So precious God, we come tonight, thanking you
for your faithfulness, Lord, in all these weeks,
the unfolding of your great apostolic and priestly
heart to us, Lord, so merciful in the
way that you've looked upon our frames and
know that we are as dust, Lord, and
to give it to us in installments, and
to bring us from where we were, my
God, to where you would have us to
be, to put before us heroic challenges, my
God, monumental things.
You are the Alpha and the Omega of
these days.
You gave this occasion, my God, no man
sought it.
You gave the beginning, and now we ask
also that you give your conclusion.
We look to you, my God, so grateful
for the anointing that was alluded to tonight,
for we know, my God, without that holy
anointing oil poured out from the throne of
God, everything is hay, wood, and stubble.
Your anointing is your very life, my God,
the essence of your being, that vibrant, life
-giving, and penetrating quality.
It has nothing to do with deserving, my
God, or having put sufficient time in prayer
as to warrant it.
It's a gracious gift unto the church, to
men, and we ask it tonight, Lord, that
your word might go forth to kindle something
in our hearts, and to melt them, and
to work a concluding work in these days.
Be with my mouth now, by your Spirit,
and be with our hearing, our hearts, and
our responses.
I will thank you and give you the
praise for all of your great faithfulness to
us through these days, and the days that
are before us.
For Jesus' sake, in his name we pray.
Amen.
Well, I think this is the first in
12 weeks where I've come up with only
a Bible, and only one Bible, no supplementary
reading material, no outline, nothing, just the Bible.
I guess I was banking on a very
small turnout tonight, and we would just kind
of draw our chairs up in a little
circle, and I would whisper intimate things, so
maybe we'll still do that.
I can't quite get away from last week's
theme, that in the last analysis, when the
smoke clears, for all the great principles of
the kingdom, and all of the heady, apostolic
themes that God has been sounding, that in
the last analysis, what it reduces itself to,
and what is at its heart, is the
personal relationship between the believer and his God.
And that is the foundation, and that is
the apostolic thing.
And when we have lost that, and we're
just marketing principles of the kingdom, or government,
or divine order, or some of the kinds
of things that we think to have apostolically
majored upon, it will be false.
It's not an agenda, or a set of
principles in which God would have us to
be inducted, but into a whole mode and
manner of being, and thinking, and relating.
So, I've been reading through the Gospels.
If I didn't share this with you, the
Lord has kind of wrapped my knuckles, somewhere
in the course of these 12 weeks, to
show me that I myself have been overlooking
the true foundation.
Paradoxically, speaking on apostolic foundations of the faith,
and neglecting it myself.
For there's no other foundation that can be
laid than Christ Jesus.
And it's not the principles, or even the
apostolic epistles, as precious as they are.
It's the person of Jesus himself.
And that my intense Jewish zeal, had kind
of disguised a neglect of my relationship to
the person of Jesus.
And that as a matter of fact, there
was something residual in my Jewishness, and in
the monotheistic emphasis that we Jews have had,
that did not make sufficient room for him.
And therefore, something was neglected for the want
of that relationship in my own being.
Namely, the humanity of God.
God in the flesh, that would affect one's
own humaneness.
And the brothers who brought me this very
precious insight and word, also commended to me
that I needed to major on the Gospels.
And not leap over it as if it's
kid stuff.
Preliminary.
And that the heavy weight stuff are the
apostolic writings.
So I have been devotionally reading the Gospels.
Every morning and every evening.
Through these weeks.
And being reintroduced to Jesus.
And finding precious things in the Gospels that
I had not seen in previous readings.
And I want to begin tonight with just
where I presently am in the Gospel of
John.
Beginning in chapter 14.
And the Gospel of John, I don't have
a word.
I mean, wow.
It is, well, it was in the Gospel
of John that the Lord gave me that
initial revelation.
23 years ago.
A deck of a trance steamer en route
to Greece, which was my spiritual homeland.
Jew by birth, Greek by conviction.
The humanist, the philosophical nut going to the
land of Plato and Aristotle and Socrates.
And rightly on that journey from Italy to
Greece.
The Greek book, the New Testament came into
my hands for the first time.
Never willing to have opened it in times
past.
So arrogantly contemptuous of any one book that
could be purported to be the answer.
But now I was ready.
Through the dealings of God and through a
life that had come to its own unhappy
and pathetic conclusion.
As a headstrong, self-willed, self-righteous.
Jewish man.
And in the very first reading in the
Gospel of John.
In the episode of the woman taken in
the act of adultery.
In the one statement out of the lips
of Jesus.
Let him who is without sin cast the
first stone.
That sentence came up off the page.
Penetrated my eyes, my brain.
My whole body began violently to tremble.
And instead of stopping and lodging in my
mind, which I thought is the seat of
life.
The false altar.
It went down into my heart like a
sharp sword and cleaned me in two.
And I was just left a trembling halt
on the deck of that ship.
In a moment of time with the absolute
certitude.
In that moment that there is a living
God.
I'm reading his book.
And Jesus says who it claims to be.
So you can understand why I have a
special endearment.
For the word of God and for the
Gospel of John in particular.
And it's inexhaustible.
As is true of all the scripture.
To keep drawing the enormous riches.
And even to go beyond the meat.
And to suck the marrow out of the
bone.
You'll never come to the end of it.
Sweetest, most nutritious part is the marrow.
And maybe we who have been content with
meat.
Have moved from milk to meat.
Thought that that was the end of the
line.
But I want to commend to you the
marrow.
The real drawing out.
The real borrowing in.
For the nuances of the word of God.
And the what's the word?
The tremulous things that God can hint at.
Through his word.
Even between the lines so to speak.
Well what I'm going to share with you
now.
Is not that these are basic observations.
In chapter 14 verse 15.
If you love me you will keep my
commandments.
And I heard that so long.
That I kind of numbed my way through
the love part.
And didn't realize that the keeping of the
commandments.
Is not a kind of act of human
diligence.
It's the response of love.
God has so stacked things in his genius.
And his infinite wisdom.
That obedience is impossible.
Independent of a loving relationship.
He's not going to allow us to become
technicians.
Or to move ahead in religious zeal.
Which was the kind of thing of which
I've been guilty for so long.
And have impressed the saints in that condition.
And yet you can obey.
But I think that the quality of the
obedience.
And the fruitfulness that will issue from it.
Will be less.
If your obedience is out of conscience.
Out of religious requirement.
Rather than out of love.
So God in his brilliance.
Has rooted everything.
In the issue of the relationship with him
in love.
Which beats the law.
Beats legalism.
It beats orthodoxy.
It beats everything.
But to find that relationship.
To nurture it.
To maintain.
To go on.
To deepen it.
Is the thing.
In verse 23 of that same chapter.
If a man loves me.
He will keep my word.
Here again the conjunction.
Between love and obedience.
Is reiterated.
And my father will love him.
He will come to him.
And make our home with him.
He who does not love me.
Does not keep my words.
There's the long and the short of it.
That if there's a failure of obedience.
We just simply have to recognize.
The failure is the failure of love.
We don't love him adequately.
Or our obedience would show it.
And I think you can make a case.
That this has always been so.
This is not just a New Testament doctrine.
This has always been the genius of God
with men.
So for example.
The Lord did not come to Israel till
Sinai.
But what preceded Sinai.
It was the great deliverance out of Egyptian
bondage.
And through the Red Sea.
That parted at the demonstration of the mighty
power of God.
Who brought them out by the blood of
the Lamb.
And then assembled them at the base of
Sinai.
And brought to them the law.
That they should obey it.
Out of the love that grows.
From gratitude for so great a deliverance.
And so great a salvation.
Which is exactly true of us.
If we don't love him enough.
Remember what he said to that Pharisee.
Into whose home a woman came.
A street prostitute.
Where the guy murmured.
And he said if this man were a
prophet.
He would know what kind of woman this
is.
But what did this woman do?
Despite the humiliation.
Of coming into a men's fellowship.
In that culture and time.
And without saying a word.
Breaking an expensive alabaster box.
And pouring the content of this precious ointment.
Upon the feet of Jesus.
And weeping over his feet.
Wiping them with her hair.
And Jesus said to this guy.
Who was murmuring under his breath.
And even Jesus' disciples were murmuring.
This money might have gone to buy literature.
To help the poor.
What a waste.
But it was the extravagance of love.
By a woman who had heard the message.
Or recognized in Jesus.
Her salvation.
And the gratitude.
Eventuated and issued in such a love.
That it was expressed.
In extravagance.
And maybe we need to say tonight that.
The love that does not express itself in
arrogance.
Is not love.
If it could be measured by the symbols.
Symbolful.
If we are mean about it.
Or chintzy.
And feel that if we put a dollar
in a collection plate.
Or if our church attendance has been regular.
That what more can God ask.
We have not experienced what that prostitute experienced.
Namely a gratitude.
For so great a salvation.
That lavishes upon Jesus.
And upon his body.
The body of Christ.
Things that would make us poor.
If a man loves me.
He will keep my word.
I think the first time that I really
broke before God.
As a young believer.
Was when I had a certain full gospel
breakfast in Kansas City.
Where I was a young missionary to the
Jews.
The speaker said.
When I was a younger believer.
He said.
I rushed to do the commandments of God.
I was obedient to every commandment that the
Lord showed me.
But he said.
As I have gone on in the faith.
I no longer wait for the commandments.
That's kids stuff.
You have no alternative when God commands what
to do.
He said.
Now I intimate his will.
I intimate the very disposition of his spirit.
And I rush to do it.
Even before he commands it.
You know where I was before the last
word came out of his mouth.
I was on the floor and under the
table.
Coming apart at the seams.
Because I had probably complimented myself.
For my diligence in obeying.
But to intimate the will of God.
Not to have to wait to be commanded.
Is such an expression of a love.
That just fastens on him.
And delights to do his will.
Even before he speaks it.
Can you imagine a church like that?
The whole house will be filled with the
fragrance.
And on the occasions when I preach this.
This broken alabaster box.
Which my wife thinks is my greatest message.
And probably is.
I say.
We have been correct.
We have been charismatic.
We have learned all the principles.
We know how.
But our house is not filled with the
fragrance.
And in 2 Corinthians.
I think the 4th chapter says.
And by him the triumph.
His triumph is made manifest by us in
every place.
The knowledge of him.
The fragrance of him.
Is made manifest by us in every place.
You imagine wafting the fragrance of Christ in
the office.
Or in the seminary.
In the classrooms.
In the shopping mall.
Or with our neighbors in our own families.
Because of something that exudes out of our
very life.
That is broken.
And that wants to heap upon the Lord.
The expensiveness of the inward thing that has
been mined in us.
For man loves me.
He will keep my word.
He who does not love me does not
keep my words.
And the word which you hear is not
mine.
But the Father's who sent me.
At the very end of that chapter.
Verse 31.
But he says.
Verse 30.
The ruler of this world is coming.
But he has no power over me.
But I do.
As the Father has commanded me.
So that the world may know.
That I love the Father.
Rise.
Let us go hence.
I know I'm taking great liberty.
And my professors would cut me down in
a moment.
To say that rise and let us go
hence.
Is anything other than a directive for physical
walking.
But I want to be very suggestive to
that.
And say.
Rise.
Let us go hence.
Let us do as Jesus did.
Who did as the Father commanded him.
So that the world might know.
That I love the Father.
Even his obedience to the Father.
Was not some grisly compliance to a taskmaster.
It was born out of love for the
Father.
And it's an obedience that took him all
the way to the cross.
As only loving obedience can.
Because I think that principled obedience.
Or guilt ridden obedience.
Or religious obedience.
Will break down somewhere before that place.
Only the obedience of love.
Will bring us all the way through.
As it brought him.
Let us go hence.
So.
And again.
Even to abide in his love.
And to increase in his love.
Is to keep his commandments.
As we're told in verse 10 of chapter
15.
And then in verse 12.
This is my commandment.
That you love one another.
As I have loved you.
And not only is it the issue of
obedience.
It's even the issue of faith.
As chapter 16 indicates in verse 27.
For the Father himself loves you.
Because you have loved me.
And have believed that I have come from
the Father.
I don't think that that believing.
Was some kind of logical deduction.
With the data.
That was presented by Jesus.
Some kind of bookkeeping.
Acknowledgement.
Yes.
That you must be the Christ.
Because look.
This is fulfilled.
I think it's a love.
That made believing possible.
It's a love that opened the flood gate.
Of credulity.
And dissolved away.
The stubborn human.
Resistant.
Unbelief.
So even here.
Love is the key to believing.
As it's the key to obeying.
And so if you have trouble with faith.
And you don't know why you can't believe.
And why you're nervous or anxious in your
faith.
And you don't have the quality of faith.
Maybe again.
It's not that you have not been rubbing
the genie lamp.
And invoking the promises.
Meticulously in order to obtain.
Something by a formula.
But that the issue is much deeper.
That the failure of faith is the failure
of love.
Everything points us back.
To the intimate.
Personal.
Relationship with him.
And with that as a preliminary.
I want to take you to my real
text for tonight.
In the Old Testament.
A very precious and favorite text.
Exodus the 24th chapter.
And this is the chapter that describes.
How the law was obtained and given to
Moses.
I never cease to start to be awed.
At the terseness of the scripture.
How compressed.
How so much can be said in so
few words.
How God doesn't wallow in redundant and unnecessary
things.
Very sparse.
Very lean.
They crucified him.
Jesus wept.
And here in a few verses.
Such an episode.
Of this great man Moses.
Being summoned by God to the top of
the mountain.
There to receive the tablets of the law.
Which is to be the basis for the
whole obedience.
Of the people of Israel to their God.
And the key to their witness to the
nations.
Verse 24 reading.
He said to Moses.
Come up to the Lord you and Aaron,
Nadab and Abihu and 70 of the elders
of Israel.
And worship afar off.
Moses alone shall come near to the Lord.
But the others shall not come near.
And the people shall not come up with
him.
Moses came and told the people all the
words of the Lord.
And all the ordinances.
And all the people answered with one voice
and said.
All the words which the Lord has spoken
we will do.
And Moses wrote all the words of the
Lord.
And he rose early in the morning and
built an altar at the foot of the
mountain.
And 12 pillars according to the 12 tribes
of Israel.
And he sent young men of the people
of Israel who offered burnt offerings.
And sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the
Lord.
And Moses took half of the blood and
put it in basins.
And half of the blood he threw against
the altar.
And he took the book of the covenant
and read it in the hearing of the
people.
And they said.
All that the Lord has spoken we will
do.
And we will be obedient.
Tragically, we know that wasn't so.
There was a failure of love.
They went hooting after other gods.
They were unfaithful.
They looked for some voluptuous alternative to the
God who met them at the mount.
And Moses took the blood and threw it
upon the people and said.
Behold the blood of the covenant which the
Lord has made with you in accordance with
all these words.
And Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu were
the sons of Aaron.
And 70 of the elders of Israel went
up.
And they saw the God of Israel.
And there was under his feet as it
were a pavement of sapphire stone.
Like the very heaven for clearness.
And he did not lay his hand on
the chief men of the people of Israel.
They beheld God and ate and drank.
I think it was the first communion between
God and a people.
And then here's our text.
The Lord said to Moses.
Come up to me on the mountain and
wait there.
And I will give you the tables of
stone with the law and the commandments which
I have written for their instruction.
So Moses rose with his servant Joshua.
And Moses went up into the mountain of
God.
And he said to the elders.
Moses, tarry there.
Tarry here for us until we come to
you again.
And behold, Aaron and her are with you.
Whoever has a cause, let him go to
them.
Then Moses went up on the mountain.
And the cloud covered the mountain.
The glory of the Lord rested on Mount
Sinai.
And the cloud covered it six days.
And on the seventh day he called to
Moses out of the midst of the cloud.
Now the appearance of the glory of the
Lord was like a devouring fire on the
top of the mountain.
In the sight of the people of Israel.
And Moses entered the cloud.
And went up on the mountain.
And Moses was on the mountain forty days
and forty nights.
Amen.
The Lord said to Moses.
Come up to me and be there.
And I will.
And I want to say that I believe
with all my heart that that is the
quintessential definitive apostolic requirement.
You say what are you talking about?
The word apostle was not even yet invented
in the time of Moses.
But I see Moses as a foundational servant.
A master builder.
And all of the configuration of the things
that make up that which is apostolic pertain
to him.
And so this call is critical.
It is the key.
It's the difference between the false and the
true apostle.
The false apostle is one who can market
the principles.
One who is good and facile in interpolating
segments of the apostolic scriptures.
And applying them to a present church need.
Or having even some facility to help churches
in their need or in their crises.
And be an older responsible brother.
Or even establish churches in the franchise McDonald's
way.
What's the difference between the true apostle and
the false?
It's not goodness.
It's not facility with apostolic phraseology.
Or an ability to do something for fellowships
or to seem authoritative.
The difference is the man who has gone
up and the man who has not.
The man who has remained below.
And thinks to serve God and his people
without having made this ascent.
I want to bring you into remembrance that
12 or 13 weeks ago when all this
began, without any collaboration on my part, because
at that time I didn't even yet myself
know how the Lord was going to fill
these weeks.
And I have not known except week by
week of the day of the actual ministry
to receive that word.
But do you remember what happened that Sunday?
There was a mountain made in the sanctuary.
And the pastor and his wife wore mountain
hiking boots and short pants, lederhosen.
And the whole motif was going up the
mount.
And that was the kickoff for these weeks.
And how does the God who is the
Alpha begin?
How does he end as the Omega?
By giving me the text today.
And come up into the mount.
And come up unto me in the mount.
And be there.
You say, what's so apostolic about that?
It may say in your text, as it
does in mine, come up and wait there.
But the King James and other versions read,
come up and be there.
And I want to say tonight for your
discerning hearing that the world is dying for
the want of proper being.
You shall be witnesses unto me.
And we have misread that to think it
means And you shall do witnessing for me.
Everything issues out of being.
True ministry, true witness is out of being.
Not out of doing.
Doing is the very thing from which God
wants to deliver us.
It's too Judaistic, too legalistic, too outward.
It's being.
Come up unto me and be there.
And I will give you the tablets of
the law, which I have written.
And I think King James says that Thou
mayest teach them.
It doesn't mean that God's up there as
some kind of expedient provider.
That, well, we have to make one last
dissent, however arduous, to get the thing that
will enable us to perform our ministry.
And I'm taking pains to elaborate that because
I know you.
I know me.
I know us.
We are American.
We are modern.
We are impatient.
We are expedient.
We are utilitarian.
We'll do just that minimal thing that is
required to obtain that which serves our ends,
even religiously and even spiritually speaking.
But the woman with the alabaster box went
far beyond expedience.
And as we have been willing to be
only merely expedient with God, how then have
we been related with each other?
No wonder that we don't often hear confessions
of men publicly that their marriages are askew
and appealing for the prayer of the saints.
I said to Arlene Hatchen before I left
the house tonight, if the handful of souls
who will come out tonight will come under
the burden of this need in my own
marriage and we were to greet together in
that holy place, I'll get a phone call
by the time I get home with a
wife saying, Come.
Every depressing spirit, every discouraging spirit, everything that
has robbed her of hope and faith for
the future or for the continuance of this
relationship will be dismissed when something is broken
in the heavenlies by a people who are
together, who can go beyond merely the expedient
and the necessary thing.
Fragrance is going to have to fill the
house again.
It's not just come up and be there
and then you'll get.
It's come up unto me.
Come up unto me.
I'm the end in myself.
I'm not just a means to an end.
I didn't just save you that you should
be delivered out of this and that thing
and that you should be equipped to do
this or that.
The whole purpose is to come unto me
for my own sake without any thought of
the consequence or what will be the result
or the reward or the benefit.
So long as that tinctures our thought about
relationship with God, we have not ascended this
mount.
This mount is the mount of the negation
of all expediency.
It's come up unto me and be there
alone for my own sake.
Be there.
And you know, if we really search our
hearts, when is the last time we have
really been anywhere in that kind of totality?
Even when we're talking with one another, I
know what I'm guilty of.
My mind is already racing and I'm thinking
of something for tomorrow or I can't even
wait for the person to finish.
I'm ready to answer them before they've gotten
their question out of their statement as if
the issue is giving them an answer.
You know what I've learned in community?
And the many crises and problems that we've
had to experience?
It began to dawn on me over the
years the frequency of these crises and insuperably
difficult problems that the reason that God was
giving them to us was not that we
should seek a solution, but that we should
seek him because he knows our sloth.
He knows that we've been calibrated and inducted
into the mentality of the world that we
only go so far as is necessary to
obtain our end.
And as soon as that thing comes in
sight, that's the end of our seeking him.
And what is an apostle in the last
analysis?
Why is he foundational to the church?
Why is the church built on the foundation
of the apostles and the prophets?
Because they're clever, because they're glib, because they
have a command of the principles of the
scripture?
And I'm not negating those things, but something
more.
Because they communicate very God.
Because you tell me, what is a church
that is built on correct principles and has
correct procedure and correct church order and divine
government and every other requisite thing and has
not the sense of God?
It's a husk.
It's a caricature.
My God, give me some sloppy, flat-dash,
out-of-joint, broken, awkward, groping bundle of
saints who don't even know what divine order
is who yet have something palpitating.
There's yet a fragrance.
There's a sense of God.
Because the world is dying for the sense
of God, who He is that cannot be
communicated by principle.
It's the fragrance of Him that is to
be made manifest in every place, not the
principles about Him.
But where is that to be obtained?
Only in one place.
Come up to me and be there.
What an ascent.
And you think it's just a cutesy little
hike and you'll get there without hardly being
winded, you're mistaken.
I can tell you by the time you
get there that my experience in community and
in fact my whole 22-year walk and
my own present struggles are any indication of
what it is through which God is leading
us tortuously through such paths except your eye
is fixed on Him.
You can't even find your way to the
top.
It's wreathed in smoke.
At the time you get there, you're bloody.
You're dripping.
Your flesh has had burrs and briars embedded.
You've twisted your ankle.
You've stubbed your feet.
You've sweated.
You're just a mess of sweat and blood
and dirt and groping with your fingers and
clamoring and every single thing that is strident
and logical is ruling you to come down.
Don't be a fool.
It's a vain exertion to defy gravity like
that and to go up.
Three times in the year the men of
Israel were required to go up to Jerusalem.
Of all places to locate the house of
God and the holiest place of all where
the obedience to God was to be given
it had to go up to Jerusalem.
There's always a going up.
And we've lost sight of that.
We've lost sense of that with automatic drive
and turbo power and all that kinds of
things that with a little touch of the
toe, zoom.
Hey, this is going to cost something to
go up this mountain.
It's going to cost something psychologically, spiritually, physically,
morally and you're alone.
And everything else is below with all of
the clamoring details and the weight of them
and the things that need to be attended
that you never are able to get free
from it.
Did I tell you about the time when
I was preaching and I said that the
church was born in waiting in the upper
room?
And that it needs to continue in the
spirit of waiting and waiting is the priestly
disposition that has been lost to our modern
sensibility?
And some young kid just newly saved came
to me after the service and said, Mr.
Koetz, he said, in all of your travels
around the world, he said, have you ever
found a fellowship that has waited ten days
on the Lord like the early church?
I went, dope.
And my mind raced through these brilliant fellowships.
Where have I not been the biggest, the
best, finest, the most touted and lauded?
And I had to think, no, I don't
know of one where an entire fellowship as
it was in the days preceding Pentecost waited
on the Lord together.
Waiting is going up.
Waiting is sacrifice.
Waiting is dying.
What do you do?
Do you twiddle your thumbs?
What about the boredom?
We need distraction.
We're sensual.
We need something voluptuous for our seeing, for
our hearing.
We're full of mind-blust.
We need new ideas, something novel, something, well,
what do we do for ten days with
the same saints locked into one place?
And after the young man asked me if
I'd known a fellowship, then the Lord took
over and He said, okay, hotshot, how about
your fellowship?
How about your community that has opted to
go up into the woods and into the
rugged and the remote parts to find its
way back into the apostolic lifestyle?
When are you going to wait ten days
in the woods?
I was doubled over, hit in the solar
plexus.
The wind went out of me.
I came back to whisper to the fellowship,
you know what the Lord said to me?
Hey, that's great, Ark.
One day we'll do that.
When it's convenient.
When the kids don't have to go to
school.
When there's no great demand on ministry.
When the phone is not ringing.
We're not this needed.
Yeah, as soon as there's a...
You know what we found?
That time never comes.
The world is never accommodating.
And even the religious world fills you with
so much consternation and go and do.
You know what we had to do?
The kingdom of God suffers violence and the
violent take it by force.
We declared, the elders, beginning Monday, we're commencing
a ten day period of waiting on the
Lord.
We're stopping everything.
Everything.
No cooking.
Fasting, ten days.
No program.
No business.
No detail.
We're going to wait on the Lord.
We didn't know how to do it.
And we elders are going to begin first.
And so we started in, by the third
or fourth hour, we were dozing off.
But the Lord is, you know, full of
love, full of patience.
He knows our brains.
And He showed us how to do it.
Three hour shifts around the clock, 24 hours
a day.
Unceasing prayer.
And so you rotated.
And you find yourself in a prayer shift
from four to seven in the morning with
saints with whom you've never prayed before, that
you've been in fellowship with them ten years.
And on the seventh day of the fast,
when your breath smells like a camel, and
you've long since ceased being able to pray
spiritually, or even significantly, or even intelligently, and
your prayer now is just a, a groan.
I remember myself in that condition, on the
floor, founder of the community.
On the floor, with two or three of
the other saints, in the same kind of
whacked out condition, too feeble even to raise
our voices.
And it was holy.
It was precious.
It was revelational.
You say, Arthur, the ten days were over.
Did the fire of God fall?
Don't think we didn't need it.
But it didn't.
Do you know why?
Because if we had even surreptitiously in our
own minds calculated, hey, listen, we're investing ten
days of fasting and prayer around the clock.
We'll get our reward.
We'll get the fire of God to fall.
We would have invalidated the whole meaning of
the word waiting.
The moment that you establish a condition, or
look for a reward, or a response for
your investment, it's no longer priestly.
It's no longer waiting.
It's no longer going up.
It's an expediency.
It's a means to an end.
Even if it's a spiritual end, it stinks.
Because there's a God who is still waiting
for the fundamental apostolic requirement.
Come up unto me and be there just
for my own.
Don't wonder what the benefit will be to
you, or how it will enhance your ministry,
or what greater anointing you're now going to
have, or insight, or revelation, or to be
able to boast, I have been in the
very presence of the Most High.
I'll tell you, when the forty days are
getting up there, just like the ten days
of fasting and prayer around the clock, you
don't have any motives anymore.
You know what I realized when I stretched
out as just a piece of hulk?
One thing I realized was, in all the
years we've been together in community, we've had
three-day fasts, five-day fasts, for critical
decisions about overseas trips and urgent matters.
We had never really adequately sought the reward.
We put in what we thought was the
modicum required to obtain the end, namely, the
revelation of His will, should we, shouldn't we.
But we had never really sought Him.
And when I was in that condition, in
those wee hours, you know what I realized?
He is the Creator and I am the
creature.
And in this prostration before Him, with my
tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth
dry, and unable even to beat anything that
was faintly spiritual, I am in my proper
place before Him.
Now I have a sense of who He
is, as I sense who I am.
And this sense of God is everything.
To restore this sense is the apostolic requirement.
For what shall we communicate if we don't
have it?
But if we make it a means to
having it, we'll never have it.
It's just simply a love of God that
beckons us, come up unto me and be
there.
Your mind, your soul, your thoughts, your emotions,
all that you are, the totality of all
that you are, come before me as the
total God that I am and let totality
meet totality because that's what the faith is
all about.
That's deliverance, that's healing, that's salvation.
And once we find it with Him, I
think we're going to be another people with
each other.
We're not going to be doing it by
the numbers, like those paint sets, you know,
17 is purple and 12 is red and
when it's all finished, it's Leonardo da Vinci's
Last Supper.
It's not going to be like that.
There's going to be a transformation in proportion
to the fact that we have come up
unto Him and been there.
I think we're going to be to each
other something new, something else, something far more
attentive, something far more patient.
I had the privilege of being counseled by
John Sanford and Inger came at the end
of it.
I spent two weeks with this precious man
in his basement and when Inger came, we
finally sat down together and he gave me
my report card.
I only got a C.
And I thought I was doing real well.
I didn't blow my cool and I was
rather calm and gallant and he said, Artie
said, you were responding to Inger outwardly and
literally as if what she was saying is
really what she means.
I said, huh?
He said, you did not at all relate
to what she was really saying, to what
she really is.
That's what a dumb dumb I am because
I don't know how to be there.
If I've not found it with God, how
shall I find it with my wife or
with men?
To enjoy the saints, to appreciate each other
even when we're not amusing, even when we're
not clever, even when we don't have some
great insider revelation, just to enjoy the presence,
just to be together.
We don't have to say anything weighty.
Being there is everything and for the want
of that ability, an entire modern civilization is
going awry.
They're flipping out, they're freaking out, they're driven
to find some novelty, some new alternative, some
clever thing, some orgy, some drug that they've
never tried before, some new fetish, any kind
of thing to break their silence.
They're driven because they've never known how to
be there and there's never been a church
to show them because we're marked by our
own restlessness and by our own drivenness.
We've not been there and been called up
into his presence on the seventh day and
I want to say it's more than just
going up, however great that is, and turning
a deaf ear to everything that says stay
down here and some of you have already
experienced that.
You're becoming fanatical.
What's the matter with your religion as we've
known it?
You'll hear worse things than that.
There's something that infuriates even the religious world
by those who begin the ascent.
Maybe some of us have begun it and
were discouraged and turned back and came down
below where the others are and have gone
on in a lackadaisical and nondescript Christianity because
we didn't persevere to the top.
If I would say anything about these 12
weeks of speaking, about some total of them
has been a call to come up unto
me.
Moses did not eat nor drink and it
says the cloud covered the mountain, verse 15,
the glory of the Lord rested on Mount
Sinai and the cloud covered it six days
and on the seventh day he called to
Moses out of the midst of the cloud.
No accident that six is the number of
men, seven is the number of divine rest
where we cease from our own doing.
But for six days he had to stay
in this mountain weaved with smoke.
And I want you to know that that
was not marshmallows or cotton candy or something
that you fly through that is white and
fluffy.
This was a frightening thick smoke of the
fire of God's presence.
Six days in it will extinguish anything in
you that is humanly religious.
Say, how do you know, Art?
Well, because I had six minutes in thick
smoke that has revolutionized my believing life.
Up at the community the building caught fire
where we were staying one night about three
or four in the morning.
We heard the crackling and smelled the smoke
and we got out in time with the
best building we had.
And my wife was beside herself.
She said, go in and get my pocketbook.
It's right on top of the kitchen counter.
Man, I knew that kitchen like the palm
of my hand.
We had our meetings in the living room.
I've been in and out of that place
countless times.
Sure, there's no problem.
I bent my head low.
I went in through the front door and
that kitchen counter could not have been more
than the distance between me and the first
row here.
The moment I entered into that smoke not
only could I not find the counter I
could not find the door through which I
just entered.
I was completely and totally humanly what's the
word?
Disoriented.
I lost every bearing.
I couldn't tell you where I was how
to come in or to go out.
It was an absolutely stupefying experience for a
man that has lived for over 50 years
by his wit, by his intelligence, by his
ability, by his command, by his knowledge to
be totally disoriented that there's nothing to which
one could turn in himself or outwardly for
guidance, for direction when you're in a precarious
and even a dangerous situation.
I never did get her first.
I never found the kitchen counter and only
by the grace of God did I find
the door to get out again.
Thick smoke.
Moses was in it for six days.
Of course, this was a prince in Egypt.
This was a man who was tutored and
skilled in all of Egyptian law and metaphysics
and mathematics and whatever the civilization offered.
And he wasn't altogether uninstructed in the things
pertaining to the God of Israel.
And to be in that smoke for six
days means a total emptying.
You don't come before this God in that
presence with your charismatic know-how, with your
brittle cleverness and your formulas and how to
do it.
We know, but we don't know as we
ought to know.
And we'll never send that mountain if we're
content merely to be correct.
There's something beyond being correct.
There's something beyond truth.
There's truth in truth, if I can put
it that way.
There's truth that has come to us by
listening to tapes, by reading books.
And there's truth that has come to us
that comes to us out of the presence
of God that is ultimate truth.
That is real knowing.
And that's why my prayer has been every
week, Lord, let me not stand before this
people except that I can speak to them
as one having come out of your presence.
So I want to ask you, not only
are you willing for the rigors and the
ardor of going up and turning the deaf
ear to everything that will keep you below,
but are you willing also to enter into
something that contains the number six by which
you'll be emptied of your humanity and everything
that has been humanly obtained.
Are you willing to come before God as
a boob, as not knowing, as without your
own cleverness, without your own artfulness, without your
ability to put fellowships together and teach this
or that or witness all the things in
which we think that we have know-how
and comprehension and to receive from him out
of his presence the tablet that he has
written.
That's what I think this suggests.
And I've tasted this smoke a little bit.
I know the humiliation of what it means
to be a missionary to the Jews and
not have a single message on prophecy in
Israel.
The only one in the whole mission board.
How come I don't have a concordance?
Sure I've got a concordance, but I'm not
going to cleverly make up a message, however
correct it is about Israel and prophecy.
I'll only preach it in the day that
the Lord gives it by revelation out of
his presence.
Then you have a word.
Then you have an understanding.
Then you have a knowledge.
And maybe what we can say about our
charismatic generation that that's exactly what we've not
done.
We've established systems.
Discipleship.
And we've had orders and hierarchical pyramidal structures
of who's related to who.
And we've taken precious and divine ways of
God and transmuted it into some kind of
human trap system that victimizes rather than ennobles
and uplifts.
Because you can't take the holy things and
transpose them.
We need to receive them out of the
presence of God when we have come up
to him and been there.
Then we can come down the mountain.
Then we have something to offer that's not
plastic but written with the finger of God
upon his own tablets.
Then we can find Israel going amok and
dancing nakedly around a golden calf too impatient
to wait as for that man, Moses, and
finding its own substitute charismatic alternatives that seem
like the real thing and sound like the
real thing but are false.
And to come down and to dash the
tablets in divine anger?
What?
Isn't Moses the meekest of all men?
I'll tell you what, there's a conjunction between
divine anger and divine meekness.
Only the divinely meek can express the wrath
of God.
It's not a matter of temperament or personal
irritation.
And where did he obtain that meekness?
He was fused to the God who is
very humility itself in the fire on top
of the mountain.
He saw the glory of God.
He was in the presence of God.
And if that will not establish meekness in
the soul of a man, I don't know
what else will.
You'll never learn it as a principle.
Only out of union with him who is
meek and says, learn of me whom lowly
and meek of heart.
And here where he was expressing the hot
indignation of a man who's meek.
And he ground that golden calf to powder
and tossed it in the drink and made
them lap it up.
And you don't hear so much as a
whimper.
The same Israel, who is this Moses?
And that was continually bucking against him and
railing against him and revolting.
You don't hear a whimper of opposition.
Who are you to require this?
Because he who is meek and who is
indignant was also authoritative.
And it wasn't an authority that was tied
to his office.
It was tied to his person.
It was infused in his being because he
brought the very sense and presence and authority
of the God in whose presence he had
stood in that seventh and final day.
That's the basis for authority.
Not human expertise or cleverness or our credentials
or what school we've graduated or our experience,
but the sense of God that has been
obtained in communion with him.
Any other authority that is braggadocio, bravado, is
false.
The false apostles and the false prophets are
those who've never ascended up.
Willing to go?
And Moses entered the cloud and went up.
And Moses was on the mountain forty days
and forty nights.
So I'm getting my signals that my time
is out.
And I gave you an invitation last week
to enter within the veil.
I'm giving you an invitation this week to
ascend up to the mount.
And really, it's saying essentially the same thing.
Come up unto me and be there.
And I will give you the tables of
stone with the law and the commandment which
I have written for their instruction that thou
mayest teach them.
It'll be another kind of teaching.
It's not going to be some glib, unctuous
performance.
It's not going to be a clever guy
doing the right thing.
It's going to be communicating not just the
law but the lawgiver because you bear the
very sense of him having come from his
presence.
That's apostolic.
That's the ingredient and the quality for which
the church is perishing and what shall we
say of the world?
Freaking out for novelty, diversion, distraction, entertainment because
this glory has not been communicated by men
who have come up.
So let's say yes to the Lord.
If the coming up means a trial in
marriage, physical difficulty, whatever kind of emptying, whatever
breaking from earthly things that God is about.
You've heard his voice in these weeks and
these nights.
Come.
It's something that no man can presume to
do without being invited.
But once you ascend, go all the way.
Precious God, Jesus, may we hear your voice
tonight, my God.
May we hear threaded throughout all of the
speaking what you're saying to us.
It's not a Bible teaching.
It's an invitation.
Come up unto me and be there.
We ask your forgiveness, Lord, for our distraction,
for our partial coming, for our inadequate union
and relationship, Lord, for our expedient mentality.
We're only willing to give, my God, what
is needful to obtain what we think is
required.
Teach us what totality means.
Teach us what it means to come up
and to be there before the God who
is total, pure actuality, to be there in
our minds, our hearts, and all that we
are, to be there for your sake and
not for something that we will obtain by
coming.
For you are, precious God, the end all
and the be all.
You're the thing in itself.
You're the precious source.
You're all in all, Lord.
Bid us come.
Help us to make this ascent.
Bring us into that precious union, willing to
be emptied, my God, of our own notions,
however correct, that we might receive from you,
out of your presence, the thing that is
burningly true.
That we might receive, my God, authority, meekness,
all that's required into coming into the land.
We bless you and we thank you.
And we say yes to you, Lord.
And we come.
For Jesus' sake.
In his name.
Bless the Lord.
I appreciate the elders and whoever else wants
to come up and pray.
The first message was Acts 13, so they
laid hands upon them, and so they're being
sent forth by the Holy Ghost.
And I pray that this is going to
be a Holy Ghost sending, and it will
not be human cleverness that will be coming
to men, but something out of the heart
of God to men who are living in
a very critical place.
Thank you, Jesus.
Hallelujah.