We ask you to breathe upon us, Lord,
the spirit of life.
We love the law of the spirit of
life in Christ Jesus, mighty God, and no
other.
Just ask you to enfold us, precious God,
in that life and to bring forth out
of your own heart this morning the things
that are choice and pertinent and intended, Lord,
for this hour and for this people.
Bless this speaking and richly anoint it, mighty
God.
Anoint also our ears to hear it and
to receive it.
Give us the courage, mighty God, to enter
into it and to live it.
We thank you and praise you, Lord, for
this precious way and your answer now in
Jesus' holy name.
Amen.
I wonder if I need to remind you
of the one verse that constitutes salvation in
all the scripture.
I've quoted it to Jews time and time
again.
And I've seen many pass from death to
life into believing in that one verse and
the acting on it.
It says, if you'll believe in your heart
that Jesus is Lord, what's the rest of
that, and that God hath raised him from
the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Just for curiosity's sake, how many people have
never heard that verse before?
Raise your hand.
Come on.
Just one?
How many people have heard it but dimly,
somewhere it's just, there's a faint, okay.
Isn't it interesting that of all of the
doctrines of God, the Lord only insists upon
one to constitute salvation, that you believe that
Jesus is Lord and that God hath raised
him from the dead.
Has someone ever said to you when you've
had a religious discussion, well, have you seen
anyone who's come back?
Is there anything more offensive to human sensibility
than resurrection from the dead?
It's the most patent and calculated offense to
human reason and logic and understanding.
I think it's for that reason that God
has delighted above all in selecting it as
the key to salvation.
If you've not been able to leap over
that one, then you are yet dead in
your sin.
The belief in the resurrection of Jesus is
the key to salvation.
And it's more than just a doctrinal thing
that I'm speaking about, which I hope will
be more clear as I go on.
I want you to turn in the book
of 1 Corinthians to the 15th chapter.
The whole chapter is devoted to the theme
of resurrection.
We'll just step right into the middle of
the stream.
The 17th verse of Christ be not raised,
your faith is vain, you are yet in
your sins.
Isn't it interesting the countless tens upon tens
of thousands who believe that Jesus was a
good man and a moral example, and somehow
if we screw up our courage and purse
our lips and grit our teeth and try
to walk in the model that he established,
that is all that religion could require of
us?
I don't know what name you would call
that, but I know that it's practiced by
millions of religionists and it is a heinous
abomination.
Do you know that?
To take something that is holy and sacred
and that is intended by God to enter
us into the glories of his kingdom, to
emasculate that and to dilute that and only
to bring forth out of that some kind
of limp moral figure whom we should emulate
on the basis of our own puny strength
has got to be one of the unholiest
concoctions of which human ingenuity can conceive.
And the pity is that that is what
is called Christianity by untold thousands in the
earth who are probably right now attending the
country club and others like it all over
the earth.
Dear children, anybody insulted yet by being called
that?
Okay, dear children, but you are dear, but
you're children, if our faith is anything, it
is a resurrection faith.
And if you'll not believe that God hath
raised Jesus from the dead, how then shall
you believe that he can raise you also?
Because God intends for us to be a
resurrection people as those brought back from the
dead.
I want to remind you of something that
the Lord has reminded me somewhere between last
night and the early morning hours at the
conclusion of the book of Job.
Do you remember that book?
In the very first verses, God describes Job
as a perfect and an upright man.
And as a matter of fact, as the
description goes on, we find that he is
exemplary, a saint as to be found anywhere
in the annals of religion.
He is impeccable.
He is a moral giant.
We would fall on our faces and dissolve
in tears if we had, oh, but that
model to emulate.
But do you know what the end of
the book is?
That same one described by the Lord as
perfect and upright.
He says, I've heard of you by the
hearing of my ear, but now my eyes
seeth, and I abhor myself, and I repent
in dust and ashes.
I want to make a flat statement.
You can write it down in your notebook.
The most fundamental error that's at the heart
of why the whole world is grievously askew
is this, the failure to understand God as
he is.
God says in the scriptures, my people perish
for the want of knowledge.
And he's not just talking about doctrine.
He's talking about the knowledge of him.
My people perish for the want of knowledge.
And the great lament against Israel was this,
that they learn of me by precept, that
their condition is so pathetic and so fallen
that the only faint way that they proceed
is by precept and by the teachings of
men, rather than by the awesome knowledge of
God that comes by intimate joining with him.
The basic error of men is the failure
to perceive God truly.
And the other error, which is twin with
it, is the failure, therefore, to perceive ourselves.
The human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.
Who can know it?
Do you believe that?
Or are you enjoying, rather, some inflated and
subjective notion of yourself, which you have languished
in all your life long, and no one
has ever had occasion to contradict, and it
has served you well, and it gives you
a sense of assurance when you lay down
at night, surely God can have no controversy
with me.
I've not committed adultery, or if I have,
there's been outstanding justification.
It really wasn't adultery, it was love, or
art, or poetry.
And if you need more reasons, I can
give them to you.
I've used them.
I think that what we most desperately need
is what both Job and Isaiah and Daniel
and every great man of God experienced, including
the Apostle Paul, who was so blinded by
the effulgence of the glory of God that
he was in darkness for three days and
had to be led away from the encounter
on Damascus Road as a child by the
hand, and languished in darkness and would not
eat for three days.
So astounding was the revelation of the magnitude
and the glory of God when it came.
Job, who was the perfect and upright man,
who would make our Mr. Presbyterian, or man
of the year, look sick, when he saw
God in something of the magnitude of his
glory, cried out, I abhor myself, and I
repent in dust and ashes.
You know what God said about that statement?
God turned to his three theological comforters and
said, My wrath is kindled against you, because
you have not spoken as my servant Job
has spoken.
And if I can presume upon God this
morning, you know what I would tell you?
That there's only one fit statement from mortal
lips that God is pleased to hear.
Ever and always, and that is, I abhor
myself and I repent in dust and ashes.
Every other statement is an offense in his
holy healing.
When the prince of the prophets and the
chiefest oracle of God, to whom was committed
the greatest treasure of revelation of the Messiah
to come, glimpsed that same glory, he cried
out, Woe is me, oy vey, I'm undone,
I'm a man of unclean lips, and I
live in the midst of a people of
unclean lips.
Dear children, can you deduce something from that?
That if the chief oracle of God cries
out that he's undone and he's a man
of unclean lips, what then shall we say?
And I'll tell you this also.
Every single one of us in this room,
and at the country club country club, and
the places like it all over the earth,
shall have a head-on encounter with the
God of glory, and shall have occasion to
smite our breasts eternally, except we first say
in this life, I abhor myself and repent
in dust and ashes.
How far are we from that recognition, so
smugly self-satisfied in our religious, moral, ethical
Jewish lives, not at all understanding a holy
God and what is his requirement?
Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven
is perfect, and holy as I am holy.
And if you think that he's a whooping,
or he's just playing with words, or he's
just setting a vague standard toward which we
should generally aspire, you have simply not understood.
That phrase is so archaic, I abhor myself
and I repent in dust and ashes, that
we smile in a kind of wry way.
What does that mean?
Well, men literally put on sackcloth.
They took something that would chafe their skin.
Why, that very picture is so inimical to
the spirit of this age, that I don't
even know how to describe it.
The spirit of this whole age is smooth
and flesh-exalting.
We've learned supremely how to powder ourselves and
pimp ourselves and adorn ourselves deliciously in every
kind of garment and array.
For us to put on sackcloth would really
be a radical turnabout.
I abhor myself and I repent in dust
and ashes.
Men actually took their hands and stuck it
in filth and sprinkled it on their heads.
You know what that is a picture of?
Nothing less than burial.
You know why God said that his anger
was kindled against Job's comforters?
Because they had not spoken as my servant
Job had spoken?
Because in God's sight there's only one place
for us in the light of his glory,
and that's unto death.
There's not a righteous man upon the earth
who'll do us good and sin us not.
And the wages of sin is death.
But the glory of God is, that though
the wages of sin is death, the gift
of God in Christ Jesus is eternal life.
I want to underline that little two-letter
word, in Christ Jesus.
Not about him.
In him is life eternal.
If you have acknowledged your condition as God
sees it and have received the remedy that
God has provided, and that is by an
act of faith entering into the death which
Jesus performed in your stead, and then sinking
with him into burial, because anything that's dead,
any cadaver that is mortal has got to
be corrupt, and go into burial, you'll also
be joined with him into resurrection, unto newness
of life.
You know what God is about, children?
God is wanting to establish a kingdom on
the earth.
He's wanting to show a dying world an
alternative.
And that alternative is the alternative of men
risen from death who can say, death where
is thy sting?
Fearless!
No more necessity for underarm deodorants and sprays.
No more tremblings and tremors of encounters and
fitful commitments which you feel unable to meet,
which you are.
But the resurrected Christ in you, the hope
of glory, able to meet every situation however
demanding, and you entering into a new rest
in him, a kingdom of such people who
don't sweat, who don't strive, who know the
peace of God that passes understanding, who move
by his life, who are not eating from
that corrupt tree that brings death, but from
the tree of life continually, who can say
with Paul, for me to live as Christ,
in him I move and live and have
my being.
I want to say, children, this is utterly
supernatural.
It's not at all religious.
You don't attain to it by the study
of doctrine or by systematic attendance at church
or Sunday school or any such thing, but
by a radical act of faith by which
you lay aside your life and let it
sink into death and are raised up to
newness of life with him.
It was right here in Kansas City, seven
or eight years ago, among the experiences that
God gave us then as a new believer,
that a woman came to our house and
prayer village one day more dead than alive.
She was so harried by Satan that she
couldn't remember when she had a night of
undisturbed sleep.
She found herself blaspheming God, a mouth filled
with filth, things that were uncontrollable happening in
her life.
She was wretched, and she had been to
many who she thought might help her or
would cast out demon spirits or take her
by the ankles and shake them out, but
I had the impression that that was not
the need.
It was not a demon problem.
It was just a good old-fashioned flesh
problem, and I think that there's a reason
why demonology has become particularly popular because it's
a lot more convenient to shake it out
or cast it out than to submit to
a cross unto death.
If we can only have our life and
keep it.
Isn't that what Abraham said when the Lord
said that in Isaac and his seed will
the covenant be established?
And Abraham said, but Moses said, can't Ishmael
live forever?
Can't he use something from the flesh?
That desire is in us all.
So I said to this woman, how would
you like to die once rather than 10
,000 times daily?
She said, what do you mean?
I said, if there were a coffin in
this living room ready to receive you, would
you be willing to enter it once and
for all with the faith that if you
join the Lord in his death, you'll be
raised with him to newness of life?
No more to be plagued by the kinds
of things that have been continually harassing your
life?
All of the things that impinge upon the
flesh, those hordes of Egyptians who are in
pursuit of Israel and will not let it
go?
And the only answer is that they need
to be swallowed up in the waters of
death, that we can see the flotsam and
jetsam on the opposite shore.
I knew that I was reaching her because
she started to get pale.
And if you've not gotten pale at the
prospect of joining Jesus in his death, then
for you it has remained only thus far
a point of doctrine.
There must be a God up there who
is wringing his hands and crying, oy, they
have made doctrine of my foods.
They think that if they speak about them
and are able to quote them, that somehow
they have entered into the magnificent realities which
they speak.
Children, resurrection is more than a doctrine.
It's an experience, and not just once and
for all only.
But Paul says, I die daily.
Well, she said she was willing.
And by an act of faith and prayer,
she committed her life unto death.
I'm not just talking about her defects.
I'm not talking about her temper, or her
other grievous aspects of her personality that she
wants to commit to the cross.
All.
Because God's judgment is on all flesh.
And in the spiritual sense, that lid came
down on that coffin, on that life.
And that woman who was willing, I said,
you know, you'll not leave this room.
I've said this to people time and time
again who have come forward at church invitations.
You'll not leave this altar.
You'll not get up off your knees.
If there is no resurrection, if Jesus not
be raised from the dead, you're finished.
I remember the church in Sweden at a
youth meeting.
Precious, beautiful, young Swedish believers, screaming forth out
of their seats at one of these late
midnight services, and this call to join Jesus
in death and resurrection.
And I was taunting them and provoking them
as they came, and telling them that they're
too young to die.
And they just brushed me aside, and went
right on past, and laid down their lives
at the altar.
The man who was my interpreter in those
days said, Artie, I need to speak with
you.
We made an appointment the next day to
take a walk in the streets of Oslo.
And as we walked, he rehearsed his pitiful
condition.
Spirit filled, tongue speaking, gift endowed, holy given,
life to God in service.
But he said, Art, something is missing.
Why should he talk to me?
He sent something.
And I don't know why I did this.
I said, dear brother, you're a precious young
man, and I know that your life is
dedicated, and you want to serve the Lord.
But supposing I had a death warranty with
your name on it.
Would you be willing to sign it?
And before I could speak further, this man
ripped the pen out of my hand, grabbed
me by the scruff of the neck, and
threw me up against the wall of a
building.
And as the tears rolled down his face
and bounced off the sidewalk, he said, Where
do I sign?
He was sick to the teeth of being
up one day and down the next.
Have you experienced that?
Those momentary risings and fallings that are so
characteristic of the people of God.
Screwing up their courage, cursing their lips, trying
to do good things for God, only to
find themselves defeated even that same day.
God never intended that the glories of the
kingdom were going to be built or obtained
by all fleshly striving.
He signed on the dotted line and left
his life on the sidewalk of Oslo.
And I've met this brother over the years
since, and the Lord has used his life
for a glory.
But it's no longer a bright young man
trying to do for God.
It's a resurrected Christ who has the possession
of a life that was yielded unto death,
who is performing his own glories.
There's a difference, children.
The resurrection is real.
If Christ be not raised, your faith is
vain.
You are yet in your sins, or yet
in yourself.
Then they also which are fallen asleep in
Christ are perished.
If in this life only we have hope
in Christ, we are of all men most
miserable.
But now is Christ risen from the dead
and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death, by man
came also the resurrection of the dead.
And here's the punchline.
The 22nd verse, 1 Corinthians 15.
For as in Adam all die, even so
in Christ, in I Am, shall all be
made alive.
In Adam all die.
That doesn't refer only to that ancient act
that took place in Genesis.
It refers to every Adamic act since.
If what you're speaking, I don't care how
religious it is, or what you're witnessing, or
what you're performing, is Adamic in its origin,
if it is only cerebral, or moral, or
born out of your own volition and will
and energies and abilities, it is Adamic and
it is death.
In Adam all die.
Now, if we're going to get anywhere together,
and with Him, we've got to believe the
Word of God.
This isn't some superior kind of gamesmanship.
This is life and death in every syllable.
And we're enjoined by God to live by
every syllable that proceeds out of the mouth
of God.
And God tells us flat out that every
Adamic act is tainted by death, however well
-meaning and well-intending.
We saw that last week, when a hotshot
apostle sought to detain his lord from an
encounter in Jerusalem where he would have to
suffer.
Isn't suffering inimical to the human mind?
Isn't it equally as offensive as resurrection?
Isn't there something about the nature of flesh
that shrinks from any variety of suffering, whether
it's psychic, emotional, physical?
Isn't there something that panders toward comfort and
to being placated and tampering?
The flesh does not understand the necessity for
suffering.
Isn't that why Jesus had to tell His
disciples, O fools and slow apart, not to
believe all that the prophets have spoken, ought
not the Messiah to have suffered and died
before He ascended to His glory?
They only wanted the glory.
They didn't want the suffering that must precede
the glory.
Dear children, for every showing forth of the
glory of God, I believe that there has
to be an equal measure of suffering and
death.
And death does not mean the obliteration of
consciousness.
That's a lie.
Else there would not be an eternal gnashing
of teeth and wailing of which Jesus spoke.
Death means suffering.
Suffering is another name for death.
And there's something about our nature that shrinks
from it, and something about the kingdom of
God that requires it.
There's a crown of thorns before there's a
crown of glory.
And I would to God could preach you
another gospel, but I'd be doing you and
God a disservice.
And I can tell you flat out that
right here in River City, before this age
shall have come to its conclusion, we're going
to find men and women again being martyred
for Christ.
Would you believe that?
I know it boggles your imagination.
You can hardly perceive that in the kind
of civilization that we have, which seems to
be so supportive of religion, and indeed it
is, but antagonistic to His life, that there
shall again be martyrs for Christ's sake.
There are going to be casualties as we
come further to the conclusion of the age,
because there are two kingdoms in collision.
And the sparks are going to fly, and
the anger and the conflict is going to
ensue.
I can't think of anything that's more imperative
for those who are determined in their hearts
to follow on after God than to know,
to learn, to enter in to the resurrection
truth of God.
I think that the great plumb line that
shall separate the sheep from the goats at
the end of the age are those who
have held resurrection as doctrine only, and those
who have known it, or will come to
know it, as actuality and as experience.
Death is not the cessation of consciousness.
It's the mortification, the humiliation, the anguish of
soul, the pain of being suspended, waiting for
the resurrection life to break forth out of
your humanity.
And I want to demonstrate that today, and
I'll not be able to finish it, but
hopefully conclude it at the final session next
Sunday.
But I think that it is a profound
word for this age, and that the Lord
has not been pleased at least to reveal
it to me until recently, because it was
not yet time.
I want you to turn to that main
text in the 11th chapter of John, the
episode of the death of Lazarus, which I've
never understood, but I'm beginning to understand now.
If you believe in your heart that Jesus
is Lord, and that God hath raised him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Because if you have believed that God hath
raised him from the dead, then that same
quality and integrity of faith will enable you
to be saved from death by the same
power and glory of God.
It's not a salvation once and for all,
although it is that eternally, but it's a
salvation daily in the death to which God
will bring you for the bringing forth of
his glory.
And such a death was it that the
Lord allowed a friend by the name of
Lazarus to suffer.
A certain man named Lazarus was ill.
He was of Bethany, interesting that that means
the house of affliction, the village where Mary
and her sister Martha lived.
This Mary was the one who anointed the
Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with
her hair.
It was her brother Lazarus who was now
sick.
So the sister sent him, saying, Lord, he
whom you love so well is sick.
When Jesus received the message, he said, This
sickness is not to end in death, but
on the contrary, it is to honor God
and to promote his glory, that the Son
of God may be glorified through it.
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and
Lazarus.
They were his dear friends, and he held
them in loving esteem.
Therefore, even when he heard that Lazarus was
sick, he still stayed two days longer in
the same place where he was.
How do you like them apples?
I love it because it so confounds human
understanding.
It so perfectly offends our Jewish and Presbyterian
sensibilities.
Let's say if one is sick and we
profess to love them and he's a friend,
we will be jolly on the spot to
go and to provide the niceties and the
amenities.
But because Jesus loved him, therefore, he still
stayed two days longer where he was.
That is such a beautiful picture of the
kinds of situations that we are going to
encounter in the end days.
Things that shall not be able to be
resolved and cannot be submitted and are not
amenable to human reasoning.
I was just telling my brother Jim on
the way down to the service this morning,
who asked me, what was the result of
the conference that you had in Minnesota with
regard to the question of whether you're going
to be allowed to remain in Kansas City
or return to that remote location?
I said, well, I went with full intention
to persuade them that they were being myopic
and selfish and insisting that we return.
After all, our time could be more significantly
redeemed in Kansas City and there's a Jewish
community here of 30,000 and this is
the hour we believe when God has again
turned to his Jewish people.
Evidently, he's begun to stir certain things and
bring them into being.
And we were going to persuade them that
though they fasted and prayed three days and
had a unanimous witness that we would return,
that they were wrong.
And when we all assembled in one room
and submitted the question before God in the
name of Jesus and the Spirit of God
began to move and his corporate wisdom be
revealed through his people, I bowed my head
together with two other Jewish brothers who had
accompanied me there also with the same intent
and said, yes, Lord, to a decision of
God that contradicted my will on every point.
And I'm not a babe in the Lord
and I've had some experience in what is
called being led by the Spirit and I
had completely missed the mind of God because
I had read only the natural circumstances.
I had seen only by the natural eye
what seemed to me a promising and prominent
beginning with the Jewish people.
What I would think would be a more
significant use of my time and energy.
But that was not the will of the
Lord at all.
His will is that we are returning to
that remote location and we had to say,
yes, Lord, though we did not understand it.
Are you content to live on such a
basis?
Can you do the will of God without
understanding?
Does he have to give you explanation?
Because we're going to see here a man
who was sick unto death, who was comforted
by his sisters, that the message has gone
out that Jesus should know that he's sick
unto death.
And as he languished unto death, day by
day, he could see in the faces of
his sisters however brave show they made that
the Lord was simply not coming.
And there was no explanation.
How many of you have experienced that?
You've cried out to God.
You're in terrible distress.
Your marriage is teeter-tottering on the brink
of annihilation or some other catastrophe of equal
significance.
Or you're suffering in your body or a
great anguish of mind or soul or some
great question that must be answered for you.
And it seems that he's a million miles
from you at the end.
I'll tell you that it's the same reason.
Because he loves you, he's not rushing to
placate you.
Because he loves you, he's not going to
baby you.
Because he loves you and knows that there
just must live by faith, he's going to
induct you into that school if it kills
you.
But he's not ignorant of your plight.
He's slow in coming because this sickness is
not unto death, but to promote the glory
of God.
He can make nice, he can take away
your temporary affliction, but there are deeper purposes
of God that are being worked, which the
human and religious mind cannot understand.
And therefore, in the last analysis, as we
said in the beginning, it always comes to
what tree from which we shall choose to
eat.
The tree of the knowledge of good and
evil?
It wasn't evil only, it was good also.
But it's knowledge that we must have.
Egotistical children who have to know, who can't
trust without knowing, who must require explanation before
they do.
Yea, though he slay me, yet will I
trust him.
The same Job said.
Can you say that?
Are you willing to be brought to that
same place in faith?
I believe that God is bringing us there.
We went to bed that night with peace
that God had given answer, and yet with
another question left unanswered.
But Lord, what about what you've begun in
Kansas City?
What about the hope and the expectancy?
What about the weekly Bible study now which
has been begun without our seeking and striving?
Where young Jewish believers in the Lord are
being succored and helped and strengthened.
Is all that to languish and to die?
And the next day the Lord gave us
the answer.
Once a month, the first weekend of every
month, we're to return to Kansas City and
make the input that will keep this work
alive.
And another Jewish brother already in Kansas City,
together with yet another, will see to the
weekly Bible study.
And by the provision of the Lord through
His Word that He gave answer to every
need.
Though it contradicted every human need, we simply
do not see as God sees, and our
way is not His way.
And therefore the only answer is that He
must be our life, our reason, our wisdom,
our all.
And that's why it says in 1 Corinthians
that God in Christ is named unto us
wisdom and redemption and sanctification.
And there's one more attention to this.
Power, whatever, He's all in all.
For me to live is Christ, Paul said.
And if you think that Paul accomplished the
things he did by virtue of Jewish intellect
or natural attributes or unusual courage, you have
simply not understood.
The glory of Paul is the glory of
the resurrected Christ.
How many of us, if our friend were
sick, would remain longer in the same place
where we were?
How many of us, when a crisis comes,
are moved by our own human sensibility and
judgment, rather than wait for the action of
the life of Christ in us to dictate
what our response shall be?
How many of us, if we had the
opportunity to give answer to some bristling Jewish
man who wants to argue and dispute with
us and we're bright and filled with all
kinds of scriptural knowledge and understanding, would turn
on our heels and walk away and leave
him flabbergasted with his jaw agape, not willing
to enter into foolish debate?
And by that act, by a silence, have
a far more telling effect on his life
than by our speaking.
O children, we cannot play this game by
the numbers.
This is a pretty little paint set and
we put red for number 17 and blue
for number 16 and we'll have a beautiful
picture of the Last Supper when we're finished.
These last days, we are in the last
days, are not going to be walked and
be fulfilled by any such patsy formula, but
only by the very life of Christ, by
his wisdom, by his power, moving through the
complex pattern of the days and that only.
How many would enroll in that kingdom?
You say, what do I have to do
to join?
You have to lay aside your life, lose
it, that you might find it.
You have to be willing to call finis,
halt, to the manner of life which is
now being conducted.
You have to be willing to bring into
the grave that life which is not necessarily
evil, it's good and it has even been
applauded by many and you thought was even
satisfactory, but which God says is of the
flesh and his judgment is on all flesh
and the only thing that he is pleased
to hear is one who abhors himself and
repents in dust of nations, willing to sprinkle
the dust of death on his head, a
symbolic statement that he is willing to bring
that whole natural life into burial, that it
might be raised with him at the notice
of the Lord.
Now, I knew that today was going to
be the most difficult of all the speakings.
I don't know why it is, but my
experience has shown that there's nothing more difficult
to persuade the people of God than the
resurrection of Christ.
And if you have not believed it unto
salvation for yourself again and again and again,
then you have not yet believed.
In a sense, you've not yet been saved
and maybe your faith needs to grow by
hearing to the point that you're able to
enter into this resurrection glory.
After that interval, he said to his disciples,
let us go back again to Judea.
And the disciples said to him, Rabbi, the
Jews only recently were intending and trying to
stone you and you're going back there again?
I wonder when Jesus delayed two days longer
where he was, how many of the disciples
thought to themselves, hey, is our master chicken?
His friend is languishing in sickness unto death
and he remained two days longer where he
is?
He probably remembers that the last time he
was in that neighborhood, he narrowly escaped with
his life.
And if he goes there now, it's curtains.
He's a coward.
And you know what, children?
Every act of yours that is an obedience
unto death, and by the way, that's a
definition for faith and there simply is no
other, will always elicit from those around you
misunderstanding and reproach.
That's part of the dying.
Are you willing to suffer that?
Being obedient to God unto death, in waiting
for his life to move you where men
would expect you to be, will bring from
them a reproach that you'll not be able
to answer.
And I gave an illustration last week of
how the Lord seemed to have departed from
me at a critical confrontation at a city
college in New York, 85% Jewish, for
reasons that I could not understand and for
reasons that were not given and the Lord
allowed me to drink and to taste the
cup of humiliation and that's dying.
And that the deepest mortification of all was
not the horrendous attacks of rabbis and Jews
who had a fall guy who couldn't even
answer for himself, but was to look in
the faces of the Christians who had arranged
the meeting and to see their pitiful disappointment.
Their faces spoke volumes.
Hey cats, what's wrong with me?
What's the matter?
Couldn't you pray knowing that you were coming
to this kind of encounter?
Something wrong?
A hidden sin in your life?
Don't you know how to fast?
And you cannot answer them in words.
That disappointment is part of the dying and
Jesus, I believe, had to experience that from
his own disciples and so also must we
walk who are called by his name.
We're happy to wear the crosses around our
necks.
We're happy to decorate our churches by them.
We're happy to plant them on our dashboards
with suction cups.
But how many of us are willing in
fact and in daily life to experience this?
Death is humiliation.
Death is mortification.
Death is God doing something without explanation.
Death is lying on a sweaty bed of
sickness in terrible weakness and ineptitude looking at
the distressed faces of your sister Mary and
Martha to see that the Lord is not
coming and he's not going to save you
though he's given sight to the blind and
he's healed others who are sick.
He who loves you is going to leave
you languished unto death and still trust him
and still have peace because Jesus said of
Lazarus when they did go Our friend Lazarus,
he says in the 11th verse is at
rest and sleeping but I am going there
that I may waken him out of his
sleep.
One of the earmarks of the kingdom of
God is the rest of God.
And one of the earmarks of the world's
religions is sweaty striving.
Isn't it interesting that the day of rest,
Sabbath, Sunday is one of the sweatiest and
most grisly days in Christendom.
My, my, my.
The kingdom of God is rest.
There's a rest which God has prepared for
the people of God even without knowing.
Our friend Lazarus is at rest but I'm
going there to awaken him out of his
sleep.
I won't say that I enjoyed that or
I knew that rest when God allowed me
to taste that mortification in that college encounter.
And I told you that for three weeks
I languished like a dog licking my wounds
hardly able to lift my head with terrible
haunting doubts that came sweeping in like a
flood.
Cats, you've blown it.
Cats, you've missed it.
Whoever said that you were called to ministry.
Whoever said you had a calling to the
Jews.
You had a glorious opportunity.
You thought that this was going to ignite
sparks of gospel fire throughout New York City
that would be taken into the Jewish communities
and you failed.
And three weeks later to get a phone
call from a woman with a pathetically thin
little voice and the end thereof was the
salvation of one straggly nervous wreck of a
Jewish woman who passed from death unto life.
Paul said, It's death which worketh in me
and life in you.
Children, there's a principle here so great, so
deep, so profound that we cannot avoid it.
It's real.
It's not a little biblical rhetoric.
It's not a little flourish.
It's not something to which we give acknowledgement
and consent or assent.
It's something so utterly real, so radical, so
graphic that God will give us the opportunity
to taste of it even daily that out
of that death might come a resurrection glory.
We have all soon been fallen short of
the glory of God.
And I think in one of these sessions
I described a very famous painting at Colmar,
France, The Crucifixion of Jesus by the artist
Gruenwald, a 15th century painter.
It had to be one of the most
horrible paintings before which I have ever stood.
The sisters of Mary of Dunstadt have celebrated
this great work.
And there's a wretched Jesus depicted on the
cross that you could hardly wonder whether you're
looking at a man or some kind of
animalistic form.
So grotesquely descended, so misshapen, so gnarled, so
pulled out of joint, the fingers just twisted
and reaching to heaven with the spikes through.
The lips white, the face full of beatings
and bruises and blood and coagulation.
White lips.
The paroxysms of pain being registered on that
face in death.
And the body a sickly gangrenous hue with
pieces of wood and metal embedded in the
flesh from the flagellation.
You never saw a more pathetic, wretched thing
strapped on a cross.
And the contrast with the forms of his
mother Mary and John the Baptist, which the
artist has included, makes it all the more
startling.
They are in perfect symmetry and he is
in the most ugly of distortions.
We need to see that and to understand
how that painting was inspired by the spirit
of God and how wretched a thing sin
is that God was required to suffer that.
But I don't want to leave you there
because I walk this time around the other
side of the painting and on the other
side is the resurrection.
One side the death, the other side the
resurrection.
And vocabulary fails me to describe the glory
of that painting.
As wretched and as pitiful as was the
death, that is how glorious is the resurrection.
And that is always true.
If our life is humdrum, average, mediocre, unexceptional,
if we have not touched people for God's
sake and we have not set forth the
kingdom, it's because we have not been willing
to suffer a proportion of humiliation and death
that would have resulted in a like measure
of glory.
This painting shows Jesus bursting forth out of
death.
And this Renaissance artist has captured and frozen
a moment when you see not only is
Jesus leaping up out of the tomb, but
the Roman centurions pitching forward in that moment
they were stunned, their helmets were toppling off
their heads.
And here's this glorious figure emerging out of
death in beautiful and perfect symmetry that was
deranged and distorted on the other side is
now coming to perfect symmetry.
And where every wound was great beams of
light and glory are pouring out.
I can't describe the effulgence of glory that
attends this figure as it comes forth out
of death.
This, children, is the faith.
If you believe that Jesus is Lord and
God has raised him from the dead, thou
shalt be saved again and again and again.
Death, Paul says, is swallowed up in victory.
Death, where is thy sting?
Grave, where is thy victory?
But thanks be to God which giveth us
the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Have you ever heard the Resurrected Christ speak
out of your mouth?
Have you ever heard him give witness through
you?
Have you ever seen his calm and his
peace, his strength, his poise, his joy, his
power in moments of your ineptitude, your weakness,
your human frailty?
Are you willing to switch off from you
and switch on to God in moments of
crisis and predicament where you're unable to be
the loving mother, where you're unable to be
the truly spiritually accommodating wife?
In all of the places where your life
fails and breaks down, are you willing to
believe that if you're let go unto death,
willing to suffer the humiliation of nothingness, that
the Lord will bring forth an expression of
the glory of his resurrection life?
The just shall live by faith.
That's what that scripture means.
That your believing in moment by moment will
bring forth the expression of his life.
Jesus told them plainly in the 14th verse
that Lazarus is dead.
And for your sake I'm glad that I
was not there.
It will help you to believe and to
trust and rely on me.
Next week we'll continue and conclude with this
remarkable episode because I think it is such
a statement for the age.
But I'll just leave you with this thought.
Many of you who have marveled and have
admired Martha and Mary and the one of
the two which was more spiritual doubt on
this, that both women greeted Jesus exactly in
the same manner when he came.
Lord, if you had been here, my brother
would not have died.
It was a reproach to Jesus.
However spiritual, one thought herself to be over
the other.
In the moment of crisis, both women had
exactly the same understanding, the same beggarly notion
of God, the same failure.
Lord, if you had been here, my brother
would not have died.
And Jesus had to answer her and answers
us.
I am myself the resurrection and the life.
Whoever believes in and adheres to and trusts
and relies on me, although he may die,
yet shall he live.
And whoever continues to live and believe, have
faith and cleave to and relies on me,
shall never actually die at all.
Do you believe this?
Who do men say that I am?
And not content with the general question, Jesus
poked his fingers in the chest of his
disciples and said, who do you say that
I am?
Children, this isn't just an episode out of
antiquity.
Do you believe this?
That you'll never die if you cleave to
and rely on him?
That though you go into the grave and
languish in sickness unto death and you stink
and your body has corrupted and it's a
fourth day that you've been in the tomb,
that when it shall please the Lord by
the beauty of his own speaking and his
own perfect time to say, come forth, that
you shall come forth unto glory.
And you know what the thing is?
More Jews believed on Jesus in the day
when stinking Lazarus came out of death and
corruption at the near call of the Lord
than probably has ever been performed by the
speaking and ministering and witnessing of men.
Without a word, without a deed, without any
limit describing, by the seeing of this resurrection
splendor, it said many believed on him in
that day.
You know what I believe with all my
heart?
God's waiting again for a Lazarus people come
forth out of death that many Jews might
believe upon him in that day.
My Jewish people have seen your religious respectability.
It's nice.
But not half as impressive as their own.
But they've not seen the resurrection splendor.
They've not seen the glory that comes only
out of death.
You know what the name Lazarus means?
Isn't it interesting?
No accidents in the scripture?
His name means helpless.
And you'll be willing to put aside your
pride, your self-sufficiencies, your ability, your religious
expertise and be helpless, be humiliated.
Not draw from your own strength, your own
ability, your own speaking, your own cleverness.
Out of that death and humiliation and mortification
shall come forth his glory out of your
helplessness.
And I'll tell you what, if you'll not
do it willingly, the Lord is going to
engineer the circumstances of our life in the
last days by a bewilderment of such conditions
that whatever our expertise and competence, we shall
be rendered helpless without him.
That we must say, for me to live
is Christ.
Are you happy for that?
Don't look so happy.
I'm happy for that.
What a glory.
All naked, travails and groans until now, waiting
for the coming forth of such sons of
God.
Resurrection children.
Let's bow our heads.
Ask the Lord to seal this word.
Save it from being just another religious talk.
Make it utterly real and persuasive.
Show us the futility of any other foundation
for life and being than the resurrected Christ.
And teach us how to enter in to
that awesome reality by a willingness to suffer
and measure something of His humiliation and death.
Precious God, in Jesus' name, Lord, if ever
I have cried out unto you, Lord, for
help, if ever I have felt myself like
a Lazarus, Lord, if ever I have sensed
the futility of mere words, it is now.
And Lord, I ask for a demonstration of
that resurrection glory, of that life from death,
of that spirit of life in Christ Jesus
to take the words which are as pleasing
to be spoken and to make them like
a fire in the hearts of His people
and like a hammer upon the rock, to
break up, Lord God, every lesser thing, however
religiously acceptable, and to make us divinely discontent
with anything less than the glories of your
kingdom, that we shall be willing, mighty God,
truly to embrace your cross and to be
joined with you in death and burial and
newness of life.
For Jesus' sake and for your kingdom's sake
we pray.
Amen.
Bless you.