So we just bow, my God, before you
at the commencement of our opening of this
great book.
It's not for the casual.
It deserves, my God, the deepest, most earnest
attention and respect.
And we trust we come, my God, with
that attitude that is fitting in your sight.
And look to your spirit, my God, to
exposit and to open the unsearchable riches, my
God, of the glory of this book.
Lay foundations through it, my God, that are
overdue in our own consideration, and that will
affect our present and our future.
And through us and beyond us, my God,
to touch the lives of many.
So thank you, Lord, for this privileged time,
your presence, your spirit with us, Lord, to
teach us all things.
Thank you, Lord.
We bow in respect and admiration and reverence
for yourself, for your book, for the great
apostle, my God, for the rich inheritance which
is ours as saints.
Come now, my God, and instruct our souls
in our understanding.
Require of us what you will, for to
whom much is given, much is required.
We're asking that much be given and we're
willing that much be required.
So come, my God, in an unstinting way
and draw forth what you will and receive
now our gratitude yet again in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, the Lord did not allow me to
open the book in advance.
Today.
We've looked at this earlier.
It began with some sessions with Ben Israel.
But sensing that this was the subject, the
Lord did not allow me to open it
until now.
Why that is, I don't know.
Maybe just that there will be a sense
of fresh discovery together with you.
I wish we had all kinds of time.
We would start right from verse one.
We're actually going to start from verse 16.
Because the initial verses are Paul's salutation and
introduction, which we did examine here at Ben
Israel together.
And it was rich in the way in
which Paul even expresses himself to the Roman
congregation, explaining his necessary neglect of them, that
we had hoped to visit and his affection
and esteem, his desire again to come to
Rome.
And then having finished that salutation, he leaps
in in verse 16 with that remarkable statement,
like the great theme of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
I'm not ashamed of the gospel.
It is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone who has faith or who believes,
to the Jew first and also to the
Greek.
For in it, the righteousness of God is
revealed through faith, for faith, as it is
written, the one who is righteous will live
by faith.
That's a remarkable blast in one statement that
we need to examine.
So I've already suggested in the prayer time
this morning, what a strategic thing to sound
to a church at Rome, inhabiting the city
that glorifies those things that pertain to man.
Because Rome is the adoption of Greece.
Roman civilization is the assimilation and the translation
of Greek civilization.
They were the inheritors.
They were not original in themselves, something like
the Japanese today.
But taking what was original, they marketed it
so that all roads lead to Rome.
And Roman civilization is the high watermark of
all that men could admire in that generation.
So when you live in the shadow of
it, as the church, you're continually intimidated by
its evidences.
And the gospel is more foolish to you
than it would be to those who are
in the boondocks and are not intimidated by
the signs and the presence of this overarching
civilization.
What then must it have been in Rome,
for the church at Rome, in the shadow
of the great architecture, the Colosseum, the culture,
the literature of Rome, the Senate, the Caesars,
their military exploits, marching through the Arch of
Titus.
Have you seen where they carry the menorah
and the other loot that they got from
the temple in Jerusalem before its destruction in
70 AD?
Marching triumphantly into Rome, bringing captives and the
loot from a devastated and defeated Israel is
inscribed right on the Arch of Titus.
To this day, the ruins of it yet
remain.
And the Romans were privy to all of
this great spectacular chariot races and athletic events
and great pomp and ceremony.
So when Paul says, I'm not ashamed of
the gospel of Jesus Christ, he's making a
remarkable statement.
And I'll tell you what, you dear saints,
you'll never know how foolish the message of
the gospel is until you have first to
bring it to a Jew.
Because the Jew is the epitome of that
which is revered by men as civilization.
The epitome of what is rational, what is
cerebral, what is cultural, what is ethical, what
is moral.
And the gospel is a piece of foolishness.
Think on that.
What is its essential message?
God lay aside his deity and took upon
himself the form of a man by being
conceived and born out of the womb of
a virgin in a little nothing place of
a little nothing nation living an obscure life
for 30 years and then after a brief
three year period of message and ministry suffering
the death of a criminal.
The most disgraceful form of death which every
Roman knew.
Paul was not crucified, he was beheaded.
Why?
Because crucifixion was reserved exclusively for criminals or
for people in rebellion.
But if you had any kind of status
as a human being the dignified way for
you to pay the capital punishment was beheading.
Paul was beheaded.
Peter was crucified upside down at his own
request.
So that this Jesus whom you are proclaiming
has suffered the greatest indignity known to Rome
through this death at the cross.
And you are saying that this was very
God, the son of God and very God
and that in fact his death was necessary
and voluntary and that his blood shed in
that suffering and death has an efficacy to
remove sin and that by calling on his
name a salvation is obtained which is valid
eternally.
Have you ever thought how foolish that message
is?
Yet Paul says I'm not ashamed of the
gospel it is the power of God unto
salvation.
The message itself is the power of God
because God chooses the things that are foolish
to confound the things that are wise.
The message is the statement of the genius
of God who could have conceived and have
obtained eternal salvation in perhaps other ways that
would have commended itself as a message with
which we would have had greater comfort to
present.
But this message is contrary to all that
is reasonable, rational that commends itself to man's
intellect.
It's a piece of foolishness and weakness by
design and yet God honors it to those
who proclaim it by faith as being the
very power of God unto salvation.
So that's how Paul begins his great statement
and the reason is to encourage the church
in the realm that is the seat of
civilization that this message however foolish is God's
power and not to be ashamed but rather
to rejoice and to exult because you yourself
are the recipients of that word and therefore
constitute the assembly of God that the church
has saved.
So God saves through the message of the
gospel that it's power is operative unto salvation
and it's through the gospel alone.
It is the gospel that is God's power
unto salvation and that this word of God
is powerful and living though foolish.
So I'm saying and he says to the
Jew first and also to the Greek why
that priority and why that order?
Any thought that this is not some arbitrary
thing on God's part that there's a divine
logic to the Jew first the Greek would
not be as intimidating as the Jew and
nothing makes you more conscious of yourself as
a Gentile than to stand before the Jew
who is the epitome of those things that
are cerebral mental, intellectual, formidable and opposed to
the message of the gospel itself and that
their history insulates them against receiving it because
the very name of Jesus, the word gospel
is like waving the proverbial red flag in
a bull's face so God is saying if
you're going to see the power you're going
to see it in the place where it
must be demonstrated because the forces against its
receiving by Jews are most adverse for the
Jew to receive this is totally uncommon everything
militates against the Jew's consideration his history, Satan's
misuse of the word, of the name Jesus
the church's conduct which is a stink throughout
history toward the Jew everything militates against the
Jew's consideration but you're not absolved from your
responsibility because of that you still have an
obligation to observe the priority of God to
the Jew first though it will mean your
death you'll taste death you'll have a door
slammed in your face you'll be mocked, you'll
be shredded by their superior intellect and their
power you'll never feel yourself more weak and
frail and shallow than to stand before so
imposing and intimidating a people but for those
reasons you're not absolved in fact it's for
those reasons that you're called because if you're
not faced this test at the very inception
of your obedience what then can be expected
from you thereafter I won't ask how many
have actually confronted a Jew with the message
of the gospel but I can tell you
as a Jew confronting Jews I am intimidated
right through to my boots my bootstraps I've
had doors slammed in my face and shredded
with the absurdity who do you think you
are to dare have the impudence to bring
that name to our consideration and to come
on the Shabbat with a Gentile Bible under
your arm to my door where the mezuzah
is hanging you know what the mezuzah is
that Jews kiss before they go in when
they come out and in it is a
scroll from Deuteronomy that thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart and
you're going to pass through that and bring
this Goyesha Gentile message is the height of
impudence and arrogance but only a son will
bring it because it's a death to face
this backlash so if I'm experiencing that as
a Jew with Jews what would you experience
as a Gentile with Jews and yet you're
called to experience it and have you noticed
that there's a sufficient proliferation of Jews in
virtually every community so that we are without
excuse there were Jews in Rome at the
time of which Paul spoke that and there
are Jews everywhere in the world I have
found them in Asia in Yugoslavia in places
where you would think that there would not
be again any presence there's always a minimal
presence as if to maintain attention by which
this cannot be dismissed as academic but actual
and still being required we went to the
synagogue in the capital city of Bulgaria which
is Sofia and in a corner room is
the congregation the Jewish population of Bulgaria has
been so reduced that their service is conducted
in a side room but we went into
that room and sat in the back I
was with a few brothers and my eye
surveys the room and fell on one man
who is especially dark and prominent and when
we left about a half hour later he
follows us out onto the sidewalk wanting to
know who we are and why we are
in his synagogue in this capital city and
so as I could explain he invites us
the next day to visit his new building,
his Jewish community center, he's a Lubavitcher Hasid
25 years old sent from Jerusalem to establish
an outreach in Bulgaria, we went the next
day, he had refreshments on the table, he
gave us a complete tour of the building
and when we sat with him at the
end we spent hours with this dear man
in which he confessed that for the first
time in his Jewish life he has experienced
anti-Semitism he grew up in Israel, a
Jewish nation, but when he came to Europe
and Bulgaria and was walking by one of
the schoolyards when the kids spotted him with
his black hat, his black coat and his
black beard they began to chase him and
pelt him with stones and call out names
and so he's sharing with us this new
experience by which we could say you're only
at the beginning, there's going to be woe
for the Jews of Bulgaria and all over
the world in the time of Jacob's trouble
and we bear that message to alert you
and the believing church to anticipate it and
would you receive our prayer?
Yes, and so we pray for this dear
man and so there's a relationship that has
been occasioned that's waiting on the shelf for
the believers in Sophia to follow up with
this dear man who was so receptive with
us, so I'm taking Brian to that same
movement in Brooklyn its headquarters 777 Eastern Parkway
and we came down to a thousand men
with their tallis and their prayer shawls on
bowing, facing the the ark where the Torah
is and taking it out and walking around
the room, men kissing it touching it with
their sitzes with their prayer shawls and here
we stand like two conspicuous lumps I'm dressed
in black but I don't have a beard
and I'm wearing the hat that I've got
in Yugoslavia which is close enough to what
they wear but a much cheaper edition and
there's a man who's looking at us and
he comes over, Brian will remember, an older
man, can I help you?
We're evidently strangers and we said yes do
you have the service in English that we
can follow what is being expressed and he
found us a Hebrew English book and we
were trying to follow and from time to
time he would come and explain to us
what's going on as we came to the
end he said and where are you men
eating at the conclusion of this service?
I said we have no plans, he said
I would be delighted if you would be
my guest and we came across the street
where he has his apartment and had the
midday meal, the Shabbat meal at his home
with twenty others at his table, three of
whom were rabbis, young rabbis and it was
a remarkable time of fellowship and of sharing
because he's asking Brian, you a gentile, what
are you doing here?
and he's trying to explain with me so
right away questions are raised that a Jewish
man brings a gentile and so as much
as we could it was our initial visit,
the man is a teacher in that movement
his name is Greenberg remember his first name?
and then I left him my phone number
I don't know what I did I wrote
him a little note I couldn't give him
my phone number, how come?
because you can't write on the Shabbat writing
is broke didn't you know that?
There are things you need to know elementary
things I could not write my phone number
but I sent him a little card expressing
our gratitude for taking us in as strangers
how grateful we were and how blessed we
were and leaving my phone number in the
event that you would again like to extend
fellowship, we would love to see you again
and bring the book that I promised you
of my initial experience in God without telling
him what it was about and sure enough,
a couple of months later I got a
phone call after the longest silence in which
I thought we had been dismissed inviting me
again to be at his table and this
time I brought the book Ben Israel and
shared my testimony and he was hearing and
his wife, fewer people than the first time,
but it was an extraordinary opportunity for witness
and he wouldn't take the book, I had
to carry it out with me because he
said, is there any reference to the New
Testament in your book I said of course,
my first revelation was in the reading of
the Gospel of John and that book records
that episode I cannot receive it then anything
that alludes to let alone the New Testament
itself, I cannot have in my possession or
in my house I didn't know that so
there's a remarkable what's the word, not just
an antipathy, but a principle in their movement
maybe throughout the whole of orthodoxy that is
opposed even to so much as looking in
that book or having it in their possession
it is for them more reprehensible than for
us the Book of Mormon or some new
age kind of thing that we know is
satanic, for them that's what the New Testament
represents why?
because it's the account of a deceiver, a
magician there's another word they use, a sorcerer
a sorcerer who learned from us his practices
and performed them so as to turn Jews
away from the law and to follow himself
so there could be nothing more reprehensible than
a man bringing people in devoted attention to
himself and away from the law and for
that reason he is detestable and he's an
enemy to this day of Jewish people Judaism
and the God of our fathers himself the
man is a sorcerer and I was attending
a Saturday morning discussion of one of the
principal books of the Hasidic movement called Tanya
and I was, one day as I came
up into the floor with a room, one
of the two teachers who was a financier
two men taught financier and a doctor and
it was brilliant the way they relate one
to the other and I enjoyed thoroughly those
sessions and never once opened my mouth I
never even so much as asked the question
I never took opportunity to say well yes
but the New Testament says nothing like that
but I was met at the door and
forbidden to enter because they had discussed it
among themselves that though this man has not
utilized an opportunity to in any way bring
his dissension he's still too dangerous to be
allowed to remain because he believes in a
sorcerer and is deceived and therefore will be
an instrument for the deception of others, so
sorry Mr. Katz but we will not allow
you to continue to attend I'm saying all
that I'm being asked what recent episode these
are the recent episodes very instructive for me
because I did not understand how deep is
the enmity and hostility toward Jesus that yet
remains, though I should have remembered that when
I spoke at that college in upstate New
York the girls school begins with a V
Vassar that that day as I'm walking through
the building some Jew, now as co-ed
some Jewish student looks up at me and
says you'll get yours tonight, I thought whatever
does he mean and that night I'm speaking
before a Christian congregation, Christian students and those
who have come from the outlying communities and
the doors burst open and in came a
dozen Hasidim, Lubavitcher Hasidim, black suited, black beard
black eyed, black fedoras the Jewish Mafia and
they came into that building with a bang
and people stopped breathing, they were terrifying talk
about intimidation they never sat down they placed
themselves strategically around the building and people just
were overwhelmed and overcome by the fright and
one guy was as close to me as
our sister here and looking at me with
deadly eyes, if looks could kill, that this
Jewish man, this traitor he's got to be
a traitor what is he being paid for
this because what reasonable Jew would ever subscribe
to this noxious Greek pagan religion and seek
to persuade Jews that it's true, so he
must be a flunky, he's got to be
paid, for what other reason would a man
do this and he's using a Greek pagan
Gentile Bible to convey and my message was
about Abraham and circumcision, I'll always remember that
and I had to finish my message with
this man standing right in my face, try
that sometime it prepares you to speak to
Christian congregations that are a little bit hostile
I finished that message and my practice was
to open for questions and the moment I
opened these guys took over and they just
they rioted and I'll always remember this man
how dare you come with this Gentile Bible
you ignoramus you who do not even speak
Hebrew and seek to persuade Jews to subscribe
to your noxious pseudo religion and went on
like that and then he said if your
Jesus was alive today we would do to
him what our fathers did but he said
we know that you love us cats and
that's the last thing I remember because when
he said we know that you love us
cats, I said I never told you that,
I never knew it myself, where did you
get that so that was a remarkable episode
that again shows this deep grained hostility that
indeed is capable of doing again to Jesus
what it did before and if it can't
get its hands on Jesus, it will get
its hands on those who represent him so
it may well be that the thing that
will conclude the age and will communicate Jesus
to those who will not be able to
kick against the pricks will be the persecution
of Jews themselves against believers as it came
against Stephen unto the death of martyrdom alone
by which Paul, then Saul was pricked at
the observation of a man dying with such
tranquility and such magnanimity as to forgive his
murderers and to see the heavens open and
Jesus as a man standing at the right
hand of the power of the father it
may take again the same demonstration because Paul
could not swallow that down, there's something released
in suffering and death as witness for which
there's no substitute, it's one thing to say
are you saved brother and have you received
the blood of Jesus it's another thing to
be a witness with your blood in fact
the word martyr means witness ultimate witness is
ultimate death, so when Michael said to come
before a Jew to bring the gospel is
a death no question about it, it's a
form of martyrdom of a willing and voluntary
kind, you know you're not going to survive
the occasion, if not physically at least spiritually
and emotionally but it may take a very
literal martyrdom again at the hands of outraged
Jews and the way in which we received
that suffering from them because they opposed themselves
in their ignorance as they did with Stephen
though he had demonstrated the power of miracles
though his face shone like an angel though
he was able to confound the darkness of
the law with a greater wisdom it still
did not dissuade them from stoning him to
death but it was in the way in
which his death was received that Saul obtained
a witness from which he could not turn
and he could not kick against the pricks
and he was prepared by that for the
revelation of the Lord who confronted him on
the road to Damascus, that may be a
paradigm, that may be a pattern of the
final last days witness to the Jew when
nothing less than the sacrificial death of martyrs
will persuade those to believe who have been
hostile to the last moment as Saul himself
was because they laid their garments at his
feet who took Stephen as their first victim
so we have to know the depth of
the intransigence of Jewish hostility to the gospel
when I read Isaiah 53 to my mother
here some years ago, she had never heard
it she said, where are you reading in
the New Testament?
I said I'm not reading from the New
Testament at all, I'm reading from the greatest
of the prophets of Israel, Isaiah she said,
I've never heard that because it speaks so
clearly about a suffering servant who was marred
more than any man that we had he
had no beauty that we should desire she
knew of whom it was speaking she said,
I've never heard that, I said you never
will she said, I've never heard it in
the synagogue you guys know that every Shabbat
morning not only is the selection from the
books of Moses read but a selection from
the prophets that in one year's reading all
five books of Moses have been chanted rather
than read the speed of it is remarkable
because how can a one hour reading one
day of the week one morning of the
week cover all five books so they read
large they chant large segments of course those
who are bobbing and weaving with the reading
are familiar with the text and they have
read it themselves at their own leisure and
have studied it but what is being rehearsed
now is more ceremonial than instructive but what
follows the reading from the Torah is the
reading from the Haftorah this is what we
Jewish kids do when we are bar mitzvahed
we read or we chant that portion from
the prophets appropriate to the day of our
bar mitzvah I wish I could know what
my portion was that I chanted in my
ignorance so that my mother could cry because
she had seen her son through Hebrew school
and through bar mitzvah who was himself a
pagan and never again darkened the doorway of
a synagogue it did my duty but in
these selections from the prophets Isaiah 53 is
omitted so they'll come to a certain reading
52-12 and the next week they continue
from 54 and completely omit that section it's
hard for me to believe that more modern
day rabbis, post Christian rabbis have not consciously
seen to it that that segment would be
omitted if it was not already omitted because
of its clear Christological emphasis you need to
know that the councils of the rabbis carries
the same weight and authority as Moses himself
in fact even a greater authority that can
actually controvert anything that Moses may have spoken
and in fact even God himself that the
council of the rabbis is the supreme statement
of God himself even to supersede scripture and
so by that means Jews are denied a
hearing and a consideration of the most profound
statement of Messiah and the shedding of blood
by which salvation is to be obtained the
promulgators of the gospel themselves have to be
the demonstrators the living actualization of their own
message as Paul himself was but for us
for the gospel being reduced to a formula
and our own lifestyle and character is not
in keeping with it, that word falls to
the ground it loses its cogency its authority
and its power so there's an obligation for
character and life in keeping with the word
that we're called to exposit of course for
Paul the New Testament was not even available
to him so what did he employ when
he says that sums up the gospel as
being somewhat healthy Corinthians died and was raised
on the third day according to the scriptures
according to what scriptures?
Old Testament scriptures so he was able to
glean from the repository of the Psalms, the
prophets and the books of Moses sufficient testimony
to establish the case for Jesus and his
witness to Jews and we ought also to
have that same ability so it requires of
us to do our homework and find what
he found by which he presented the case
for the Lord so in fact after my
own first encounter with Jesus in the revelation
that came in the first reading of the
New Testament, I went from Greece to Egypt
where I contracted Hepatitis and was twice in
the hospital with that and an ear infection
but in the hospital I'm reading for the
first time the five books of Moses that
came into my hands with the Jewish community
of Cairo where I was living and relating,
in fact they paid my hospital bills and
so I'm seeing for the first time how
Christological the five books of Moses are and
how in the commentary by Rabbi Hertz in
that first edition how careful he is to
alert the reader to avoid the Christological implications
to be found in the Old Testament readings
so we have our work cut out for
us but there is a basis for an
appeal to Jews the thing is that most
Jews are as ignorant of Old Testament Scripture
as they are of new in fact their
secular mentality is opposed to Scripture itself and
perhaps the most begrudging thing they can allow
is that the Bible is a piece of
culture it's something written by men over a
span of time that may have curiosity and
interest but no way is it to be
understood the word of God because that would
offend their rational categories that God can inspire
a word to be conveyed through men and
so registered that it's veracity can continue uninterruptedly
throughout the generations without loss that the Bible
itself is a mind boggling contradiction to the
secularly minded men which is of the kind
that I myself was until that day on
that Greek ship en route from Italy to
Athens which was for me homage because I
was more Greek than I was a Jew
and had up at the blackboard of my
classroom in California go Greek because Greek was
the celebration of man know thyself man is
the measure of all things all came from
Greece which Rome then adopted and so I'm
reading a Greek book on a Greek ship
on my way to a Greek capital destination
which was for me homage because I'm a
Jew by birth but I'm a Greek by
conviction I'm rational, I'm cerebral and then the
Lord reveals himself in the Gospel of John
and then gives me opportunity in the subsequent
weeks in Egypt to ponder how this revelation
could come from a God who is the
only God and yet in a figure and
name that has been made reprehensible for Jewish
consideration through history I'm wrestling how could God
ask me a Jew to subscribe to that
name and become a Christian with those who
have historically opposed us and been our murderers
throughout the ages so this is a great
travail and struggle which Jews will face in
the last days so we need to know
that they're not only hostile to the New
Testament they are calloused against all scripture because
their categories, their cerebral categories, their empirical categories
do not permit for anything supernatural that even
when I find myself engaged with an Orthodox
Jew not the Lubavitcher Hasidic the more modern
Orthodox with their Van Dykes and their Yarmulkes
I find out that in the exchange that
they themselves do not believe that God parted
the Red Seas, that it was a confluence
of tides, that they have to find a
naturalistic explanation even for supernatural events though they
are fastidious in their practices in their orthopraxy
they are not as careful in their orthodoxy
because their secular minds cannot permit them to
believe in the supernaturalness of God you see
why it is that he had to send
his only begotten son to be that very
demonstration and to raise him from death and
why the issue of his resurrection is contested
to this day and remember that when the
report came from those soldiers who were posted
to see to the security of that tomb
and told the authorities what had happened supernaturally,
they were bribed to say that his disciples
had stole his body away and that that
story is believed to this day so that
we are responsible for what we believe and
secular Jews would prefer to believe that the
body was stolen than that the body was
raised because the issue of resurrection is the
issue if Jesus is a presumer and a
man himself deceived and suffering from a megalomania
of some absurd thing that he is not
only the Messiah but very God then the
issue of whether he is resurrected is the
issue of the truth of those claims so
where is his body?
Well the disciples stole it away.
What else are you to believe?
That the power of God broke through a
sealed tomb and raised a dead body and
ascended it up on high and imbued it
with a newness of life that continues still
and is imparted to believers by the Holy
Spirit poured out from the throne of heaven
when he hasn't ascended?
You guys need to know just how absurd
this whole gospel is if you're going to
make peace with it and make it your
own and communicate it as the very truth
of God and the nub and nexus of
very reality itself that makes everything that purports
to be true, false and gives us a
prism of seeing by which everything that is
celebrated by man in the world is rendered
in ipso facto in one fell swoop as
false in view of this greater truth.
Got that?
You have to be nearly insane to subscribe
to this and make this the buttress and
principle of your own life and being which
of course most of Christendom has not done
it does not understand the gospel, it does
not proclaim the gospel but they use the
word gospel as if they have a familiarity
with it but they have never pondered or
understood what in fact it is and I'm
saying that they never will understand what in
fact it is until they're required to bring
it to the world in its most intimidating
expression, the Jew.
When you touch the Jew you touch the
world, you touch the world in its wisdom,
its mentality its categories, its pride and its
power that's why there's a fierce reaction that
is more than just human there's a rage,
wherever you see rage and fury you know
that this is more than man, this is
the powers of darkness themselves who have taken
this people captive and employ them because who
are the foremost architects of the modern world?
Karl Marx Sigmund Freud, Steven Spielberg the guy
who was the head of the Time Warner
Corporation, Jerry got his last name Jewish, they're
all Jews prominent in industry in commerce, in
advertising in culture, in publications the New York
Times was founded by a Jew, Ox, OCHS
a German Jew and German Jewish civilization is
the predominant form and authority and power of
what yet prevails in world Judaism today it
is formidable formidable you have no idea but
you need to have an idea because you're
called to this very confrontation and very conflict
because to communicate this to the Jew and
to break through with the Jew is to
pierce the world at the very crossroads of
world civilization, power and prestige by which millions
are held captive the world, let's put it
this way, the modern world is essentially Jewish
New York City is essentially Jewish and its
influence is global to break into that and
to reveal that as being false and predicated
on false assumptions and lies given by the
father of lies by the power of truth
is a remarkable penetration that can only come
in the power of God, in the power
of the word, in the power of the
spirit by those who believe it and will
obey God as sons to the father who
says go ye into all the world and
preach this gospel to every creature beginning at
Jerusalem to the Jew first and if we
will not obey that first command and that
first priority what are we signaling to the
principalities and powers of the air but that
we are a disobedient people and we take
our own liberty about which of God's requirements
we will observe and which we will shuck
off as not being serviceable out of whatever
reason, see what I mean?
If we miss God at this point, we
miss God and that's why the powers of
the air hold the church in contempt and
can say Jesus we know and Paul we
know, but who are you?
You presumer?
Just because you have adopted the vocabulary and
do this or that, we are totally unimpressed,
we yawn in your face you have no
persuasion that makes us to fear because you
yourself say Lord but you do not acknowledge
him in truth in the first call to
which he has given you, to the Jew
first you got that?
That's how critical disobedience is and who explicated
and demonstrated that more than Paul himself in
whatever community he came he went to the
Jew first and even after saying after he
was beaten and left for dead or whipped
or rejected I go now to the Gentiles,
no you have refused so now I go
to the lowest of the low but what
did he do when he came to his
next destination?
He went again to the Jew first, he
preached in the synagogues and what did he
do in his last days in Rome, in
the place that he was given to occupy?
He received Jews, he received the Jews in
Rome and spoke to them of the things
pertaining to the kingdom with virtually his last
breath from his first breath to his last
breath, he exemplifies exactly what he is exhorting
the church to do because that's what an
apostle is he doesn't just give a series
of injunctions that others are required to hear
and observe, he himself explicates the demonstration of
that very thing in the reality of his
own life, though it cost him greatly, how
many times was he stoned, left for dead,
beaten with rods all because of his obedience
to the Lord, to the Jew first and
the reasons need to be examined not only
because Jews will be the essential promulgators but
because to them was given the covenants, the
promises the oaths when Paul later on in
Romans says, what value has a Jew?
Much in every way, and then he lists
the various things that pertain uniquely to that
people but to say this in Rome is
a piece of apostolic courage because the Romans
the church is essentially Gentile and part of
the issue is the Jewish community that opposes
the church that is recognized by the Roman
authorities as being licit or legal it was
the one religion outside of Roman paganism that
the Roman authority recognizes as legitimate that's why
when Jewish Christians were kicked out of the
synagogue they were put in the unenviable position
of losing the status of a legitimate religion
recognized by Rome then they were outside, they
were atheists and therefore deserving of whatever penalty
Rome would care to inscribe and the Jewish
authorities knew that when they cast the Jews
the Jewish Christians out of the synagogue they
were making them candidates for persecution and death
so Paul is speaking to the church at
Rome where these Jews exist and if he
were politic and playing his cards right, he
would have avoided the subject altogether and just
spoke to the Gentile church about things that
pertain to their own understanding, but from the
verse chapter 1, right after his introduction and
his salutation and his greeting BOOM!
I'm not ashamed of this gospel it's the
power of God unto salvation to the Jew
first the last thing that he ought to
say because my rub here is raw is
the first thing that he says this is
the same Paul who at the end of
his career said, you know I never withheld
from you the whole counsel of God I
never just gave you the good parts and
withdrew the difficult parts I gave it to
you straight from the beginning the whole counsel
and they knew it and hung on his
neck and wept when he said you'll not
see my face again this is the genius
of what is apostolic, it does not withhold
the difficult or the dangerous parts, even to
a Gentile congregation that has no disposition to
hear it, but if they don't hear it,
how shall they be the church how shall
they be the witness in a pagan Rome
if they void the consideration of the Jew
by which the church's own identity is connected
and it's authority and it's witness so right
from the beginning he lets them know yes
they are temporarily fallen as we'll read later
on in Romans 11 but the God is
able to graft them back in again if
he grafted you in, you Gentile dum-dums,
you wild vines that were not capable of
bearing any fruit will he not be capable
of grafting them back into their own tree
you were wild were grafted in how much
more shall they be grafted into their own
tree, so there's a destiny that yet awaits
them and in fact they'll not obtain it
except through you the reason for your salvation
is not your own enjoyment of it but
that through their fall salvation has come to
the Gentile so as to move them to
jealousy you dum-dum, it's not for you
to enjoy, you have with your salvation a
responsibility, a mandate to that same people for
whom you have no natural disposition, because in
the natural you distrust them you're envious of
them, you're suspicious they're different from you and
you have always felt inferior to their Jewish
superiority and yet except that you have a
particular relationship and mandate to them of a
kind that is more than just mechanical or
perfunctory excuse my language minimal they will not
be grafted back in, you're the key to
moving them to a place by what you
express to them that though they are presently
hostile to the gospel, they will in time
turn and receive it unto salvation there's a
mystery of which you should not be ignorant
because if you're ignorant it destroys you as
the church then you become an entity unto
yourself the kingdom is the petty kingdoms of
men, their denominations and their ministries, and you
lose the glory that God intends for the
church which can only be yours in the
fulfillment of this remarkable mandate which is antithetical
to you as Gentiles in every point in
particular that the only way you can succeed
is through the glory of God, through the
power of the Holy Spirit and the knowledge
given to you in your relationship with his
son in union with him, that's remarkable staggering
and our problem is we have not been
sufficiently staggered but the beauty of the apostle
is he begins with this why?
not by calculation, but just a natural thing
that issues out of his apostolic heart because
his apostolic heart is so in union with
the heart of God that it expresses what
is intrinsic to God's deepest heart and the
priorities of God which are expressed as first
to the Jew first take it or leave
it, you don't like it you would rather
have avoided them no, no, God says to
the Jew first, and then also to the
there's a priority and there's no explanation for
the priority he doesn't then give the reasons
why you should agree with this priority because
of this this and this, he just states
it as a priority given by God for
which you don't need explanation and God is
not obliged to give you explanation, he just
is only obliged to state it, if you're
a son you'll obey it without requiring an
explanation but an erudite Jew accomplished, educated moral,
ethical tell him that he's as lost as
that gentile and is as much in desperate
need of that savior is a remarkable impudent
assertion but with what spirit do we say
it?
If there's something that is yet in our
gentile hearts that wants to do them in
a little bit and needle them we'll make
it like a provocative thing but if we're
broken in our own hearts and know that
we ourselves were pulled up out of a
mire, we'll bring that word with a brokenness
dear men, I know you don't understand, I
know you think yourself righteous, but you don't
know the righteousness of God because as Paul
goes on to say here, the righteousness of
God is demonstrated in the gospel itself, and
your righteousness is of a lesser and other
kind, which God holds in contempt, and you're
still under the wrath of God as a
sinner however exemplary you may think yourself to
be, by your present conduct, by world standards
but by the standard of a God who
is holiness, who is holy you are in
error and in a grievous place because the
scripture says that God is angry with the
sinner every day and he who hath the
son hath life, who hath not the son
hath not life, and the wrath of God
abides upon him, so I'm under obligation to
tell you that I know you subjectively do
not see it, you don't experience it, but
I would your blood would be on my
hands if I withhold from you this biblical
statement of truth as God sees it and
desires you to understand it well, he'll think
you mad but I'll tell you what your
very courage and faithfulness as a son to
bring this noxious message has got to penetrate
this morally superior Jew and say I don't
understand these guys they're crazy what could God
want anymore from me I donate to Israel,
I donate to charities, I do good works
surely with this God I'm more than acceptable,
what is this guy saying I'm a candidate
for eternal hell but that he's willing to
say it, and that he's saying it with
a broken heart and compassion compels me to
consider what seems to be at its face
totally absurd and maybe that's the beginning of
a jealousy that this Gentile knows he's going
to be blown away by me a few
of my erudite words and the power of
my personality I can dismiss them like nothing
and chew him up and spit him out
and he's willing to suffer that indignity and
that humiliation at my cost to bring me
this ridiculous message of hell death, salvation I've
got to consider this, if that man is
willing to go that far, but how many
Jews have ever been confronted with that predicament
of Gentiles willing to go that far, where
they go is not to the Jew but
around him and circumvent him, and they'd rather
go to Bali and some other exotic place
in the world and there to communicate the
message that omit this Jew who is right
in their midst I think we can safely
say and it's been true in my experience
that those believers, Christian Gentile believers who have
a propensity and a sensitivity to the Jew,
this kind of discernment, perception and heart are
those that are markedly spiritual I received my
baptism in the Holy Spirit not in my
Pentecostal church or in any other place where
I sought it I received it on a
farm room floor in Northern California in the
fellowship of a band of Gentile saints who
were distinguished by their love of the Jew
the study of Hebrew, their visits to Israel
and their continual prayer and intercession on behalf
of their people.
In that environment I received the baptism in
the Holy Spirit, but never in the Pentecostal
church where I was part so my observation
over the years, in fact I said to
this people why is it that you have
this affection for me, and this willingness to
be sacrificial, and this love for the Jew?
Their answer was something like they're God's people,
and to the degree that we love God,
we love what He loves and so they
express it so when I was in Spokane,
Washington on my way to Canada from conference
the woman at whose home we were staying,
precious saint, said we have a beautiful synagogue
in our community would you care to see?
Oh yes I'd love to she drives us
up and into the parking lot and around
and out as if we had seen the
synagogue.
I said sis what are you doing?
I want to go in and we went
in and spent hours walking through the hallways
and on the wall are the pictures through
the years the bar mitzvah group of 1915
the feast of Esther and the costumes they
wear against Haman in 1923 and the rabbi's
class and the women's fellowship and you went
around the room looking at the whole history
of the Jewish community of Spokane, Washington then
you come into the sanctuary and you see
the precious beam of a platform and the
ark where the Torah is kept and the
architecture, the beauty aesthetically is touching and then
you start talking to the secretary the rabbi
is out and one word leads to another.
Finally I left him a copy of Ben
Israel before I we left the community the
following day and when I came into Canada
and my first message was have you considered
the Jews of your own community?
Have you visited their synagogue?
Have you sought to establish a relationship?
Have you shown yourself friendly?
Have you begun to make them just the
initial and elementary contact by which the message
of the gospel can in time be expressed?
The next day I was called to a
special hearing by the founder of the conference
and other of the leaders and charged with
a lack of brokenness and anointing for the
first time in my history because the subject
with which I opened was the obligation of
the Christians to take a significant active witness
in and know their own Jewish community.
They thought that that message was so irrelevant
and so uninspired and so out from God
that I was being confronted for the want
of brokenness and anointing and that's the same
conference in which the lord at the end
brought the message on the tent of Shem
that God is waiting for Japheth the Gentile
European peoples of the world to humble themselves
to enter that tent and they cannot enter
it without bowing to the centrality of the
Jew Shem that God in his wisdom has
established by which the Gentile is to receive
the redemptive blessedness that can only be communicated
by this a special people and this was
so offensive a message that it triggered the
worst backlash I have ever known in my
41 years in the lord by responsible Christians.
I was struck in the chest by the
same man with his Bibles in his hand
as I left the building that day after
that last message and he cried out cats
you arrogant Jew he was so offended by
the requirement to bow to enter the tent
of Shem and came back to Ben Israel
thinking here I would refine a cordial reception
and understanding of the prophetic thing that had
taken place and found there was as much
marked hostility here as there was elsewhere because
there was something intransigent in the Gentile about
the necessity to bow and to acknowledge the
priority of the Jew of Shem in the
ordination of God and in his wisdom so
one last thing before we break my most
recent message in Germany where Juergen is from
and he may actually have been there when
I spoke it at Bad Nauheim was the
issue of the gospel to the Jew to
the church of Germany because the issue of
the gospel is the issue of the church
the church that relegates the gospel to the
dustbin and doesn't actively know and promulgate it
loses its character as church the church's function
and form is tied in with this unwelcomed
message that's foolish but in Germany to bring
the message to the Jew where there's now
an influx of Jews one to three hundred
thousand which is one of the astonishments of
the last days that Jews would come back
to that nation that has been there undoing
and come back in such remarkable numbers largely
Russian Jews because of the great benefits that
they obtain in housing and other allowances that
in fact makes the average German envious that
such special consideration is given them but it
charges the church in Germany with a new
obligation to promote the gospel to the Jew
in Germany but as a German how dare
we bring this offensive message to Jews having
so recently been the instrument of their undoing
and talk about death if it's a death
for a Gentile to bring the gospel to
the Jew it's a double death for the
German Gentile to bring that message in view
of recent German history against the Jew and
my message was if you'll not bring it
however much however great the requirement you forsake
the issue of the church itself, the church
will decline by your unwillingness and the vacuum
that will be created by the failure of
the church to be the church will invite
again the same dark forces that came in
the 1930's as Nazism and perverted the entire
nation and made it the engine of Jewish
annihilation and a threat to world civilization itself.
You'll see that same thing reenacted maybe in
double measure if you'll fail now in your
first obligation to the Jew even in Germany
as Germans.
That was a searing radical word if you
want to hear it I think that we
have the message on tape so the issue
hasn't changed the issue is in fact made
more radical because of recent history but it
doesn't in any way lessen the remarkable mandate
and priority of God spoken at the first
by Paul and as valid now as then
though more difficult now than then but still
the issue of the church and an issue
that can only be met by those who
are sons so Lord break us up my
God we've nodded in agreement but that's as
far as we have gone and the depth
of Paul's statement Lord has never really penetrated
our depths it certainly has not activated us
so as to do it and for what
other purpose is the word given but it's
doing and so the church has lost much
by its indifference and its neglect it's fearful
and easily intimidated it has no confidence that
this message is indeed the power of God
unto salvation it has been unwilling to test
it with that most radical test that the
Jew is now and in every generation so
Lord if we're going to be the church
that glorifies God for which creation is groaning
and waiting this cannot be omitted bring it
to our attention my God as we have
never before considered it and not one of
us is absolved because we come from Dinky
-Doo Iowa or some other place where there's
hardly a Jew in existence if you look
carefully enough you'll find him and if you
pray fervently enough God will provide him so
that it's not an abstract issue but a
real bless your servants Lord and as they
take your word to heart as you lead
us into the depths of this remarkable book
seal this Lord and let nothing fall to
the ground we thank you and give you
praise in Jesus name, Amen