In this sermon, the speaker describes a meeting with a successful and impressive man, highlighting the worldly success and luxurious appearance of the man. The speaker then transitions to discussing his own experiences and activities, including a trip to Germany to discuss an exchange of life with German brothers. The speaker emphasizes the importance of spiritual maturity and having an appetite for the quiet and unseen things of God. The sermon also explores the unity of the body of Christ and the connection between the apostolic man of God and those who are connected to him. The speaker references the story of Paul being called to go to Macedonia in response to a vision, highlighting the importance of following God's leading. The sermon concludes with a discussion about the world's desire to see a real "mensch," a fully-rounded and mature individual who is not afraid to quote poetry or be impressed by the Spirit.

Hallelujah. Precious Holy God, thank you for a pure, unadulterated, and holy word that came from your heart this morning to ours. Establish it, mighty God. Right it, mighty God. Right into the heart of our being, Lord. And in this world, mighty God, of increasingly stunted and caricatured men, bring forth your model son. Out of this assemblage, precious God, of Jews and Gentiles, of black and white, every shape and size and description, bring us increasingly, mighty God, into your maturity, into your reality, into your depth, into your oneness, into your life. Shape us into the image of your son. Thank you for these precious days and this precious speaking. Bless now, mighty God, whatever modest portion you'd express through me. Bless these children. Thank you for speaking so to our hearts. We covenant, Lord, not to allow a syllable to fall to the ground, but to do it for Jesus' sake. Amen. Bless you. Please be seated. If it were not that he who is joined to Christ is one spirit with him, I would tremble to have to get up and to speak after what we've just heard. But I believe that the author of what I'm to speak is the same author of what our brother Charles has spoken. This is the last of a three-part message on apostolic character or the character of the end-time man. And I spoke about something of a definition of what character is. A sum of traits conferring distinctiveness, an attribute or quality or properties which serve as an index to the essential or intrinsic nature of a thing or a person. The totality or the aggregate of distinctive moral qualities belonging to an individual. The sum of qualities or features by which a thing is distinguished from others. A person's essential peculiarity. I think of the word peculiar when God says about Israel that I have called them as a people unto myself, a peculiar people. I don't think that he meant an eccentric people. He meant a distinctive people, a holy people, a nation of priests. And praise God that he's given us the model and also the enablement. God is shaping and forming in our life his character. It's a process, as I've tried to suggest, and every time that we defer to God, in particular moments of our life, in that moment his life is being formed and expressed through us. Character is something you find you have when you come to be about 40 years of age. And you find that there's a certain distinctive mode of thinking, being and acting which has been shaped and brought forth over the course of your years of walking. And that's what you are. Character is what a man is. And as I continually remind audiences, our spiritual maturity or character is not to be measured by how we feel or perceive ourselves in audiences or times such as this. But what shall be revealed in moments when there shall be, for example, a power shortage, we shall find ourselves caught in elevators between floors, in choking darkness and suffocation, compressed with strangers in a little box and every instinctive thing in our flesh crying out for our own well-being and safety. What you are shall be revealed then. The end times is eminently going to be an age of increasing polarity and crisis and revelation. And those of us who know from our college days the axiom in political science, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, I'm very fond of saying that crisis reveals and absolute crisis shall reveal absolutely. What shall be revealed of our character both individually and corporately in the crisis of our end time condition? God is speaking to us now that when that revelation shall come, we shall not be found wanting. There's a process, children, and I'm so conscious of it, as I've just concluded my first decade with God, a precious sojourn, hallelujah, not altogether peaches and cream, lots of grindings and crushings and untoward events and cries and shrieks and tearing of hair and pounding of chest and holding my hands up and not understanding the dealings of the Most High God. But you know, as I look back and survey the course and the process and the place where I now find myself, I say, God, thank you, Lord. Hallelujah for the process. Hallelujah that you took a kind of a derelict, a bum, egotist, sensualist, living as a god unto himself and running amok and grinding to powder every unfortunate victim who happened to come in his way. And a decade later, there can be seen the first rudiments in the modicum of godliness through this life. Hallelujah to you be praise and glory forever. I can count the times that I've cried on the fingers of one hand in the first 35 years of my life. The first pastor that I ever had said to me, you're the hardest man that I have ever met. And I was already born again. And the five times I think that which I cried in the first unhappy segment of my life had never to do with a human being, always and invariably with a dog. An injured dog could move me to tears. A lost dog, a dying dog. But a dying mankind, I could turn in complete indifference. But I'll tell you, children, I've given up counting the crying since. Not saccharine tears and little gushings and that kind of business. I mean the deep breakings, the convulsive sobs and shakings that rack a man to the foundation of his nature. Where you've used up every Kleenex in your pocket and your handkerchief and the tablecloth and you're under the table at a banquet and you've just decomposed in tears. Praise God for every such holy encounter that we cry out with our prophet Isaiah, Oy vey, oy vey, woe is me, I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips and I live in the midst of a people of unclean lips. There's a process by which God finds the unregenerate man and saves him. And then he becomes for the first time, man. Because it takes God, children, to be a man. There's no manliness, there's no manhood without the deposit of the sublime and holy God in us by his spirit. It's the very beginning the foundational requisite for manhood. You're not a man. You're a debased and deformed and caricatured, stunted, anthropomorphic, grotesque until the Ruach HaKodesh has found his place in your heart. And that is only the beginning. Unregenerate man, man. And then as you continue to walk with God maybe a decade or so later you begin to see the first configuration you can say, godly man. But you know what the end of the whole process is? The God-man. It's no longer easy to perceive where man has left off and where God has begun. You can stand as the Elijah of your generation and say to the Ahabs and the filthy potentates who have wedded the Jezebels of our age as the Lord my God liveth before whom I stand it shall not reign nor do but according to my word. And that, children, is either the most unspeakable act of presumption or a man who has become so one with God in his character, in his life, in his purpose that his word is God's word. You tremble to contemplate the glory to which God is bringing us. And you shrivel and wince when people speak about Judaism and Christianity as if they are two religious alternatives. A pox on every filthy misunderstanding of what true religion is. Now I want you to turn with me this morning to the book of Acts and the 17th chapter. A chapter which I have long ignored as my dear brother Charles has ignored the Gospels. I'll tell you why I ignored it. I've loved the book of Acts. I was so naive from the moment of my new birth that I believed that God had called us to continue and to conclude the book of Acts. Can you imagine? I came like a roe bounding to my first New Testament fellowship expecting utter honesty and candor and shared lives and open hearts. Powerful dealings of God in the community through us and the persecution which must invariably follow. And found not a whit of any of these things but some kind of cozy Pentecostal club. I love the great acts of God made manifest through his gospel heroes. The Pauls and the Silases and the Barnabases of that apostolic generation. The great shakings and the earthquakes and the cell doors bursting open and the manacles falling from limbs and everyone was set free. But the 17th chapter passed me by. No bombast, no drama, no great electric events. It was one of the most low keyed modest episodes. It's almost like a lull between the great events. What's happening to me children? I don't know. But I feel like that somehow I have more of an appetite a spiritual appetite for the things that are quiet for the things that are unseen for the things invisible for the things not lauded than for the things that are bombastic dynamic, electric and easily acknowledged. And I'll tell you there's something to be seen in this 17th chapter that we dare not miss. Let's pick this up in the 14th verse. Trying to remember now the pattern of God's leading for Paul who had been first in Asia and the spirit commanded him and forbid him to continue there. And a vision came to Paul in the night of a Macedonian beseeching him, come help us. And immediately when he had received the vision they assuredly gathered that the Lord had called them to go unto them. What a fantastic teaching there and the oneness between the apostolic man of God and those whose lives were knit to him. And they went. And the end result of their obedience was backs torn to pieces public humiliation thrust into dungeons in the stench and the reek. But the final upshot was that in their praise in the midst of their suffering by a God who inhabits the praises of his people in direct proportion to the authenticity of their praise and the degree of their suffering came a burst of his holy presence because where the spirit of God is there is liberty. And everyone's manacles fell from them and the doors burst open in the cell in which they were imprisoned. And the prison keeper holding the keys waiting for his social security retirement wanted to keep his nose clean and be a respectable Christian but the man who the prisoners had fled and would have killed himself was saved by a gift of the Holy Spirit when Paul down in the dungeon saw the man outside by the spirit and cried out to him Cool it, we're still here. No sweat. We were never prisoners to begin with because to be free in Christ is free indeed. And if my God has led me by a holy vision into a cell in Philippi I'm more free than you and so out of that ragtag collection to use Charles' phrase of a fearful prison keeper motley collection of prisoners a cellar of purple and a former demoniacal woman was born the body of Christ in Philippi. And then these same precious apostles went on to other cities in Greece and came finally it says in the 14th verse when the brethren had sent Paul away as it were to the sea and they that conducted Paul brought him unto Athens and received a commandment unto Silas and Timotheus to come to him with all speed and they departed. Here's a man who's not even in control of his own steps. He didn't determine to go to Athens. He didn't sit down and say man wouldn't it be groovy to have some kind of evangelical outreach at the center of the intellectual heart of the western world. Hey listen so long as I'm in Greece anyway I'd love to make contact and I'd love to get myself up to Mars Hill where the action is. You want to know something children? For this piece of flesh who was such a wheeler and dealer for 35 years and always had to be on top of the situation and pull strings and coerce and exert influence I've not lifted a finger in this decade for anything. I'm not born out of the will of men but by the will of God. These are holy convocations. It has not to do with the promotions of the ministries of men nor any other purpose than to give God a platform by which he can express to us the burden of his heart for our generation. To minister to our Jewish kinsmen to establish them in the faith and to proclaim the vision of God's end time purpose for Jew and Gentile at the conclusion of the age. No man needs strive to reach the Athens of his generation. There's a God who is in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. Let's give him a chance and get out of the way. The apostle Paul was led by other men. They conducted him to Athens. And in the 16th verse while Paul waited for them at Athens his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. You know what I love about that? His spirit was stirred in him. He's not some automaton. He's not some spiritual tin saint stamped out on God's assembly line. There's something human in the life of Paul commingled with the holy substance of the living God. There's a mystery and God works through the humanity of that man to perfect his holy acts. His spirit winced while he was waiting in Athens when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. I love the human responsiveness of the apostle Paul. He wasn't a word a mensch he was soul and spirit and he had it all together. He was not some effete spiritual saint trilling with his voice and walking on eggshells Jesus and making with his face religious postures of the kind that we do on communion Sunday. He was a well rounded full orbed human being. Children it takes God to be a man. That we might all come in the unity of the faith to the fullness and stature of Yahshua HaMashiach unto a perfect man. He saw he winced he responded when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. And if Paul saw that in Athens what ought we to say who are here in the greatest Babylon of all times on the earth New York City. When shall our spirits wince by his spirit because I tell you children that is ever and always the beginning of everything. Every good and perfect gift cometh from above and every holy act has its inception in heaven out of the heart of God through the heart of his children. A lot of us are busy knocking on doors and distributing tracts and full of evangelical striving so busy that our hearts have not been available to God that he might wince through them and begin his work if we would leave off our own. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews. Hey Art what is that how does he go from idolatry to the synagogue easily. You know what idolatry is children? It's not some pagan beating on tom-toms or drinking the blood of animals and other kinds of things of course those are expressions. Idolatry is that form of religion which affords men a psychological relief valve and allows them by some cursory and cheap out like a dollar in a collection plate or a Yom Kippur service to think that they have requited God. Idolatry is any form of religious exercise that keeps men from full commitment to God and enables them to have some modicum of religious psychological and aesthetic satisfaction feeling that they have fulfilled their religious requirements. Paul winced in his heart and the very next step led by God he finds himself in a synagogue. So ought we to be at not Jewish synagogues only but synagogues of every description both Jew and Gentile. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons and in the market daily with them that met with him. And you know what children? I don't have any doubt whatsoever that every single person who met with Paul in the marketplace was there by the divine arrangement of God. This is a man caught up in the purposes of God moving by his spirit in God's place at God's time without striving without exertion performing holy acts. We said to the Jewish professor who came again last night and sat in the presence of that heavenly glory through that concert authority on the New Testament and the Pauline epistles orthodox Jew he may be in our audience again this morning whom we love I said did you think that you were here by accident that you stumbled in somehow yesterday or the day before by accident? Divine encounter with God. We didn't have to advertise lavishly there's a God who knows very well what is taking place here and whose eye roves to and fro over the face of the earth seeking that one whose heart is perfect toward him. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him and some said what will this babbler say? Others some he seems to be a set of forth of strange gods because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection and they took him and brought him unto Arapagus saying may we know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears we should we would know therefore what these things mean for all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time and nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill dum-da-dum-dum they took him if he had strived and turned himself inside out and upside down if he had written letters to every kind of evangelical contact I don't know if what he had done to get himself at Mars Hill it would have availed not at all but they took him and brought him to the chief place where the intellectuals met where the shapers of society had their confrontations there Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and he said you men of Athens I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious for as I passed by and beheld your devotions I found an altar which with the inscription to the unknown God whom therefore you ignorantly worship him declare I unto you as my wife Inger says how do you like them apples? how would you like to begin a significant eternal confrontation with an insult I perceive that in all things you guys are just too cotton-picking superstitious to whom is he saying this? but the leading intellectual lights of their day who esteem themselves for their rationality and their logic and Paul begins his first words coming to the place of eminence and confrontation with slap I'll tell you there's not a mission organization today that would likely have hired him he blows every qualification and he doesn't even know the simple ABC's of how to witness hey you know you've got to be nice and you've got to rep and be winsome and Paul neither bleated like a lamb nor roared like a lion according to his choosing but there was a God who had so the possession of him who knew how to speak the electric words that would command the attention of men and open them for life-giving truth I was not too long ago come back from about 30 days of activity in Europe Germany Yugoslavia and Switzerland and I would say that they were the most jam-packed fruitful significant days of my life of service with God it's not immodest because to God be the glory to recall the phrase that the Yugoslavian brothers spoke in the car on the way to Belgrade after some days of meeting at their minister's conference unbeknownst to me torn by strife and divisions of every kind where God brought healing and reconciliation by a living word in those days out of the mouth of a Jewish man younger in the Lord than they wholly removed from their circumstances without any natural way to understand what their need was leaving the hotel room and walking from the hotel to the place where the meetings were to be conducted not knowing from the time I left at the hotel to the ten minute time later when I would arrive what it was that I was to speak day by day by day to hear from these men at the end of those days at the moment of our greatest crisis God brought us the living word He sent us a prophet my heart burst to hear men speak that of me and flew from Belgrade, Yugoslavia to spend one day in Zurich to visit some German brothers pure and holy and so restless not from any human and natural thing but from the glories that God had been performing that I had to walk the streets of Zurich that night and as I walked the streets of Zurich you know what I remembered this is where it all began eleven years ago this is where God picked me up as a hitchhiker with the back on my back this is where God had me to meet that Gentile of the Gentiles that lily white middle class washed Protestant from the Midwest who bugged me no end telling me that it was the love of God the love of God that enabled her to be kind to me whom I thought I would crush in my arrogant atheism when I asked her that one question that no Christian had ever been able to answer for me in all my 34 years How do you know that God is? and this little thing turned up that face brimming with the light of God and said in a way from which I've never recovered I know that God is art He lives in me POW! and one great hulk came crashing to its face crying Oy vey, woe is me I am undone the very next day not yet having recollected collected my senses still stunned shattered by that divine encounter through a little little middle class girl I was picked up off the side of the road by a beautiful man who didn't just wait give me this business hurry up fella I'm doing you the favor but got out of the car and greeted me by the side of the road as if I was some exalted guest with a smile on his face from ear to ear to arouse my suspicions immediately to think that he was a homosexual who else shall take such delight in picking up the likes of me you know that God is preparing a whole generation of men to become broken and disconsolate utterly lost and know it to be standing by the sides of the road of our world waiting to be picked up with one with a beaming confidence who shall make them to feel as exalted guests in the front seats of our cars this is what it's all about children and that man looked at me as we drove off and saw that I was no high school kid out on a lock it was well past the tourist season why are you traveling like this he asked me in German and so well as I could in my butchered Deutsch I told him I was a modern man whose foundations was broken I was looking for the deepest answers to life and before I could stop myself I heard myself blurting out that I was Jewish I thought cats you've really blown it now man that's not the information you just tell any old body I turned cautiously to see what this man's reaction might be would he murmur would he be agitated would he burst out would he be silent and I couldn't believe when I saw his face it was just a glory of joy and a pain of light at the knowledge of the fact that he had a Jew in his car he was more excited for my Jewishness than I was because he understood its meaning and for me it was only an enigma and a predicament he insisted we stop for refreshments at his expense and we had a conversation children which I treasure above all conversations in the long life of speaking and he said there's not a word I was the one who was pouring out without let and hindrance I was sharing with this gentile stranger the entire burden and content of my life the anguish of soul my desperation my futility my frustration for a world that was on collision course and dying and for which there was no answer hopeless and finally when I spit out all my grief my inability to live with a German wife the failure of my humanism and my good will and my intelligence which is the failure therefore of all mankind and all modern men I looked at this man who has not much to look at and thought to myself what is he going to say to me Marxist existentialist pragmatist there is nothing new under the sun belong to all kinds of organizations on the attorney general's list left wing radical what is he going to tell me some ideology philosophy odd he said to me in a very soft voice in that beautiful German way do you know what it is that the world needs I thought to myself if he doesn't have the answer he sure knows how to ask the question I had my arms fixed over my chest with my cynical face that was a hard mask the man who had not cried in more than 5 times in 34 years hard obdurate a rock knocked from pillar to post could take anything and not whimper or wince what I asked him double dare you to tell me anything new odd he said what the world needs is for men to wash one another's feet pow there went my heart pow stunned speechless and a vision on the spot of all of the hot shot angry men of my generation bending themselves to wash the feet of the lowly and the despised and me in the midst of them all of us who are going to save mankind and can't save our own marriages and something broke forth in my heart a silent eureka and I knew that this was it we don't need programs we don't need socialisms we don't need legislation and grooving new ideas and education we need a new spirit the spirit of humility and love and I began to salivate is that a Jewish reaction? and as I was gagging on my own juices this man went on to speak to me in German the gospel of Yeshua HaMashiach the words of truth and life you never saw a more devastated you in your life than when I was finished with that man that day and now 11 years later after experiencing the greatest glory in which God had ever used me in such tumultuous days in such a variableness of requirement of life in army chapels before stayed Germans speaking to millionaires human, civil, individual confrontations before massive audiences in season, out of season always the choice and ready word by the spirit of God and now to this denomination of the most significant group that God can use in that iron curtain country and he had healed them and in the days in between in the hours in between the meetings God had used me to call out and to fish and to find nine of my Jewish people in that inconspicuous city of Yugoslavia it had nothing to do with my striving I was as rested on the last day as I was on the first it's the father who doeth the works what? how did you find those Jews? I tell you children I didn't even know they were there wouldn't have even occurred to me to look for them except that we were in the street one day and we asked a woman for directions and she was just about to get up on the street car and I said to my Yugoslavian brother stop her she's Jewish he said Art how do you know? I said don't argue with me stop her and he just got her in time before she stepped on that street car and was lost to obscurity she was Jewish how did I know? it wasn't by her conspicuous or countenance Holy Spirit of God walked us back to the hotel one of the last of the survivors of an earlier Jewish community in that city and she gave us the address of two other Jews and they gave us the address of others that before we were finished we had been in their homes having wine and cookies meeting their Catholic wives survivors from the concentration camps sole survivors into the remnant and the pathetic shambles of the building that had once been their synagogue with its creaking floors dust and death and decay everywhere and loose bricks and loose plaster and opened up the ark to find the Torah and my heart failed within me when I saw an empty box and nothing and God spoke to my spirit reminded me your house shall be left unto you desolate wondered shouldn't I be in the hotel preparing for tonight's message? this is the last night this has got to be significant God has been building something shouldn't I be seeking his face instead of sightseeing in Jewish synagogues? I came children unprepared to that meeting so to speak I had no other preparation than what God has invested in me in eleven years at his hand by his precious holy dealings that's all I had no other preparation and God spoke that night to these Yugoslavian ministers if you shall not be made one with each other if you'll not put away your resentments and the grounds for your separation and be reconciled one to another and be the corporate expression of the life of God in your nation when I shall come again and see you I shall find you as a house that is left unto you desolate you shall be like that synagogue with the plaster coming off the lathes and the bricks falling out we shall open up the ark on the platform and you shall not have a heart one of the men said to me in the car as Edwin and I drove to the airport on that last day crammed in in a three cylinder twelve year old German car with suitcases and four burly men he said I saw one of the elders last night weeping whom I had not seen broken in eleven years children what preparation need we to have except that which God invests in the life of those who will receive the fullness of his dealings character is not born in a day and the apostle Paul was not some groovy Jesus freak with a heavy star of David around his neck and a yarmulke on his head ready to do for God he was a seasoned tempered man full orbed matured shaped at the hand of the living God caught up in the purposes of God and found himself on Mars Hill no accident that I perceive that in all things you're too superstitious for as I passed by and beheld your devotions I found an altar with the inscription to the unknown God you know what I love about this his eyes weren't closed he wasn't so spiritual that he could not take note of the culture that was about him he didn't speak to men out of a sound chamber thus saith the Lord he was alive and human he saw, he witnessed he observed and he used this existential material with which to speak to men in whose culture it was and that's why you've seen only a peripheral Jew like myself in the kingdom in these recent years struck off and flying like loose flotsam and jetsam and stumbled their way into the kingdom no thanks to those who call themselves Christians by and large you've not sought to come to us and to express the living truth of God in a context and culture and way that we might have had our hearts and attention arrested we find one little thing and however it had its beginning in God we make of it a formula therefore everything has to be with sawdust invitations cliches I'll tell you the phrase that Christ isn't the answer can become the most pathetic cliche and I'll tell you that scriptures themselves if they are not uttered and born and inspired by the spirit of God in a particular moment can themselves become pathetic cliches God understands what I'm speaking I pray you do too to think that we're glib and can quote John 3.16 or four spiritual laws and that this is going to do the work is a pathetic statement of the fact that we've not come to the place that God had Paul in the chapter that we're now reading as I beheld the inscription to the unknown God as I passed by I perceived I praised God for a man wholly alive in God and then he goes on to say God that made the world and all the things therein seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth dwells not in temples made with hands neither is worship with men's hands as though he needed anything seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation that they might that they should seek the Lord if happily they might feel after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us for in him we live and move and have our being as certain also of your own poets have said hey Paul you're dangerously trafficking in the world what are you doing quoting poetry I'm concerned for your condition you're getting carnal I'm thrilled when my brother Charles admitted that he had been to a movie and God has given me one of my greatest messages sitting in front of my own TV tube watching an English production of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar you know children the world does not want to see emaciated religious types gray, barren toothless, old things haggard and bent croaking out their little crochets having their little religious meetings their few groans and screeches you know what the world is waiting to see there's a word for it in Yiddish a mensch they want to see a real mensch they want to see a man full orbed rounded, mature solid, established grounded alive who's not averse to quoting poetry if it pleased God to impress him by his spirit with it as certain as your own poets have said you know what we've just read children in these verses of Paul's statements which God has included in the Holy Writ we read a philosophical exposition hey isn't that worldly Paul spoke to philosophical men philosophically and he said more in those four verses than they had been able to understand in a lifetime of squabbling and hair splitting and all kinds of inane philosophical reckonings he spoke to them clearly and philosophically what is the end all and be all and purpose of our human existence bang then he goes on to say for as much then as we're the offspring of God we ought not to think that the Godhead is likened to gold or silver or stone graven by art and man's device and the times of this ignorance God winked at but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead do you want to know something children he has not yet actually mentioned the name of Jesus he has not yet quoted one scripture ought are you trying to suggest that this is the way to witness what I'm trying to suggest is that there is no one given way to witness and among the times that God's servants want to just shrivel up and die is when after pouring out your heart before an audience of God's people knowing that you have the rema of God by the Holy Spirit that men have heard from the living God himself is to find out later that there was someone in the audience who went to complain to the men who had arranged the service that this Jewish man who spoke didn't mention the name of Jesus once ipso facto unkosher yes that's right I didn't mention Jesus once in the whole message but every single word was bathed in his glory and in his person may God save us from our cliches from our methodologies from our techniques from our abracadabra where we rub the genie lamp in the name of Jesus and watch to see the genie come out and work the magic may God give us a holy reverence for the name that even when it is not explicitly spoken the fragrance of all that it means shall be made manifest in our speaking and our doing that's the man of God you know what I think when he came to that place where he said where he spoke to them about repenting and about resurrection I don't think that he changed his voice all of a sudden he didn't shift gears he says oh now I got to get spiritual now I was talking philosophically about a secular subject now I'm talking about a spiritual subject I've got to adjust my voice and my face nonsense it was the same face and the same voice whether he was discussing the baseball scores or philosophy or the holy things of God he was a well rounded fully whole man of God may God save us for affecting religious looks and postures and voices and when they heard the resurrection of the dead some mocked and others said we will hear the again of this matter so Paul departed from them isn't that always the way some will always mock some will say that they will hear again and likely will not but when they stopped hearing Paul stopped speaking and departed from among them how be it certain men claim unto him and believed and so it was that God's purpose for having brought Paul through the instrumentality of other men to the chief place of Mars Hill was affected I want to read to you just a little bit as I conclude from Watchman it begins with some beautiful words Paul was a man I'm stopping right in the middle of a sentence what is it about the word man that makes me salivate so Paul was a man in this frenetic age in which we live when Satan is so busy to erase and disfigure the image of male and female in the earth he's also wanting to make them one one shaggy head long screaming grotesque there's a God who said he made them male and female what is it about a man Paul was a man you know what I think it is that it's something about the image of God that makes us to drool it's not just that we're bipeds there's something holy in the image physical psychological emotional spiritual that is the very reflection of the God who designed it and every time we see any deflection any distortion any grotesque disfigurement the heart within us winces because there's a cry in all nature to bring forth to make manifest the son of the living God which son we are children together Paul was a man who had divine revelation but when we meet him we touch something in a human life that was not imparted by revelation alone for years he had followed the Lord and for years he had not given way to sin nor even countenance defeat and over all those years his spiritual wealth was being continuously increased so in the course of time it came to pass that when he was faced with a need he could immediately speak the word that met that need your spirit stinks you need not think that God will give you anything I told you that yesterday in a moment of crisis in an impassioned confrontation at a Jewish fraternity house and at the end of those 30 days in Europe you know what happened? Corey Ten Boom's nephew came to the Youth with a Mission where I was speaking to hear me and as he drove the driveway the Lord said to him by the spirit take art to see this Armenian millionaire and so he told me that after the meeting I said let's go God is doing fantastic things in Minnesota he's establishing in that remote place a haven for soon to be saved orthodox kinsmen there's no telling what shall be the needs the extent of the finances to build for them a place now tell you children I stood on that grassy knoll less than two weeks ago and saw there a battered old farmhouse and a dilapidated barn and some cynical American woman said to me do you think she said that God's going to do something here for the Jewish people? and I looked with my natural eye at that swaying barn and that dilapidated house and something in the spirit began to break and I saw laughing shouting children dark haired I saw a Jewish life in all its fullness I saw a community a messianic community of Jews who had come to a prepared place of refuge I said let's go to see this millionaire so I call him up tell him we're coming he called up and he said Artie said the man is grievously sick and he can't see anyone his son tells me he can't receive any visitors I said that doesn't sound right maybe Satan is trying to steal this opportunity let's go anyhow we'll raise him up out of his sickbed and he'll know that God has sent us he said okay so we drove out to this palatial place in Switzerland and there we were knocking on the front door and a door opened and as the door opened from by the sun I looked beyond him and there in the back in the study I saw this man fully dressed and utterly whole he was on the phone trying to find out where we were his son had told him we had called and he wanted us to come because that afternoon in his sickbed all of a sudden a thought occurred to him what am I doing here and he raised himself up and was made whole and as he was seeking to find us on the phone there we were knocking on the front door and even as I came into his study I did not know why I was there you don't have to know he knows and two hours later out of my mouth God had so spoken to this man a millionaire with properties in Monte Carlo Israel Switzerland America who knows the extent of his holdings very much accustomed to making split decisions like this over which hundreds of thousands of dollars will be decided said to me this is too much for me to contain please write me a statement of what you have spoken that I might prayerfully consider what my response to this ought to be it was not a man who had spoken to him although it came forth with a Brooklyn accent on my very last day the next day on my way to the airport at Geneva comes the same Peter Van Vorden again and says Art I feel today that I ought to take you to another millionaire he's Jewish I said lead on brother and we came to this man's suite of offices in Geneva oy you can't believe I mean paneled I mean luxurious and impressive as was the man himself what a picture of worldly success his suit his jacket alone is probably worth to some value of all my wardrobe put together he was a man of command and assurance and we sat in his office I felt like a little pimple the end of 30 days of enormous activity on my way to an airport yet to fly up to the German community in Frankfurt to discuss with them what kind of exchange of life we're going to have with German brothers what God is doing children is fantastic in the earth German brothers who had never laid eyes on me before and two days later by the witness of the spirit and that's how we need to know each other are willing to exchange life members of their community and thousands of dollars in a scheme of God that overshadows nations and is designed for the ultimate salvation of Israel no man could have conceived it nor executed it only those moving by the spirit of God who have no purpose unto themselves nor for themselves I sat in that man's office and I listened to him what an impressive man and what a dedicated Zionist hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars had he given to Israel and even now he's working on programs and organizations for fundraising that's going to help Israel in this predicament his son experienced 40% burns on his body as a tank commander in the Yom Kippur War and his wife is an inmate one of the last survivors of Auschwitz and a leader in women Zionist organizations he's a macha and as he was continuing to speak you know what happened something was happening in my spirit a sorrow began to spread over my heart and finally my mouth opened and I said Norman I spoke to him like a little boy I saw him in his little short pants I didn't see him in his great vested suit and impressiveness I saw him as a little boychickle with all his millions who doesn't know which end is up spiritually speaking Norman I said if you continue speaking like this I'm going to weep is that a way to begin to speak to an impressive Jewish millionaire whatever do you mean he said as he drew himself to his full height with his clipped British accent who had been picking up the phone during the course of our time and speaking in French and Hebrew I said Norman you're the living embodiment and the personification of our Jewish era compounded over the centuries and writ large do you think that by your fundraising and your organizations you're going to save Israel from its predicament I tell you that if you will not set your priorities aright my God shall compound your predicament until you shall have no alternative but turn your face to the heaven and seek him from whom our salvation comes that was the beginning of a two hour conversation in which he did not open his mouth to interrupt me once I saw the living God pin a man to the wall and when it was finished note he said to me a man used to make massive decisions international connections he said this is too much for me to contain write me a statement that I might consider what my response to this must be I sent the same statement to him as I sent to the other millionaire I don't know what's going to come out of it children it's in the same hands of him who sent me and spoke out of this mouth to these men Paul was a man who had divine revelation I've enjoyed that also but you know what I've enjoyed almost as much those speakings of God in which I've not felt crackling anointings in which it came forth in my familiar Brooklyn accent even with a bit of slang thrown in and it was as much an utterance out of the heart of God as any anointed public utterance in which the Lord has ever spoken through me you know what I have a feeling children God wants that to be the whole sum of our life in him every utterance anointed every word having its origin in him every act a divine act nothing so small so insignificant that it is not an exalted sanctified expression of the living God in his people they don't have to wait to see us when we're religious let them see us munching on a hot dog and they'll be stunned and we can say when you see me you see the Father I and the Father are one God save us from our religious posturing when he was faced with a need he could immediately speak the word that met the need here we see the lofty heights to which under the new covenant the grace of God can bring a man here is a human life that has been wrought upon by God over the years God has been ceaselessly molding this life and purifying it till at length something has been wrought into the man's very constitution you cannot any longer discern where the man leaves off and God begins there one Paul was a man in motion for God mature and anointed in the heart of God's will a God man natural human spontaneous free resourceful and out of his rich supply without being explicitly supernaturally led came divine encounter which arrested the lives of men for an eternity with me will you gracious living God how we love your way mighty God how we flush with embarrassment even to think of the years that we've spent as believers in so much foolish striving and prattle so much activity so much nonsense so much spinning of our wheels seeking to do for you as if you needed to have someone to do for you who have created the heavens and the earth and all that in them is mighty God may we understand deeply that for us to live is Christ and that in his life are all the things that pertain to godliness to character to virtue to ministry that we might say with Paul in him I move and live and have my being thank you precious God that there's a great mystery in this that Paul who has so perfectly the expression of this was so distinctively himself and that we also if we shall be willing to lose our lives shall find it we shall not be paper mache saints we shall not be little tin puppets we shall not be little Jesus's echoing in sound chambers thus saith the Lord but in the distinctive accent that you have given us in the distinctive configuration in which you have made us your life shall come forth to reveal your glory through our speaking thank you mighty God through the variety of all these precious flowers in different shapes and sizes and hues can go forth the life giving quality of God in speech that is in keeping with their personality the shape that you have formed and the place where you have called them to express it thank God that we're not all art kinsmen to all the world you see me you see the Father hallelujah precious holy God thank you for a pure unadulterated and holy word that came from your heart this morning to ours establish it mighty God right it mighty God right into the heart of our being Lord and in this world mighty God of increasingly stunted and caricatured men bring forth your model son out of this assemblage precious God of Jews and Gentiles of black and white every shape and size and description bring us increasingly mighty God into your maturity into your reality into your depth into your oneness into your life shape us into the image of your son thank you for these precious days and this precious speaking bless now mighty God whatever modest portion you would express through me bless these children thank you for speaking so to our hearts we covenant Lord not to allow a syllable to fall to the ground but to do it for Jesus sake amen