well, I think I want to start from the end, and then go back to the beginning. Chapter 22 of the book of Revelation. Chapter 22, first verse, book of Revelation. I'm reading from the Amplified Edition. Then he showed me the river whose waters give life, sparkling like crystal, flowing out from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Through the middle of the broad way of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life, with its twelve varieties of fruit, yielding each month its fresh crop, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing and the restoration of the nations. Fourteenth verse, blessed, happy, and to be envied are those who cleanse their garments that they may have the authority and right through the tree of life to enter in through the gates to the city. Now to the book of Genesis and the first mention of that same tree. The last verse of the third chapter of the book of Genesis. So God drove out the man and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every way to keep and guard the way of the tree of life. Is that what it says in the King James? Does it say the way of the tree of life? Praise the Lord. We're called to a way. There were two trees in the garden then and there are two trees now. And these two trees have ever and always been pitted, one against the other. One is calmly, attractive, beguiling. Remember what the woman said? She saw that the tree was good and pleasant for food, that it was delightful to look at and a tree to be desired to make one wise. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is always powerfully seductive and attractive. How would you like to live without knowing? Excuse me, just for the first minute right there. But think back in recent hours, days and weeks, how much the word knowledge or knowing has punctuated your speech and your prayers. If you would only know what God was about, if you only knew what his will was, if you only understood what he wanted you to do, if you could only understand the circumstances, then you would be quick to obey it. Well, of course, there's nothing to that. I remember I came to an informal Bible study one night and the guy gave a terrific talk on obeying the will of God, that when God shows you his will, that we ought to be quick to do it. And something was percolating in my spirit as he spoke and I said, Lord, I'm just a guest, I'll keep my mouth shut, except that someone actually bid me to speak. And sure enough, at the end, I was bidden to speak. And I said in my fresh, saucy Jewish way, I appreciated the talk tonight and of course it's good to obey the will of God when he shows it. But I want to say that at the end of the age, the paralyzing predicament and the demanding thing for the children of God will be to obey without knowing. I've got a precious little booklet here by Watchman Lee and it's called Two Principles of Conduct. Have you ever noticed the duality of things? Am I getting fancy on you? That there are always two alternatives? I'm fond of saying that you can know when you're converted that when you were an atheist, it was always so much more than two alternatives. It was always such a complexity of choices, such variable factors, such nuances and shades of gray that broke your brains to pieces. You ever been an atheistic schoolteacher as I have been? And have been sincere and have tried to compute grades? It'll kill you. And make you realize in one fell swoop that you're a man and not a God. And to know that if you come up with a C plus rather than a B minus, it can permanently injure the career of the student whose grade you're computing. And which of us is wise enough to compute all the variables and to tell the difference between C plus and B minus? That was one of the contributing factors that brought a terminus to my atheism and opened me to hear the still small voice of God. Now once converted, you know what I found out? There aren't so many variable factors. It's usually black or white, life or death, the kingdom of God or the kingdom of this present world, spirit or flesh. It's always a choice between dualities. It's always one tree or another. It's always, in the last analysis, pleasing man or pleasing God. You ever notice that when the smoke clears? It's a choice of one of two things. Now I just left a Jewish man in Beverly Hills hanging on the ropes just an iota away from a knockout. The Lord has really been giving him a zest in these days. Right to the tissue. Pow, pow, pow. Beautiful man as the world goes. Five Academy Award Oscars on the mantle. Prestigious, well-known. First time we met, he took me to Beverly Hills Country Club for lunch. And he paid full for that lunch and sustains our community for a month. And as I looked at this man before whom men were scraping and bowing, I saw a kid in short pants living a child's fantasy, a foolish dream. But the pity is that the whole world has joined in that conspiracy with him and they all think it's real. Well, we've got to give him a second chance. These recent days have just come up from this. I can't even sum up. But God has just been progressively taking the ground down from under his feet. And he has only a wisp of ground, but he's ready to sag at any moment. We had an early breakfast this morning in which he made a last brave resolution in which he complimented me and wished that he could be as I was, but. And he expressed his last intellectual reservations. And I just looked at him wistfully and sadly and went up to my room to complete my packing and thought that was the end. But no, he came in difficult because I had made one last crack. He's working on a great musical piece. And I said, I think you're afraid that if you come to the Lord that he's not going to let you finish it. And you want to make one last heroic statement of resounding audacity. And he came back to see me as I was finishing the packing. And that's when he walked down. He said, I cried out to God, is that true? And he said, I think God would say yes, it's true. So he said, I said, well, what's holding me back? What's the obstacle? And he said, I believe that I've been an egoist all my life. My whole life, together with other artists of this community, has been founded on ego. But he said, I think that my real obstacle is that I don't understand the Trinity. And my heart went clunk. And that little buzzer was going off in my spirit saying, cop out, cop out, cop out. And I said, no, brother, that's not your problem. You already touched it in passing. All your life has been motivated, been based upon, animated by, driven by ego. And ego can take a man at a distance if he has natural endowments and gifts. And God is saying to you, pull out that plug and plug into me and have another source of life. And you're paralyzed for fear of what that new life will be and if you shall be sustained by it. And what about the perilous moment when you unplug one and you've not yet plugged into the other? He reminded me of another encounter I had with a Jewish man. There's something about these encounters with Jewish men. It's not because it's an ethnic oddity. It's because Jews are so deeply established in the spirit of the world. They have shaped it. So when God puts his finger in the chest of one of these men, he's touching the wellsprings of a whole world established on another principle. And I remember this other encounter with this Jewish man who had come to the Lord and we were sitting at his kitchen table. He had a stable of his own horses, several kinds of businesses and homes and properties and wealth. And he was kicking it off one end to the other. Like me, he had his origins in Brooklyn. He knew what the depression years were. He had struggled and lifted himself up by his own bootstraps, by his own heroic exertion. And now he had made it. He was saying, I'm ready to give God my horses. I'll give God my racing stable. I'll give God my businesses, my house. And he went right on down the list. And all of a sudden I heard myself saying, would you give God also your compulsive, I forgot how I expressed it, drive to succeed. Would you give him that competitive spirit? And guess what happened? He freaked out and could not do it. He was ready to give the things which his competitive spirit had obtained, but he wasn't ready to yield the spirit by which they were obtained. Because I know him. He could give his horses and his stables and his businesses, but given that spirit, given that drive, given that competitive urgency, it will only be a matter of time before he'll be ready. In a word, children, he was unwilling to give up the root of his life. He had been so long eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so long making decisions by his own moral and ethical and business mind, that he was paralyzed to consider that there's another alternative, which is utterly frightening. And that is the very life of God himself. Well, how would you like to have your life founded on that other principle? It's great when that life moves. It's great when it stirs. It's great when that spirit broods. It's great when he gives utter incentives. But what about the times when he chooses to be silent and leaves you with an embarrassed and hotly flushed face? What does it say in Colossians? Let me find it. If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. And here it comes. For you are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. You've pulled out the plug. There's no more juice from the world. There's nothing that's going to animate you or make you clever or give you things to speak or to do. You're dead. You're a lump. Dead is dead. And your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then and only then shall you also appear with him in God. Now, how would you like to be this man with the five Academy Awards at the next Hollywood cocktail party where you have been a raconteur, that means a bright storyteller and a whip and an intellectual and a man conversant with the arts and one who makes easy conversations and can drop names in every moment and is looked upon as a scintillating figure. And you come to this cocktail party as yet another man, one brought back from the dead. And you stand there and wait for the life of Christ to make himself manifest. And if he chooses not to express it, you're going to appear to be the most unseemly and unattractive lump. I see our champs back there, and he's ready. With all due respect, Baloney, he's never ready. And last night, well, maybe I shouldn't mention the when. You'll find out where it was. I spoke at a meeting, and God only gave me a beginning. And I was faithful to speak that much to give a mouthful of what I was saying. And it proved to be displeasing and irritating to the pastor and leaders of the place, so much so that they called me into their office afterwards to exhort me and to rebuke me for injuring the flock and speaking things that ought not to be spoken to young believers. And my only frail defense in this barrage of four men coming on strong with great years of experience was that I believed God and believed that I had given him a mouth for his own speaking, however foolish. I wondered if you understand what God is talking about tonight. And I can't think of a more appropriate beginning for a series of talks in the days that celebrate the resurrection of Christ than when it has pleased God to begin this night. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil will always appear attractive to the eyes. It will always commend itself to men, will always itch to pluck and to eat and to live from it. See, it's not evil. It's the knowledge of good and evil. It's knowing, it's having that security before we make our act. But the tree of life has another mode altogether. Watch when he says, what is Christianity? Christianity is a matter of life. If you are a Christian, then you possess a new life. And when you have to decide on the course of action, you do not ask, would it be right to do this? You ask, if I do this, how will it affect my inner life? How will that new life within me react to this? It's the most amazing thing that the objective of so many Christians is only conformity to an external standard. Though what God has given us by new birth is not a lot of new rules and regulations to which we are required to conform. Christianity does not require that we investigate the rights and wrongs of alternative courses of action, but that we test the reaction of the divine life to any proposed course. This is heavy stuff, folks. It is so heavy, so curious, so perfect, so utterly profound, that I don't dare paraphrase it. I want you to hear directly from the pen of the most inspired spokesman of the deepest principles of the... How many of us are making moral and ethical decisions? It's like to do this, it's not like to do that. How would it look? I'm a Christian. How would it appear? That's nudism, folks. As Christian, you now possess the life of Christ, and it is the reaction of his life that you have to consider. Do you realize that the conduct of many a non-Christian is governed by the principle of right and wrong? Where does the Christian differ from the non-Christian if the same principle governs both? God's word shows us plainly that the Christian is controlled by the life of Christ, not by an external code of ethics. Boy, I'll tell you, we're going to miss God if we think we're going to move by an external code. And my life in the Lord is yet very young, and I can yet cite adventures in God so unusual and so unconventional that at first hearing you would strongly contend and dispute whether God was the author of those actions and those speakings. You would say, God would never do such a thing. And yet, in obedience to such acts and speakings, I've seen the life of God go forth. Oh, I can multiply the instances. What would you say to a Jewish kid at a fraternity house at a great university in the midst of a frenzied six-hour marathon, an encounter between a foolish spokesman for Christ and an outraged assemblage of Jewish young intellectuals who have invited me to debate their atheistic professor of comparative religion. People hanging from the chandeliers, waiting to watch with glee the comeuppance of this nuisance who had already shaken the campus and was embarrassing them as a Jew. People who so hated what I was speaking and found it so offensive that they couldn't stand it and got up out of their seats and left the room in disgust and bitterness and were back two minutes later because they couldn't stay away either. What did Jesus say? Those who love the truth will hear my voice. Oh, it will drive us to a fury. But what are you going to do with the Jewish? About ten o'clock at night, this had gone on now for four hours, one of these students got out of his seat and began to approach me with his fists clenched and his knuckles wiped and spittle at the corners of his mouth and his eyes ablaze and he was trembling like a leaf. And he stood nose to nose with me. Can you picture this? Everybody stopped breathing, including me. If your God can do what you say that he can, I defy him to save me now. And I was looking around for my four spiritual laws. I'll tell you, children, in such a moment as that, when two thousand years of bitterness and frenzy and satanic distortion, no amount of clever speaking or four spiritual laws or forty will answer to the moment. You know what we need in that moment? Something of that truth. And I opened my mouth, if you want to see something pathetic, stupefied, dumbfounded, terrified, sensing that the whole night had come to a climax in this one moment and I'm not clever enough to meet it. And out of that nothingness and emptiness and barrenness and futility, when life and death were hanging in the back, God took a great Turkish towel and dipped it in icy water, dipped it, he saturated it, and brought it up sopping wet and twisted it and made of it a bludgeon. And as I opened my mouth, he gave that tear such a zest in the pus. With my statement, you need not think that you can receive your spirit's sting. Is that what they taught you, Pastor? Jewish amen? That's the point, children. Nothing that we have been taught, no principle, no knowledge, is going to suffice in moments of his life, his tree, his pure waters of life, giving its fruit. But I'll tell you, it's a lot safer and less demanding. And your own stockpile of religious clichés. Pastor, are you deprecating the word of God? No. But I'm saying, accept that a word has been quickened by the waters of life in that moment. I want to ask you a question tonight, children. You don't mind me calling you children, do you? I better explain it because it's not because I'm a hot shot or I'm looking down from some lofty Olympian height. But I believe that it is an expression of the very thing that I'm saying. I believe in my simplicity and naivety that the one who is speaking to you tonight is the resurrected Christ. How do you like them apples, as my wife says? I believe that. But you say, Art, it sounds suspiciously like you. Are you trying to say that Jesus had a book with action? We're laughing, but you know that right there is the glory of what all this is about. Or you say, if everybody sounded like Art can, and with all due respect, if everybody sounded like that particular historical Jesus who walked and spoke. God has done something far more magnificent, although that was an unspeakable glory. And I think he can't do it better than I have done. Greater in magnitude, greater in scope, greater in variety. Because he was limited in one body to be in one time and place. But look at the variety of what is before us tonight. It's remarkable. And there's a world that's dying to hear the originality of God, to see the uniqueness of a living God and a resurrected Christ expressed through your mouth and face. There's only one word for that. It's unspeakable glory. And I can't think of anything more pitiable than we should be an army of latinicans, little religious kin saints, all stamped off the same assembly line, all making the same pathetic sounds, expressing the same inept clichés. His fruit children is new in every season to those who live from the tree of life. And I want to tell you tonight that when God cast out that first man and his wife and established seraphim with flaming swords turning in every direction to God, the way of the tree of life, lest they take of it and eat and live forever. Because the life that is eternal is also the life that is abundant. It's only one life. But if you have received the Holy One of Israel and the blood of forgiveness and the Ruach HaKodesh, you are invited again to the garden to eat from the tree of life. And as a man eats, so once you realize, Wachmany says, that the determining factor in all Christian conduct is life, then you know that you must not only avoid all that is evil, but also all that is just externally good. It wasn't just the tree of the knowledge of evil. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Because I want to tell you tonight that there's something better than good. It's that which is perfect and the greatest problem for us. And it was reiterated by an oracle which God sent to us in Kansas City only some months ago. And he said to us, the greatest problem for the saints of God in Kansas City, and he might have said it before, the saints of God everywhere, is that they will substitute that which is good for that which is perfect. Only what issues from the Christian life is Christian conduct. I would say only what issues from Christ's life is Christ's conduct. Therefore we cannot consent to any action that does not spring from life. Nish speaks about an episode when he felt that he ought to rebuke a brother and he had a scriptural mandate to do it. Isn't this what we do, playing the games of discipleship and submission and all of the other fads that are so new and popular in Christendom? We're the first in our neighborhood to have one and we've got a new toy and we're going to play with it, thank you. And look how well we do it, better than the next guy. And we've learned how to conduct meetings and take offerings and do all of the kinds of religious things. So he went to this man's house, all set to do the good thing, and he raised his hand to knock on the door and that was as far as he ever got. His hand just dropped limply. It was absolutely lifeless and inert. God's life was simply not in that moment. It's going to take something for us to learn to live from the triumph. It's going to be a whole new ballgame and for many of us it's going to be as terrifying and as fearful a prospect in its unfamiliarity as is the invitation to this Jewish Academy Award winner to pull out the plug from the world and to plug into God. I think I just want to end tonight with a few words out of Ezekiel 47. Because in Revelation we read that this tree of life is planted by a river. It's a life-giving, fruit-bearing tree, but it's got to be watered by a river of life. And in the 47th chapter, there is a precious description. I'll probably only use the first few. In the 47th chapter of Ezekiel, afterwards he brought me again unto the door of the house, and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward. For the forefront of the house stood toward the east, and the waters came down from under, from the right side of the house, at the south side of the altar. What do you think of such a verse? Isn't it strange how particular God is? South, under, right side? Why does he bother with such picayune? Because he's speaking of something very real, very tangible. It's not at all a metaphor. It's not at all some kind of spiritual abstraction. The river of life issues forth from a specific place. And the word that I want to underline in the conclusion of this talk tonight is this. It comes out from under. And I'm not quite sure that I understand what that means. But it's got somehow to do with things that issue forth out of burial, with things that have been submitted unto death, with things that pertain to humility rather than to arrogance and to pride. The pure waters of life issue out from under the threshold of the door of the temple. I'll give you one last little anecdote from my recent experience. Some of you may have heard this if you've heard a tape of mine. But I was invited to a great charismatic center not too long ago. And they had just built themselves a new building. It cost $200,000. They were an earnest people. They were at a crossroad in their spiritual history. And their elders had heard me in Jerusalem and felt that somehow I should be invited to address them at this particular time. That somehow they were going to hear from an oracle of God. And I agreed with them. I felt it was God's invitation and I came. See, I'm naive enough to believe that every speaking before God's people is a matter of life and death. Do you feel that? Or do you think that it's an entertainment and it has to do with some guy who is well stocked with messages and can turn it on and off at will? I'll tell you it would have been a lot easier tonight to come prepared and to give you a standard message that would have sent you with your tongue clucking and admiring what a great guy I am. But obedience to God unto death is the willingness to come unprepared with the risk that your fragile reputation is going to be destroyed and people will cluck their tongue but not with admiration. But maybe with contempt. Are you willing to suffer that? That's what it means about coming from under the door of the temple. Well, I came to that community and they had put me in a hotel room and I went down on my face on that floor and prayed to God. And I reminded the Lord how earnest this engagement was. How significant was this fellowship and this crossroad in their life. And that I indeed wanted to be a mouthpiece for the Lord in those days. And I realized before long that God simply was not going to give me an answer right there and tell me what I was supposed to speak. So I finally got up off my knees and got busy and got dressed to go to the meeting and I figured well, in the car on the way down there as the Lord has so often done in times past something is just going to well up in my heart and spirit the theme, the scripture, the text and I'll know. We always have to know. Well, if you've been Jewish for 35 years it gets to be a habit. And as I drove prayerfully to that meeting God wasn't letting me know anything. Well, I thought to myself, I still have time. I went into the prayer room in that new building and I really went down before God in earnest. And I told Him in no uncertain terms that the hour has now come and is and He ought to be getting with it. They were out there and they were expecting and I was completely empty Lord. It's remarkable how much self-love can hide behind brave references to the needs of other people. Well, finally I came out there with trembling and the meeting was underway and I took a seat in the front pew and I thought surely in the moments that remain before I'm called up the Lord is going to flash it on my heart. And nothing was happening and the sweat was beginning to trickle and I had my Bible between my hands like this hoping that by osmosis and when that didn't happen in the last moment was to call it introduced in any moment I turned to the table of contents and I began reading through the books of the Bible right in prayer, right before the people, right at the pulpit. Boy, how He keeps you suspended. And when I got up and I looked down on those faces I had never seen such an army of tape recorders in my life. And when I lifted my head, I knew talk about zero talk about empty and you know what happened in that moment? My head was flattered with a hundred juicy messages I had a real itch that would have satisfied everybody in the house. Oh, dear children, do you understand what Elijah meant when he said as my Lord liveth? Do you understand that the Levites were not consecrated for their priesthood until the day when Moses said and go in and out of the camp I thought of a thousand things that would be good and man-pleasing messages that God Himself had given me but I could not speak and finally I had the patience to speak but I had nothing to say. In that moment, as I looked on their disappointed faces it gives me an angry mob of rabbis any day but saves me from the disappointed faces of God's people. You know what their faces said? What do you mean, Tess? Ain't you prayed up? Don't you not have faith? Don't you take these things seriously? What do you mean you have nothing to say? And I could not answer them a word. You know the song we love to sing about waiting on the Lord in front of several hundred people who are looking at you with beauty and the moments are ticking away like veritable eternity and just when it's coming to the last excruciating moment and it becomes unbearable some man gets up out of his seat with whom I learned that he had never before ever publicly opened his mouth. But you know what I had to say to this brother? I'm sorry. And then came the terrible silence again. And in the last excruciating moment I woke up I thought the scripture could just be it and she gave the scripture, mamma mia you had to be a fool not to be able to spin off a half dozen sermons on the spot with a scripture that powerful. And I had to say sorry. Now what would you say folks if I said that God had inspired both those people to suggest those scriptures but that we were not to act on either of them? How would you like to go to that school of obedience? And finally in the ashes of terrible suffering and death? See death wouldn't be so bad if you were just obliterated. But it's remaining there that hurts. Somewhere something broke forth in tongues and God gave a word and a direction and we were off and approved to be a knight out of the ashes. You're willing to be dead and hid with Christ and God until His life is revealed then your life shall be revealed with Him unto glory and not before. Children we have all sinned and or fallen short of the glory of God. The world is dying from boredom dying from monotony it doesn't know what to do with itself it's freaking out it's TV programs and it's films are becoming grotesque and obscene it's literature, it's entertainment odiastic and filthy we're on a straight line collision course with Sodom and Gomorrah because there is an inexorable pressure in the world to produce some novelty to assuage the boredom of men because they do not know a God who is new and that which God intended to be a life-giving alternative to death has itself become a weary, grey, dismal, religious thing punctuated only by a little charismatic thrill we need something more than new choruses and even freedom in the saying of Amen we need a resurgence of the life out of the personalities and mouths of His children who are the instruments of His speaking and the showing forth of His glory new in every season because they eat from the tree of life and are watered from the purest waters of life the river that flows forth from under the door of the temple will you bow your heads with me? Precious God, we repent we've never thought to think of the word repent in such a context as this we thought that we should only repent if we had been guilty of moral misdeeds but we never thought that we ought to repent from having fed ourselves from the wrong tree teach us what this means, Lord show us that we have a choice again and again and again to return to the tree of life Mighty God, plant us by the waters of life, Lord deeply water us and bring forth from us in the places where you have called us to live our lives and to serve you bring forth the originality and the uniqueness the life-giving power, the creativity of a living God Gracious God, gracious God help us to be truly a new covenant people who can say with Paul for me to live is Christ help us, Lord, and keep us from anything less however good than that which is perfect and issues from you moment by moment thank you for this speaking tonight, Lord that you fashion it as we have gone bless it to every hearer and seal it may it be like a fire pent up in our bones, Lord let it do a work in us and turn us again to the source of life Thank you, Lord Precious God, we love you Hallelujah