This is tape number K-010.
Art Katz with the message entitled, The Anatomy
of Adultery.
I've been meaning for some time to prepare
a message on adultery, and I've never quite
gotten around to it, but I'm going to
speak something this morning I've never spoken before,
and it's hardly a message, it's just reading
some scripture and commenting as we go.
The message that I'm thinking about is not
just expressly designed to speak about the evil
of adultery as if it pertains only to
adulterers, but something about the anatomy of adultery,
which is, the real word is adulteration.
Anything that's an admixture, anything that's not pure,
any relationship or thing to which we're called,
to which we've allowed entry of the things
and mix the things which are profane and
the things which are holy.
There are a lot of us who are
adulterers who have never committed the act, and
who need to have the anatomy of adultery
open to our understanding.
For example, in Hebrews, which this is not
my text this morning, don't turn for just
for a moment here, really some interesting words
where we're told that we should follow peace
with all men and holiness, without which no
man shall see the Lord, looking diligently, lest
any man fail of the grace of God,
lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble
you, and thereby many be defiled, lest there
be any fornicator or profane person as Esau,
who for one morsel of meat sold his
birthright, for you know how that afterward he
would have inherited the blessing.
He was rejected for he found no place
of repentance, though he sought it carefully with
tears.
And I thought as I read that one
time, lest there be any fornicator or profane
person as Esau.
And it really troubled me because I didn't
recall any reference to Esau ever having been
a fornicator.
But I think that there's a certain anatomy
of fornication.
There's a certain quintessence.
There are certain constituent elements of fornication or
adultery to which many of us are guilty,
although we've never committed the express act.
I want you to turn with me to
my real text for this morning.
And I want to pray before we begin
it because our heart's beginning to skip already,
right?
Who knows what this madman is likely to
speak.
So let's just commit this to God because
we're on sensitive ground and we certainly need
the careful guidance of his spirit and a
spirit that will open our understanding.
Let's not be offended at him.
Let's hear what the spirit speaks this morning.
So precious holy God, Lord, have your wonderful
way altogether.
Shape, mold, perform the things that please thee.
Help us to have very attentive hearts and
ears, oh, that we might understand.
Gracious God, give us a vision of the
enormous distance, the separation that has subtly and
day by day entered into our lives, the
admixture of things of which we've hardly been
conscious that somehow has altogether conspired to rob
us of our joy, our power, our peace,
our light.
Help us, Lord, to be a holy people.
Speak to us now by your spirit, Lord,
and we'll thank you and praise you for
it in the wonderful name of Jesus.
Amen.
Will you turn with me to the first
chapter of the book of Isaiah?
The Lord spoke to us recently that we
should begin a very earnest searching of the
book of Isaiah and taking him at his
word, we began that, and the Lord began
to immediately kindle something in my heart, and
this will be the first opportunity this morning
to share it with any congregation.
The Lord gave Isaiah a vision.
I'm a great believer in visions.
Without a vision, the people perish, and a
vision is something very difficult to communicate.
It just doesn't lend itself to words, and
it requires as much a creative leaning forward
on the part of those who hear it
as the one who projects it.
So I'm going to ask you to exercise
your spirits this morning and meet God halfway
and read between the spiritual lines and try
to catch the vision that the Lord wants
to project.
And when I know that this pertains to
Israel, who knows it better than I, a
Jew?
And it's for that reason that my heart
smarts over this.
You know that there was a big conference
at Emanuel Temple in New York City, which
I guess would be the St. Patrick's Cathedral
of Judaism, and they had invited speakers from
all of the spectrum of Judaism to speak
on the contemporary problems of Judaism.
And some man who had been led to
the Lord through my ministry, who had been
in the habit of attending that great cathedral,
he said, Artie said, you ought to be
a speaker there.
And I said, I quite agree.
And so I wrote a letter to the
rabbi asking for participation.
It was true that I didn't represent Orthodox
Judaism or Reformed Judaism or Conservative Judaism, but
I represented Messianic Judaism, and from my point
of view, I believe that that is the
Biblical Judaism of God.
And I got back a very snotty reply.
Excuse my parlance.
And it was just to this effect, he
said, since when, he said, do the problems
of Judaism consist of apostasy?
In other words, we don't need an apostate
like you to tell us what the problems
of Judaism are.
And so I wrote back a lengthy five
-page reply, liberally quoting from the prophets, of
whom we're going to hear today, to suggest,
brother, apostasy is not only the contemporary problem
of Judaism, it is our long-standing problem.
It is our chronic condition.
And I concluded this way.
I said, tell me, please, when is it
ever that our apostasy was healed?
God says the things which befell Israel are
written and given to us for our admonition
upon whom the ends of the ages have
come.
It's a very painful way to learn a
lesson, that my people had to experience something,
the record of which is given to you
for your edification, that you who are the
wild branch grafted in should not be wise
in your own conceits and fall even as
the natural branch has fallen.
So Isaiah cries out, Hear, O heavens, and
give ear, O earth, in the second verse,
for the Lord hath spoken.
I wonder why it is that God has
to appeal to the heavens and the earth
to hear him.
Perhaps it is that those who have natural
ears have shut off their hearing.
It's something like the cry of Jesus, who
said, if you'll not allow these Jewish children
to worship me, the very stones will cry
out.
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth.
God has to appeal to the very natural
elements because men themselves will not listen.
I have nourished and brought up children and
they have rebelled against me.
And I suppose that that ought to occasion
a certain pang in the hearts of those
who are in the congregation this morning who
have brought up children and have experienced rebellion
against themselves.
It's becoming the acute manifestation of our age
and didn't God warn us that in the
last days, perilous times would come and children
would be disobedient to parents, flaunting authority, and
many of you have fastidiously cared for your
children only to experience the kind of pain
which God knows in far greater measure of
having taken exquisite and painstaking concern to nourish
and to bring up children only to see
that they have rebelled against him.
For the ox knows his owner and the
ass his master's crib, dumb brutes.
But Israel doth not know and what's even
far worse, my people do not consider.
O people that I could just take my
heart out before you and wring it because
we don't have the time and I don't
have the ability to communicate to you the
things which perhaps I am uniquely afforded the
opportunity to daily see and hear in my
ministry to my own Jewish people.
Dumb indifference, insensitive lack of concern, a running
helter and skelter for every kind of substitute
salvation but that which is afforded us of
God.
Even yesterday, right in this community, a precious
Jewish man who belongs to so many committees
and is doing so many things and obtaining
Israel bonds and full of human virtue and
goodness and ethical concern, but he does not
consider.
He has no knowledge of God and he
does not seek him.
Our sinful nation of people laden with iniquity,
a seed of evil doers, children that are
corrupters that have forsaken the Lord, they have
provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger,
they are gone away backward.
And I've read these scriptures before but all
of a sudden it dawned upon me, they
were not just people upon whom evil had
fallen but they were evil doers.
And they were not ones who were simply
corrupted but they were corrupters.
And I hope you'll not construe this as
anti-Semitism.
But let's face facts.
Unfortunately, instead of being a nation of priests
and a light unto the world, we are
priests of a sort and lights of a
sort and messengers of a sort.
But where the A.B. Hoffmans and the
Jerry Rubins, where the disseminators of violence and
rebellion and obscenity, where the masters of pornography
and contemporary and voguish literature, we're corrupters.
And I think that what God is trying
to show us is that there's no neutral
ground.
You're either for him or you're against him.
There's no such thing as a middle stance
or posture that's respectable, ethical, moral.
You're not just going to be corrupted if
that's your place.
You're going to find yourself a corruptor.
And that is the melancholy history of Israel
even to this day because they have forsaken
the Lord, the Holy One of Israel.
They've gone away backwards, spurned and rejected and
despised the Lord.
Those are very strong words, people.
And you know that it's interesting that while
God describes that phenomenon in the same breath,
he describes that all of their religious practices
continue to flourish.
And I don't think that we should be
mindless about that and fail to understand the
significance because in the 11th verse we read,
To what purpose is the multitude of your
sacrifices?
You see, Israel had not forsaken their sacrifices.
Merely because they were apostates, they had not
abandoned their religious practices.
In fact, I think it's quite an irony
that at the very height of apostasy, religious
practices are at their zenith.
And I don't think it's any accident that
in our own land that religious attendance is
up, enrollments in synagogues, temples and churches.
There seems to be almost a kind of
renaissance of religion.
But lest we be wise and take it
in our own conceit, it's quite possible, in
fact, I believe that this is a pattern
that while religion flourishes, in fact, it provides
a wonderful cover, apostasy flourishes also.
To what purpose is the multitude of your
sacrifices?
Unto me saith the Lord, I am full
of the burnt offerings of rams and of
the fat of fed beasts, and I delight
not in the blood of bullocks or of
lambs or of goats.
When you come to appear before me, who
hath required this at your hand to tread
at my courts?
Bring no more vain oblations, incenses and abomination
unto me, the new moons and sabbaths, the
calling of assemblies.
I cannot, away with it.
It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting, your
new moons and your appointed feasts.
My soul hates.
They are a trouble unto me.
I am weary to bear them.
You know what the interesting thing is?
Everything which God has just condemned are the
very things which he appointed for men to
perform.
These aren't things that were coined in the
imagination of Jewish men who were trying to
be religious.
They were following the things which were prescribed
of God.
And he says that they are an abhorrence
to him, and he hates them.
They're vain oblations.
Why do you tread my courts and trample
in the holy place?
That's a confusing thing, isn't it?
And I don't know that I have the
answer to explain it.
I only have a presentiment in my Jewish
heart that there's no greater offense to the
holiness of God than to continue to perform
the prescribed things when our own lives and
conduct and speech and heart contradict them.
Imagine some man or some woman continuing to
go about the outward forms of marriage, dutiful
to put a nice supper before her husband
nightly, dutiful to wash his dainties in his
socks and to hang his suit up and
do all the kinds of things that pertain
to domesticity, but her heart has gone a
-whoring after other things.
I tell you, if I were the husband,
I would much rather eat gruel or a
box of cornflakes and do my own wash
than have a woman continue to mock me
with the motions of matrimony whose heart has
turned from me and to another.
Oh, that we could understand the grief and
pain of a God who daily has to
witness people in his name going through superficial
motions of religion whose hearts have forsaken him.
Far better we made no pretense, far better
we stopped our mouths and far better we
recited no mechanical prayers and sang no dusty
hymns than that we should grieve a God
in that way.
I'd rather be a healthy atheist and knock
my fist at a God whom I cannot
understand than be some mealy-mouthed weasel playing
at religion whose heart has gone after fornication
and after adultery.
Look at the fifth verse.
Why should you be stricken anymore?
You will revolt more and more.
The whole head is sick and the whole
heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even to
the head there's no soundness in it but
wounds and bruises and putrefying sores and they've
not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified
with ointment.
You know what the thing is, people?
That that very condition can exist and yet
there'll be no outward physical evidence.
How do you like them apples?
I just realized it this morning in looking
over these scriptures because I know that it's
the exact condition of my people today and
all of us who know Jewish people know
is there a people more fine in outward
appearance?
Is there a people more ethical, more moral,
more cultured, more civil, more humane, more awarded
by the world for all of these honorific
things and yet God says of them that
from the sole of your foot even to
your head there's no soundness in it.
You're full of wounds and bruises and putrefying
sores that have not been closed up nor
mollified with ointment because God sees not as
man sees.
Man looks on the outward parts but God
looks on the heart.
And I tell you there are a lot
of us who are not Jews who are
yet ethical, moral, sensitive, humane but as God
sees us we're full of bruises, rents, tears,
putrefying sores that have not been bound up
nor mollified with ointment.
O to see as God sees and accept
that God raised up a prophet that we
might hear his cry how then shall we
see?
He says in the 15th verse and when
you spread forth your hands I will hide
my eyes from you yea when you make
many prayers I will not hear your hands
are full of blood.
You see this isn't the people who are
forsaken praying.
They continue to pray but they pray without
effect.
It becomes mere ceremony empty, forsaken of power
or answer from God.
Wash you, make you clean, put away the
evil of your doings from before mine eyes.
Cease to do evil, learn to do well.
Seek justice and relieve the oppressed and judge
the fatherless and plead for the widow.
Come now and let us reason together saith
the Lord.
Though your sins be as scarlet they shall
be as white as snow.
Though they be as red like crimson they
shall be as wool.
And I can't help but note all of
the tremendous words that speak to our will.
And I tell you people that when it
comes to theology I'm a bumpkin and I
wouldn't begin to express any kind of theological
understanding.
I'm just a simple man and I don't
know the arguments that are Calvinistic or whatever
but it seems to me quite evident that
we have an enormous responsibility before God.
There are things that are incumbent upon us
to do.
And from my own experience and the places
to which God brings me I hear a
lot of people say Oh I can't!
What they really mean is I won't.
They mean I can't without a measure of
pain.
And isn't it fantastic how sophisticated we can
be in so many areas and so precise
in our speech and in our vocations and
professions.
But when it comes to things which are
spiritual all of a sudden we become like
babbling infants.
It's not that we cannot.
It is rather that we will not.
Because we're unwilling to come to that place
of obedience which invariably will bring us to
sacrifice and suffering and death.
Wash you.
Make you clean.
You put away the evils of your doings.
Cease to do evil.
Learn to do well.
Relieve.
Judge.
Come.
Now.
Praise the Lord.
I'm so glad he's not an academic God
who just titillates us with a little message
on Sunday but he's the God of now.
Come.
Now.
Get with it.
The time is short.
I'm not speaking to titillate your ears.
Have your eyes opened.
Understand what your responsibility is.
Bestow yourself.
It's not enough to occupy a pew.
It's not enough to go through mere motions.
It's a God who says that without holiness
you shall not see the Lord.
And no fornicator nor profane person like Esau
need think that he can inherit the kingdom
of God.
If you be willing.
Don't you love those ifs?
If.
Little to let it word.
My God.
What a fantastic mammoth obstacle.
If.
If any man be in Christ he is
a new creature.
And countless tens of thousands for whom the
Bible is a dead book prayer, a sweaty
exercise and witness a pure flight of agony
have to live and suffer these terrible things
because they've never come through that if.
They think themselves Christians.
They've condescended to accept the Lord.
Is that the language we use today?
They've signed up and they're in membership with
a certain church or denomination but they've never
passed through the great if.
If.
Any man be in Christ he is a
new creature.
All things have passed away and all things
are made new.
Maybe that's why it is that you need
so desperately to hear when I say you,
I don't mean this particular congregation I mean
Christendom.
From Jewish men who were enemies of God
and had enmity with him but who were
so powerfully crashed into the kingdom of God
that they know what it means to be
in Christ.
I tell you that if I were not
in Christ right now my knees would be
knocking.
Where does a man come to presume to
speak in a way like this?
It's only because I have a perfect confidence
that it's not a man speaking that I
dare lend my voice to what's coming forth.
This is what it means to be in
Christ.
If you'd be willing and obedient you shall
eat the good of the land but if
you refuse and rebel you shall be devoured
with the sword for the mouth of the
Lord has spoken it and we know the
tragic history of Israel when God speaks he
means it.
How is the faithful city become a harlot?
It was full of judgment it was full
of justice righteousness launched in it but now
murderous.
I don't know about eternal security and other
things which you may believe but as I
read that verse God described the city which
at one time was faithful a city that
was filled with justice and with righteousness righteousness
launched in it but now murderous.
How is it possible to go from that
high lofty pure state and swing to the
other end of the spectrum and find yourself
debased and utterly fallen in the worst work
of the flesh that's listed in Galatians murder.
I tell you if it happened to Israel
is it possible it might happen also to
us?
Is it possible that we might be murderers
already?
Not having committed the act but lending ourselves
only to willingly not to obedience but to
anger, resentment, bitterness unloving spirits.
And here's my key verse I haven't even
come to it yet are you patient with
me this morning?
Thy silver is become dross thy wine mixed
with water.
One little precious verse and I began to
do a little homework about dross and about
silver well we know that silver is a
precious metal it's the symbol of righteousness it's
lustrous and it's white and we know also
that it's malleable it can be fashioned rather
easily into different shapes and forms it's easily
molded it's susceptible and I tell you once
that you've been made into silver by the
righteousness of God you are more susceptible to
be shaped and to be conformed than you
were before you knew him.
You're either going to be shaped and conformed
to the image of his son or you're
going to find yourself more malleable and more
easily conformed to the spirit of this world.
Before you came into the dimension of the
spirit it could not touch you but once
you're in it I believe that you're more
susceptible to the kinds of spirits that are
loose in the world that's the very nature
and character of silver itself.
What else do we learn about it?
It's ductile that means that silver is a
carrier and every engineer and electrician knows that
silver is a prime metal for the conduct
for the conducting of electricity it's a carrier
and I want to suggest to you today
that silver can be a carrier for either
good or for evil.
And I'm just going to quickly turn to
2 Peter where that spiritual principle is made
very clear.
In the second chapter in the 21st for
if after they have escaped the pollutions of
the world through the knowledge of the Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ they are again entangled
therein and overcome the latter end is worse
with them than the beginning for it had
been better for them not to have known
the way of righteousness never to have become
silver than after they have known it to
turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
Silver is a carrier for good or for
evil it's ductile it's liable to tarnish when
exposed to the air and to the atmosphere
and especially to sulfur.
It needs therefore continuously to be polished which
is only another word for being buffeted and
I wonder how many of you are conscious
of that process of God's working in your
life.
I tell you I am buffeted daily and
I wonder often the kinds of things to
which I'm subjected at the hand of the
Lord excruciating things and trying things but I
know that except that I submit to that
buffeting how then shall I luster forth for
the Lord.
Isn't it interesting how God can give us
profound sermons over mundane and picayune things we
bought a used Volvo and I wanted to
polish it and I'm an old-fashioned guy
and I really wanted to do a job
and not just put a little thin coat
of wax over that and I bought blue
car cleaner which I think is the toughest
thing to polish a car with on the
market but oh oh oh what a job
it does and my brother Paul had an
electric polisher we poured that stuff on and
he began zzzz with that thing and I
was disappointed nothing was really happening there just
wasn't enough power in that electric machine to
do the job and I had to face
up with it it was going to take
pure unadulterated elbow grease and so I just
rolled up my sleeves and I went to
it and I did a patch at a
time and I rubbed that sucker back and
forth and the grime was coming out and
that luster was beginning to break forth and
I stood back like an artist looking at
his easel and I appreciated my work I
enjoyed it I'm an old-fashioned depression baby
and I want to see the fruit of
labor I like real luster and then I
turned to another panel and I began to
work on it and inadvertently my head was
turning back to the first panel and I
would turn back and turn back and finally
I threw my rag down and I had
to come back to that first panel it
wasn't good enough I tell you it was
heads and shoulders above the shine and sheen
of most cars but it was not yet
perfect and I knew it and therefore I
took one more swipe and I poured that
stuff out on that panel and I went
to work on it once more with that
cloth and I buffeted it and I wasn't
at it more than one or two minutes
when all of a sudden my cloth just
began to slide over the surface of that
hood we had arrived and the last filth
and grime which had been insinuated into that
pigment because it had been exposed to the
air since 1969 finally was loose and that
rag just slid over that thing and such
a luster broke forth as would dazzle the
eye I've got a certain sense about my
Jewish God that he is not the God
of the second best he is not the
God of mediocrity he is a perfect and
holy God who says be ye perfect as
your father in heaven is perfect be holy
as I am holy and a lot of
us have a thin coat of wax over
a lot of grime and it suffices for
the world and it enables us to quote
and unquote get by but we've not yet
lustered and shown forth the silver that we
are that the eyes of the world might
be dazzled oh precious people are we willing
to subject ourselves to the buffetings of a
living God you can see how gracious and
loving he is because for some of us
today the buffeting is begun you know what
dross is?
when the Lord says thy silver is become
as dross it's that scum it's that refuse
and waste that always attends the making of
silver it's part and parcel it's got to
be but it doesn't have to remain and
it doesn't have to swallow up the precious
stuff itself but I'll tell you what it
takes to remove the scum and to remove
the dross it takes effort it takes diligence
it takes an act keep your heart with
all diligence for out of it proceed the
issues of life and I'm amazed continually how
diligent we are in every other area of
our life our professions, our business, our properties
and our dealings my, my, my how we
minutely examine every line but when it comes
to the thing which we are vessels in
the house of God silver there we're slipshod,
forgetful we neglect to be diligent with the
precious thing which has been afforded to us
my brother Paul who's an engineer and has
left it to serve the Lord with all
his heart told me because I don't know
a thing about science that although silver is
a great transmitter that when silver is tarnished
that it's less effective either than more base
metals to transmit current put that in your
spiritual pipes and smoke it we're less capable
of transmitting the precious things of God than
even base metals and God doesn't just end
with thy silvers become dross thy wine is
mixed with water and I thought, Lord, why
is that?
why are men willing to mix their wine
with water?
it's because they have an inadequate supply and
they have to complement it by diluting it
and I think we Jews are more familiar
with wine than you fundamentalists and I tell
you that if you've never tasted it there's
something about wine which is very special which
I don't think is in any way a
haphazard, the Lord did it there's a certain
savor there's a certain bouquet there's a certain
body we speak about rolling wine on our
tongues you can just lift it to your
nose and something exhilarating even begins to penetrate
your nostrils it's no wonder that the Jews
equate wine with life we raise the glass
and we say l'chaim to life it's
the symbol of life it's effervescent, it bubbles
it's spirited oh, oh, oh, pitiful thing that
such substance as that has ever to be
mixed with water to be diluted and add
mixture and what about our civilization?
aren't we eminently the adulterous civilization?
the fruitcake civilization?
Dagwood Bumstead sandwiches?
every kind of mixture that human ingenuity can
conceive we not only do it, but we
relish it well, I can remember only just
a few years back you didn't dream of
mixing certain colors like blue and green everybody
understood there are certain laws that are not
to be violated and now it seems that
we've raised up a generation of designers and
people of cunning artifice who have taken all
of the things which were sacrosanct and not
to be violated and in them, they've exploited
them and delighted themselves in them and have
given us every kind of uncanny and berserk
combination you name it, in color, in food
we love to mix, mix, mix but there
was a God who said that we should
not mix wool and linen there's a God
who said we should not mix the various
seeds with the vignette there's a God who
said that women should not dress as men
and that it's a shame for a man
to have long hair there's a God who
made us male and female but we've been
mixing, mixing, mixing and I tell you very
often, you have to study a person for
some minutes before you've determined what their sex
actually is we've come a long way from
the holiness of God a long way and
those of you whose hair is as short
as mine this morning don't sit there smugly
it's because you've been permissive you've been so
tolerant, so nice you've not raised a voice
in protest you've not heard nor expressed the
cry of God at that subtle mixing that's
been going on in our civilization life yea,
verily, even under your own roofs that we're
beginning to reap the kind of harvest that
we are homosexuality, it's not such a bad
thing after all listen, we should be tolerant
and have a Christian attitude toward homosexuals and
after all, it doesn't hurt anybody we're coming
into that really permissive spirit of the age
anything goes any combination, any admixture our silver
is become as dross and our wine is
mixed who loves us because in the 25th
verse we read and I will turn my
hand upon thee and purely perch away thy
dross and take away all thy tin thank
you Lord I've been waiting for that tin
to go because I can't think of any
greater abomination than a tin saint and you
know what tin is?
it's a cheap counterfeit substitute for silver it
looks like silver it's white it lends itself
to a shine but it's much softer it's
not the real thing there are a lot
of us today in Christendom who are tin
saints tin is used for plating we're thinly
plated over outwardly but inwardly we're something else
again we're not pure silver and if the
Lord threw down our coin it would not
ring true it would bend and buckle and
crack and reveal the just a thin plated
coating which we too often unfortunately are