Different cultures are predicated on what is good,
the consensus of men and how they view
values, and just one illustration of what I'm
talking about is the day that I removed
my TV set from out of my house.
It has found a way back in, but
it hardly has any use at all.
I'm no more a video player, but in
the old days, I came into the house,
the room was dark, the living room, and
the kids were glued to the screen.
My children and the children of other people
in the community, they were watching a program,
a drama, whose setting was the Olympics, and
there was a love affair between a woman
Russian athlete and an American athlete.
There was nothing lewd, there was no foul
language, there was nothing depicted that was sex.
It had every appearance of being a very
fine drama, and as I just looked in,
passing through, I just caught something of the
dialogue and the conversation between this man and
this woman that passed for romance, that was
so sinister, so evil, all the more because
it was not apparently evil, but purported to
be good.
And my kids, the kids were drinking it
up.
I went right to the machine and I
pulled the plug out of the socket.
It was almost like Phineas putting a spear
between the fornicating Israelite and the pagan woman.
It was all the more evil because it
had the appearance of good, but what was
being communicated in that good was deadly.
It was anti-Christ, it was contrary to
God, and had everything to do with a
false reality that somehow is benign and has
every appearance of attractiveness, and that's what made
good evil.
So when the Lord forbids the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, we need
to understand that the good is as evil
as the evil, perhaps even more evil, because
its appearance is disarming, and the culture is
interwoven with what men endorse.
That seems to have the appearance of benevolent
understanding and kindness, but if we could see
through it, it's opposed to God.
Now there's a wonderful line that I often
quote from the play Hamlet by Shakespeare, where
Hamlet confronts his mother.
I don't know if you know the play,
but in my opinion, it's probably the greatest
play ever written.
It shows forth the genius of Shakespeare, and
I don't know to what degree the Bible
was formative in his own understanding, but there
are certain things that come up in his
writing that are remarkably rich.
So here's a student who has come back
from school to find that his father has
died mysteriously, and that his mother has remarried,
and she's remarried the murderer, who was the
brother of the deceased husband, and Hamlet is
learning about this terrible plot and subversive usurpation
of power, and that this woman in her
mindlessness and in her sensuality has married even
the murderer and doesn't even know it, and
there's a scene of confrontation in which he
opens the locket from around her throat, and
in it on one side is the picture
of the deceased husband, and on the other
side is the picture of the husband who
now is, and he pushes this thing right
into her face and convicts her of what
she has done, lying between incestuous sheets, and
all of a sudden her heart is struck
because the reality of what she has in
her mindlessness done comes upon her in this
confrontational thing, and she cries out, Hamlet, no
more!
No, I can't take any more!
And he says, sometimes one must be cruel
in order to be kind.
Well, in my short career in the Lord,
I have had more than one occasion where
I've had to be cruel in order to
be kind, and you're going to have more
than one occasion when you will appear to
be cruel in order to be kind, but
if you're stopped by cruelty or what appears
to be offensive and violates the sensibilities of
men and their definitions of what is good,
you will have fallen short of God's requirement
in that moment.
And the last thing, the most powerful thing
that disarms saints from an ultimate obedience toward
God is their respect for what is good,
and wanting to be found respectful of what
is good, and to receive the approval and
the benediction of those who subscribe to what
is good, not knowing that more often than
not, what is good is evil.
Only that which is from above is good.
You remember when a man came to Jesus
and called Jesus good?
And Jesus stopped in that moment.
He wouldn't tolerate it for a moment.
Why callest thou me good?
There's no man good but God.
He might just as well have said, there's
no thing good but that which issues from
God.
We mustn't be deceived by the appearances of
good, and we mustn't look upon good as
somehow a sanction, as being respectable and approved,
and therefore we can affirm it also.
And I think we're moving toward a head
-on collision with culture, with society, and the
thing that will offend society more than anything
is when you the whistle on its apparent
values, when you remove the veil, when you
remove the disguise that appears to be benevolent,
and show it to be vicious, self-seeking,
anti-Christ, and opposed to God.
The world does not want to be found
out.
The whole world lies in the wicked one
who is the father of lies and the
master of deceit.
And they remember that in the temptation of
Jesus in the wilderness, his every probing thing
was apparently good.
Why don't you turn this bread, the stones
into bread?
Oh, you have this coming.
You deserve all the kinds of things where
Jesus was impervious, he could not be seduced.
So we need to be alerted to the
peril of good.
Why is it a peril?
Because it does not appear as evil, and
because the world sanctions and approves it and
condones it as good.
There's no man good, Jesus said, but God,
and there's no thing good but what comes
from God.
And what Hamlet was doing with his mother,
as cruel and as fierce as his insistence
upon confronting her with the truth of her
sensuality and of her lie, was God, even
though it brought an extreme pain.
Now, I'll just give you, I said I
have to draw from episodes out of my
own life.
Not too long ago, maybe the south in
North Carolina, I was the guest of a
couple whom I've known for many years.
I had known the wife for maybe 30
years, at one time she wanted to be
my secretary.
That's how close our relationship was.
Some of the greatest adventures in our history,
that first conference on messianic discipleship was conducted
in Rowley, North Carolina, and she was one
of the instrumental people in setting that thing
up, so we had a long history.
I've been in their home many times and
have spoken in the area.
On this occasion, the visit began by attending
a full gospel monthly meeting, whatever it was,
where her husband is the full gospel president.
I was not the speaker, but we just
attended.
The next day my own activity began.
In fact, it began at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at the pit,
which is the open debate area where the
evangelists come and engage these students in face
-to-face confrontations, and I've been there before
and have had really significant times of confrontation.
But the night before, I'm at this full
gospel thing, and it is horrendous.
It is full gospel at its worst, back
-slapping, amens and hallelujahs.
It was a carnal, I don't know what
to call it.
I could barely sit my way through it.
It was so bad.
It's a culture.
It's a full gospel culture, and full of
loud, ribald statements, and ain't we got faith,
and all of that kind of thing.
I could barely get through it.
Well, the next morning was the confrontation at
the university, and this brother, who's the president,
came and brought one of his officers with
him.
We sat around the perimeter of this pit
area, and instead of my preaching or speaking,
the Lord had another format.
It was one-on-one, just going to
these students, sitting around that perimeter and engaging
them in conversation and earnest discussion.
A number of black students, and white of
course, and the last one that I spoke
to was a Jewish boy.
I would not have known it.
Blonde and blue-eyed.
So the Lord was really engaging representatives of
the whole of humanity around that pit.
Students who are earnest about questions of an
ultimate kind.
But these two men sat watching and had
not a single word to say.
They had nothing to say.
They were not involved in engagement, though it
was available to them.
And something in my spirit was being chafed
in the contrast between what was taking place
the night before in this so-called evidence
of the Holy Spirit, and ain't we got
faith, and blah blah blah, and their complete
silence when it counted.
Where was your Holy Spirit then?
Where's your anointing now?
Where's your unction?
Where's this fullness of the Spirit when life
and death and eternity is at stake right
now?
Why are you silent?
Well, I didn't say anything then, but the
final meeting was at this brother's house.
And that morning, as is my practice and
the Lord's early, because I had a premonition
that that night I must address this and
speak it.
And it's going to be offensive.
It would be a naming of names.
It would be clear to everyone that if
I drew the comparison between the full gospel,
look my no hands, fulminations, and the silence
of the same men were counted, that it
would be clear who was being referred to,
but that I would have to do it.
That there was something at stake.
It wasn't the Lord just wanting to needle
someone.
It was the Lord wanting to expose a
whole counterfeit Christian culture that revealed its paucity,
its emptiness, the night, the morning after the
night before, by the failure to be able
to bring that so-called fullness of the
Spirit to the point of confrontation where life
and eternity was at stake.
Can you understand what I'm saying?
I'm giving you a little picture of the
prophetic dilemma of having to offend and that
your heart is pierced in a strange way
that would have passed completely over the mind
of the heart of the understanding of others,
but somehow the prophetic heart is zinged by
the contrast of the profession of the one
and the failure of the other.
And somehow to the prophetic man, it's more
than just a moment that took place in
North Carolina.
It's an eternal moment.
It's a statement of a condition that is
pervasive that goes far beyond North Carolina.
It's universal in our contemporary Christendom, and it
needs to be confronted, needs to be revealed.
It needs to be, the whistle needs to
be blown.
See what I mean?
But you can't blow that whistle and be
nice.
You can't register the heart of God and
spare those who are the very ones that
were involved.
There's a necessity to be cool in order
to be kind.
And I felt that these people were living
a kind of dream world, a fantasy that
their amens and hallelujahs and turning up the
volume of the loudspeakers and the whole ribald,
R-I-B-A-L-D culture, I
don't have another word for it, was somehow
representative of reality.
But where was it when it counted?
It was revealed as wanting, and it needs
to be addressed.
And that, so I was early in the
morning in their house.
They were still sleeping.
The brother who was with me from Ben
Israel was still sleeping.
The same brother who slept while I was
run over by a hundred Mack trucks in
the Philippines and in Australia and in New
Zealand, he accompanied me on a Southeast Asia
trip, where every time we came to a
capital city, I spent an entire sleepless night
being worked over by the evil one.
I can't tell you, not just physically as
well as spiritually.
Groanings and agonizings of the powers of darkness
while my brother snored all through the night.
I even took my flashlight to see what
he was doing.
Could he remain in that sleep while I'm
going through this agony?
Yes, he did.
This is a brother who has subsequently left
us because his wife heard from the Lord
that Ben Israel is under judgment and they're
getting out while they're getting is good.
Doesn't the scripture speak about those with whom
you went into the house of the Lord
together and they ate your bread and now
they've kicked up their heel against you?
You see how I'm required to draw from
these things, not because I want to identify
anyone or embarrass anyone, but this is the
grip of life and the prophetic men are
groomed in it and draw from it.
That's why they marry prostitutes.
That's why their wives leave them.
That's why they're confronted with infidelity.
Is there anything that more crushes a man's
spirit and leaves him hanging for dead than
to find his wife in bed with another
man?
I'm speaking that symbolically.
Whatever corresponds to that, that must come into
the experience of men who bear God's burden
for an Israel that has gone to bed
with idols.
That somehow those that are called to that
nation and are involved in the process of
their restoration have in some measure to know
God's own grief, what he has had to
bear over the ages in the unfaithful wife
that Israel has been.
It's remarkable when I look back over the
years how many men I see that are
being dealt with like that and it's for
me the evidence that they have that goal.
So that morning I was on my face
before God if I could have run and
found an exit.
The time I finished crying out the guy
because I knew what he was calling for
that night in and the meeting was in
the man's own house.
Well brother haven't you ever heard of southern
propriety?
You don't do that in the south.
You don't bite the hand that feeds you.
You don't offend those who have profit hospitality.
What kind of a brute are you anyway?
So I knew what was coming and I
was crying out the time I finished and
I'm not, this is not an appeal for
pity but a description of what is intrinsic
to the prophetic call.
To whatever degree that call is yours it's
the call of the church at large in
itself.
The church that's not prophetic is not the
church.
So there's a measure in which the church
must bear and experience realities of this kind
and if it's not your call personally you're
called as an intercessor for those who have
that call who have got to groan through
episodes of this kind all the more as
we come closer to the end of the
age where the issues are so pregnant that
they can't be addressed in any other way
without being cruel.
So when I finished my time before the
Lord while my brother was yet sleeping who
later on though he was with me the
whole thing accused me of arrogance that my
speaking that night though he didn't tell me
that then but later on in his indictment
against me by which he has been justified
in leaving Ben Israel he recalled that episode
as being a statement of my arrogance.
Well I want to tell you dear Saints
I'm not saying that the man is not
right he may be right maybe I'm wrong
and that the prophetic man has always to
live with the tension of that very possibility.
You'll never know with uttermost certainty that what
you spoke and what you did was to
look it may well have been human arrogance.
It's either that or it's uttermost humility the
one or the other.
When Jesus upset the money changes tables was
he being arrogant?
By every appearance would he really take it
upon himself to physically turn over these tables
and who did he think he was and
these are long established practices and people needed
to buy pigeons that couldn't afford a lamb
for sacrifice.
So it's a moot question of whether that
act of obedience to the Father was a
man acting out of his own bumptious presumption
and arrogance or really the uttermost humility.
If humility is not the issue of walking
on eggshells and being self-effacing but humility
is doing the will of God no matter
what the requirement and knowing that the greater
the obedience the more it will be misunderstood
and be misconstrued as exactly being opposite of
what it is sort of the act of
love is looked upon as cruelty.
You know what I mean?
And you'll be accused of lovelessness when it's
the very act of love that people misconstrue.
Do you know why?
Because they are attuned to the world's definition
of that which is good and they're judging
you by that standard because they themselves are
living consistently from the tree of knowledge of
what is good rather than knowing what is
good from the life of God.
And what is good from the life of
God in one moment may be for the
very next day not good.
In other words you can't act on it
because it was the Lord one day as
if he's giving you a principle or an
allowance that that act can always be.
No.
It's a moment-by-moment obedience to God
which is good and never our determination by
our thought of our assessment of what is
good.
Because by every human reckoning that night it
was not good to name names.
I didn't name the man by name but
it's clear who's being described.
But there was no way to reveal the
issue of what has happened to our American
Christendom in its charismatic form that its blatant
failure were accounted in the issues of eternity
around that pit area with those students.
So I spoke that night there was a
you could have heard the proverbial pin drop
and it was a real call to resurrection
life that there's no alternative for us but
to live and move and have our being
in him because we're moving by our own
humanity our own thought our own definitions of
what is propitious and appropriate.
We will miss God.
It was a real call to a death
and resurrection and I naively thought that the
Word of God would bring that man and
those who are with him in subscribing to
that culture down on their faces nigh unto
death and that they would be raised up
into a whole new dimension of a resurrection
life that is what the South really needs
what those students really need.
But no he sat quite complacently and listened
because he's a southern gentleman and I'm a
Brooklyn lout and so he has the largesse
and the magnanimity to tolerate this offensive and
crude thing that is biting the hand that
feeds it and violating against one's own host
in one's in his own home.
That man today is dying from cancer.
When I got home there was a letter
waiting for me or soon after making sure
that I understood what an offense I had
been and that I had burned the bridges
behind me and I had destroyed relationships that
were over a quarter of a century old
by my brute insensitivity and I tried to
answer how do you answer a little like
that.
Now that man is dying of cancer.
He's had all kinds of treatments and we
prayed for him here at Ben Israel and
then I don't know if Adam remembers or
Pearl morning prayer times.
I had the thought should I write him
a letter?
I wonder if there's any conjunction between his
cancer you remember that and the fact that
he had repudiated the word of the Lord
and the servant who bore it.
Could that be that that God would allow
a judgment of that kind nigh unto death
by refusing that critical word?
At least it's a possibility and how can
we pray for his healing or deliverance if
God is waiting for a repentance.
So what am I going to do now
write him a letter and say that your
cancer this is what they call this is
putting salt in the wounds.
This is heaping offense upon injury.
It was one thing to be a loudmouth
and a boor and violating Southern conventions and
propriety and what is good then but now
while the man is suffering cancer and is
staring death in the face to bring an
accusation or an indictment and a suggestion.
You know what they know how they interpreted
his cancer?
It was a brave testimony because the man's
doctor is Jewish and they're really showing their
faith and it's the enemy attacking them and
well that's one way to perceive it and
maybe they're right.
Am I saying that thus sayeth the Lord
that that cancer is directly related to the
rejection of God's Word and God's Messenger?
I can't say thus sayeth the Lord but
I know it could be a possibility and
do I have the responsibility understanding that to
write that to them while the man is
down?
What would you do?
Stay on with the Lord and it will
be.
That's why I'm taking the pains to recount
this.
I'm in advance.
This is coming.
Should having offended once do you now perform
the greater offense and suggest that the man's
cancer is not the statement of his spirituality
where he's giving a brave testimony and fighting
against the devil but a consequence of a
rejection of a time significant word and the
man who bore it and that you'll not
be delivered from your cancer unless you acknowledge
that and repent of that and it will
release the deliverance of God.
I sent that letter.
I wrote that letter.
I sent that letter.
I have not heard from them since.
I can only imagine the the horror when
that letter came.
Wow.
Well it was one thing when he did
that but now.
So how are we led?
What's one of the basis for our obediences?
How do we assess and act?
And here's where the issue of the two
trees comes in.
Are we acting on the basis of what
we think good?
And how much of our thinking is socially
and culturally conditioned?
I can remember an episode some months ago
a couple had come to us.
They're only here maybe a couple of weeks.
We're having a Bible study in their home
on the cross and at a certain moment
I don't know what possessed me I turned
and I looked at the wife and I
said something about your politeness is a mask.
I don't remember the exact words.
Just like that and the Lord was uncovering
something that had been what shall I say
a guarded personality all through that woman's lifetime
and the Lord was pressing to open it
and she started crying.
Oh praise God.
It was the word of the Lord and
she needed this relief and this confrontation.
I don't take any delight in that but
there it was and one of the sisters
in the room the next day in the
prayer meeting make sure to make clear how
that was an offense and look at how
the poor woman was upset and disturbed by
it and that that that that that that.
The woman who is making these comments the
next day is speaking herself out of a
cultural mentality that you don't do certain things
publicly.
It's not nice.
Look how she was offended.
More recently in one of our community meetings
just before the advent of this school the
issue came up about Inga cooking in the
kitchen.
Well if you know the history my wife
is not at all reticent to let you
know her whole history of grief with Ben
Israel and this is wrong and that's wrong
and that that that that that and my
husband she's going to make sure that you're
not all that carried away by being that
impressed with her husband because she can tell
you his foibles and will just give her
this much opportunity and so the question was
she she was not cooking last year the
Lord gave us a replacement but she wanted
to cook this year should we allow her
and would she begin to express those things
that would have an adverse effect on students
and those who come.
It was a real question a legitimate question.
It had to come up in our community
meeting because I wasn't going to push something
through that would affect us all and affect
the school.
It was a critical thing.
It needed to be publicly discussed and we
had come to a place of maturity where
those things can be discussed.
Sure enough the same lady who was offended
by my abrupt turning to that young wife
and saying your politeness is an exterior cover
you know and was offended that I allowed
my wife to be the object of discussion
and she made sure to say in the
next morning's prayer meeting this distant embarrass her
to say I don't know what man would
ever have allowed his wife to be the
object of public discussion like that implying that
this man allowed that but why did this
man allow that?
Because I have a greater responsibility then quote
the protection of my wife.
We're out we're in this but my wife
and I where our faces are sticking out
we're naked and exposed that's what community is.
All you who went to hear abandon all
hope of covering your in your dignity and
issues are going to arise in which you
yourself are the object of the discussion.
So yes from the point of view of
morality or propriety that could be offensive but
from the point of view of the health
of community for the righteousness of the issue
for the necessity to discuss something that could
not be veiled there was there was no
alternative it had to be out.
So how do you view it?
From what tree are you eating?
So that's what is in my spirit this
morning that we must not make sure to
pass over the subject of the two trees
and miss the subtlety and the power of
what issues from the tree of the knowledge
of good as well as evil that the
good in the last analysis can be more
insidious than the evil because it disguises itself
and appears as good and for us the
toughest issues in the last days are going
to be seeing through what is good and
sometimes having to be cruel in order to
be kind.
Well what example do we have in the
Lord himself and in the God of our
fathers in having to be cruel in order
to be kind?
What do we call his judgments?
How do we understand his holocausts?
How do we understand the destruction of two
temples?
The inviolability of Zion where the Jewish defenders
against the Roman legions were convinced that God
had to win because how is he going
to allow uncircumcised pagans to destroy the city
of God itself and the holy temple of
God itself?
They died on its roof, burned by the
fire that was set by the Romans to
the temple in order to melt the gold
out of it and they were crushed.
Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost.
The blood I think was proverbially up to
the bridle of the horses.
You know almost the total population annihilated and
a remnant sent into slavery in the Roman
Empire.
It was one of the one most massive
tragedies in Jewish history and the only thing
to which it can be likened is the
holocaust of the Nazi time.
But where was God?
The God who is kind and good.
There's no man good but God.
Oh yeah?
So how do you explain that?
Well I have to explain it that when
God has got to be cruel in order
to be kind that cruelty is good.
That judgment is love.
Painful though it is and God does not
restrain himself because he is violating against the
expectation of his own people or their own
understanding.
He's willing to leave them devastated not only
in their bodies but in their minds and
in their hearts and in their understanding and
is not quick to give explanation.
It's now a half century since the German
holocaust, Nazi holocaust and there are yet a
people without explanation and in fact Jewish authorities
of the Orthodox kind think that it's not
propitious.
It's unbecoming even to seek an explanation let
alone that your explanation has something to suggest
that the holocaust was not some aberration in
history or a historical accident but the fulfillment
of God's own very word in judgment for
sins that go back through the generations and
are called for in this historic moment of
time.
Now you know that a rabbi in Israel
has recently caused a great furor because in
one of his public addresses he said the
holocaust was God's judgment on sinners who were
reincarnated to experience that judgment.
Whoa all hell broke loose.
What are you saying?
You're defiling the memory of the martyrs who
died nobly and you're offending their survivors by
suggesting that there's even a connection between the
holocaust and sin because reincarnation is his own
strange twist but he's the first religious authority
that I know that has even implied that
there's a connection between the holocaust and sin
and that that took the top off.
You could the howls and screams and shrieks
from every sector of Israeli society and Avraham
Borg an Orthodox Jew with a yarmulke on
his head who presides over the Knesset he
said well that rabbi had to blame man
because he could not bring himself to blame
God.
Can you believe that?
That it's better to blame man than to
blame God.
In fact if you'll not blame man God
is inevitably the culprit.
So it's as if the lid is being
lifted from the garbage can and what men
are expressing in their horrified responses to this
rabbi's statement reveals their hearts.
So be assured that we're going to offend
many in the last days but my concern
and I think the jealous heart of God
this morning is that we don't miss him
at any given moment because we're acting out
of the consensus of culture and of society
that has established the norms of what is
acceptable and what is good.
The world is eating from the wrong tree
and good from that tree is death.
God's cruelty that seems not to be good
is life maybe not in the moment but
ultimately and we have got to have an
unswerving devotion to the tree of life and
abstain at all costs from allowing ourselves to
draw from the tree of knowledge of good
and evil it will always be death.
Let's get right down to the nitty-gritty.
Was it good to send that letter to
this dying man and his wife or just
raising the possibility that maybe what is that
issue here is a failed response to God
and God's messenger that needs to be recognized
and repented for?
Who says you're right in that and if
you're not right aren't you really pouring salt
into the open?
Is this a time to make a suggestion
like that when a man is gasping for
very life?
Isn't that cruel?
Isn't that an offense?
How would you determine whether to send that
letter or not?
Are you going to hear a voice from
heaven?
Listen, thus saith the Lord my son, yes
send that letter.
This is complete silence where he allows you
to choose from the one tree or the
other and I'll tell you what if you're
not consistently living from the tree of life
and have too often condescended to the other
you're not likely to know.
You understand what I'm saying?
I don't have a word for this.
I'm saying this now for your benefit.
My poor wife has had to suffer me
for over 35 years.
You know how Inga is made?
God bless her.
She comes out of a Danish culture that
is nice and she wants always to make
people feel good and it's so solicitous for
them that when we had our most recent
house guest she laid out two sets of
towels on the bed, two bath towels, two
this.
It's always overkill, it's always nice, it always
grates me but I have grated her.
That poor woman has had to bear the
humiliation of sitting on a platform while her
husband is bringing offense to the sponsors of
a conference whom she loves and wants to
spare and not offend.
So I've done more to kill my wife
in the area of her sensibilities and kindness
because she's made that way.
She has the gift of mercy and of
kindness and here she's living with this brute
who goes where angels fear to tread and
brings uproar and that's why she doesn't want
to travel with me.
So what do you do when you're faced
with the issue of obedience to God and
offending against a wife who's delicate and whose
culture and upbringing will completely misconstrue that moment
and will be hurt by it?
Well you can be assured you're not going
to have an immediate satisfaction or gratification or
seeing God smooth out the wrinkles and placating
and making everything right.
He'll allow even that obedience to go for
a long time to be a sore and
exacerbating thing, an irritation before you vindicate it.
And your wife has got to bear that
for that length of time also and maybe
there's a vindication that has yet not come.
Obedience to God will bring that offense to
those that are dear to you and are
you willing to allow them to be offended
and trust the Lord at some future time
of his choosing to bring the answer and
reconcile and show them that it was of
himself and that they actually have received a
benefit.
Though you know it's not going to come
in the moment.
See we don't suspect our own humanity the
way Jesus does.
We somehow are convinced that we have some
virtue, some ability, some understandings and knowledge.
It says many believed upon him seeing what
the miracles that he performed, but he would
not entrust himself to them for he knew
what was in man.
He would not even accept the tribute of
their acknowledgement of him as Messiah because they
came to that conclusion by interpreting the miracles,
the external work of God.
It was not revealed to them from the
Father which is in heaven.
So he would not even receive their acknowledgement
because it came humanly rather than divinely.
So great was his suspicion of that which
is in man.
But as Oswald Chambers I think says he
was never cynical about man.
It didn't allow him to be embittered because
he knew what was in man.
He just was powerfully realistic and understood that
there's only one source of good and that
is God.
That's why those two trees are so remarkably
important.
And I just have to repeat myself, unless
you are habituated to the tree of life,
you're continually living from it.
You'll not miss the critical moments.
So this is more than just an ability
that you're going to find in a crisis
moment if you have not consistently and consciously
cleaved to the life of God and the
life of God.
What do we say?
Why didn't they go to that tree immediately?
Because somehow it was not as apparently as
attractive as the other.
In fact it might have had something of
the repulsion of the cross itself and that
to go to the place of life is
always to go through something that has as
its first appearance death.
Isn't that ironic?
It's the life that issues out of death
and it would repel us.
We want to go to what's more attractive,
what the world thinks, what the world applauds,
what's kind, what's nice, what's good.
That's death.
But to go to an offensive letter heaping
insult upon injury that appears to be death,
if it is the Word of God, could
save that man out of death as nothing
else will or can.
And you have got to be willing to
experience the death of sending it because you
might be wrong.
See what I mean?
It's a death guys.
Going to the tree of life is a
death and we have got to be willing
for it.
And I think one of the most powerful
illustrations, just a moment Roge, is Jesus hearing
that his friend Lazarus whom he loved, let's
put in the scripture, he's a zinger.
That's Lazarus who's a stranger or a secondary
acquaintance or a casual guy whom you love
is sick, implying sick unto death.
And Jesus hearing that remained two days longer
where he was.
And the disciples assuredly gathered that our master
is saving his neck because Bethany is only
a stone's throw from Jerusalem and already the
word is out that his life is in
peril.
So he doesn't want to bring himself in
a place of jeopardy to his own life
by coming immediately to the bedside of his
friend and saving him who saved strangers, who
healed this one and that one.
Why would he not immediately alleviate the distress
of one whom he loved?
Isn't that good?
Shouldn't he have done the good thing, the
expected thing, the approved thing?
Didn't the sisters chide him when he finally
came too late?
If you had been here, our brother would
not have died.
Both the sisters said that, both the spiritual
one and the woman who attended to the
kitchen.
Both gave him the same thing in his
teeth.
It was a zinger, a rejoinder, a thorn.
If you had been here, coward, Jesus was
willing to offend the sisters, was willing to
offend his disciples who would surely misconstrue his
failure to act as personal cowardice.
And he did not offer a word of
explanation, but only to say in a mysterious
way, this sickness is not unto death, but
this will glorify God the father and his
son.
And sure enough, by the time Jesus came,
this man was already four days in the
grave.
Where have you laid him?
And Jesus wept.
The shortest verse in all scripture, two words,
Jesus wept.
What was he weeping about?
Was it saccharine tears?
Was it sentimentality?
Was it the loss of his friend?
Or was he weeping about the Jews that
were having a bash of, what's the word?
Psychic, cathartic release of having a good cry.
Wasn't it a pity that a man so
young had to die and that if his
friend had really come earlier, it might have
been prevented.
What lamentable loss, how sorrowful.
And they were enjoying their tears, self-pitying.
Jesus wept because to be absent from the
body is to be present with the Lord.
Death is not all that tragic.
And where's the sovereignty of God who alone
determines when to take a saint.
What are you crying about?
It's evident that you're not rightly related to
him and you have no understanding of the
superiority of heaven and of the unquestionable sovereignty
of God that you're allowing yourself this bash
in tears.
I think he was weeping over the weeping
because it was such a statement of the
chronic era of Israel of its being out
of place in God that completely misconstrued the
meaning of the death of a young man.
But where have you laid him?
And then Jesus stood by the tomb and
turned his eyes to heaven and said, Father,
I know that you hear me always.
How do you know that?
Because he hears God always.
He hears the Father always.
Because he's up early every morning while it's
yet dark seeking a place of prayer, which
is more than just putting his petition to
the Father, but being in the place of
communion to hear the Father, to receive the
import of the Father, the disposition of the
Father, the sense without the Father naming off
the details, but registering upon the one who
has come into communion with him in prayer.
Those things that will give him a sensitivity
and walking out a day that will surely
offend many because of an obedience registered and
affected by the communion obtained in the early
morning prayer time.
You want to know how to eat from
the tree of life?
Not in the moment of whether you write
the letter or not, but all the moments
that have preceded it while it is yet
dark and everyone else is sleeping.
You're before the Lord, not plying him with
your petitions, but being in his presence.
I can't tell you what that confers.
It's something about God as God that when
a crisis moment comes, though everything is contrary
to what it says, you shouldn't do that.
Somehow inwardly, you know that this is the
way that I must go, misunderstood though it
be.
How do you know that?
Because you've been in a place of communion
with the tree of life himself.
So when Jesus cried out, Lazarus come forth,
what?
Talk about history in suspension, talk about eternity
at stake, talk about the whole issue of
the salvation history of God coming to a
point in that one moment of whether this
man was going to be raised from the
dead.
That resurrection is the make it or break
it issue of the validating of the son
of God and the whole issue symbolically of
Israel's one day future resurrection when it will
be called out of its grave, when a
prophetic people who will be standing before the
tomb of Israel in the last days will
have the same prophetic credibility and oneness with
the father and authority to speak a word
that will release that nation, that they'll take
the veil from its eyes and unbound its
hands and loose it to be what God
intended Israel always to be and cannot be
accepted the resurrection mode.
It'll not bless the families of the earth
except out of a resurrection power, resurrection enablement,
the life of God and it's got to
experience death first.
So don't you go running to Israel now
and making nice and placating and telling them
God loves you and you don't have to
suffer this and you hang in there, you'll
come through.
That's false encouragement, that's false counsel, that's pre
-empting God but not to run and not
to go.
I thought you loved Israel, I thought what
are you doing and they're going through crisis,
shouldn't you be there now and comfort them?
False comfort is deadly and Jesus refrained, restrained
himself but what does it mean for Jesus
in his humanity not to go to the
bedside of a man whom he loves who
is writhing in his sweat and in his
fever waiting for his friend to come and
it's not explained to him why his friend
does not come.
So the friend also has to suffer without
explanation unto death and Jesus knows that.
Everything of that suffering is registered upon his
humanity in every corpuscle and yet he restrains
himself, he will not go.
In order for the life of God to
come out in the statement, Lazarus come forth,
rested entirely on prophetic obedience unto death.
Had he done the good thing, I don't
have a word to assess what the loss
would have been and this very thing that
he did do that raised Lazarus from the
dead set in motion Jesus's own torturous death
because when they saw that and the whole
world will be running after him, it's now
time that one man died for the nation.
His obedience to the father set in motion
his own death and it will set in
motion yours.
Prophetic obedience, it's going to violate everything to
which not only the world but Christianity itself
subscribes as to what is appropriate, what is
good, what is acceptable, what is nice.
You call that Christian?
You call that indifference Christian?
Where's your love?
Are you willing to die to the reproach
of accusations that you cannot answer?
Are you so lost in God that you
have no reputation to maintain?
What about your spirituality?
You're a minister, you're expected to do this
or to do that.
Are you dead to that?
That's what it means to adhere to the
one tree and to ignore the other.
It is, despite all appearances, uttermost love and
obedience to God and respect in the honor
of his name.
Priestliness means blood and gore from fingertips to
elbow.
You can't be a priestly mediator between man
and God except you're willing for that blood.
By the time the priest is finished, as
I say on my message on priestliness, you
can't tell where the sacrifice ended or the
priest began.
He's become interred with his own sacrifice.
Then he can perform and stand before God,
before men.
I'll give one more illustration out of my
many episodes of the past.
When I came in California one time years
ago, another kind of full gospel conference with
this pastor I'd never met him before, I
was assured that I had to be there
and be a speaker.
I came late, the conference was already on,
it was a hot day, I was driving,
my feet were swollen, my shoes were off,
I wasn't wearing my tie.
Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in
the middle of the sun.
I arrived in that condition, completely out of
it, no inspiration.
Finally, we went in and quickly washed my
face, got my shoes on, sat down, and
there was a woman missionary talking.
I forgot what she was saying about God
and the abundance and what he puts on
the table.
I couldn't stand it.
Finally, when I was called on, the first
word I said was, if I hear one
more word about this kind of abundance by
faith, I will puke.
From that day, the children of the pastor
never came back to any service.
People were horrified.
I went on from that beginning, each time
worse, more horrendous, more wild.
I thought, what am I saying?
I was being put up at a motel.
I was hoping that the car would not
come for me, that they would learn finally
to let the man alone.
No, there it was every time.
Every time I spoke, it got worse.
When I had to look in to the
face of the pastor's wife, you want to
see looks that could kill.
If you want to see pure, unadulterated hatred
coming out of a spiritual woman's eyes and
face toward me as if I was the
most loathsome thing that had ever come upon
the scene, the poor man was beside himself.
We came into the office.
I said, dear brother, I can't explain what
I'm saying and what I'm doing.
He said, artist, I've never experienced anything more
horrendous than this in my life.
You're making a mess of everything.
It's terrible.
I said, I know it.
We went down on our knees.
He said, but I know that you're supposed
to be here.
I can't reconcile.
And so it went right to the end.
And the Lord did not pull the string
until the end.
And in the end, he brought it all
together and broke through.
It was necessary.
That outrageous confrontation, that violation of all taste
and rectitude was necessary to break through that
veneer of a man who was taught how
to build the church by hiring airplanes and
taking people for rides and dropping balloons.
And I mean, it came out of a
whole milieu in an environment that is so
unbelievably carnal that it took this devastation of
the word again and again, to finally break
through.
So I always remember the last morning, the
day of our departure, and his wife was
not there.
And I said to the brother, where's your
wife?
Oh, he said, art.
She was all the night weeping, all through
the night, because you finally broke through and
opened her to things that went back all
the way to her earliest childhood that had
been suffocated and suppressed and compressed and was
like a cancer that affected her rigid, religious,
righteous behavior.
You exploded that.
And she just wanted to tell you that
she's grateful and that she thanks you.
Well, you don't always experience that kind of
vindication at the end.
And you yourself don't know why you're acting
as you are, because it's not only violating
the sensibilities of the congregation and the pastor
who's inviting you, it's violating your own sensibilities,
your own sense of propriety, your own sense
of what is right and appropriate from a
minister.
Are you willing to be obedient, even when
you yourself are offended?
That's the kind of obediences which God will
call in the last days, that will be
the issue of life or death.
I could have been a nice guy, I
could have blessed them, I could have said
all kinds of things, but the wife would
have remained in that condition.
And the man would have gone on in
that full gospel-ish mentality of how to
build the church.
He was devastated in his every category.
It was back to square one.
God threw everything up in utter confusion and
confrontation.
It took that.
And maybe that's a picture of what it's
going to take.
I'm wondering about all of these revivals and
the Torontos and men running from all over
the world, and God allowing it.
But I'm wondering if one day he's going
to call for it.
Men so persuaded that what they're experiencing is
God, when it actually might be.
I'm not saying it is, I'm willing to
make allowance.
But assuming again, that he's allowing men to
have what they want, experience.
Some kind of thing that lifts them from
the grayness of their everyday predictable Christianity.
And they're so in such a place of
lacking in the knowledge of God, that they
construe any sign of power as being God,
and are quick and avid to grasp for
it, and to lend themselves, and to submit
to it, no matter what they're incurring and
bringing into themselves, that one day will redound
to their ill.
Though in this moment, they're experiencing quote, blessing,
excitement, whatever.
And that the Lord will one day bring
it down, and show them that they did
err, because they did not know God as
they ought, and were so hungry for some
kind of an experience that would alleviate their
grayness, that they were not too questioning or
critical or discerning as to the auspices or
the origin of that which they ran too
greedily to receive.
I think that one of the leading exponents
of that movement, I could even mention his
name.
He said, even if it's from the devil,
it's good, because our condition is so desperate
that that that's, we need something to happen,
even if it comes from the devil.
Can you believe a statement like that?
I can't help connect.
Let me read from Karl Barth.
The man who lives under the sign of
the tree of life cannot know of himself
that which he must know, and which has
therefore to be told him to be explained
and interpreted to him.
The reality of divinely given life speaks for
itself.
The possibility of divine likeness does not do
so.
It obviously does not commend itself.
Man has to be told specifically, and that
and is in fact is told that from
that tree he must not eat.
It's not an opinion, not an evaluation that
he makes.
He needs to be told and to receive
the word that comes to him from God
as being the statement of the Lord.
And that this is the relationship that God
is wanting to establish from the first in
the garden, that man is not to make
his own independent assessments or determinations by the
operation of his own mind, which is eating
from the wrong tree, but that he recognizes
that there are things that he cannot know.
He cannot know what is good.
You cannot know what is good, because what
is good in your estimation and that of
the world and of society, and that is
approved and conventional, can be the most vicious
opposition to God in his way.
And what might be approved on one moment
is for the next moment wrong and evil.
You cannot know.
And if you need to know, you're already
habituated to the wrong tree, that the issue
for man in the garden if he's going
to enjoy the Edenic and paradisical relationship with
the God who is the creator and alone
knows what is good, because when he created,
he said, and it is good.
And he made light and day.
He said, it is good.
Everything you created, it is good.
He alone knows what is good.
We cannot know, except that we are told,
you shall not.
And the issue of relationship with God is
the fellowship that comes with obedience to that
which is told us and which is given
from his word or from the tree of
his life.
Well, that brings the whole emphasis on the
role of the prophet to the king, the
role of the prophet to the church, the
role of the prophet to society and to
the world, the role of the church in
its prophetic function to the world.
Because how shall the world hear and the
world know what is right in God's sight,
except it comes from those men and that
church that have this prophetic character and distinction
who have been trained in uttermost fidelity to
God through the process of death and can
speak the word of the Lord, contrary to
the world's whole understanding and expectation.
See how critical this prophetic function is.
And giving you enough example, and maybe, you
know, out of your experience and from the
reading of prophets, the dealings of God with
them is severe, ruthless in what he requires
from them in order that they would be
so paired and shifted from themselves and their
own sensibility, their own sense of propriety.
Don't they have it?
Aren't they ethical and moral men that they
might be ruthless in what needs to be
spoken because only they can convey it.
The whole issue is being heard, that their
word comes to them as the word of
God.
They are the mouthpiece speaking for God as
God and giving of discernment, a perception of
reality completely in opposition to where men otherwise
would understand it.
And the issue of their receiving that word
contrary to their understanding is the issue of
life or death.
What a remarkable thing the prophetic phenomenon is.
And the irony is that the more faithful
the prophetic man to the fidelity of God
and to that word, the more likely to
be accused of being false.
Because he offends.
Is this a time to tell Israel that
they're facing imminent disaster?
Hey, shouldn't you rather encourage them?
Aren't they suffering enough?
Haven't you suffered enough historically?
Come on, it's time to make nice and
to assure them that whatever their present troubles
with the Palestinians and God will see them
through.
After all, they are the chosen people.
What are you telling them that they need
to brace themselves and impending disaster and your
cities will be left in ruins and the
nation and the land left desolate and you're
again going to be expelled and be cast
out into the nations?
That's false.
That's destroying their confidence.
That's giving the enemy his opportunity and advantage.
So you can see what speaking the word
of the Lord will mean.
It's got to be misconstrued, got to be
misunderstood.
And you'll be accused of just the opposite.
If you're speaking out of love, it's lovelessness.
You'll be accused even being a Jewish messenger
of being antisemitic.
We lose the rest if we exceed the
limitation of God.
If we can only rest in the defined
limitations that God has established for us as
creatures.
But when we transgress and take for ourselves
an activity or a role or a conduct
that is not ours, we lose the rest.
We've got to rest within the confines of
God.
So we're raising up a whole generation of
distraught women full of fretfulness and anxiety and
seeing psychiatrists and drugs and I don't know
what else they're taking who are exceeding God's
definition of what he has intended for women
and have allowed the world to encourage them
out from those parameters to function as men.
Not that they're not capable.
The fact that they're capable is not God's
evidence that they are entitled or encouraged to
that function, but that it's given not to
possess or to perform, but to relinquish and
to forsake.
Understand what I mean?
What does submission mean if you cannot exceed
that submission because you're able?
It's because you're able and not choosing to
act in that ability because you want to
be in the rest of God's parameters and
restriction because that alone is freedom and shalom
that it's really significant.
See what I mean?
Women can be and do exceed even men
in their capability, but is that God's permissive
thing or does he give it in order
to be abandoned, to be forsaken?
Yes, I can, but I will not because
to do that though I have the ability
is to move myself out from the place
of the limit that God has set in
his own wisdom of what is good and
is the basis for my peace and my
Edenic tranquility and fellowship with God and with
men.
Let me read this.
It is the judicial wisdom of God to
know.
Only God has the right to know.
Only God can know because God alone is
omniscient.
He knows the whole.
He sees the whole thing.
Nothing is concealed to him.
Everything is transparent, naked, and revealed.
We cannot know and therefore we cannot judge.
We cannot assess.
We cannot make a direct assessment by what
we observe and think about because we'll always
be in error because as we were told
yesterday, there's always one thing more that we
can't know that if we did know it
would change the whole perspective.
Only God knows and if we're going to
know, we'll only know by his knowing, not
by our own direct assessment, but by what
is mediated through him in our fellowship and
communion with him and not directly with the
event, the man, or the circumstance.
For example, Moses when he directly apprehended the
plight of Israel killed an Egyptian and had
to flee for 40 years and was lost
to the purposes of God in the wilderness
tending sheep.
He acted out of his own direct assessment.
After all, he was a prince in Egypt
and he was a Levite.
Can you think of two more distinguished attributes
by which a man could have a basis
for making independent judgments and acting upon them?
He was a prince in Egypt and he
was of the house of Levi.
He was a priest as well as a
prince and he acted on this uncommon human
ability in looking upon the apparent distress of
his people that ended by he looked this
way and that way and slew the Egyptian,
but he didn't look that way.
You can almost say that his flight was
a judgment and a necessary dealing with God
if he's going to lead the people.
Then how does he receive his commission?
Those 40 years later burning bush and God
speaks from out of the bush and says,
the affliction of my people has come up
before me.
Now go therefore and say to Pharaoh, you're
being sent not on the basis of what
you have seen, what you understand, what you
have assessed.
You're only going because I send you.
Look what happened the last time when you
acted out of your own human assessment.
Only I know the truth of this condition
and I'm sending you not out of your
sap, but out of my will.
Now you can go.
Now you can be a deliverer.
Before it only ended in the death of
an Egyptian, now it'll end in the deliverance
of a nation.
When I was at that Lutheran seminary and
I saw these middle class students bleeding for
Africa, bleeding for Latin America, bleeding for the
oppressed and the crushed and who are living
on a nice style of life as beneficiaries
of a whole system of oppression and their
middle class consciences are bothering them.
And so they are bleeding hearts.
They wear their hearts on their sleeves.
Oh, the condition, you know, I'm not at
all impressed.
I'm not at all touched.
I know that as full of tears as
they offer the plight of mankind tomorrow, they'll
be at a rock concert.
That's mankind acting out of itself.
Only God knows.
Every good and perfect thing comes down from
above.
His thoughts are not our thoughts.
You say, well, brother, how do you know
how to proceed in these days?
Not misusing or abusing the potential of what's
before.
Look where God has sent people from different
parts of the world and what a collection
of saints of whom the world is not
worthy.
What's the agenda?
And once understanding that, how do you perform
it?
Only by the life.
And that's what Adam was celebrating this morning
in his prayer.
That's what I know only too well.
So.
It is the judicial wisdom of God alone
to know and his judicial freedom and office
to decide what he wills and does on
the one hand and does not will or
do on the other, and therefore what is
good and evil for salvation or perdition, for
life or for death.
It is in this wisdom, freedom and competence
of a sovereign judge.
Remember what Paul said at Mars Hill?
God has appointed a day in which he
will judge the world by that man whom
he has raised from the dead.
Well, that man whom he's raised from the
dead is the one who created the world,
and only the creator has the right also
to be judged.
For he alone knows what was good in
his creation, what was violated in it by
man, and what is a true judicial response
in equity and in righteousness.
He will judge the world.
And he judges everything, judges us, judges us
in our conduct, judges us in that letter
that was sent to North Carolina.
I'll have to stand before the Lord one
day in responsibility for having written that either
in terrible offense by rubbing salt into the
wounds of a dying man or in obedience
to God if it is that, and I
don't know for sure.
I have got to take that risk and
stand before him that I have offended one
of his servants who really is fighting a
battle against the devil and making wonderful testimony
before a Jewish doctor, and you cannot know
until the day of judgment.
And yet the agony of the prophetic call
is you're still required to act because the
one thing that would be intolerable for me
to consider is to stand before the judge
in that day for not having acted, for
unwilling to take the risk and allowing a
man to perish who might have been saved
by a word that was sent to him
in time that he might have repented by
virtue of it.
Do you mean the tension that we're in?
There's no way that we can humanly resolve
such tensions when life and death and eternity
is at stake.
Our brain box, our thought can never come
to a right decision, only the life.
In the last analysis, the issue of this,
the sending or not, the not sending, was
the issue of my proximity to the life
of God and to that tree.
That I knew that I knew.
I had to write it.
There was no alternative.
But it was not a determination by virtue
of logic or appraisal or weighing up the
pros and cons.
His way is not our way, nor his
thoughts are our thoughts.
How many Christian kids have I upbraided for
going to college who never even thought to
consult God?
Of course God wants me to have a
career.
I got to make a living.
Of course he approves my choice.
Oh yeah?
How do you know?
Maybe he wanted you to be a garbage
man first.
Maybe he wanted to bring you to a
place of humiliation.
That you could then appreciate and receive the
value of the education that would come.
And how do you know that the course
that you have chosen and the major and
the degree is my choice?
Have you consulted me?
Am I Lord or am I not Lord?
Oh Lord, I'm leaving the great questions for
you, but the issue of my career, my
schooling, my marriage, that's my baby.
Oh yeah?
He's Lord over all or he's Lord over
nothing.
And when I challenged Christian students with questions
like this, I said, even now it's not
too late to seek the Lord.
And if he would say, what you're presently
doing and attending is not my will, would
you forsake it?
And how are you going to explain that
to a mother who has worked her fingers
to the bone to send you to college
that you could have a degree?
Aren't you going to disappoint your Jewish mother
who wanted you to be a lawyer or
a doctor?
You know what I mean?
Are you willing to disappoint?
Are you willing to offend in obedience to
him alone who knows who is judge and
who is the Lord?
Because if you're not in relationship with him
as Lord, you're not in the fellowship of
the garden.
You'll be cast out and then you'll work
by the sweat of your brow and you'll
know the...