I'm going to give you a special treat,
a little quotation from P.T. Forsythe.
It was not enough, that we just got
our toes dipped in, but I was reading
somewhere this afternoon, and there's a passage so
remarkable, it may touch our subject, because it
has to do with the silence of Jesus,
the quiet of his own soul, and the
absence in his sonship, in his life, from
clamoring to have to know.
So I would just say, off the cuff,
one of the greatest impediments to hearing the
word of God is our own noise, is
our own disquiet, our own agitation, our own
insecurity.
And so long as that is active, and
we are interjecting or making any demand, even
unconsciously, it impedes, if it does not altogether
dismiss, the still small voice.
The sine qua non, you know that Latin
phrase?
The absolutely essential condition without which the result
does not follow.
Sine, S-I-N-E, qua, Q-U
-A, non, N-O-N.
The absolutely essential condition is the absence of
any determination on your part for anything.
You'll not hear the voice of God and
receive his direction so long as you have
already an agenda of your own, a thought
of your own.
You have got to be completely free of
any necessity for your own end.
And I'm not talking about carnal ends, even
spiritual ends.
So a condition for hearing him is the
absence of any clamor, noise, inward exercise of
our own souls.
That's why I never heard him until I
was 35.
I had so many good opinions, and formidable,
that until my mouth was shut by the
collapse of my categories, I could not hear
God.
But once I was shut up and had
nothing more to say, I began to hear
God, even to the point where he called
me by name.
So, P.T. Forsythe is so remarkable a
spirit that he takes up aspects of things
like this as I've never heard anyone do.
So I'm just dipping in here.
He says it was perhaps part of his
work's perfect glory, speaking of Jesus, not to
know, to be silent in the agony of
knowing only the Father's will and not even
the Father's way.
His self-emptying meant self-limitation in knowledge
as in other things.
Think on that, the limitation on knowledge, that
when he emptied himself, he emptied himself not
only of knowing, but the principle of knowing,
which if you strip that from any modern
man today, you have brought him down.
Men live by knowing.
So when God called Abraham, follow me in
the land that I will show you, it
was already the issue of the cross, that
you're not to move by your knowledge, your
predetermined understanding, your own counsel and will.
Follow me and I will show you.
So Paul said, I'm determined not to know
anything, but Christ and him crucified.
For a Jewish man with an intellect like
that, it required a determination.
Had he not exercised it, he just would
have been an impressive figure, but he would
not have been a glorious apostle.
He had to restrain his own knowledge because
the Greek axiom is know thyself.
Man is the measure of all things.
Knowledge is a virtue.
Seek knowledge, knowledge of a kind that will
advance your purposes.
So for Jesus to empty himself, not only
from knowledge, but the principle of knowledge as
trust is really an emptying.
Because what is college about?
What is university about?
What is the world instructing us to know
in order to make decisions and be rightly
determined in the choices that we will succeed?
The kingdom of God is the reverse, the
antithesis of every principle that the world celebrates
as good.
It emphasizes knowledge and your confidence and your
knowing by which you make determinations, by which
your success is obtained.
The principle of the kingdom is not knowing,
but trusting, and that Jesus himself exemplified this
way of the father.
This repudiation of entire knowledge may well have
been a vital element in the agony of
the great act.
It's not cheap not to know.
Not to know can be excruciatingly painful because
every corpuscle in our humanity wants to know,
desires to know, wants to have its security
founded on its knowledge.
To give up that dependency, that trust, that
elementary consideration that the world applauds is painful.
And he's suggesting that it's not the least
of the elements that constituted the agony of
Jesus following the father in obedience in acts
in which he did not know their full
meaning, the implication, or the requirement, and that
he didn't need to know to render the
obedience.
That's where the sun is.
How do you proceed without knowing?
The remarkable tension that the Lord bore, and
that we're called also, and that is probably
a vital element in the agony of the
great act, of the great issue of the
cross, it drew on the spiritual resources of
his moral personality.
There he goes again, P.T. Forsythe.
Everything in the last analysis is the issue
of what is moral, his moral personality.
It's not just some abstract personality, it's the
heart of the man.
The moral constitution of the man had to
do with the willingness to forebear and to
proceed in the absence of knowing.
That's a moral decision.
You know, you learn what moral is by
the references that are made to it and
about it.
You don't learn it by going to it
head on.
Every time I've looked in a dictionary, for
whatever source for the word moral, I've never
yet come to a definition that is satisfying.
You'll come to it by apprehending it, not
by defining it.
And so if Jesus is a moral personality,
if the genius of Jesus is what he
is in his moral personality, then we've got
to sense what that means.
And he's saying that the willingness to forfeit
knowing as a principle of life and trust
without knowing is at the heart of the
moral personality of Jesus, who is the pattern
son.
In its superhuman obedience and trust, his silence
may have been due to voluntary ignorance, to
nescience, I've never heard a word like this,
I guess it's the opposite of omission.
Instead of an all-knowingness, it's a non
-knowingness by a holy and omnipotent consent.
It was perhaps the abyss of his self
-emptying.
The willingness to let go of knowing as
a basis for his obedience, Forsythe is suggesting,
is not just an aspect of his moral
personality, but it might be at the very
heart of it.
Because we need to assess how deep is
that human desire and need to know.
So that when he emptied himself, he emptied
himself even of that aspect, and that it
was the triumph of what constituted his humiliation.
His utter exercise of those self-imposed limitations,
which made his incarnation, was essential in those
things that pertain to redemption.
I'm rephrasing here as I'm reading to make
it more understandable.
It was perhaps his power through positive trust
to curb the passion to know.
It was perhaps his power through positive trust
to curb the passion to know.
His trust in knowing God, knowing the Father,
was the power to let go of the
need to know in fact.
If he knows the knower, he doesn't have
to know the particulars.
Isn't there a hymn like that, a church
thing about knowing God, knowing the knower?
Not needing to know the particulars, but you
need to know him who knows.
He had such a power of trust in
him who knows, the Father who knows, that
he as the son did not need to
know.
He knew the knower.
How do you like to live like that?
Are you getting nervous just hearing this?
You ought to.
It's either a wonderful freedom or a terrible
insecurity.
Not to know the future, but to know,
how does it go?
Who holds the future.
And Jesus is the epitome of that kind
of son.
He did not need to know the particulars.
He knew the one who holds the future.
When he said, into thy hands I commit
my spirit.
That's not just a little frothy statement.
It's like when death comes and my consciousness
is obliterated and I'm powerless to affect anything,
I'm trusting you to then affect my resurrection
and whatever else is in your intention in
the supreme knowledge that you have as Father.
To you I commit my spirit.
He yielded up the ghost.
And that's the very point where the Roman
centurion said, truly this is the Son of
God.
He had never seen a man relinquish his
life with so complete a trust as Jesus
did in that expression.
He gave up the ghost as he already
had prayed to the Father, I yield.
So there's a confidence and a trust that
does not require knowledge.
How would you like to be a candidate
for this?
As a preacher, not knowing what the next,
not only what the next message will be
in a series of messages, but what the
next sentence will be in a message.
Strange, you never get used to it.
So it's perhaps his power through positive trust
to curb the passion to know, his acquiescence
by faith, his consent not explicitly to see
how his mortal obedience expiated and redeemed, but
his certainty only that it did.
That the Holy Father had need of it
for his holiness, for his kingdom, for his
sons.
Had he seen all, he could have suffered
but little, to have known in detail at
that hour the whole meaning, power and effect
of his sorrow could have been to quench,
to quench it in the glory that could
really only come with salvation.
This is making a demand on you to
hear this and understand what Forsythe is saying.
That this is no small issue.
That the glory of redemption required the ignorance
of Jesus that was willful.
He chose not to know even the things
that were being affected by his suffering and
his death.
And that had he known, it would have
removed some of the suffering that comes from
a tension of trust and would have robbed
the act of redemption of its full glory.
That's how I'm reading this.
Had he seen all, he could have suffered
but little, to have known in detail at
that hour the whole meaning and effect of
his sorrow would have been to quench it
in the glory that could really only come
with salvation when he had sounded its darkness
and risen on the other side.
You have to have a particular sympathy for
Forsythe that is uncommon for Americans because he's
poetic and lyrical and intuitive and he's not
writing like a disciplined theologian.
He's writing like stream of consciousness because he's
dealing with mystery and he's just feeling his
way through remarkable things about he had sounded
its darkness, sounded means plumbing its depths and
risen on the other side.
The tree of knowledge is not the tree
of life.
So even in the last and final act
of Jesus there's the choice of trees and
choosing not to know in the extremity of
what he's even experiencing that has to do
with the ultimate purposes of the father is
the son who is repudiating Adam by not
eating from that tree or looking to knowledge
but rather to trust and so this silence
was the draining of sorrow's cup.
To see all would be to suffer none
and to utter suffering is to escape some.
To confide it is to ease it.
To die alone is the death in silence.
So it's going from knowledge to silence.
Jesus, well here's what I said before so
long as you're a jangle of making claims
or demanding or having your own opinion you
can't hear the spiritual voice.
So there's a silence in the final sufferings
of Jesus who is not demanding to know
is not making any assertions, is not making
any claims he's going through his final agony
except for a few broken statements father forgive
them or the statement to John your mother
or I thirst he went to his death
in relative quiet.
Silence is sorrow's crown of sorrow and can
be more pathetic than death and the silence
of the gospels reflects the savior's true dying
because we're not in other places to say
the gospels don't explain they just describe or
set forth the narrative.
Jesus didn't explain his conduct or his meaning,
he just did it.
There's a silence of God even about the
great acts of God and the silence reflects
the awful silence the hiding of the father
and the last word test of holy obedience
dying trust it was not the father's anger
but his holy love unspeakable by word or
look to be uttered only by deed by
resurrection quiet is broken not by an explanation
but by a deed and the deed is
resurrection and quiet but that resurrection speaks volumes
that resurrection says that the sacrifice of this
son is acceptable to the father it constitutes
the redemption of mankind so God doesn't explain
by speaking the deed itself is the explanation
but the deed itself takes place in silence
listen we can afford to hear something like
this it won't hurt you Christ's love could
only speak silently at last in the act
and mystery of dying so God could only
answer silently in the mysterious act of raising
him from the dead and this was more
than comforting him in death it was raising
him from death's utmost desolation from death comfortless
to deadliest death death's sharpest sting and utmost
power deep calling unto deep and the will
that died addressed and revoked the will that
raised him up again in silent antiphony which
is now the standing balance and order of
the spiritual world forever.
I'm going to go over this this is
like reading poetry more than it's reading theology
but it's saying much because poetry is the
most intensive form of communication.
The brevity the terseness of poetry is a
remarkable art form so that in two or
three verses you can say what would already
take pages to describe in prose.
So this man is almost a poet and
maybe every good theologian and Christian ought to
be.
Let me read this last part so that
in this act of dying in silence and
the father is silent.
The father doesn't answer the son when he
cries out my God my God why hast
thou forsaken me well here's why son because
don't you understand there's a requirement.
You've got to experience absolute abandonment so I
can't be here now to give you the
comfort of presence that you've known eternally silence.
He's dying in silence the father is silent
but the act of obedience to the father
and what is being wrought by it speaks
volumes.
The resurrection the event of resurrection in silence
is God's way calls it a silent antiphony
it's like one silent corresponding to another silence
and that this is now the standing balance
and order of the spiritual world forever where
did he get that thought that what was
communicated and demonstrated in the silence of the
father and the silence of the son and
a son who did not need to know
and did not raise his voice inwardly even
foreknowing and accepted in silence the work of
the father without needing even explanation is not
only what took place in that moment but
what took place there is a pattern that
thereafter shall always prevail and be the condition
in the spiritual world forever so that silence
needs to be considered anew that if there's
a silence required in this great greatest single
ethical act between father and son that constitutes
eternal redemption then this writer is saying that
that was not just a happenstance but a
demonstration of a principle that shall henceforth forever
prevail in the world in the spiritual realm
that the great acts that will take place
thereafter will also be in silence and where
there's not silence but noise clamor and contention
striving there the spiritual thing is lost it
might be the ultimate statement of faith for
any of us that our trust is of
such a kind that we do not need
to know our souls are at rest our
spirits are in peace and we can trust
God for his outwork with us as Jesus
trusted him for the outworking through him in
the final acts of redemption and the reason
that we're not hearing God and that it's
even raised as a question of how do
you do it indicates that we're not on
the right ground it's not what we have
to do to hear it's what we have
to cease from doing in order to hear
we have to cease from clamor and contention
even of an inward kind that makes a
demand of God and he's under obligation to
tell me show me, direct me you know
that we're humans all too human we're American
all too American we're modern all too modern
we have been trained, programmed to know and
if one thing we can't stand is not
knowing we can't stand the uncertainty we want
the security of a clear statement that this
is that and God is not giving it
except on rare occasions but even when he
spoke on the top of the road here
Dominion End Time Teaching Center he didn't say
do it, he just announced what his desire
for this property is the rest was drawing
out the implication and a God who failed
to spell it out in detail had to
obey it be still and know that I
am God isn't that a remarkable statement that
this is the sine qua non this is
the essential requirement to know God is to
shut up and that he's giving it to
you not as an option but as a
command be still and you will know God
I will reward your obedience when your clamor
stops by revealing what about myself you're not
obtained by your exertion your self-conscious desire
because your motives are impure but if you'll
rest and be still you'll know see how
topsy-turvy the kingdom of God is and
how opposite is the wisdom of the world
be still and know so I appreciate these
reflections and felt that they were so choice
and unusual that however it would tie in
with the request tonight for hearing God that
it needed to be expressed the church takes
her moral bearings there she discovers God's moral
world and authority there in the example of
Jesus and that silence was not the least
of the components that constituted the suffering of
Jesus in his time at the cross okay
thank you Lord repeat before safe precious rare
saint that he is so what else about
hearing God quiet is a very desired we
took a walk today Troy and I in
the woods and I said I love walking
in the woods I like to hear the
silence isn't that a strange statement silence is
not just the absence of sound it's the
absence of contention striving I don't know what
to say and it's a condition to be
desired in a generation that has the earphones
glued to its head day and night I
think the kids go to bed with it
and wash and get up and go to
school and there's always something stuck in their
ear boom boxes and a world that's polluted
by noise so to come to a place
of quiet without getting edgy about it is
a condition to be desired and it has
to do with trust that whatever I need
to know I don't need to know it
as knowledge I need to know it as
obedience and the Lord will direct and I
don't have to have an inward clamor see
there's a silence that is inward that you're
not jangled and agitated in insecurity there's an
inward peace and an inward quiet and in
that place the still small voice of the
direction of God can be discerned or sensed
when you think of the great episodes of
biblical history like Elijah at Carmel confronting the
apostate nation with the sacrifice made by the
false prophets and himself how did he get
that instruction there's not a word that indicates
that God said so how about Abraham when
God said Abraham take thy son thy only
son whom thou lovest and make of him
a sacrifice in the place that I will
show you everything about that statement sounds like
it's right out of paganism of immolating your
own children having them to walk through fire
it's the most dread and vile pagan practice
is killing your own children to placate a
God who's not truly God that command of
the father of Moses to Abraham has that
same content but he rose up early in
the morning cut the wood down his ass
and took his son and he went so
my question to you is how was Abraham
able to discern that this was God though
the requirement made of him contradicts all that
one would understand about God and yet if
he had not performed that the whole of
subsequent redemptive history would have been lost because
what he performed was in its essence the
same thing that the father performed with his
son only his son was not saved by
a ram caught in the bush his son
became that sacrifice so the obedience of Abraham
has implications throughout the whole of redemptive history
so how did Abraham know to rise up
early that this was God and not an
imposter not a demon not Satan mocking and
imitating to destroy the son of promise if
it had been Ishmael it wouldn't have been
so great an issue but this is the
son of promise that came after barrenness when
Abraham looking upon his own condition was as
good as dead and now God says this
son for whom you've waited and is the
progenitor of the whole Hebrew race and the
key to everlasting salvation I'm asking you to
sacrifice and beggars logic reason have you been
stupefied over this have you choked and splintered
if you haven't you're missing something in one
of the great epical events in Old Testament
history so the question remains there's not an
indication of any hesitation on Abraham's part like
an immediate assurance this is God speaking you
want to know how to hear the voice
of God it will come to those who
will obey him that have not their own
agendas will not question and dispute and debate
or weigh it up and see if it's
convenient or what will the neighbors say or
what will my wife say what will Sarah
say so long as we have those considerations
we're not here so my question is how
is it that Abraham heard how is it
that Elijah heard that they should make two
sacrifices Abram get thee out of nation kindred
fathers house and follow me in the land
that I will show you having obeyed that
voice with that requirement he was then in
a kind of relationship by which he could
hear a subsequent requirement what could Abram have
said in the morning after the Lord required
his son could he have struggled with the
same doubt the scriptures are silent but do
you think he was just mechanically the Lord
said and he did he had three days
before he came to the mount that God
will show him where the sacrifice was to
be performed and what do you think was
running through his mind could Abraham have doubted
himself did he not go down to Egypt
did he not require his wife to be
a concubine did he miss it on other
occasions could he be missing it on this
occasion and is there ever a requirement of
God in which there is not the issue
of missing it there is a way in
which this kind of certitude can become close
to becoming a presumption against God this kind
of based on the principles that are true
it can border on presumption I am wondering
if anguish is a necessary element in the
relationship with God in the coming to decision
especially in those things which he requires because
it wasn't the next day that the thing
is performed it's three days later while you're
treading through that heat and the thought and
the implications now are beginning to set in
what if I have missed this what if
the enemy who is a mocker and an
imitator has so captured the tone of God's
voice that I am completely deceived and I
will be destroying the very son of promise
in what I think to be an act
of obedience so we have to consider these
are excruciating things and we don't feel something
of the moral pang of it we're not
really understanding what is being called for and
that when he raised his hand with the
knife the angel arrested him and God says
now by this I know that you fear
God it's as if God himself had to
wait for the free voluntary act of Abraham
to consummate that sacrifice and not just play
at it yes he knew there's a resurrection
but still would you know that if you
have to bring your own knife into the
heart of your own child at that point
your doctrines, your theology your correctness begins to
quiver and tremble and it's an excruciating moment
but the father of faith had to pass
through and God was waiting to see if
he would the God who foreknows everything had
to wait on the actuality of Abraham's own
obedience that's one of the great episodes in
the whole of Old Testament scripture and we
need really to ponder what that means because
in some measure if we're going to follow
the same God of Abraham as sons of
Abraham we're going to face excruciating requirements of
decision before this life is out the weight
of deciding rightly am I hearing God is
enormous when it's beyond the issue of your
own life it would have been easier for
Abraham to have been made the sacrifice no
sweat when it comes to his son that's
God reaching for the very deeps of the
man that we can miss it is exactly
what constitutes the anguish that however mature we
are however great a history with God however
consistent the line of obedience is this very
next instance might be an instance in which
being a piece of dust and frail and
susceptible to deception and even the secrets of
our own heart we could miss it that
tension is ever always present or else it
would be a snap we have a total
assurance no sweat step one step two but
there's that we can miss it even in
our best intentions is always the threat that
makes that tension an anguish the thing that
is most apprehensive is about ourselves not in
our carnality in our spirituality if we go
back to the subject of silence this very
anxiety which is valid and we all know
in our own experience is exactly the thing
that keeps us from the knowledge of the
will of God that this is the noise
this is the clamor this is the jangling
and the inner man that keeps us from
that quiet by which we still know that
I'm God we're not being still because we're
apprehensive about our own prospect for failure so
maybe complete faith is a faith that believes
that you yourself will not misguide you will
not fail because actually you're crucified and dead
and buried you're not even a factor that
the man that you are is Christ resurrected
and he doesn't make mistakes he was always
perfect in his revisions I'm talking off the
top of my head but I'm listening to
what I'm saying that the real answer for
anxiety is death that so long as there's
another man however well meaning however spiritual however
dedicated there will be the doubts because that
man is not to be trusted at his
best and so what is God's answer that
that man has to perish he's got to
vacate he's got to give up the ghost
that the only life is the resurrected and
ascended one who as ever and always obedient
to the father and cannot miss now is
that just being fancy schmancy is that just
being hypothetical or playing loose with the principles
of God or is this really the only
safety and the danger of deciding rightly for
God so what's the answer for a predicament
that comes not because you're carnal but becomes
because you're spiritual because you are concerned not
to miss God because you are weighing up
what the consequences of failed obedience might mean
or premature act before the time or acting
out of your well meaning intention and missing
the time of God or the detail of
God this is a remarkable tension so what's
the answer when you doubt your own self
and your own hearing remember what we said
about the mount of transfiguration they were in
the cloud of glory that came down and
the father's voice said this is my beloved
son hear ye him, talk about the subject
and when the cloud lifted they saw no
man but Jesus himself alone and I quoted
a writer who said they did not even
see their own seeing that they themselves were
taken out of the picture that the cloud
of glory, the voice of the father dismissed
anything that even comes from them so men
will not even see their own seeing can
men not even hear their own hearing can
men not even obey their own obeying can
you come to a place where you as
a subjective factor are removed through the presence
of the glory of God and the voice
of the father so that there's a pure
seeing, a pure hearing, a pure obedience talking
aloud, we're thinking our way through something can
we come to a place where the human
factor at its best and most spiritual is
itself removed and if we're not for that
there can never be a safety in any
decision because our best well-meaning intentions can
pollute and corrupt us if what I'm playing
with here in thought that the only safety
is in crucifixion that the well-meaning man
has got to die is the last obstruction
to the pure hearing and obedience to God
that Jesus could render that obedience at the
cross in quiet without knowing because he was
already crucified before he was crucified he was
already the crucified son his own consciousness of
his own sonship and whether he's missing it
or with it has already been brought to
death and therefore he can be quiet and
just act out the thing that the father
is wanting this anguish is a suffering in
fact it may be the most intense form
of suffering it's a moral suffering and it
could be that it's just not something that
accompanies having to make decisions before God but
that it's a required ingredient and a condition
in making decisions and that the life with
God requires this kind of an anguish intention
and that somehow it works something in the
believer and that the issue for God is
not only the act of obedience but the
willingness to bear the anguish that precedes and
even follows the act because often you are
not vindicated by the act the act doesn't
necessarily bring the confirmation that there was you
have to wait and maybe eternity will show
whether you were right in what you performed
or not and that something is rendered in
the anguish that may be more important to
God in the shaping of our moral personality
than the decision itself we haven't factored in
what's at stake here in the dynamic of
what God is fitting and forming for eternity
that is not going to be stamped off
the production line in some kind of assurance
of faith that knows that it knows and
in that knowing, though it's correct, it's wrong
that no previous experience in knowing the voice
of God and even being vindicated in your
obedience is any assurance for the next time
the anguish is fresh as if you have
had no previous experience, no history this situation
now is utterly and altogether new and unique
and your past I seem to be contradicting
myself because I'm talking about the necessity for
history, but the anguish is as if you
have had no past experience and now this
is coming to you fresh in a virginal
way and makes a requirement to the uttermost
it would be wonderful if you could say,
well I'm experienced at this this is old
hat, the Lord showed me and I was
that took place, that took place, now I
can handle this but this when it comes
is as if nothing had ever come before
but is your faith a faith in faith
or is your faith a faith in God
we can have a faith in faith that
is not a faith in a person and
a trust that allows us to be silent
and quiet in the inner man that's a
faith that Jesus not knowing and forsaking knowing
trusts the Father into his hands he commits
himself without having to know so his trust
is a sublime and ultimate faith in the
Father, it's not a faith in faith about
the Father, it's the faith in the Father
and the proof of it is the quiet
so have we a faith of that kind
and will God call us to decisions beyond
our faith of the King Jehoshaphat when three
uncircumcised armies are at the border of Israel
ready to extinguish the nation and he calls
a fast and the people congregate before him
with their wives and their children I mean
everything is at stake and in that waiting
on the Lord a word comes to the
prophet Jehoshaphat the battle is not yours saith
the Lord but mine but go ye out
against them tomorrow you'll have all night to
dwell on this and so when the great
dawn comes and you can visualize those three
armies you're pitifully outnumbered, there's no way you're
going to come out of this alive was
that the word of the Lord?
wasn't that a man whose flesh and blood
we know?
isn't he subject to error?
maybe he's just trying to give us a
pep talk and psych us up psychologically but
when we get out there we're going to
be clobbered but the King calls for, he
said who are the sweet singers of Israel
and the people indicated they knew them and
he put them at the forefront of the
army and they went out in obedience singing
the praises of God when the enemy heard
them they were confounded and they destroyed each
other so here's another go out against them
tomorrow stew in your juice anguish through the
night hours because your women and your children
are at stake, what does that mean?
if these armies defeat you there's no one
to defend the women and the children when
these invaders come they will be the object
of rape and molestation and vile abuse and
misuse of a kind that would make you
cringe and die a thousand deaths over that
you missed the Lord, that you failed to
defend your own families your own wives and
daughters are now the victim of what you
thought the Lord had said isn't that remarkable
that the stakes are so great and it's
all predicated on one man speaking who is
named Jehatzio but when they heard his prophecy
they went down on their faces they knew
that that voice and that speaking coming from
a human being and a human voice was
God, it wasn't a pep talk it was
the word of the Lord, the battle is
mine, not yours go ye out against them
it's a command, and you know we read
that as if we're reading a bible study
material and we haven't vicariously identified with Israel
and wet our pants in contemplating what this
will mean if we miss God this is
a precarious life this is not something by
the numbers God forbid that we should reduce
it to that and we've got to know
that we are vulnerable and that we are
our own worst enemy not at our carnal
indifference but at our spiritual best we can
miss it, and that tension of that possibility
is ever and always before us so that
when I gave the message on the holocaust
at that theater in Kansas City in 1974
before 2000 people after 5 days of fasting
for one message, and spoke that message in
fast, on a yellow legal pad that the
Lord never augmented it was the dullest monotone
speaking I have ever performed and there was
a deadly silence when I finished like, you
have missed it cats there's not a ripple
of effect no one is responding, it went
over like a loud thud you've been waiting
for years for an opportunity to express your
burden on the holocaust and it is a
terrible collapse so much for your fasting because
your fasting cannot twist God's arm to come
up with the goods when you think he
won't and on top of that, in that
deadly silence two guys are coming up the
center of the theater and beckoning me to
come over to the apron of the stage
and one I knew was Ern Baxter's young
man and he said, Artie said, this man
with me is a Jewish prophet sent of
God, he has a word for you from
the Lord, I said, yes thus saith the
Lord, you have missed the mind of God
grievously, and done untold damage to the body
of Christ you need to go to the
microphone now and recant your message have you
ever been stabbed in the heart and not
just stabbed, but that the handle is twisted,
because he could have been exactly right, and
you never know that however well meaning however
you fasted, however you prayed that you have
missed it, and that he's right my face
is sticking out the dead silence seems to
confirm that he's right and before I knew
what to say or do pow, people were
falling out of their seats, delayed action bomb
crying out for mercy, people were crying for
repentance maybe their silence was a stunned silence,
that they had heard the word of the
Lord and it took that amount of time
to register because I have never seen again
in 41 years, another such episode of the
depth of repentance that took place in that
theater that day, it went on through the
afternoon foot washing and miracles, it was a
remarkable Holy Ghost episode, but until that break
came, that prophetic man could be right and
you have to bear the possibility that he's
right, you've got to bear the pain of
the dagger coming in and its candle being
twisted, or you're not going to be called
to bring oracular messages at historic moments in
God, if you're not willing for the pain
of the prospect that however well meaning and
prepared, you can be wrong, we're not getting
oracular statements because there are not enough men
who are willing to suffer the prospect of
being wrong at critical moments and have reduced
the faith to some kind of good formula
that we can get by and that God
is with us and we know and we're
always right, but what do you do when
you're the sole message bearer so on another
occasion in California I brought a message on
worship that I believe God had given me
on my knees but the woman who was
the pastor and directed the worship from the
platform with her telephone stopped me in the
middle of the message never allowed me to
finish and people were crying out, let him
finish I never did finish, and later on
in conversation in the back room she and
her colleague said, why didn't you submit that
message for our confirmation before you spoke it
I said, I've never submitted a message for
confirmation, if you have not a sufficient confidence
that I'm a message bearer of the Lord
don't invite me to speak, but if you
do, trust that that's the word I said,
you don't submit the message you submit the
man I can think of other instances, well
I can tell you in Melody Land in
California in Disneyland, again, I gave a message
and I was taken aside afterwards and rebuked
by the pastor and his colleagues one of
whom was found to be one of the
greatest phonies ever perpetrated on the charismatic world
Michael, Michael, why do you love me and
the statement was what you're saying is over
the heads of the congregation actually it had
to do with being ethical, moral accountable, something
like that and that it should have been
submitted to these leaders before I spoke it,
it never occurred to me to submit a
message, we can submit decisions in community and
we will not act without unanimity but in
message giving, you're on the spot you're the
man called to speak as an honor court
and so it's your baby we're going to
be brought to places where we have not
been given for our past experience will not
at that time guide us we need an
inward sense of God and we need so
to be dealt with ourselves that we in
our best well-meaning intention are not an
impediment to the will of God even by
our own self-conscious concern is it me,
is it God, is it me, is it
God and the only answer to that I'm
suggesting is take out the me, that me
has got to be brought out of the
picture through death, so that whatever then issues
has got to be God, you have no
will for yourself you have no thought for
yourself, you have no intention even in serving
God and that of course is a remarkable
place at the cross and maybe what he's
saying about the quiet of Jesus as I've
suggested is that he was already at that
cross before he performed the cross he was
already a crucified son he was from the
time he left heaven to come to the
earth he had already submitted himself in utterness
unto a death of which the cross was
only a final expression and therefore he could
be quiet even in those final acts that
constituted the redemption he didn't need to know,
he didn't need to hear he could commit
his spirit to the father even of what
would follow his death and maybe that's what
we need to see and that's the pattern,
he's the answer this is sonship, the sublime
confidence in the father by which you yourself
are no longer a factor and you've come
to a quiet, which is the quiet of
death death to that thing that cannot be
silenced except at the cross because it's not
your blatant carnality that is making the noise,
it's your spirituality it's your concern, it's your
genuine concern is this God, am I missing
him anguish is a suffering and suffering is
death three days in the grave bears a
correspondence to three days before reaching the mount
and I've never said that before, I've never
thought that before and that's why I love
these interactive sessions something is breaking from your
remark that I'm putting out as a consideration,
that he was experiencing a death his anguish
was a death and he didn't see the
mount until the three days were completed because
he was seeing now by the eye of
a pure spirit his own humanity, his own
uncertainty his own fatherliness had been brought to
a death so that he could believe in
a resurrection from the dead in other words,
that faith requires a death to all that's
religious and all that's human and so that
God is setting a stage of a mountain
that requires three days to attain in order
to serve the purpose of effecting a death
in Abraham by which he can believe for
resurrection so he didn't start out with that
belief because scripture doesn't tell us, we're just
surmising but anguish is suffering, suffering is death
and the anguish produced the death that enabled
him to believe that there'd be a resurrection
and therefore resulted in the act that had
to be arrested by the angel himself I've
never considered but I'm putting it out for
your consideration that anguish is more than just
a disturbing emotion anguish is maybe the most
excruciating expression of moral death moral suffering that
culminates in a death that brings the old
man into the grave that that doubting thing
needs to die and anguish will bring him
to that death so no word of comfort
coming from me or counsel from the saints
but that the death, there's a three days
though it may be three months but it
will be affected by the bearing of the
suffering, of the tension that we face in
ultimate obedience to God I've never thought that,
I've never heard that but I'm liking what
I'm considering that nothing less than a death
will affect a silence Jesus' silence was already
the work of the cross before he himself
performed the cross and that the cross is
our answer and that the anguish is bringing
us to that death it will affect the
death it's something not unlike having a vision
before the time to fulfill it what purpose
does it serve?
why don't you just give the vision the
day before you act it because there's something
that takes place in holding a vision and
not being able to perform it there's an
inward something that has to do with ambition
with self, with vanity with a desire to
see fulfillment that has got to be brought
to a death so there's a purpose in
holding things in tension there's a purpose in
the anguish of soul and you know what
our problem is?
we're unwilling even to begin faintly to have
to bear it we don't want to be
faced with predicaments or calls of a kind
that would bring us to a place of
anguish and so we see to the safety
of our lives and keep God at a
distance and we want a safe, predictable Christianity
that does not make this kind of requirement
of us we're unwilling for the suffering of
anguish anguish is a word for moral suffering
of an excruciating kind that only can be
precipitated in a crisis that comes by an
obedience called for by God of an ultimate
kind I'm defining it right on the spot
what is anguish?
what kind of suffering?
it's an ultimate excruciating suffering of a death
that comes by God moral anguish is a
spiritual phenomenon where God provides both the crisis
allows the anguish and brings through the anguish
the final death of self and its spirituality
by which we can have a pure quiet
confidence in God for the other factor is
removed by the death anxiety is soulish human
concern but anguish is a spiritual phenomenon that
is created by a crisis given by God
and mandate or vision calling for an obedience
of an ultimate kind in which one can
be wrong the willingness to bear that anguish
is a suffering suffering is another name for
death and that death is the death to
that last vestige of spiritual self-consciousness by
which we are not sure is it God
or is it me the me is brought
to death through the anguish and then you
have a pure quiet in which you know
that you know not by the particular knowledge
but by the union with the God who
is knowledge and that you can act the
reason that all this is a new ground
for us is because we have never been
brought to such ground until now but that
we will be brought is for me an
evidence for which God is calling for this
discussion this would have been totally academic in
our more harmless forms of Christianity if we
were not on a divine course toward ultimate
kinds of obedience in the last days where
this anguish would be a factor and so
what is a son or a daughter one
willing to bear the anguish of suffering unto
death which brings the extinction of those last
subtle vestiges of self in their best form
that keeps us from the certitude in God
he brings the crisis by the mandate and
the vision and allows for the suffering of
anguish that takes three days to do its
full work that by the time you go
up to that mount with that son with
the knife in one hand and the fire
in the other you are ready to render
an obedience without question because you have a
faith now beyond your own faith that you
did not have three days before that there
will be a resurrection even up to death
something like that so Lord the question my
God is how far are we willing to
go for you and with you are we
willing to hear such searing requirements my God
that instantly provoke this anguish or are we
guarding ourselves to keep ourselves exactly from the
threat of it we don't want to be
brought to visions and mandates that make such
requirements we want to play it safe and
playing it safe we will never be instruments
of your use in the unfolding and the
fulfillment of your last days purposes especially as
it pertains to Israel in their time of
final extremity and trial so Lord thank you
that you have recorded this tonight because I
don't think we can get it in one
hearing in one sitting but that we can
have opportunity to hear this maybe somebody will
even transcribe the gist of this but we
can review it my God and receive its
benefit may you tonight receive from the saints
whom you have gathered a transaction, a covenantal
agreement that we are willing we are willing
for this kind of suffering that is beyond
physical this is ultimate moral excruciating suffering and
it comes with the call so Lord let
there be a yes sounded out of the
hearts of those that are here and be
released then to give them that vision, that
mandate, that call for which you have waited
as for the sons of Abraham who will
rise up early in the morning and settle
their heirs and cut their wood and take
their son and do it thank you Lord,
gracious God for the cross and the remarkable
deliverance of a total kind that only it
can perform we welcome it my God because
we are rattled by that stubborn tenacity of
self even of the spiritual kind that makes
the noise and clamor by which we cannot
hear you with comfort come Lord quiet our
souls by laying the axe to our own
anxieties of whether we are right or wrong
or have we heard or have we not
heard and we thank you and praise you
for so great a provision