Antioch, Apostolic Sending and Setting - Part 10

that those who have labored with Jews recognize that the most civil Jews, the most educated, the most polite, the most cultured, they can talk about any subject with equanimity and with grace, but mention Jesus, mention the Christ, mention the cross, mention the faith, and it's as if a mask of civility is taken away, and it's the devil baring his teeth at you. And here, that episode takes place, and Paul answers being filled with the Holy Spirit. He's not intimidated, not threatened, he's not cowering, he doesn't retreat in the face of this darkness, but being filled with the Spirit is being filled with God and the authority of God, and he speaks to judgment, and brings blindness to this man after describing him as being the son of the devil, an enemy of all righteousness, full of deceit and villainy. I'm sorry to say, and I hope you'll not consume this as being anti-Semitic, this sounds like a description of our Jewish historic opposition to God and to the faith since time immemorial. We're villainous. We have produced the Karl Marxists. You know the Karl Marx, who he is. Jewish, the author of Communism, Das Kapital, an alternative messianic scheme for the world. God rejecting a program, a communism, a warped and distorted answer to the need of mankind that eventuates in oppression and bloodshed. Enemy of all righteousness, you know why? Because we are so filled with our own. Self-righteousness is the name of the game for a Jew, and if you're going to be concerned with your own righteousness, you must therefore, ipso facto, be an enemy to the righteousness of God. It's no accident that when Israel's redemption finally comes, they say, God is our righteousness, and when they're able to say that, you know that they have really been redeemed. Why am I saying all this? Because I think that you're susceptible to a certain kind of fascination for things Jewish and even Judaic, for which I have great reservation. Somehow when I see a Gentile wearing a prayer shawl and a yarmulke and bobbing and weaving in prayer, which we call davening, something in my spirit knots, because I know that there's a soulish valence, even a demonic thing that inheres in synagogue practice because the synagogue itself is not a statement of our honor but our shame. It is a diasporic institution away from the temple, away from the priesthood that has elevated a Pharisaical class of rabbis to dictate and to determine the whole concept and mode of Jewish life. Keeping them in darkness and allowing them to think that their Yom Kippur and Day of Atonement in any way has some kind of validity. When God says without the shedding of blood, there's no remission for sin, these rabbis have determined out of their own skull, their own villainous alternative to God that a day of fasting and a day in the synagogue and good deeds will be an acceptable substitute. Oh yeah? By what authority? Who are you? Dear saints, don't get carried away by the mystique and the intrigue and the attraction of so much that is Judaistic, and yet at the same time, I encourage you to everything that is Hebraic and biblical. You need to distinguish between what is Jewish, Judaism, anything that bears that suffix ISM is of man. Whether it's Communism, Socialism, Judaism, ought to be already a grounds for suspicion. There's a difference between Judaistic practices mediated by men or rabbinical class that has almost become tyrannical in determining what is acceptable for Jews and terrified and tyrannized my mother. And the first question that a Jew will ask often when you're witnessing it, but what do the rabbis say? What do the great authorities say? And if they have not seen Christ, then I'm not under obligation to consider either. I want to assure you or at least put you on record not to be suckered in by a soulish fascination that has a power and to heed the warning by Watchman Me in a book written in 1926, the latent power of the soul. And don't think that synagogue appurtenances, the prayer show, the talent and the head covering is somehow cute or attractive. It has a latent power to influence you in the realm of soul and against that of spirit. It's a villainy. Paul was not in one moment hesitant to curse that, identify that. And this is the way somehow I read it this morning in the early morning hours. Will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the road? Is Paul speaking to more than an individual? Is he addressing a condition of which that individual is representative? Oh, I know I'm over your head. So you're in a strange paradox of having an affinity for Jews. Yes, very legitimate. You're called to that, but at the same time being suspect and keeping at a distance a culture that is rabbinically mediated, that is villainous, sinister and opposed to the true faith. Can you distinguish between the two? Can you still have a love for the Jew and yet not get sucked in to their culture and become Judaized? Because there is a movement now in the church about a restoration of Jewish roots. I'd much rather it was a restoration of Hebraic roots, which Jews themselves lack and can only be imparted by communion with the God of Israel, as the Psalmist knew him and as the church needs to know him and communicate him. And so now, listen, the hand of the Lord is against you. You will be blind for a while, unable to see the sun, S-O-N. I took the liberty of writing that in this early morning time. Here's the judgment. Because of your villainous opposition, remember it says, not only would they enter the kingdom themselves, but they prevented others from entering. Here also is exactly that same thing. It's a strange thing to say an anomaly, but not the least of the aspects of the last day's suffering of the remnant church may come from Jewish hands themselves. It may even be that like Stephen, there will be a necessity for a certain martyrdom that we have to bear at their hands because they oppose themselves in their own ignorance. And Jews are increasingly insecure in a world that is growing against them so that they lash out in their defensiveness and in order to protect their waning sense of Jewishness, they will oppose the very thing that is intended for their good and we will have to bear it. Would there have been a Paul, the apostle, without first a Stephen? I don't think so. What did it take to convert the most vehemently bitter enemy of the faith?