Messianic Community Tzaneen - Session 1

Well, I don't know that I've ever waited longer to come to the place of speaking. I have to stress that you've not run out of spiritual steam, and you can take something more than a little homily, something more like, I don't know what, a substantial foundational proclamation out of the book of Ephesians of the mystery of which Paul was the steward, and that is little understood by the church, and needs to be brought profoundly to the church's attention and to its foundations. See, I've got a task before me. So Lord, grace, grace, grace. To communicate what's on your heart for this people this morning, grant something, my God, the measure of grace that you gave to your apostle Paul in the revelation of that mystery in which he was the steward, and impart it, my God, to me, that I can, so to speak, second-hand forward it to this people. We bless you, Lord, that it's a timeless and imperishable word, and may it find lodging here, and affect, my God, all the seeing and the perception of this people in the walk, the conduct, their service, as you were, rightly should. And we thank you for that, the operation of your spirit, your anointing. Grant it, my God, a measure to the significance of this sharing. We give you praise and glory for the occasion. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, my text is from Ephesians, chapter 3. Just read from the beginning of that chapter, and you'll see how difficult, or you'll be reminded of how difficult the book this is. This is the reason Paul is already speaking to something that has preceded the commencement of chapter 3. And that's why we need to be reminded that these chapter designations are a convenience, but they cut into the flow of Paul's apostolic mind. It's not just to cut in separately. You almost have to begin from the first word of chapter 1, and not end until you've come to the conclusion of the entire book. That's how organic, joint, related is the flow of Paul's seeing. But just to be abrupt and to enter, this is the reason that I call him a prisoner for Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles, for surely you have already heard of the commission of God's grace that was given me for you, and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation as I wrote above in a few words, a reading of which will enable you to receive my understanding of the mystery of Christ. This is one of Paul's favorite words, is mystery. And it's a word that is rarely or ever sounded or even considered by the contemporary church. But it needs to be restored. It's something about the depths of God that can only be understood and sought and found as mystery. The only way that we know the word mystery as modernists is a detective story, but a mystery is some sublime and foundational perception of God that is ordinarily concealed and hidden until a moment in God comes when it is to be revealed. There's no way to appropriate a mystery by intellectual endeavor. Scholarship will never obtain it. It can only come by process of revelation. And it's given to those who have an office, who will steward the mysteries of God and make them known to men. Beloved apostles, do you know the word apostolic? I say many times, and some of you have heard me over the years, if you don't salivate when you hear the word apostolic, you've not yet been touched by the genius of that word. And if you've not been touched by the genius of that word, how shall it have come not only into your vocabulary, but into your experience? How do you perceive yourself if you don't perceive yourself as apostolic? What then are you if you're not rooted in this timeless and foundational thing that has been the glory of God since time immemorial, and that the church is founded upon the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone. Where is that from? Ephesians. I think even in this chapter. So I want to encourage the church, yourselves, to an unabashed seeking of the foundational content of the faith, lest we become flim-flam, some ephemeral, passing, charismatic-y kind of a phenomenon that we enjoy, but leaves little impact in time, and let alone eternity. Of course, as you're going to see, the word eternity and eternal is a set piece in Paul's apostolic mindset. And that brings a whole dimension of perception of the faith, when that one word is inserted into our consciousness. I would say that by and large today that word is entirely omitted from the consideration of modern saints. It sounds almost antique, it's archaic, to talk about something eternal, well, that has a distant aura, and maybe we'll consider it after we die. Well, it's too late then. It's now that eternity needs to be considered, and to be considered deeply, and taken into our inmost being and consideration. Or, ironically, we will be profoundly irrelevant in time. Isn't that a paradox? We will be irrelevant in point of time, unless we have taken eternity into our deepest consideration. So it saves us from being just the product of time and of culture, because to touch eternity is to touch the God who is eternal, from eternity to eternity, ever was, ever is, ever will be. And it brings such dimensions and depth into every consideration. So I encourage you in that. And just to say that the Paul who was so occupied with the things eternal was not for that reason made irrelevant. He wasn't on some lofty plane, thinking only of transcendent things that made him useless on the earth. There's no man more practical, more dealing with the nuts and bolts of the church and its daily operation than Paul himself. And yet he's the one who speaks of his citizenship as being eternal. He's the one who sees the things that are invisible and eternal. And they're so real for him that they eclipse the things that are seen, even the things that are felt. So that even his sufferings he considers both momentary and light, in view of the eternal weight of glory. He has brought the dimension of eternity into such depths. And his apostolic consciousness even affects the question of pain. Because to be occupied with the subject of eternity is to invite pain. It's to mark you as someone whom the powers of the air must consider and take note. You become instantly dangerous the moment that eternity comes into your consciousness. Because it affects all you've seen and all your subsequent conduct. Something qualitative has shifted that makes you return from a yawn of indifference on the part of the powers of darkness into an object of fear and trembling. And it's going to invite repercussion, retaliation even, and a kind of oppression and suffering that would not have been your experience if you had not opened yourself to that category. There is such a thing as apostolic seeing. But there's such a thing also as apostolic suffering. But the remarkable thing is that the seeing obviates the suffering. When Paul says that his afflictions are momentary and light, he's not playing on words. He's graphically stating what is his subjective experience. Pain does not affect him as it does others. He's not living in fear of it or of death. It's momentary. How is that? Because he sees it in the context of that which is eternal. Paul's seeing is intended for our seeing. That's why the apostle is the foundation of the Church. God is not just setting before us a curio of Paul, a kind of a strange mystic, but he's setting before us the formidable thing in itself as it was expressed and experienced by that man as being the foundation for our own being, and that the whole Church should grow up into the reality in which Paul conducted himself. You know what it said of those men? These are they that turned the world upside down. So in former generations, in verse 5, this mystery was not made known to mankind as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit, and that is that the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise of Messiah Jesus through the gospel. Well, this is not even my subject. I'm just trying yet to come to it, to have you dare read this and pass it without some kind of acknowledgement of what is being spoken here, because this very thing in passing, I think, is almost totally absent from the consciousness of the Church. You know what the mystery is? That you guys, you Gentiles, who were once removed from God without God and without hope in the world, have by the grace of God been brought by the blood of Messiah into the covenant promise and hopes of Israel, into an already existing body of believing Jews who have held fast their faith in anticipation of Messiah and have now realized him in his coming, and you now can be sharers with them in the promise of Messiah Jesus through the good news, the gospel, that this is available to you by the grace of God. That the Church is not some innovation, different from... Well, I have to be careful here. Different from Judaism is profoundly different. If you think of Judaism as a rabbinical phenomenon, as it now is, but in terms of the Hebraic biblical anticipation and faith from Abraham, this is the continuum. And the only thing you guys have been invited in, that's the mystery. That has been concealed and now revealed. Even Peter required a trance to recognize it. Remember? He was so... For everything that he was, he was yet orthodox. This was the Jewish faith. It was not for the glam. Those were the ones to whose houses Jews were not even allowed to come, let alone to eat or break bread or have fellowship. So in order to think that these who are outside of Jewry would be invited in to their faith, required a little elixir in the trance, coming down in a sheep. And he even protested in the trance. I've never eaten anything unclean. The Lord said, kill and eat. He said, I've never eaten. He's protesting out of his Judaic experience. And God says, what I have made clean, called on unclean. And at that moment, there was someone banging on the door downstairs, sent from Cornelius's house, where he would not have responded, nor gone, to proclaim the message to Gentiles, had he not first received the revelation in the trance. I'm rehearsing all that to show you how radical an innovation it is that Gentiles should be admitted into the Jewish faith. Now the question is, is for Jews to be admitted into their own faith, who themselves now are without God, without hope in the world. There's too much in the world. And now God is saying to you, who have received this grace and this benefit, to move them to jealousy by the evidence that you have come into the reality which they have fulfilled. Got the picture? Are you getting the picture? So, of this gospel in verse 7, I have become a servant according to the gift of God's grace that was given me by the working of his power, although I am the very least of all the saints. This grace was given to me to bring to the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ, and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for the ages. I'm going to stop there because what follows this is the punchline. But just not to do disservice to God or to you, because there's something about Ephesians that is so compact. It is so infiltrated with truth. It is so dense in its content that we're not trained by the world, and even in the church, to read this rightly. We gloss over it. It sounds too phantasmal. It's too florid. It's like Paul's special rhetoric, as if it's not to be taken seriously. It's just to be honest in his mode of communication, and therefore we miss it. This book is sublime, and it takes such an intensity of concentration and attention to plumb it. So, I feel guilty myself of just reading it that casually, where he says, Although I am the very least of all the saints this grace is given. But dear man, it's because you're the very least of all saints that this grace is given. Not only are you the very least, but you've got to know that in your deepest consciousness. Therefore, God can afford to give you the grace of the revelation of the mystery that will not be afforded to other men. If you think you're something, you're disqualified. Only when you know that you know that you're the least of all saints are you qualified to receive the revelation of the mystery that was hidden from the ages and is now being revealed. This must be some rhetorical flourish. Paul certainly knows that he's the chief of the apostles, and he says in some kind of self-effacing way, I'm the least of all saints. What is he, a salesman that needs to affect a false monastery? Have you wrestled with this? I don't think so. This is critical, saints, because if this is true of Paul, what must our qualification be to receive the revelation of the mystery of which he was told? Does that require a humility on our part, where we see ourselves as the least of all saints? When just at the time when we're celebrating our growing maturity and spiritual success and the enjoyment of our fellowship, we should think ourselves the least of all saints? Come on. How do you explain this, cats? Here's how I explain it. The deeper that a man is in God, the more he knows that he knows he's the least of all saints. This is not some affective false modesty, because the apostle cannot enjoy anything that is false. He's a servant of the truth, even of his own condition. This cannot be some play on words. This has got to be authentically the statement of the truth of the man himself, and he knows it. The only thing I can think that's akin to this is Moses saying that I'm the meekest of all men on the face of the earth, because both Moses and Paul are the apostles of their generation, and both know because of their proximity and union with God how little they are. It's only the bumptious hotshot who has commandeered a certain vocabulary and familiarity in phrases and makes a show of things that thinks he's got something and is something. The deeper a man is in his relationship with God, the more he knows that he knows he's the least of all saints. And that inward and authentic knowledge, which is not a false modesty, I can't say this enough, opens to him a revelation of the mysteries of God that would not otherwise be afforded him. Somehow we've got to come to this, and we're going to enjoy the benefit of these mysteries and ourselves make them known. Are you on your way to becoming the least of all saints? So what is the grace that was given? And could Paul have communicated these mysteries without grace? Can I communicate it without grace? Can you receive it without grace? We're not dealing with hocus-pocus and some weird formulation. These are the foundational mysteries of God that any church that is to be called a church must have, surely, as its immovable foundation. Can we come to that without grace? I can speak this a hundred times, and I probably have over the course of the years, but the hundred and first time requires as much grace as the first. Are you dependent on the grace of God? Are you willing to be God's fool? And unless that grace be given, you're just going to be a stumbling block with your foot in your mouth. You would be better off giving your testimony than attempt to speak from an apostolic text like this. So here already I'm filling out something of the genius of what an apostle is, a man of deepest humility, because he knows that he knows, in view of the God whom he is privileged to know more intimately than most, that he's the least. And that without the grace that that God gives, he cannot put two words together. I'm sure Paul was remarkably eloquent and gifted prior to his conversion as the prized student of the rabbi Gamaliel. I was also, before my conversion, articulate, personable, able. Why, I led students off of cliffs as a history teacher. They would follow me like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I had such a dash and such an ability to communicate. And I was the atheist. I was leading them into socialism or into atheism. But when I became a believer and stood before students again, it was remarkable how defunct I was in those very giftings that were elementary when I was outside of God. I was stuttering, choking, spluttering, unable to put two words together. When you say, God, what was the big deal? It's just a history class. Oh yeah? Any kind of apostolic mindset knows that a history class is the issue of eternity. More so than those kids sitting in their youth section in their Sunday churches. And what is before us is not just the communication of history, but the issue of life and death and eternal things. And now you're stuttering and now you're incapable? Until God gives grace. You know, when I take a sabbatical, when I cease speaking, when I begin to hear myself, as if I have come full circle now and I'm no longer now speaking out of the heart of God, but my memory of having spoken out of the heart of God. When I begin hearing myself as a memory and reciting things that were spoken once authentically and now spoken by remembrance, it's time to quit, it's time to stop and go back to the source and find a place of refreshing and renewing in God before you open your mouth again. Or else you'll just be speaking in palabra. That will aid no one. And so what is Paul's call? To make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things in order that and stop right there. We dare not run on and read the next word for fear of missing the whole thing that Paul is about to state. How would you like an apostle to come and to tell you in one fell swoop what is the purpose of God in the creation of all things? Do you think you would like one? Do you think that it would affect what we are about? Can we be about something that is not in relationship with God's purpose for his creation? I see a few of you are getting drowsy. I'm going to pray a little for your revived ability. Lord, don't let any saint do this for us. We've had such vigor and exuberance only 15 minutes, a half hour ago and now when the word comes they're getting dull. It ought not to be. So I'm asking my God, revive, stir them let them be attentive to the word and hear it to their great benefit and to others through them in Jesus' name. We are about to hear Paul's apostolic understanding of why God has created all things. That this is a purposeful creation through a purposeful God and it's incumbent upon us to understand what that purpose is. And when you find out it will knock you out of your seat. It's the last thing that you would have thought or expected and it will radically affect every consideration thereafter. Now isn't that a lavish statement to make for what we are about to hear? Are you leaning forward in the spirit? What is the purpose of God's creation for all things? In order that through the church. Wow! I'm already staggered. That creation has to do with the church exclusively and totally. The whole of the cosmic order the galaxies, the planets, the earth their movement, their seasons, their ability to sustain life is for the church. Yes! In order that through the church something might take place. God did not think it too lavish and extravagant to create the cosmos. What do you think of that? What kind of church is that? And what kind of function is he expecting from that church that he did not think it too extravagant to establish creation for it? Once we know this we'll forever be saved from spiritual inferiority. Or think of the church as a Sunday addendum or a Christian culture or a purveyor of services or any of the kinds of things by which the church has come to be known in the world and is. Because it has lost its apostolic distinctive and character because it has never known or considered what God's purpose for it is in creation. That will doom you to mere religiosity to purveying services, to gratifying men and they'll love it and they'll pay for it and society will give you every kind of consideration. You'll be harmless and without consequence in the world if you have not understood what your purpose is in God for which he did not hesitate to create all things in order that through the church. Through the church what, Lord? That men would be blessed? That your gospel would go forth? That salvation be made known? That many benefits be accrued to men? Not a whisper of that at all in what is going to fall. Get your safety belt on. This is going to destroy all your categories. There's not a word that follows that has a thing to do with benefit to men. There's not a word that follows that has anything to do with God's salvation being made known or any of the kinds of things that we think are our ultimate purpose in God. I'm not disowning or minimizing those things. I'm drawing your attention to the singular thing that Paul specifies. Because we don't understand that and embrace that. The gospel that we do proclaim and the services that we do perform will be perfunctory, limited, and lack the apostolic grandeur and depth and weight that would really make them a penetration in the world. God says nothing about the benefits that accrue to men. You need to know that because ours is a generation whose whole civilization is predicated on benefits to men. Man-pleasing and the gratification of men is what this whole world is about. What's in it for you? What's the benefit for you? Is a mentality we have even brought into the church that is not even suspect because it's the unspoken premise by which the world lives its whole life. We are number one. What's in it for me? What's the benefit? What's the pleasure? What do I obtain? Then I'm willing perhaps to extend myself. There's a deep ego-centrism that pervades the whole of the world's order and it has infiltrated the church itself because the one thing that was provided to break its power you have ignored. And that is the purpose of God through the church. What is the purpose? That the manifold wisdom of God through the church in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. Oh, what a disappointment. Is that all? What kind of purpose is that? To display, to make something known not even on the earth but above the earth in an invisible spectral realm of principalities and powers some kind of angelic entity that broods over the earth? That that is important enough for God to have created an earth that a church might have its existence on it to demonstrate to those powers his wisdom? This Paul, I don't know, he's off on some wild tangent or he's touching something that is at the heart of everything one or the other. Either he has radically missed it or we have. I'll side with Paul. And so I want to understand what he's saying here. That God did not think it to lavish to create the worlds, the earth, give it its form, that there might be an entity on it called the church whose essential function and purpose is not to bless men or to confer benefits but to make a demonstration to an invisible realm of entities above the earth and in the air called the principalities and powers of the earth. What do you think of that? Not only has it nothing to do with men per se but it has nothing to do with you in terms of any advantage that will accrue to you by making that demonstration known. As a matter of fact if you're still thinking in terms of the benefit that will accrue to you by obedience and service to God you cannot make that wisdom known. Because that wisdom is altogether entirely opposite, antithetical and inimical to the wisdom of the world that makes self-interest its first principle. If you're still thinking of benefit for yourself or for your church or for whatever you're not exhibiting the wisdom of God. The wisdom of God has to do with a people willing to sacrificially be for God in such a way that his soul will be gratified independent of any benefit that might come to him. It has nothing to do with the church's own benefit or self-interest but one thing only that which is important to God. You know what the heck of it is? He doesn't even explain why it's important. He doesn't say why that's his purpose. He merely states it. And just to make sure that we're not going to miss it as if this is some kind of abstract consideration that is irrelevant he concludes by saying this was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord. Whatever this purpose is however much we understand it whatever this wisdom is whatever those powers are this is in accordance with the eternal purpose of God in Christ Jesus. Now you show me a church that has not sought nor understood nor desired nor embraced the eternal purpose of God in Christ Jesus and I'll show you a flaky outfit. I don't care how what measure of success it enjoys for itself it has no apostolic consequence for God or for the world unless we have understood sought and embraced the eternal purpose of God. Because if we're not concerned with God's eternal purpose what then are we? What then are we concerned with? What's the object of our attention? What's the purpose for our being? Our own satisfaction? To establish a groovy fellowship and enjoy its emptiness? Is that the purpose for which God created the earth? I want to say the church that is the church and for which the world is desperately hurting and in the absence of which the world is freaking out is a church that has as its foremost purpose in being is to surrender to and to submit and to desire the fulfillment of God's eternal purpose. So if we're going to be occupied with God's eternal purpose we've got to be occupied with the eternal. Just our movement toward understanding that purpose compels us to come onto the ground of that which is eternal. God, he could not have used a word greater weight and moment than eternal. I don't know why God wants to make this demonstration. I know that he's already made a demonstration himself against the principalities and powers of the earth. Remember that? In which he revealed them as defeated and he took their, how does he say, collusions? He disarmed the principalities of the earth and made them an open spectacle. It was Jesus' coming that even revealed the presence and the reality of the principalities and powers of the earth. They were always there. They were always present. They were always afflicting and jerking and manipulating nations and the world and races of men. They were the unseen gods of this world. They are still that now. You can't understand Rwanda and Bosnia and any of the other horrendous things or the Nazis of World War II, the systematic abolition of Jews independent of the principalities and powers of the air. Do you know who they are? What they are? What they are about? Do you understand the cosmic setting of the faith into which we have been called? Do you understand that there's a conflict since time immemorial between these powers and God over who, in fact, is going to rule over this very creation? Remember Psalm 2? How the kings rage and the rulers take thought against God and against his anointed? Why does God say that the kings and the rulers are... It's not kings. There's another word in Psalm 2. The visible earthly magistrates and the rulers take thought against God and against his anointed and want to break their bands asunder. They rage and they form at the mouth. Listen, you guys. This is exactly what we're going to see in the last days. When the devil is cast into the earth and has made sure of time, we're going to see the rage, the intense fury of the powers of darkness that know they have but a short time and that they're usurping this government of creation is to be over for there's a king coming and a kingdom that will once and for all end the usurping false rule. Am I going too far? Is that the setting of the last days? Indeed. But how effectual will we be if we have no consciousness of these dimensions? And you know one thing about them? They love for you to remain in that ignorance. They love to be concealed. They love for you not to be ignorant of what is the actual motivating force, the underpinning, the powerful, diabolical thing that moves nations and men that is invisible and unseen but powerful, effectual. Someone said that that church, which is ignorant of the existence of the principalities and powers dooms itself to irrelevance. It merely bats at the air unless we understand that over Cyprus, Israel profoundly, South Africa, my God, wherever there's been a history of violence, wherever there's been contention, strife, racial enmity, blood flowing, the powers of the air have had their hooks in and have left their residue behind and have principalities yet prevailing because of that history. Look at Nazi Germany, the land of Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Wagner, my God, the end of German brilliance and genius is limitless and yet within a decade a regime came with the skull and crossbones on the Gestapo hats and completely took over the reins of government and made it the apparatus for the annihilation of world Jewry. What do you think that that's a statement of German brilliance or demonic influence? No longer content merely to brood above Germany and to exert its influence but to take over the whole apparatus of state and society and make it an instrument of death. Wake up you guys because someone has rightly said though the military power of Germany was defeated through World War II, those powers of the air that had provoked Nazism remain and seek their next opportunity. We need to brace ourselves for ultimate conflict and it's in that ultimate conflict that we will have opportunity for ultimate demonstration for which God waits. How are these powers to be defeated? By the demonstration of a wisdom entirely contrary to their own. What is their wisdom? Power, force, threat, intimidation, brutality, violence. That's what came upon Jesus at the cross. The powers of the air had their hapless victim and did they ever enjoy it. Oh, I can just see them salivating over what they now had to manifest their wisdom on this victim. Did they ever do a job? Have you seen the famous painting in Colmar, France with the Eisenheim altar by the 16th century artist Grunwald called The Crucified Christ? I'm converted because of that painting. I was an atheist when I stood before that painting. I'd seen Jesus on black velvet pillows with sequins as a Jewish atheist that left me with a yawn when I stood before this colossal masterpiece of a man with gaping wounds and impregnated in his flesh with the prickly things that were on the end of that cat and nine tails with which he was lashed and his white lips in death and his jaw agape and his head down on his chest a crunched, brutalized piece of humanity gnarled and a nail pierced. Oh, my God. That's a Holy Ghost masterpiece of the truth of what came upon Jesus in the Holocaust which he bore for all men for sin. Make light of that and take a gall in depth cross with roses as Gerda said and you destroy the faith and you leave the church without its message or the understanding of even its own salvation. You need to see that masterpiece. The Holy Ghost is a horror. You want to avert your face. You can't look at it. But you need to see the powers of the air in their fury ventilating their intrinsic wisdom as the wisdom by which the world lives. Force, violence, intimidation, threat. What do you think happens to Christian prisoners in Romanian dungeons and other places in China where believers are in the hands of their captors? Their torture is not just men delighting in the lust of violence. There's a demonic quotient. They want these men to say uncle. They want them to forfeit the faith. They want them to deny the Lord who sent them. The brutality and the things they inflict are demonic in its ingenuity and ferocity. It's the same thing that came upon Jesus at the cross. There's a fierce conflict since ruling. And there's only one agency in the earth that God has established that can both recognize the dimensions of this conflict and affect it. And that agency is called the church. But a church of what kind is the question. A church that shares Paul's apostolic view and knows that creation will no longer suffer torment and real deliverance will finally come when these powers are brought to their final and ultimate defeat. Jesus inflicted their first profound defeat and where did he inflict it? Where did he make of them an open spoil and disown them? At the cross. He received their worst fury the most malicious abuse but how did he receive it? The physical pain which he bore is beyond our understanding. But while he's bearing it and hanging from his own tendons there are his own people to whom he came as Messiah jeering and taunting him and saying come down and we will believe you. If ever a man had the right to break his silence and to say you dirty so and so now that I'm suffering here for you that I have to hear in my last moments the indignity of your taunts and your jeers for the very reason that I'm bearing your sins well then you deserve every but he opened not his mouth. He went as a lamb to the slaughter. As the lamb is silent so also is he. Had he so much as cried once or ventilated his exasperation once he would have been disqualified. Because what was at stake in the remarkable crush that came upon him was the opportunity to reveal the wisdom of God for another kind under extreme duress. What did they say? Suffering reveals. You know the old Russian school of acting that they used to say I want to suffer. Why did they want to suffer? Because suffering strips the ear. Suffering reduces things to their absolute core. Suffering removes the the amenities and the things that soften our view and tend to compromise it. Suffering brings you to ruthless reality. And ultimate suffering is ultimate revealing. And what was revealed in the ultimate suffering of Jesus? Not a response in kind to rail in anger and bitterness against those who are inflicting but to say Father forgive them for what they did. A magnanimity of God a graciousness of God at the point of ultimate suffering and duress was the thing that issued out of Jesus not because he was reading a script but because he was what he was as only suffering would ultimately reveal the truth of it. That's a picture of us of the church in the last days. We're going to be brought to a crunch. And what we do and what we exhibit and what we express in crisis is what we in fact are. Got the picture? He started it by an initial defeat we ended it by the demonstration of the same doctrine that he showed forth at the cross. The word wisdom has a meaning that's lost to us. It's not how to be wise. Wisdom is the value of things as God sees them. Ultimate value ultimate understanding of what verity what truth is what righteousness is what reality is and is about is the wisdom of God as God sees it and as God expresses it. Suffering will find us out and that will conclude the age. It will demonstrate the manifold complex wisdom of God through the church not through individual virtuoso saints but through the corporate thing that God calls the church to be. In great I don't want to say uniformity that sounds like some artificial thing in a great coming of mind and heart and soul and agreement with God together. It's the corporate church. The church is fullness revealing the character of God in extremity. Because one thing when we're well fed and we're comfortable and our circumstances are pleasant but what are we when we're under duress and stress and severe opposition is what we in fact are. Maybe that's why verse 12 says in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in Him. Are we ever going to need access to God in confidence and boldness and faith? Are we ever going to need union with God? Because what has got to be revealed is God and not mere human religious determination. Remember what the powers of the air said? Jesus we know and Paul we know but who are you? There's one thing about the powers of the air malicious as they are is that they have an uncanny ability to discern that which is authentic. Jesus they know and Paul they know. But so and so fellowship at so and so location with the greatest choruses and worship services and attendance may not necessarily impress them. They see through and they want the only thing that they're obliged to recognize is the same thing that they saw in Jesus and in Paul namely apostolic authenticity and that is not a cheap acquisition. And it will never be our acquisition it will never be ours unless we consciously seek it and understand what is the the contest into which we have been brought and that every time we come together and hear the word of God and receive his visiting ministers it's some opportunity for the Lord to bring us by the word into this deepening context. Every crisis we face every trial every challenge is the Lord's school to bring us into the realization of the character and the life of God. You know how I got acquainted with this subject? I had a shattered kneecap. You know how I shattered it? By slipping on a YMCA swimming pool floor on my way to the locker after having baptized about a dozen Lutherans in the pool. And all of a sudden I'm within twelve inches of opening my closet door and getting changed when I find myself up in the air. It's something like I found myself going down my staircase two days before leaving for this trip and bunged up my foot cagway. And I'm not a man who suffers accidents. Nor is any believer one who suffers accidents. So there I was up in the air with my Bible in my hand what am I doing here I thought in a frozen moment of time. And down I came on that five floor in such a crunch that every page in my Bible was creased. And I got up and that night I spoke you know my leg was swollen like a football but it was God's man of faith and power and I was going to be healed. The next day the Lutherans insisted I go to a hospital and I did. A Jewish orthopedic surgeon was examining my x-rays and he said, Mr. Katz he said your knee is not just fractured it is crunched it is it is a blob of broken fragments and you need to be operated on. I said okay good. When can you do it? He said Thursday I think it was Thursday. I said no I said Thursday I'm going up to Northern Minnesota God is giving us, the Lord is giving us a property. He said to who? The Lord. And it began a whole penetration of this Jewish consciousness by having a Jewish man on his examining table who has university degrees and in his sound mind is talking about the Lord who gives properties. As he had his hand on my knee he said something is happening he said I feel that these pieces are coming together if I can put your knee in a cast you said you might need an operation. I said oh pretty sure I'll do it. So there I was that night with my foot in the cast what do they call it? Entraction? And here's what happened. The nurse came in with a hypodermic tool. I said what's that for? She said that's for pain. I said I'm not suffering pain. Oh but you must have this she said. No I don't need that. I don't want any drugs. I don't need to be drugged up. I can bear this. This is only a minor affliction. This is only a momentary affliction. I'm not in some supreme pain. I can bear this. Oh but you must. No I said I won't. She stormed out. I mean she was angry and came back with pills. I said you don't understand. I'm not afraid of needles. I was in the US Army and we walked through a corridor of men poised with needles. We were punctured like a baby cushion. They were men who had never done that before whose needles were bent. A man in a falling ghetto. We were faint just to see them. I'm not afraid of a needle. I don't want drugs. Don't you understand? I don't want to be stupefied in my consciousness. It has to be kept for God. The next thing I remember, the last thing, two doctors and two nurses in my doorway jabbering with such intensity as if I was upsetting their entire world. And I was. And that's when the Lord showed me you're touching something you're not. You're touching a principality and a power. You're touching an area to which the whole world subscribes mindlessly and that it is in the whole formation of the American civilization the pursuit of pleasure. This is a nation bent on the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain and this is the premise of the whole world. And you're saying that pain isn't all that bad and pleasure is not the ultimate value to be sought, that there are some things deeper, in fact, in which suffering would even be a requirement to the bearing of the cross of privilege. You're striking at the whole premise of the wisdom by which the world lives its life. Do you understand that sense? What I touched in the medical situation has its correspondence in the academic world, in the legal world, in every aspect of institution of society is where the principalities and powers are most manifest and there's no institution in which they're more powerful than that which is religious. Muhammadiyah. That's where they really have their province in denominational conflict and all of the infighting and ambition in the religious world. That's where they are most conservative and influential. Somewhere somebody needs to blow the whistle. Somebody needs to call a halt. Somebody needs to alert the victims that they don't have to be jerked and manipulated by these powers of the air that play upon their fear, their lust, their ambition, their need for security, their desire for pleasure. Because these powers of the air disguise and keep men away from the issue of eternity. Their greatest lie is that this life is what it's all about. You know better than that, don't you? This life, from our perspective, apostolically speaking, is only a preparation for that which is eternal and above. People of the Middle Ages that we talk about being in the Dark Ages who saw their life as a veil of tears and a time of preparation for that which is eternal were closer to the truth of the reality of what existence is about than we today. Eternity for us, at best, is an abstraction. The world is too much for this. Our present is too much for this. Our culture is too much for this. Our own immediate concern is too much for this. The only thing that will save us from this preoccupation that is inveterate and inevitable is to take into ourselves the thought of that which is eternal. The powers of the air want to rob mankind of any consideration of that which lies beyond this life. You know why I'm so heated up about that? Because I'm describing the condition of my Jewish people. They are absolutely without eternal consideration. They think this life is everything. You know how I know? That's why they amass their fortunes. That's why they're successful in their careers. And for them, eternity means leaving behind your fortune for your children, or your name, or your reputation, or your books, or your compositions. Because there's nothing beyond this life. They think that when this life ends, it's over. It's the greatest lie ever perpetrated upon mankind. And one of the most brilliant peoples on the earth have subscribed to it. Because if there's ever people manipulated and jerked by the powers of the air, it's this people. That's why God says to you, this gospel is the power of God to salvation, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. Let me try it out first in the country. Let me try it out first in Zimbabwe, or some other place like that, where the people know they need something. Don't send me to Johannesburg, where these Jews are established in their prosperity, their prestige, their academic honors, and tell them they need a gospel. Because that will be fierce. That will be confrontational, and like you are. It's more than just challenging a people about their religious preference. It's touching the world at the heart of its system. And who is sufficient for these things? So I want to pray. To the church which is at where we are. And its branches and its expressions in Cape Town, in Cyprus, and other places where the word is likely to be, that it will be consciously an apostolic body, an apostolic entity. It will be apostolically minded. It will be eternally minded. It will understand the cosmic struggle of the invisible realm that can only be dealt with in the realm of weapons of warfare that may be an icon of the spiritual. It will know that the powers can see through us, and know whether we ought to be feared or not. And the two times in which I actually have seen the face of these powers over our own locality in northern Minnesota, eight miles from the headquarters of the Chippewa tribe of the American Indian ravaged by violence, death, alcoholism, and drugs, when one was an occasion in prayer, and the other was an occasion in worship. Worship is the name of the game, but not as our enjoyment, but as a demonstration of that which is the spontaneous overflow of the hearts that have been redeemed by God, and the depth of the sanctifying work that can only take place in the church that is the church, where it is open, seeking, receiving, the counsel, the admonition, the dealings of God, in that grit of intense and real relationship that brings saints to maturity as such. It's a suffering. That kind of church is a suffering before it's a glory. And so having passed through eight years of that suffering in the initial history of Ben Israel, which David knows and Sarah knows well, we've caught a glimpse of it, and which still continues still. A couple from us had come back from Mexico, and they shared with us their experience, they were Mexican-Americans, and how they had shared with the simple peasants to whom they had come something of the experience and the reality that had been theirs in our community. And how those people were blessed to receive a word tempered out of the reality of a life together. And when we heard that there was some benefit, that someone was really receiving the benefit of things to which we had labored and struggled together, we had a Friday night Shabbat meal, and we just pushed aside our plates and got up and we raised our hands before God and we began to give Him praise that our suffering and the dealings of God and the trials to which we had passed were somehow beginning to have some consequence for a people in a distant location that was redemptive. And as we were rejoicing without an overhead projector, I saw a figure, a face overhead that at first was leering at us, but as the worship went up in its authenticity, the expression on that face began to change from a scowl to fear. The lips began to turn, the teeth began to back off, and as we continued, I don't think anybody else was conscious of that presence but myself, that thing burst and dissipated and a great kind of release came over the entire body. That a significant power that had prevailed over our locality through the history of the American Indian, the injustices, the violence, every kind of thing that had impacted and affected that area was being dealt with and suffered an initial defeat and was required to leave and be broken out from over our locality by the expression of an authentic worship that issued out of the reality of the redemptive life experienced together. The other experience was in a prayer time. We had a morning daily prayer time and it was again the Indian powwow, that occasion when they meet and their drums beat through three days and nights and we heard that another Christian community was suffering all kinds of problems during that very time and we all felt hung over. One of the advantages of community is that it's living in truth. When you're hung over and pressed and depressed if you're living by yourself you would think well it's me, it's a subjective thing I got off at the wrong side of bed I don't know what I ate last night but when everybody is feeling that oppressive thing then you know something is being operated in the locality where you are that needs to be recognized. And so they said yeah, the powwow is taking place right now. I said well we need to pray. And we started to pray and after five minutes I really was going to say quit it that's enough, that's not prayer. What you're doing is ceremonial what you're doing is religious what you're doing is obligatory and it is not impressing the powers of the air at all. You've got to put your gut into it and enter into something corporately with an earnestness of real conflict with an invisible realm that's above us and we entered into that reality but it took eight years of human life to bring us to a place where we could pray like that. If you walked into the room at that time you would have thought this is an insane assignment people are flailing at the air people are stretched out of their faces, people are groaning people are weeping, they're in every posture of prayer without an iota of self-consciousness. Their gut is in it because they have passed through so much together there's no room for self-consciousness. We were engaged and they caught the battle with spiritual weapons and then I saw their face and it was at first with contempt looking at us, oh Ben Israel ha ha ha, what a joke. They're full of problems, they're weak, they're contradictory they're defective but as the authenticity of our corporate prayer went up I watched that face change from a contemptuous smear to a trembling fear and I watched that thing back off and as we pressed in with the intensity of that prayer, that thing broke and ran and we were pursuing it in the realm of spirit until finally something like a fist smashed through and I got like a splatter, I could see the fragments going everywhere and then we stopped praying. Nobody said stop. This one was laughing this one was giggling like a mood of mirth or release or enjoyment or delight came over the entire body we had fought a battle and won it. These are real entities and they can only be met corporately and only on the ground of truth authenticity and prayer that is real prayer and worship that is real worship and the wisdom that's a real wisdom is the manifold wisdom of God, the multifaceted richness of God's own value His own understanding of our suffering His own ability to be magnanimous in experiencing it and even to have those who are interrupting it It may well be that my own Jewish kinsmen will again be persecuting the church in the last days, that the church ages will end as it began in an enormous controversy about the issue of the gospel. It's already heating up already a debate between the Southern Baptist conference and rabbis because the Southern Baptist had the audacity to make an open platform that Jews need to be witness to and in the high holy day season, wow, the Jewish community was outraged. How dare you what are you treating us as different pagans we have a religion what's the issue here? There's an issue that there's nothing that will reveal the reality and the depth of the gospel in the confrontation of the Jewish community We've not seen it because we've not pursued it we've not been obedient to the priority of God, to the Jew first, and then also the cyclist, so to speak Why? Because we have intuitively recognized these people are too tough, let's circumvent them and they're too nice they're civil, they're educated they have values, they treat their wives decently, their children are admirable, how can they need this gospel it must only be for alcoholics and drug addicts. We've not seen in the eye of God the truth of their condition and what they need and that the Lord who has given us the fertility has been ignored in his authority He set them Jew first would not even make them last so you know what the powers of the air how they view us when they see that they're not at all concerned they only will be concerned with a church that takes the word of God seriously that takes his priorities to heart and seeks to do it that is a body to be feared that is a body that not only sees apostolically but moves in apostolic authority and in dealing with the Jew of breaking into the conflict of the wisdoms of two worlds this is a grace given this whole thing must be wasted so I'm going to pray in the Christ that we understand and receive Lord you know every soul in this room you know their hearts, their minds their history, their condition you know how they even hear a word and particularly a presentation of this kind you know the prism through which the word is filtered you know their mindset, their thought life you know that their hearing is subjective that they have already certain categories that they consider valid and important than other things that have lesser significance and need not be needed I'm asking grace Lord I didn't invent this topic and it was not my choice this morning it was yours but all I sought by the grace that would be given is to express it and I ask therefore Lord that you not allow any of it to fall to the ground that you break in with new understanding new categories, new apostolic saying that the word of eternity will no longer be strange it will be sought for that the purpose of God will be a first priority for people even though it confers not only no immediate benefit, but it opens the door to a new kind of suffering and opposition I bless this people Lord I couldn't ask more for them that they should be apostolic not in the mere employment of the word but in truth establish those foundations my God and let it permeate the entire body that it will be factual in every place we have planted it that you first make them significant my God let them blow the whistle on the false values in which the world is dying and show forth the things that are eternal and real and invisible not just by what they say, but by what they are that their very presence is a statement because they have defeated the powers of their own life they have identified the insidious and subtle inroads of those powers and have opposed them and broken their influence they are a free people they are not motivated by fear or need they move by another beat I bless them Lord precious God, let this word sink into their foundations where their minds have not been able to pick up and has gone into the spirit bring it to the level of understanding let them invest themselves in these very scriptures in this text and wrest out of it the meaning my God, you intend I bless them give them the best I know and give them the grace to receive it I thank you for your grace Lord for giving me the opportunity to give you the opportunity