And we don't understand, Lord, why it is
that you come to send to us and
use us yet as vessels in thy house,
Lord.
But we ask, Lord, as much as it
is possible that we might be beside ourselves
tonight, that truly it is the messenger of
the covenant who speaks, Lord, the Holy One
of Israel, the angel of the Lord, even
the Spirit of Truth, precious God.
Thank you for such a night as this,
Lord, for such a taste of thy glory.
Make it holy as thou art.
Change us by it.
We'll thank you and praise you that you
have ordained it.
Fulfill now your own heart in it, Lord,
for your kingdom and for your name's sake.
In thy holy name, Jesus, we pray.
Amen.
Well, I don't know if I can explain
to you why it is I'm dissolving.
When I first saw some of the promotional
material for this weekend and that the word
prophet had been used, I had a suspicion
that it was used as a gimmick, just
a little flourish that might intrigue people to
come and hear who would not otherwise come.
Whether that was the motive or not, I
doubt it, but I believe that God is
honoring that reference.
And I have such a sense of the
magnitude of this day and of this night
as being holy history, that God is speaking
not only into this congregation but beyond it
because blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord and blessed are they
who receive him who comes in the name
of the Lord.
If you knew how close we came to
missing this and the somewhat panicky, concerned phone
call from your pastor back to where we
were, wondering if we had gone sour because
of some of the reports that had circulated,
and then the necessary cancellation of my coming
here some months ago because of a true
spirit of submittedness to those to whom my
life is related.
And I winced over that because I wanted
the opportunity to assure the pastor that there
was no real need for alarm and that
I was not going to have it.
But I just had to trust the Lord
that as we allowed that commitment to fall
into the dust of death, he would resurrect
it in due season.
And he has.
The word that came before out of the
congregation about changing us into his image was
virtually syllable for syllable, the very word that
we prayed at the back of the platform
before coming out tonight.
Everything is so lending itself to the unfolding
of the purpose of God for this night.
And what is on my heart to speak
has to do with the spirit of truth.
And I want to turn to two texts
tonight.
One is an Old Testament text in 1
Samuel 15.
Samuel also said unto Saul, The Lord sent
me to anoint thee to be king over
his people, over Israel.
Now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of
the words of the Lord.
Do you love that beginning?
Doesn't it have a ring to it in
something so Hebraic?
It goes beyond mere listening.
It's not just an auditory experience.
Hearken thou, not just to the words, but
to the voice of the words of the
Lord.
Such a calling.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember
that which Amalek did to Israel, how he
had laid wait for him in the way
when he came up from Egypt.
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy
all that they have and spare them not.
But slay both man and woman, infant and
suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
I tell you children that at the reading
of this one verse we ought to fall
flat on our faces.
This is either some grievous typographical error, or
it is an insight into the depths of
the nature of our God that shatters every
saccharine sentimental distortion, every projection of Him in
our image, that we just have to grovel
on the floor and let our eyes roll
back into our skull and spittle form at
the corners of our mouth and say that
we don't understand such a God as this.
Do you understand what he's calling a king
to perform?
Wholesale and unremitting slaughter?
The God of mercy?
The God of love?
Or total annihilation of a Canaanitish people?
Every impulse in us would shriek in protest
to be obedient to such a requirement as
this.
So Saul gathered the people together and numbered
them.
The fifth verse, Saul came to a city
of Amalek and laid wait in the valley.
The seventh verse, Saul smote the Amalekites from
Havilah until thou comest to shore that is
over against Egypt.
And he took Agag, the king of the
Amalekites, alive and utterly destroyed all the people
at the edge of the sword.
But Saul and the people spared Agag and
the best of the sheep and of the
oxen and of the fatlings and the lambs
and all that was good and would not
utterly destroy them.
But everything that was vile and refuse, that
they destroyed utterly.
May I just make the statement that the
Lord breathed upon me in the car coming
down tonight?
That partial obedience is disobedience.
And a partial truth is a lie.
And if you can sense the spirit of
God that is hovering over this congregation tonight.
The absolute God.
The radical God.
The God of all totality.
Even the spirit of truth which the world
cannot receive.
You can hear the cry of God calling
us to his holiness and to his impeccable
standard.
As you can see in the wavering vacillation
of a king.
Partially obedient only, a picture of God's present
people.
From whom the kingdom was wrenched.
You'll be brought more nearly to the place
to see as God sees.
And I'm eternally grateful for the definition of
truth which was given by Jesse Penn Lewis.
Truth is everything as God sees it.
And there is no requirement for us more
pressing for this hour than to see as
God sees.
Let's let this, the word of the Lord
and the voice of his speaking sink into
our hearing.
How would we have responded to so devastating
an invitation to be ruthless in utterly destroying
and sparing us?
Or we might have considered with our rational
minds that the men and women would have
to be destroyed.
The cup of their iniquity was full.
They were given to the most gross kinds
of erotic sin in the name of religion
and of God.
But why the infants and the suckling?
Surely they're innocent and were not stained by
the sin of their parents.
Surely there's some redemptive hope for these children.
But this is the God who is not
required to explain.
At what age is a child no longer
an infant?
And if we by our own judgment had
to say, well, if a child is five,
six or seven and had sight of these
filthy and erotic practices and somehow the leaven
of that corruption had already passed into his
being and he would in turn communicate that
to the children of Israel, it needs be
that he be slaughtered.
But how about at the age of four?
And if not four, how about three?
And if not three, two?
Where do you draw the line by human
thinking?
And God says, utterly destroy and spare not.
Okay, Lord, men and women, infants and sucklings,
camel, sheep, oxen and asses.
Lord, aren't those animals?
Surely they could not have been corrupted by
the practice of these human beings.
To hear the cry and the bellow of
these dumb brutes as we lay the axe
and the sword to them wrenches our very
hearts, Lord.
Why the necessity for that?
God is not required to explain.
He's only an absolute God.
And maybe if we want to conjecture, we
could say that many of these animals were
used in these filthy sexual practices.
But it's not for us to examine.
It's only for us to do.
It's interesting to review then the obedience of
the king that began in the ninth verse
with the word, but.
I wonder in how many instances of our
life and our obedience before God it begins
with the word, but.
But Saul and the people spared Agag, and
the best of the sheep and of the
oxen and of the fatlings and lambs and
all that was good and would not utterly
destroy them.
But everything that was vile and refuse that
they destroyed utterly.
Then came the word of the Lord unto
Samuel, saying, It repenteth me that I have
set up Saul to be a king, for
he has turned back from following me and
hath not performed my commandments.
And it grieved Samuel, and he cried unto
the Lord all night.
And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in
the morning.
It was told Samuel, saying, Saul came in
Carmel, and behold, he set him up a
place and has gone about and passed on
and gone down to Gilgal.
And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said
unto him, Blessed be thou, the Lord, I
have performed the commandments of the Lord.
I guess then as now, Saul had the
batting average mentality.
Listen, if a man comes up to bat,
and he gets three hits out of ten,
then he's a candidate for the Hall of
Fame.
I've obeyed the commandments of the Lord.
I've done most of what he has asked.
Not a sense of a grieved conscience.
Not a sense of the failure to obey
God.
Even a kind of self-exaltation and flattery
and self-congratulatory spirit.
I've obeyed the commandments of the Lord.
How much like us, who are not in
any kind of grievous sin, and are more
or less hitting three out of ten, or
five out of ten, may I say nine
out of ten, who would be staggered and
stopped in our tracks to be reminded in
James, that if we have failed in one
point of the law, we have failed in
all.
Praise God that the revelation of the meaning
of that came from a holy man, who
reminded us that nine times out of ten,
the will of God may be that it
has been perfectly coincident with our own.
We wanted to do what God wanted, but
there came one time when we did not,
and there we refused obedience, and elevated our
opinion and our desire above his.
Therefore we all along were rebels.
We were all along disobedient.
We were all along reserving to ourselves a
final judgment on whether we would obey or
disobey the requirement of the Lord, depending on
whether it suited our fancy.
And it was not revealed to us, because
nine times out of ten, we happened to
agree with him.
It's total obedience, children, or it's disobedience.
Partial obedience is disobedience, and partial truth is
a lie.
I have performed the commandments of the Lord,
Samuel said, what meanest then this bleeding of
the sheep in my ears, and the lowing
of the oxen which I hear.
Oh, I can't describe to you the ungainly
experiences that men like myself have coming up
to varieties of pulpits.
Today was easier than most.
You're a blessed and you're a beautiful congregation
of God's people.
That's not always so.
And sometimes we'll come up on a platform
and look out at the sea of faces
and groan the overwhelming grayness of God's people.
What their faces betray unbeknownst to them.
The corporate and collective personality which congregations have.
The pearl that is over many of the
so-called spirit-filled congregations of God's people.
It is the visual expression of the thing
which the prophet Samuel acknowledged.
It's the lowing of the oxen and the
bleeding of the sheep.
It's the evidence of the disobedience registered in
the faces and the corporate spirit of God's
people.
It's the truth which is partial and not
absolute.
I want you to turn to the book
of Acts, and I believe it's the fifth
chapter, for a strange apostolic episode which we
might find it hard to understand in our
generation.
Same God, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
It is only we who have changed.
It speaks of a certain man named Ananias
who with his wife Sapphira sold a piece
of property.
And with his wife's knowledge and connivance, he
kept back and wrongfully appropriated some of the
proceeds, bringing a part only and putting it
at the feet of the apostles.
But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled
your heart that you should lie to and
attempt to deceive the Holy Spirit?
And should a violation of your promise which
was secretly inappropriate to your own use part
of the price from the sale of the
land?
As long as it remained unsold, was it
not still your own?
And even after it sold, was not the
money at your disposal and under your control?
Why then is it that you have proposed
and purposed in your heart to do this
thing?
How could you have the heart to do
such a deed?
You have not simply lied to men, and
playing false and showing yourself utterly deceitful, but
to God.
Upon hearing these words, Ananias fell down and
died, and great dread and terror took possession
of all who heard of it.
The same God who wrenched a kingdom from
a partially obedient king is the same God
who executed a man in an apostolic hour
who submitted a thing in part to make
to stand for the whole.
If you can sense the hour in which
we stand and where we are in God's
holy history and that we are being restored
and returned to the apostolic standard described in
the book of Acts and that the speakings
of God which we heard today and hearing
now are a preparation for this restoration.
If you could understand that.
And I would ask you in the same
breath, how many of you have a heart
to see this apostolic standard returned?
How many are groaning, waiting to see again
the manifest demonstration of the glory of God?
Of the signs and wonders that shook cities
of multitudes both of men and women who
were added to the church daily without so
much as a single gimmick or bumper sticker.
How many of us would be wanting to
live in a sense of awe and dread
and fear at the holiness of a God
who does not keep from slaying those who
seek to deceive the Holy Spirit?
Where are the fishermen of our generation, untutored,
who immediately discern the spirit of a lie?
And how many of us in a life
situation if someone came to bring the handsome
proceeds even in parts would readily fall upon
their necks and hug them to our bosoms
and install them as deacons and elders were
so magnificent a gesture as that.
And not one with discern what Peter the
fisherman discerns.
Jesus said he's going to send us a
comforter.
Even the spirit of truth which the world
cannot receive.
And John the Baptist was told by the
Father that that one upon whom he would
see the spirit descending and abiding as a
dove he it is who is the Messiah
and the Holy One of Israel.
He was not to know him by the
flesh.
And God is waiting again lo these two
thousand years for a son to emerge out
of the waters of absolute separation from the
world and its spirit before whom the heavens
again can part and a spirit descend and
abide as a dove and a voice ring
out again from heaven saying this is my
beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
Note that that statement was made before Jesus
ever did anything.
Character before charisma.
I don't know about other birds children but
I'm told that a dove is a very
peculiar bird.
It doesn't have the peripheral vision of other
birds.
It is single-eyed only.
It will not roost and rest in any
old place.
And we know that when God's judgment came
on all flesh and he poured out a
baptism of death upon the earth that Noah
sent out two birds and one never came
back.
It was a raven that can roost on
any kind of crutch anything that floats any
flotsam and jetsam is okay thank you but
not so the holy dove of God.
May I share a little Holy Spirit suspicion?
All of the celebration of the dove in
our charismatic generation all of the battles on
platforms all of the euphoric and good things
that are spoken in the name of the
unity of body of Christ.
I'm just wondering sometimes which bird that actually
is and whether it's not actually a dove
at all but some other kind of pigeon
dropping and making its droppings on the cross.
May I say that if there is no
abode and dwelling place for the holy dove
of God that it's not only the spirit
of power that departs and the spirit of
love but also the spirit of truth and
that this one spirit is preeminently and foremost
and firstly the spirit of truth before it
is the spirit of power.
When it goes, everything goes.
When it abides, everything abides.
And we have all the leaden experience the
memory of the distaste in our mouths when
we have come from services and various other
kinds of Christian activity in full gospel sense
and have had some kind of instinctive and
intuitive sense that we could not articulate that
in the absence of the holy dove of
God men have gesticulated and pounded pulpits and
sung weary chorus after chorus seeking to fabricate
and to create some sense of the presence
of the things that only the dove of
God himself can bring.
A half hour later the wife of Ananias
came in or three hours it says not
having learned of what had happened then Peter
said to her tell me, did you sell
the land for so much?
Yes, she said, for so much.
Then Peter said to her how could you
two have agreed and conspired together to try
to deceive the spirit of the Lord?
Listen, the feet of those who have buried
your husband are at the door and they
will carry you out also.
And instantly she fell down at his feet
and died and the young men entering found
her dead and they carried her out and
buried her beside her husband.
I have a suspicion that until this generation
maybe even this hour the church of God
more than it has realized has already been
carried out seek first and it shall not
be raised to life in the apostolic grandeur
and power of that first generation until the
spirit of truth can find a place to
rest in the lives of God's people.
If partial obedience is disobedience then partial truth
is a lie.
Something that is offered in part only to
be made to appear as the whole is
a lie.
It's the whole truth and nothing but the
truth or it's a lie.
I have not yet recovered from the experience
of a Sunday morning only some months ago
one of those strange occasions when I have
a Sunday morning off and I was taken
by a Jewish brother to hear his pastor
of whom he was so proud being a
spirit-filled pastor in a staid denomination.
I remember sitting up in the balcony and
as is my custom I take a look
at those about me notorious people watcher that
I am and I had such a despairing
sense that as I looked at the married
couple sitting side by side that the better
word to describe their relationship than marriage was
truth that there was some kind of unspoken
agreement you don't push me, I don't push
you let's share these common facilities and make
the best of a sorry situation.
Where was the glory of God?
And as my eyes traveled up to the
farthermost reaches of the auditorium there were their
kids wearing the hip-hugging clothes and the
shirts unbuttoned to the navel the chokers and
jewelry around the neck long-haired, stringy, creepy
-looking kids jiving each other and poking each
other in the ribs with their elbows and
having a ball wholly indifferent to what was
going on below pagans in the house of
God and my spirit within me winced and
then finally my eye traveled down below to
the man at the pulpit carrying on baptized
in the Holy Spirit I had the strangest
experience I don't know quite how to describe
it my ear was hearing technically true words
but my spirit told me it was a
lie you say, how can that be?
Was the message scriptural?
Yes Was it doctrinally sound?
Yes Could it be false in any way?
No How then can the truth be made
a lie?
Easy Because while his mouth was quoting scriptures
his spirit was saying cool it, don't take
me seriously don't worry, don't get alarmed don't
panic no one's expecting for you to do
this don't you remember our unspoken agreement?
I don't push you, you don't push me
this is our ceremonial Sunday hour this is
my requirement to give you some kind of
a sermon and that's your requirement to hear
it but no one intends that you should
be changed by it so don't panic the
spirit of the speaking was a lie or
I could give you multitudinous illustrations just in
the course of these days in an assembly
church we're pleased the Lord to have me
which was not on my schedule sitting on
the platform groaning over what was before my
sight in that congregation despairing of any prospect
of true communication we might have come from
opposite planets and a young youth minister was
called upon to pray in the opening of
the service and when I heard his prayer
my spirit sank you say what was wrong
with it Art?
only this one thing it was a performance
it was a grand prayer in the Pentecostal
manner but it was not true I don't
know about you but I'd rather have someone
who chokes and splutters is awkward as all
get out who croaks and groans and gets
something out of his heart and spirit something
limp and feeble in terms of human eloquence
but let it be authentically true than the
most masterful performance of men in the grand
Pentecostal manner anything that is offered to appear
to be something that is not is a
lie how many times have our spirits cringed
at so called charismatic functions when we have
sensed a spirit of manipulation when men coax
and goad and move audiences soullessly and psychically
so determined for a happy meeting and a
successful meeting that will have every appearance of
being somehow a night filled with the splendor
of the spirit that you think that you're
in some kind of free ring circus all
for the pain of watching men leap from
their seats to get to the microphone for
fear that if there be one moment silence
between the one leaving and the one coming
that somehow the audience will be bored and
distracted no accident that I've used the word
audience rather than congregation the Holy Spirit as
a dove is waiting to find a son
upon whom it can abide and the spirit
of manipulation is eminently alive it is the
antithesis of faith that trusts God that in
our foolishness and in our weakness and in
our nothingness that whatever it pleases the Lord
to perform by his spirit shall be done
and if it pleases him for his glory
not to be revealed we're willing to suffer
that disappointment than any human substitution oh children
the spirit of the world is the spirit
of the life and nowhere is it more
painful than in the church of God God
gave me a dex of revelation one night
not too long ago in Germany in Bavaria
in the hotel used by Hitler for his
headquarters when I went to sleep that night
utterly caught to the core where down below
was the most farcical charismatic kind of meeting
that one can imagine I thought I was
at some kind of high school pep rally
it was gross and manipulative every kind of
human substitution for the Holy Dove of God
I was then in my sixth week of
absence from home, wife and family and may
I make a true statement it gets a
little hard around that time for God's mobile
servants there's a craving and a yearning for
which Satan has been waiting and he has
sharpened his knives and we are cruelly sought
after and I had a night of such
gross reveling in desire and lusting that made
my soul sick that I was capable of
that kind of reverie I hated it but
I couldn't leave it I despised it and
I loved it are you being disillusioned?
good it was a terrible darkness and in
the midst of that darkness and that swept
and gritty night there broke forth a little
tincture of light in the abyss of darkness
and I believed that God showed me something
about the anatomy of lust that lust is
not merely sensual gratification that is only the
cloak in which something far more devious hides
that our filthiest reveries the power which we
have been unable to break that has affected
and corrupted our marriages and our lives and
hovers in our imaginings is not mere sensual
gratification but the desire to manipulate another it's
the last refuge of the scoundrel who wants
to assert self and see someone crumple by
the imposition of that power it's the spirit
of manipulation and it's alive I can't tell
you the emancipation that has come to my
life in marriage since God has shown me
this the release the heat is off and
God has continued to unfold both to my
wife and to myself the degree to which
we were using manipulative practices in our own
marriage and life by innuendo, by suggestion by
the look of one's face by the inflection
of a voice we can manipulate the other
as by screams to get them to accommodate
our desire I knew well how to pout
well how to look like a stricken and
disappointed husband well how to give an appearance
of woundedness in a way that I know
was calculated to bring a certain desired effect
in my wife's behavior and what God showed
me is that that spirit has penetrated through
and through Christendom that we have become masters
of manipulation as I have learned by a
word and by an inflection by syrupy crescendo
of our voice to move and to manipulate
the people of God as a substitute for
the work of the Holy Dove of God
it's an appearance that's made to stand for
something which is not and the only alternative
is a terrifying radical cleaving to God by
faith both in our marriages and in the
intimacy and in our congregations trusting the Dove
of God to bring the path to things
that are true that are authentic that are
real truth is everything as God sees it
our gestures our faces the manipulative tones of
our voices the right things with the wrong
motives it's right in part but it's a
lie it's got to be the truth and
all the truth or it's not the truth
at all and how many of our evangelistic
activities and organizations who have true callings and
true purposes use devious means to obtain them
my God if I shall see one more
newsletter felt tipped underlined I shall shriek and
be destroyed one more crying of wolf in
order to elicit and to jerk from God's
people another dollar for a good cause the
world and the spirit of the world which
is the spirit of a lie can mix
its ends and its means but not so
the people of the kingdom our means must
be in accordance with his ends and I
say this not as any kind of boasting
but as a description of what God is
beginning to do in some portions of the
body and shall require increasingly of us all
that he has had us to desist from
including in our seasonal four time a year
newsletter a return envelope you say God what's
wrong with that don't you list your needs
in your newsletter no if you have needs
you better believe it fifty degrees below zero
we're in a life and death situation and
I said to those children in Minnesota do
you guys realize what you're doing every ministry
uses envelopes it's a convenience for God's people
yes they said God but it's also a
subtle manipulation if the spirit of God will
bid them give they'll exert themselves to find
and to address and to stamp their own
envelopes thank you and if they will not
we are prepared to perish and may I
say children that if you'll not die for
the truth we're not going to have it
truth is costly do you love the truth
so much that you would die for it
and suffer for it and experience reproach for
it and misunderstanding for it will you speak
the truth in love he's given us every
provision for godliness and life and we have
been cowardly to use it speak the truth
in love confess your faults one to another
and we bottle it up and suppress it
and keep it down and make a brave
appearance of a spirituality which is not yet
ours making a pot to appear as a
whole we've been carried out more than we
realize it feet first I remember as a
young believer excuse me for being so anecdotal
and you may have heard this before it
bears repeating how I had such a troublesome
son my son David my first born what
a chip off the old block what an
egotist always at the center of things always
got to be seen always that little show
of I would have been such a saint
if I didn't have a son like that
or is it that I will be such
a saint because I have a son like
that bugger all he knows to mess it
up his timing is exquisite just before I'm
getting prepared for service I'm getting all groomed
and revved up spiritually getting sanctimonious preparing my
spirit to be God's man to deliver God's
word and pow he blows it and pow
goes my temper and pow he gets cuffed
in the put and I go grumbling and
letting hearted trying still to hold together the
shambles of my life and be God's man
may I say something I think God has
winked in times past isn't he gracious such
love such long suffering patience towards us I
think there was a recent hour when God
allowed a disparity between our lives as ministers
and as men but increasingly and in this
hour he's insisting that the messenger and his
message are one the ephod and the holy
breastplate was bound to the body of the
priest there was no easy put on and
take off for convenience sake you weren't one
thing at the pulpit and another thing was
your feet up on the coffee table watching
the box with your tie loose the man
increasingly is the message well I remember going
to a service at the assemblies church that
I was attending in those days in New
York being trained for Jewish missionary work and
sure enough my David pulled his little stick
lock his little stunt and he got under
my skin and I let him have it
pow and the last words I heard as
my wife crashed the door behind me go
tell him what a great saint you are
pow and I remember driving to church letting
hard at justifying myself well he had it
coming he needed this and he's been cutting
up too often and if he'll not discipline
then I'll have to and but my heart
was like red and I came to the
service it was late and I took a
seat in the pew and it was testimony
time and yes I want to praise the
lord this week and I want to say
pow remember those times and the moment I
sat down in the pew I heard a
still small voice Art I began to
break out in a sweat I had hot
spells and cold spells my knees were knocking
I said but lord but but and finally
despite myself I found my hand going up
and there was my precious pastor oh brother
Katz yes he'll bless the congregation yes brother
Katz you are super saint and I
said pastor since I've come to the church
tonight and I've been sitting in the pew
and I've never seen this done supposed
to be done or when it's appropriate but
I feel that I must confess a fault
what is it and I told him that
I had been behaving toward my son in
a way that was let alone as a
child of God let alone as one called
to his service it was utterly humiliating I
wish that the floor could have opened and
swallowed me as I changed colors and I
perspired and my voice broke and creaked and
when I finished for the first time that
I and as long as I had known
that pastor he was silent and didn't know
what to say hallelujah and as we waited
in that terrible quiet another woman at the
other side of the congregation got up and
she confessed a fault and I don't remember
what happened after that I think that we
went to prayer and the glory of God
fell I don't know how long we were
lost in God in such a glorious sense
of his presence there never was a message
that night and when it was over and
the pastor again found his voice he said
look what happened when two were obedient to
the word of God we experienced the spirit
of revival look to God we were all
obedient Samuel also said unto Saul the Lord
sent me to anoint thee to be king
over his people over Israel now therefore hearken
thou unto the voice of the words of
the Lord children hearken thou to the voice
of the words of the Lord there is
a spirit of God that is brooding and
wanting to dwell and to abide with us
even the spirit of truth which the world
cannot receive and that same spirit is also
the spirit of power and little wonder that
in the same book of Acts in the
fifth chapter when the whole church was appalled
and great awe and terror and dread seized
them and all others who heard of these
things by the hands of the apostles numerous
and startling signs and wonders were being performed
among the people and none of those who
of their not of their number dared to
join and associate with them but the people
held them in high regard and praised and
made much of them and more and more
were being added to the Lord those who
believed and acknowledged Jesus as their Savior clouds
both of men and of women so that
they even kept carrying out the sick in
the streets and placing them on couches and
sleeping pads in the hope that as Peter
passed by at late at least a shadow
might fall on some of them what an
age what splendor what glory where there was
the discernment and the razor edge awareness of
the spirit of truth in the church this
is the standard to which God seeks to
restore His church the last verse of 1
John 5 says and we know that the
Son of God is come and hath given
us an understanding that we may know Him
that is true and we are in Him
that is true even the Son, Jesus Christ
this is the true God and eternal life
true, true, true in the
6th verse of that same chapter the last
portion and it is the spirit that beareth
witness because the spirit is truth I love
what this brother spoke tonight about judgment coming
to the house of God it's not a
cruel God who is pulverizing us and delighting
it's a God who knows that the spirit
as a dove must be restored to His
corporate Son in a spirit without measure in
a place where it can find an abode
where no lie is partial obedience is disobedience
and partial truth is a lie it's the
whole truth and nothing but the truth God
is looking for people who will be true
in their speaking true in their faces true
in their voices true in their gestures free
from all manipulative practices whose motives are in
keeping with His ends that the Holy Spirit
even the spirit of truth might abide with
us that multitudes both of men and women
might believe let's bow our heads and ask
God by this same spirit by the revelation
of His light to show us where we
have been partially obedient only oh we've destroyed
the men and the women but we have
spared King Ajag and the best of the
sheep and the oxen we've destroyed all that
was utterly despicable and refuse and waste but
we may have saved that which we thought
is good and may I say that in
God's sight nothing of the flesh is good
there's a total God calling us to a
total obedience and a total truth He wants
absent from our life the lowering of the
oxen and the bleeding of the sheep the
grayness of our faces the wooden appearances of
our marriages as truces rather than as glories
He wants restored to the church the spirit
of truth hallelujah precious God shine your light
into the darkest recesses hidden places of our
life mighty God may we be as rigorous
in the searching out of the leaven of
our lives as Jews are in their practice
in preparing the house for Passover may we
begin as they with the attic and going
from top to bottom through our minds and
through our imaginations through our memories and through
our thought life down through every vestibule and
nook and cranny of our hearts our stomach,
our gut and down into the basement the
dark and the hidden things may we search
out and remove all hummus, all leaven for
a little leaven leavens the whole lump show
us mighty God the things that are compromised
the things that are partial the things that
are offered as a whole when they really
are part only show us the deceptive appearances
which we allow to stand for a truth
which is not quite yet show us where
we have been silent where we should have
spoken where we have refrained from confessing our
faults one to another and not spoken the
truth in love thank you for the blood
of the Lamb Jesus that maketh clean Lord
purge us purge your house see our hearts
Lord and understand that we didn't understand how
radical is your requirement we saw ourselves as
heads and shoulders above the standard of the
world and yet did not realize that we
were obedient and part only help us to
walk even as you walked search us and
purge us and restore mighty God to the
Son who is now emerging even the Spirit
of God without measure hear the confessions of
your people sitting in their pews this night
and where so ever they are in the
hearing of this word as they name mighty
God the places of compromise of deceit of
manipulation of mixture