I boast in this, that they understand and
know me, that I am the Lord.
I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness
in the earth, for in these things I
delight, says the Lord.
So God delights in those that understand and
know him.
And our subject this morning, for as many
days as the world will give us, is
God.
The knowledge of God.
And I've been up half the night looking
at some very rich material, at least of
the effect of which is to realize that
God's revelation to Israel is God's revelation to
mankind.
That the only way that God, in fact,
could communicate himself is by picking a particular
people and investing in them the revelation of
himself, and that they would in turn be
the witness to that revelation.
And that's not unlike the role of the
church, even as a continuation of the ministry
that was given to Israel as a nation.
I remember once we talked about coming back
to the New York area and establishing some
kind of a ministry of witness to Jews.
I was talking about myself coming back, but
the wife of a brother who had been
with us for years said, no Archie, if
there's a witness to the Jews, there needs
to be a corporate expression.
It's not just one man that will need
some way to bring a whole band of
souls to present the witness to the Lord.
And that's touching the principle of God's employment
of an entire nation.
So how God chose to reveal himself to
Israel is a remarkable instruction about God himself.
What he says of himself in the words
that he gave to that nation through Moses,
through the prophets, through the psalmists is the
statement about himself that he wanted communicated.
God wants to be understood and wants to
be known.
And it's interesting that in the messianic age,
one of the descriptions is that the knowledge
of God will cover the earth as the
waters cover the sea.
And if we are hurting for any single
one thing in the church today, it's the
want of a true knowledge of God.
Because if that is one thing, if that
is deformed, if that is inadequate, everything else
will be affected by it.
Everything will be askew.
So I can't think of a better investment,
and evidently that's the Lord's thought, but that
we should look to this.
So I want to pray again here over
the table for that.
What a topic.
I just talked earlier with the Lord this
morning already.
I said, Lord, if no man has the
right to preach the cross or to teach
the cross, but him who was impaled on
it, who then shall speak about the knowledge
of God but God?
So, Lord, we ask that again.
We desire what you desire.
We want to be instructed in the knowledge
of God.
And we admit that we share with the
church at large, everywhere in the world, an
inadequate knowledge.
We do not know as we ought to
know, and it shows.
And we're asking, my God, that you would
help us and bring us to a better
perception of yourself, far more complete and intensive.
And only you can perform this, Lord, by
the grace of your spirit.
So I thank you for those men who
have sought you out in this regard, two
of whose books are before us this morning,
and that you would draw freely from those
things that you have richly given them.
Bless us, my God, as we embark on
this great subject and we thank you even
for the privilege of it.
It would be a privilege to fail at
it, and we should succeed in something less
or other than this great subject, God, as
he in fact is, and not as men
or we have thought him to be.
So bless this, Lord, we pray, and bless
those who will receive benefit from these tapes.
And we thank you again for the subject
that you've put before us.
In Jesus' name, amen.
I pray to the Lord for my birthday
gifts, the complete set of Karl Barth's Church
Dogmatics, 14 volumes, and this one is entitled
The Doctrine of God.
I knew it was there, and the Lord,
I believe, prompted me to pick it up
early this morning.
And then another book that I'll be quoting
from perhaps more extensively, Theology of the Old
Testament, by another German, Walter Eichrodt.
So as I've mentioned before over this table,
it's a remarkable thing, even an anomaly, strange
kind of contradiction, that the most superb Old
Testament study is performed by Germans.
And we Jews are indebted to them.
I don't think that we know what our
own treasure is.
And the church has suffered from a kind
of separation from all the New Testament that
God never intended.
There's kind of a rupture.
And for too long, many Christians have come
to their church services with the New Testament
and Psalms, as if the rest of the
Old Testament has very little cogency or relevance
and don't know what they're missing.
So part of our burden is to restore
an appreciation for what God has given in
the Old Testament scriptures and what he has
made manifest through that revelation of Jesus as
a fulfillment of what has been hinted and
known and understood and sought for by the
Old Testament saints.
I just started looking at Bart on this
subject and just want to share a few
things out of it.
I didn't realize I'd turned up many pages.
I was just sitting there going, wow, just
started.
That was a week's worth of turning.
Well, I read until my eyes closed up
on me.
I went to bed about 6 a.m.
knowing that I had to be up within
a short time but desperately needing a little
rest.
I'm wondering, I'll fall into a state of
stupefaction.
I'll sleep right through the 7 o'clock
bedtime.
But also I just, my eyes blinked and
opened at about quarter to 7.
Another miracle from the Lord.
So it gave me a bit of rest
but enough to be prompt and on time.
I'm looking for a footnote.
He makes reference
to another very famous book on God.
I'm trying to remember the author's name.
Who wrote of God as a mystery.
A kind of spiritual phenomenon communicated in a
kind of a hazy way.
Oh Lord, turn me to that.
That had made quite a stir in its
time but he shot it down.
Here it is.
About the Holiness of God, a book by
Rudolf Otto where this other German theologian talked
about the numinous, N-U-M-I-N
-O-U-S.
It's like a word that describes what is
indescribable.
The vague sense of God's mysterious spirit and
that this was supposed to be the communication
of God and the sense of the divine.
But Barthes says that the Holy God of
Scripture is the Holy One of Israel.
He was not impressed with this man's work.
The knowledge of God is not some kind
of a numinous mystery that is going to
be promoted by referring to some vagary about
a sense of God as mystery but that
God is going to be revealed by his
relationship with Israel.
That that's where the action is.
That's the payoff.
The God who made a covenant with Israel.
The God who made promises.
The God who spoke to the patriarchs.
The God who revealed himself to Moses.
That this is the foundation of revelation for
the knowledge of God and not some speculative
consideration about God in the sense of a
mystery.
There are mysteries as things that are withheld
until the time when God will reveal them.
But the foundational knowledge of God is not
going to come as some kind of a
vapor and that you have to somehow intuit.
And it's really interesting that the man who
wrote that book did not have Barthes' grasp
of the revelation that had come to the
Old Testament saints.
It may be something in the spirit of
men that balks at acknowledging the centrality of
Israel in the purposes of God that leads
them often to other by-paths trying to
find some key to the revelation of God
which would have been revealed had they understood
the centrality of the people that God had
chosen to make the knowledge of himself known.
So, Barthes says, it's not this numinous thing
of which this man writes but the Holy
God of Scripture is the Holy One of
Israel.
That is the primary and fundamental thing to
be said about him.
That one quotation is worth everything.
The primary and fundamental thing about God is
his relationship to Israel and what he has
revealed to Israel.
Present Israel or the descendants of present Israel,
modern day Jewry know little or nothing about
it and to some extent are even offended
by the history of God with Israel.
Don't even believe it.
Look upon the Bible as their own accomplishment.
That somehow it's our Jewish contribution to the
world in giving the world a book that's
made up of fanciful things that are not
intended as some factual account but are imaginative
or picturesque or historic or mythological and brings
the concept of a monotheistic God which is
an advance over pagan views of multiple gods.
That's the way most modern Jews would look
at the Bible which they themselves do not
read or if they read it, they read
it as a kind of an antiquity just
something of a cultural interest that happens to
be our contribution.
They cannot bring themselves to understanding that the
Bible itself is a piece of supernatural reality
given of God by the Spirit.
That these 66 books, I'm including the New
Testament are a statement of God through the
ages over a millennium through almost as many
authors and so Bot is that kind of
a man who looks at the scripture and
particularly the Old Testament as the primary and
fundamental thing to be said about God is
what was said and established with Israel with
that people.
So this does not mean first of all
and decisively that God who is exalted over
Israel separated from it and confronting it to
be feared by it as the one to
whom it has obligations.
The holiness of God does mean all this
too because it means primarily that and decisively
that God has adopted and chosen Israel as
his child and given it his promise and
has already conferred upon it his gracious help.
And that's why Israel can say who is
like unto thee O Lord and speaks about
the holiness of God, the mercy of God,
the grace of God because this is Israel's
experience of God.
So God makes his entry into the world
with the nation and with the people and
the record of that relationship is our basis
for the knowledge of God.
So we need to go back again and
to maybe come to it in a fresh
way.
I myself have been guilty of just kind
of gliding over or looking at those statements
about who is like unto thee among the
gods fearful and praises doing wonders as kind
of a poetry.
But these are the statements of the people
to whom the wonders have been performed.
And for them it was very real.
They had a real knowledge of God based
on his acts.
And what distinguishes the faith we call Christianity
is that God has made an entry into
the world and before men.
There's a historic testimony.
This is not something imaginative or speculative like
other world religions but that this is predicated
and based on history on God's actual entry
and involvement with a nation.
And that is the foundation of our knowledge
of God because God knows how men love
speculative fanciful things that sound very spiritual like
this book by Rudolf Otto on the mystery
of holiness but it's not a statement of
God as he in fact is.
It's a statement of a man's speculative thought
on what he would think the holiness of
God is when it's considered outside of and
separate from the actual acts of God what
God has actually spoken and done with the
nation Israel.
So the great events of Israel like the
parting of the Red Sea the exodus out
of Egypt the judgments that came to Egypt
are the foundation of God's revelation.
God is in judgment God in mercy God
in faithfulness the provision in the wilderness all
of that are the foundational elements of Israel's
faith about God who has revealed himself through
those provisions and through those acts.
There's a whole number of things here about
the grace of God and the mercy of
God as it was revealed to Israel that
God's grace is revealed even in the opposition
of the people for whom the grace is
intended.
That it's not a grace given to those
who agree or even willingly receive it but
that the grace is all the more grace
when it's expressed to a people who resist
it.
So that the love of God does not
require even agreement but it's all the more
demonstrated when it has to be brought to
a people who even oppose it as has
been the history of Israel and even to
this day with many.
Only in this opposition is God known in
his being as love and grace for only
in this relationship of opposition does he actually
create and maintain fellowship between himself and us
and turns toward us.
Only in this tension as we experience and
recognize it and are subject ourselves to it
do we truly believe in him and yield
to him the right which he has against
us and over us the right in which
we can then place our confidence.
So how is God's grace revealed?
All the more when it's not welcomed all
the more when it's opposed God persists and
he has no condition that makes his grace
acceptable.
The fact that he's willing to contend and
strive with men and to make his grace
and mercy known even in their opposition is
the very demonstration of that grace and mercy.
You see what I mean?
So Israel's stubbornness is God's foil.
He couldn't ask for a better platform to
communicate himself and what he is in grace
and mercy than in the stubbornness and opposition
of the people who have bucked against it.
Isn't that a remarkable statement about God?
And that's why Israel was selected.
Not because it was most conducive to the
grace of God but most opposed.
Not because they were the most spiritual but
because they were the most carnal.
Not because they were the greatest but because
they were the least.
In everything that was adverse toward God and
that the whole history of the nation is
shot through with terrible apostasy the grace of
God and the mercy of God is made
more apparent.
And that's Israel's purpose is to reveal God
as God.
And in that revelation God revealed himself in
a personal way.
The tendency of men to think about God
would have been even to prefer God as
being abstract.
I can remember occasions when I was a
missionary to the Jews and came in contact
with rabbis in Kansas City they would ridicule
my faith and the reference of believers to
God as being known personally as Lord.
I realized that they actually preferred a God
who is abstract and distant than a God
who is personal, real, and immediate.
Why would that be?
That there would be a tendency in men
to prefer God abstractly than God personally.
But the genius of God's revelation to Israel
is God at a personal level immediate, intimate,
real and as a personality himself having attributes
just like man.
He sees, he feels, he aggrieves, he hurts.
Why would men prefer not that God but
a God who is abstract and distant and
speculative?
You can't even say that an abstract God
has spoken but the God who is intimate,
personal, and real in that hand has and
requires with that speaking.
And God has even not only revealed himself
in a personal way but he's given Israel
names for himself and that these names El
Shaddai and Adonai Shabaoth the Lord of Hosts
or the Almighty God are like progressive revelations
they have come at different times in Israel's
history.
I can't remember where it was I think
with Moses that I have not given you
this name till now but now I want
you to understand me as the Almighty God
or to Abraham, I think it's Genesis 15
Abraham, walk thou before me I am the
Almighty God walk thou before me and be
blameless.
It's the first time that God uses the
name Almighty at a point in Abraham's personal
history with him because Abraham is now being
called to a more exacting walk that will
require the Almightyness of God to perform.
I am the Almighty God I'm speaking to
you now with this name that I have
not given to you before walk thou before
me and be thou blameless.
So the name brings not only revelation but
a requirement and so this is characteristic of
God's dealing with Israel and it's a way
in which we in our generation can come
to an understanding and the knowledge of God
by looking back on the kind of relationship
that they had and what God intended by
giving himself in a personal way and by
the use of his name.
That's why he was so insistent that his
name not be taken in vain that there
was a power in the name that the
name was not just an appellation, a designation
but communicated something and even to invoke the
name with that kind of an understanding had
a meaning and a consequence that would not
have been Israel's privilege except the name was
given.
Now this is completely lost to modern people.
We think the name...
I spoofed my mother for calling me Arthur
my birth certificate says baby she couldn't think
of a name and then it was crossed
out and she finally called me Arthur of
all names.
She said that she leaned over the crib
and she said, Abraham?
And I went, what?
So she scratched that.
So we call our kids Fawn and Bruce
and Dawn and all kinds of lovely poetic
sounding names but they're just designations.
A name to us does not mean in
our generation what it meant biblically to an
Old Testament people because the name was the
identification and even became the thing in itself.
That the first privilege given to Adam as
a son of God was to name the
other animals that God had created that were
nameless until Adam himself gave them names.
When he gave them the names that he
did it was not just a label that
was conferred but an identity.
You could almost say that the giving of
the name was a creative act that established
the distinctness of those different pieces of God's
creation.
So the bestowing of a name has a
remarkable significance and Israel's privilege was that God
had bestowed his name upon that people and
given to Israel various aspects of himself in
the names that he would employ at different
times in their history.
Even the blessing that God ordained the Aaronic
blessing in Numbers chapter 6 anybody can turn
to that?
Telling Aaron how to pray that this prayer
would not just be a mumbo-jumbo kind
of a religious exercise but the conferring of
something.
In verse 22 the Lord spoke to Moses
saying speak to Aaron and his son saying
thus you shall bless the Israelites you shall
say to them here's the remarkable significance of
words and of speaking that was pagan nations
in their mythologies and their occultic and other
forms of religion had some significant sense of
words but not the kind of sense that
the Israelites had that words were almost like
a sacred trust particularly a word that would
come from God because they knew God as
creator who created by his word he brought
all things into being by his word so
Israelite religion the faith of the nation Israel
has to do with God as a creator
and the account of creation given in Genesis
is the key to understanding God as creator
by his word and this is one of
the profoundest foundations of Israel's whole understanding about
its own God no other nation had this
kind of grasp of God that Israel had
because this was the revelation given it about
its own God and that revelation is given
to Israel but it's intended for all generations
for the people of faith of all generations
and for all nations and we'll come into
this in the Psalms and in other places
where Israel is made conscious that it has
an obligation to the nations to communicate their
knowledge of God to the nations or else
the nations will be walking into walls and
continuing in their primitive mythologies and other kinds
of occultic practices for the want of the
knowledge of God who alone is God it's
a strange conundrum thing to consider how do
you keep yourself from a kind of nationalistic
self-exaltation when you have been singled out
for the privilege of the revelation of the
one God who is God how do you
communicate that to other nations without exhibiting some
kind of a superiority over them was a
contradiction that Israel had to find its way
through the problem for God is how do
I communicate what I am to a nation
without their getting puffed up over that communication
and being corrupted by the very thing that
I intend for their sanctification it's a strange
kind of paradox it's a remarkable question we're
not through with it yet the church itself
can well do to consider what it does
with its revelation and Paul what did he
say that for the measure of the revelation
given him he was given a gold a
thorn in his side lest he be exalted
beyond measure so even the great apostle had
to receive something from God as a countermeasure
because of the revelation given him remember Exodus
3 the revelation to Moses of God in
the burning bush who shall I tell them
is sending me and God's answer is for
all generations you shall tell them this I
am the God of your fathers the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob but moreover this
is how you shall be known of me
that I am that I am and so
when Jesus in John chapter 8 when they
said who do you think you are are
you greater than the prophets who were sent
to us are you greater than our father
Abraham whose remains are with us Jesus said
well verily I say unto you from the
Latin word veritas verily, truly I say unto
you that before Abraham was I am and
they picked up stones to kill him they
knew exactly what that meant that was uttermost
blasphemy because they knew that they knew as
Israelites that God had given the name I
am as his eternal designation how dare this
upstart and carpenter's son employ that language so
their meaning and their revelation is a unique
provision of God to Israel no other nation
can boast of it and the God who
is giving this is the one who is
God in fact and so this is through
this nation that knowledge and revelation is to
be communicated to others not in a prideful
and a boastful way but in a humbled
way maybe in keeping that with the thought
to whom much is given much is required
we're privileged but we also have the greater
responsibility well getting back to the blessing that
God gave Aaron to say you shall say
to them the Lord bless you and keep
you the Lord make his face to shine
upon you and be gracious to you the
Lord lift up his countenance upon you and
give you peace remarkable statement and I love
it when we will from time to time
conclude a service or someone will will pray
the Aaronic blessing on God's people now and
then it says so they shall put my
name on the Israelites and I will bless
them what a strange statement by speaking these
words so will my name come on the
people who have heard this benediction benediction bene
means good like beneficial and diction means speaking
it's a good speaking why?
because something is conferred with that speaking that
is tangible and palpable that is an actual
blessing so God is instructing the nation even
in the efficacy of words that words have
a value a content, a meaning, a power
particularly the words that are given you shall
say this to them I'm calling you to
say this to them and when you do
that my name will be upon them what
does that mean?
what is in my name what's intrinsic to
my name the meaning of that name what
I am as God in that name will
also be conferred this is I don't think
that this has been appreciated sufficiently but this
is radical this is unknown and unheralded in
the history of mankind and this is only
a few thousand years old but it's God
breaking in this is the grace of God
the mercy of God and the very choice
of a nation for this revelation is itself
a revelation of a God who chooses I
will have mercy upon whom I will have
mercy so everything that God does with Israel
for Israel making a covenant with Israel a
covenant making and a covenant keeping God is
a statement about God himself the God who
makes promises the God who puts great emphasis
on his word is God so by
his act of bestowing a name on himself
God chooses to be described as the definable
the distinctive, the individual in this way the
faith of Israel sets its face both against
an abstract concept of deity and a nameless
ground of being what are the alternatives to
have a God who is not named you're
either going to fish around and speculate and
have some abstract notion that is not God
it's your own abstraction or you're going to
use a phrase like the ground of being
he's actually quoting, I think another German, Tillich
used that phrase well it sounds very poetic
but what in fact does that mean to
call God a ground of being can you
pray to a ground of being can you
have a hope and a confidence in a
ground of being does a ground of being
give promises to which you can remind him
and anticipate by faith that can give you
hope when every kind of thing is set
against you a ground of being is not
or an abstraction is not capable of any
of those things so from the beginning God
is explicit personal and gives his name and
reveals himself takes the risk of allowing the
people to get puffed up in their knowledge
or to misuse it so that he himself
has got to caution and don't take my
name in vain I'm giving you a sacred
trust I've not done this for any other
people I'm doing it for you but be
careful with it it's an extreme privilege don't
misuse it he talks about this a little
bit later on as actually being a falling
away not a statement of an increase of
intimacy and knowledge of God but a falling
away from it because the orthodox Jews today
think that they are honoring God by saying
Hashem the name what they're actually doing is
pronouncing an abstraction they have lost the intimate
sense of God that their forefathers once had
and this is since the destruction that came
upon the temple and the dispersal of the
priesthood this is the rabbinical Judaism that came
out of the crisis of Israel's judgment and
so they've lost the sense of intimacy the
knowledge of God that Israel had before that
judgment and so what they have now is
a kind of abstraction that they speak in
the sense that they think that they are
honoring God but what it really indicates is
they don't know Him beyond that abstraction Hashem,
the name but what name?
both deceived thinking that they're doing service to
God and that somehow this is honoring to
God when actually it's a statement of a
falling away because God desires to be known
and He wants to be known intimately and
you can't have that kind of relationship without
communicating yourself in your name so to be
reduced to a Hashem the name without saying
what that name is and having no greater
meaning for the name and unable to bring
yourself to the place where you can say
Yahweh or Jehovah or Yeshua shows how destitute
they are and their religion is like unto
that abstraction it's an abstract legalism and it
has lost the intimate sense of God and
maybe the end of that is the statement
of Jesus of those who say Lord, Lord
and He says depart from me you workers
of iniquity, I never knew you you've been
reduced to such a state that you're just
invoking a little syllable but there's no comprehension
no knowledge of myself and you've never had
that but you think that by invoking that
you do have it so it's an astonishing
coming up short in a final moment of
great mortification I never knew you just to
come back into an Old Testament Hebraic mindset
just to appreciate the meaning of names the
meaning of words the communication of why it
was given the personal sense the intimacy this
is what I'm trying to touch now not
so much although it's interesting to examine the
different names that were given but what underlies
the God who reveals Himself by giving His
name He desires to be known intimately He's
giving people the privilege of the name that
is an insight into His makeup as God
it makes Him very personal He's taking the
chance of the familiarity that breeds contempt He
would be much wiser so to speak and
safer to keep those people at a distance
terrify the dickens out of them and let
them have an abstract fear of God but
that would not be His nature He's not
in business to terrify or to keep His
people at a distance the kind of God
that He is and the grace that He
exhibits which is the expression of His love
is the desire to be known and to
be an intimate relationship with His own people
and it's the love that's willing to take
the risk of being abused I think probably
to use it like a kind of genie
lamp to think that by invoking it we
can use the name magically and this is
the characteristic of all pagan religions is that
its use of God as they knew it
was magical things were invoked and intoned to
obtain a certain effect or result what it
is is man in the saddle man using
and manipulating that which is holy this is
the taking of the name in vain that
Israel would come down to the level of
its pagan neighbors and take the holy names
of God and seek to manipulate them for
their own advantage as a means to their
own ends it's not given for that it's
given for intimacy not for manipulation so religion
that becomes a manipulation which is even Christianity
today in many ways is an offense to
God but He opens the door for it
that possibility by giving His name but the
God who's here's the point the God who's
willing to take that risk is showing us
what He is as God I'm a God
who so desires intimate relationship and the knowledge
of myself as a person of what I
am that I'm willing to take the risk
that you might abuse this I'm warning you
not to but it's the fact that I'm
warning you shows that it is a possibility
but I'm willing to take that risk you'll
be sorry if you do you'll be chastised
there'll be unhappy consequence but what is love?
we're learning what love is love is the
willingness to take risks by making itself vulnerable
and this is the most high God who's
the creator of the heavens and the earth
and all that in them is we would
not have known that except that God had
done that historically with this nation and that's
why Barth in the other book said I'm
not impressed with this Rudolph Otto and the
numinous mystery of God as a kind of
a sense or vapor the true knowledge comes
in God's relationship with Israel and what he
has both spoken and done for that nation
and that's what we're seeing here this is
so good so God doesn't desire to be
abstract or just a nameless ground of being
that's rejected so the proclamation of the divine
name was treasured as an act whereby God
himself came forth from his secret place and
offered himself in fellowship isn't that a beautiful
picture?
beautiful statement it's a picture of not only
the love of God but the humility of
God to come down and come to send
to be in fellowship with his own creation
with his own creatures even at people who
are going to be his heartache through many
generations this is a God who comes down
so even before the advent of Jesus where
we see the literal physical fulfillment of that
aspect of God it's already indicated in the
history of God from the beginning with that
nation that's why they should all the more
recognize Jesus because Jesus was the fulfillment of
all that God had all along been conveying
in the one way or another and here
he is now in all fullness before you
it's a God who comes down so by
revealing his name God has, as it were
made himself over to them he has opened
to them a part of his very being
and given them a means of access to
himself I don't know that I'm that willing
myself to be that open and available to
others but God is isn't that a remarkable
revelation of God?
I think I share Karl Barth's feeling I'm
not impressed with this mystical stuff but I
love this I love this, the reality that
could only have been communicated in the tangible
way that God did by being in relationship
with this people and giving them his name
he has opened to them a part of
his very being and given them a means
of access to himself he wants to be
accessible whosoever shall call on the name of
the Lord is only a final statement of
what was all along God's way with men
he wants to be called upon and what
do we see in the psalmists but a
generation of men who are continually calling upon
God with a real intimacy and holding him
to his promises didn't you say and didn't
you show us in the past weren't you
faithful in the past didn't you open the
Red Sea how come now we're faced with
these enemies and where are you?
are you sleeping?
it's amazing the kind of directness it almost
borders on what's the word impoliteness in the
address of some of the psalmists to God
in their crisis times but never once is
there an indication that God reproves them for
that kind of talk he actually loves it
he loves to be addressed he wants to
be reminded of what he had promised that
men are believing for that and expect God
to act on the basis of what he
has said because that's what he is as
God and we'll only learn that in one
way by investing ourselves in the history of
Israel and the great irony is that we
for the most part who are Gentiles are
being nourished by this whereas Jews who are
the descendants of Israel have little or no
notion or even interest in the kind of
thing that blesses us so that part of
our calling is to make known to them
their own God and what could be more
powerful than it should come to them through
Gentiles who are more enamored and taken up
with the truth of the God of Israel
than is Israel itself and even in that
mystery is a revelation of God by itself
so the knowledge of his name is more
than an external means of distinguishing one person
from another it is a relation with the
person's being isn't that a beautiful statement God
has made himself accessible by giving his name
it's like saying here's an aspect of myself
I'm not just giving you a little key
word to invoke in a magical way but
I'm inviting you to a relationship with me
and my being and what I am in
myself as God because that's going to have
though it doesn't say this consequence for yourself
how do you enter into a relationship with
God as God and what he is in
himself and not be changed into that very
image if we are changed from glory to
glory beholding in each other's faces the glory
of God what potential for change is there
in having God as accessible in the aspects
of himself that are contained in his name
this is another revelation of God it's not
just that he enjoys the intimacy he wants
to see us transformed into his own precious
image and the way to it is through
the communion with him as he in fact
is and not as we would have thought
him to be a lot of people who
shun the Old Testament have some kind of
erroneous view that this is the God of
judgment I like the New Testament God he's
mercy and kindness but the Old Testament wrath
and fury and anger I'm afraid of that
I don't want anything to do with that
they don't realize what they're losing they're being
stunted in their knowledge of God they're being
deprived of a relationship in a fullness that
would be theirs and they have a mistaken
notion of God because they played upon some
aspect of himself as judge but have neglected
the other aspects which were as conspicuous as
the God of the Old Testament as they
are in the New his grace and his
mercy and his love his benevolence put my
name on the people so the church that
has satisfied itself with the New Testament with
the Psalms and dismissing the whole Old Testament
has to a great degree dismissed God himself
and to that degree their Christian life is
stunted unnatural it lacks a fullness that would
have been there had they availed themselves of
the accessibility that God intends they don't know
that bridge if God had not done this
we would have every reason to shrink back
from any relationship that we would have to
assume that God who is the creator and
stands above all this is foreboding distant fearful
the only reason that we have a disposition
to seek him and to find him in
a way in which we can say Abba,
Father or say Lord with an endearing sense
is because he has communicated himself to us
in that way otherwise we would not have
known it we could err as much about
insisting on Yahweh as the alternative to the
word Lord and make that a new legalism
and be bereft of any real intimacy even
though we're invoking the right word I'm thinking
of a place in the Psalms and I
think it's mentioned several times where the psalmist
is invited to run into the name of
the Lord and find his security there that
those who know the name of the Lord
will run into it what does that mean?
that they've got the secret code?
that they know the letters?
the name of the Lord is the Lord
it's what he is in himself and that
knowledge is ultimate security that's what it means
Paul, he calls himself husband father lover friends
who sticketh closer than a brother he uses
a variety of endearing terms that are shot
full of implications of intimacy that we would
never have dreamed that God would have desired
but the fact that he's the one who
has invoked those terms he calls himself husband,
father, friend encourages us that this is a
God who is desiring this kind of relationship
and that's the very release but where do
we learn that?
we learn that in his relationship with Israel
versant I'm just saying over what I said
before with their own history with their own
tradition with their own scripture far from being
offended with Jesus and rejecting him they would
have seen the very fulfillment of all that
God was hinting and implying throughout their history
here it is now rolled up or stated
in one so this author goes on to
say we look in vain for any instance
of the magical use of the divine name
though it was given to Israel they did
not use it that way the whole climate
of the religion of Yahweh was unfavorable to
such a use it never had a chance
to develop the assurance that the divine name
constituted a guarantee of Yahweh's presence remained a
free gift of grace at the hand of
a sovereign God Israel had enough to realize
this is not something to be misused or
abused but rather it's the statement of God
as a gift of grace coming from the
God who is sovereign and that is so
holy you don't violate it so what he's
saying is the thing that safeguarded the intimacy
to which Israel was invited was the very
sense of the holiness of God that came
with that they could not misuse it because
the climate that God had established the environment
of Israel itself as the people of God
forbade the magical use of his name which
was the way in which pagan peoples employed
the names of their deities and so what
can we say that when judgment came to
Israel and that environment was destroyed then we
find a kind of a Judaism that goes
back again to the abstract Hashem and has
lost the intimate sense of God and is
even offended by those who imply that not
only is that possibility real but that they
themselves know it there's nothing that infuriated these
rabbis Kansas City was where I was living
as a missionary to the Jews and the
fact that I could say that the Lord
brought me or the Lord sent me or
I'm here because the Lord that you can
speak in a personal sense in that way
of a God who is immediate and intimate
who directs who provides who enables was offensive
to them so not only have they moved
away from it but they were offended by
those who are in their own very tradition
that God gave at the first the fact
that you're offended by what once blessed your
own nation is a statement itself of judgment
so this God he says is beyond the
reach of any human pressure and God did
not give it like something that Israel can
possess in order to manipulate any more than
gifts of the spirit as if we own
them and we can turn them on and
off at our pleasure something the Holy Spirit
will give it's not a sense of possession
with the potential for misuse it's a gift
but one that is in his control in
that house lest it puts us in the
place of manipulating God see what I mean?
that's the whole tension there of grace when
it is given that it comes close to
the possibility of a grace abused or misused
and in fact we can say that that's
happened historically where people will misuse God or
for their own purposes and even invoke the
name of the Lord to justify it as
if somehow they can put that phrase that
it sanctifies what is otherwise selfish and has
to do with their own ministry their own
foundation their own this or their own that
God takes that risk which is a precious
love it's good to think of the problem
before God how do I reveal myself to
my creation?
how do I make myself known to the
nations who have gone off in their own
perverse directions into occultic and magical forms of
religion calling upon the false gods of this
world to their own destruction how do I
reveal myself to them in a way that
can correct them and bring them into alignment
with myself and be a provision for their
own life how can I do that?
safely that was God's problem and his answer
according to his wisdom was I will choose
a nation from among all the nations and
to them I will bestow my name and
the revelation of myself and I'll call them
to be a priestly nation to the nations
and to mediate and communicate the knowledge of
myself which I have made dear to them
and intimate to them that the nations might
know sanity peace and righteousness that was God's
problem and so Israel's history is painful to
consider seeing how great was their privilege and
their obligation an instructor for us as the
church who have essentially that same calling but
understand what the problem of God is and
the communication of himself to the nations and
to the world that he himself has created
how opportunistic men are even to employ good
things God-given things to their own ends
don't we see that now taking the name
of the Lord in vain is not just
some vocalization but it's going off in some
carnal direction in ministry where you're riding high
and inviting finance and contributions and so on
and so forth and sanctifying it by invoking
the name of the Lord so easy to
misuse and to abuse they'll have their comeuppance
they'll have to stand before God one day
for the misuse of the name in order
to sanctify their carnality but the Lord is
willing to take that risk but think of
the kind of situation how does he communicate
himself except by taking that risk and that
that risk as I've said is itself the
statement of his love so God reveals his
name and his way, his person to affect
the life of those to whom it's given
to teach them how to live and to
walk walk thou before me and be thou
blameless, I am the Lord God almighty would
be an example of that and this will
affect the concrete details of the daily life
of the nation how to conduct themselves that's
how the law was given what they should
do, how to proceed what happens in an
instance like this where a neighbor takes your
animal or there's an act of violence even
right down to the details of marriage, sexual
relationship God gave them his word, gave them
law gave them a way to proceed and
to conduct themselves so he's not an impersonal
God, but wants the people to live and
to have their being in a way in
keeping with what his name means another
beautiful thing that this writer takes up are
the references to God's jealousy you see this
very often in the Psalms that he's a
jealous God how would we know that?
well, because we're told that and the fact
that God is jealous says something about God
not jealous in some narrow mean way, but
jealous for us jealous that we will receive
the benefit and not misuse something to our
own detriment and he says that the concept
of a jealous God determines the whole slant
of this mosaic faith and shows Jehovah's soul
dominion the desire with regard to his people
and all of the men of God Moses
to Ezekiel, the prophets emphasize this jealousy so
this is a feeling God, and one who
can be offended and grieved and good to
know that, that this is not some kind
of impersonal deity who cannot be offended, and
somehow lacks what constitutes our humanity our humanity
is distinctive because it has the capacity for
joy for grief, for pain, for loss for
sorrow, and so also God, we're made in
that image and it behooves us to know
that that this is a jealous God and
that it will give us an attitude toward
him because we know that, that would save
us from an unnecessary offense toward him and
so this is reiterated through the psalmists, Moses
and others about the jealousy of God for
his own name so that when we get
to Ezekiel we hear God saying not for
your sake have I done this I have
not restored you because of any virtue of
your own, but for my name's sake, which
you have blasphemed in all the nations where
I have driven you, there's a jealousy of
God for his own name, why?
because if that name becomes produced if Israel
has so wallowed in abuse of that name,
and blasphemed it what would that mean then
for the nations?
what would that mean then for the way
in which people would behold God?
it would have brought down the whole appreciation
the reverence for God, and when that comes
down, everything comes down with it morality, values
honesty, decency respect for life then you see
the increase of sexual immorality, lying, cheating abuse,
violence murder, mayhem he's jealous because he's a
God who's a creator and he doesn't want
to see what he has created deformed and
produced and turned into its opposite, so he
has got to cherish and be jealous over
his own name, and the way in which
it is held, and the way in which
he's understood, and the way in which he's
honored and obeyed and conveyed to the unbelieving
and it's good to know that about God
it shows that it's not a selfish egoism
that he wants his name and his honor
maintained because he needs self-esteem he doesn't
need it he's a God who is free
from any dependency on anything that men will
bestow to him he is a acts out
of a complete freedom unto himself, he's not
driven or affected by anything that men would
need to establish themselves, why then is he
jealous?
because he's jealous for his creation's sake he's
jealous for mankind's sake, he's jealous that life
have a decency and that human beings would
conduct themselves in a way worthy of their
call and of the kingdom, but it's good
to know that he has that jealousy and
that it's not a selfish jealousy it's not
someone insisting upon his prerogatives or his name
as if he's going to lose prestige if
it suffers loss if he were that kind
of a God he would not be standing
at the door of our hearts and knocking
and if any man hear my voice I
will commend the humility of God the very
fact of a God who incarnates himself in
flesh who is willing to come down to
earth in the form of an infant in
complete dependency upon those that would care for
him and suffer the abuse of his own
nation right through to rejection and to the
wretched things that were performed on the day
of his execution, the jeering and the taunting
is not a God who is jealous for
his reputation his jealousy is of another kind
and because we know the kind of jealousy
that is God's it's elevating for us that
breaks the power of any need to be
jealous for our reputation if he's not jealous
for his the knowledge of God and what
he reveals about himself is a benevolence for
us it saves us from being mean narrow,
selfish self-justifying and all the kinds of
things in which we would automatically be plunged
if we did not know God as God,
that's why the knowledge of God is all
let not the wise man boast in his
wisdom let not the wealthy man boast in
his wealth but let them boast in this
that they know and understand me so
what God is is the basic assumption of
all thinking, the unshakable cornerstone of man's whole
attempt to construct a picture of life in
the world his existence remains at all times
unquestioned there's never an instance in the Old
Testament scripture where the issue of God's existence
is at all ever taken up it's understood
it's implied and it's unquestioned he is that's
a given and Israel knew that, but what
he is as the God who is is
the something that needs to be revealed and
that there's a whole list of scriptures here
referring to the jealousy of God, if anybody's
interested I can give you some of them
to look up so you don't get anything
about God in the abstract or God philosophically
but you get only the knowledge of God
personally what he is in his own person
and that runs the risk of making God
anthropomorphic of making him like man and somehow
debasing or bringing down God at our level
because he's showing us that he's a God
who feels, he's a God who aches he's
a God who grieves, he's a God who's
jealous, he's a God who's passionate, he's a
God who loves he's a God who abhors
and his hand is mighty or he stretches
out his arm the language of the poets
and the psalmists and of the prophets depicts
God anthropomorphically in the way that as if
he were himself a man though he's above
man, the danger is in being communicated like
that is that we might bring him down
to our level here again, he's willing to
run the risk, and so the whole revelation
of God if it's to be accepted and
received to retain the benefit has to come
in an environment of a kind that will
not allow it to suffer loss we're not
going to allow him to be degraded to
the form of a man, there's a certain
there's no way to understand God except that
he be communicated and having something of the
same dispositions that we ourselves know but to
say that he's not much more than man
or to lose the sense of the transcendence
of God which is beyond man, is to
suffer very great loss, you see the tension
he needs to make himself known, there's a
need for intimacy he uses the language through
the psalmists and the prophets and Moses and
the men of God who knew him, that
is anthropomorphic but he's yet transcendent and above
that so our obligation the tension for us
as believers is that though God speaks about
his hand outstretched, or his grief or his
jealousy, is not to allow it to come
to a place where we lose sight of
the transcendence of God who is yet those
things and yet above them at the same
time, it says no man has approached the
light, how does it go in a light
that is unapproachable, this is the same God,
he's in a light that is unapproachable, no
man shall see my face and live, so
there are warnings even the holiness of God,
there's a great sanctity, and yet at the
same time, he desires a relationship that would
be discouraged by that kind of fear and
so there's a tension of things that need
somehow to be balanced, in Israel we see
both the priest and the prophet so the
prophet would be speaking about God's jealousy the
attributes of God that are anthropomorphic, that display
God humanly, so to speak, that we might
know him, and walk in his way, but
the priests might more likely take up the
sanctity of God, sacrosanct holy, higher, his thoughts
are above your thoughts, in a light that
no man can approach, so here even in
the offices that God creates, both prophet and
priest, we see a provision from God, from
two aspects of things that are essential for
the knowledge of God God in his humanity,
so to speak and God also in his
transcendence and he gives men the calling the
priestly man would be a little bit uncomfortable
with these intimate terms of God, that in
his attributes he would much rather be disposed
to speak of God in his transcendence, the
awesome God who lies beyond words that you
fall on your face and whereas the prophet
would have just the opposite tendency, both are
needed and God has provided both and that
provision is another statement about God how majestic,
how great is his way, how great is
his grace how great is his provision how
great is his wisdom in balancing the kinds
of things that if we went off into
one tangent as against the other, we would
have a deformed knowledge of God and we
would be ourselves deformed because as our knowledge
of God is, so are we also so
he has provided both prophets and priests both
intimate endearments about himself and his own emotion
as well as suggestions of his unspeakable holiness
that is not to be transgressed what a
God we have what a mighty God we
have who is both intimate and ethereal transcendent
and both things are necessary for our sanity
and the correctness of our walk and somehow
we have the intimacy of love we say
Abba Father and at the same time we're
not going to become familiar there's a holiness
that we dare not transgress you know and
the only way I'm saying again and again
in which this complex statement about God and
all of his richness could be communicated was
to a nation which he had chosen and
to whom these things were communicated by both
prophets and priests through Moses, through Abraham and
those who had received the revelation of himself
in one aspect or another and came into
the total compendium of what we call the
Old Testament so that to set this aside
as somehow being passé is to do great
disservice to God, he never intended this as
somehow to be chucked out but to see
a fulfillment in the new but what makes
the new so endearing and rich is because
we have a firm inheritance and grasp of
what God has given from the first so
God himself shatters the spiritualizing images and concepts
which men make for themselves in order that
they may encounter them in living reality as
a person you know, some people would prefer
the ethereal and transcendent God like these rabbis
who like a God abstract and distant, but
what is this writer saying?
God himself doesn't allow that he shatters that
possibility by giving himself to us in the
way of intimacy he doesn't allow a spiritualizing
of images and concepts which men make of
him for themselves, isn't that interesting?
it serves their purposes to see God idealized
and spiritualized and distant, and God knows our
carnal hearts, who knows the heart better than
he, and has made provision for it, how?
that he may encounter them in living reality
as a person what a remarkable feat, to
communicate himself as a person and yet not
in such a way that we would lapse
into a kind of familiarity by which there
would be loss.
He empties himself and lays aside the form
of divinity he humbles himself and assumes the
form of a man he appears to men
not as distant conception or lofty idea, not
as the absolute, the incomprehensible the infinite with
capital letters, but as the one who is
truly closest to all, as supremely the personal
friend or foe of that humanity in which
he reveals himself what a God I mean
to have solved the problem of how do
I make myself known in my creation, without
disfiguring or giving a warped view to those
to whom it would be communicated how do
I solve the problem of giving them a
fear of me that is a right respect
and reverence and awe, without making myself so
distant and so formidable that they would be
afraid to approach, and on the other hand,
how do I make myself known to them
in a way that would be endearing that
I could have the loving intimacy that I
want with them as sons and daughters without
it lapsing into a kind of familiarity that
would be a disservice to them that was
God's problem, and God has solved it gloriously
and so it's not unusual to come up
in our conversation to hear God referred to
as the living God, I love that phrase,
and I'll tell you what that that phrase
in these very days has become very dear
to me because I've seen it in these
very days not knowing how to begin this
school what the subject matter was, not having
the program, the curriculum the agenda, I've seen
the living God, anyone who was with us
in the first week, session by session knew
that something was being unfolded of a precious
kind, of which we had no previous knowledge,
and even now today to embark in this
direction and to feel and grow up our
way is to show again, he's a living
God, a present God he's with us now,
in the immediate moment, he's not just the
God of the Old Testament as if somehow
that's sealed in the past but the God
who was and is, is now presently with
us, they called him the living God because
they experienced the reality of the grace of
his life in their immediate circumstances even as
is our privilege now imagine what it means
to be a witness unto him in this
way to communicate these things to those who
are locked and imprisoned in faulty notions of
God and find him threatening or intimidating who
don't know his grace and the intimate love,
and yet at the same time his righteous
requirement, who can exhibit that?
What person has apprehended the divine in the
sense of the intimacy and at the same
time the righteousness and holiness of God, and
can communicate that, not only in their words
but in their person that's exactly what Jesus
was and did and waits now for a
church of the same kind this is why
God is exalting the knowledge of himself or
else in the absence of that men will
continue to fashion a God in their own
image they'll project something that is not God,
that intimidates and threatens them, or serves their
purpose and leads, and will result in living
a deprived and stunted life the knowledge of
God, as he in fact is, and not
as men think him to be, is the
great issue now when he says you shall
be witnesses unto me this is what he
means so it's not are you saved brother?
but somehow, not only in our words, but
in our whole demeanor we exhibit both a
fear for God, a reverence and an awe
for his majesty who only does wondrous things
and yet a sense of God as present,
intimate, real living.
Who of us could not say we don't
know him as we ought that the knowledge
of God is all, but what a knowledge
and how is it to be gained to
capture be taken in by this remarkable richness
and the balancing of things let me just
read a few things and then we'll take
a little break see how beautifully this man
writes it, and when we say he's a
scholar, does that mean that he was some
impersonal academician who only brings academic disciplines to
the study of God he may express himself
with a disciplined mind but you can believe
that what he has seen, the insight that
he knows and communicates, has come on his
face and in tears and in groanings and
in struggles of his own that's what makes
this kind of scholarship so exalted, that's what
makes theology a discipline different from any other
the study of God is not just an
academic discipline I appreciate the academic quality of
mind and learning that these men bring but
we mustn't think by that, that they were
somehow indifferent themselves to God as God so
what gives this belief in Israel its unparalleled
importance is first that it rules out all
rival deities God is absolute he's the one
God, the living God the creator and that
assertion rules out any other claim that any
other God might have that are entertained by
other nations by his very nature God is
exclusive and it puts the other gods in
a place of jeopardy and if men are
benefiting from having false gods, that's why they
have them then there's going to be a
threat and a resistance to the word of
truth that only this God is in fact
God and until you repent of your false
gods you are not only presently losing out
but you are in a place of eternal
jeopardy so God has given both Israel and
we who are the continuation of Israel such
an unwelcomed message that no wonder men have
paid for it with their lives the Jewish
apostle who went to India Thomas died violently
in fact the only apostle who survived of
whose end was likely not violent was John
of Patmos every other apostle died in bringing
an unwelcome message to the nations this runs
across the very grain of the nations in
their insistence that their gods are also credible
and how dare you tell us or imply
that somehow we're barking up a wrong tree
you're just being nationalistic you're just wanting to
convey your sense as if it's the only
God, you know keep him, because the history
of religion is the history of comparative religions
and of local deities and regional gods but
how do you say that your regional God
is the God of all nations that's an
effrontery that is ultimate offense that is absolutist
and dogmatic and it's an unwelcome thought especially
in this age of relativism that says that
there are many paths to truth how do
you insist that your path is the only
path that was Israel's predicament and it's ours
so you'd have to have an enormous confidence
and an assurance in what you believe you
cannot be dissuaded by impressive evidences that they
also are receiving benefit you better believe they're
receiving benefit because the devil is able to
heap up those benefits to those who worship
him and the gods of this world so
you're coming with an unwelcome message, and it's
got to be spoken, it's an absolute word,
and it's got to be spoken with an
absolute conviction it can't be merely our opinion
or men will not regard it and maybe
there's nothing more persuasive about the truth that
we hold than our unwillingness to die in
the proclamation of it, and maybe our death
is the only and last thing that will
verify and confirm it as being the truth
that people will recognize that anyone who is
willing to die for their noxious belief must
really be on to something that I have
an obligation to consider see what I mean?
the call of the church and the call
of Israel is a call to monogamy it's
the very nature of the thing, so this
belief of Israel as being unparalleled in importance
rules out all rival deities it's not just
that it's your official religion but your responsibility
to the knowledge of God that is to
be maintained at all times with shattering force,
this writer says that nothing comparable can be
observed in the history of other civilized people
no wonder Israel has been such an offense,
no wonder Hitler hated the Jews, no wonder
there's been a historic anti-Semitism not because
Jews were faithful in this obligation but even
in their apostasy however dimly they reflected the
call to make the God of Israel known
as the only God they were still hated
that there's such an instinctive hatred against the
truth of God that would threaten men in
their pagan alternatives that even Israel was an
offense unto death even in its own apostasy
how much more when Israel would be alive
in its faith and dare to challenge the
nations in their false gods and we can
see from Psalm 2 why do the heathen
rage and imagine a vain thing and the
kings and rulers take thought against the Lord
and against his anointed to break their barns
asunder with such a deep inveterate hatred of
God the whole world is at enmity with
God, they do not want to know God
as God they prefer false gods so anyone
who will contest their false religion with the
truth of the God of Israel puts his
life at jeopardy and so who will do
that but only those who are absolutely persuaded
that the only God is the God of
Israel and that the rejection of him has
a consequence for eternity that is dread beyond
all thinking and is worth even the risk
of our own lives we don't really believe
what we say we believe unless we're really
passionate about that conviction and willing to suffer
that loss maybe that's the reason why Israel
backtracked maybe they were not willing for that
burden they didn't want to be noxious and
be distasteful to other nations and even now
what we hear from present state of Israel
is not that we want to take up
this burden, we're a chosen people we do
not desire to be chosen, as a matter
of fact what we really desire is to
be like all other nations, we don't want
to be conspicuous, we don't want to stand
out we don't want to make any extraneous
claim because we ourselves do not believe those
claims let alone be willing to suffer for
them can you see what God has got
to deal with?
that the nation that he appointed to make
himself known to the nations is itself unwilling
for that task and does not even believe
the primacy of the God of Israel as
being the only God and the true God
for they do not even know him that
way and do not desire themselves to know
him that's why yoga and the cultic things
are popular in Israel today and that there's
no resistance to anyone coming to Israel as
a Jew who is subject to the law
of return they'll take you back you can
be an atheist, you can believe in yoga,
you can believe in some Indian guru and
you're still Jewish but come and seek re
-entry to Israel in the law of return
as one who believes that Jesus is the
Messiah and the Holy One of Israel and
you find yourself rejected they can take every
other consideration but not this one this is
too absolute and in its absolute insistence it
threatens every other belief and makes those beliefs
non-beliefs and non-credible and requiring their
rejection and the world cannot abide that God
is still waiting for people who so love
him, who know him to be the only
God and the true God and the living
God that they're willing to die to make
that knowledge known and maybe nothing less than
that willingness will indeed persuade men so we
have to take up where Israel left off
and in fact the irony of our call
is to persuade Israel itself about the truth
of its own God as Gentiles who have
been saved out of our own paganism and
our own false gods and our own idolatries
and our own materialisms and the kind of
false things that would have been our destruction
because the revelation of God as God has
come to us in the mercy of God
and we're so grateful for that that that
gratitude is the incentive to make him known
what can we do for him who has
saved us out of death but to save
others out of death by seeking to communicate
that truth so through all the poetry of
the scriptures the psalmists the prophets that this
God has spoken and is real and seeks
to determine the whole of life this isn't
a Sunday matter this isn't a religion as
an addendum this is the whole of life
that's at stake here this is a way
this is a way to live it's not
just a religious category it's a message that
is more than just an alternative to your
religion it's a whole mode of being and
of living in righteousness because if you're in
error about God and you're willing to live
in that error every other reckoning and every
other consideration must be askew it's warped, it's
out of whack and the consequence of that
must be made visible your kids will go
haywire your kids will shoot students they will
not obey you there will be no respectful
authority the whole of your life is going
to show its cracks and finally will crumble
because at the heart of it you have
not surrendered to what is true about creation
itself and about life itself that God is
God that is the God of Jacob and
that you have an obligation to not know
him but to walk in his way you're
not just offering a religious alternative you're striking
at the very reality that men presume is
real and is false you're blowing the whistle
on what appears to be real and is
false and the only way you can blow
it effectually is to demonstrate the reality that
is real namely that issues out of the
relationship in an intimate way with this God
who has made himself known we're involved in
an awesome drama and for this to be
reduced to a Sunday religion for ourselves is
itself a falling away from the faith of
the God of Israel that faith is all
inclusive the whole of life and the kind
of retorts that I get that my mother
will say to me is that all you
know?
don't you have any other interest?
you used to be so interesting you were
interested in socialism, Marxism is this all you
know?
if I check out I bought some books
are they all on religion?
they don't like this overwhelming absoluteness that takes
in the totality of life they're much more
comfortable if what you believe is only an
aspect of all your interest but that it
is total is the thing that is intimidating
and threatening but if God is God, isn't
that as it ought to be?
and is anything else a true relationship with
God except in its totality?
God didn't call us to a Sunday religion
he called us to a totality of life,
a mode of being to walk in the
way and walk before him and so to
make him known in this way as the
whole of life this writer says, requires a
reckless energy and a self surrender it takes
a kind of prophetic absoluteness that men will
look upon itself as an insanity, you're too
extreme you're over the deep end is that
all you know?
and you're insisting on, for me, you're pressing
me to share and surrender to that same
God you're going too far so where is
a church that has this prophetic insistence this
reckless energy and in fact if we're listless
and we're wanting an energy it's because there's
not a conviction that we ourselves desire to
make known it has not really been communicated
to our hearts the absoluteness of this and
the truth of this and that it is
for this reason that we were saved there's
an issue at stake here of such moment
to save men from eternal death and a
howling and a shriek without relief and without
remedy that this is the purpose for our
salvation and until we understand that and give
ourselves to it he's not going to give
us the energy the energy is not to
spin our wheels the energy is for a
task that except to be divinely enabled is
impossible and all the nations are opposed to
it including his own nation Israel so we
need a divine enablement that he'll give when
we take up the task and say it's
for this purpose that I've come into the
kingdom for such a time as this and
this kind of reckless energy and surrender characterized
all the leading spirits from Moses onward through
the whole succession of the prophets the power
of the divine assertion shines forth like light
reflected in the mirror this is what made
Moses, Moses and Abraham, Abraham and the prophets,
the prophets and the psalmist, the psalmist they
were taken up with this absoluteness it took
me a while until it broke upon my
consciousness that God's call to discipleship was the
call to every believer the fact that men
were not walking in it was showing at
what variance they are from the faith of
God itself listen, this is our call this
is God and we have to surrender to
it it deserves a consuming intensity of faith
he talks about the Sinai revelation and how
it remains an abiding witness that cannot be
paralleled by any other kind of religion in
the world the question for us is is
Sinai and the revelation of God at the
mount and the law and the covenants and
the promises as real for us as those
to whom it was given is it our
inheritance or is it just a bookish archaic
antiquated thing of the past, is it made
real for us, you know that in the
orthodox Passover Seder they speak about the four
sons someone maybe can help me with this
one is a foolish son who says what
has this got to do with me one
is a wicked son who says that has
no relevance for me what my ancestors passed
through, he's wicked because he's unwilling to make
the passage through the Red Sea and the
deliverance of God out of Egypt and through
the wilderness his deliverance and his passage he's
a wicked son, he's unwilling to identify with
his forebears and make the past his own
now and these are unsaved Jews who have
devised this as a kind of a Passover
Seder understanding, but it's deeper than what we
know and so the question for us is,
can we be that witness, except that Sinai
is to us, and what the revelation of
Moses and the ten commandments the covenant, the
law is as real and as part of
our inheritance as it was to whom, to
those to whom it was first given can
we be alive in that vibrancy and totality
that witness requires, except it become that, or
are we wicked sons who have shunned the
past and we don't see it as part
of our inheritance it's not real for us
and to the degree that it's not we've
lost the sense of the divine majesty of
God, the wisdom of God, the provision of
God the God who wreathed the mount of
his revelation in smoke, and he was the
fiery presence upon it, we have to fight
to gain something of that revelation, because it's
lost to us, even though we have the
record and I realized this on this last
trip overseas, I went to the Treblinka concentration
camp, I went to the cemetery at Warsaw
the cemetery of Germany, I saw all of
the evidences of the recent history only 50
years old of the most fearful episode that
had befallen Jewry in modern times and I
realized the futility of trying to memorialize it
they had their monuments, they had their Warsaw
Ghetto monument, you took a few pictures, but
the whole thing had been landscaped and cleared
away there's not the ruins, there's not the
debris there's not the stink of the cadavers
that came up out of the sewers, raising
their hands before the Nazis who gunned them
on the spot so how did, if we've
lost the past as recent as only 50
years ago, what are we going to do
with the past that goes back a few
thousand years?
there's maybe an imperative in the faith to
strive for and seek for the reality of
those things and not to dismiss them as
kind of history that has no relevance for
ourselves about the scripture that says, contend for
the faith, once and for all given to
saints, which we naively think means keep the
articles of the faith to credo, but how
much more does it mean if it does
not mean this, contend for it, if you
don't strive for it to keep it alive
in your consciousness and spirit, you'll not be
a witness, and the church is failing that,
who are we affecting in this locality?
who is challenged by our presence, what do
we communicate even in our silence that would
in any way cause them to take pause,
to think the awfulness of the divine majesty,
which can only be worshipped with trembling here
creates a deep impression on others, if we
ourselves have the sense of that majesty the
fear of God no wonder those who know
their God will do great exploits just that
very knowledge will itself be an exploit so
I don't know what the answer to that
is but to contend for it examine yourself
to see if you're in the faith maybe
another scripture that is pointing to that, as
being more than just the sum of the
credos of the faith, we have satisfied ourselves
with becoming just credally correct and we think
that if we can recite the confession or
the apostles' creed that we have fulfilled all
of God's requirements the faith has got to
come alive for us prophetically God has got
to be seen in his awesome majesty and
holiness or we are not a witness men
think nothing of disregarding what we are about
we're only exercising another alternative, another option that
you can safely disregard without any fear of
eternal consequence to be able to communicate that
is to put your head on the block
men will either have to fall before you
and say, what must we do to be
saved?
or to cast you out over the brow
of a hill it will either be our
persecution or their salvation the fact that men
have other responses to us shows that we
have not communicated this kind of faith and
the awesomeness that requires a response for or
against God and that this is the faith
that God intends for all nations the one
and only God of Israel is the God
of all creation and of all nations and
will one day his glory will fill the
whole earth so I wrote an homage and
I I went to a Lutheran seminary and
I was shocked that this very attitude that
I'm commending and I don't say that I
myself have it was looked upon askance as
Christofascism this insistence that Christ is the only
way is an offense even to Lutherans and
is called Christofascism and a kind of a
sneering disregard for this absoluteness because it's unbecoming
in an age of relativism to be absolute
and to insist on your Christ is Christofascism
and it's not fair to others who have
another faith commitment can you imagine that this
is being taught in a Christian seminary so
far have we moved from the faith of
the fathers it would shock the prophets and
the apostles to death to know that this
is a Christian mentality today that they are
offended by the gospel and it's absolute claims
it's ironic but that Jews are so opposed
and fearful of fundamentalists that they might make
America Christian and that will change the atmosphere
of relativism that they think would be safe
for themselves are really cutting their noses to
spite their faces actually if they but knew
it was the fundamentalists those who insist on
the faith is really their hope but they
see it as a threat from their unregenerate
way of looking at it and of course
I have to say that a lot of
the fundamentalists are so offensive in their dogmatism
that is not tempered by mercy that indeed
there is reason why Jews can well be
offended by that we got it and you
don't got it mentality and God is not
hearing the prayers of Jews I mean there
is reason for them to be turned off
so not only we need the absoluteness of
the prophets but the mercy of God that
it's not enough to be correct but that
we've got to show forth God as well
as make his claims known and that's why
the church is so defunct this is ultimate
requirement and how is it to be obtained
how do we come to be bearish not
only of the word but the reality except
that God has himself dealt with us in
the root of our own being and has
identified those things that are idolatrous and false
in our own life even as we speak
the right words and that kind of sanctifying
work can only take place when the church
is really the church which is to say
the community of God's people it's a radical
alteration of their lifestyle it's putting themselves at
risk it's an open invitation to be humiliated
who would want that so it will take
even a message to the church itself about
what kind of reality God is wanting at
the last days and the environment alone in
which it can be obtained so you've got
to come out of that environment you have
to be sent from that environment of community
in order to invite people to it as
a living option and a possibility you can't
bring it as an abstract message if you
yourself are not sent forth out of it
and maybe that's not the least if not
the heart of Acts 13 and the first
epistolic sending that came not to Jerusalem but
to Antioch to a church that was made
up of diverse races, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds
who had come to the place where they
worshipped the Lord together in fact it was
in the moment of such worship where men
were not distracted from their ethnic and racial
differences they had come to a unity in
the faith the hard way that the Spirit
of God said separate unto me you've got
now something that can be exported you've got
a message that's alive the reality is written
in you now this needs to be sent
into the pagan world where men are still
divided and at enmity with each other on
the basis of race, ethnic background, culture, religion.
Now bring this heavenly reality to men whose
lives are shot through with violence and hatred
because you have come to it in Antioch
now you can be sent forth from it.
Maybe that's what we're waiting on.
So who is it who can stand outside
the grave of contemporary church and cry out
come forth that will be just more than
a hopeful statement but it's so charged with
prophetic reality and the resonance of God that
it will bring them out of their tombs
and then we say loose them and let
them be now to the nations and can't
think of anything more cruel than men should
come to the church and invite it to
community who are coming only, community is some
cutesy alternative some technical thing that they were
able to fashion or they think that because
they live on the same property that they
have it you know what I mean?
That it's just another alternative there's a reality
an awesome reality that needs to be conveyed
but it takes something to obtain that and
to obtain it corporately.
Leaders are the least likely to expect that
reality or to encourage it because they have
a vested interest in perpetuating what already is
and they're not willing to the threat of
the sacrifice or the loss of it if
they themselves are leaders.
So it's an enormous requirement and pray for
those who are willing to venture into this
and that it might be obtained so let
me read the last paragraph here that sort
of sums up a lot of what we're
saying.
The development of Old Testament religion shows that
the essential factor in the emergence of a
vital and moral faith was not philosophical speculation
or moral or play on words or word
game I'm adding that, but the experience of
God's close and living reality if Israel's belief
had secured a foothold prematurely it would have
made no progress it would have been a
pale abstraction devoid of inner force and this
has been the fate of all conceptions arrived
at by speculative methods.
Oh boy, just don't want to lose this.
This would be our fate if community for
us is a speculation or an abstraction or
a set of principles the loss would be
unfathomable so what is required is a reality
that comes out of living experience and the
reality of community is the reality of the
cross and the reality of the cross is
the reality of Christ.
The reality of Christ is the reality of
God You know the precious church legend, some
of you may have heard me share this
of Columbo the man who was sent by
God to Scotland when Scotland was nothing but
contending and rivaling pagan peoples and before they
could come to the mainland this Columbo had,
was part of a community, they don't say
how many but God brought them to an
offshore island where they remained for two years
and at a moment of God's release, maybe
something like Antioch they came to the shore
of this pagan pick people P-I-C
-T who were savage in their fierceness and
something of that yet remains in Scotland the
violence of the McCoys and the still tribal
lines and differences that eventually the legend is
that Columbo stood outside this double thick fortress
and they were looked upon with contempt by
those on the watchtowers and he made the
sign of the cross and when he made
the sign of the cross the gate opened
of itself there was something in that demonstration
that was honored by God that moved the
supernatural power to open the gate that could
not otherwise be opened by any power except
the men inside and when the king saw
this demonstration he was converted and called for
the conversion of his entire pagan people and
when I heard that I thought was well
what gave that thing its power anybody can
make this genuflection of a cross but this
pointing upward to God and the pointing horizontally
to men was the heart of that power
they were in relationship horizontally as they were
in a relationship vertically, in fact nothing will
compel you to the vertical relationship with God
but the frustrations, the trials, the problems the
crises that come in your relationship with men
so there's something about this reality that waits,
the reality of the cross that has to
do with the horizontal member as well as
the vertical member that will be the revelation
of the reality and the truth of God
to pagan peoples that they might be saved,
that's how it was then, that's how it
will be at the end and that's what
he's saying here the experience of God's close
and living reality probably waits on close and
living relationship with God's own people it was
only because their God Yahweh was at hand
to dominate the whole of life and to
give practical proof of his reality that Israel's
picture of God was able to grow and
her ability to make that God known something
about the whole of life practical proof of
this reality was the issue then and it's
the issue now as a people in covenant
relationship as a people and not as individuals
we have become very individualistic and when we
take the cup of covenant, the Lord's Supper
in most churches is with an individual plastic
glass cup and an individual little piece of
wafer so that we can be sitting alongside
a number of people who are themselves taking
it individually and we're taking it individually there's
no covenant sense of a peoplehood who are
in the same relationship with God as Israel
and that with the church, as you who
are far off without God, without hope in
the world have been brought nigh by the
blood of the Messiah, into their covenants, promises,
hope and commonwealth so that we're called to
be the continuation of that once authentic faith
in such a way as Gentiles as to
move them to jealousy as they see it
performed but we need to know what we're
being brought into it's this faith the faith
of Israel well one of the things given
Israel in the revelation of God that's unique
is covenant and maybe we'll talk about that
in the next occasion, one of these occasions
what I'm coming to sense is that the
kingdom of God is patterned on or modeled
after or issues from Israel's covenant relationship with
God and that the kingdom of God is
the universal thing for all nations reflecting a
kind of covenant relationship that Israel had as
a nation with God the kingdom is the
extension of that covenant for all nations so
here's the thought of God for Israel that
ultimately is intended for all nations that we
need to consider and then one final thought
in my experience here at Ben Israel I
came with such a distaste for what they
call the Lord's Supper having gone through the
sitting with a plastic cup in my hand
with a sea of anonymous and unknown saints
without any sense of covenant connection or family
or community that if it came once a
month that was soon enough once a year
as in fact is the practice in some
denominations would have been enough but when we
came to the life here the requirement of
it was so demanding that our nice guy
-ism ran out after about two weeks and
we realized that without the frequency of God's
life and the power of it enhanced and
given through the bread and the wine we
could not be to each other what we
ought let alone to others and we began
to take communion with a frequency that became
daily that's how much we needed the life
of God because of the demand of community
itself so something will become a form unless
there's a corresponding life and that's how God
intended it and out of that reality will
come a witness we'll be driven to know
God as we ought just to be to
each other what we ought let alone to
others and show forth his mercy, his grace
all of the things that he is and
desires to communicate let's have a little prayer
we're past our time even for the continuation
of this appreciate this direction the Lord is
giving us so feel free to pray I'll
just not let