I must be losing my Jewish distinctive.
Oh my.
Well, thank you for coming.
You're going to be my guinea pigs.
I'm going to try out something on you
that the Lord gave me this morning after
reading the brochure from the ministry here about
preaching the gospel.
I want to make some remarks about the
gospel and its proclamation because I don't know
if you have noticed it is sadly in
decline.
It has become a nomenclature for salvation.
Step one, step two, step three.
It is certainly a decision of a dubious
kind.
It doesn't have the apostolic ring.
Not as compelling.
Nor is it attended by controversy.
Have you noticed?
It's become rather bland.
In fact, you even wonder what the word
gospel means.
And I trust that these are the thoughts
of the Lord and not the fact that
I'm Jewish in myself, but I feel that
the loss has somehow to do with the
absence from our consideration of the centrality of
the Jew that this gospel is the power
of God at the salvation to the Jew
first and also to the Greek.
And somehow if we have lost that central
focus, it has become diffused and something else
and something less than God's intention even for
the Greek.
Very important to obey the priorities of God.
When he says first, he means first.
He must have reasons for that.
There are many reasons.
Judgment is first for the Jew as well
as blessing because we're privileged people.
And we were called to covenant and we
enjoyed a relationship with him and we were
select and appointed.
And we suffered double curses for our disobedience.
You have suffered double for your sins as
says in Isaiah chapter 40 verse 1 or
2.
There's a penalty for us that is greater
than others.
And maybe for that reason, the gospel has
got to come to us first.
But I think there are other reasons as
well.
Paul says in Romans 11 that we are
the enemies of the gospel for your sake.
Now I know you have not had ever
an occasion to observe that.
You need to be a missionary to the
Jews to know how vitriolic and vehement and
bitter is the opposition to the gospel on
the part of most Jews.
And until we have observed that in our
experience, we lose the sense of how radical
a message the gospel is.
We will be brought to an awareness of
just what kind of message we're called to
bear when we see how vehement, avid, bitter
is the opposition to it on the part
of Jews.
Why is that instructive more so than any?
Because salvation is of the Jews.
So for Jews to oppose the message of
salvation with a degree of vehemence and bitterness
more so than others and even to be
the inventors of gospel alternatives like, can you
name a few?
Marxism, Karl Marx, the Jewish, what would you
call them, ideologue or Freudianism, also a Jewish
invention and many other devices and radical alternatives
and schemes and maybe Zionism itself, socialism, all
of the isms in which we Jews have
been prominent are alternative schemes of salvation contrary
to God's.
You following me?
Testing, catch the control tower over.
Lord, break through the haze and pierce our
souls asunder.
Bring my God your perspective to bear and
rescue us from the kind of bland, wishy
-washy, nondescript Christianity that has not moved Jews
to jealousy and even questionably if it has
affected Greeks and give it to us, my
God, afresh in the sense in which it
needs again to be communicated in the last
days knowing that if we would take it
up in that way we can expect the
same kind of backlash, violent opposition, rejection, persecution
that was the experience of the church at
the first.
Somehow the gospel doesn't mean today or invoke
today what it did then and we feel
that we are amiss.
It was right at the beginning but something
is amiss now.
So, Lord, let these first exploratory remarks begin
to probe and open our understanding and our
concern.
Thank you for this format tonight, that this
should be your heart and burden here and
let whatever I'm sharing, is it being recorded?
Have a circulation beyond this immediate band of
souls where it will do the most good
and we thank and give you praise in
Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, turn with me to Romans.
I've already quoted it.
This gospel is the power of God unto
salvation, to the Jew first.
But this morning I noticed for the first
time the introduction of Paul in verse 1
of chapter 1.
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to
be an apostle, set apart for the gospel
of God.
I never saw that before or realized that
before, that there's some kind of conjunction between
being an apostle and being set apart for
the gospel.
That maybe, well, set apart for the gospel.
I think in other places Paul speaks of
my gospel, not that he invented it, but
for him it has become something intensely personal
and passionate, my gospel.
The man was in love with the message
and maybe this is the genius of what
an apostle is and what an apostolic church
is.
And when the gospel will lose its, what,
its apostolic character and become a bland formula
for salvation or just a cheapy kind of
word that people would be strained to define,
something suffers with that loss that is apostolic,
that the two things go together.
Because it was together for Paul and it
needs to be together for us.
Am I making any?
Well, I won't ask you again.
So I'm just ruminating and tossing out.
I want to hear myself and want to
probe this.
So, just to read this through, Paul, the
servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an
apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,
which he promised beforehand through his prophets and
the Holy Scriptures.
Well, already I'm getting a slant on this.
No wonder Paul is so intensely preoccupied with
the gospel.
No wonder it's part and parcel, part and
parcel of what it means to be an
apostle because look at the distinguished lineage here,
promised beforehand through his prophets.
Hey, this has got a history and a,
what's the word, a backdrop, a preparation that
is more than something of a Johnny come
lately.
Promised through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures.
The plot is thickening.
The gospel according to his son, who was
descended from David according to the flesh and
was declared to be the son of God
with power according to the spirit of holiness
by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our
Lord.
Isn't that a mouthful?
My God, is that a mouthful?
That deserves to be taken apart phrase for
phrase, word for word, and examined.
It's a jewel.
You have to hold it to the light
and catch this facet and that.
No wonder Paul honors the gospel.
No wonder he's a slave to it.
It's his passion, his purpose for being when
it has this kind of distinguished ancestry.
But how much of this is lost to
us?
Descended from David.
See how Hebraic this is.
This isn't some Johnny come lately New Testament
phenomenon.
This is a thing that has its formative
elements in the whole history of the faith
that goes all the way back to the
prophets and to David, declared to be the
son of God with power according to the
spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead,
which had validated and endorsed and made this
the significant message of God, Jesus Christ our
Lord.
So, I'm remembering a remark made by a
Jewish Christian theologian, Jacob Yosh, J-O-C
-Z, who has since gone on to be
the Lord.
He said, Nothing reveals the radical content of
the gospel than when a Jew is confronted
by it.
Now, why would that be?
Because we Jews have been in the forefront,
as I've already mentioned, of so many movements,
of so much that's in the world.
And the vehemence of our opposition to it
requires a deeper explanation than the fact that
we have been persecuted in Jesus' name.
I'm speaking also from the perspective that my
Jewish mother, who has just gone to the
Lord, Shabbat, this Saturday, at 7 a.m.
in her sleep, at the age of 95,
almost 96, was only a week old in
the Lord and has resisted the gospel for
the length of my believing life, 36 years.
This is a little microcosm that deserves examination.
Born in London and never once influenced by
anything English and Christian.
And, in fact, I said, Did you ever
notice the White Chapel mission to the Jews,
which was a block and a half from
the Brady Street buildings where my mother grew
up in the Jewish tenement section?
She never knew that it existed.
Well, maybe some of the young men played
ping-pong there, but I doubt if it
had any really vital impact on that Jewish
community.
Now it's boarded up, probably since I've been
there last, it's been torn down, and right
across the street is a flourishing mosque.
And if the mission to the Jews is
boarded up, you can be assured that its
alternative will rise up in greater impressiveness than
that which was boarded.
There's something there that deserves consideration.
And so my mother, through a long life,
disappointed in this son of hers whom she
loved as a Marxist, atheist, but when I
came home from Jerusalem 36 years ago as
a believer, at the end of 14 months
of hitchhiking, seeking for explanation for the unresolved
quandaries of my life, my mother slammed the
door in my face in her Brooklyn apartment
building and shouted, and it echoed through the
halls, he's gone mad, he's gone mad.
My mother's had to live all these years
with that disappointment of a son of promise
who became, quote, a Christian.
And for my mother to take the name
of Jesus to her lips, no, no way.
She could not even so much as pronounce
it.
I had trouble 36 years ago in Jerusalem
calling upon the name of the Lord.
Something is amiss that salvation is of the
Jews, and yet, the name of Jesus, the
gospel, the word Christian, all of the things
associated with salvation for you are reprehensible and
distasteful for us.
And that we would resist the message with
such vehemence that Paul, in his frankness as
an apostle says, and they are the enemies
of the gospel for your sake.
You notice that last phrase?
Like, who needs it?
Because Jewish opposition is ultimate.
I know you haven't experienced it.
You're probably not a Jew around here for
miles.
That's why I was mistaken for a Scot.
But I can tell you, my first four
years of public ministry was as a missionary
to the Jews.
And I've had doors slammed in my face
more than once and been spat at and
kicked.
And I know myself, the kind of firebrand
that I was in my atheistic days.
And if someone tried to witness to me,
watch out.
I was dangerous.
And yet Paul says, they're enemies for your
sake.
As if you need that opposition.
Because if you don't have it, you're going
to rest on your knees.
You're going to become comfortable and casual.
And I don't know what.
There's something radical that you need as the
church that we Jews and our opposition provide
and that has been wanting from your experience
that I think is a factor in explaining
the blandness of the church.
Because if it loses the vitality of the
message of the gospel, which is central to
its whole being, what can we expect the
church itself to be at large?
Got the picture?
The church is God's provision for the proclamation
of the gospel.
It's its central purpose for being.
It's the central purpose for Paul as an
apostle.
So what then shall we say?
And somehow, if we neglected you first and
don't experience their opposition, something is going to
leak out and has leaked out that I
think explains our lamentable and present condition.
So if that's our error, how shall it
be corrected?
But by going back to the point at
which we left off from the biblical requirement
to the Jew first.
Or else the gospel will suffer loss.
It becomes disarmed and trivialized.
It becomes a nomenclature, a formula.
For salvation is of the Jews.
I'm trying to feel my way through something.
There's a tension.
There's a connection in the wisdom of God.
That needs to be brought together.
That the church has lost so much that
the Jew is not even considered.
And here's what struck me last night at
another meeting here in Scotland.
Where a woman said to me after the
meeting, I'm talking about the coming catastrophe of
Israel.
That I'm expecting the defeat of that state
and an expulsion again of Jews out from
the state and into the world.
And in fact at a time of Jacob's
trouble where Jews will be discomforted worldwide.
And this woman who has a sympathy, sentimental
affinity for Israel was offended by that and
spoke to me afterwards.
And she said, and what about the settlers?
Don't they have God?
And aren't they there in those settlements because
of God?
Don't they know God?
Well, can they?
Can you know God independent of Christ?
No man knows the father but the son
and he to whom the father will reveal
him.
If you have not the father, you have
not the son.
That's what I understand in reading John and
scriptures.
That you can't know the father independent of
the son.
The son is the revelation.
If you see me, you see the father.
I and the father are one.
How can this woman, a Christian, charismatic, spirit
filled, say to me that those settlers, Orthodox
Jews, know God?
You know that that's a dangerous and frightening
statement?
Because if that's true, then the gospel is
only really an option that is not all
that important because if you can know God
independent of the gospel and independent of Christ,
it's only a secondary means at best but
not an imperative thing as it was in
the apostolic generation.
There was an absoluteness.
What's the word?
A singular minded insistence for which men died.
Go you into all the world and preach
this gospel to every creature.
No guaranteeing you're going to come back from
every part in the world where you're going
to preach this because this is an unwelcome
message and it's an offensive message and it's
a dogmatic message and we're living in an
age where dogmatic insistence on a single way
is the height of offense.
And who wants to offend anybody?
You Scots are much too nice and you
don't want to offend and you want to
be accepted.
So how to be a respectable Christian and
find acceptance without offending I think explains the
unhappy condition of the church today.
If the gospel was the single issue that
we are called to proclaim in stubborn insistence
that there's no other salvation given by God
no other name given in the heaven and
earth whereby men may be saved we are
going to offend multitudes of people.
And not only will we offend Jews we're
going to offend Christians.
Particularly those Christians who are ecumenically minded and
do not want to offend Jews and don't
want to offend Muslims and don't want to
offend this faith posture or that that somehow
it's all a very nice mishmash and there
are many paths to faith and to God
and this is only one of many options.
This is an age of relativism and pluralism.
Why?
Because we have moved away from the apostolic
insistence that there's no other name given under
heaven and earth whereby men may be saved
and that the issue of salvation is the
foremost reason for being.
Remember when Paul went to Athens and spoke
to the philosophers on Mars Hill who were
everyday seeking for some new thing and wanted
to hear this curious rag picker who was
speaking something about resurrection this disgusting Hebrew who
didn't have the credentials of a philosopher and
he said this unknown God whom you purport
to seek you phonies you never do find
him and you prefer to have him remain
unknown so he'll make no requirement or demand
of your life him I will set forth
to you.
Paul had what we Jews call chutzpah arrogance,
single-minded insistence and in the end it
killed him and maybe we need to understand
that if we're going to proclaim the gospel
with that narrow-minded insistence of the exclusive
and dogmatic message it may require our life
also and if we're unwilling for that how
important a message is it?
How important is salvation?
Is redemption?
What kind of issue is at stake in
it?
Is it just going to improve your life
and you'll know the Lord and he'll find
you a girlfriend, boyfriend and job security and
happiness or is there an issue of eternity
at stake?
A burning issue of eternity of which I
could not persuade my mother she was ready
to go to hell not afraid of hell
or even believing that such an eternal fate
awaited her because we Jews have no consciousness
of any dimension beyond this life that's why
we succeed in this life we have to
because there's no prospect beyond it we've got
to make our mark now and leave behind
a fortune, a name, a reputation a book,
a Nobel Prize you understand?
Eternity is not part of our consideration because
you've never impressed us with that reality you're
not living as if this life is only
a transient thing and its purpose is to
make the issue of eternity known and if
you have failed with the Jew in your
midst everywhere my mother's from London my family
is still in London and not one of
them has ever come to the faith and
has a real, what's the word, contempt for
that which is Christian or Gentile because they
equate the two things as one they don't
know that to be a Christian is one
who has adopted their Messiah I didn't know
it when I was a university graduate that
the word Christ is Greek derived from Christos
which is the translation of the Hebrew word
Mashiach for Messiah had I known that one
thing I would have been turned and disposed
to hear something more of what a Messianist
is which is what a Christian is even
in Israel they're called the Mashiachim the Messianists
but the word Christian Christ Greek, Gentile has
no Jewish, let alone Hebraic, connotation and you
don't even know that you have so effectively
dismissed the connection with the Jewish origins of
which Paul speaks of the son of David
that a Jew is not at all struck
with the imperative question you need to go
back and find that connection because you who
are far off and without God and hope
in the world drinking beer out of skulls
were brought nigh by the blood of Messiah
into the hope and covenant promises of Israel
and even into the commonwealth of Israel salvation
is of the Jews and if you have
it it's because you have received it through
the Messiah of the Jews doesn't that give
it a different coloration?
so in the book of Romans in chapters
9-11 Paul is answering the question of
the Roman church is God finished with the
Jews?
did they have their opportunity and they blew
it?
and now we are to inherit their promises
and we are the new Israel of God
and they are dismissed, they slew the prophets
they crucified their own Messiah he says God
forbid that you should believe that they're only
temporarily out of the way God is able
to graft them in again have they stumbled
that they should permanently fall?
no, it's only a momentary stumbling that salvation
should come to the Gentiles so as to
move them to jealousy listen dear saints, I
don't know how to say this I don't
care whether you're in Tibet Morocco or Scotland
the issue of the Jew is central to
the gospel to the faith and to the
call of God for the church and to
the degree that we have omitted that from
our consciousness we are something other than the
apostolic reality that God intends and our message
will suffer because we're not even proclaiming it
and when we seek to it's without the
vigor, force and power that would have been
ours because God says through Paul that this
gospel is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone who believes to the Jew first
and if we've not seen that power demonstrated
with the Jew how shall we believe it
with or for anyone?
it takes power to persuade the Jew for
36 years I was unable to convince my
mother though I convinced her as a Marxist
I convinced her philosophically, ideologically in all my
unbelieving years when I came to the faith,
boom!
like an iron door shut because of the
depth of my mother's prejudice against everything Gentile
which is a synonym for everything Christian it
took my mother to be nigh unto death
a week before her passing when I was
called to her bedside somewhere between 2 and
4 in the morning because she was hallucinating
and fighting a battle for her soul and
catching glimpses of hell that I came down
and opened my mouth and out of my
mouth poured one verse after another pertaining to
the Messiah and to salvation until finally she
was so done in by the word of
God that she followed me to prayer to
receive the Lord so I'm not going to
her funeral Thursday I'm going to stick it
out in Scotland and England trusting that my
mother who is now in the invisible cloud
of witnesses overhead much prefers for me to
speak the word of God to Anglo-Saxons
who need to be radically reminded of their
faith that might yet affect Jews before the
end comes then I should run to Florida
and be there at her graveside to pay
my respect as her son I am antagonizing
my uncle Harry in London who thinks it's
appalling that I'm not coming to the funeral
but I'm here for your sake which is
to say I'm here for the Jews' sake
because Paul was not an apostle to the
Jews but to the Gentiles how do you
figure that?
a man with the depth of rabbinical background
that Paul had that made him so admirably
suited to be an apostle to Jews God
makes him an apostle to the Gentiles and
takes the fisherman who doesn't know which end
is up and makes him in his simplicity
and rudimentary education to be an apostle to
the circumcision how do you figure that?
only one way that Paul was an apostle
to the Gentiles because the issue of the
Gentile church is the issue of Israel because
had they stumbled that they should fall?
God forbid, but through their fall salvation has
come to the Gentiles so as to move
them to jealousy there's a purpose for your
salvation beyond yourself and if you have not
found that purpose and embraced it and requires
the power of the Holy Spirit to embrace
it and to walk in it all you
have adopted is a kind of Christian culture
ok for your sake but having little consequence
beyond yourself got the idea?
you're not saved to the uttermost if you're
still the center of your own concern you're
saved when there's a purpose for your being
beyond yourself and for which you're willing to
sacrifice yourself that is salvation Paul cries out
in chapter 9 of Romans that he would
wish himself accursed for his brethren's sake I'm
speaking the truth in Christ I am not
lying my conscience confirms it by the Holy
Spirit when he lays it on the line
he lays it on the line I'm not...
this is a true statement that the Spirit
of God himself will confirm that I have
a great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my
heart for I could wish that I myself
were accursed and cut off from Christ for
the sake of my own people my kindred
according to the flesh you know what the
church has thought especially in modern times this
is a Jew feeling the depth of the
lostness of his own people and willing to
be accursed for their salvation because he's Jewish
well you're wrong this is an apostle feeling
the depth of the anguish of the lostness
of his people because he knows the value
and the significance of the gospel and knows
that if they will not believe that Jesus
is the Christ they will die in their
sins my mother has been narrowly saved being
stretched nigh unto death so weak and so
frail, so infirm that she finally was able
to be persuaded to call upon the name
of the Lord that's why I can comfortably
remain here and not run to Florida for
her burial because I know where she is
so if Paul's hot cry is not because
of an ethnic identification he's not crying out
of his Jewishness but out of his apostolicity
what's our excuse?
why aren't we anguishing?
not only for Jews that are lost but
for anyone who is lost but especially Jews,
why?
because God says salvation is of the Jews
for them to miss their own salvation is
a special irony of a penetrating kind it's
a scandal I don't suppose you've heard the
name Calabar have you?
Swiss-German theologian I think he was a
good Presbyterian he said in more than one
place that the very existence of the synagogue
alongside the church is a scandal and an
indictment against the church that we have allowed
its existence as if it stands for some
valid alternative to the faith is an indictment
against Christianity itself he's not inviting us to
burn synagogues down but what he's saying is
that their very existence assumes that there's something
about Judaism that has a validity that does
not require the gospel and once you've allowed
that for Jews what shall you do with
Muslims or Hindus or any other?
the apostolic age was narrow, insistent, dogmatic singular
in its insistence but why would they go
out to every nation and risk their lives?
because there's no other name given on the
heaven and the earth whereby a man may
be saved out of eternal death so
I'm concerned with that woman last night talking
about orthodox Jews as if they know God
and how then can they experience an expulsion
again out of the land because evidently she
has a relativistic view that sees for Judaism
and orthodox Judaism a certain validity that the
gospel and the scriptures do not allow she
has a relativistic and pluralistic view that is
in contradiction to the absolute imperative of the
gospel in the word how did she get
it?
because she lives in this kind of relativistic
world and her church and its message has
never made that clear and somehow it
even implies that the gospel, that orthodox Judaism
can be equated with the gospel and is
even a valid alternative to Christ although the
scripture says he who hath the son hath
life and he who hath not the son
hath not life and the wrath of God
abides upon him and for Jews what shall
we say?
maybe a double wrath because salvation is of
the Jews and when we forfeit the life
of God in rejection upon us comes a
wrath of double magnitude and is that not
possibly an explanation for the kind of suffering
that has been our experience throughout our whole
Christ-rejecting history right up to this present
day I think, you know I was going
to say there are some of my newsletters
out there but in our recent newsletter I
wrote an article seeking to explain the present
violent crisis in Israel coming at us from
Muslims and suggesting that Islam is a heresy
born out of Mohammed's adoption of our monotheistic
Judaism because Islam is another monotheistic religion but
the faith of God is not monotheistic it's
triune and we Jews had opportunity to know
that in the coming of Jesus, the son
who cried out to the father at the
cross and gave his life without spot by
the eternal spirit the crucifixion of Jesus was
the most profound revelation of the fullness of
the Godhead in its triune form that is
to say, God as he in fact is
and to reject that and stubbornly to insist
on a narrow monotheism one encouraged and inspired
Mohammed to form Islam along those lines and
the greatest threat to Jewish life today is
Islamic I was in Montreal, Canada when the
days of rage broke out in Israel and
on that day six synagogues had their windows
smashed, their doors smashed graffiti written on the
walls, tombstones knocked over the reverberation and the
consequence of what happened in Israel was felt
in Jewish communities around the world and will
again be felt with more than doors being
smashed but heads this is the ironic judgment
of God that whatsoever a man sows that
too shall he reap it has cost the
Jewish community to reject Christ that's why Paul
was grieved and willing to wish himself accursed
because he knew the consequence of that rejection
that's why Jesus wept over Jerusalem because he
could foresee prophetically what the consequences of that
rejection would be even in modern times right
to the present violence in Jerusalem now right
to the past holocaust and right to the
holocaust that is yet to come this is
an important message, this gospel it's not a
little cutesy alternative or shouldn't we be doing
something what is the motive in our proclamation
we're bored, we have a guilt a sense
of guilt that we should be doing something
but is that the passion of an apostolic
kind that would proclaim the message of which
God says it's the foolishness of preaching by
which a man believes are we willing to
bear the scandal of that foolishness and the
shame of it unless we are really persuaded
of the truth and the power of that
message because we ourselves have been redeemed by
it to the uttermost so this
whole view has been lost to the church
as it has lost its recognition that but
for the grace of God it was without
God and hope in the world but has
been brought nigh by the blood of Israel's
Messiah so as to move them to jealousy
that the natural branches might be grafted back
in again the church has an irrefutable and
inexorable, excuse my language connection with Israel and
the Jew and to the degree that it
fails to recognize that and take it into
its deepest consideration not as an obligation we
have to but joyous affirmation the church suffers
as the church its message suffers, its gospel
suffers and we suffer our worship is bland
we're saying the right things but we don't
in the deeps of our hearts believe it
it's not yet our reality something is wanting
there's something rotten in Denmark there's something rotten
in Scotland there's something rotten in Christendom it's
the absence and the loss of the centrality
of the Jew and of Israel in the
church's own consideration for the church is the
mercy of God for them and your salvation
is not for yourself but so as to
move them to jealousy so until the gospel
is said again in this lost context it
becomes necessarily trivialized a nomenclature on how to
get saved is not yet a dubious decision
to insist upon its exclusive claims is to
open the church to a fury of retaliation
even from other sectors of Christendom desiring an
ecumenical peace with Jews and other faiths you
want to know that there's a war on?
you want to know that there's a controversy?
you want to know that there's a scandalous
message that we're called to bear?
that if we really bore it we would
invite the angry reprisal of the world and
even of the Christian world let alone of
Jews and that there are Christian churches that
will say why don't you leave them alone?
as a woman said to me on an
airplane once I'll never forget it with those
three seats together and I'm turning to this
woman how did I even know she was
Jewish?
there was nothing to indicate that but I
knew and I'm speaking to her in a
very compelling way and the woman was so
uncomfortable being challenged that the woman by the
window finally turned in her Christian compassion and
said why don't you leave her alone already?
that's what you're going to hear why don't
you leave them alone?
haven't they suffered enough?
what are you trying to do, make Christians
out of them?
this is going to take courage it's going
to take conviction that you can answer that
retaliating statement no, I'm not seeking to make
Christians out of them I'm seeking to make
Jews out of them because we suffered the
Holocaust not because we were Jews but because
we were not Jews enough and you have
an obligation to make known to us our
own faith which we have rejected because salvation
is of the Jews and who wants that
kind of controversy if you're respectable?
you don't want to stick out like the
proverbial sore thumb you want to be good
company cowards what did Shakespeare say?
conscience doth make cowards of us all so
to insist upon its exclusive claims is to
open us to the fury of retaliation its
promulgation will be seen as arrogant and that's
the last thing that we want to be
considered because we're nice guys and we don't
want to insist that our way is necessarily
the only way that's presumptuous and proud we
want to give credibility to other faith postures
you see what I'm saying?
we're trapped folk we're either Christians of an
apostolic kind or we have become something else
and the weakness of our message our inept
ability to proclaim it our lack of desire
to proclaim it the lack of recognizing its
power, its centrality its significance condemns us why?
because we have not been obedient to the
Lord who said go ye into all the
world and preach this gospel to every creature
beginning at Jerusalem and Judea and then to
Samaria and to the uttermost corners of the
world to the Jew first, he gave us
a priority because he knew we needed the
collision, we needed the confrontation we needed to
recognize the radical nature of that message we
needed to realize that this message is so
hated and despised and opposed that unless we
go in the power of the spirit we're
dead ducks and unless we're sent by a
sending body of an apostolic kind it's vain
that we don't need some what do they
call these organizations?
para-church groups that are going to do
the job for us when it's the task
of the church itself well what kind of
a church?
a church that sends a church that will
uphold those sent ones that bear that message
in London and where so ever Jews are
with intercessions and groanings that cannot be uttered
because the church knows this is going to
be fiercely contended and opposed why?
because the last thing that Satan wants is
for Jews to believe if they believe and
return to the Lord the age is at
its conclusion the king comes and establishes his
throne in their holy hill of Zion and
in their Jerusalem as a redeemed nation restored
to the Lord so everything that the enemy
can do to prevent the promulgation of that
message to the Jews, he will do and
has done but he doesn't have to strain
himself because we ourselves have abdicated our responsibility
we're cowards, we intuit and recognize these Jews
are tough yes it's one thing to talk
to some drunken sop who's rolling in the
vomit in the gutter about the gospel but
talk to a Jew who has a university
background who is erudite and cultured and has
never ever so much as raised his voice
to his wife, a lot better than what
we've done and tell him that he needs
your Christ talk about insult talk about indignation
are we willing to bear that?
see how the Lord has loaded this and
are we impressed with their external appearance and
their civility and their decorum and they have
it all together and they're well mannered as
some woman has said they're more Christian than
Christians and you're going to tell them that
they're lost not on the basis of what
you see with the natural eye in their
distinguished being but because you know the word
of God that however outwardly impressive they may
be they are utterly lost and without hope
and without God in the world which was
your condition before you were brought nigh by
the blood of their Messiah you're not impressed
with their culture you know that when the
moment of eternity comes and they pass into
death there'll be a shriek, a holler and
a scream that will send chills down your
spine because in that moment all values are
reversed and in that moment a person is
known as they are known and that they
know that they've been living a fool's paradise
that they've been seduced by culture that God
is not impressed with their being nice guys
or being philanthropists or they've given to charity
but that there's no man good, no not
one if God were to count iniquity who
can stand and the sinner who dies in
his sins shall be eternally lost there's a
shriek there's an unremitting and eternal cry that's
what I wanted to see my mother saved
from and by the grace of God he
did it at the last moment but only
after she was waited on hand and foot
by an entire Christian community 24 hours a
day around the clock and prayer and prayer
and prayer and prayer and prayer and prayer
and prayer and prayer for years everywhere I've
traveled in the world pray for my mother
Esther and our own prayer in the face
of stubborn repudiation until finally the Lord poured
the vial down on her head of all
the prayers that have gone up over the
years it's tough to win a Jew they
are the epitome of a world system when
you scratch them when you press them with
the gospel you're not just putting before them
some religious alternative you're striking at the heart
of a whole system, a mindset a mentality
that is of the world and the powers
of the world the invisible spectral principalities and
powers of the air have had a field
day with that people and when you touch
them you touch the world and its power
no wonder that they'll scratch your eyes out
hey but isn't this the purpose for which
we were born again or was it our
career or our physical comfort or our pleasant
Christian fellowship I mean let's get with it
what are we about, what do we call
for, what is the church and what kind
of embarrassment will we face eternally when we
have to stand before the Lord and have
lived a life without distinction or accomplishment there'll
be some shrieks and screams from us that
will be unremitting because when he comes he
brings his rewards with him to give to
every man according to his labors and insomuch
that we have neglected the priority of God
to the Jew first do you know what
we have said to the powers of the
air that have observed us Jesus we know
and Paul we know but who are you
your harmless little charismatic society and your choruses
and amens and hallelujahs no threat because we
have observed that you though you say Lord
Lord and sing all of these elegant choruses
do you realize what you're singing when it
comes to obedience you have flinched and you
have found a way to circumvent the requirement
of God to the Jew first and in
that you have telescoped or indicated to the
powers of the air that you are not
a people of obedience to the Lord and
therefore you are of no consequence to be
feared it's costly to disregard the clear injunction
of God and that has been the historic
condition of the church since the apostolic time
and that's why we're no longer apostolic we're
a Sunday culture with parachurch groups to do
for us what we're unable ourselves as the
church to do you know what God has
done he's seen to it that we Jews
are proliferated everywhere, try and find a nation
in which there's not some Jewish presence right
under your very nose so we're without excuse
but I'll tell you what if they're not
here now they'll be here very shortly it's
a whole other story, maybe tomorrow I'll speak
about it Jews are going to be cast
again in and through the nations dispersed, another
exile another flight another exodus through all nations
in the time of Jacob's trouble they'll be
coming through and then you'll be tested what
will you do with them then what will
you say to them then in the last
opportunity for them to hear or perish will
you speak it as a formula you need
to be saved brother well I praise God
that 36 years ago when I was the
hitchhiking Jewish atheist the man who picked me
up as I stood at the side of
the road for 3 hours in the drizzle
and the rain with a brand new car
and stopped and didn't just wave me on
but got out of the car and greeted
me at the side of the road I
thought he's got to be a homosexual why
else would a man stop for a soggy
mess like me an angry modern man but
he took my filthy rucksack, saturated and threw
it in the back seat of his car
and didn't even notice what it did to
the upholstery I thought what manner of man
is this and had me sit down in
the front seat and we drove off, I
felt like I was an exalted guest and
that I was doing him a favor and
he turned to me in German and he
said why are you traveling like this it's
past the tourist season, you're no kid and
so well as I could I tried to
explain I'm a modern man not only I
am a modern man I am the quintessential
modern man we Jews are the authors of
modernity we have given the world Karl Marx,
Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein relativism we have created
the modern world and it's dying and I
said I'm looking for the deepest answers to
life and before I could finish I said
and I'm a Jew oh cats, you dumb
dumb what do you want to tell him
that for and I turned cautiously to look
to see if he was offended and the
man was just radiating joy it was like
a neon tube had been turned on that
he had picked up a Jew as if
it were a big deal it was not
a big deal for me to be a
Jew why should he be excited and he
insisted that we stop for refreshments at his
expense and I poured out my soul to
a Gentile stranger why would I do that
to tell a Gentile stranger who picks me
up off the side of the road the
deepest secrets of my life and the anguish
of my soul as a modern man whose
ideologies and faith and hope have collapsed with
the failure of a marriage to a German
woman and all of the other kinds of
things that have brought me to an end
of myself why would I tell him that
why would I tell him I'm fearful for
the future of mankind I'm expecting an atomic
holocaust I'm expecting a breakdown of human values
I'm expecting blood to roll in the streets
why would I tell that to a Gentile
stranger when I've not shared something like that
with my mother, a closest friend and some
family there was something about that man that
drew my heart out he listened to me
as if listening were an act of love
he wasn't just impatiently waiting to jump on
me with John 3.16 and put a
notch in his belt the man's hearing of
me was an act of love and finally
when everything was spit out and I'd come
to the ultimate end of myself what is
this guy going to say now I've been
to Marxist institutes I'm a university graduate I'm
a teacher of history there's nothing new under
the sun I had my arms folded over
my chest and he said to me in
a quiet and assured voice Artie said do
you know what it is that the world
needs I thought wow this guy knows how
to ask the questions yeah, I want to
know what the world needs I'm dying for
what the world needs double dare you to
tell me what would you have said if
you picked me up of course I wouldn't
expect that you would but hypothetically if you
had picked me up and you had taken
me at your expense to a Scottish coffee
house and heard me bare my soul to
you and there's a man dangling from a
thin strand over the precipice of eternal death
disillusioned and utterly hopeless and one wrong word
will snap that cord and let him plummet
to an eternal doom what would you have
said are you saved brother do you know
Jesus if you would have said even that
much or would you give me a little
pat on the back and give me some
I don't know what humanistic aside that would
have guaranteed my death I'm looking at this
man what is he going to tell me
about what the world needs and Artie said
you have to hear this in German what
the world needs is for men to wash
one another's feet and when I heard that
down I went at least my human spirit
went down and was weeping on the floor
while I continued to sit in my chair
looking very defiant and totally unmoved be prepared
for that don't look at their faces don't
think that because they're angry or because they're
silent or because they seem to be unimpressed
that your words were without effect it's deeper
than you know especially if it's not your
word but the Lord's if this man had
said John 3.16 or quarter of the
scripture or given me a formula you know
where I'd be long before today dead I'm
alive and blessing you I trust because at
a critical juncture in a once and for
all existential moment a man did not give
me a religious cliche which he could cheaply
have said and then gotten rid of the
responsibility but he spoke the one thing calculated
to pierce my soul what the world needs
is for men to wash one another's feet
instantly I had a vision of the angry
art cats hot shots of the world bending
to wash the feet of those with whom
they're in opposition school teachers with their administrators
and black and white and Palestinian and Israeli
wherever there's conflict I instantly recognized that washing
of the feet of the other would bring
reconciliation without bloodshed and something rose in my
heart like Eureka and before I could contain
myself this man went on to tell me
about the gospel of Jesus Christ in German
and I'm trying to say, hey, hold it
I'm a Jew, that's not for me, that's
you guys you have your book, you have
your this, we have ours but I had
no voice and he went on and the
time he finished I was done for I
left that Swiss coffee house like a drunken
sailor I staggered out the power of what
had impacted me in a moment, because a
man did not speak a cliche, but the
word of the Lord how did he know
to speak it?
because the spirit of God knew me and
knew that I was an idealist a social
activist a political ideological man always looking for
something to save the world that's us Jews
and never finding it that even when I
was a Marxist and a communist we were
doing one another in and didn't know what
kindness is when he spoke, wash one another's
feet because that man was in such union
with God he was such a man of
the spirit that the spirit could give him
the thought appropriate to me and to speak
it with an anointing that pierced my soul
asunder and put me on the path of
salvation could you have performed that?
not in a moment unless you're consistently a
man or woman of the spirit you see?
we Jews are for your sake or else
you're going to slumber you're going to fall
back in your seat you're going to reduce
the faith to some kind of bland culture
except that we are a test and a
challenge for you to be the men and
women of the spirit moving us to jealousy
speaking words that we cannot evade and are
calculated to bring us to an eternal salvation
salvation is of the Jews you owe us
something you receive something from us and God
is waiting for you to give it even
if you'll be called arrogant and presumptuous and
narrow and dogmatic and exclusive you can expect
anger, rejection abuse, insult, opposition maybe martyrdom hey,
what a privilege a crown, an eternal crown
for faithful obedience even if it has required
my life and here's what you need to
know you dear saints there's so much to
tell you that the church is called to
be a martyr church by definition that when
the Lord ended my 14 months sabbatical silence
about 15 years ago with an invitation to
speak on the mystery of Israel and the
church in the last days the first thing
I spoke of of 7 messages was that
to move the Jew to jealousy and I
never said how and through 6 messages I
roamed the landscape, never answering the question went
to bed Saturday night Sunday morning is the
final message and not knowing what that message
was as I don't know tomorrow's at 3
o'clock in the morning not 2.59,
3.01 3 o'clock, I shot out
of bed with one word, martyrdom the final
message was the church that will move Jews
to jealousy is a martyr church particularly if
it's a martyr church for their sake what
you Gentiles are going to be martyrs for
us Jews what did we ever do for
you you have every reason to resent us
dislike us we are arrogant look at the
trouble we bring in the world and look
at the things for which we will be
accused and you're going to be willing to
suffer martyrdom and maybe even at our own
hands if that doesn't move a Jew to
jealousy I don't know what will if that
doesn't impress a Jew that what you are
about is of uttermost importance that you're willing
to die for it I don't know what
else could move them well let me end
this it is the willingness to die for
the message that attests to its singular significance
and to the issue of eternity itself as
not only being real but being a foremost
and ultimate consideration we are not living as
if that's true and Paul said to the
philosophers at Mars Hill God has established of
one blood all nations of men and established
the bounds of their habitation that they might
seek after God if happily they may be
found of him Paul is telling philosophers there's
only one reason for human existence there's only
one reason for the existence of nations, it's
not for culture it's not for anything else
but to give men opportunity in this life
transient and short that it is to establish
the issue of eternity that was Paul's narrow
view of reality and the purpose for being
and they scoffed and they said well we'll
hear again of this man and they never
did, but some clave unto Paul and believed
because there's something about Paul's insistence and the
reality of what he conveyed that you could
not separate the man from his message they
clave unto Paul and believed the man was
his message so either the gospel is a
scandal or a cliche a formula for salvation
or a message of eternal life that requires
the sending of messengers by a sending body
that intercedes with groanings that cannot be uttered
we need to make that message our own
that the issue of redemption is something that
we have come to know through the gospel
that we ourselves are saved to the uttermost
and don't think that that is automatically true
many of us in this room have only
recited a formula have only quote made a
decision and our lackluster Christian life indicates how
wanting we are in the full salvation that
God intends when you read the biography of
Oswald Chambers who was eloquent and impressive as
a teacher at the same time going through
a dark night of the soul at the
very time he was being complimented for how
well he expressed the gospel and the scriptures,
he himself was agonizing over the issues of
faith for his own soul.
The Lord gave him a long season of
a suffering of the dark night of the
soul but when he finally came out of
it he could speak the reality of God
and the message of God with such insight
and such penetration as has been blessing saints
of every generation still and whom I read
every morning and you should also are you
willing for a dark night of the soul?
are you willing to move from bland formulas
and easy decisions and shallow Christianity to a
radical appropriation of a faith because it has
been made unmistakably real through trials to which
God will submit you that you might know
what it means to be redeemed to the
uttermost and therefore proclaim it with that kind
of reality I want to pray for the
church over the last days that the glory
of the latter house will be greater than
the former we need to repent for how
far we have fallen Lord precious God on
high what shall I say Lord, forgive us
we have not taken your word seriously you
have said to the Jew first, you have
said this gospel is the power of God
because the message itself is inane the message
itself is intellectually embarrassing the message itself does
not commend it intellectually to anyone it's a
piece of foolishness, it's a scandalous message and
unless it is conveyed by power how shall
anyone believe it unto salvation and Lord we
have not known that power and not only
have Jews suffered for the neglect, but Greeks
so I'm asking for revival, that is revival
indeed going back to the point where we
missed it and left off in our own
obedience and why you should speak that tonight
I don't know, because of the ministry here
that is occupied with and purports to be
concerned for the propagation of the gospel, you
use that to trigger these thoughts for me,
I don't know it's just a sounding board
and that this word will go out beyond
them to a church that needs to be
pricked in its neglect in falling into a
relativistic, pluralistic world, where it's an embarrassment to
be insistent there's only one way and it's
narrow and that the issue is eternal and
to insist upon that with those who are
the foremost expositors of the world and its
values, the Jew and to trust the power
of God to succeed there and to be
willing to suffer, not just insult, but injury
because we know that this is a message
of life or death thank you my God
help me Lord to be what I ought
in this regard, calling the church to this
kind of reality precious God, teach us as
you taught Oswald Chambers what redemption means, my
God to esteem it and its message and
to be willing to bear the offense of
it, no matter what, and we thank you
and give you praise for the privilege of
it, in Jesus name