Well, tonight I'm taken by surprise that the
only leading that I have from the Lord
is to read something to you that's not
even my own.
Reading itself is usually deathly.
It's the thing that one wants to avoid.
People fall asleep when they hear a red
word.
But I'm impressed to share with you some
extracts from a sermon from one of the
theological giants of the 20th century.
And if I don't communicate something about him
to you, you'll not get him from another
source.
This is a once and for all.
He's so important to figure.
His sermons are so extraordinary, his works, that
it behooves us to have some acquaintance with
his name.
The name is Karl Barth, B-A-R
-T-H.
You pronounce it with a hard T in
German.
He's a German-Swiss theologian and has passed
on to be with the Lord.
He lived through both world wars and probably
one of the great theological figures of the
20th century.
It has to do with neo-orthodoxy, with
the return of the word of God at
a time in Germany when liberalism was rampant.
The search for the historical Christ, and did
he really live, and are the accounts accurate,
and all of that kind of liberal confusion
that had come into the German church and
finally took its terrible toll in the Nazi
time when the church was so weakened, its
faith so enervated, excuse the language, that the
enemy had opportunity to sweep in and bring
a demonic reality into the entire German state.
It doesn't hurt you to examine that history
because it's a little preview of things yet
to come of an anti-Christ time that
was prefigured by the actual taking over of
apparatus of a state, and not just any
state, but the most advanced, the most civilized,
the most cultured, and make of it an
engine of destruction for civilization and the near
annihilation of all European Jewry.
So the church is the issue of society
and a key in history, and we need
to learn from its failure.
And the failure has almost always to do
with the neglect of the word of God
by men who themselves do not take it
seriously and don't take God seriously and have
so depreciated the word that the audience that
hears them does not expect to be hearing
the word as God's word, nor does the
man who speaks it thinks that it's God's
word.
It's an opinion.
It's an educated commentary.
It's something of that kind.
So into that kind of generation, Calbot came
as a simple Swiss pastor who took his
obligations seriously and was confronted by the same
congregation week after week who looked at him
quizzically and wondered what he was about, and
so he strained and sought God for what
it means to be a minister of the
word and to preach, and the whole phenomenon
of preaching that needs to be resuscitated, restored,
be brought to the exalted status that it
must occupy or the church will fail.
And it wouldn't hurt to hear something from
a man with that emphasis, for we are
exactly in that kind of danger now.
So let me pray, and I'm taxing your
patience, your ability.
If you had difficulty with my English, wait
until you hear his, and I'll try to
transmute his thought in a way.
I'm like a mediary between this theological and
spiritual giant and to the contemporary here and
the church, that it should not be lost
upon us, because though the man is dead,
he still lives.
It would be almost doing despite to God
to be neglectful or ignorant about who he
is, what he represents, and what contribution he
has made, because if he's touching the issues
of truth and the significance of the preached
word, that is timeless.
The fact that I'll be quoting from a
sermon that was given in the 1920s does
not make it old-fashioned or antique.
If it is the word of God, it's
timeless and will have a power and a
meaning for every generation and maybe especially all
the more for the last.
So Lord, this is experiment perilous, but what
can I do?
You've not given me any other kind of
leading, and I know that it's, as a
rule, suicidal to read, but nevertheless I'm asking
that if this is your will, you'll quicken
that reading and you'll quicken, my God, thoughts
that you would have me to express in
conjunction with what is being said and an
ability to elaborate it and bring it in
a meaningful way to this significant congregation.
Lord, we need your blessing desperately.
I'm feeling out of it.
My juices are not running.
I don't feel my adrenaline flowing and ready
to go and tiptoes, and I would rather
have stayed in bed, so to speak.
But come, my God, and show resurrection, life,
and power, all the more that cannot be
attributed to a sluggish piece of aging humanity,
but to the reality and power of God
that raised Jesus from the dead and will
raise us also.
Come, let this be a Holy Ghost resurrection
phenomenon and we'll give you all the praise,
the glory, and the honor because we know
that we know it's not in any way
to be attributed to man.
You've seen to it that he's defunct and
down and that nothing issues from him is
out of his own verve, his own sap,
his own ability.
He has none.
For all effect and purposes, he's dead.
So come, my God, and be the life
of this speaking and make it so significant,
Lord, that it will be a deposit of
an historic kind that will affect the church
that is the church of this city, this
nation, my God, for all the days until
the day of your appearing for which they
will be grateful.
For we thank and give you the praise
for it in Jesus' name.
God's people said amen.
You can turn to Psalm 24, which is
his text.
It's a gorgeous psalm that I had the
liberty myself to comment upon it, but it's
not for me that the Lord would have
you to hear tonight, but a man who's
dead and yet lives.
But the psalm, like all psalms, is precious,
a psalm of David, and this Davidic influence
needs to come into our Christian lives.
This is the fullness of the Gentiles that
is waiting to come in.
It's more than something numerical.
It's a dimension, a quality, a quotient, that
is transcendent, that whatever the nationality, race, or
ethnic origin of a people, God is wanting
them to be infused with something so essentially
Hebraic, which is to say the essential character
of every God himself.
And one of the ways to obtain this
fullness is to invest yourself in the psalms.
So this is my daily practice.
I commend it to you.
And it's not playing spiritual roulette and your
reading obligation that you've read so many chapters,
so many verses.
God forbid you should reduce this to a
mechanical requirement.
It defeats the purpose.
It's no longer Davidic.
It's Singaporean.
It's Davidic when you luxuriate in the psalms,
when you swim in them, when you take
this rare wine to your lips and let
it rest on your tongue before swallowing and
catch the fragrance of the bouquet and the
scent and the tingling sense of this remarkable
language.
For these men, this David, this extraordinary man
of whom the Father was not ashamed to
speak of Jesus as the greater David, that
what is Davidic is the genius of the
faith that needs to be restored.
It's not some Old Testament thing.
It's timeless, and it needs to be brought
in, not just to our consideration, an infusion
into our being.
So, the earth is the Lord's, and the
fullness thereof, the world, and they that dwell
therein.
Believest thou this?
Paul believed it, and when he spoke at
Mars Hill, he virtually quoted it.
He said, God, the maker of the heaven
and the earth, does not dwell in temples
made by hands.
The first thing he said to the Greek
philosophers is to make a statement about God
and creation, and that's the first thing that
needs to be said, that remembered, and deeply
taken to heart.
The earth is the Lord's.
It's not our playground.
It's not for our amusement, our entertainment, or
let alone our exploitation.
It's the Lord's, and he's a purposive Lord.
He has purpose in his creation, and it
behooves us to understand what is the purpose
for the piece of earth upon which we
reside.
What do you think?
That this peninsula, this Malaysian thing, is some
kind of geographical freak that just happened by
circumstance and convulsions?
Or is it ordained in its very configuration,
and the way that you're located as a
hub has got to be more than accident,
but divine intention, but not for our commercial
success, but for some divine purpose that needs
to be sought and recognized.
You have to seek the face of God
for the meaning of your location, your place,
your purpose, and your time.
And that's a Davidic understanding.
That's Hebraic, that kind of mentality.
And you can enjoy it, even being Chinese.
Just don't let that intrude upon it.
And that's a secondary factor.
This is primary.
And by the way, I don't have this
because I'm Jewish.
It's not automatic.
It doesn't come with your genes.
It comes by your investment.
It comes by luxuriating yourself in this very
peculiar literature that if this were to be
taken from the book, from the Bible, it
would so diminish all of the content of
God.
So to read the Psalms daily, the Psalm
of the day, and to dwell upon its
language and take it to heart and ask,
put questions to the text.
Why is God saying like that?
Why does this begin like this?
Because the end of the Psalm seems to
be so unrelated to its beginning.
Why the frequency of certain words?
Why the repetition?
The earth is the Lord's and the fullness
thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.
For he has founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the floods.
And then an abrupt shift and change, taking
us by surprise.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the
Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
Every time I read who, as I shared
this morning in another context, I'm always getting
the sense that whoever who is, he is
so few and so rare that when God
raises the question, it's almost haunting, it's almost
like a mock, it's almost like a challenge.
Who?
Is there one who shall ascend the holy
hill of the Lord?
Who shall stand in his holy place?
This is more than play on words.
This is something graphic that is being hinted
at, that there is an actuality.
That's holy, a place that can be obtained
and found and ascended.
But who's qualified?
And yet as we're going to find out,
if we don't make that ascension, the consequence
is tragic.
Somebody needs to go up.
As Moses went up to the top of
the mount and was there and received from
the Lord the tablets of the law and
set in motion a whole dispensation of which
we are the inheritors and full of consequence
for all generations because one man went up,
took him 40 days, and he didn't just
ascend up on an escalator.
It was a fighting through brush and thorns
and thickets and things that bite at your
legs and are exhausting, all the more when
you're in a fast and you're neither eating
nor drinking.
And the last six days before he came
right up to the summit, he was in
a bank of cloud.
An overwhelming kind of darkness came upon the
dear man because the Lord called him out
of it in the seventh day, the number
of completion.
But whatever it was, he could not come
directly.
This is presumption.
Even though you're invited, you go, how do
I say it, tippy-toe.
This is holy stuff.
And he had to have his things, his
humanity, dealt with in the cloud of smoke,
which if you've never been in, I don't
commend it to you.
I was in it once and I hope
never again to be required to be in
the thick smoke that comes from fire.
You cannot know how totally disorienting it is.
Our little building took fire at three o
'clock in the morning where I was with
my family, and on the tile countertop I
had a whole box of my classic tapes.
And we ran out, and my wife said,
can you go in again and get my
pocketbook?
It's right on the tile table top.
No sweat.
I bowed low and went under and came
in through the door, and it's almost just
an arm's reach from the door to the
counter, and I never found it.
I was so totally disoriented.
I could not, not only could I not
find the counter, I could not find the
door through which I had entered.
I was totally, totally, humanly disoriented.
It's the strangest feeling that even the things
that are familiar to you are lost in
the smoke.
How would you like to be in it
for six days?
Why six?
Because that's the number of man.
And you don't come up into God's presence
and be there and receive the holy tablets
of the law and bring your own human
scent with you and your own cleverness and
your own brittle humanity and even your good
stuff needs to be dissolved in the cloud
of smoke before you dare come into the
presence of the Most High.
You see, dear saints, if we're only cleaving
to the New Testament and are not immersed
in these realities, how brittle will we become?
How metallic?
Our voices will be a clang.
This is for us.
We need to make that ascent.
We need to understand why the great Moses,
a prince, could not come directly into the
presence of God.
So how dare we budge in?
How dare we push open the doors and
come up at will and do our thing?
What presumption, what arrogance, how contrary to the
very nature of God.
No wonder that we're forbidden to even attempt
the holy hill.
That's why, who shall ascend?
Who shall stand in His holy place?
He that hath clean hands and a pure
heart who hath not lifted up his soul
unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully.
Well, we'll need a whole night just to
examine these criteria given by the Holy Spirit
that makes a person acceptable to attempt the
ascent.
But just reading it crudely, it already speaks
for itself.
Clean hands does mean more than just washing.
It means you've not given your hands to
things that manipulate and masturbate and all those
kinds of things for which we'll never be
censured or criticized and in which we take
a certain liberty.
But the hands have to be clean.
And if the hands have to be clean,
what shall we say about the heart?
It's got to be pure.
My God, who's free from taint, from egoism,
from vanity, from making, excuse my language, envidious
comparisons with others and exalting ourselves thereby?
This is to be human, all too human.
I mean, we take this in, we breathe
this air.
To have a pure heart and to have
lived in this world for any length of
time and to maintain that purity of heart
is no small thing.
And yet God says, if you don't have
it, forget even about making the ascent.
And by the way, who likes to go
up?
Up is a taxation, a demand.
It's grueling.
It defies spiritual gravity.
Everything dictates that we remain below.
We stay on the level ground.
We don't exert ourselves.
We just go with the flow and we're
one of the many.
To break out of that and to go
up requires a certain determination that only a
pure heart itself can entertain.
Most of us are fixed and choose to
remain below.
It's as if God is giving an invitation,
who?
Who chooses to go up and is willing
for the sacrifice and the attention to the
character of his life and his integrity in
order to be a candidate that I will
consider and receive?
You see, you would never have thoughts like
this if you hadn't read Psalm 24.
But there's reading and reading.
So don't pull that stuff that you learned
at school as if this is an assignment
and you're going to be tested.
This is dwelling.
This is imbuing.
This is luxuriating.
This is taking to heart.
He shall receive the blessing from the Lord
and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of them that seek
him, that seek thy face, O Jacob, O
God of Jacob.
Then again, there's another radical shift.
There's a break in this text and something
now else is being introduced.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and
be ye lift up, you everlasting doors, and
the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty
in battle.
Lift up your heads, O ye gates, even
lift them up, you everlasting doors, and the
King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts.
He is the King of glory.
Do you know what I, in my imagination,
conceive?
That somewhere the connection is at the top
of this summit.
This place where God is waiting for someone
who dares to make the ascent.
The King of glory himself waits at the
gate.
And it's an ancient gate.
And it's a gate of a kind that
does not want to permit his entry.
Because when the King of glory comes in,
everything must change.
And he does not knock that gate down.
Though he has all force and all power,
he allows himself to be restricted, restrained by
a gate that must be opened by someone
who has come up, and with holy hands
can pull the bolt and loose the closing
and permit the entry of the King of
glory into Singapore, China, Asia, America, the world.
The King of glory has not come in,
dear saints.
He's waiting for someone, maybe a corporate someone,
a unified soul, a body that has a
heart of this kind.
This is more than just a single virtuoso
and spiritual adventurer for whom God is waiting.
He's waiting for a body, a corporate entity
that has a desire of this kind, men
and women of kindred spirit who are joined,
related, unified, organically one who want to make
this ascent.
That's the one for whom he's waiting.
And when they come up, because they have
the requisite condition and have seen to it
painstakingly, even in their relationship with each other,
is the issue of purity.
We need one another because who does not
have a blind spot, who does not have
some intrinsic defect or some inherent failure that
needs to be identified and recognized by someone
who will speak to us about it in
truth and love.
This is the genius of the church as
church and the issue is the King of
Glory coming in.
What will that mean, my God, for Asia?
So lift up your heads, O ye gates,
you everlasting doors that have since time immemorial
contained the Holy One of Israel, the King
of Glory, because he's strong and mighty but
he'll not use his strength to break through
because that would be a contradiction in terms.
He's waiting for something.
We're co-heirs.
We're participants with him in the mystery.
He has faith.
He believes for people rising up out of
charismatic obscurity, out of predictable Christianity, out of
the things that are mundane every day and
who want to remain at that level and
trust that the word that comes to them
will find lodging and stir and ignite something
that begins to touch their imagination and excite
them to attain a condition of a kind
that is not to be found in the
general neighborhood.
Clean hands, pure heart, soul not given to
vanity that has kept itself from being compromised
because it wants to make this ascent, because
it's jealous that the King of Glory come
in, because there's a world that's dying for
the want of his presence and his entry
and we're willing for whatever sacrifice that ascension
will require and we know that we need
to attain it with others of like mind
and heart and that even this intention will
single us out as being different because most
will remain at the plateau and will be
looked upon strangely even for having this kind
of desire and what is required to attain
this kind of character.
We will be mocked even by Christians as
being thought too radical and not content with
things as they are.
We're divinely discontent and we want to go
up and we're willing to defy gravity and
obtain the character by which an ascent is
welcomed by the Most High.
You can be sure you'll stick out like
the proverbial square peg in a round hole
and who wants to be looked upon as
different, right?
We want to be just like one of
the boys and acceptable and a Christian but
good fun also.
This will disfigure us to have this kind
of intention that can't even be explained.
You can only groan.
You can only surmise.
You can't even communicate.
You can't even articulate this desire that has
to do with a jealousy for the King
of Glory coming in.
So how does Barth speak to this subject
who is so jealous about the Word of
God and the preached Word that sees the
Word as a sacrament and as a holy
thing that has to be a living Word
because he knows that there are people who
need, who look for a redeeming Word.
If it's merely informational, it's not enough.
It has to have certain character, certain attribute.
And this Word, we must not rest in
our quest for it.
This redeeming Word must be a primary all
-inclusive Word which must embrace the whole world.
It must be one Word alongside of which
there is and can be no other Word.
God's Word.
Can you sense the heart of this man?
The Word of God?
Can you see the juices running in his
mouth that it's more than something informational and
more than just biblical correctness?
It's infused with something.
It has a meaning, a significance.
It's a life-giving thing because men have
not called upon God, because they have not
sought the face of God, because there's a
kind of callousness and an indifference to God,
not only among the unbelieving but even among
the faith.
They need to be called out of the
things that are false.
They need to come to a fear in
the knowledge of God, the awareness of the
God of judgment, because he says we have
forgotten God.
So the Word is the thing that rescues
us out of falling into a state of
that kind.
So it needs to be a special Word
that allows God's judgments to be understood and
recognized, and his grace to be cherished.
It kindles something.
It brings a light.
It's a hope, a new day.
The earth is the Lord's.
But, he says, why does that statement enlighten
us so faintly?
Why do we read it in a matter
-of-fact way and we don't topple out
of our seats in the acknowledgement that the
earth is the Lord's?
Why doesn't that fact smite us and have
such a penetration?
Why do we ascend into the hill of
wood and stand even amidst the need which
surrounds us in the Holy Place?
Why is it not true and real to
us?
Why do we not live by that Word?
Why doesn't the acknowledgement that the earth is
the Lord's affect the practicalities of our life,
give us a larger vista of understanding that
finds its way down and into the everyday
issues of our life?
Just merely to nod in agreement with the
statement and not to be affected by it,
is to miss it.
And he's raising the question that even if
we read it and somebody speaks it, if
it's not a really preached Word, it doesn't
penetrate, it doesn't come through into our deepest
consciousness as it ought.
It's there to give us a sense of
God as Creator.
But why is it not true and real
to us?
Why don't we live by it?
Why do we live as though it's not
true if it is true?
Which is the worst thing that we can
do to just give the truths of God
a kind of begrudging acknowledgement but not receive
it as a truth that requires something from
us and is life-changing in its meaning
is to disregard it as true.
It's technically true, but it's no longer true
effectually.
And that's where preaching comes in.
It takes the Biblical Word and speaks it
with such a quality from God that the
truth becomes true in a way that makes
a requirement of us and affects our categories
and is factored into all our consideration.
If that doesn't happen in the Word that's
proclaimed, it's not the preached Word.
Preaching has lost its significance.
It's no longer a sacrament.
It's a skill.
It's a style.
This is what this man is groaning about.
So even our Christian words, our sermons, our
pious observations are so helpless, faltering, lacking in
light and spirit.
They sound pious, but the reality is absent.
The saddest part of it is that we
speak and hear the Word of God as
a mere word of man.
It no longer possesses its unique power and
meaning.
The saddest thing of all is that the
Word of God has become for us the
Word of Man.
And it no longer possesses its unique power
and meaning.
It takes faith to believe that the Word
that we're hearing preached is not the Word
of Man or a commentary or an opinion,
but God's Word.
And the very same text preached by another
loses that quality.
It's the preacher and his own faith to
believe that that Word and his attitude and
the comment that he wants to make by
it and with it is not his own,
but the Lord's.
That gives it and infuses a quality into
that Word that makes it true in a
vital way.
That changes us.
It becomes life-giving through preaching.
Preaching is a sacrament.
And are we expecting the Word to be
that for us?
And are we willing and so know that
it's a holy thing and it requires the
God himself to imbue the speaker and the
Word to have that kind of value and
force?
And therefore we should have been praying today
and not think that some personality is coming
who has it all together.
He brought his briefcase.
He has his messages.
And he can do it.
He's a pro.
It's a holy thing.
It's a tentative thing.
God has got to be in it and
he needs to be called upon.
He needs to be sought because we're not
asking for an amusement.
We're not wanting to fill the hour.
We're wanting to hear something of a transaction
with God that changes us, that affects the
world, that allows the King of Glory to
come in.
And for that, we have to pray because
every factor in hell and darkness and the
air that contests God protests and wants to
keep that Word from coming forth.
And if it does come forth, it wants
to thwart it.
It wants to distort it.
It wants to bend that communication so that
you don't receive it as a pure Word
that has come from heaven.
But by the time it comes to you,
it has taken on another kind of aspect
and it loses its cogency and power.
The Word of God as a preached Word
is a sacrament, you dear saints.
It's a holy thing.
It has not to do with men who
have a gift of gab and can quote
Scripture and make a message.
These are words that need to be birthed
through the travail of prayer.
And such words, when they come, cannot be
easily comprehended.
They make a demand upon us who hear
because they're different from the usual thing that
we can handle easily.
This is another kind of content.
It must be read and pondered and re
-read and pondered again until the truth that
is in such a preached Word becomes spirit
and life to the reader and to the
hearer.
It's not only a requirement made upon the
man who's up here who's speaking, it's a
requirement made upon those who are down there
who are hearing.
There's hearing in hearing.
And a real Word of God that is
a sacramental Word needs to be heard several
times.
It needs to be heard in a small
circle of saints who can shut the machine
at the desire of anyone in that circle
and say, what is he saying?
Did you understand the point he's making?
Where is that in Scripture?
Or, what's the application for ourselves?
We need to dig out.
We need to take the meaning, find it,
and search that content.
What a privilege, because that very activity stretches
and enlarges us.
But just to sit there passively like a
bunch of dummies to hear something of a
kind that's an entertainment and we enjoy it
because it's biblical and have not been extended
to reach out and wrestle with that Word
and dig out its meaning and its application
is to lose its value.
That's why we don't grow.
That's why we're fixed in the state that
we're in.
The Word of God is holy saints.
It's not an entertainment.
Maybe we need to hear fewer words but
more acute words of God's own speaking.
Maybe that's why I don't have a message
tonight.
The Lord has given you enough already in
the two speaking since I've been here and
I'm going to be here again Sunday?
What do we need?
More messages?
Or to examine more profoundly the messages that
have already come?
What has already come from me just in
these two speakings?
Fresh, original, given from the throne, full of
implication, full of promise, full of possible judgment?
It's weighty.
And has it bounced off?
Has it found a place in our deepest
consideration?
Or is it something that assures our lightness?
We're too light already and the thing that
saves us from being light is the weighty
Word of God when it is adequately considered.
We printed up copies of the message that
I gave in Germany on the issue of
the Gospel to the Jew because I knew
that there's no way however astute that German
audience is, that they could hear such a
thing in one hearing.
It's too convoluted.
It's too...
the content is so demanding, the thoughts, every
sentence is compact that needs to be unpacked.
It requires something of the hearer and we
provided it in written form that they might
study the Word that came.
Are you students or passive hearers?
There's no greater provision made for our growth,
for our enlargement, for our maturity, for our
wisdom, for our discernment, than the Word of
God properly considered.
And do we have the faith to believe
that what we're hearing from the man that
we know, maybe know too well and see
him sweating or laboring, that that could be
God's Word?
What are we, romantic?
Does it have to come out from the
ceiling and say, Thus saith the Lord?
If it comes from the familiar man with
the familiar accent, can you believe that that
could be God's Word through him?
And you would do well to believe that
than to dismiss that.
But does he himself believe it?
Or is he just giving an opinion and
filling the air and fulfilling a function because
it's a service?
Something is radically needed, saints.
Groan with me, will you?
Groan with Calbot, who wrestled with this because
he wanted to avoid sermonizing.
He wanted to avoid sermonizing his congregation and
stupefying them in which they leave in the
same condition in which they came, and nothing
happened.
He knew that it's contextually God's Word, but
something needs to happen to make it a
divine reality that produces a work.
And Paul, boasting in Thessalonians, says to these
former pagans, I praise God that when you
heard the Word of God from me, you
received it for what it was, the Word
of God and not the Word of man
that produced a work in you.
Have you ever dwelt on that?
These former pagans turned from their idols to
serve the living God and to wait for
his Son who has saved them for his
coming from heaven and will save them from
the day of his wrath to come.
Boy, they got the full measure.
They got a whole apostolic gospel.
They were expecting.
They were waiting for his coming.
They knew that they had to share in
the kind of sufferings that they saw in
Paul, that it was intrinsic to the faith,
that there would be opposition but they still
believed because when they heard a Word of
God from him, they received it for what
it in fact was, the Word of God
and not of man which performs a work
in them that believe that the same people
who would have heard the same preaching and
had not the faith or the heart to
believe that it was God's Word because after
all, it came out of a Jewish man
and probably had an accent of some kind
and we have seen him sweat and he
had to go to the boys room and
in other ways give evidence of his humanity.
So how can that be the Word of
God?
And so they received it as being the
Word of man and it performed no work.
How are you receiving this tonight?
Or yesterday?
Or Sunday?
Will you dismiss it even in a complimentary
way as being the Word of a man
or will you have the faith to believe
even though it's faltering choked, spluttering ragged that
it's the Word of God because to believe
that performs a work in them who hear
and we need that work and if we
don't have that work, how shall we have
clean hands and a pure heart?
How shall we ascend the Holy Hill because
it's the very Word that fits us for
that ascension if we hear it and receive
it as God's Word.
All you dear saints, if you will receive
this tonight as God's Word, how will it
affect every subsequent message that you hear out
of your own pastor and other speakers from
this pulpit?
It will be transforming and if it's God's
Word, how can we in one hearing receive
the totality of it?
We will need to ponder and to reflect
and to contemplate which won't hurt you a
bit that's why you need amusement and novelty
as alternative to boredom and get sucked up
into the vortex of the world and its
cheap stuff because you're not spending the time
in the Holy Word that has come.
You don't delight in it you don't think
to contemplate and find occasion to hear the
message again or as the pastor told me
he's taken messages of mine and he has
transcribed them for himself.
I said, that has got to bless you.
I'm not ashamed to ask people, who will
volunteer to take this tape and transcribe it
as a printout because I know that whoever
will do that will receive a benefit that
is immeasurable.
Just dealing with that word, hearing it typing
it, reflecting upon it is transforming.
This is the given thing of God to
save us from mediocrity to save us from
predictability, to save us from being stagnant, to
raise, to elevate to bring forth a people
in the earth of a notable kind that
makes the heads of the unbelieving turn in
the mere contemplation of them because they have
a stature.
They have a beauty.
They're Hebraic.
There's something about them.
Their eyes are already seeing the things that
are eternal and invisible.
They're lofty.
They have another set of values.
They cannot be compromised by materialism and possessions
and things of that kind.
They can take it or leave it.
It doesn't affect them because they've seen and
heard something of another kind and their knowledge
of God as God is being kindled and
deepened with awe and respect and majesty so
that their worship is not just their vocalization.
It's genuine.
They've grown in the apprehension of God as
God through the word that's preached.
So Bot states, a bolt is fixed in
place.
It requires certain hands, different hands from our
own to open.
Clean hands are required for it, says the
word of our text.
It requires men with other hearts than our
own to see God's light.
He who has a pure heart, says the
word of our psalm, can ascend into the
hill of the Lord.
It requires men in our place who have
not lifted up their souls to falsehood, to
vanity, to compromise, to cheapy things, to break
the bonds of this temptation.
He who has clean hands, this is the
primary thing which is told us.
Clean, guiltless hands open the bolt that closes
the entrance to the redeeming and freeing thing
which God has to say to us.
To understand what is meant, we may imagine
that all of us are without exception sitting
in a prison which we have erected around
ourselves and keep on building through our foolish,
frivolous, cruel, and unclean living, thinking, and doing.
I'll repeat that.
This man is mad.
This man is preacher, prophet.
This man is seeing something.
He squints his eyes and he sees a
condition of mankind and even in the church
that others do not see and do not
see for themselves.
This man sees and speaks and addresses and
he says, what we have to imagine is
our problem is where we have erected, we're
in a prison of a kind that we
ourselves have erected for ourselves and we continue
to keep building it through our foolish, frivolous,
cruel, and unclean living, thinking, and doing.
Can that be a statement that is true
of a people who avoid conspicuous sin, who
do not fornicate or get drunk or gamble
or lie even and yet there's some aspects
of their life that are not too far
removed from the things that are foolish or
frivolous or cruel or unclean in their thinking
and doing?
This is how he sees the condition.
And what's the antidote for a condition like
that?
The Word of God.
That sanctifies, that cleanses, that washes in the
water of the Word.
And so I said to the speakers at
our own conference in Minnesota, be aware that
what we need to hear is more than
a word that is informational.
We need a word that washes.
We need the washing of the water of
the Word.
Because the Lord in my early morning devotional
time showed me in Leviticus 19 that if
you touch a dead body, you have to
go outside the camp and be washed in
water and wash your clothing and after seven
days of washings you're free to come back
again because death is pervasive and the stink
of it and you can't use your hands
and touch things and be for God if
the taint of death is upon you.
You've got to wash.
So where is the corollary to the Leviticus
19 requirement of the Hebrew people in ancient
times?
It's the Word of God now.
And so I'm saying to our speakers, you
better pray.
You better seek the Lord.
You better give us more than a word
that is correct.
We need to be washed because the taint
of death is upon us.
There's a day that we can't go.
The world is filled with death and lies
and subterfuge.
The whole system is predicated upon death, values
that are deadly and the thing that purges
and removes the taint of death from us
is the Word, the washing of the water
of the Word that is truly the Word
of God and not the Word of man.
When we need to know that our preaching
has this requirement, who is sufficient for it?
This is ultimate requirement and it needs to
be prayed for by the congregation so that
it's not the speaker's obligation alone that he
can do it.
He's a pro.
He's experienced.
He's got it in his briefcase.
I can lean back and enjoy my obscurity
and let him do it.
Know you, dear saints, we're in something together
and we need your prayer.
We men who are the messengers and the
bearers of the Word of God who have
the same kind of intention is called but
we know what God is wanting and what
must come or the King of glory will
be penned up and restrained unless someone can
go up to that hill who has been
made clean by the Word.
But what Word?
The Word that is preached, the Word of
faith, the Word of revelation, the Word of
the Spirit because there are people who have
sought the Lord for the speaker and for
his utterance because it's once and for all
it will not be given again and we're
privileged to be in the hearing of the
presence of the Word of God preached.
Well, that's going to take time and you
can't fiddle with your TV set and write
up to the last minute on Saturday night
and watch the Late Late Show and doze
off and wake up and hope for some
piece of spiritual roulette on Sunday morning that's
going to stimulate you.
You've got to shut that cotton picking thing
off and pull out the plug and begin
seeking the Lord and you'll be opposed and
your ceiling will be like brass and your
words don't feel like they're going through to
begin to pray for tomorrow morning service.
Will you be praying for Sunday morning service?
Because what you'll get will be proportionate to
what you are by faith expecting and by
diligence seeking.
I tell you, dear saints, I've got such
treasure.
I'm a unique man.
I'm chosen.
I'm called.
I have a history with God.
I've been given revelation and understanding of so
uncommon a kind that I can't begin to
tell you.
The Lord can draw forth out of me
things so holy, so precious, so once and
for all you'll not hear it again from
any other man if you don't get it
from me.
But will you get it?
Will be the measure of your investment because
it's not automatic.
If I know the way things are that
will be busy, will be strained, will not
have adequate rest bang, it's time to come
and you're on and you're being invited and
you're called and there you stand by the
holy desk.
It's more than professionalism if it's going to
be a word that cleanses, purges, washes, instructs,
inspires, changes.
You've got to pray for that and believe
for that and desire that.
You privileged people.
This is not an entertainment though it's in
a theater.
And when the word comes it's not going
to be easily comprehended.
The man is going to use funny language
and words we've not heard before and we
have to strain to follow him and it
won't hurt you to be strained.
A dictionary is the most valuable tool after
a bible.
And you know what I found?
That it's not only for the hard words
but I go to the dictionary now for
the common everyday words and I'm astonished at
what I find there.
The subtlety and aspects of truth that are
in the most ordinary words you would never
have thought so.
Use that dictionary.
Grow by the use of language and know
that the ability to speak words and hear
words is privilege unspeakable and distinguishes your humanity.
If you're dull to words both to hear
them and to speak them if you have
no reverence for the sanctity of language and
make it cheap and glib with gossip and
small talk your whole humanity will be defrauded.
This is the provision of God for us
to become larger than life and more Hebraic
than we are Singaporean.
Don't be stuck in your culture and ethnic
origin.
Though we love your food, I mean first
things first.
So the words that are real words need
to be pondered, need to be reflected on.
Somebody paid me a high compliment.
He called me a contemplative prophet.
Praise God.
I love to contemplate.
I love to muse and to reflect on
the word of God upon history, upon situations,
upon complexities of life.
Musing is reflection that enhances our humanity, but
not to muse is to become amused and
to seek amusement, which is the negation of
musing.
That means you lose your contemplative reflective capacity
as a human being and you become a
dum-dum.
An object of commercial manipulation, especially you young
ones.
Don't you know you're a market?
You're a profound market in the commercial world
and therefore they're out for you that you
should buy, that you should consume, that you
should wear this, you should eat that, you
should go there.
That you should fill out your silhouette, lighten
your complexion, and do all the kinds of
things that will make you more attractive and
you palpitate over that.
Only the word of God can save us
saints.
It needs to be respected, revered, holy.
But it's not for those who already have,
Colbert says, prepared their programs and want God
to ratify it, who have already found God
so-called and defined him and are bent
on building their own kingdoms.
If that's your mentality, forget it.
You're nullified.
You're no longer a candidate for the word
of God, either to speak it, to hear
it, or to receive it.
If your kingdom is already established and you
know God and ratify and need and you
got it all together.
Where's your uncertainty?
Where's your sense of mystery?
Where's the sense of God who's beyond our
defining?
In fact, if we have defined him, we've
made him non-God.
He's beyond our defining.
He's not to be defined.
He's to be appropriated and what's the word?
Received.
How did Paul say it?
Oh, that's apprehended.
This is a glorious God who needs to
be apprehended.
He's full of mystery, the triune Godhead.
What, have you got reduced it to a
formula?
Father, Son, Holy Spirit, you got it all
together?
That's mystery.
Why is God composite?
What kind of relationship between his persons?
How can it still be one God in
three persons?
Isn't that a contradiction of terms?
Why does God establish himself in this configuration
that where the one person defers to the
other, the Son to the Father, the Holy
Spirit to the Son, in a gracious self
-deferring love and condescension to one to the
other to show us a pattern of how
we ourselves should relate on this earth.
If you reduce that to a formula, you've
got a doctrine.
My God, you're a candidate for apostasy, even
with the technical truth that turns into a
lie, if you've not struggled with it, wrestled
with it, invested yourself in it, and know
that you know, and love the mysteries of
God, and know that it's never beyond, it's
always beyond our reach.
Something needs to be apprehended.
Do you have a sense for mystery?
Do I have to bawl you out as
I did those German students and tell you
you have no sense of the tragedy of
life?
You have no sense of mystery.
You're mechanical, you're predictable, you're one-dimensional.
The very thing that would save you, you're
not obtaining or utilizing, which is God and
his Word and the remarkable mysteries of which
Paul was a steward and handle with such
delicacy and love.
The gospel itself was for Paul.
My gospel, our gospel, he speaks of it
fondly and affectionately, and for him it wasn't
a formula on how to get saved, it
was a statement of God's cosmic intention for
the redemption of mankind.
For us to reduce it to a formula
is already travesty and doing despite to the
faith.
You'll reduce it to a formula if you
haven't wrestled with it.
What is this gospel?
What is this message?
Why is it central to the church's understanding
of itself as the church and its purpose?
What are we promoting before men that just
requires their little decision that has not brought
them into any depth of awareness of God
and his magnitude and glory that requires their
real repentance?
We've made it cheap and glib and easy?
What then is the church composed of such
so-called converts who were saved with a
gospel of that kind that was other than
Paul's?
So, one statement, and I'll try and conclude.
The earth is the Lord, and it's too
great a truth for man to express, know,
and perceive as he would other truths.
God is divine and not the subject of
our perception and our measurement.
We don't know him saints as we ought.
We have diminished him and fitted him into
our categories.
That means in the end we have trivialized
God and made the faith a Sunday culture.
We need to be enlarged.
The awe of God, the fear, the sense
of himself as he in fact is, to
bow before that God requires being apprehended by
the word that is God's word, that is
spoken through people who have birthed it through
prayer.
It makes a requirement of us, as I
said to the ministers this morning, if the
word that you speak makes no requirement of
its hearers, it's not God's word.
God doesn't speak for effect.
He requires.
His word requires.
To whom much is given, much is required.
We need to be required of.
It's his mercy to make that requirement lest
we be stagnant and stay at the plateau
level and refuse to go up.
So, Carlebach says, the holiest thing is lacking.
Even though we talk much about it, that
deep respect for God's majesty, that real reverent
respect is wanting in that God's thoughts in
every case are higher than our thoughts.
There is wanting that earnest prerequisite of the
knowledge of God as God.
But only his name, his kingdom, thy will,
that is wanting.
And when that is wanting, it's not merely
that something is wanting, but everything is wanting.
When that is wanting, nothing will succeed.
Everything is loose, empty, mere doctrine, even if
it be tenfold pure.
This guy is crying out that even our
correct things are not correct enough.
If it be tenfold pure, if this critical
thing is wanting, everything is wanting.
And what is the thing?
The real reverent respect, the deep respect for
God's majesty, that sense of his awe, the
earnest prerequisite of the knowledge of God, his
name, his kingdom, his will, that is wanting.
And when that is wanting, that total jealousy
for God's glory and honor and name to
be served in our generation that will require
sacrifice to attain, when that is wanting, it's
not merely that something is wanting, everything is
wanting.
And everything for the want of that is
loose, empty, even if it be tenfold pure.
There's something wanting in the knowledge of God
as God, even among those who believe.
And if that condition is to be remedied,
it'll come through one way only, the word
of God preached from the holy desk that
trembles us who come up to speak from
it, who in the very moment of coming
up and opening our mouths are made immediately
aware of the frailty of our humanity, that
we're sweating even as we speak.
And out of our mouths has got to
come holy things that become an event for
the hearer and bring change and purity of
heart and hands and keep them from vanity
that they might ascend to the top of
that hill for which God is waiting, someone
who's qualified to come up, that corporate someone
who has broken out from the world and
its details and its depths and its allurements
and seductions and gone up in the purity
of heart for which he waits and have
a pure hand to throw open the bolt
that opens the door and allows the king
of glory to come in.
What a calling.
What a privilege.
God forbid that we should live entire Christian
lifetimes and fall short of it and read
Psalm 24 as if it's a little ditty
rather than an invitation for ultimate heroism and
transcendent humanity which is the glory of the
faith.
Lord, bless these children.
Lord, have mercy on these children.
They're the products of their age and time
and they're doing so impressively in the measure
that they have and they think that that
is the measure.
There's more.
There's something ultimate, my God.
Something holy we haven't begun to contemplate or
to seek.
We're satisfied with our success.
We're enjoying it but we've not thought that
there's something more than enjoyment.
There's an issue here of glory.
There's an issue of a king who's the
captain of the host who has to come
into this Asia that is dying for the
want of the knowledge of him that is
living in its superstitions and its materialism and
doesn't know that this is only a preparation
for an eternal life to come and they'll
learn it too late in the day in
which they pass this life and it's too
late to remedy their indifference and rejection of
the one God who is God and is
the God of Jacob and the God of
Israel because he has not been made known
to them.
No one has preached.
The word has not come that they might
call upon him of whom they've not believed.
So Lord I'm praying blessing for these children.