I really want to apologize if I used
vocabulary last night that confused people.
I'm going to try tonight really to be
conscious of that and speak as simply as
I can.
I think part of the problem was that
I was quoting from a very erudite theologian,
so there I go already.
But I don't see that there's anything wrong
in God's people having their vocabularies expanded.
Because language is enormously significant, and there are
some words that simply cannot be replaced.
So, oftentimes I speak like an amplified Bible.
I'll give three or four adjectives for the
same word.
If you miss the first one, don't panic.
There'll be others coming.
We need to come to a place where
we're not intimidated by each other, or the
unusual ministries that God has in the body.
Not threatened, but somehow that we have an
ease of spirit, and that we're willing to
open our hearts to receive what the Spirit
is speaking, sometimes even when our minds are
not fruitful.
So, I appreciate that if you would establish
your heart in that way.
As I've said, I've not spoken these messages
before, and there's an element of spontaneity by
which God infuses something as one speaks.
So, if there's a disconnectedness or an awkward
pause, don't become uncomfortable, but enter into the
process of drawing the Word of God out
from his own heart.
So, with that introduction, let's join our hearts
together to hear from the Most High God,
the God of Heaven, that he would breathe
upon us a living Word, a life-changing
Word.
Talk about intimidation.
I was almost intimidated myself when I came
in tonight and saw your ecstatic joy, and
gathered that you'd had quite an afternoon, and
I thought to myself, cats, you're superfluous.
That means unnecessary.
They've already arrived.
They need nothing that you have to say.
Hallelujah.
Somehow it all works together.
I'm not clever enough to understand how, but
it does.
So, gracious God, we love you, and we
would desire, Lord, to love you more and
to know you more, Lord, that you might
expand our hearts and our understanding, Lord, that
you would infuse into our being something from
Heaven.
Gracious God, that has to do with the
enormity of the theme of the cross, that
we might be soldiers of the cross, Lord,
that our joy might not be expressed only
in circumstances like this, that lend themselves to
the expression of joy, but that our people
might learn to praise God at midnight, in
cells at Philippi, with their backs hanging, mighty
God, in strips of flesh, praising God and
worshiping him, that the prisoners might hear us.
Give us that kind of joy that will
not dissipate, but that is constant, that has
its source at the cross, which is the
source of all life, mighty God.
Use this occasion tonight to express what's in
your heart.
We just look to you now with trust,
love, admiration for working what you have in
your own suffering and making available to us
through it, life, reality, joy, power, all the
things that pertain to godliness and life, in
Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus the Christ, in whose precious
name we pray.
Amen.
I want to read something of the melancholy
account of the events that attended the night
in which Jesus was apprehended and brought to
the place of execution.
As you've gathered from my vocabulary, I've had
some exposure in books and something of an
academic background and was a teacher for seven
years, but there's no book that more gives
me cause for exultation than the Bible.
One of the reasons that I delight in
it is its enormous honesty.
It is so utterly candid.
There's nothing that God has withheld.
He just tells it like it is, and
I stand in enrapt amazement for such a
God who does not spare us and does
not condescend, but he speaks the things that
are true, even things that are painful, even
things that at first stagger us, and perhaps
if we had anything to do with the
scriptures we might have omitted them, even the
things that have to do with the humiliation
of the disciples of Jesus in the way
that they came completely unglued in the night
of terror.
I think that there might be something salutary,
that means healthy for us, in reviewing some
of these things.
Matthew 26, the 31st verse, Then
saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be
offended because of me this night.
For it is written, I will smite the
shepherd and the sheep of the flock shall
be scattered abroad.
But after I am risen again, I will
go before you into Galilee.
Peter answered and said unto him, Though all
men shall be offended because of thee, yet
will I never be offended.
Mark 14, the 31st verse, After Jesus had
answered that remark of Peter's by saying that
you will deny me thrice before the cock
crows, we read in the 31st verse, But
he spoke the more vehemently, If I should
die with thee, I will not deny thee
in any wise.
Likewise also said they all.
And they came to a place which was
named Gethsemane.
And here he saith to the disciples, Sit
ye here while I shall pray.
And we know that on that occasion the
disciples slept in the hour of the agonizing
prayer of Jesus.
In the 71st verse of the same chapter,
When what Jesus spoke was fulfilled in the
humiliation of Peter, where he denied knowing the
Lord and denied it again.
But he began to curse and to swear,
saying, I know not this man of whom
you speak.
And the second time the cock crowed, and
Peter called to mind the words that Jesus
said unto him, Before the cock crowed twice,
thou shalt deny me thrice.
And when he thought thereon, he wept.
In the 16th chapter of the Gospel of
Mark, in the 11th verse, After the events
of the crucifixion and the resurrection, When the
women came to the tomb and found that
the tomb was empty and encountered the angel
that told them that Jesus had risen, And
they in the 11th verse, when they had
heard that he was alive and had been
seen of her, believed not.
After that, he appeared in another form unto
two of them, as they walked and went
into the country, And they went and told
it unto the residue, neither believed they them.
In the Gospel of Luke, in the 22nd
chapter, Jesus speaks a strange word to that
same Peter who denied the more vehemently.
22.32 Well, let's begin with the 31st
verse.
The Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath
desire to have you, that he may sift
you as wheat.
But I have prayed for thee, that thy
faith fail not, and when thou art converted,
strengthen thy brethren.
I have long been intrigued by that statement
that Jesus made to Peter, And believed that
the moment of conversion for Peter came, in
the moment that he went out and wept
bitterly, Seeing that he had fulfilled the very
words of the Lord, that he would deny
him three times.
This is a melancholy statement of the condition
of the disciples, Who were vehement in their
espousals and their affirmations, That though all the
world would deny him, yet would they deny
him never.
Thus said they all.
And yet, not only was he denied, not
only did they flee him, but he was
fled naked.
It says, one of the disciples, clothed with
linen, escaping the men, fled naked.
There's something about these ultimate moments of crisis
that tend to reveal what is the true
condition of men.
There was a political axiom that we used
to use in my academic days that went,
Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And I've just turned that to say this
spiritually.
Crisis reveals, and absolute crisis reveals absolutely.
In the absolute crisis of the apprehension and
the crucifixion of Jesus, Even in the event
of his resurrection, the true condition of the
disciples of Jesus was revealed.
And I wonder that unless we see in
the humiliation of Peter something of our own
condition, That there won't be a degree or
a measure to which we ourselves will be
required To experience the failure of all flesh
in the moment of ultimate trial and crisis.
This brings me again to my theme of
the necessity for an encounter at the cross.
And yet there's nothing so unpopular as for
the crucified God to be made a present
reality through faith.
Only this faith that comes in this kind
of encounter is capable of setting men free
From their illusions and releasing them from the
involvement which binds them And confronts them with
the truth of their own existence.
That's what happened to these men in the
events of the crucifixion.
They were confronted and the illusions of their
own life had to burst.
I don't know how to express this.
There's something that adheres in the absolute terror
of the cross That will unmask us, that
will reveal everything that has not been established
in God.
And maybe we need to sense how much
of our own vehement statements, Our affirmations, our
loud yeas and amens Are something of the
same substance of that which was spoken by
these men Before the revelation of their failure.
It's coming to the cross in an authentic
way that frees us From the illusions about
ourselves and the things that are unreal.
But every coming to the cross is painful
and for that reason men shrink from it.
Because the cross is the picture of ultimate
suffering, as I mentioned last night.
But until we are willing to gaze upon
the suffering of God, God crucified for us,
We will not experience the release that will
enable us also to enter into these sufferings.
There's something in the heart of the believer
That is engendered by gazing on the suffering
God In a way that is beyond our
theology and our catechisms and our shallow understandings
That frees us also to enter into the
same suffering because of the love of him
who suffered for us.
The cross is the painful revelation of truth
in the midst of untruth.
And it is in this pain that the
prospect of reality is born.
I was reading this afternoon from a book
of messages on the cross by Spurgeon, the
great English preacher.
I've never read anything so grand as these
precious messages From one who has entered into
the glory of this mystery.
And I'm reminded again of how little opportunity
we have to hear this kind of preaching.
He writes, we see in Jesus the monarch
of the realms of misery.
Monarch means king.
How many of us have ever thought of
him as this kind of a king?
King in the realm of misery.
The chief among ten thousand sufferers.
Never say, I'm a great sufferer.
What are our griefs compared with his?
What are our woes and sufferings?
Even so, I ask, what are our shallow
griefs compared with the intimate sorrows of Emmanuel?
There's something in contemplating the sufferings of God
That makes our own small sufferings to be
eclipsed and made tolerable.
And yet if we could hear as God
hears the enormous screech and howl and shriek
That comes up from God's people over the
face of the earth For much less things,
we would be astounded.
If we have fits now And we're quick
to moan and groan now over much lesser
things What when real suffering shall be required
of us?
And I think that as the companion piece
of the enablement that is given us by
the grace of God through the Holy Spirit
The other piece is the knowledge of the
meaning of the cross As the suffering of
God for our sake That will enable us
also to bear what God shall call us
to bear.
There's a radical faith that is born at
the cross That many of us have not
yet tasted Because it's the place, as I
mentioned last night, where all of the human
categories are shattered.
Now will you understand me if I say
That there are a lot of human categories
that are to be found in scripture But
for us they are human.
What do I mean by that?
That there are things that we have gleaned
and picked up or absorbed or adopted or
spoken And have fitted in to our categories,
to our understanding and to our theologies But
they are still human understanding They are not
things that have been born by radical confrontation
with God In a kind of crisis thing
that makes these things reality This is why
these men could say, though the world deny
you, yet would I deny you never And
thus said they all They were absolutely sincere
They really believed that, they were persuaded But
when the moment of crisis came It burst
like a bubble It had no substance and
no power to enable them to endure And
they fled in every one For one who
had laid his head on Jesus bosom fled
him naked I think that we would be
fools to ignore the meaning of that We
would be fools to think that we are
made of better stuff than these men And
that somehow if we were faced with the
same crisis We would react in a more
admirable way The cross is the place of
repentance And too many of us have been
so fixated on a salvational level And thought
of the cross only as atonement for sin
That we have not recognized it also as
the place for the exchanged life By which
we give over the shambles of the things
which we are as natural men We repent
of ourselves as men And recognize that in
us is no good thing And we are
willing to lay at the altar of that
cross And forsake the whole of our life
Recognizing that we need to say with Paul
For me to live is Christ This is
more than the forsaking of sin It is
the forsaking of self And many of us
who have come to the cross for the
forsaking of sin Have not come for the
forsaking of self We have been willing to
bring our particular maladies and defects and sins
But we have not been willing to bring
ourselves And what we have to learn in
the cry of Peter who went out and
wept bitterly That we are made of the
same stuff And if we were faced with
the same crisis We would likely also betray
him Our charismatic gifts And the wonderful adornments
of God that are given by the Spirit
If it is not a grace which accompanies
A life that has been established at the
foundation of the cross Will not be sufficient
to sustain us It would be interesting to
wonder As the age comes to its end
And the controversy of the gospel increases Which
we are seeing now only in part in
Iron Curtain countries But shall experience also throughout
all the West How many of us will
still continue to convene like this And to
be known by the name of the Lord
And stand together to enjoy the things that
we have enjoyed in these days We are
told that in the last days many will
fall away And just to repeat something from
our brother Sylvester God is speaking things now
to enable us to stand It is an
hour of preparation for things that have not
yet surfaced And become real for our life
That gives me the unhappy task of speaking
things that are distant As if they were
present realities But that has ever and always
been the prophetic function When Isaiah confronted his
people in the first chapter of the book
of Isaiah And he said from your head
to your toe You are laden with saws
that need to be mollified and bound up
You are full of bruises and ungainly saws
Your city has been laid waste and ravaged
They looked upon him as a madman For
there was not a thing that they could
see with their natural eye That confirmed what
he spoke by the Spirit of God The
prophet always speaks of the distant thing as
the present reality And it would behoove the
people of God to receive the prophetic spirit
That they might prepare for these realities for
which they are surely called Coming to the
cross is coming to the place of shame
We can't come to it in the authentic
way that God would desire Except that we
radically see ourselves as we see him also
And I mentioned last night the double vision
The two things that are revealed when we
see God as he is We see also
ourselves as we are Which is why the
prophet cried out In glimpsing the Lord high
and lifted up Woe is me, I am
undone For I am a man of unclean
lips This is the prince of the prophets
speaking Which is why I celebrate the same
Holy Ghost masterpiece That the sisters of Mary
celebrate called the Eisenheim altar Because it gives
us an opportunity to glimpse What must have
been seen by that Roman centurion And those
that were with him In the ultimate suffering
and death of the Lord It's the unhappiest,
saddest, painful, agonizing portrait Of suffering brought to
its final extremity in death It's a piece
of shame And God has given me two
opportunities to glimpse the masterpiece In person, so
to speak The first as an atheist and
more recently as a believer On a recent
trip to Germany And as I stood before
this painting the second time Awed and stunned
by the horror that is so masterfully depicted
there My eyes fell on the loin cloth
that covers Jesus And the thought came to
mind Where does it say in the scripture
That the enemies of God afforded him this
elementary decency Why should we assume that God
left the world In a condition different from
which he entered it Which is to say
he entered naked and he left naked And
part of the agony and the suffering of
the cross Is the humiliation of utter nakedness
For which reason many of us refuse to
go there It's interesting how I'm quoting And
I've been so much affected by the writings
of German theologians I want to read something
from Dietrich Bonhoeffer Who gave his life as
a martyr for Christ in this country At
the end, at the closing days of World
War II He wrote a little book which
I consider a masterpiece That I would commend
to you, it's called Life Together I've not
found anything finer that pertains to Christian community
And I'd say in the same breath whether
you realize it or not We are all
being drawn to that We've learned from our
own experience To agree with Bonhoeffer that the
only foundation for life together Is the knowledge
that we are sinners saved by the grace
of God It is patently impossible to live
in community with other believers And to feel
yourself in any way superior to them Spiritually
or in any manner And the only condition
therefore that will permit true community Is the
brokenness that comes with the awareness That we
are sinners saved by the grace of God
That we are all the beneficiaries of his
mercy And we all live in the shadow
of his cross It's only that kind of
humility that makes true relationship possible And I
might say that it's the absence of that
very thing That accounts for the strife, for
the division For the fragmentation of the body
of Christ everywhere in the earth today The
cross is too conspicuously absent from our experience
And therefore the pride and the self-sufficiency
And the superiority that is part of God's
people Provides the very conditions by which they
find themselves fragmented Bonhoeffer writes Anybody who lives
beneath the cross And who has discovered in
the cross of Jesus The utter wickedness of
all men and of his own heart Will
find there is no sin that can ever
be alien to him We have no basis
for moral or spiritual superiority When we come
to the cross in truth And contemplate there
the naked Savior And see also in our
coming the nakedness of our own condition This
revelation is necessary To see that there is
no sin of which we ourselves are not
capable Because on his head and in his
suffering Was all the totality of sins for
which he groaned For which we, if we
have not been guilty, we are capable May
I say that my life in God began
Nine years before I was saved In a
German railroad car on my way from Dachau
back to Munich Having that day as a
G.I. visited the concentration camp for the
first time I was utterly sickened by the
horror that I saw there I was a
proud self-righteous Pharisee I was an arrogant
atheist and a self-sufficient intellectual Who was
utterly assured that the Germans were some kind
of fiend And that somehow if all men
could be like us, me We would have
the condition of brotherhood that my Jewish heart
desired But in the horror of what I
glimpsed in the concentration camp that day And
may I say that the present Dachau is
not the same that I saw 25 years
ago It has been nicely tidied up, thank
you And the horror and the sting has
been removed Every ugly barrack has been taken
away and it has been nicely landscaped with
stones Nothing of the stink or the wretch
or the whipping posts Or the places of
horror and torture remain Except for the gas
room and the oven And yet that today
is sufficient to sicken us Imagine how much
greater was I stricken as a Jew 25
years ago to see that place while it
still carried the stench of death And I'll
tell you what confrontation with the reality of
horror did It saved me from going on
being some kind of bumptious Self-righteous character
Who looked down disdainfully upon Germans Because I
recognized that in the magnitude of that horror
That I myself was implicated And on the
train that day in that stunned condition and
sick in my soul Locked in with a
German veteran who was without arms and without
legs In one of those unusual encounters that
God himself will perform I recognized beholding my
enemy that there for the grace of God
go I That it was only by dint
of circumstance that I was wearing the uniform
of Uncle Sam It was only a fluke
and a caprice of faith that I was
born a Jew And that had I been
born a German I would have been easily
capable of stoking the ovens with bodies Dear
children, we shall never come to a proper
place in God Which is to say the
foundation in repentance Until we acknowledge that we
are capable of atrocity My Jewish people will
never be reconciled to their German brethren Until
they come to the recognition of which I've
just spoken That not only they are capable
of doing the same But to a certain
degree in the ironies of history They already
find themselves involved to some measure or another
Inflicting atrocity on men Do you understand what
I'm saying or do I have to play
that again?
And what have we Americans learned in our
own recent and unhappy experience In Vietnam and
so forth But that red-cheeked boys from
the U.S. are just as capable Why?
Not because we're Americans or because we're Jews
or because we're Germans But because we're men
And it's from this that we've not yet
sufficiently repented This confrontation with the truth Is
in the first instance Critical and destructive Remember
how God spoke to the prophet Jeremiah Tear
down, root up, destroy, pluck out Before you
build and plant Confrontation with the truth Is
always in the first instance painful and destructive
There's always something that's got to be removed
Before something is established and built up This
confrontation does not promise the confirmation of our
own conceptions Hopes and intentions It promises first
of all the pain of repentance And fundamental
change I agree with Derek That the act
of repentance is an act of will But
what the Lord is enabling me to see
is That it's also a painful act of
will To repent is painful It means forsaking
something And anything that has to be parted
That has had a long history Or is
dear or familiar When it is wrenched from
us or is required to be given up
Is painful The religion of the cross does
not elevate And edify in the usual sense
But scandalizes The believer However, if he has
been freed at the cross Is willing to
suffer for truth's sake Again and again I
wonder if you have ever thought of the
conjunction of the words Suffer and truth In
my own experience Lover of truth that I
am I've never enjoyed the truth Without having
to experience the measure of suffering that accompanies
it Truth is painful And the first realization
of that came Nine years after the incident
in the train compartment When the God of
my fathers Of whom I had no knowledge
whatsoever As a darkened atheist Put into my
hands a New Testament Aboard the deck of
a tramp steamer On my way from Italy
to Greece Where I was going to pay
homage to my culture heroes Who gave rise
to humanism and Greek philosophy And God confronted
me out of the Greek book The New
Testament To show me how Jewish it is
And none more Jewish Than the Holy One
of Israel Of whom I was reading for
the first time in 34 years And in
one utterance out of the mouth of Jesus
I experienced a revelation from heaven That utterly
persuaded me in the moment that it came
That there was a living God I was
reading his book And Jesus was who he
claimed to be I had been a seeker
for truth From my high school dropout days
on And truth finally confronted me And I
didn't shout Hallelujah And my first thought was
What is this going to cost you?
I knew that my mother would never understand
it And 14 years later almost to the
day She still has not Still believes that
I have joined the enemy's camp That I
have identified and made myself one With the
same people who pelted her with stones On
her way to school in London as a
little girl And were the ones responsible for
the destruction Of the Jewish people in the
Holocaust How could I do it?
Who was the apple of her eye I
knew that for truth's sake I had to
step over my mother And I've had to
experience the door being slammed In my face
in her Brooklyn apartment As she cried out
in the slamming of the door He's gone
mad, he's gone mad Truth is expensive and
painful And yet I have not an end
of praise For the God who is the
God of truth And whose spirit is eminently
and first The spirit of truth before He
is the spirit of power And more than
we've realized The absence of Pentecostal power Is
in exact proportion to the absence Of the
spirit of truth In the earth and among
God's people And if you want again to
see apostolic glory Which is more than Amen's
and hallelujah's If you want to see again
The shadow of a simple fisherman Falling on
the sick and healing them If you want
to see Signs and wonders following I think
that God is going to have to Restore
the spirit of truth to us In such
proportion As that if any man come among
us And give a part And allow that
to appear for the whole The spirit of
God shall kill him on the spot And
he shall be carried out feet first How
many of us would be willing For the
restoration Of the severity of God The divine
severity of God Against a partial lie In
order to enjoy again The magnitude of the
glory Of the spirit of power That existed
in the apostolic age Do you hear what
I'm saying There's a world dying For the
want of the demonstration Of this power And
it shall not return Until God's people are
willing also For the magnitude of truth Because
the spirit of power Is first the spirit
of truth And when that dove departs He
takes his power with him also And if
you'll understand this I'm not trying to be
loving I am loving How much in our
charismatic sessions I'm not speaking about These immediate
days But experiences that we've all had Where
we come away with a leaden feeling And
the amen's and the hallelujah's Rattle in our
ears But somehow Our souls have not been
uplifted How much of that has been an
exercise Seeking to fill the void Which would
be filled Had the holy dove been there
In fullness All children love truth Love truth
And you'll not love it Except you'll be
willing to suffer for it And if you're
willing to suffer for it You'll find yourself
at the cross For surely is there one
among us No acting No posturing No deception
No subtlety of lie No ambition of heart
No braggadocio And vehement statement Yea the world
will deny you Yet will I deny you
never There's a cross To which God is
bidding his people come If they are to
be established In this last age From which
we shrink Because it's painful When we see
the God who is truth Crucified We're willing
also To enter into that portion of suffering
Which is ours And we can say with
Paul That the suffering of the present time
Is not worthy to be compared With the
glory That shall be revealed in us I'm
just a simple believer Despite my vocabulary But
I can't help but notice The conjunction of
two words Again and again and again Suffering
and glory Suffering and glory It's rare to
find an occasion When God will speak the
word glory Without first breathing the word suffering
In the same verse Ought not the Messiah
to have suffered Before he ascended to his
glory O fools and slow of heart Not
to believe all That the prophets have spoken
Every time Jesus made a reference To his
impending suffering and death You'll read that the
very next verse Peter is ready to do
something Or be somewhere Or some kind of
fleshly exercise Completely missing what the Lord is
saying It's not because he's Peter It's because
he's man And there's something that adheres in
flesh That shrinks even from suffering as subject
Let alone suffering as experience But if we
are called to be anything We are the
people of the cross And one of the
greatest parodies And shames of our age Is
that it has become A piece of junk
jewelry A suction cup fixture For our dashboards
And a piece of architectural Decoration for our
churches This is an age of restoration And
first is the restoration To the cross of
Christ Jesus It needs to be raised again
True faith which is commitment Must ultimately bring
us to this cross The German theologian Whom
I quoted yesterday Writes Christians who do not
have The feeling that they must flee The
crucified God Have probably not yet understood him
In a sufficiently radical way If we will
not join him In the scandal of public
nakedness Unto death We must like the beloved
disciple Flee nakedly from him Though we delighted
earlier In resting upon his bosom I'm going
to read that again True faith which is
commitment Must ultimately bring us To this cross
And Christians who do not have The feeling
that they must flee The crucified God Have
probably not yet understood him In a sufficiently
radical way If we will not join him
In the scandal of public nakedness Unto death
We must like the beloved disciple Flee nakedly
from him Though we delighted earlier In resting
upon his bosom I'm going to read that
again True faith which is commitment Must ultimately
bring us To this cross And Christians who
do not have The feeling that they must
flee The crucified God Have probably not yet
understood him In a sufficiently radical way To
a certain degree our faith Is a patsy
faith It's innocuous, easy, glib We've learned and
we've been inducted And we can speak it
and quote it But unless we have fled
Even as the disciples fled From the horror
of that confrontation On that night We have
not sufficiently And radically understood The cross that
is raised before us We will not join
him In the scandal of public nakedness Unto
death Which is the negation, the doing away
For us of our own self-image Our
self-assurance Our religious notions And so forth
We must like the beloved disciple Flee nakedly
from him Though we delighted earlier That's a
beautiful picture of us Tonight at the beginning
of this meeting We were still enjoying Resting
upon the bosom of the Lord And the
delights that he made available In the ministry
of this afternoon But I think that it's
sobering And needful to be reminded That the
one who characteristically And always leaned his head
On the bosom of the Lord Was the
one also who fled him nakedly There's something
about the cross That radically polarizes And gives
men one of two options Which is the
place of nakedness And shame and suffering Or
to flee him nakedly And there is no
neutral ground There is no intermediate option It's
the one of these two things If I
would and if I could If I were
able by the Spirit of God I would
want to breathe into you Something of the
fear and the awe Of these things To
save us from a shallow And easy believism
Cheap grace Casual amens and hallelujahs Which in
the day of trial Which most assuredly come
Will not be sufficient To enable us to
stand This is the foundation It's the cross
It's a wonderful practical way In which God
gives us opportunity To share his nakedness His
humiliation, his suffering And it's the way by
which Sin itself is dealt with And fully
put away It comes in confessing a fault
One to another Or a confession of sin
To a brother Many of us have never
ever Practiced that And many of us are
playing A kind of a game By which
we commit to God Sins that we want
forsaken But it's a kind of private cop
-out And the weight of the thing And
the guilt of it remains Because we have
not Gone horizontally to men As we have
gone vertically to God Shakespeare said Cowards of
us all And I would just paraphrase that
To say the confession of sin One to
another Makes cowards of us all Much of
our life is secret The deepest tremblings of
our life Are unknown to others And way
in deep below Where the true life is
Far from the facade Of the easy amens
and hallelujahs And the good things that we
say and do And the bright faces that
we wear Is where God wants truth And
until he has it He's not going to
have glory In the church Until he has
it There's not going to be a kingdom
at hand To which men can be invited
to repent That they might enter God is
after something deep, children And it's only to
be met at the cross Bonhoeffer writes It
was none other than Jesus Christ himself Who
suffered the scandalous public death Of a sinner
in our stead He was not ashamed to
be crucified For us as an evildoer It
is nothing else but our fellowship With Jesus
Christ that leads us To the ignominious dying
That comes in confession In order that we
may in truth Share the cross The cross
of Jesus Christ Destroys all pride We cannot
find the cross of Jesus If we shrink
from going to the place Where it is
to be found Namely the public death of
the sinner And for that reason I will
accommodate thousands I am much more fond Of
an intimate circle of saints Who are moved
from glory to glory Even as by the
spirit of God Beholding each other's faces Face
to face I think that we lose the
opportunity Sitting in large congregations For the kind
of confrontation in truth With each other and
at the cross That would make us The
real people of God in truth In the
deep and physical pain Of humiliation before a
brother Which means before God We experience the
cross of Jesus As our salvation The old
man dies But it is God which has
conquered him Now we share in the reality
Of the resurrection of Christ And eternal life
In confession the breakthrough To new life occurs
God has given us provision That we might
be a people in truth And I am
discomfited And concerned That we see presently In
modern day Christianity And especially in the charismatic
realm Which seem to move Away from this
direction The symbol of the cross In the
church points To the God who was crucified
Not between two candles on an altar But
between two thieves Where the outcasts belong Outside
the gates of the city This cross does
not invite thought But a change of mind
Which is a definition Where the cross The
theologian writes No longer invites a revolution in
thought It becomes the end of thought In
idolatry Have you been sufficiently scandalized By the
cross?
Have you trembled before it?
I praise God that I have an honest
wife Who refused to receive Lutheran confirmation At
the appropriate age As a young girl growing
up in Denmark Because she could not fathom
The mysteries of the faith And was simply
brainwashed And indoctrinated To espouse certain things To
win the approval of men And to receive
her confirmation gift And to go on My
wife is a precious, soft, tender thing Unlike
her husband That's the balance in the body
of Christ She can't Ever see anyone being
hurt She's the most wonderful hostess And she'll
just drown you in goodies She's always making
nice And she trembles Lest she has to
be identified As being joined to that one
Who speaks the ungainly things And my dear
wife can't understand How God the Father, the
God of love Would allow his son To
be so cruelly treated And be crucified I'm
waiting for the revelation Of the cross for
her And when it comes You're going to
find A very authentic saint I praise God
That she will not allow herself To be
glibly brainwashed And indoctrinated In the catechism of
the faith But she needs a revelation Of
what the horror of the cross means What
it meant for God And what it means
for her Maybe what we need is more
waiting On the things that are true And
less rushing in To the things which are
glib That the God who is the God
of that Which is perfect Will give it
to us And will encourage Even to stand
naked and empty Waiting for the truth of
God As I said last night Would we
be willing For the three hours of darkness
To come over us That came over him
In the time of his crucifixion Where the
earth was made dark God is so touching
me To consider the things that are heavenly
That I have developed a contempt For everything
that is earthly And I'm willing For every
earthly thing Every earthly category Every earthly religious
understanding That when the light breaks forth again
After that time of denial And the suffering
of darkness I might know from a light
Which comes from heaven Am I speaking mysteries
to you?
To the degree that our life Was sham
and posturing We are invited With the one
abandoned on the cross To abandon also our
previous identity As known to others I gave
last night the illustration Of the Japanese girl
Living with us precious Who gave every appearance
Of being the complete saint Until crisis revealed
What was her true condition And the porcelain
exterior cracked And then we had to go
Through a long period of time In that
agonizing of that darkness That covers that which
is earthly Until true light broke forth And
she came to an authentic place in God
How many of us realize To what degree
our own life Is sham and posturing Are
you formed in the image of God Or
in your own image?
Have you determined for yourself What you think
a successful saint ought to be And how
he ought to carry himself And what he
ought to speak and quote and do?
How much of your witnessing is compulsive?
How much of your activity for God Is
a work and a labor?
An expression of legalism Because you have not
come To that place at the cross Where
there has been the exchange of life That
rest of God In which no work from
us is required So I'm just speaking to
those Who are conscious And I think that
maybe we all Would realize to one extent
or another There are things in us that
are phony Make-believe, imagined We're full of
little petty fears There are shadows and things
in our life That need to be abandoned
at the cross Which is the place of
abandonment If we do it, the prospect is
open For the first time By union with
the crucified To find identity in Christ by
faith With the Lord from heaven Obtaining citizenship
In the new creation I said to a
young lady last night I'm hoping that before
these days end You're going to encounter The
crucified God on the cross There's going to
be some kind of a transaction And I
think that the first expression of it is
I'm expecting to hear from you Another voice
and another quality of speaking Isn't it interesting
how voice Is so much the emblem of
our personalities And sometimes if your ear is
trained to it You can pick up in
the speech of people And most frequently in
ministers The things that are famed and put
on The raising of the voice And the
lowering of the voice The voice as an
instrument of manipulation Seeking a desired effect in
the hearer Rather than the natural outflow Of
authentic personality founded in God And being a
vessel for the expression of his life You
keep hearing men speak like that And you'll
be drowned in unreality And become so blunted
in your own spirit That you'll not be
able to discern your own Would you be
willing to give up that which is false?
That which is your own image?
For which you have even been complimented By
believers who think you an admirable saint To
recognize that you're made of the same stuff
as Peter And that if the circumstances would
require it You're likely to hear yourself denying
him Three times before the cock crows twice
To be free in Christ is free indeed
We've quoted that like fools But have not
recognized That in Christ means An identification in
joining with him on the cross Our own
images and subjective things Have been projected upon
God And when we think of union with
him We think of some predefined Christ Every
hair pertly in place Gloriously gowned, fragrant But
how many of us would be willing to
be joined With the Christ of the cross?
With a bloody bright bridegroom Splattered with spittle
Full of gore And by being joined with
him Sharing also his shame And if I
know anything about God And anything about his
way You have not been authentically joined with
him So you've been joined with him there
And that's where you'll find your identity in
Christ In your union with him In his
death, in his suffering In his burial, in
his resurrection to newness of life I'm a
fool for the resurrection You better not let
me be near any bathtub If there's so
much as a saint Who has not been
baptized into Christ Because I believe that we
have been withheld The glory of God And
we have not shown forth The glory of
his resurrection Not so much because we have
wanted for water As we have wanted for
saints Who are willing to identify with him
In humiliation and in death and in nakedness
That precedes the burial And also the resurrection
We have made the doctrine of atonement A
doctrine only And we have not preached Christ
crucified One writer comments We have made the
bitterness of the cross The revelation of God
And the cross of Christ Jesus Tolerable to
ourselves By learning to understand it As a
necessity for the process of salvation Isn't that
true?
We've made it tolerable for ourselves And that
we might understand it As a process for
our salvation It has the same spirit As
I heard a priest say once About the
charismatic movement That he was considering joining it
Until David Wilkerson Made those unhappy remarks About
the end times And the Catholic Church Persecuting
its charismatic members And he said, and I
took several people To that conference, Catholics That
they might be exposed And we decided not
to join You don't join the movements of
God You don't join You don't become a
Christian By indoctrination And by the ability to
say certain words Haven't we made to a
great degree The cross tolerable By learning to
understand it Would to God that we couldn't
understand it Would to God that we were
staggered by it Mystified, vexed, broken Crying out
for the revelation of what it means That
we might come to him at that cross
In spirit and in truth We're so American
We've made everything Into a kind of a
methodology That is amenable to our ease I'm
coming to the end If you'll be patient
Perhaps it can be said that in proportion
We have suppressed and destroyed That which is
unique and particular In our own lives This
Japanese girl was precious But it was only
good Rather than perfect How much more joyous
Is the true thing becoming for us now
When the good thing was shattered At the
base of the cross of Christ Jesus How
much of that kind of true individuality Has
been suppressed in us How many of us
are Cardboard mache saints Paper mache mannequins Without
true personality How many of us are as
dead as doornails And as dull as stale
donuts And once we get beyond Our favorite
categories And favorite scripture or theme We have
nothing more to say I think it's one
of the scandals of Christendom That an atheist
is oftentimes A more compelling company than a
believer Where is the richness of our personalities
Where is the full auburnness of our lives
Why are we so anemic It's because to
a great degree We have not received in
union with him That fullness of life And
continue to clutch that thing Which God would
have us to give up In nakedness at
the cross We have sidestepped the cross The
scandal The truth of him who was crucified
We have unbloodied the cross And made it
a non-event Preferring the fig leaves to
the bloody skins Nothing has changed Since the
beginning of the ages There's something about us
that prefers Fig leaf aprons Than bloody skins
We always want an easier way Something less
costly That will get us by And in
so doing We've portrayed our own life in
testimony Because we have fled him We've avoided
death We have not been lifted up in
him Nor he in us To the result
that we have An evangelism that has not
impressed the world And we think that by
dollars And by stadiums That somehow it's going
to work When I Be lifted up I
will draw all men to myself And I
don't believe that he's going to be lifted
up Except by a people Who have met
him In this radical way at the cross
The theologian writes in conclusion As we have
avoided The Christ who was profaned In crucifixion
We have voided the world Of the sacred
also What an echo that rings in my
heart Is the word Christian who is virtually
out of the faith A writer Who said
that if we will not Not be radically
sacred We shall most assuredly become Radically profane
I want to say tonight That the profane
condition of the world It's vulgarity It's obscenity
It's drug traffic It's What do you call
that with nakedness Pornography It's parlors that are
opening In New York City even now Making
their owners Ninety thousand dollars a month Where
a locker is assigned to you In which
you can disrobe And enter into any one
of several rooms And pick the orgy of
your choice That this ugly profanation of the
earth Has got to be laid at the
feet Of the people of God Because they
have not been A royal priesthood To have
shown the world That which is sacred And
we've shown them That which is glib We've
shown them A style of religion superior to
Dead fundamentalism While we still have fallen short
Of the glory of God And we've not
shown them the sacred Because we have refused
The identity with the profaned Christ on the
cross We are incapable also In that same
measure Of showing forth the sacredness of God
I'm speaking a mystery And I know assuredly
That the two things go together Crisis becomes
reality When faith encounters The total truth of
the crucified Christ Here's my conclusion For tonight
When we will see ourselves In the fleeing
and denying disciples When we will go out
And weep bitterly repentantly When we will bring
Our clutched and protected Lives to the cross
The things that are hidden And concealed And
be joined to him Nakedly in his shame
Then shall we be raised with him Also
to newness of life This is going back
to first things To a foundation That should
have been laid At the beginning But many
of us in this room Are ourselves victims
Of the shallow evangelism Of our own age
We never were converted To the promise of
the benefits That would accrue to us There's
a God who's restoring the cross For those
who have missed it Come back to that
foundation That should have been laid in the
beginning Lest we build our charismatic houses Upon
the sand of earthly pretense Because I tell
you With everything that's in me And I
can say it as a Thus saith the
Lord I don't know what your theology is
Or what your anticipation of rapture is But
I know that we are being fitted For
confrontation and for suffering For his namesake in
the earth Any man who does not glimpse
this Is blind already And maybe our fat
condition Our full gospel burps Our well-fed
thing That we give as a picture of
ourselves Is a reflection of the fact That
we think that we're going to be Conveniently
whisked away Before anything shall be required from
us By way of trial and standing More
than what I've described physically I've described ourselves
spiritually And there's a God who's calling us
to be lean And soldiers of the cross
Who will stand when the rains will descend
And the floods will come And the winds
of adversity will blow And beat upon your
house And great would have been the fall
of it If it were not built on
this rock Christ, Jesus, and him Had been
crucified I glory only in the cross of
Christ, Jesus, the Lord Said the Jewish apostle
Who could have gloried in any number of
things And who was not indifferent nor unknowing
Of the gifts of the Spirit And the
other things that we so celebrate today Even
at the expense of the cross But he
gloried only in the cross of Christ, Jesus
I invite you to glory in the cross
And to build your charismatic house on that
rock Hallelujah One last
word from Spurgeon What a saint Notice
that Paul does not say that he gloried
in Christ Though he did so with all
his heart But he declared that he gloried
most in the cross of our Lord, Jesus
Christ Which in the eyes of men was
the very lowest and most inglorious part Of
the history of the Lord Jesus He could
have gloried in the incarnation Angel sang of
it Wise men came from the far east
to behold it Did not the newborn king
awake the song from heaven Of glory to
God in the highest He might have gloried
in the life of Christ Was there ever
such another So benevolent and blameless He might
have gloried in the resurrection of Christ It
is the world's great hope concerning those that
are asleep He might have gloried in our
Lord's ascension For he led captivity captive And
all his followers glory in his victory He
might have gloried in his second advent Yet
the apostle selected beyond all these That center
of the Christian life That point which is
most assailed by its foes The focus of
the world's derision The cross And putting all
else somewhere into the shade He exclaims God
forbid that I should glory Save in the
cross of our Lord Christ Jesus Learn then
that the highest glory of our holy religion
Is the cross The history of grace begins
early and goes on later But its middle
point stands The cross Of two eternities this
is the hinge Of past decrees and future
glories This is the pivot Let us come
to the cross And think of it till
each one of us In the power of
the spirit of God shall say God forbid
that I should glory Except in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ Can we pray?