The title of this tape, The Spirit of
Truth, delivered by Art Katz, founder and director
of Ben Israel Ministries, author of the books
Ben Israel and Reality.
Art is a well-known Jewish Christian used
by God in the United States and Europe
to bring timely messages through his unique ministry.
Precious God, Lord.
What is man, Lord, that Thou art mindful
of him?
And we don't understand, Lord, why it is
that you come to send to us and
use us yet as vessels in Thy house,
Lord.
But we ask, Lord, as much as it
is possible that we might be beside ourselves
tonight, that truly it is the messenger of
the covenant who speaks, Lord, the Holy One
of Israel, the angel of the Lord, even
the Spirit of Truth, precious God.
Thank you for such a night as this,
Lord.
For such a taste of Thy glory.
Make it holy as Thou art.
Change us by it.
We'll thank You and praise You that You
have ordained it.
Fulfill now Your own heart in it, Lord,
for Your kingdom and for Your namesake.
In Thy holy name, Jesus, we pray.
Amen.
Well, I don't know if I can explain
to you why it is I'm dissolving.
When I first saw some of the promotional
material for this weekend and that the word
prophet had been used, I had a suspicion
that it was used as a gimmick, just
a little flourish that might intrigue people to
come and hear who would not otherwise come.
Whether that was the motive or not, I
doubt it, but I believe that God is
honoring that reference.
And I have such a sense of the
magnitude of this day and of this night
as being holy history, that God is speaking
not only into this congregation but beyond it,
because blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord, and blessed are they
who receive him who comes in the name
of the Lord.
If you knew how close we came to
missing this, and the somewhat panicky, concerned phone
call from your pastor back to where we
were, wondering if we had gone sour because
of some of the reports that had circulated,
and then the necessary cancellation of my coming
here some months ago because of a true
spirit of submittedness to those to whom my
life is related, and I winced over that
because I wanted the opportunity to assure the
pastor that there was no real need for
alarms and that I was not going to
have it, but I just had to trust
the Lord that as we allowed that commitment
to fall into the dust of death, he
would resurrect it in due season, and he
has.
The word that came before out of the
congregation about changing us into his image was
virtually syllable for syllable, the very word that
we prayed at the back of the platform
before coming out tonight.
Everything is so lending itself to the unfolding
of the purpose of God for this night,
and what is on my heart to speak
has to do with the spirit of truth,
and I want to turn to two texts
tonight.
One is an Old Testament text in 1
Samuel 15.
Samuel also said unto Saul, The Lord sent
me to anoint thee to be king over
his people, over Israel.
Now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of
the words of the Lord.
Do you love that beginning?
Do you love the word hearken?
Doesn't it have a ring to it in
something so Hebraic?
It goes beyond mere listening.
It's not just an auditory experience.
Hearken thou, not just to the words, but
to the voice of the words of the
Lord.
Such a calling!
Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember
that which Amalek did to Israel, how he
had laid wait for him in the way
when he came up from Egypt.
Now, go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy
all that they have, and spare them not,
but slay both man and woman, infant and
suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
I'll tell you children that at the reading
of this one verse, we ought to fall
flat on our faces.
This is either some grievous typographical error, or
it is an insight into the depths of
the nature of our God that shatters every
saccharine sentimental distortion, every projection of Him in
our image, that we just have to grovel
on the floor and let our eyes roll
back into our skull, and spittle form at
the corners of our mouth, and say that
we don't understand such a God as this.
Do you understand what he's calling a king
to perform?
Wholesale and unremitting slaughter?
The God of mercy?
The God of love?
Total annihilation of a Canaanite-ish people.
Every impulse in us would shriek in protest
to be obedient to such a requirement as
this.
So Saul gathered the people together and numbered
them.
The fifth verse, Saul came to a city
of Amalek and laid wait in the valley.
Seventh verse, Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah
until thou comest to shore that is over
against Egypt.
And he took Agag, the king of the
Amalekites, alive and utterly destroyed all the people
with the edge of the sword.
But Saul and the people spared Agag and
the best of the sheep and of the
oxen and of the fatlings and the lambs
and would not utterly destroy them.
But everything that was vile and refuse, that
they destroyed utterly.
May I just make the statement that the
Lord breathed upon me in the car coming
down tonight?
Partial obedience is disobedience.
And a partial truth is a lie.
And if you can sense the spirit of
God that is hovering over this congregation tonight,
the absolute God, the radical God, the God
of all totality, even the spirit of truth,
which the world cannot receive.
You can hear the cry of God calling
us to His holiness and to His impeccable
standard.
If you can see in the wavering vacillation
of a king, partially obedient only, a picture
of God's present people from whom the kingdom
was wrenched, you'll be brought more nearly to
the place to see as God sees.
And I'm eternally grateful for the definition of
truth which was given by Jesse Penn Lewis.
Truth is everything as God sees it.
And there is no requirement for us more
pressing for this hour than to see as
God sees.
Let's let this, the word of the Lord
and the voice of His speaking sink into
our hearing.
How would we have responded to so devastating
an invitation to be ruthless in utterly destroying
and spare not?
Or we might have considered with our rational
minds that the men and women would have
to be destroyed.
The cup of their iniquity was full.
They were given to the most gross kinds
of erotic sin in the name of religion
and of God.
But why the infants and the suckling?
Surely they're innocent and were not stained by
the sin of their parents.
Surely there's some redemptive hope for these children.
But this is the God who is not
required to explain.
At what age is a child no longer
an infant?
And if we by our own judgment had
to say, well, if a child is five,
six, or seven and had sight of these
filthy and erotic practices and somehow the leaven
of that corruption had already passed into his
being and he would in turn communicate that
to the children of Israel, it needs be
that he be slaughtered.
But how about at the age of four?
And if not four, how about three?
And if not three, two?
Where do you draw the line by human
thinking?
And God says, utterly destroy and spare not.
Okay, Lord, men and women, infants and sucklings,
but camel, sheep, oxen, and asses.
Lord, I love animals.
Surely they could not have been corrupted by
the practice of these human beings.
To hear the cry and the bellow of
these dumb brutes as we lay the axe
and the sword to them wrenches our very
hearts, Lord.
Why the necessity for that?
God is not required to explain.
He's only an absolute God.
And maybe if we want to conjecture, we
could say that many of these animals were
used in these filthy sexual practices.
But it's not for us to examine.
It's only for us to do.
It's interesting to review then the obedience of
the king that began in the ninth verse
with the word but.
I wonder in how many instances of our
life and our obedience before God it begins
with the word but.
But Saul and the people spared Agag and
the best of the sheep and of the
oxen and of the fatlings and lambs and
all that was good and would not utterly
destroy them.
But everything that was vile and refused that
they destroyed utterly.
Then came the word of the Lord unto
Samuel saying It repenteth me that I have
set up Saul to be a king for
he has turned back from following me and
hath not performed my commandments.
And it grieved Samuel and he cried unto
the Lord all night.
And Samuel rose early to meet Saul in
the morning.
It was told Samuel saying Saul came in
Carmel and behold he set him up a
place and has gone about and passed on
and gone down to Gilgal.
And Samuel came to Saul and Saul said
unto him Blessed be thou the Lord.
I have performed the commandments of the Lord.
I guess then as now Saul had the
batting average mentality.
Listen if a man comes up to bat
and he gets three hits out of ten
then he's a candidate for the hall of
fame.
I've obeyed the commandments of the Lord.
I've done most of what he has asked.
Not a sense of a grieved conscience.
Not a sense of the failure to obey
God.
Even a kind of self-exaltation and flattery
and self-congratulatory spirit.
I've obeyed the commandments of the Lord.
How much like us who are not in
any kind of grievous sin and are more
or less hitting three out of ten or
five out of ten may I say nine
out of ten who would be staggered and
stopped in our tracks to be reminded in
James that if we have failed in one
point of the law we have failed in
all.
Praise God that the revelation of the meaning
of that came from a holy man who
reminded us that nine times out of ten
the will of God may have been perfectly
coincident with our own.
We wanted to do what God wanted but
there came one time when we did not
and there we refused obedience and elevated our
opinion and our desire above his.
Therefore we all along were rebels.
We were all along disobedient.
We were all along reserving to ourselves a
final judgment of whether we would obey or
disobey the requirements of the Lord depending on
whether it suited our fancy.
And it was not revealed to us because
nine times out of ten we happened to
agree with him.
It's total obedience, children, or it's disobedience.
Partial obedience is disobedience and partial truth is
a lie.
I have performed the commandments of the Lord,
Samuel said, what meaneth then this bleeding of
the sheep in my ears and the lowing
of the oxen which I hear?
Oh, I can't describe to you the ungainly
experiences that men like myself have coming up
to varieties of pulpits.
Today was easier than most.
You're a blessed and you're a beautiful congregation
of God's people.
That's not always so.
And sometimes we'll come up on a platform
and look out at the sea of faces
and groan the overwhelming grayness of God's people,
what their faces betray unbeknownst to them, the
corporate and collective personality which congregations have, the
pall that is over many of the so
-called spirit-filled congregations of God's people.
It is the visual expression of the thing
which the prophet Samuel acknowledged.
It's the lowing of the oxen and the
bleeding of the sheep.
It's the evidence of the disobedience registered in
the faces and the corporate spirit of God's
people.
It's the truth which is partial and not
absolute.
I want you to turn to the book
of Acts and I believe it's the fifth
chapter for a strange apostolic episode which
we might find it hard to understand in
our generation.
Same God, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
It is only we who have changed.
It speaks of a certain man named Ananias
who with his wife Sapphira sold a piece
of property.
And with his wife's knowledge and connivance he
kept back and wrongfully appropriated some of the
proceeds, bringing a part only and putting it
at the feet of the apostles.
But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled
your heart that you should lie to and
attempt to deceive the Holy Spirit?
And should in violation of your promise withdraw
secretly and appropriate to your own use part
of the price from the sale of the
land?
As long as it remained unsold, was it
not still your own?
And even after it sold, was not the
money at your disposal and under your control?
Why then is it that you have proposed
and purposed in your heart to do this
thing?
How could you have the heart to do
such a deed?
You have not simply lied to men playing
false and shown yourself utterly deceitful, but to
God.
Upon hearing these words, Ananias fell down and
died and great dread and terror took possession
of all who heard of it.
The same God who wrenched a kingdom from
a partially obedient king is the same God
who executed a man in an apostolic hour
who submitted a thing in part to make
to stand for the whole.
If you can sense the hour in which
we stand and where we are in God's
holy history and that we are being restored
and returned to the apostolic standard described in
the book of Acts and that the speakings
of God which we heard today and hearing
now are a preparation for this restoration.
If you could understand that.
And I would ask you in the same
breath how many of you have a heart
to see this apostolic standard returned?
How many are groaning, waiting to see again
the manifest demonstration of the glory of God?
Of the signs and wonders that shook cities
of multitudes both of men and women who
were added to the church daily without so
much as a single gimmick or bumper sticker.
How many of us would be wanting to
live in a sense of awe and dread
and fear at the holiness of a God
who does not keep from slaying those who
seek to deceive the Holy Spirit?
Where are the fishermen of our generation, untutored,
who immediately discern the spirit of a lie?
And how many of us in a life
situation if someone came to bring the handsome
proceeds even in part would readily fall upon
their necks and hug them to our bosoms
and install them as deacons and elders for
so magnificent a gesture as that and not
one wit discern what Peter the fisherman discerned?
Jesus said he's going to send us a
comforter.
Even the spirit of truth which the world
cannot receive.
And John the Baptist was told by the
Father that that one upon whom he would
see the spirit descending and abiding as a
dove he it is who is the Messiah
and the Holy One of Israel.
He was not to know him by the
flesh and God is waiting again lo these
two thousand years for a son to emerge
out of the waters of absolute separation from
the world and its spirit before whom the
heavens again can part and a spirit descend
and abide as a dove and a voice
swing out again from heaven saying this is
my beloved son in whom I am well
pleased.
Note that that statement was made before Jesus
ever did anything.
Character before charisma.
I don't know about other birth children but
I'm told that a dove is a very
peculiar bird.
It doesn't have the peritual vision of other
birds.
It is single-eyed only.
It will not roost and rest in any
old place.
And we know that when God's judgment came
on all flesh and he poured out a
baptism of death upon the earth that Noah
sent out two birds and one never came
back.
It was a raven that can roost on
any kind of crut.
Anything that floats.
Any flotsam and jetsam is okay.
Thank you.
But not so the holy dove of God.
May I share a little Holy Spirit suspicion?
All of the celebration of the dove in
our charismatic generation all of the banners on
platforms all of the euphoric and good things
that are spoken in the name of the
unity of body of Christ.
I'm just wondering sometimes which bird that actually
is and whether it's not actually a dove
at all but some other kind of pigeon
dropping and making its droppings on the cross.
May I say that if there is no
abode and dwelling place for the holy dove
of God that it's not only the spirit
of power that departs and the spirit of
love but also the spirit of truth and
that this one spirit is preeminently and foremost
and firstly the spirit of truth before it
is the spirit of power.
When it goes, everything goes.
When it abides, everything abides.
And we have all the leaden experience and
the memory of the distaste in our mouths
where we have come from services and various
other kinds of Christian activity in full gospel
sense and have had some kind of instinctive
and intuitive sense that we could not articulate
that in the absence of the holy dove
of God men have gesticulated and pounded pulpits
and sung weary chorus after chorus seeking to
fabricate and to create some sense of the
presence of the things that only the dove
of God himself can bring.
A half hour later the wife of Ananias
came in or three hours it says not
having learned of what had happened then Peter
said to her tell me, did you sell
the land for so much?
Yes, she said, for so much.
Then Peter said to her how could you
two have agreed and conspired together to try
to deceive the spirit of the Lord?
Listen, the feet of those who have buried
your husband are at the door and they
will carry you out also.
And instantly she fell down at his feet
and died and the young men entering found
her dead and they carried her out and
buried her beside her husband.
I have a suspicion that until this generation
maybe even this hour the church of God
more than it has realized has already been
carried out feet first and it shall not
be raised to life in the apostolic grandeur
and power of that first generation until the
spirit of truth can find a place to
rest in the lives of God's people.
If partial obedience is disobedience then partial truth
is a lie.
Something that is offered in part only to
be made to appear as the whole is
a lie.
If the whole truth and nothing but the
truth oh it's a lie.
I have not yet recovered from the experience
of a Sunday morning only some months ago.
One of those strange occasions when I have
a Sunday morning off and I was taken
by a Jewish brother to hear his pastor
of whom he was so proud being a
spirit-filled pastor in a staid denomination.
I remember sitting up in the balcony and
as is my custom I take a look
at those about me notorious people watcher that
I am and I had such a despairing
sense that as I looked at the married
couple sitting side by side that the better
word to describe their relationship than marriage was
truth.
That there was some kind of unspoken agreement
you don't push me, I don't push you
let's share these common facilities and make the
best of a sorry situation.
Where was the glory of God?
And as my eye traveled up to the
father-most reaches of the auditorium there were
their kids wearing the hip-hugging clothes and
the shirts unbuttoned to the navel the chokers
and jewelry around the neck long-haired, stringy,
creepy-looking kids jiving each other and poking
each other in the ribs with their elbows
and having a ball wholly indifferent to what
was going on below pagans in the house
of God and my spirit within me winced
and then finally my eye traveled down below
to the man at the pulpit carrying on,
baptized in the Holy Spirit.
I had the strangest experience I don't know
quite how to describe it my ear was
hearing technically true words but my spirit told
me it was a lie.
You say, Art, how can that be?
Was the message scriptural?
Yes.
Was it doctrinally sound?
Yes.
Could it be faulted in any way?
No.
How then can the truth be made a
lie?
Easy.
Because while his mouth was quoting scriptures his
spirit was saying, cool it don't take me
seriously don't worry, don't get alarmed, don't panic
no one's expecting for you to do this
don't you remember our unspoken agreement I don't
push you, you don't push me this is
our ceremonial Sunday hour this is my requirement
to give you some kind of a sermon
and that's your requirement to hear it but
no one intends that you should be changed
by it so don't panic the spirit of
the speaking was a lie Oh, I can
give you multitudinous illustrations just in the course
of these days in an assembly church where
it pleased the Lord to have me which
was not on my schedule sitting on the
platform groaning over what was before my sight
in that congregation despairing of any prospect of
true communication we might have come from opposite
planets and the young youth minister was called
upon to pray in the opening of the
service and when I heard his prayer, my
spirit sank you say, what was wrong with
it, Art?
only this one thing it was a performance
it was a grand prayer in the Pentecostal
manner but it was not true I don't
know about you, but I'd rather have someone
who chokes and splutters is awkward as all
get-outs who croaks and groans and gets
something out of his heart and spirit something
limp and feeble in terms of human eloquence
but let it be authentically true than the
most masterful performance of men in the grand
Pentecostal manner Oh, children anything
that is offered to appear to be something
that is not is a lie how
many times have our spirits cringed at so
-called charismatic functions when we have sensed a
spirit of manipulation when men coax and goad
and move audiences soullessly and psychically so determined
for a happy meeting and a successful meeting
that will have every appearance of being somehow
a night filled with the splendor of the
spirit that you think that you're in some
kind of three-ring circus all for the
pain of watching men leap from their seats
to get to the microphone for fear that
if there'd be one moment's silence between the
one leaving and the one coming that somehow
the audience will be bored and distracted no
accident that I've used the word audience rather
than congregation the Holy Spirit as a dove
is waiting to find a son upon whom
it can abide and the spirit of manipulation
is eminently a lie it is the antithesis
of faith that trusts God that in our
foolishness and in our weakness and in our
nothingness that whatever it pleases the Lord to
perform by His Spirit shall be done and
if it pleases Him for His glory not
to be revealed we're willing to suffer that
disappointment than any human substitution oh children the
spirit of the world is the spirit of
a lie and nowhere is it more painful
than in the church of God God gave
me a depth of revelation one night not
too long ago in Germany in Bavaria in
the hotel used by Hitler for his headquarters
when I went to sleep that night utterly
cut to the core where down below was
the most farcical charismatic kind of meeting that
one can imagine I thought I was at
some kind of high school pep rally it
was gross and manipulative every kind of human
substitution for the Holy Dove of God I
was then in my sixth week of absence
from home, wife and family and may I
make a true statement it gets a little
hard around that time for God's mobile servants
there's a craving and a yearning for which
Satan has been waiting and he has sharpened
his knives and we are cruelly sought after
and I had a night of such gross
reveling in desire and lusting that made my
soul sick that I was capable of that
kind of reverie I hated it but I
couldn't leave it I despised it and I
loved it are you being disillusioned?
good it was a terrible darkness and in
the midst of that darkness and that sweat
and gritty night there broke forth a little
tincture of light in the abyss of darkness
and I believe that God showed me something
about the anatomy of lust that lust is
not merely sensual gratification that is only the
cloak in which something far more devious hides
that our filthiest reveries the power which we
have been unable to break that has affected
and corrupted our marriages and our lives and
harbors in our imaginings is not mere sensual
gratification but the desire to manipulate another it's
the last refuge of the scoundrel who wants
to assert self and see someone crumple by
the imposition of that power it's the spirit
of manipulation and it's a lie I can't
tell you the emancipation that has come to
my life of marriage since God has shown
me this the release, the heat is off
and God has continued to unfold both to
my wife and to myself the degree to
which we were using manipulative practices in our
own marriage and life by innuendo, by suggestion
by the look of one's face, by the
inflection of a voice we can manipulate the
other as by strings to get them to
accommodate our desire I knew well how to
pout well how to look like a stricken
and disappointed husband well how to give an
appearance of woundedness in a way that I
know was calculated to bring a certain desired
effect in my wife's behavior and what God
showed me is that that spirit has penetrated
through and through Christendom that we have become
masters of manipulation and have learned by a
word and by an inflection by syrupy crescendo
of our voice to move and to manipulate
the people of God as a substitute for
the work of the Holy Dove of God
it's an appearance that's made to stand for
something which is not and the only alternative
is a terrifying, radical, cleaving to God by
faith both in our marriages and in its
intimacy and in our congregations trusting the Dove
of God to bring the path to things
that are true, that are authentic, that are
real truth is everything as God
sees it our gestures, our faces the manipulative
tones of our voices the right things with
the wrong motives it's right in part, but
it's a lie it's got to be the
truth and all the truth or it's not
the truth at all and how many of
our evangelistic activities and organizations who have true
callings and true purposes use devious means to
obtain them my God, if I shall see
one more newsletter felt tipped on the line
I shall shriek and be destroyed one more
crying of wolf in order to elicit and
to jerk from God's people another dollar for
a good cause the world and the spirit
of the world, which is the spirit of
a lie can mix its ends and its
means but not so the people of the
kingdom our means must be in accordance with
His ends and I say this not as
any kind of boasting but as a description
of what God is beginning to do in
some portions of the body and shall require
increasingly of us all that He has had
us to desist from including in our seasonal
four-time-a-year newsletter a return envelope
you say, Art, what's wrong with that?
don't you list your needs in your newsletter?
no do you have needs?
you better believe it fifty degrees below zero
we're in a life and death situation and
I said to those children in Minnesota do
you guys realize what you're doing?
every ministry uses envelopes it's a convenience for
God's people yes, they said, Art, but it's
also a subtle manipulation if the spirit of
God will bid them give they'll exert themselves
to find and to address and to stamp
their own envelopes, thank you and if they
will not, we are prepared to perish and
may I say, children, that if you'll not
die for the truth we're not going to
have it truth is costly do you love
the truth?
so much that you would die for it
and suffer for it and experience reproach for
it and misunderstanding for it will you speak
the truth in love?
he has given us every provision for godliness
and life and we have been cowardly to
use it speak the truth in love confess
your faults one to another and we bottle
it up and suppress it and keep it
down and make a brave appearance of a
spirituality which is not yet ours making a
pot to appear as a whole we've been
carried out more than we realize it feet
first I remember as a young believer excuse
me for being so anecdotal and you may
have heard this before it bears repeating how
I had such a troublesome son my son
David, my firstborn what a chip off the
old block what an egotist always at the
center of things always got to be seen
always that little show of oh I would
have been such a saint if I didn't
have a son like that or is it
that I will be such a saint because
I have a son like that that bugger
boy how he knows to mess it up
his timing is exquisite just before I'm getting
prepared for a service I'm getting all groomed
and revved up spiritually getting sanctimonious and preparing
my spirit to be God's man, to deliver
God's word and pow he blows it and
pow goes my temper and pow he gets
cuffed in the putz and I go grumbling
and leaden hearted trying still to hold together
the shambles of my life and be God's
man may I say something?
I think God has winked in times past
isn't he gracious?
such love such long suffering patience toward us
I think there was a recent hour when
God allowed a disparity between our lives as
ministers and as men but increasingly and in
this hour he's insisting that the messenger and
his message are one the ephod and the
holy breastplate was bound to the body of
the priest it was no easy put on
and take off for convenience sake you are
one thing at the pulpit and another thing
with your feet up on the coffee table
watching the box with your tie loose the
man increasingly is the message well I
remember going to a service at the assemblies
church that I was attending in those days
in New York being trained for Jewish missionary
work and sure enough my David pulled his
little shticklach, his little stunt and he got
under my skin and I let him have
it pow and the last words I heard
as my wife crashed the door behind me
go tell him what a great saint you
are pow and I remember driving to church
leaden hearted justifying myself well he had it
coming he needed this and he's been cutting
up too often and if she'll not discipline
him I'll have to but my heart was
like lead and I came to the service
it was late and I took a seat
in the pew and it was testimony time
and yes I want to praise the lord
this week and I want to say remember
those times and the moment I sat down
in the pew I heard a still small
voice Art, confess your faults one to another
confess your faults one to another confess your
faults one to another I began to break
out in a sweat I had hot spells
and cold spells my knees were knocking I
said but lord but but and finally despite
myself I found my hand going up and
there was my precious pastor oh brother Katz
yes he'll bless the congregation yes brother Katz
you are super saint I
choked and spluttered and I said pastor excuse
me but since I've come to the church
tonight and I've been sitting in the pew
I've been hearing a voice repeating again and
again confess your faults one to another confess
your faults one to another and I've never
seen this done in the church as long
as I've been a believer I don't know
where it's supposed to be done or when
it's appropriate but I feel that I must
confess a fault what a silence came over
the congregation and I told him that I
had been behaving toward my son in a
way that was unbecoming as a father let
alone as a child of God let alone
as one called to his service it was
utterly humiliating I wish that the floor could
have opened and swallowed me as I changed
colors and I perspired and my voice broke
and creaked and when I finished for the
first time that I and as long as
I had known that pastor he was silent
and didn't know what to say Hallelujah!
and as we waited in that terrible quiet
another woman at the other side of the
congregation got up and she confessed a fault
and I don't remember what happened after that
I think that we went to prayer and
the glory of God fell I don't know
how long we were lost in God in
such a glorious sense of his presence there
never was a message that night and when
it was over and the pastor again found
his voice he said, look what happened when
two were obedient to the word of God
we experienced the spirit of revival would to
God we were all obedient Samuel also
said unto Saul the Lord sent me to
anoint thee to be king over his people,
over Israel now therefore hearken thou unto the
voice of the words of the Lord children,
hearken thou to the voice of the words
of the Lord there's a spirit of God
that is brooding and wanting to dwell and
to abide with us even the spirit of
truth which the world cannot receive and that
same spirit is also the spirit of power
and little wonder that in the same book
of Acts in the fifth chapter when the
whole church was appalled and great awe and
terror and dread seized them and all others
who heard of these things by the hands
of the apostles numerous and startling signs and
wonders were being performed among the people and
none of those who of their not of
their number dared to join and associate with
them but the people held them in high
regard and praised and made much of them
and more and more were being added to
the Lord those who believed and acknowledged Jesus
as their savior crowds both of men and
of women so that they even kept carrying
out the sick in the streets and placing
them on couches and sleeping pads in the
hope that as Peter passed by at late
at least his shadow might fall on some
of them what an age what splendor what
glory where there was the discernment and the
razor edge awareness of the spirit of truth
in the church this is the standard to
which God seeks to restore his church the
last verse of 1 John 5 says and
we know that the Son of God has
come and hath given us an understanding that
we may know him that is true and
we are in him that is true even
the Son Jesus Christ this is the true
God and eternal life true true true in
the sixth verse of that same chapter the
last portion and it is the spirit that
beareth witness because the spirit is truth I
love what this brother spoke tonight about judgment
coming to the house of God it's not
a cruel God who is pulverizing us and
delighting it's a God who knows that the
spirit as a dove must be restored to
his corporate son in a spirit without measure
in a place where it can find an
abode where no lie is partial obedience is
disobedience and partial truth is a lie it's
the whole truth and nothing but the truth
God is looking for a people who will
be true in their speaking true in their
faces true in their voices true in their
gestures free from all manipulative practices whose motives
are in keeping with his ends that the
Holy Spirit even the spirit of truth might
abide with us that multitudes both of men
and women might believe let's bow our heads
and ask God by the same spirit by
the revelation of his light to show us
where we have been partially obedient only oh
we've destroyed the men and the women but
we have spared King Adag and the best
of the sheep and the oxen we've destroyed
all that was utterly despicable and refuse and
waste but we may have saved that which
we thought is good and may I say
that in God's sight nothing of the flesh
is good there's a total God calling us
to a total obedience and a total truth
he wants absent from our life the lowing
of the oxen and the bleeding of the
sheep the grayness of our faces the wooden
appearances of our marriages as truces rather than
as glories he wants restored to the church
the spirit of truth hallelujah precious God shine
your light into the darkest recesses hidden places
of our life mighty God may we be
as rigorous in the searching out of the
leaven of our lives as Jews are in
their practice in preparing the house for Passover
may we begin as they with the attic
and going from top to bottom through our
minds and through our imaginations through our memories
and through our thought life down through every
vestibule and nook and cranny of our hearts
our stomach, our gut and down into the
basement the dark and the hidden things may
we search out and remove all hummus, all
leaven for a little leaven leavens the whole
lump show us mighty God the things that
are compromised the things that are partial the
things that are offered as a whole when
they really are part only show us the
deceptive appearances which we allow to stand for
a truth which is not quite yet show
us where we have been silent where we
should have spoken where we have refrained from
confessing our faults one to another and not
spoken the truth in love thank you for
the blood of the Lamb Jesus that make
us clean Lord purge us purge your house
see our hearts Lord and understand that we
didn't understand how radical is your requirement we
saw ourselves as heads and shoulders above the
standard of the world and yet did not
realize that we were obedient in part only
help us to walk even as you walked
search us and purge us and restore mighty
God to the Son who is now emerging
even the Spirit of God without measure hear
the confessions of your people sitting in their
pews this night and where so ever they
are in the hearing of this word as
they name mighty God the places of compromise
of deceit of manipulation of mixture