Jewish Opposition to the Gospel — Art Katz

Lord, may we bless you for the day of small beginnings, and feel free entirely, Lord, to set aside any thought that I may have had in how to begin, and just put forward and promote the thing that is upon your own heart in that wonderful way that you have by your spirit to open something and to make it a living and a vital thing, and to touch areas, my God, of our own thought and consideration and inward and personal issues and problems, even as you discuss, my God, the larger things, issues of the faith and the nations and things of that kind.

So we bless you, Lord, and we thank you now that you're the God of the beginnings, the Alpha and the Omega. Grant us such a beginning, my God, as has the end in view, that we will look back when we come to the end and recognize how precious and perfect you were in beginning us as you have, that you might receive, my God, the acclaim and the acknowledgment of your saints.

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, I think the first thing I want to do is read my revised letter to Abraham Foxman. For you fellows who are with us today, we had a little preliminary session the other day where I read an article by Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, responding to the resolution of the Southern Baptist Convention to resume or to increase their gospel witness to the Jew.

Opposition to the Gospel and the Church's Mandate

And he writes a letter of indignation and protest in which he says, I thought that the time of conversionary tactics was over, but evidently it is not. And I want to register my complaint that we're moving away from this ecumenical, dialogical relationship with Christians and the reasons why it is not valid for Christians to promote the gospel to the Jew.

And in our own discussion, we saw that that is an attack on the faith itself and renders it no faith, that to remove the church's obligation to the Jew is to remove the church as the church. So we can't go back into all of the reasons for that.

That was a session that we had. And then I asked the students, how would you answer this man? Because he's raising all of the classic arguments that have ever been raised against the promoting of the gospel to the Jew, the validity of Judaism.

And then he invokes the American culture and the pluralistic civilization, that it's unbecoming in an age of pluralism to insist upon a view as being somehow absolute and that this is disrespectful to Judaism and to the Jewish people.

It's an attitude of contempt. That is, these are powerful, cogent arguments, and that the true church that will promote the gospel to the Jew is under obligation to do so. And the Jew is coming increasingly into the consideration of God as we come to the end of the age, and he must again turn toward this nation and to this people.

We're going to hear a great clamor. In fact, there will not be an exaggeration to say that the controversy of the last days, as it was at the inception of the church, will be the issue of the gospel and the Jew.

And so we're coming full circle. And the church had to face the blast coming from the Jewish community against its apostolic message. And modern times has diminished that controversy, and I think to the detriment of the church itself.

There's a Jewish Christian theologian, now gone on to be with the Lord, Josz, J-O-C-Z, Polish Jew. I wish I could think of his first name. Jacob Josz, J-O-C-Z. If you never find any of his books, probably out of print, you'll have very fine work.

In fact, there are two, three, or four outstanding Hebrew Christian commentators, and we will be alluding to them in these days. He is one of them, Jacob Josz, J-O-C-Z, whose brother married Inga and me in Oakland, California, whose name was Reverend Yates.

He anglicized the Polish name. But in one of his books, he says, nothing more reveals the radical content of the gospel than when it is brought to the Jew. And I don't think that the church itself knows the content of its own faith, because it has failed at exactly that place.

There's something that reveals the radicalness of God's message and call when it is brought to a people who have historically resisted it and have become the enemies of the gospel for our sake. We may come into this at another time when we discuss, if we do discuss, Romans 11.

But he says in one of his books, nothing reveals the radical content of the gospel than the fierce opposition that comes to those who seek to bring it to the Jew, the foolishness of the gospel, the absurdity of the gospel, the scandal of the gospel.

The Gospel's Radicality and Alternative Messages

We have not understood it for ourselves, and we never will, until we come again into this contention with the people who have historically been most resistant, not only in refusing to hear it, but opposing the apostolic church and persecuting those who bear the message.

And more than that, they are the enemies of the gospel in the sense that they have raised up an alternative message or messages, alternative gospels, alternative solutions for the predicament of man. Can you name any that have been invented by Jews?

Psychoanalysis. Okay, who's the founder? Freud. A Jewish psychoanalyst from Vienna. What else? Communism. Communism, Karl Marx, a German Jew. Even Einstein, though he was a physicist and gave us the theory of relativity, also gave us relativism indirectly, not consciously, and affected social thinking profoundly, though it was not his intention.

And that was reflected in Abraham Foxman's statement. Relativism, which is to say, how can you insist that any single truth is absolute to the exclusion of all other views? That is a scandal to the modern mind.

So in many ways, it's true, the Jew has been the enemy of the gospel, not only in the resistance of the message, but in the bringing of alternative messages themselves. So it was interesting for us to read his statement.

I can run off a copy for you guys who were not here when we did this, if you want to hear the classic summation of arguments opposed to the gospel to the Jew. And they're very cogent. They're so cogent that the Christian church is going to embrace them and to employ them against the radical apostolic remnant that will seek to fulfill its mandate to the Jew first.

And it may actually have something to do with a scripture yet to be fulfilled. They will kill us and claim doing God a service. My ear still rings from a shout. I don't know where I heard it. I think it was on an airplane when I turned to a girl who was sitting next to me who proved to be Jewish.

And the woman next to the window, hearing what I was saying to her, turned finally and said, why don't you leave her alone? And that's what we're going to hear. Why don't you leave them alone? Haven't they suffered enough already?

Why are you trying to make them Christians? Are you trying to complete what Hitler failed to do? If you can't exterminate them physically, you want to exterminate them spiritually? We're going to hear the most oppressive, powerful diatribes and attack against any segment of the church that takes seriously the mandate of the Lord, that this Jew is the power of God and the salvation for everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

And by the way, if the church fails to take seriously the mandate of the Lord toward the Jew, that's the end of the church as the church. And the powers of darkness know this. And that's why they yawn in the face of the church.

And they say, Jesus, we know, Paul, we know, but who are you? We know that you're not taking God's word seriously. We know that you're not living as a people of obedience that do the word of God. Therefore, you're railing against us and you're, what do they call it?

Worship your spiritual warfare is just so much vapor. It affects us not at all. Your obedience would affect us. Then we know you're in right relationship with him and then you're to be feared. But your disobedience and your willful disregard of his word as it pertains to this people makes you of little consideration in our sight.

So we'll develop this at another time. The issue of the Jew is paramount for the church. And if it sounds strange in the ears of the brothers who are here today, like some going overboard on something, the Jew in the wisdom of God is central to the whole issue of the church, the faith, the fulfillment of last day's things, his own coming, his kingdom and his glory.

Not the least of the reasons for which that his kingdom requires for its base a restored nation called Israel and a people, an entire nation who will be a nation of priests and the light unto the world.

And so the dealing with them to bring them to that place is the final historic dealing of God in the world. And it affects all the nations and all the nations will oppose this because they want to maintain their independence.

And they would say, why do the heathen rage and the people or the goyim or the nations imagine a vain thing? They will not have this man to rule over them. And so we'll talk about that. So let me just read my revised letter to Abraham Foxman, because when I read it, then there was a feeling that we needed to express something of a note of apology or forgiveness for the church's historic failure toward the Jew.

And then indeed, there is a justification for a man wincing about the word conversion. When you think of the history quote of the church and that poet, that word has to encompass all that men have done in the name of Christ, even in their unregenerate condition, the middle ages, the crusades, forced conversions, forced exiles, reconvert or death ultimatums.

This is the Jewish historical experience with Christianity. And they cannot distinguish between what we represent born again, New Testament, what believers, let's say the authentic remnant that is truly the church with what has come under their word name church historically.

And there's no way we can explain it to them. It's one thing for them. And we are identified with that one thing. And we share and bear the reproach of it. And so we need to ask their forgiveness as if we were responsible and identified with what is called the church.

So I have tried in some way not to incorporate this into the letter, and you'll hear it now and you can give me some feedback. So this is an open letter to Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Dear Sir, I have before me your rebuke to the Southern Baptist Convention with regard to a renewed resolution to convert Jews. The historic memory of our forced conversions rightly haunts us still. Notice, I'm saying our and us.

I'm identifying myself as a Jewish believer with the Jewish people and coming under that. No amount of apology, heart-stricken Christians unmistakable in their love for Israel offered nonetheless, can either excuse or dismiss the blight and dishonor brought upon the Messiah's name by Jew-hating clerics and the unregenerate mobs excited by them.

We're not sweeping the history under the carpet. We're acknowledging it. It's pitiful and it's been a tremendous blight on the name of the Lord himself that all of that was done in the name of Christ.

From the perspective of a liberal and pluralistic society, such a pronouncement is understandably horrific when a Southern Baptist say we're going to resume seeking the conversion of Jews. Nevertheless, from the paradox and perspective of eternity, it is ironically God-pleasing and blessed.

The Biblical Priority of the Jew First

Then I take up these arguments. What are we to say to those Christians under the obligation to go ye into all the world and preach this gospel to every creature? More explicitly, the New Testament scriptures enjoins them to go to the Jew first and also to the Greek and that repentance and remission of sin should be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem.

It's remarkable how specific and explicit God is of where to begin. It's where men would say you go last, not first. If you're going to produce a play and you want it to come to Broadway, you don't start in New York City.

You start in Connecticut and Maine and up in the woods and try it out first. And if it succeeds there, then ultimately you bring it to the final place, New York City itself, the final test. But that's not God's wisdom.

God says begin where I was crucified, begin where the prophets were stoned, beginning at Jerusalem and then to Samaria and then to the uttermost corners of the earth. He takes the hardest first. And there's strategic and significant reasons, in my opinion, why he has chosen this.

But historically, we have to acknowledge the church has not obeyed God's priority. It has not gone to the Jew first and ultimately it has not gone to the Jew last. It has not gone effectually to the Jew at all.

And that, I think, explains more than I can now say the unhappy condition of the church. And this is especially significant for a church in New York City, which is not an exaggeration to say is a Jewish city.

That New York is more the effectual Jerusalem of world Jewry than Jerusalem itself. It's the powerhouse. It's the publishing media center influenced by Jews and in the corporate world, the stock market, the whole commercial Babylonian thing has its root in that city.

We cannot ignore that fact and be a Christian presence in that city. David Wilkerson said to me, it's vain to think that we can evangelize New York City and circumvent the Jew. That's true. Any presence of God in that city must have in its consciousness the foremost factor of that Jewish presence and what it represents in affecting the whole character and tenor and spirit of that city and what a challenge it will represent to crack and break into that.

So there's a reason for the Jew first and beginning at Jerusalem or beginning at New York, what one needs to recognize is that our controversy is not with men but with God. And unless we are able to dismiss these scriptures and he who spoke or inspired them as not being of God, and who would be more ignorant than presumptuous in denigrating them.

For you to say that Christians are not under obligation to obey what the Lord commands is to be guilty of the very thing of what you accuse the church of being presumptuous and arrogant. You're denying God's word for those who believe it.

And that is an enormous presumption for a Jewish spokesman to take. Well, I don't think there were any other significant changes except that that first paragraph where I make mention of the historic memory of our forced conversions rightly haunts us still.

No amount of apology can either excuse or dismiss the blight and dishonor brought upon the Messiah's name by Jew-hating clerics and the unregenerate mobs excited by them. Now use the word unregenerate.

What is that going to mean to Abraham Foxman? What it really means is those who have never been born again. They're just Gentiles who have embraced Christianity as religion in the same way that Jews have embraced Judaism.

But they are mobs that can be excited by clerics, by priests, and others who actually had anti-Jewish hatred. So we're not dismissing that, we're acknowledging that. But the fact that that existed historically is not a reason to nullify or to set aside our present obligation to bring the message of Christ to the Jew.

It just compounds it and makes it all the more difficult. We have to work our way through that past. And as I have stood in the vortex of controversy in university meetings and heard the shouts of you're worse than Hitler, who only sought to destroy our bodies, I knew that no answer could be given on the spot in the heat of that to say, hey look, don't identify me with what the Crusaders did or the Church of the Middle Ages.

I don't, I'm not with that. I don't represent that. Can't you see I represent New Testament Christianity and it's something else altogether. We have your best interest in mind. There's no way even to begin to talk that.

You just have to bear the assault that comes from the historic woundedness over what has been perpetrated in the name of Christ historically. That's our suffering. We have to bear that. But it's not an excuse by which we are removed from the obligation to yet bring the message to them.

So it puts the remarkable premium on the Church to be able to communicate something for which Satan has done such historic damage as to poison the name of Christ and make it beyond any possibility of Jewish consideration.

And yet you've got to come in that name because there's no other name given on the heaven or on earth whereby a man might be saved. Can you see the enormity of that challenge? And the Church that will rise to that challenge and succeed in it is the Church.

Apostolic Authority and the Power to Reach the Jewish People

And then we'll talk about what it will take to be a Church of that kind, of an apostolic character and quality that can bear that message and bring that message despite the historic opposition of the past successfully.

It's beyond the ability of any single individual. This is not a looking for virtuoso hot shots who have some exceptional charisma that they can break in. It's going to have to be what it was at the beginning.

These are they that turned the world upside down because they have been sent apostolically from an apostolic body and bear the authority, resonance, anointing and weight of that apostolic character. And nothing less will affect Jews.

Jews don't know it. They're waiting for the Church to become the Church. Okay. There's an instinctive knee-jerk reaction by Jews of whatever kind in description, whether they are secular, whether they are orthodox, doesn't matter.

They have all breathed the same air and have drunk the same milk from their mother's breasts. They all intuit and know the historic ugliness of the history of the Church to the Jew. We grew up with it.

We knew it. There's an instinctive awareness. So it may be more acute in some more than others, but there's not a Jew, if you'll scratch him deeply enough, who does not exhibit this awareness. And so it's probably one of the most formidable barriers to the promotion of the Gospel.

And every Jewish believer, almost without exception, himself or herself has had to struggle through these questions. How do I embrace a faith in whose name my own people have been persecuted? How will I be able to explain that to my own kinsmen?

My mother, that was my own great-grandmother, what are you doing? Who asked for this revelation? How's my mother going to understand it? She was pushed into the swimming pool in London as a little girl by her Gentile teacher who said, you fat Jew, sink or swim.

And she's not forgotten that, now that she's 91. How do I tell her now? I have, I'm called now by the same name as that teacher before he went to that pool. I've joined the enemy. So it's an extraordinary demand, even for Jewish believers to fight their way through this.

And the enemy plays upon it as well. You would think that such people would be easier candidates to hear the message. But ironically, all the more because their Judaism is weak, are they defensive and even more resistant to what threatens the meager Jewish identity that they have.

So if you can find a Jew who is secure in his own Judaistic sense, you might have a greater opportunity to receive a hearing than a secular Jew or mildly religious Jew who is insecure in his identification and therefore resists all the more vehemently any attempt to quote convert him.

So it's interesting. You can't seem to win at any hand. It's tough. It's not just tough. It's the ultimate toughness. It's the ultimate challenge. It's the ultimate demand upon our faith and upon the anointing of God and confidence that this gospel, though it is foolish, is yet the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

A Canadian Jew's Conversion Through Romans 10

I've had the experience living in in Israel as an immigrant when a Canadian Jew who was a neighbor came up into our apartment and we were somehow in the scriptures and he took the Bible right out of my hand and began to read out of Romans 10.

And before he finished the last verse, he was saved. Something happened to him in the reading of the word that was just on the spot, a remarkable transformation, so much so that his life was endangered thereafter.

And some weeks later on his way to work, one or two of his tires came off because all of the lugs had been loosed from his wheels. The enemy has with an unusual virulence and hatred and cunning done everything in his power to make the name of Jesus objectionable for Jewish consideration especially.

To keep this people from the knowledge of their Messiah and their God and being brought into effectual union with the God of their fathers, that the gift and calling which is theirs, which has been forfeited so long historically, might again be restored.

The enemy knows better than the church the significance of Israel's turning again to their own God. And for that reason has gone out of his way in diabolical cunning to poison the name of Jesus for Jewish consideration.

And so the crusades, the pogroms, the Spanish Inquisition, forced conversions, exiles, ultimatums of convert or die have been employed to so poison that name even to this day. And this foxman is reacting when he really reads that the Southern Baptist Convention is now talking about again converting Jews.

All of that historic residue that attends the word conversion is invoked like waving the flag, the red flag before a bull's face. And yet we have to answer him. Maybe just at the end of my letter where I talked about something rotten, not in Denmark, but in ourselves and 2 ,000 years of diasporic failure to consider it is before us.

Are we willing to reflect on the misfortunes and tragedies of that exile as being the consequence of a willful failure to review what may have been the colossal error of our fathers from which the of Israel and the Jewish people, the evangelical Christians safe to seek to save us.

They evangelical Christians needs not so much to be censured, but thanked for their persistent concern. Despite our intimidating condemnation, as we continue stubbornly to oppose ourselves as a people in our ignorance, while congratulating ourselves, assured that we are doing God a service.

You have to read that to follow that. It's so loaded. Two great historic events explain the severance between the original Jewish believers and what has come to be called the church. The first was about 135 A .D.

Historical Severance Between Jewish Believers and the Church

With the final Roman conquest of Palestine that took place at Masada, you know, this fortress and the destruction again of Jerusalem in 70 A .D. And again at 135 A .D. And there was a final war and a certain Jewish general.

Somebody helped me with his name was called the star Rabbi Akiva. And what's going on? Somebody help me. I'm Markosha. Markosha, Barman's son, K-O-C-H-B-A, which I think for either from the Aramaic or Hebrew means star was celebrated by Rabbi Akiva as being the Messiah.

And of course, Jewish believers could not subscribe to that and could not join him. And so they were looked upon as traitors to Israel because of their failure to participate in the Bar Kochba revolt against Rome.

And many of them suffered at the hands of Jews unto death who'd been looked upon as traitors because their identification with Jesus could not allow them to subscribe to Bar Kochba as Messiah. So that was the first serious historic severance, because from the time of the inception of the church until about 135, there were still Jews involved in synagogues and in temple worship and had a certain degree of legitimacy and recognition.

And then the final historic severance was the rise of Constantine and the advent of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church and a conscious, willful rejection of all of the Hebraic elements of the faith and an anti-Jewish mentality and posture that finally compelled Jews either to be separated from the church or be separated from the Jewish kinsmen.

So from that time to this, there's been a long parenthesis of non-Jewish involvement in the faith. But in the last 10, 20 or 30 years, I'm a believer, 32 years, and there have always been, as Paul says, a remnant, an elect remnant of Jews in the faith.

But as a movement in the last 10, 20 years, Jewish believers are coming in increasing number so that there's not a place in Israel that does not have a substantial presence of Jewish believers. I think seven or more congregations in Jerusalem alone, in Tiberias, in Galilee, in what's the southernmost side of the sea?

In Haifa and every place in Israel, and in the United States, there's a whole messianic movement. So this is a very interesting subject, but not exactly on what we are about. So I'm saying at the very end, we oppose ourselves in our own ignorance, and we congratulate ourselves that in that opposition, we're doing God's service.

It's really ironic that Jews think that they are defending the true faith, the monotheistic faith, and that Christians have brought some Greek innovation of a triune God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that is totally a negation of the one God.

Shema Yisrael, Eloheinu Eloheinu Eloheichot, Hero Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord. So we have also this complexity, where Jews think that they are preserving the true monotheistic faith from the innovation that has come through the church that sees God in three persons.

So in a word, everything is stacked against us, historically, and theologically, and presently, in fulfilling the mandate that has been given the church to the Jew. And all of that means this, that the church has got to be the church in the ultimate meaning of that word, or it cannot fulfill that mandate.

The Church's Identity and the Challenge of Jewish Witness

And this also, that the church can never be that until it begins seriously to take the mandate to its heart in every place where the church is, whether it's Hong Kong, or where about are you going? Gainesville, Florida, that the church, wherever it is, needs to see the centrality of the Jew in the interest and the purposes of God.

And they will find, even in Hong Kong, certainly in Florida, a residue of that people in their own community, who wait yet to be tested to the Jew first. And it will shake the church to its foundations and scare the church, because it will feel itself intimidated.

Jews have an overbearing power of intimidation to threaten Christians who feel themselves weak in the faith to begin with. And this will altogether prove how weak they are when the withering blast makes them to recoil and go back.

Because how many Christians can have any competence even to promote the gospel to Gentiles, let alone to Jews? Or even if you could ask them, what is the gospel? Or can you sum up the meaning of your own faith and present it in a meaningful way to another?

There are not many Christians who are capable of that simple test, let alone apostolic authority, let alone anointing that is not magical, but has to do with the righteousness of one's life and the body with which one is authentically joined.

The whole issue of the church as the church comes into its real perspective and real requirement when you but restore one element, the issue of the Jew. Click, click, click, click, click. But the absence of that gives the church a latitude to be something other than God's, in my opinion, intention.

Slapdash, weak, charismatic in the worst sense, all of the other kinds of things would have been met by and corrected if the church had been the alignment with God to which the Jew compels it. Kanye, can you follow me?

I'm speaking this so well that it's likely to go over your head. My words are so well chosen and so clear and so right to the point that you can conceivably miss it. All of this would be only academic and a forced obligation, a kind of a grim having to do something because it says so, unless the church has as its foremost concern, the thing that I spoke and challenged the congregation yesterday, the jealousy for the glory of God.

The Glory of God as the Ultimate Purpose

The issue of the Jew is only the instrumentality and the means to the end, but it's not the end in itself. And we would be in serious trouble if we make that the end. The end is the glory of God, and we need continually to be reminded.

And that's why Paul's great treatise on the mystery of the Jew and the church ends at the conclusion of Romans 11 with, who has been his counselor, who has given and shall be given again for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever.

We need again and again to be reminded that the ultimate issue is the glory of God forever. In what way? That a God who has had infinite patience and forbearance with a people who have blasphemed his name in every nation where he has driven them in judgment will again be restored, not because of their virtue, but because of his.

That in fact Israel will become worse at the end than ever it was at the beginning, if for no other reason to demonstrate that it's not their qualification that has won God's approval, but his mercy. His mercy is his glory.

When Moses asked, show me thy glory, God showed him his mercy. And that's what he will show all the world as his final statement to the nations. And if they refuse then to recognize having seen the visible judgment of God upon Israel through the nations and his restoration, there's no answer for them then but judgment.

That's how this drama is so loaded, but it's the revelation of himself and not some supposed virtue of Israel. That is what is at stake here. We need to understand that it's God's glory and the church that does not have a heart for his glory, but for its own programs, its own success, its own celebration will miss the issue completely.

Even if it has some kind of interest in Israel and the Jew, it has it in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. Can you follow that? Okay. Well, this wasn't my subject for this morning. I'm just tidying up on what we had already discussed.

If anybody wants to see the final corrected paper, I have it here. But our hope, if there's such a letter would ever reach him, is to open him for that consideration. But we can't make that the message here.

Here we're pleading with him to consider that what he's condemning is a real grace from God and a mercy from God toward us as Jews. Instead of censoring the Southern Baptists, we ought to be congratulating them and thanking them for their persistence with us because we are opposing ourselves in our ignorance and opposing the very message, which is our salvation.

What that message is remains to be heard if we will give it a hearing. But if we close it out as being against a pluralistic society and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then there's no chance he has chosen the weak things to confound, that which purports to be strong and the foolish, that which purports to be wise.

And what is the Jew, if not the very epitome of what the world celebrates, both as wisdom and as strength. And for him to be faced by a frail Gentile, trembling in their own weakness, the very epitome of weakness and lack of confidence is the classic confrontation between two wisdoms.

His strength is made perfect in our weakness, but we're not going to experience that strength before our going, but in our going. That's the faith of the church, where we go in weakness, trusting the strength of God in our frailty.

Bearing Rejection and Embracing the Cross

The historic phrase that the Jewish community has used to describe the church is the kingdom of arrogance, not humility and weakness. But the word rejection is another one that we need to pick up on. What is our capacity to bear rejection?

Jewish rejection makes men to wither and presidents of nations have crawled to obtain Jewish approval. I can't explain this phenomenon. Maybe there's some instinctive recognition of the centrality of the Jew in God's ultimate intention that even has a weak resonance in Gentiles wanting Jewish approval.

It's powerful. So can we bear Jewish rejection? Can we bear Christian rejection? If we can't bear it among ourselves who are in the faith together, in the community of faith, how shall we bear it from them?

So the issue of rejection is no small question. And if we are a bunch of patsies who crumble when we're rejected, we're finished. We have to have a capacity to bear rejection. And we learned that in the church.

So here we are scorning the very provision of God to strengthen us in the realm that we most need it and run from it when we experience it in the church. And it's God's very provision to school us. And we look upon it with horror.

And it's the very grace of God that we are being inducted into the school of rejection, whether it's imagined or real, it's still equally as painful. But it shows that we're very sensitive and alive to ourselves and not yet in that place of that crucified life in Christ that takes no thought for itself and exalts in its rejection rather than comes apart at the seams.

So we come back now to Romans 6, to the cross, to the issue of baptism, to the issue of faith, which would never have been for us issue if we were living a kind of pallid, minimal Christian church life that would be possible to us culturally and is the description of present church life because the Jew has not been raised in the place of challenge as he ought.

Can you see that? Whichever way you turn, you touch rejection, boom, then it comes back to what is the church? Happy meetings or a suffering of a particular kind, because there's no rejection more painful than that comes from your own.

Somebody in the street can say exactly the same thing, and it's water off the duck's back. But when we hear from a brother and sister with whom you're living and joined together, and for whom you have sacrificed yourself, and they tell you that you're the enemy of the gospel, it cuts in you like a knife, and the knife is turned in its hilt.

So there's an exquisite degree of suffering, which is really preparation that can only be found in the church where it's a church where relationships of this kind exist and have an environment where they can promote, and you don't flee from it.

That's the church. That's the church. But like the issue of brokenness, I was discussing with Craig after the breakfast this morning. It's not something that you put on alert, and you can't describe your experience, let alone boast in it.