Lord, may we bless you for the day
of small beginnings and feel free entirely, Lord,
to set aside any thought that I may
have had in how to begin and just
put forward and promote the thing that is
upon your own heart in that wonderful way
that you have by your Spirit to open
something and to make it a living and
a vital thing and to touch areas, my
God, of our own thought and consideration and
inward and personal issues and problems, even as
you discuss, my God, the larger things, issues
of the faith and the nations and things
of that kind.
So we bless you, Lord, and we thank
you now that you're the God of the
beginnings, the Alpha and the Omega.
Grant us such a beginning, my God, as
has the end in view, that we will
look back when we come to the end
and recognize how precious and perfect you were
in beginning us as you have, that you
might receive, my God, the acclaim and the
acknowledgment of your saints.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Well, I think the first thing I want
to do is read my revised letter to
Abraham Foxman.
For you fellows who are with us today,
we had a little preliminary session the other
day, where I read an article by Abraham
Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League,
responding to the resolution of the Southern Baptist
Convention to resume or to increase their gospel
witness to the Jew.
And he writes a letter of indignation and
protest, in which he says, I thought that
the time of conversionary tactics was over, but
evidently it is not.
And I want to register my complaint that
we're moving away from this ecumenical, dialogical relationship
with Christians and the reasons why it is
not valid for Christians to promote the gospel
to the Jew.
And in our own discussion, we saw that
that is an attack on the faith itself
and renders it no faith, that to remove
the church's obligation to the Jew is to
remove the church as the church.
So we can't go back into all of
the reasons for that.
That was a session that we had.
And then I asked the students, how would
you answer this man?
Because he's raising all of the classic arguments
that have ever been raised against the promoting
of the gospel to the Jew, the validity
of Judaism.
And then he invokes the American culture and
the pluralistic civilization, that it's unbecoming in an
age of pluralism to insist upon a view
as being somehow absolute, and that this is
disrespectful to Judaism and to the Jewish people.
It's an attitude of contempt.
And these are powerful, cogent arguments, and that
the true church that will promote the gospel
to the Jew is under obligation to do
so.
And the Jew is coming increasingly into the
consideration of God as we come to the
end of the age, and he must again
turn toward this nation and to this people.
We're going to hear a great clamor.
In fact, there will not be an exaggeration
to say that the controversy of the last
days, as it was at the inception of
the church, will be the issue of the
gospel and the Jew.
And so we're coming full circle, and the
church had to face the blast coming from
the Jewish community against its apostolic message.
And modern times has diminished that controversy, and
I think to the detriment of the church
itself.
There's a Jewish Christian theologian now who got
on with the Lord, Josz, J-O-C
-Z, Polish Jew.
I wish I could think of his first
name.
Jacob Josz, J-O-C-Z.
If you never find any of his books,
probably out of print, you'll have very fine
work.
In fact, there are two, three, or four
outstanding Hebrew Christian commentators, and we will be
alluding to them in these days.
He is one of them, Jacob Josz, J
-O-C-Z, whose brother married Inga and
me in Oakland, California, whose name was Reverend
Yates.
He anglicized the Polish name.
But in one of his books, he says,
nothing more reveals the radical content of the
gospel than when it is brought to the
Jew.
And I don't think that the church itself
knows the content of its own faith, because
it has failed at exactly that place.
There's something that reveals the radicalness of God's
message and call when it is brought to
a people who have historically resisted it and
have become the enemies of the gospel for
our sake.
We may come into this at another time
when we discuss, if we do discuss, Romans
11.
But he says in one of his books,
nothing reveals the radical content of the gospel
than the fierce opposition that comes to those
who seek to bring it to the Jew.
The foolishness of the gospel, the absurdity of
the gospel, the scandal of the gospel.
We have not understood it for ourselves, and
we never will until we come again into
this contention with the people who have historically
been most resistant.
Not only in refusing to hear it, but
opposing the apostolic church and persecuting those who
bear the message.
And more than that, they are the enemies
of the gospel in the sense that they
have raised up an alternative message or messages,
alternative gospels, alternative solutions for the predicament of
man.
Can you name any that have been invented
by Jews?
Psychoanalysis.
Okay, who's the founder?
A Jewish psychoanalyst from Vienna.
What else?
Communism.
Karl Marx, a German Jew.
Even Einstein, though he was a physicist and
gave us the theory of relativity, also gave
us relativism indirectly, not consciously, and affected social
thinking profoundly, though it was not his intention.
And that was reflected in Abraham Foxman's statement.
Relativism, which is to say, how can you
insist that any single truth is absolute to
the exclusion of all other views?
That is a scandal to the modern mind.
So in many ways, it's true, the Jew
has been the enemy of the gospel, not
only in the resistance of the message, but
in the bringing of alternative messages themselves.
So it was interesting for us to read
his statement.
I can run off a copy for you
guys who were not here when we did
this, if you want to hear the classic
summation of arguments opposed to the gospel to
the Jew.
And they're very cogent.
They're so cogent that the Christian church is
going to embrace them and to employ them
against the radical apostolic remnant that will seek
to fulfill its mandate to the Jew first.
And it may actually have something to do
with a scripture yet to be fulfilled.
They will kill us and claim doing God
a service.
My ear still rings from a shout.
I don't know where I heard it.
I think it was on an airplane when
I turned to a girl who was sitting
next to me, who proved to be Jewish.
And the woman next to the window, hearing
what I was saying to her, turned finally
and said, why don't you leave her alone?
And that's what we're going to hear.
Why don't you leave them alone?
Haven't they suffered enough already?
Why are you trying to make them Christians?
Are you trying to complete what Hitler failed
to do?
If you can't exterminate them physically, you want
to exterminate them spiritually?
We're going to hear the most oppressive, powerful
diatribes and attack against any segment of the
church that takes seriously the mandate of the
Lord, that this Jew is the power of
God for the salvation of everyone who believes
to the Jew first and also to the
Greek.
And by the way, if the church fails
to take seriously the mandates of the Lord
toward the Jew, that's the end of the
church as the church.
And the powers of darkness know this.
And that's why they yawn in the face
of the church.
And they say, Jesus, we know, Paul, we
know, but who are you?
We know that you're not taking God's word
seriously.
We know that you're not living as a
people of obedience that do the word of
God.
Therefore, your railing against us and your, what
do they call it?
Your spiritual warfare is just so much vapor.
It affects us not at all.
Your obedience would affect us.
Then we know you're in right relationship with
him, and then you're to be feared.
But your disobedience and your willful disregard of
his word as it pertains to this people
makes you of little consideration in our sight.
So we'll develop this at another time.
The issue of the Jew is paramount for
the church.
And if it sounds strange in the ears
of the brothers who are here today, like
some going overboard on something, the Jew and
the wisdom of God is central to the
whole issue of the church, the faith, the
fulfillment of last day's things, his own coming,
his kingdom, and his glory.
Not the least of the reasons for which
that his kingdom requires for its base a
restored nation called Israel, and a people, an
entire nation, who will be a nation of
priests and a light unto the world.
And so the dealing with them to bring
them to that place is the final historic
dealing of God in the world, and it
affects all the nations.
And all the nations will oppose this because
they want to maintain their independence.
And they, what does it say?
Why do the heathen rage and the people
of Goyim or the nations imagine a vain
thing?
They will not have this man to rule
over them.
And so we'll talk about that.
So let me just read my revised letter
to Abraham Foxman, because when I read it
then there was a feeling that we needed
to express something of a note of apology
or forgiveness for the church's historic failure toward
the Jew.
And that indeed there is a justification for
a man wincing about the word conversion.
When you think of the history quote of
the church, and that poet, that word has
to encompass all that men have done in
the name of Christ, even in their unregenerate
condition.
The Middle Ages, the Crusades, forced conversions, forced
exiles, reconvert or death ultimatums.
This is the Jewish historical experience with Christianity.
And they cannot distinguish between what we represent,
born again, New Testament, what believers, let's say
the authentic remnant that is truly the church,
with what has come under their word, name
church historically.
And there's no way we can explain it
to them.
It's one thing for them, and we are
identified with that one thing, and we share
and bear the reproach of it.
And so we need to ask their forgiveness,
as if we were responsible and identified with
what is called the church.
So I have tried in some way now
to incorporate this into the letter, and you'll
hear it now, and you can give me
some feedback.
So this is an open letter to Abraham
Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Dear sir, I have before me your rebuke
to the Southern Baptist Convention with regard to
a renewed resolution to convert Jews.
The historic memory of our forced conversions rightly
haunts us still.
Notice, I'm saying our and us.
I'm identifying myself as a Jewish believer with
the Jewish people and coming under that.
No amount of apology, heart-stricken Christians, unmistakable
in their love for Israel, offer it nonetheless,
can either excuse or dismiss the blight and
dishonor brought upon the Messiah's name by Jew
-hating clerics and the unregenerate mobs excited by
them.
We're not sweeping the history under the carpet.
We're acknowledging it.
It's pitiful, and it's been a tremendous blight
on the name of the Lord himself, that
all of that was done in the name
of Christ.
From the perspective of a liberal and pluralistic
society, such a pronouncement is understandably horrific when
the Southern Baptists say we're going to resume
seeking the conversion of Jews.
Nevertheless, from the paradox and perspective of eternity,
it is ironically God-pleasing and blessed.
Then I take up these arguments.
What are we to say to those Christians
under the obligation to go ye into all
the world and preach this gospel to every
creature?
More explicitly, the New Testament scriptures enjoin them
to go to the Jew first and also
to the Greek, and that repentance and remission
of sin should be preached in his name
to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
It's remarkable how specific and explicit God is
of where to begin.
It's where men would say, you go last,
not first.
If you're going to produce a play and
you want it to come to Broadway, you
don't start in New York City, you start
in Connecticut and Maine and up in the
woods and try it out first.
And if it succeeds there, then ultimately you
bring it to the final place, New York
City itself, the final test.
But that's not God's wisdom.
God says, begin where I was crucified, begin
where the prophets were stoned, beginning at Jerusalem
and then to Samaria and then to the
uttermost corners of the earth.
He takes the hardest first, and there's strategic
and significant reasons, in my opinion, why he
has chosen this.
But historically, we have to acknowledge the church
has not obeyed God's priority.
It has not gone to the Jew first,
and ultimately it has not gone to the
Jew last.
It has not gone effectually to the Jew
at all.
And that, I think, explains more than I
can now say the unhappy condition of the
church.
And this is especially significant for a church
in New York City, which is not an
exaggeration to say is a Jewish city.
That New York is more the effectual Jerusalem
of world Jewry than Jerusalem itself.
It's the powerhouse.
It's the publishing media center influenced by Jews
and the corporate world, the stock market, the
whole commercial Babylonian thing has its root in
that city.
We cannot ignore that fact and be a
Christian presence in that city.
David Wilkerson said to me, it's vain to
think that we can evangelize New York City
and circumvent the Jew.
That's true.
Any presence of God in that city must
have in its consciousness the foremost factor of
that Jewish presence and what it represents in
affecting the whole character and tenor and spirit
of that city, and what a challenge it
will represent to crack and break into that.
So there's a reason for the Jew first,
and beginning at Jerusalem or beginning at New
York.
What one needs to recognize is that our
controversy is not with men, but with God.
And unless we are able to dismiss these
scriptures, and he who spoke or inspired them
as not being of God, and who would
be more ignorant than presumptuous in denigrating them?
For you to say that Christians are not
under obligation to obey what the Lord commands
is to be guilty of the very thing
of what you accuse the church of being
presumptuous and arrogant.
You're denying God's Word for those who believe
it.
And that is an enormous presumption for a
Jewish spokesman to take.
Well, I don't think there are any other
significant changes except that that first paragraph where
I make mention of the historic memory of
our forced conversions rightly haunts us still.
No amount of apology can either excuse or
dismiss the blight and dishonor brought upon the
Messiah's name by Jew-hating clerics and the
unregenerate mobs excited by them.
Now use the word unregenerate.
What is that going to mean to Abraham
Foxman?
What it really means is those who have
never been born again.
They're just Gentiles who have embraced Christianity as
religion in the same way that Jews have
embraced Judaism.
But they are mobs that can be excited
by clerics, by priests, and others who actually
had anti-Jewish hatred.
So we're not dismissing that, we're acknowledging that.
But the fact that that existed historically is
not a reason to nullify or to set
aside our present obligation to bring the message
of Christ to the Jew.
It just compounds it and makes it all
the more difficult.
We have to work our way through that
past.
And as I have stood in the vortex
of controversy in university meetings and heard the
shouts of you're worse than Hitler who only
sought to destroy our bodies, I knew that
no answer could be given on the spot
in the heat of that to say, hey,
look, don't identify me with what the Crusaders
did or the Church of the Middle Ages.
I don't, I'm not with that.
I don't represent that.
Can't you see I represent New Testament Christianity
and it's something else altogether.
We have your best interest in mind.
There's no way even to begin to talk
that.
You just have to bear the assault that
comes from the historic woundedness over what has
been perpetrated in the name of Christ historically.
That's our suffering.
We have to bear that, but it's not
an excuse by which we are removed from
the obligation to yet bring the message to
them.
So it puts the remarkable premium on the
church to be able to communicate something for
which Satan has done such historic damage as
to poison the name of Christ and make
it beyond any possibility of Jewish consideration.
And yet you've got to come in that
name because there's no other name given on
the heaven or on earth whereby a man
might be saved.
Can you see the enormity of that challenge
and the church that will rise to that
challenge and succeed in it is the church.
And then we'll talk about what it will
take to be a church of that kind
of an apostolic character and quality that can
bear that message and bring that message despite
the historic opposition of the past successfully.
It's beyond the ability of any single individual.
This is not a looking for virtuoso hotshots
who have some exceptional charisma that they can
break in.
It's going to have to be what it
was at the beginning.
These are they that turned the world upside
down because they have been sent apostolically from
an apostolic body and bear the authority resonance
anointing and weight of that apostolic character and
nothing less will affect Jews.
Jews don't know it.
They're waiting for the church to become the
church.
There's an instinctive knee-jerk reaction by Jews
of whatever kind and description whether they are
secular whether they are orthodox doesn't matter.
They have all breathed the same air and
have drunk the same milk from their mother's
breasts.
They all intuit and know the historic ugliness
of the history of the church to the
Jew.
We grew up with it.
We knew it.
There's an instinctive awareness.
So it may be more acute in some
more than others but there's not a Jew
if you'll scratch him deeply enough who does
not exhibit this awareness and so it's probably
one of the most formidable barriers to the
promotion of the gospel and every Jewish believer
almost without exception himself or herself has had
to struggle through these questions.
How do I embrace a faith in whose
name my own people have been persecuted?
How will I be able to explain that
to my own kinsmen?
My mother that was my own great-grandmother.
What are you doing?
Who asked for this revelation?
How's my mother going to understand it?
She was pushed into the swimming pool in
London as a little girl by her Gentile
teacher who said you fat Jew sink or
swim and she's not forgotten that now that
she's 91.
How do I tell her now?
I have I'm called now by the same
name as that teacher before he went to
that pool.
I've joined the enemy.
So it's an extraordinary demand even for Jewish
believers to fight their way through this and
the enemy plays upon it as well.
You would think that such people would be
easier candidates to hear the message but ironically
all the more because their Judaism is weak
are they defensive and even more resistant to
what threatens the Jewish identity that they have.
So some if you can find the Jew
who is secure in his own Judaistic sense
you might have a greater opportunity to receive
a hearing than a secular Jew or mildly
religious Jew who is insecure in his identification
and therefore resists all the more vehemently any
attempt to quote convert him.
So it's interesting you can't you can't seem
to win at any hand.
It's tough.
It's not just tough.
It's the ultimate toughness.
It's the ultimate challenge.
It's the ultimate demand upon our faith and
upon the anointing of God and confidence that
this gospel though it is foolish is yet
the power of God and the salvation to
everyone who believes to the Jew first and
also to the Greek.
I've had the experience living in Carmel and
Israel as an immigrant when a when a
Canadian Jew who was a neighbor came up
into our apartment and we were somehow in
the scriptures and he took the Bible right
out of my hand and began to read
out of Romans 10 and before he finished
the last verse he was saved.
Something happened to him in the reading of
the word that was just on the spot
a remarkable transformation so much so that his
life was endangered thereafter and some weeks later
on his way to work one or two
of his tires came off because all of
the lugs had been loosed from his wheels.
The enemy has with an unusual virulence and
hatred and cunning done everything in his power
to make the name of Jesus objectionable for
Jewish consideration especially.
To keep this people from the knowledge of
their Messiah and their God and being brought
into a factual union with the God of
their fathers that the gift and calling which
is theirs which has been forfeited so long
historically might again be restored.
The enemy knows better than the church the
significance of Israel's turning again to their own
God and for that reason has gone out
of his way in diabolical cunning to poison
the name of Jesus for Jewish consideration and
so the Crusades, the pogroms, the Spanish Inquisition,
forced conversions, exiles, ultimatums of convert or die
have been employed to so poison that name
even to this day and this Foxman is
reacting when he reads that the Southern Baptist
Convention is now talking about again converting Jews.
All of that historic residue that attends the
word conversion is invoked like waving the flag
the red flag before a bull's face and
yet we have to answer him.
Maybe just at the end of my letter
where I talked about something rotten not in
Denmark but in ourselves and 2,000 years
of diasporic failure to consider it is before
us today.
Are we willing to reflect on the misfortunes
and tragedies of that exile as being the
consequence of a willful failure to review what
may have been the colossal error of our
fathers from which the truest lovers of Israel
and the Jewish people, the evangelical Christians, seek
to save us.
They, evangelical Christians, need not so much to
be censured but thanked for their persistent concern
despite our intimidating condemnation as we continue stubbornly
to oppose ourselves as a people in our
ignorance while congratulating ourselves assured that we are
doing God a service.
You have to read that to follow that.
It's so loaded.
Two great historic events explain the severance between
the original Jewish believers and what has come
to be called the church.
The first was about 135 AD with the
final Roman conquest of Palestine that took place
at Masada, you know this fortress and the
destruction again of Jerusalem in 70 AD and
again in 135 AD and there was a
final war and a certain Jewish general, somebody
help me with his name, was called the
star.
Rabbi Akiva Barman's
son, K-O-C-H-B-A, which
I think either from the Aramaic or Hebrew
means star, was celebrated by Rabbi Akiva as
being the Messiah and of course Jewish believers
could not subscribe to that and could not
join him and so they were looked upon
as traitors to Israel because of their failure
to participate in the Bar Kochba revolt against
Rome and many of them suffered at the
hands of Jews unto death who'd been looked
upon as traitors because their identification with Jesus
could not allow them to subscribe to Bar
Kochba as Messiah.
So that was the first serious historic severance
because from the time of the inception of
the church until about 135 there were still
Jews involved in synagogues and in temple worship
and had a certain degree of legitimacy and
recognition and then the final historic severance was
the rise of Constantine and the advent of
the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church
and a conscious willful rejection of all of
the Hebraic elements of the faith and an
anti-Jewish mentality and posture that finally compelled
Jews either to be separated from the church
or be separated from the Jewish kinsmen.
So from that time to this there's been
a long parenthesis of non-Jewish involvement in
the faith but in the last 10, 20
or 30 years I'm a believer 32 years
and there have always been as Paul says
a remnant an elect remnant of Jews in
the faith but as a movement in the
last 10, 20 years Jewish believers are coming
an increasing number so that there's a place
in Israel that does not have a substantial
presence of Jewish believers.
I think seven or more congregations in Jerusalem
alone in Tiberias in Galilee in what's the
southernmost side of the sea in Haifa and
in every place in Israel and in the
United States there's a whole messianic movement so
this is a very interesting subject but not
exactly on what we are about.
So I'm saying at the very end we
oppose ourselves in our own ignorance and we
congratulate ourselves that in the opposition we're doing
God's service.
It's really ironic that Jews think that they
are defending the true faith the monotheistic faith
and that Christians have brought some Greek innovation
of a triune God Father, Son, Holy Spirit
that is totally a negation of the one
God.
So we have also this complexity where Jews
think that they are preserving the true monotheistic
faith from the innovation that has come through
the church that sees God in three persons.
So in a word everything is stacked against
us historically and theologically and presently in fulfilling
the mandate that has been given the church
to the Jew and all of that means
that the church has got to be the
church and the ultimate meaning of that word
or it cannot fulfill that mandate and this
also that the church can never be that
until it begins seriously to take the mandate
to its heart in every place where the
church is whether it's Hong Kong or where
about are you going?
Gainesville, Florida that the church wherever it is
needs to see the centrality of the Jew
in the interest and the purposes of God
and they will find even in Hong Kong
certainly in Florida a residue of that people
in their own community who wait yet to
be tested to the Jew first and it
will shake the church to its foundations and
scare the church because it will feel itself
intimidated.
Jews have an overbearing power of intimidation to
threaten Christians who feel themselves weak in the
faith to begin with and this will altogether
prove how weak they are when the withering
blast makes them to recoil and go back
because how many Christians can have any competence
even to promote the gospel to Gentiles let
alone the Jews or even if you could
ask them what is the gospel or can
you sum up the meaning of your own
faith and present it in a meaningful way
to another there are not many Christians who
are capable of that simple test let alone
apostolic authority let alone anointing that is not
magical but has to do with the righteousness
of one's life and the body with which
one is authentically joined the whole issue of
the church as the church comes into its
real perspective and real requirement when you but
restore one element the issue of the Jew
click click click click click but the absence
of that gives the church a latitude to
be something other than God's in my opinion
intention slapdash weak charismatic in the worst sense
all of the other kinds of things would
have been met by and corrected if the
church had been the alignment with God to
which the Jew compels it can you can
you follow me I'm speaking this so well
that it's likely to go over your head
my words are so well chosen and so
clear and so right to the point that
you can you can't conceivably miss it all
of this would be only academic and a
forced obligation a kind of a grim having
to do something because it says so unless
the church has as its foremost concern the
thing that I spoke and challenged the congregation
yesterday the jealousy for the glory of God
the issue of the Jew is only the
instrumentality and the means to the end but
it's not the end in itself and we
would be in serious trouble if we make
that the end the end is the glory
of God and we need continually to be
reminded and that's why Paul's great treatise on
the mystery of the Jew and the church
ends at the conclusion of Romans 11 with
who has been his counselor who is given
and shall be given again all things to
whom be glory for ever we need again
and again to be reminded that the ultimate
issue is the glory of God forever in
what way that a God who has had
infinite patience and forbearance with a people who
has blessed who have blasphemed his name in
every nation where he has driven them in
judgment will again be restored not because of
their virtue but because of his that in
fact Israel will become worse at the end
than ever it was at the beginning if
for no other reason to demonstrate that it's
not their qualification that has won God's approval
but his mercy his mercy is his glory
when Moses asked show me thy glory God
showed him his mercy and that's what he
will show all the world as his final
statement to the nations and if they refuse
then to recognize having seen the visible judgment
of God upon Israel through the nations and
his restoration there's no answer for them then
but judgment that's how this drama is so
loaded but it's the revelation of himself and
not some supposed virtue of Israel that is
what is at stake here we need to
understand that it's God's glory and the church
that does not have a heart for his
glory but for its own programs its own
success its own celebration will miss the issue
completely even if it has some kind of
interest in Israel and the Jew it has
it in the wrong way and for the
wrong reasons can you follow that okay well
this wasn't my subject for this morning I'm
just tidying up on what we had already
discussed if anybody wants to see the final
corrected paper I have it here but our
hope if there's such a letter would ever
reach him is to open him for that
consideration but we can't make that the message
here here we're pleading with him to consider
that what he's condemning is a real grace
from God and a mercy from God toward
us as Jews instead of censoring the Southern
Baptists we ought to be congratulating them and
thanking them for their persistence with us because
we are opposing ourselves in our ignorance and
opposing the very message which is our salvation
what that message is remains to be heard
if we will give it a hearing but
if we close it out as being against
a pluralistic society and blah blah blah then
there's no chance he has chosen the weak
things to confound that which purports to be
strong and the foolish that which purports to
be wise and what is the Jew if
not the very epitome of what the world
celebrates both as wisdom and as strength and
for him to be faced by a frail
Gentile and trembling in their own weakness the
very epitome of weakness and lack of confidence
is the classic confrontation between two wisdoms his
strength has been perfect in our weakness but
we're not going to experience that strength before
outgoing but in outgoing that's the faith of
the church where we go in weakness trusting
the strength of God in our frailty the
historic phrase that the Jewish community has used
to describe the church is the kingdom of
arrogance not humility and weakness but the word
rejection is another one that we need to
pick up on what is our capacity to
bear rejection Jewish rejection makes men to wither
and presidents of nations have crawled to obtain
Jewish approval I can't explain this phenomenon maybe
there's some instinctive recognition of the centrality of
the Jew in God's ultimate intention that even
has a weak resonance in Gentiles wanting Jewish
approval that it's powerful so can we bear
Jewish rejection can we bear Christian rejection if
we can't bear it among ourselves who are
in the faith together in the community of
faith how shall we bear it from them
so the issue of rejection is no small
question and if we are a bunch of
patsies who crumble when we're rejected we're finished
we have to have a capacity to bear
rejection and we learned that in the church
so here we are scorning the very provision
of God to strengthen us in the realm
that we most need it and run from
it when we experience it in the church
and it's God's very provision to school us
and we look upon with horror and it's
God it is the very grace of God
that we are being inducted into the school
of rejection whether it's imagined or real it's
still equally as painful but it shows that
we're very sensitive and alive to ourselves and
not yet in that place of that crucified
life in Christ that takes no thought for
itself and exalts in its rejection rather than
comes apart at the seams so we come
back now to Romans 6 to the cross
to the issue of baptism to the issue
of faith which would never have been for
us issue if we were living a kind
of pallid minimal Christian church life that would
be possible to us culturally and is the
description of present church life because the Jew
has not been raised in the place of
challenge as she ought can you see that
whichever way you turn you touch rejection boom
then it comes back to what is the
church happy meetings or a suffering of a
particular kind because there's no rejection more painful
that then that comes from your own somebody
in the street can say exactly the same
thing and it's water off the duck's back
but when we hear from a brother and
sister with whom you're living and joined together
and for whom you have sacrificed yourself and
they tell you that you're the enemy of
the gospel it cuts in you like a
knife and the knife is turned in its
hilt so there's an exquisite degree of suffering
which is really preparation that can only be
found in the church where it's a church
where relationships of this kind exist and have
an environment where they can promote and you
don't flee from it that's the church that's
the church but like the issue of brokenness
I was discussing with Craig after the breakfast
this morning it's not something that you put
on a learn and you can't describe your
experience or let alone boast in it it's
there or not there and if it's there
it will resonate and evidence itself and and
those who have called the church the kingdom
of arrogance need exactly to see that and
you'll never see it except by your people
who exhibit it in complete unselfconsciousness that they
are exhibiting brokenness the experience of their own
rejection it simply comes out in the wash
in your voice in your eyes in the
way you bear yourself and this this is
the church only this kind of character formed
only in the church when it is obtained
in such a way when you are unselfconscious
and totally unaware but it is the residue
of God's work in you to which you
have opened yourself by coming into the body
of Christ welcoming what comes and can only
come through them if you want happy services
and a and a Sunday message that gives
you uplift and you're going to flee when
when crunch comes and and rejection then you
forfeit the very provision of God to be
such a people before the Jew there's something
about the Jew whatever else can be said
about them that gives them an uncanny ability
to recognize what is authentic I don't know
what it is but they can tell the
difference between what is feigned and what is
true what is authentic love and purports to
be what a sloppy sentimentality and love the
Jews as against someone who seemed to be
an enemy and yet something in their own
heart says this guy really is for me
I can't understand that everything about him what
he's telling me is horrific and yet I
can't cast this aside and I can more
easily identify with him than that one that
slobbers all over me to impress me how
much they love the Jew to me and
I praise God that there is an existence
in the earth of a people who are
calculated by God to test and measure the
authenticity of the church as no other people
can or will and that's why the first
real measure of whether we have are the
people of God is not our own estimation
or the success of our program or our
budget or our own enjoyment but have we
to jealousy have we impressed them who are
the calculated enemies of the gospel for our
sake the church that can move that people
to jealousy by something that it exhibits is
the church that has arrived and has come
of age and for whom the powers of
darkness tremble and the only way to come
to that kind of place in that kind
of church is through suffering and it's a
suffering of an exquisite kind that we bring
upon one another in the intensity of our
relationship in the church and if we flee
from that we flee from any prospect of
being what we ought both to the Jew
and to the world so we'll come back
again to these things again and again there's
a residence of anti-jewish feeling in virtually
every Jephthah that when the press comes on
will rise to the surface in a way
that will stun us and what I'm experiencing
is this residue in the church itself of
which the church is unconscious until the issue
of the Jew is brought before and then
something rises up not in the way that
you can recognize it as being anti-semitic
but that's what it is at its heart
even in their apostasy they are yet the
people of God and if there's something in
us unreconciled to God in an ultimate way
it will come out there that's something to
ponder and what I love about this school
is that we have an opportunity to explore
areas that have not been investigated and in
our interaction over them the Lord is going
to bring many things to light of this
kind I have the hunch but I'd love
to pursue that further and I've almost made
it a declaration that the prejudice against the
Jew in its ultimate form however subtly it
is expressed is the evidence of an area
of unreconciled surrender to God even by the
most consecrated Christians if they have an area
that has been withheld this is the breeding
ground for resentment against God even God hatred
God disappointment I'm going to take that up
in just a minute another paper that is
expressed in a somehow bitterness against the Jew
so okay