The Mysteries of the Faith — Art Katz

If this is important in your own sight, and you want, my God, the things that will be discussed to go out to a larger audience who are not presently with us and have the same prospect for blessing and for understanding as to affect the church where they are, we're asking, my God, that the blood of the Lamb Jesus would be not only upon our heads and upon this building and this room, but upon the equipment itself.

That, in fact, we invite you, my God, to put up a cordon of angelic beings around us with their swords drawn to guard this place and to guard the sanctity of what you are about in this hour. And Lord, instruct us that we're not playing make-believe and we're not imagining or exaggerating some kind of threat from an invisible realm that we're overdoing.

If anything, we are underestimating the enormous significance of this demonic realm. So Lord, instruct us, establish an understanding, my God, that makes the church the church, and help us with any difficulty through language, through vocabulary, through cultural differences, any kind of thing that would rob us of anything of the importance of what you want to communicate.

We ask that grace. Bless us together, Lord, that you might have such a blessed presence in this earth and in this nation of those who are girded and strengthened and know that there's a conflict on and are not afraid.

And we bless you, Lord, and look to you now, thanking you for the blood upon us and over us, your brooding presence in your name, and the angelic host around us with swords drawn in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Cosmic Conflict Behind the Church’s Struggle

Well, did you notice that in verse 12, there's one, two, three, four, five uses of the word against, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, against, against, against, against.

We might well say that there's a war on, and it's been on for millennia, thousands of years. There's been a cosmic conflict between the powers of darkness and light, between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of God.

And if we think that the subject of demons is only the issue of personal deliverance, we have missed the greater importance altogether. In fact, these dark powers would like for us to be totally caught up at the level of individual demon deliverance, as if that represents the whole issue.

And I'm not invalidating deliverance for individuals. I have been used of the Lord on occasions for that. But that seems to have fixed the understanding of the church at that level and robbed it of the greater understanding of the dimensions of the conflict between powers of darkness and light that are vying and are in contention for the actual dominion or possession of creation itself and the nations.

Notice it says, we struggle. This is not an issue for individuals. This is not something for just your great virtuoso saints or great men of faith and power that we like to look up at and think that we can never ourselves aspire to that kind of stature.

Everything that we're talking about and everything that Paul is saying that we're reading is addressed to the church, the whole church. We struggle. And until the church struggles, there's no victory.

And it's a very special kind of struggle. And we will go into that as we talk further on this subject. But unless we understand the struggle and understand the conflict, we cripple ourselves. We're acting in a way as if we are punching at the air and missing the greater issues that affect not only the church, but the communities and the nation where we are.

Daniel’s Prayer and the Powers of the Air

You remember that when Daniel prayed, it took three weeks for him to receive an answer. And when the angel of the Lord came to Daniel, he explained, your prayer was heard from the moment that you opened your mouth.

You have found favor with God, but the prince of Greece has contended against me and delayed my coming. So we're not talking about something imaginary, but something very real, that though it is an invisible realm, has very practical consequence in the earth and with men.

It would be interesting to see just how effective the powers of the air can be. If you would look in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, where Paul speaks in verse 7 about God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory, the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood.

For if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. Who is the they that crucified the Lord of glory? We think it's the Romans cooperating together with the Jewish religious leaders, but Paul does not mention either Romans or Jews.

The they does not refer to men. They refers to the rulers of this world's darkness. They crucified the Lord of glory. They used human instruments, but they were the effectual power and motivation that affected the death of Christ.

So here we have a remarkable glimpse of how far the powers of darkness can go in opposing God even to the crucifixion of the Son of God. But what is Paul saying? If they had known the wisdom of God, they would not have done it.

They acted out of their own wisdom, which always employs violence, always threat of violence, always intimidation, always death. Their wisdom is completely opposite to the wisdom of God. And as I'm going to show you in a few minutes, the whole conflict is a conflict between two wisdoms, two moral orders, a great cosmic conflict between light and darkness and the wisdom of this world and the rulers of this world and the wisdom of God.

Paul is saying that if the rulers of this world had known the wisdom of God, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory because in crucifying him, they set in motion the things that would in the end bring their defeat.

They would read that by his death, a resurrection would come and an ascension to the throne of God and the release of the Holy Spirit and the creation of the church enabled by that spirit to bring about the eventual, eventual defeat of the powers themselves.

The Church as a Corporate Spiritual Combatant

If you want to understand the faith and the church, you must understand it in the context of the conflict with the powers of darkness or you do not understand it at all. So I want to repeat a quotation by a writer who says, the church that does not understand the principalities and the powers of the air condemns itself to futility.

It can have all kinds of programs and evangelizations and things of that kind. But if it has not recognized the presence over the community of this invisible realm of spirit reality and has not addressed that realm and broken its influence over the community where you seek to labor, you labor in vain.

Now feel free to interrupt me at any time or raise a question or what do you mean by a word or a phrase that goes over your head and you don't grasp what I'm saying. My tendency is to make great statements and we need to stop and to examine them and understand what's being said.

We're not in any rush and I'm very much willing to repeat these statements that we can lay hold of them. So we, the church, struggle not against flesh and blood. We mustn't think that it's men who are opposing us.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of this world's darkness is another kind of wrestling, but only we can do it. So the whole issue of the great struggle in which the church is set requires the church to be the church.

If the church is only an institution where people come to attend services and sit in the kind of an audience of isolated individuals, it is not equipped for this struggle. This struggle requires the church to be the church in the sense that God intended it and not what we have made it.

Unless the church is a we, it cannot engage in this struggle. And that's why the powers of darkness will do everything to divide the church and divide individual members and bring up issues of irritation, resentment, jealousy, things based on race or discrimination or fear, to keep that church from becoming the corporate expression of the life of God that can wrestle.

Are you following me? And that's why we ourselves need to understand that and give ourselves to seeing the church come to this kind of reality. But it's contrary to our own flesh because it requires time.

It means a loss of privacy. It means opening ourselves to things that might be embarrassing. We ourselves prefer the church in its present configuration. We like to be anonymous. We like to see somebody else do it and we can say amen and hallelujah and sing the choruses, but not be required of.

If we're going to be the church that brings glory to his name and defeat to the powers, we ourselves must struggle against our own flesh and against our own unwillingness. You know what it said of Israel about the priests had themselves become backslidden and the people preferred to have it so.

There's always a conjunction between the priests and the people. Israel actually preferred that its priests would not be priestly. They liked it when they were not required of. And God's people today are very much in that kind of condition.

The Apostolic View of the Invisible Realm

So what we're attempting to communicate is an apostolic view of the church as God intended it from the beginning. And you say, what does apostolic mean? After three days, perhaps we can begin to answer that.

It's a certain view of reality. It's a certain mindset, a certain perception of things, particularly the things that are not seen and are invisible. It's a view of the church set in a cosmic context. That that sees a struggle that has gone on since the beginning of time when there was a rebellion in heaven.

And one third of the angelic host followed their prince and rebelled against God. And that rebellion continues to this day. So what are the principalities and the powers of the air? They are at a dimension of invisible angelic realm of angels that had been created by God to inhabit a realm over the earth and over nations called the heavenlies.

You remember, Paul says that he speaks of himself as having gone up to the third heaven and to have seen things that are not lawful for a man to speak. See, we don't talk like that. We don't know that there's a third heaven.

Because our view has been so earthly, but we need to understand these dimensions, though they are invisible. When Paul speaks about the powers of darkness in heavenly places, he's not talking about the heaven which God himself inhabits, but a stratum in the air over the earth.

Now, any of us who have traveled in different countries know that the moment that you cross a border and go into another country, you can sense something in the air. Have you ever used that expression?

There's something in the air. You can feel something in the air. And that's exactly what we're talking about. The principalities and powers of the air were originally intended by God as an aid to the government of his creation.

They were given a governmental assignment to aid in the redemptive work of God for men in the earth that they might find God. But in their rebellion, they took their governmental positions and used it against God.

And instead of directing men toward God and encouraging men toward God, they do exactly the opposite. And they have themselves become the gods of this present world. They not only are unsatisfied with merely influencing nations, races, and men, but they want actually to obtain the worship of men.

And they are particularly active in institutions, in culture, in business, in commerce, in sport, in amusement, TV, recreation, entertainment. I'll tell you how I was introduced to this subject in the institution of medicine.

Baptism, Injury, and Freedom from Fear

It came about some years ago that I had finished baptizing about 12 Lutherans. I had immersed them in water. Because they were not satisfied with infant sprinkling after the messages that the Lord had given me.

And we went to a YMCA swimming pool. And there I performed the baptisms. And I was on my way to the locker where my clothing was hanging. And all of a sudden, my feet shot out from under me. I had slipped on the tile floor on a little puddle of water.

And I was doing a somersault in the air. And while I was up in the air, I'm thinking to myself, cats, what are you doing there? You don't have accidents. That's true. None of us do. And when I came down, I came down on my knee with an enormous explosive force.

I had my Bible in my hand. And virtually every page of that Bible was crumpled by the impact. That's how hard I came down. And so I was going to be God's man of faith and power and not go to a doctor or a hospital.

And I preached that night with my leg, my knee swollen like a football. And the next day, it got even worse. And the brothers insisted that I go to a hospital, see a doctor. I agreed. And it was a Jewish doctor who was an orthopedic surgeon who was treating me.

And he showed me the x-ray. He said, now, Mr. Katz, he said, your knee is not fractured. It's smashed. And it needs to be wired up in an operation. I said, OK, when can you do it? Well, he said, Thursday.

And it may have been Tuesday. So I said, no, I said, I've got to be in northern Minnesota. The Lord is giving us a property. He said, who? And so I had an opportunity to speak to a Jewish physician about the Lord by a man whom he could recognize as speaking the same kind of language and yet taking God very seriously and that God is active in that man's life.

This is a whole new dimension of understanding for a Jewish secular man. And as we were talking, he had his hand on my knee. And all of a sudden, his eyes grew large. And he said, something is happening in your knee.

The pieces are coming together. He said, I could feel it. He said, if I put your leg in a cast right now, you'll not need an operation. I said, OK, do it. So he put my leg in the cast. And that night, there I was putting with my leg up in suspension just overnight.

And here's what happened. The nurse came in with a hypodermic needle. And she wanted to give me a shot for pain. And I said, no, thank you. I don't need that. Oh, she said, but you must have it. I said, no, I'm not in agonizing pain.

I can bear this small inconvenience. Oh, she said, but you must have it. I said, no, I don't want to be drugged up. And I don't want my consciousness affected by drugs. I hope that you are as jealous to keep your own mind and spirit.

And she walked out of the room in a great huff, like I had really insulted her. And she came back with pills. I said, I said, lady, you don't understand. I'm not afraid of a needle. I've been in the American army.

I've had my both arms punctured at the same time as nothing. But I don't want to be sedated. I don't want to be drugged that I should not feel this small pain. And the next thing I knew, there were two nurses and two doctors in the doorway of my room, and they were having a fit.

I mean, they were foaming at the mouth in my refusal to receive a sedation against pain. And I realized that that without thinking, I had touched a sacred principle of the medical profession. More than that, I had touched the wisdom of this world, which is the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure.

And that was my introduction to realizing that there is a massive conflict going on between darkness and light and two kinds of wisdom. The wisdom of this present world, by which almost all of mankind lives its life, which brings them into bondage, fear, intimidation, and threat.

It makes them slaves to the powers of this air of the air because it plays upon insecurity, ambition, lust. This is the wisdom of this world. Now, if the church itself lives by that wisdom, it has no effectual opposition to those powers.

And that's why they can look down and say, Jesus, we know, and Paul, we know. But who are you? They are not impressed with our worship service. They're not impressed with our programs. They look to see one thing only.

They are required to recognize one thing only. Apostolic authenticity. Now, write that in your notes. Apostolic authenticity. That is to say, they need to see the reality of heaven and the wisdom of God as being the effectual foundation of the life of God's people.

If you are insecure, if you're worried what's going to happen if you lose your job, or you're working for the government, or there's a change in government, or there's a layoff, or anything like that, and do not recognize who your true employer is, then you are ineffectual before the powers of the air.

Faith is more than subscribing to correct doctrine. The just shall live by their faith. And of what shall we be afraid? Fear is the chief weapon of the powers of darkness. Fear of insecurity. Fear of loss of esteem or reputation.

Fear of being hurt. Fear of suffering. Why do you think it is that when God's people are imprisoned in iron curtain countries and in places that are hostile to the gospel, that they take such a delight not just in imprisoning them, but torturing them.

They want to break the Christian and have the Christian to act like any man in the world would in preserving his own flesh. And if they can break the Christian, there's a delight and a glee that says to them that your faith is just a mirage.

It's just a verbal kind of thing. You're no different than anyone in the world. There was a Russian girl before the communist system collapsed, which we may yet see again, who was imprisoned for five years.

And she had not committed any crime. It was a trumped up charge. And she was sent to Siberia, one of the remote places because she was affecting many lives by her witness. And they wanted to crush this girl and break her spirit.

And they brought her to the most primitive conditions. And they kept tormenting her and teasing her to get her to make any statement about being unjustly imprisoned or that the conditions were too severe or that she would have even so much as a single complaint of anything that she's required to experience.

Because if they could get her to confess a complaint, then where is God? This girl never once complained about anything. She lost her beauty under that confinement and those brutal conditions. And she was released five years later, praising God for the privilege of sharing the sufferings of Christ and never once gave the enemy an opportunity by so much as a single complaint.

Because a complaint would have indicated that somehow it was men who were responsible for her confinement rather than the sovereignty of God. Remember what Jesus said when Pontius Pilate said, don't you know that I have the power to crucify or release you?

And Jesus answered him and said, you could do nothing against me, except it were given you from above. You need to know that also, saints. I don't know if we'll ever be back to the Philippines. I hope we will.

But if not, then this is our last and only opportunity. I think I can safely predict that we are moving toward a final showdown between the principalities and powers of darkness and light. That we can expect that the veil that has concealed this conflict is going to be removed and we're going to see it in its naked and ugly proportions against the true believers in every land.

And the way in which we will bear our last day's affliction and that God will allow the powers of darkness a certain liberty against us is for the same reason that the father allowed Jesus to be crucified by the rulers of this world, because it will result in the same kind of demonstration of the greater wisdom of God.

Now, don't don't get panicky or what is he saying? I'm going to say the same thing again in other ways, and your understanding will grow. And it's important that you don't panic because panic is already another, not the wisdom of God, because God calls us to arrest and he will communicate an understanding.

So we're getting into a very difficult subject, a subject that has not been opened to our understanding, because basically the church has not been in the kind of condition where it could even understand or act upon these things.

But we are coming to the end of the age where God is again establishing these important foundations. I'd like you to turn in the book of Ephesians to chapter three. We'll come back again, Lord willing, to where we began in six.

The Mystery of Christ Revealed to the Church

It is so remarkable that some scholars say that Paul did not himself write it. That the language is so unusual that it doesn't sound like the same Paul who gives us other epistles. I believe that it is Paul, but Paul under a very special inspiration that touches the deepest questions of the faith.

And I think that many of us have missed it because we read too hurriedly or that the word sounds so lofty and that it seems too difficult for us and we miss the great meanings as I'll show you now in connection with our subject in chapter three.

And it's so hard to break in here. Paul speaks about revelation and mystery in verse three, that by revelation, there was made known to me the mystery as I wrote before. And by referring to this, when you read, you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.

The word mystery does not mean detective story. The word mystery, who can help us to understand what mystery means from the biblical perspective? What is the mystery that Paul is talking about? Paul is as an apostle is occupied with the mysteries of God and that God has given him because he's an apostle, a certain revelation and understanding into the mysteries that they might be made known.

So what is a mystery, biblically speaking, and hidden so that it might be revealed at a moment of God's appointing? If it's hidden and concealed by God, men themselves cannot obtain it except that it be revealed by the spirit.

What we need to do as the church of an apostolic kind is to cultivate an appreciation for the mysteries of God and to desire the revelation and the understanding, not because we want to impress people, but because we want to be equipped to understand what our calling is as the church.

So the revelation of the mysteries of God is distinctly the privilege of the calling of an apostle. And he says in verse five, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the spirit.

And the word holy is important. If an apostle is less than holy, God will not entrust him with the mysteries of God. So the character of an apostle and a prophet is critical to their calling and to their function.

And what is the mystery? Well, to be specific in verse six, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel fellow heirs with whom this is not my subject this morning, but it doesn't hurt to spend a few minutes on this.

The church itself is a mystery. What's the mystery that you have been made fellow heirs with someone else and had been made participants in another body. You have made fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise with whom with Israel.

The promises of Israel faithful and believing Israel, not apostate Israel, but the remnant of believers of every generation from the beginning. This is the mystery saints. Oh, if I, if I could establish this with you and go back to our other subject later, this would be worth everything.

We need to know what the church is. It's not some innovation or something that God thought of as a last moment. It is the continuation of the faith once and for all, given the saints of Israel and you who were far off have been brought near and into their faith, their promises, their hopes, their commonwealth by the blood of the Messiah, Jesus.

So you take it for granted, but do you know how extraordinary it was for the first Jewish Christians to think that God intended the Messiah for, for non-Jews as well. Peter had to receive a revelation of a sheet coming down with unclean animals.

Remember that he was in a trance and the Lord said to him, take and eat. And he said, but Lord, he said, I've never eaten anything unclean. You have to understand that Jews were brought up in the law and Gentiles were looked upon outside the law and unclean, and that the promises of God were only for Israel.

And God had to give Peter a revelation in a trance and say to him three times, take and eat, take and eat. But, and he kept complaining, but Lord, I've never, and God said, what I have made clean call thou not unclean.

And when he wakened from that trance, there were Gentiles downstairs knocking on the door to bring Peter to the home of a Gentile Roman soldier who loved righteousness to explain to these Gentiles something about the faith or else Peter would not so much have gone inside the house of Gentiles.

And when he went in, because he had the trance and while he was sharing with them, the Holy Spirit fell on Gentiles as had fallen upon Jews on the day of Pentecost. And they were astonished. And Peter said, how can we withhold water of baptism, seeing that they have received the same gift as we.

And this started a controversy in the church that took a church council to recognize that God's salvation is intended not only for faithful Jews, but for Gentiles as well, that this is the mystery. This is a view that the church does not have of itself.

And it's very different to see yourself as an expression of God's grace to have brought you in to something that already had a long existence and continuation going back to Abraham and that you are fellow heirs and sharers of this faith with faithful Jews who have gone before you and that Abraham is your father as our father and the prophets are yours as ours and the promises of God.

It brings you into an identification and a relationship with the Israel of God of every generation. And I don't mean the present political state. It will change everything if you could understand that mystery and Paul as the apostle was given the revelation.

It took a revelation and to communicate that mystery. So what is now being revealed in verse five to his holy apostles and prophets in the spirit? Well, to be specific that the Gentiles, the non-Jews are fellow heirs and fellow members of the Jewish body.

And fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Who can tell me what the word Christ itself means? Is that Jesus's first name or his family name? When I was a Jewish kid growing up in Brooklyn, New York, and somebody said, Jesus Christ, I thought, well, that has nothing to do with me.

I don't know of any Jew whose last name is Christ. Really? I didn't know that Christ is not a name. It's a title. And what is that title? What does that word mean? It comes from the Greek Christos, but the Greek is a translation of the Hebrew word, which would give us a clearer understanding of who Jesus is.

And what is the Hebrew word? Hmm. Nobody wants an A for the day and go to the head of the class. Messiah. And the Hebrew word is Mashiach, or as we say in English, Messiah. It's Jesus the Messiah. And the word Messiah is distinctly a Hebrew term.

It has to do with the Hebrew faith, with Hebrew expectancy, with the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecies that a Messiah would come and deliver Israel from its sin. So by that Messiah, you also have been brought in.

You see, it's the mystery of the church made up now of both believing Jews and believing Gentiles into one new man. Isn't that fantastic? God forbid that we should take a mystery as glorious as that and reduce it to a religion.

And if you had been with us yesterday morning at the Christian Missionary Alliance Church, I spoke on Romans 11 to show the mystery even further that God now looks to you who were non-Jews who have been brought in to the faith of Israel to make those Jews who are outside that faith jealous that they too will believe where Paul says, have they've have they stumbled that they should fall?

God forbid that you should think that. But through their fall, salvation has come to the Gentiles so as to move them to jealousy. Can you see the design of God? Can you see the wisdom of God? You need to understand the historic enmity between Gentiles and Jews.

I've already explained to you that the law itself made Jews to be very suspicious and resistant to things that were non-Jewish. They looked upon Gentiles as unclean because the Gentiles did not have the law.

The Gentiles fornicated. The Gentiles got drunk. The Gentiles beat their wives. The Gentiles lived hardly better than animals. They had not the law. They had not the knowledge of God. And they were to be kept from contact lest their own faith would be corrupted or polluted.

And so there was always a tension between Jews and non-Jews all through the ages until Christ came and broke down the middle wall of partition that we might all become one in him. It's a mystery and it had to be revealed.

And you know what the sad thing is? The mystery has been lost to us. And we take the church for granted and we think it's an institution all by itself. And it's interesting maybe to look at Israel historically but has no present connection and miss the entire genius of God's wisdom in establishing the church not as a new novelty but the continuation of the faith that now includes non-Jews as well.

You who are far off and without hope and without God in the world have been brought near by the blood of the Messiah Jesus into the covenants and promises and hope of Israel and into the very commonwealth of Israel.

Are you pleased for that? You know there's a remarkable identity crisis in the world. People just don't even know who they are. I came from a conference in Canada only a few weeks ago where young people your age stood up at the microphone and said we don't know who we are.

We don't know what our past is. We don't know what our future is. They've forbidden us to speak our native language and yet we can't fit into Canadian society. We don't know who we are. It's very important that we as the church know who we are because we have a brilliant past.

How many people can boast of having fathers of the faith like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the patriarchs and the prophets and the apostles and all that has gone before us is yours as well as mine. You have been brought near and you have been brought before us is yours as well as mine.

You have been brought near and you have been brought in to that inheritance and you have a glorious future. But your future is also related to Israel's. Their restoration and in fact God calls you to be the instrument by which those branches that were broken off shall again be grafted in.

Well that's not my subject for today but I couldn't help but say a little bit about it seeing that there it is in chapter three. But let's continue. So Paul says in verse seven he was made a minister of these mysteries according to the gift of God's grace which was given to me according to the working of his power to me the very least of all saints.

This grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable unfathomable riches of Messiah and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery. How many times now has Paul used the word which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities and the heavenly places.

The Church’s Eternal Purpose Before the Powers

Now this is what we want to concentrate on. This is a remarkable statement. This is awesome. This is a mystery. But if we don't understand it it's like a church like a car running without wheels. This is our purpose our greater purpose our larger purpose to make known the manifold wisdom of God.

How important is this to God. It says the God who created all things that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church. What that is saying is what it is saying that God created all things.

That means the earth nations the solar system the cycles of nature the ability of men to live on this planet the earth for one principal reason that the church might demonstrate to the principalities and powers of the air the manifold wisdom of God.

Now don't don't panic again let's let's take this a little bit at a time. Paul's making an astonishing statement that gives us the reason for which God has given the church so important in God's sight that he did not hesitate or think it extravagant to create all things that the whole of creation in God's sight is to make possible the church.

What do you think of that. This is turning everything upside down. The world thinks that it was created for itself that it could have its great cities its commerce its trade its culture all the things that men celebrate.

And the church is a Sunday thing that society is willing to allow to exist if it doesn't bother the men of the world and the things important to them. Can you see that everything has been inverted turned upside down and contrary to what God says that the whole of creation is in order that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might be demonstrated to the principalities and powers of the air.

We're going to talk again about what that wisdom is but for now just to understand the setting the whole great issue of why God has established the church is to make a demonstration and it can only be made by the church and it's not even to be made to men in the world.