The portion of scripture that went through my
spirit just before I was called was, corruption
cannot put on incorruption.
And I wonder if you've ever experienced the
peculiar paradox that in the moment of God's
greatest use of you, in the moment when
his very glory is being revealed, there is
even in that moment the subtlest emanation of
our own soul, our own self-life, our
own flesh.
I don't know how a pastor could look
out on so glorious a congregation as this
and not be impressed with the number.
I don't know how a speaker can bring
a powerful word from God and not be
at the same moment impressed by its impact.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
There's a paradox, there's something that haunts us,
that shadows us, that it can't be removed.
But I want to say in the same
breath that the holy end-time works of
God shall not have this subtle corruption.
That wherever there's humanity, wherever there's the semblance
of self, wherever there is the faintest iota
of vanity, ego, pride, it has got to
go.
And I believe that every ministry and minister
of God is going somewhere in the course
of time to pass through a process of
death.
The most flourishing works, the most grandiose, the
most effective, are somewhere in the course of
time to be submitted to a process of
death.
I hate to bring up the word.
It sounds so morbid, but it's so desperately
necessary.
Even on this trip, I had the phone
number, or I had rather the name of
a black brother whom I've known through the
years in my pocket in California.
We've known each other since the beginning.
He heard me on radio one day, almost
12 years ago, in the first stages of
giving my testimony, and something touched his soul
in the hearing of my voice.
And he called the station to get my
name and tracked me down and found me
and called me.
He wanted to come over and meet me.
I said, come.
And so the door knocked, and there I
opened the door with this big black galoot
standing on the doorstep.
Without a moment's hesitation, we fell into each
other's arms, and it's been that kind of
a loving embrace ever since.
He's a man of extraordinary character and calling,
saved out of the most desperate pit that
you could ever imagine, and he has a
manner of speaking and serving God that stuns
audiences.
He's spoken at universities, and he's a great
encounter specialist of the Lord and a very
special instrument.
Well, he had called me in the early
days while I was in the Bay Area
a week or so ago, and I had
the note in my pocket, and I would
take out my coins and things at night
and look at the name and lay it
down and not call.
The next day, I would pick it up
and look at it and not call.
On the very last night of my days
in the area, his name was on my
heart, and I tried to call.
And I knew that he lived in Palo
Alto, and I looked in the phone book,
and I couldn't find any such number, and
I called information, no such number.
And just when I was going to despair
of contacting this brother, I asked the pastor
at whose church I was speaking, and that,
by the way, was an impromptu last-minute
service which was not in my schedule.
And he happened to know someone who knew
him, and so by such circumstance, I called
him.
He said the phone rang six, seven, and
eight times.
You know what he was doing as it
was ringing?
He was adjusting the bell.
And I was just about to quit, thinking
he was not home, when he lifted the
receiver, and he found out it was Ark
on the other end.
Ark, he said.
I've got to see you.
I said, well, I'm speaking at such and
such a place tonight.
Can you come to the meeting?
No, but I'll be there at around 9
.30. Please wait on me.
Well, he came, and we went for ice
cream.
Now you know where I live.
And over the ice cream, I heard such
a woeful tale of lament.
I can't describe to you a man who
is at the utter end of himself.
Things are going wrong right and left.
It's an agony to minister.
He has come to such a place so
reduced that he wonders if he's even saved.
It was pitiful to hear that chronicle of
woes.
And I shared with him something that brought
life to him that night, and I want
to share it with you.
It's in John, the 11th chapter, an episode
that I have never understood until now.
And maybe it is until now that we
are to understand it.
There may be some of you who are
languishing in a kind of spiritual death even
now, inexplicable circumstances, suffering that you can't fathom,
things going wrong.
And it may be that there are others
of you who are soon to experience what
I believe is a necessity to put away
corruption, and that is to be entombed in
a Lazarus tomb.
John, the 11th chapter, Now a certain man
named Lazarus was ill.
He was of Bethany, the village where Mary
and her sister Martha lived.
This Mary was the one who anointed the
Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with
her hair.
It was her brother Lazarus who was now
sick.
So the sister sent to him, saying, Lord,
he whom you love so well is sick.
When Jesus received the message, he said, This
sickness is not to end in death, but
on the contrary, it is to honor God
and to promote his glory, that the Son
of God may be glorified through it.
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and
Lazarus.
They were his dear friends, and he held
them in loving esteem.
Therefore, even when he heard that Lazarus was
sick, he still stayed two days longer in
the same place where he was.
You know how long you'll carry a certain
perplexity in your spirit and not understand?
I have to make certain confessions because I'm
peculiar.
But for some reason, at the end of
full gospel meetings, my spirit has not always
soared when automatically there have been three lines
of ministry, baptism in the Holy Spirit, salvation,
and deliverance, automatically as a matter of course,
as if we're required to perform this ministry
at the conclusion of every meeting.
I have not been able to understand the
wincing in my spirit until now.
When I see that there's a Jesus who
loves a Lazarus who is deathly ill and
still remains two days longer where he is,
something begins to be communicated to my spirit.
I think a lot of us have been
playing the game by the numbers, mechanically, and
have thereby been missing the glory of God.
There's something about our civilization, the whole knit
and fabric of our culture, that is inimical
to suffering of any kind.
If that's a fancy word, it means opposed.
We are a fly-now, pay-later civilization.
We are instant this and instant that.
We are immediate gratification.
We are the ultimate lovers of pleasure, of
which the Scripture says that at the end
of the age there will be lovers of
self more than lovers of God.
Never have men more fastidiously spent time with
hair dryers and blowers as they're now doing.
Perfumed, powdered, pampered, never has flesh been more
placated and appeased as in this civilization.
And even the children of God are not
immune.
We've never been so style-conscious, so pleasure
-conscious.
And there's something about the very word suffering
that sends an immediate shudder in our souls.
But may I quote Basilia Schlink?
She said, The greatest failure of the Church
is to prepare God's people for suffering.
In my humble opinion, the way of the
cross is the way of suffering.
And I know that the love of God
bathes us this morning in congregations like this,
and we're enjoying for a wonderful season the
great pleasures of the renewal of faith and
the entering into dimensions of praise and worship
we've not heretofore known.
And I'm sure that Lazarus himself enjoyed many
of these benefits before he became inexplicably ill.
I wonder how obedient we would be to
remain two days longer where we are if
some dear friend whom we love is ill
unto death.
How many of us would be Johnny-on
-the-spot to provide immediate ministry and thereby
deflect, if not impede and cancel out, the
great workings of God?
May I say that our ministry is not
first unto God.
It is never truly ministry unto men.
And that the greatest failing of Christendom in
modern times is shooting its ministry toward men
rather than to God, where men pleases and
crowd pleases, afraid to bring offense.
Jesus said this illness is not to eventuate
in death, but on the contrary, it is
to honor God and to promote His glory.
And I'm willing to acknowledge that there are
many defects in my own life and shortcomings,
and others have been the victim of these
shortcomings in that I have public places like
this to speak.
But one thing I think I can say
with a clear heart and with a full
conscience, whatever the defects or the exaggerations or
the ill consequences of my zeal, everything that
comes out of my life, so well as
I understand myself, is to honor God and
to promote His glory.
May I say, children, that there ought not
to be any other motive.
And we know what we're made of, and
there are subtle interminglings of many varieties of
motives of which we cannot help ourselves.
We desire success, and we love to see
things promoted and magnified.
It's an inextricable, built-in thing.
It adheres in the flesh.
What are you going to do?
But if God is going to have for
Himself a church without spot and without blemish,
if He's going to have holy ministers, virgins
undefiled with women, redeemed out of the earth
in whose foreheads is the name of the
Father proclaiming the everlasting gospel, we're going to
need to submit ourselves again into the earth.
I wonder how Lazarus felt languishing in sickness
unto death.
Sickness itself is only another name for death.
Don't you remember?
That terrible pounding headache where you can't even
think straight?
The terrible fever?
The tongue cleaving to the roof of your
mouth?
The utter weakness and terrible exhaustion?
You're nigh unto death.
Your whole life has been contracted and diminished.
You have barely a faint palpitation on sweaty
sheets, and the Lord has not come.
I want to tell you that Jesus didn't
take Lazarus aside well in advance of this
and say, Now look, buddy, we're friends, right?
You love me, and I love you.
So I'll tell you what's going to happen.
There's going to come at a certain moment
a sickness in your life, but don't worry,
cool it.
It'll get bad, and I'll not seem to
appear, but you can be assured that I
am going to deliver you out of this.
I don't think that he said any such
word.
Jesus loved Lazarus, and he was his friend.
And I believe with all my heart that
Lazarus loved Jesus, and he was his friend.
And may I say that the friends of
Jesus can well be bidden to suffer and
to die without explanation.
How many of you presently need explanation for
everything?
You're willing to obey God if he'll explain
it.
You're ready to be Johnny on the spot
if he'll explain it.
You're ready to serve God if he'll explain
it.
You're willing to suffer humiliation if he'll explain
it.
But I'll tell you, if he explains it,
there's no humiliation.
It's humiliation because he doesn't explain it.
I can't help but notice the phenomenon of
nature itself for which God has written his
handiwork.
It's very prolific.
And we know that a fish will spawn
many hundreds of eggs, thousands perhaps.
But of that number, not all comes to
fruition.
There's a great wastefulness in nature.
God is willing to lavish wastefulness to bring
forth some perfect expression of his life.
And of those eggs, only a few will
come to the first stages of life.
And of these fingerlings, fewer yet will survive
and go on to the other stages of
maturity.
And maybe of the great number that began
in thousands, we have only one or two
that have left the periphery and the shallow
scums to go out into the deep and
there to come to full maturity and reproduce
itself.
I wonder how many there will be in
the last accounting when the faith of many
shall grow cold.
When the Lord shall come, shall there be
faith in the earth?
And if faith is not faith unto death,
I don't know what it is.
I wonder what the disciples of Jesus thought
while Jesus delayed two days longer where he
was.
Remember what they said later?
Lord, we'd better not go there because the
Jews were only recently intending to try to
stone you and are you thinking to go
back there again?
I wonder how many of them had the
stray thought that Jesus was delaying because he
was afraid to face a possible stoning.
And I can tell you with all my
heart that every true act of obedience unto
God will always result in a reproach, not
only from the world, but also from God's
people.
If he really had guts, he'd go there
and suffer the stoning, some friend.
But he was obedient to the Father and
I want to tell you that while Lazarus
died, he died.
If you don't think it's painful to consider
that someone whom you love is languishing unto
death without explanation, it is.
This kind of obedience does not come easy,
both for him who suffers it and for
him who obeys it.
Jesus said of Lazarus in the 11th verse,
Our friend Lazarus is at rest and sleeping,
but I am going there that I may
awaken him out of his sleep.
I wonder if Jesus would say that of
us.
Whatever you are suffering, and I don't know
who's in the audience and what your condition,
and whatever it may please the Lord to
allow you to suffer, how many of us
will in that condition be at rest, sleeping?
How many of us will be pulling our
hair and beating our chest?
How many of us will be vexed?
How many of us will look at our
sisters Mary and Martha and see the disconsolate
disappointment in their face and have our hearts
sink?
Where is the Lord?
He's at rest.
What a statement for a believer in the
midst of the ultimate perplexity of his life.
Well, so then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus
is dead and for your sake I'm glad
that I was not there.
It would help you to believe, to trust
and to rely on me.
However, let us go to him.
And so they came and came to Bethany.
It's interesting what the name Bethany means, house
of affliction.
And they came to that house and Mary
and Martha were there.
And when Martha heard that Jesus was coming
in the 20th verse, she went to meet
him.
Mary remained sitting in the house.
And Martha said to Jesus, Master, if you
had been here, my brother would not have
died.
You know what's fascinating?
That when Mary, who is the more spiritual
of the two, so we think, later comes
and greets the same Lord, she says exactly
the same thing as her sister.
Lord, if you had been here, my brother
would not have died.
Isn't it fantastic how mindless we can be
in speaking the word Lord and not let
the deepest meanings of that word register?
Because if he's Lord, what cotton-picking difference
does it make whether he's there or not?
No wonder that Jesus had to say of
a Roman and a Gentile that there's not
so great a faith in all Israel because
the Romans said, You don't have to come
under my roof.
Just speak the word only.
Lord, if you had been here, my brother
would not have died.
Jesus said, Your brother shall rise again.
And Martha replied, I know that he will
rise again at the resurrection of the last
day.
I think she was a leading charismatic of
the community.
I know that.
I heard it on Bob Mumford's tape.
We know, but we don't know is our
problem.
We know theologically, we know doctrinally, but we
don't know in the gut.
Jesus said to her, I am myself, the
resurrection and the life, and whoever believes in,
adheres to, and trusts and relies on me,
although he may die, yet shall he live.
And whoever continues to live and believes and
has faith in and cleaves to and relies
on me shall never actually die at all.
Do you believe this?
I could almost imagine in my fervency that
Jesus was speaking through this woman and through
and into all generations of all ages, right
to this moment into your own hearing.
Do you believe this?
In a world in which the resurrection is
commemorated by the rolling of eggs on lawns.
Do you believe this?
Where the deepest glory of God has been
somehow dissolved in pagan practice and Easter bunnies
and chocolate goo-goo.
Do you believe this?
You know that there's not another place in
Scripture that describes the fact that Jesus wept.
The shortest verse of all Scripture is in
this chapter, two words, Jesus wept.
And I want to understand what it is
that makes my Lord grieve.
Was it the death of this young man
whom he loved?
Was it some sentimental exercise?
Or was it something else?
That when in the 33rd verse Jesus saw
her sobbing and the Jews who came with
her also sobbing, he was deeply moved and
spirit and troubled and chafed in his spirit
and sighed and was disturbed.
He said, where have you laid him?
They said, Lord, come and see.
Jesus wept.
I wonder if he wept at the unbelief
of men.
He said, I know that he'll be raised
on the last day.
I wonder if he wept at those who
quote the Scripture, absent from the body is
to be present with the Lord, but who
don't really want to be absent.
Listen, could you tell me what's so bad
about dying?
If to be absent from the body is
to be present with the Lord?
If to pass out of this mortal coil
is to be in complete and perfect union
with him?
What's so bad about dying?
That we lament and go to the tomb
and sob and gush and wrinkle our handkerchiefs
and wear out the Kleenex box?
When he saw those Jews sobbing and these
sisters with him, he chafed in the spirit
and groaned.
Jesus wept.
Beginning to reconsider the whole question of life
and death, having recently had opportunity in Minnesota
to be invited to a funeral parlor.
And there in the casket was a young
woman in her early thirties, an exemplary saint
of God, married to an unbelieving clod.
He lived and she died of cancer and
absolutely stupefied the entire charismatic community.
And they invited me to come and to
lean over the casket that perchance in the
sounding of my voice or the touching of
my finger, her eyelids would flutter and she
would rise up in resurrection life.
They could not believe that God would cancel
out and write finis to so glorious a
life and testimony and allow the unbelieving clod
to live.
Unlike Jewish practice, which keeps the body concealed,
Christian practice leaves it open for view.
And I looked down on that still form.
It didn't need any mortician's cosmetic.
There was a glory that adhered in that
life, in its death as well as in
its living, that was beyond contradiction.
As a matter of fact, is it because
I'm a peculiar Jew that as I sat
on the front pew of that mortuary and
watched the people lumber up in their Minnesota
way, ordinary folk, Lutherans and stuff like that,
and pay respects to the husband of the
deceased, that I looked at them and began
to squint and wondered in my mind, who's
really dead and who's really alive?
I wondered, what is life anyhow?
How many times have their clothes to be
washed in 30, 40, 50, 60 years?
How much weary groaning of washing machines and
dryers?
How many meals consumed?
How many rolls of toilet paper?
How many of all the things that pertain
to physical coming and going and being and
lumbering back and forth and feeding our faces
and occupying space, the end of which is
sound and fury signifying nothing?
As I looked at these lumbering oafs over
the casket, I thought to myself, she is
more alive in her death than they are
in their life.
I think we ought to review our definition.
Life has not to do with the ingestion
of calories or the occupying of space, but
only that which promotes the honor and glory
of God.
And if I can best perform that in
my silence as well as in my speaking,
so let it be.
Somebody said that if the Holy Spirit departed
the earth, 90% of all Christian endeavor
would go on as usual, business as usual.
How would you like to have your work
so thrust upon God, upon His heartbeat, the
palpitation of His life and His glory that
emanated out of the grave, that the moment
it ceases, you cease?
Really, we ought to put it the other
way.
The moment you cease, He begins.
Hallelujah.
I think there's a message here.
Jesus wept.
And the Jews said, see how tenderly He
loved Him?
Why is it that people always love saccharine
demonstrations and schmaltzy things, profuse tears and all
kinds of dramatic stuff than the pure and
holy thing of God that is life-giving?
Why is it that only some months ago
at the Great World Pentecostal Conference, in the
midst of all that clobber and routine and
religious posturing, where a cry of God came
out of the balcony, a shriek and a
cry in tongues that made your hair stand
up, and a deathly silence come over the
congregation.
And the same woman who gave the tongue
gave the interpretation in German.
How I strained to lean to hear to
catch only a phrase and heard enough to
know it was God.
My people, my people, my people.
Jesus wept.
And I waited with my heart pounding to
see what they would do at the platform
in the audience of thousands.
And if they would ask if there was
one in the audience who had heard the
interpretation and could translate it for the edification
of this body in English.
But instead, guess what happens?
It was brushed neatly away and the man
at the pulpit led the whole congregation in
singing, He is Lord, He is Lord.
He is...
And by the singing of the Lord, they
silenced the Lord.
And then they brought on their whiz kid,
pulpiteer, and he gave them a good old
slam bang Pentecostal sermon in the grand old
manner.
And they loved it.
They mopped out their eyes and they sniffled.
And when it was over, he had them
on their feet and their hands were above
their head.
And boy, it was a bash.
It was a piece of old time nostalgia.
The good old time religion, hallelujah.
But somewhere the voice of his speaking had
been pushed aside into obscurity because men preferred
a sentimental bash, a sacrament here, to the
now word of God.
Jesus wept.
Jesus again, sighing repeatedly and deeply disquieted, approached
the tomb.
It was a cave, a hole in the
rock.
Hallelujah for the Amplified Bible.
A hole in the rock.
Children, are you willing to be entombed there?
I've just come back from Israel where we
took 86 children and we went to visit
the tomb of Lazarus.
No one is quite sure exactly where the
cave is.
There were a few right in that location.
But we went into one which might most
assuredly have been it.
This much I know, it was decidedly uncomfortable.
We felt very congested, very suffocated in that
compressed, dark enclosure.
Couldn't wait to get out and take gulps
of breath again.
But would we be willing like he to
be sealed in until the hour of the
Lord's calling?
You young people who itch to do for
God, willing to be entombed in the rock,
till you hear his voice only, calling, come
forth.
I'll tell you that it's only that obedience
that shall eventuate in the glory of God.
Lots of hot shots going to Afghanistan after
three months of course in discipleship.
And there may be some peripheral efficacy for
their work.
But as for me and my house, I
am waiting for the glory of God.
Jesus said, take away the stone.
And Martha, the sister of the dead man,
explained, but Lord, by this time he's decaying
and throws off an offensive oath.
Praise the Lord for King James.
By this time, he stinketh.
He's been dead four days.
I want to tell you children that Jesus
had only to be entombed for three, but
one who loved him had to go a
little length further.
You say, how come, Art?
Because Jewish tradition says that within three days
before the body corrupts in the fourth, the
soul might yet return to the body.
But in the fourth day, the process of
disintegration and corruption takes place and there's no
prospect whatsoever for life to return.
There needed to be for Jews then and
there needs to be for Jews now.
Not only Jews who are Jews by birth,
but Jews by practice.
A demonstration of the resurrection glory of Jesus.
All that the Lord is needing is a
Lazarus who will be the object of that
demonstration both in suffering and in death until
the fourth day.
By this time he stinketh.
Some of you might be curious to want
to know what I'm doing in Minnesota.
Art, I understood that you were living just
outside of New York City where there are
two and a half million Jews.
And isn't it right that you're called and
ministered to your Jewish people?
Yeah, that's right.
Then what for God's sake are you doing
up there in the north woods of Minnesota
playing cowboys and Indians?
I'm there for God's sake without explanation.
We're entombed and shoved in and compressed together
until we shall hear his voice.
What's your program for the Jews?
I don't have one.
I'm waiting for the coming forth of his
glory.
Did I not tell you and promise you
that if you would believe and rely on
me you should see the glory of God?
Listen children, I'm not speaking about some ephemeral
thing, some fanciful spiritual concept.
I'm speaking about something tangible and demonstrable that
when men see it they fall on their
faces and cry out to God in repentance.
The Lord, he is God.
That's what has happened every time.
The glory of God has been made manifest
before unbelieving Jews.
And so shall it be also at the
end of the age.
Did I not tell you and promise you
that if you would believe and rely on
me without explanation, in your discomfort and in
your agitation, in your inexplicable circumstances that you
can't fathom, though you think that God has
absented himself from your life, though the heavens
are as brass, that you think your prayers
are not being heard, though he has not
come in two days, if you rely and
cleave to him that you should see the
glory of God?
So they took away the stone and Jesus
lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I
thank you that you have heard me.
They may prefer to sing, He is Lord,
he is Lord, but thank you that you
have heard me.
Father, I thank you that you've heard me.
Yes, I know you always hear and listen
to me, but I have said this on
account of and for the benefit of the
people standing around so that they may believe
that you did send me, that you have
made me your messenger.
When he had said this, he cried with
a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.
And out walked the man who had been
dead, his hands and feet wrapped in a
burial cloth, linen strips, and with a burial
napkin around his face.
And Jesus said to them, Free him of
the burial wrappings and let him go.
Upon seeing what Jesus had done, many of
the Jews who had come with Mary believed
on him, they trusted in him, and relied
on him.
May I say this?
More Jews were saved that day in the
coming forth of a man who spoke not
a word, and preached not a sermon, and
gave not a witness, but just was obedient
in death as unto life.
Many believed on Jesus in that day.
How would you like to be bound up
in your face and your hands and your
feet?
Boy, I'll tell you, the Lord gave us
a testing only a few days ago in
California, where on a Saturday night, the most
prominent night of my activity at the Springs
of Living Water, an audience almost this size,
I came up on the platform and I
had to tell them, I have no message.
Praise God for the maturity of that body
that can receive the unusual dealings of God
without disappointment.
He didn't explain it.
We had only to suffer it in obedience.
I said, I think that God wants no
flesh on this platform, and may I say,
in the authority of the name of the
Lord, that's true ever and always.
He wants no flesh on his platform.
He wanted us to praise him that night
and glory in him, and we could not
do it.
Oh, we managed for about 15, 20 minutes,
but you know, after a while, it gets
a bit weary, the familiar choruses and strains
and so on, and someone, of course, had
to fill the silence, had to fill the
vacuum, and they leaped in with a prophecy
or an exhortation or a call to commitment,
all good things, none of which was ordered
of the Lord.
We couldn't stand to be entombed in with
the Lord for two hours, let alone for
four days.
By this time, he stinketh.
My reputation is getting increasingly unsavory.
Why don't you go fishing where the fish
are, cats?
What are you doing up in the boondocks?
By this time, he stinketh, and that's the
eve of the coming forth of his glory.
Upon seeing what Jesus had done, many of
the Jews believed on him.
No act that Jesus did more precipitated his
death than this.
No wonder that the priest of that hour
spoke prophetically that such a man must die
for the nation, and it says in the
52nd verse of the Amplified, not only for
the nation, but also for the purpose of
uniting into one the body of the children
of God who have been scattered far and
wide.
So from that day on, they took counsel
and plotted together how they might put him
to death.
If I am not presuming upon God, may
I suggest for those of us who palpitate
for the unity of the body of Christ,
for those of us for whom this phrase
is not a piece of gamesmanship, for those
of us for whom this is not just
some unctuous, glib speaking who think that it's
going to be transacted under the banner of
the dove by a bear slap and a
hug, for those of us who know it's
going to be exacting and demanding and strenuous
to achieve this unity, for those of us
who know that until this unity comes, there
shall not be a body in the earth
who shall bear the anointing of God's Christ
to set the captives free, to whom God
can give his spirit without measure.
Everything weeps on the coming forth of this
body, and I think that that priest spoke
prophetically, and it's appropriate to ala ala, not
only for the nation, but also for the
purpose of uniting into one the body of
the children of God who have been scattered
far and wide.
A man must die for this unity to
be achieved.
Children, I'm speaking as a fool, and if
you ask me how and what do you
mean, cats, and can you spell it out,
I can't.
But I know that it's going to take
something deeper than a full gospel bear hug
and a back slap to achieve the unity
of the body of Christ.
And if I have achieved it with my
wife, that snub-nosed Gentile from Denmark, that
sandy-haired, light-complexed thing who is the
antithesis of my Jewish passionate life, who loves
crockery and bric-a-brac and porcelain, and
it took more than a bear hug to
achieve that unity.
It took dying.
What then for the entire body?
May I ask you a question in conclusion?
Who are the friends of Jesus in this
audience this morning?
I looked up what Lazarus's name means.
You'll never guess.
It means without help, helpless.
Is there a friend of Jesus in the
audience this morning who is willing to say
to the Lord, let me be your Lazarus
for this generation, helpless in the house of
affliction to promote your honor and your glory?
I've never seen a more beautiful body of
ministers than were on this platform this morning.
They're good-looking physically, and they're good-looking
spiritually.
They're endowed men, superbly endowed men.
They're capable and competent.
But I wonder if there's one of them
who is willing to be helpless where his
strength now abounds.
You'll do a precious job for the Lord
in your present strength and abilities, but there's
only one thing that will promote his glory
to the saving of many in that day,
and that's submitting your greatest strengths and abilities
into the dust of death so that that
which is corruptible, the fatal and subtle taint
of vanity, of pride, of self-seeking, of
delighting in the applause, the admiration of men,
of watching the congregation abound and grow, this
will not be resurrected to newness of life.
That stays in the grave.
It's corrupted, and it stinks.
Only that comes forth which is incorruptible and
of his life.
Hallelujah.
Oh, glory to God.
This isn't depressing, children.
This is a glory.
You're willing to be entombed in the hole
in the rock.
There's a Minnesota for you somewhere.
There's an inexplicable sickness for you somewhere up
the road.
There's a loss of a dear one.
There's an accident.
There's a financial loss.
There's something up ahead.
When it comes, will you not reproach the
Lord and say, If you had been here,
this wouldn't have happened?
Will you be at rest, a friend who
doesn't need an explanation to promote his honor
and his glory?
If you have a heart to serve God
in this way, as the Lazarus who never
spoke, there's never a word that's ever recorded
from him, never ministered.
He was just simply obedient unto death without
explanation.
You can tell the Lord, Do with me
as you will, and you don't have to
explain.
I want your glory in my generation.
Bow your heads with me, will you?
Precious God, if it was needful then that
a man should die for the nation and
to bring together as one those who were
scattered abroad, how much more needful now.
And I ask you to look, mighty God,
upon your children who are sitting in this
congregation, surely one of the most beautiful and
impressive bodies of God's people that I have
ever glimpsed, wonderful talents and abilities and dedication,
real heart for God and want to do
for him, want to sound his praises, but
see that one here who is willing not
to be heard and not to be seen
except in coming forth from the hole in
the rock.
I want to ask you in the name
of Jesus that this is not for everyone.
There's nothing about this that is compulsory or
a matter of course.
The Lord will not impede your life and
allow you to go on to be a
happy charismatic to the end, but he's looking
for a few friends who love him, who
do not require an explanation for suffering.
Is there a volunteer in the house who
will raise their hand to God and say,
Lord, see me?
Do it now.
Don't do it lightly.
Hallelujah.
Precious God, in Yeshua's holy name, seal this
peculiar kind of covenant.
We've sought to serve you, Lord, and to
work and to do our best.
We've come back disappointed and we've seen only
a modicum of results.
And Lord, save us from seeing as the
world sees.
Save us from measuring success numerically.
Give us only a divine appetite for your
glory and a divine discontent with anything less.
For you see, men and women this morning,
willing to be numbered by you and reserved
for entombment, for inexplicable dealings, that your glory
be revealed, that many shall believe upon you
in that day.
Seal them in this commitment today, Lord, and
bring it forth by your wisdom and grace
in the manner that it shall please you.
Thank you and praise you for this holy
calling.
Thank you for a Jewish man who loved
you enough.