Apostolic Vision - Part 1 — Art Katz

I feel and sense and agree with Wayne about the high seriousness of these days. It was clear from the moment that I leaped out of bed one morning that these days had to be inserted between two prophetical schools that we're conducting up in northern Minnesota, where we should ordinarily be drawing a breath and relaxing between these two enormous commitments the Lord has inserted this three-week trip by car with the air conditioner out and that you were the focal point of these entire three weeks.

We've appended other things along the way, other stops, but these four days were always from the first, clearly central to this whole trip that's being made. Well, Wayne heard a series of messages called true apostolicity.

Apostolic and Prophetic Foundations

Leave it to me to take apostolic and make it apostolicity. And I'm afraid you may be hearing it again in these days, because nothing has changed in the burden that I bear. I'm jealous over these two great words, apostolic and prophetic, for the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

And I stand like a watchdog over both words, lest they suffer loss in our generation, where they're becoming almost a commonplace. I become a little bit alarmed when we've come to a season where to be a prophet is to become popular and to be sought after, and I'm wondering what that phenomenon means.

It's not part of my own experience. So I know that you have a serious intention with God, and therefore these foundations are important to you, and I don't know how the Lord is going to unfold them in these days, but I think he's given me a point of beginning in Acts 17.

One single episode in the apostolic life, and one episode says all. I hope this doesn't sound disrespectful, but somebody once said, no matter where you slice through the bologna, it's still bologna. You can take it from the end or the middle, it doesn't matter.

It's the same consistent thing throughout. So also the apostolic life. And so we could have chosen at random any episode from the life of Paul, and in it would have been revealed the quintessential elements of apostolicity.

What is an apostle is more than a passing curiosity for us, for we are to be raised on that foundation. Whatever that foundation is, our superstructure and what we ourselves are is kindred to it and like unto it.

And there is no other foundation. And I like it best when something happens that is unplanned, that simply happens so to speak of itself, where the man has hardly time to collect his thoughts. Something like our own arrival here, coming out of Sacramento in the days that have preceded it, day by day, and to find all of a sudden you're on.

And what you are in God, what has been formed, is what is expressed. And that's what an apostle is. And that's what an apostolic church is. It is the thing in itself. It's not the taking on concepts and doctrines or peculiar interests.

It's something through and through. It's what has been formed in God and is the very expression of God who is the high priest and the apostle of our confession. So I'm trusting that these words are going to be elevated in your own consciousness.

I'm often fond of saying that if you hear the word apostolic and prophetic and you don't salivate, you've not yet really been apprehended by the meaning of those words. The juices or the sap ought to flow.

And if it doesn't, it's an embarrassing statement of some inadequacy in us where we have just made them a concept and have not laid hold yet of the actuality. So let's pray as we embark on our four nights together and with this point of beginning.

So Lord, we just look to you again, to God of resurrection, who is our life, our utterance, our wisdom, our speaking, and that this people will hear your voice, my God, and their faith will be quickened not only to hear but to see demonstration of the authentic thing, my God, to which we are called that has lain in such disuse and has been virtually set aside, my God, only as a concept and a formalism and needs be revived in these last days for the great weight that shall fall upon the church in the last and concluding days.

So Lord, we're asking mercy, we're asking grace upon grace, we're asking truth, we're asking revelation, we're asking event, Lord. We're asking largely and we're not naive and we understand that to whom much is given, much is also required and yet we're asking much.

Come, Lord, and charge these days with such a fullness. Grant such a requirement. Let there be such a calling. Let there be such a formation of something for this people, my God, that will redound even unto eternity and bless us and grant us your heart and the sense of it.

We thank you, Lord, as we look to you now. Our ears are open, my God, and our hearts also. Speak, for your servants are hearing and we thank you and give you the praise for the privilege of these days.

In Jesus' holy name, and God's people said, Amen. Well, you're probably familiar with this episode that begins with Paul in flight around verse 16 or 15 or 14 and then immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go as it were to the sea but Silas and Timothy abode there still and they that conducted Paul brought him unto Athens and receiving a commandment unto Silas and Timothy for to come to him with all speed they departed.

Paul in Athens: Apostolic Life Under Pressure

So here's Paul brought to Athens that was not on his schedule. Something extemporaneous, something that just rose out of the circumstances of that time in flight from persecution and a temporary and unplanned stop in Athens and that's what makes this so juicy.

What does a man do when he finds himself in a place that he had not planned to be and there begins to be an unfolding of something from God and what does he do in that and what does he reveal in that is what the man himself is.

So now while Paul waited in verse 16 for them at Athens his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. So the point of beginning as every great apostolic event is God's spirit in a man's spirit.

His spirit within him was stirred as he saw. So here's a conjunction of the humanity of Paul as keen observer whose eyes are opened wide and the spirit of God having opportunity to break something upon Paul's spirit as he sees the city wholly given to idolatry and that's what Athens is.

Though it stands as the epitome of civilization the high water mark of humanism a philosophy of the highest quality of human pursuit Paul nevertheless was not impressed with that he was impressed with idolatry that is everything standing as substitute for God and you don't have to go to Athens to behold this phenomenon you can go to Reno you can go to Lake Tahoe you can go to Truckee is there any city or town in the world today that is exempt from the things for which Paul winced then?

The answer is no. The only question is how is it that we are not wincing? How is it that we are not so finely honed as to sense the same acuity and grief as God in seeing the kinds of things upon which the Lord looks daily?

That's the difference between where we are and where Paul was and where we ourselves need to be. What do they say that you can put a frog in a kettle of cold water and just by the gradation of heat he finally comes to a place where he's cooked but he never knew at what point that transition came.

So also we, day by day exposed to the world, its spirit, its wisdom, its tenor, its TV the whole kind of thing that makes up the normative lifestyle and we become so attenuated to that that we no longer wince if ever we did.

In fact, let's forget about wincing when's the last time we blushed? Blushing is a lost art but I can yet remember it from my youth. But there's not many present indications of a people capable of blushing, let alone wincing.

So what shall we say but what the scripture says keep your hearts with all diligence for out of it are all the issues of life. Maybe what we need to do is perform a little radical separation from the kinds of things that have dulled our senses and our ability to perceive and to observe.

Oh, I can give you so many illustrations and every one of them will make me to appear as a freak. As for example, coming apart on the platform of a Pentecostal church in Denmark and foaming at the mouth and almost falling off the platform with my upset at something that the whole rest of the congregation was celebrating.

Namely, the moving to another locality of one of its elders who had received a promotion in his work that required his move to another place. And the church was sending them with their blessings and approving and applauding that departure.

I know you're looking at me blankly wondering why I should in any way be grieved over that. Should I not also have celebrated a man enjoying a promotion? And the answer is no, a thousand times no. That what was happening was that the fabric of the body of Christ in that locality was being rent, that a man in leadership placed there by the Spirit of God was being removed, not by the Lord who is the head over the church and who establishes the steps of the righteous, but by the business community.

And what is most grievous of all is that the church was applauding and commemorating that act with celebration. How little did it mean to them and how little did they sense the rent of a man being moved out from the organic matrix of the body of Christ because the body of Christ was to them only phraseology.

Promotion was much more substantial and everyone shared the values implicit in worldly promotion to the point of celebration. Only one freak was frothing at the mouth and upset over the entire thing and particularly the church's commendation of that and that was me.

If you're going to wince and to grieve at cities wholly given to idolatry, of necessity you're going to have to become much more freaky than you presently are. In fact, before the Lord's finished with you through me, you're going to have no alternative but to becoming pilgrim strangers and sojourners in the earth, which I may have requested when I was here the last time.

But were you sincere when you confessed that and have you been holding fast that confession or slowly falling back into the vortex of the world? It's wisdom and unquestioned premises and false values to which the whole world subscribes as if they were both normal and true.

You know what apostolic is? Apostolic is a sore point of dissension and confrontation that is out of tune and out of joint with the world, its spirit, its mentality and its wisdom. It is perfectly ungainly.

It is agitated through and through and it can't keep its mouth shut. And the very next word after Paul's spirit being grieved in him as he saw the city wholly given to idolatry is therefore. There's a consequence when a godly man's spirit winces.

God does not just give that for his own discomfort. It sets in motion the beginning of something that constitutes divine act. But it begins with the work of the spirit of God in the spirit of a man whose eyes are open to see as God sees.

And if that's your condition you may find yourself fleeing from persecution also. For that formula, that mentality, that constitution will make you a candidate not only to be opposed but to be persecuted.

It calls for it. It's the inevitable consequence of apostolic living how wise we are to avoid it and be charismatic only. I love Paul, don't you? Ah, what a mensch. You know what that word means? Solid through and through.

Single-eyed, uncompromising. Therefore, disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews. Are you following the spiritual logic of this? A man sees a city wholly given to idolatry and therefore he disputes in the synagogue with the Jews?

What has the one got to do with the other? What does idolatry have to do with estimable religion? And the answer is everything. Whether it's the synagogue of the Jews or the synagogue of the Gentiles called the Christian Church.

Their idolatry is most rife. R .I .F .E. But not recognized as that. You have to pray for me. I am really in the process of greater and greater derangement. Poor Inge has had to suffer the embarrassment of such a husband for years and it's not getting better.

But you know the impression I had in recent weeks? I knew about Mormonism and I knew about Jehovah's Witnesses and I knew about other cults and sects and deceptions of one form or another. But the thing that struck me one moment, I don't know how it came I was probably looking out on a congregation when the thought came that you can be as effectually deceived in an orthodox Christian setting subscribing to orthodox views and giving assent to orthodox doctrine as you could become deceived by subscribing to something off the wall.

Deception is the issue of the heart and you can do it just as profoundly with legitimate and orthodox doctrine as you can with the wild-haired things that constitute the belief of sects. And that's why it says examine yourself to see whether you're in the faith is more than the issue of subscribing to the correctness of its doctrines.

There's an authenticity that God is after. And it's something through and through and in fact to be merely satisfied with doctrinal assent is already deception. To think that if you verbalize or give assent mentally to that which is correct that that makes you correct is already to be deceived.

So therefore he disputed in the synagogues with the Jews. He went right to the juggler vein. And I'll tell you with all due respect what shall we say about Judaism? I so appreciate Walter Martin's book on the kingdom of the cults.

My only question is why he left out the two greatest Catholicism and Judaism. In fact, is there any ism that is not cultic? That is not made of man? The very suffix "-ism indicates that its origin is from below rather than above.

How come you have been so condescending to Judaism and to the synagogues and to the Jews? Because you don't see as Paul sees. Because you are outwardly impressed with the things that are external. Because a Jew who gives the appearance and very impressively of being ethically and morally correct and humane and all of the things in which we Jews are so good is for you so impressive that you would never raise the issue of their conversion.

Though the word says there's not a righteous man upon the face of the earth that doeth good and sinneth not yet your eye says here's a man who looks eminently good and that's why God has placed that people in the midst of us everywhere to see whether we are obedient to the word of God or whether we will be impressed by externalities of which Judaism is enormously impressive.

Paul was not content even to tolerate its existence but disputed within it. And I believe that before the age ends this dispute is going to be again quickened. Oh, I don't want to get off on a side eddy or let you think that I'm occupied with some issue about the Jews because I myself am Jewish.

But I want to say if you can hear it that the issue of the Jew is the issue of the Gospel. That there's nothing that more confronts the truth of the Gospel than this people who have been so historically and formidably opposed to it that Paul is not short of saying in Romans 11 they are the enemies of the Gospel for your sake.

To confront the Jew with the Gospel is to confront the world head on. For we Jews are eminently at the center of the world and are its prime architects and movers. Take away your Jewish Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx's and Albert Einstein's and Oppenheimer's and all the rest and Steven Spielberg's and what do you have left that you can call modern western civilization.

We are more Jewish than we know and more of you have reflected Spock in the raising of your children than you have the book of Proverbs and Spock is Jewish. But I'll tell you to confront them is no small thing.

You want to know what the Gospel is in power? Then go to the Jew first and then to the Greek. And we've never had that revelation because we have sidestepped that most demanding requirement that God himself has placed in his own divine priority to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

I think I must have terrified any number of Christians who would have thought to approach me 30 or more years ago. Talk about formidable. Talk about breathing fire. Talk about breathing slaughterings and looking upon the church not as some harmless innocuous thing that we can afford to tolerate but the very deterrent to the progress of mankind and that would be better off extirpating and rooting out that antiquated old wives tale phenomenon than allowing it to continue.

We're not just idle village atheists. We're vicious and we're going to see this spirit revived again of diabolical hatred for the church. Particularly that church that presses the issue of God upon the consciousness of men.

And will not go along with an increasing ecumenical religious and political formula for the happiness of mankind but stubbornly insist on the requirement of the Gospel and the Word and the Truth of God like Paul.

Pluralism was not in Paul's vocabulary. He would not have been tolerant with other world faiths and world cultures and the kind of mentality in which we're being inducted. He would have seen right through them for the demonic phenomenon that they are that need to be confronted exposed and dealt with.

Only we are soft saps and it's for that reason that the mosques are rising on the western horizon everywhere. And I just came back from London and right smack dab in St. Regents Park is a great golden domed mosque.

And Islam is now the second greatest denomination in Great Britain. The church is in a pathetic weak and inept condition and this demonic thing rises daily and the head of the church of England, the Archbishop recently made it known that he does not favor proselytizing Jews and that we need to come to a place of respect for all great world faiths.

So we're moving toward a diabolical ecumenical posture and the only ones who will oppose it are those who see as Paul saw and will not brook such an affront to God. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons and in the market daily with them that met with him.

And certain philosophers of the Epicureans and the Stoics encountered him and some said, what will this babbler say? Others some, he seems to be a set of forth of strange gods because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection.

And they took him and brought him to Arropegas saying may we know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is for thou bringest certain strange things to our ears. We would know therefore what these things mean for all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

Apostolic Confrontation at Mars Hill

Then stood Paul in the midst of Mars Hill and said let's just stop there. This is a you can't be at the epicenter of the world more than where Paul is at Mars Hill. This is the very nerve center of civilization.

This is confronting the finest expressions of all that is antithetical and opposed to God. And he didn't lift a finger to get there. And so Paul found himself brought to Mars Hill by men who wanted to know what this babbler would say.

God took something inadvertent, a flight from persecution and set in motion a series of things by which his man finds himself in the most prominent place and platform for which anyone could have sought.

Now what are you saying about all that cats? What I'm saying about all that is this. We've put too much confidence in organizations and sending ahead letters of application and letting people know our credentials and asking for meetings and for arrangements.

Let there be one man of apostolic timber and he'll not need to lift a finger and God will see that that man will be brought to the right place at the right time for the right purposes. The very fact that we have such organizational dependency and have a need to do something and work something is an indication that something is apostolically amiss, out of whack and wanting.

Let's give our emphasis not to doing so much as being. Let's come to that place of apostolic constituency and character and God will see that such a man is in his place at his time and serving his purpose.

Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill. I leave it to you to answer what would be the Mars Hill of today? What would be the locus of confrontation with the world head on, where God would bring his shabby apostolic figure, this Hebraic piece of nothing, an object of derision called the babbler to confront the estimable political and philosophical forces of that time.

Can you picture this confrontation? It's classic but do you know that we are heading toward it? We are moving toward this very thing summarized and symbolized in this conflict with one man with the spirit of the world of his generation.

But are we being fitted for that? Are we candidates to ascend such a hill? And when we got there, what would we say? Dear Athenians and philosophers of the Epicurean and Stoic kind, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking but I want to say, and first I'll sprinkle my address with a few jokes so as to make myself winsome and to gain your favor.

And what was it I learned in homiletics class about the three principal points of preaching? Dear children, when the confrontation comes it will not be anything that we can predicate nor plan. It's what we are in that moment that will be brought to the fore and will be the statement of all the moments that have preceded it, even this moment.

Do you see apostolically? Is your life in preparation for an ultimate confrontation at a historic moment of God's choosing? Or you don't think confrontationally? That means you're not thinking apostolically.

For the whole purpose of your salvation, of your being in God, is to raise up a corporate statement of God to a world that is going to be met head-on in the same way that it was met here in one man pole.

If you don't see it, if you don't expect it, if you don't desire it, and if you're not willingly receiving the preparation in character and life for that confrontation, how then shall it come to pass?

Do you see your life as that? Or is your life, what shall I say, a succession of services? One week that follows another? A kind of mindless kind of thing that has its own tempo and just unfolds itself?

Or do you see yourself moving with a direction toward a conclusion, a consummation, confrontation? That's apostolic seeing. And that's the kind of seeing in which I trust the Lord is going to induct you in these days.

For that seeing changes all. You know what's remarkable? That you can take things that are not in any way dramatic, mundane, ordinary, everyday circumstances of life, which will remain mundane and ordinary if they are not perceived through the prism of apostolic seeing.

But when you put those glasses on, the thing that was once ordinary becomes extraordinary. All of a sudden, there's no such thing as happenstance. Things don't just merely happen. There seems to be a divine purpose, or at least we're looking for it.

We want to understand it. There's something even in the ordinary that is charged with meaning and significance if we could but draw it out and find this application. Someone here might be astute enough to say, Art, what you're describing is a whole way of living.

Exactly. Apostolic living is living to the uttermost. And it does not require necessarily heroic events. It may consummate in a heroic event, but the preparation for that event is in the everyday and the ordinary and the things that are mediated from God to us in the circumstances of our life, our fellowship, and our relationship if you could but see that.

What we are shocking off as being irrelevant or insignificant is the very grist for our apostolic growth and the coming to maturity if we could but draw the fullness of these so-called mundane and ordinary things to the full.

To be apostolic is to live to the uttermost. Show me a bored apostle and I'll show you a false apostle. Show me a bored Christian and I'll show you someone out of the faith. My God, our life is charged with significance.

Even the world says that anything that happens anywhere affects everything everywhere. What should we say? What, did you thought this was just a meeting? Shows where you are. Series of meetings. The novelty of preaching.

You did not see this as divine event. Charged with eternal significance. You can pray for my Chinese audience of this morning in Davis. I don't know if they've yet recovered. I hope that it won't be quick.

The epitome of Christian politeness in the Chinese manner. They even gave me a cup of water with a lid on it. God bless them. And their faces are such a testimony to the fact that they do not desire in any way to be extraordinary.

But that they want just a kind of Christianity that will be fitted in neatly with their professional and academic intentions. They're all very degree minded. And here comes this freako to upset the apple cart and to call that what they're about a virtual kind of apostasy.

And to call them to the mount of sacrifice and to bring that Isaac, that PhD or the thing for which they really tremble and put it to the death with fire in one hand and with knife in the other. Go make your fortune cookies now.

And they're no different than us. It just shows more when you're Chinese. I'll tell you there's a God who's wincing in the heaven. Who winces and grieves when he looks down not so much at the world but on what is the church.

So slack. So lack luster. Whose days are so predictable. Whose services are so predictable. Whose one week is like another. Who does not see itself as being called to something of a momentous and ultimate kind.

That great decisions are, what's the word, an abeyance. That something is required from them and if so much as one member is not functioning in the calling which is his, the whole body is short changed and suffering from malnutrition and the life of God impeded and stopped from flowing at that one point.

A whole congregation after congregation of passivity looking up to elevated platforms and overworked professionals. I'll tell you God needs to send a Paul into the midst of our hill before the world itself is ever confronted and he may in fact be doing that in these days.

The Word of God in the Critical Moment

And so Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said What would you have said? I'll tell you that I'm standing here and alive in God and a servant because at a critical moment in my own atheistic life I was such a point of confrontation for another and one false word, that is to say even a correct religious word would have snapped the thin cord that suspended me over the abyss of total destruction.

I was fed up to the teeth of talk, of cheap lingo of cliches of humanisms, of religious sayings all I needed was someone to say Are you saved brother? And I would have turned on my heel and walked into an eternal perdition.

But at that critical moment, when we stood in the midst of Mars Hill, the word that came was the word of God. And it was not John 3 .16 because even if we invoke that at our convenience and the spirit of God has not prompted it, it's a dead word.

The word of God can be made cliche, but where is that one who when the critical juncture comes and eternity is at stake can open his mouth and speak a word calculated for that moment from heaven, coming unconsciously through a vessel wholly yielded to the spirit of God without mediating how it's going to sound, how will it be accepted or received, what will the consequence be?

He merely speaks. I know of another one who acted just like that and he was the first one to be stoned to death for it called Stephen. This is a mount saints where you may go up, but it's not guaranteed that you'll come down.

You don't rub philosophers the wrong way. You don't put your finger on the spirit of this world and show its fallacies and its defects and its basic flawed error and think that you're going to come down from that mount alive.

These men have a vested interest to protect who look every day to hear some new thing and somehow never come to the knowledge of it. They're phonies, they're performers and they think themselves spiritual because they have a plaque that says to the unknown God oh how honorific, shouldn't Paul have respected that?

Heck he would. He gave himself such a slap in the kisser that the first word out of his mouth was, I perceive that in all things you're too superstitious. You want to insult intellectuals go tell them that.

Where did that come from? Is that what he learned in the school of evangelism? I'm not encouraging you to be insulting. Some of us have a greater talent than others, but I am encouraging you to an obedience to the spirit of God whose word is perfect if you'll allow him to speak it through you even when it offends your own sensibility and taste.

Even by the speaking of which will threaten your stance and your relationship with those who are hearing you. Will you still allow that word to be emitted? Does God have possession of your mouth? Or are you quick to speak something of a lesser kind that saves you from the embarrassment let alone the danger of being ultimately confronting.

We're enjoying to speak the truth in love. And I can't tell you dear saints, maybe only you preachers know the ungainly feeling of coming to a series of days like this and looking at the clock in the pastor's office 15 minutes away from the commencement of the service and not knowing what to speak or how to begin or what is the Lord's stratagem for these days and yet being required to begin.

You'll find yourself in the midst of a Mars hill and there's a moment that comes when you're required to act and to speak and to trust. And such obedience is not something that shall come in the moment if it has not been preceded by a whole history of obediences.

Are you moving presently from obedience to obedience? How many times have you sucked down and swallowed down a word that you know you should have spoken? I'm not talking about some great oracular public address, but even to another brother or a sister, a word of exhortation or reproof or correction.

But you were afraid that you might have been misunderstood. Or you would have been accused of being unloving and who can bear that? And so you were silent when you ought to have spoken. And do you think that by such a process you're going to come to the midst of Mars hill?

Do you see why the apostolic thing is the masterpiece? Why it's the thing in itself? Why it's the sum total of the painstaking investment of God in a vessel? Are you allowing that kind of preparation in yourself?

And moving from an obedience to an obedience. That when you are sufficiently formed at the hand of God, he can bring you to a crisis moment where very eternity is at stake for many. To wear those glasses, to have that kind of perspective, changes the whole contour of what our life is about.

And that change is apostolic Christianity. There's an intensity that comes into the life. There's a seriousness that has come in that was not there before. Where we're sort of always having an eye cocked toward heaven and sensing God's moving and unfolding in the walking out of our life in a daily way.

Our days are charged with eternal significance and meaning if we can but see it and receive it. I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. Not in some things, but in all things. Paul began with such what shall I say, such a crack, such a strike at the very heart of the whole presumption of these philosophers.

If there's anything about which an intellectual is assured, is that he's not superstitious. He thinks he's eminently the man of reason and rationality. But Paul sees through the whole pretense of that supposed respect for unknown gods and drills them.

As I pass by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with the inscription to the unknown god whom therefore you ignorantly worship him declare I unto you. This is either an egotist, an extravagant flamboyant personality utterly what shall we say, assured of himself or is this apostolic meekness of such a kind that we're not prepared to recognize the same man that says follow me as I follow Christ.

If you see by the natural eye you'll be offended. Your ear will recoil at Paul an apostle called by Jesus Christ. No ifs ands or buts. There's such a what's the word, up front clarity and affirmativeness of Paul speaking and it's utterly free of any vanity or presumption.

It's utter meekness to recognize what is true and to state it. And there's nothing there by which Paul compliments or elevates himself. Him whom you ignorantly worship, I declare unto you. I can just see these guys jerking and doing a double take for they're not accustomed to that kind of authority.

It sounds so much like audacity. They're more accustomed to a self effacing well I don't know who can say really what truth is. These are complicated questions. One can only give one's life to search.

Doesn't that sound so ennobling? Doesn't it sound so uplifting? Here's a man that cuts right through the whole phony veneer of that and says no. With the unwillingness to recognize that the creator is also lord of all things.

Paul is not going to allow anybody to get by with some kind of syrupy respect for nature without pointing them to the fact that the God who is its creator is also its lord and requires their allegiance and obedience.

Would to God we were as insistent and showed to the so called nature lovers of our generation that to separate nature from its creator and the creator from his lordship is cop out of an ultimate kind and the eternal consequence of that is fearful to contemplate.

God doesn't need temples made with hands because men who think so think that if they provide it they can manipulate God to their ends. He's above our ends and he's not something for us to be manipulated and not the least of the things for which we are guilty in recent days is to think that by worship we can even evoke the presence of God.

That is a jack in the box waiting for us to hit the right formula and when we have it in so called worship which is hardly anything more than a droid musicality aided and abetted by the paraphernalia on a platform, God is going to come and give us the gift of his presence.