It's very good to see your individual struggle
in the context of the larger mystery.
And it gives you an ability to bear
that struggle in a way that you otherwise
would not have had a comfort.
So you need to have the context restored.
Your individual struggle, the sum total of all
of these individual struggles, is part of the
whole working of this mystery.
So it's not a little isolated thing independent
of, it's part and parcel of the whole.
But we need to see it as part
of that whole.
And it will give us the courage and
patience to continue.
The struggle is the church and in the
church.
We need to remember that when we use
the word Israel, for the uninstructed, they think
immediately of the present political state.
They think that we're endorsing that state and
wanting some superficial identity.
They don't understand the Israel that you're referring
to is a much deeper, larger entity in
reality than the present political entity.
So we need to separate and distinguish that
for them.
So the work is cut out for us.
We need to be able exegetes.
We need to present a biblical case.
We need patience in contending and striving over
these issues.
And that there's a deep escapism in the
American church that finds its desire in rapture.
That contradicts all this.
If the church is absent, how shall we
extend mercy?
Who's there to extend it when they need
it so desperately?
Love not their lives unto the deaf.
It means that they had a view of
eternity as a deep and immeasurable consolation that
permits the sacrifice of this life.
For this life is only momentary and transitory.
It's the thing that's eternal that is what
counts.
To those who believe that in themselves deeply
unto joy is a critical issue of our
willingness to lay down our lives presently.
You don't have to make your own path
to the cross.
He'll provide it when he sees your yieldedness
and willingness.
There'll be a logic.
There'll be an unfolding directly proportioned to your
life, the realities, the place where you're called,
the relationships.
Every one of us have a cross direction
in the very particulars of our life.
Because none of those circumstances are in any
way accidental.
They're already known of the Lord, given of
God.
And so the whole mystery is the fulfillment
of the cross life as it comes to
each one of us in our particular situation.
A marriage being tested, an issue of health,
finance, however the Lord will deal.
We need to receive from his hand and
even kiss the hand that brings the affliction
and the testing.
For the sum result of it is his
glory forever.
We're going to have people come to us
who will be totally emptied of any confidence
which they formerly have had in themselves, in
man, in the world.
And be devoid of anything and be the
object of abuse from forces of hatred calculated
for their annihilation.
And in that condition they'll need our mercy.
They'll need it physically, they'll need it psychologically,
they'll need it emotionally, they'll need it spiritually.
The issue is will we have it to
give.
And will we be willing to give it
when to be observed giving it makes you
a candidate for persecution.
It's not a mercy that you'll be able
to give at your convenience.
It's a mercy that you will give at
sacrifice.
And when you're willing to give it at
sacrifice for them, when they are everywhere hated,
how can they not be moved to jealousy?
And say what is it with you?
What is different about you?
Why aren't you joining the bandstand?
Why aren't you hating us as everyone else?
Why are you willing to take these risks?
Why are you being kind?
Why are you extending yourself?
Why are you making a candidate to be
persecuted yourself?
What did we ever do for you that
you should be extending yourself for us?
That's the mystery.
So concerning the Gospel, they are the enemies,
for your sakes, touching the ancient deliverer.
For the fathers, the gifts and callings of
God are without repentance.
That's good to be reminded, huh?
God is irrevocable.
He doesn't take back.
He doesn't say that, that, that, that, that,
that, now you really lost it.
He says I called you, you are a
nation of priests, you will be that.
For you in times past have not believed
God yet, have now obtained mercy through their
unbelief.
You see why it is necessary that they
were set aside?
Through their unbelief you have obtained mercy.
So that now they can obtain mercy by
your mercy.
For God has concluded them all in unbelief
that he might have mercy upon all.
Oh the depth of the riches, something breaks
in Paul's heart here.
He goes berserk, he sees the glory, the
magnitude of this remarkable mystery.
Both of the wisdom and knowledge of God,
how unsearchable are his judgments, his ways past
finding out.
Who has known the mind of the Lord
has been his counselor.
Who has given to him first and shall
be given recompense to him again.
For of him, through him and to him
are all things, to whom be glory forever,
amen.
So we need to dote and dwell on
this concluding doxology.
It's the greatest, what's the word, effulgence of
praise perhaps in all scripture.
They're remarkable that the statement of the mystery
begins in chapter 9 with Paul crying out
he would wish himself accursed.
The bitterness of his soul for his brethren's
sake.
And then he ends with this ecstatic outburst
of praise.
The chapter headings are only a convenience, they
were never intended.
So the one flows right into the other.
I beseech you therefore, therefore wherefore, therefore in
what I've just spoken and said for the
fulfillment of this great mystery that eventually is
in the glory of God forever.
Therefore do this, make your mind acceptable, make
your body a sacrifice.
Which is your reasonable service.
The whole thing flows out from the logic
of what has been expressed.
That needs to be recognized in an unbroken
way.
So what do you make of of him,
through him and to him are all things.
That Paul is not propagating a mystery that
he has invented.
It's of him.
But because it's of him, it's also to
him.
For his glory forever.
Because the issue is greater than Israel and
the issue is greater than the church.
The issue that eclipses all issues is the
issue of God's glory forever.
If we're centered on one or the other
thing, even Israel itself per se or the
church per se will not be capable of
the uttermostness, the sacrifice required for the fulfillment.
Only the jealousy for the glory that subsumes
and exceeds both the issue of the church
and of Israel will be sufficient.
And that is apostolic seeing.
This is the genius of Paul.
The jealousy for the glory of God for
which the church and Israel is only the
mode.
The means by which he's glorified forever.
It's not per se the thing in itself.
However glorious a thing it is in itself.
It's still a means to the greater and
ultimate end.
The glory of God forever.
Because once it's consummated, there's no other historical
opportunity.
There'll be no other episode, no other saga,
no other drama that will give God the
opportunity for the glorification that comes to him
by the fulfillment of this mystery.
And it must take place at the end
of the age.
For it ends the age and brings in
the new age in the millennium.
So we are of that generation and it
takes place in our time.
It's the historic consummation requiring all.
It's God's glory forever.
This glory is of such a magnitude it
will take eternity of eternities to celebrate it.
But it is effected in time.
It's now but the consequence is forever.
It's of him.
It's not a mystery we designed.
But it's to him and because that it's
through him.
It's not something that we can accomplish by
well-meaning intention, evangelical fervor, zeal, nothing like
that.
The only way it will be accomplished that
the God from whom it is of is
also the God who enables and gives.
That the life of God can be imitated.
The essential reality which is the life of
Paul, for me to live as Christ is
not a little unctuous phrase.
It's the genius of what Paul is.
He's the continuation of the very life of
Christ.
And we have to be that for the
only basis upon which this can be fulfilled
is that life.
Only the life of God is the strength,
the wisdom, the love, the patience, the forbearance,
the ability to go back into the larger
body.
To suffer the insults, the misunderstandings, the neglects,
the rejections.
All the kinds of things against which the
flesh will shrink.
His life will be a sufficient strength.
So we need to come to the place
where we say with Paul in truth for
us to live as Christ.
And Christianity has not required that till now.
Up till now we could have lived out
of our own staff, out of our own
ability, conduct services, preach, perform, teach, carry on.
But now the ultimacy of this mystery that
culminates in his glory forever is beyond anything
that we can attain or perform out of
our own strength, ability, or intention.
The long and short of it is it
requires God.
And that's what glorifies him.
He'll be glorified by himself.
He's our enablement.
He'll be our patience.
He's the essential martyr.
But we've got to shift gears and come
from that lesser evangelical place, charismatic even, where
the spirit of God is a little icing
into the place in which we say with
Paul for us to live as Christ.
Because in him we live and move and
have our being.
Our cleverness, our utterance, our compassion, our love,
all that we are that has any distinction
is from him.
It glorifies him.
And he's made that life available that we
should live through him as he lived through
the Father.
How many of us can say that that
is the descriptive statement of our life now?
That for me to live as Christ.
That if his life is removed, I'm a
dead duck.
I don't know how to put two and
two together.
I don't know how to put my best
foot forward.
I don't know how to be clever.
I don't know how to be religious.
I don't know how to be spiritual.
I don't know how to be a father.
I don't know how to be a husband.
I don't know how to be a brother.
I'm devoid of anything.
I have no distinction.
I'm a dead man without you, Christ.
You're my life.
Your resurrection is the basis of my being.
And therefore, you'll be glorified by it.
This is the milieu.
This is the dimension in which the mystery
will be fulfilled.
For of him and through him and to
him are all things.
To whom alone be glory forever.
He's brought us to a crisis where if
he is not all in all, we're finished.
And that crisis is the ultimate demanding crisis
of the mystery of Israel.
That no religious well-meaning intention or intelligence
can fulfill.
But only he himself in the power of
his risen and ascended life.
How often are we coming to the communion
table, you saints?
How often do we thirst and hunger for
his body and his blood as being more
than just a ceremonial thing that we take
once a month, once a year?
Why aren't we at that table daily?
Being renewed and invigorated by the life of
God and his body and blood given as
a sacrament for that very purpose.
That I don't even begin my devotional reading
until I first have communion.
I can't commence reading Spurgeon or any other
until I have first been revived out of
the life.
It takes his life even for devotion.
It's not that I first get warmed up
and then take communion.
I take it virtually from the moment that
my eyes are opened.
For I wake again like a dead man.
Totally thrust and dependent upon him even for
devotion.
What shall I do for service?
How shall I be to Inger?
What to the body?
How shall I be the prophetic voice?
What to the church?
Except by the life that is renewed and
sustained by every eating and drinking of his
body and blood.
The neglect of that sacrament is itself a
testimony and statement how destitute we are of
that life and how much we're still living
out of ourselves and count once a month
sufficient occasion to be at his table.
We need to be at it daily and
be renewed in that power.
There's no fulfillment of the pretense of the
claim that we should be an apostolic people
without having this pulsating jealousy at the centermost
root of our being, the jealousy for his
glory.
For that will permit you to be Christ's
fool and suffer whatever is required.
But short of that, we will bark.
It's that jealousy for his glory that makes
us insane and carries us into dimensions that
we would not have otherwise entered.
And if we don't have that jealousy as
a pulsating thing and it has been displaced
or never had a place, we need to
pray for it.
Lord, impart to me that apostolic jealousy for
your glory that blinds me to every other
consideration.
I'm willing to be the fool for Christ's
sake here now.
Whatever that means, if only you should be
glorified forever.
That's the whole purpose of my being.
I tell the Lord over and over again,
I have no other reason for being.
This is why I'm alive.
It's for your glory, Lord.
I have no career, I have no ministry,
I have nothing to develop or to present
or affect.
I'm here for you.
So may God impart that jealousy and that
glory.
We can pray for that even in conclusion
to our session today.
And if he'll be gracious to endow us
with that jealousy, we will have obtained something
much more than instruction today and that will
serve us in good stead all the balance
of our days.
Good to be reminded that what begins with
Paul's cry, I would wish myself a curse
for my brethren's sake, is not a cry
rising out of Paul's ethnic identity as a
Jew.
If we think that, then it has no
implication for us.
That's Paul, he's Jewish, of course.
I'm not Jewish, I don't have that cry.
Paul is not crying out of his ethnic
Jewishness.
He's crying out of his apostolic priestly identity.
And we can equally cry out of the
same identity for it's equally our calling.
And because we cry out at the beginning,
we can then also lay claim to the
great doxology of the depth of the riches
of both of his own gods.
We can exalt God beyond limit because we've
begun in the depths of a cry of
a sorrow that is continually with us for
our kinsmen's sake.
There's a spectrum, the green line culminating with
the end of 11, and then the injunction,
therefore, I beseech you, brethren, make your bodies
a living sacrifice.
Thank you, Lord, for those glorious words, spirit
inspired, text of old text, praise of old
praise.
Thank you, my God, may it reverberate in
our souls, may it find a permanent dwelling.
And we're asking, Lord, as a capstone for
today and in these days, a jealousy for
your glory.
We cannot fabricate this, we cannot lie on
a bed of nails, we can't perform something
religious, it needs to be imparted.
It's out of your very soul, my God,
it's the heart and genius of apostolicity itself,
without which we make a mock of the
great word.
And so we're asking even now, Lord, that
you would brood over us and move about
this room and breathe upon our souls this
jealousy for your glory.
Thank you, my God, that we would count
it privilege that we're called to be the
people of the last days, through whom the
great mysteries are effected.
Thank you, Lord, impart and bless your people
and spark that great jealousy that will never
ever subside and sustain them in whatever unforeseen
and unpredictable thing yet remains ahead.
Thank you, Lord.
Bless us by instructing us, blessing by imparting
to us.
Be the life of our life, the thought
of our thought, the speech of our speech,
the grace of our grace.
Thank you for your mercies, my God, we
live by them.
Thank you for the mercy of today, the
mercy of these days.
It has been spectacular.
Thank you, Lord, given not because of our
deservedness, but because you could not help yourself.
It's because this is what you are.
You're a God of mercy, it's in your
nature.
It's inherent in your deity.
And so we love you for it and
we receive it and want to extend it.
And we thank you.