Span-11 Apostolic & Prophetic Foundations 8 of 8 — Art Katz

The Son of Man in the Valley of Dry Bones

Okay, back to the text. Excuse my diversions. How does this chapter begin? It's not to do with Israel, but with the Son of Man.

Where the hand of the Lord came upon him.

In order to bring him out in the Spirit of the Lord and set him down in the midst of a valley full of bones. Why wasn't he there to begin with? Because who would choose it? A valley is a place of depression.

It's not the kind of thing that will attract us. So he rightly kept his distance.

And he had to be brought out of the place that he chose to occupy that was comfortable for him, spiritually and be brought down.

And into the midst of the dry bones in the valley. That's how the chapter begins.

And that beginning should not be lost to us.

The valley is a depressing place, yes. Death is never pleasant.

Especially the nation that we love.

To see that nation in that condition you want to avert your gaze.

We don't want to consider that death let alone be brought down into the midst of it.

And be made to walk around the fullness of it right into our eyeballs right into our guts the reality and the truth of death.

You need to stand up and do a little exercise. Are you okay? Okay.

Prophetic Seeing and Loving the Truth

No man will ever speak for God.

Who doesn't first see as God. Prophets were called seers. What does that mean? They did not see as other men. They saw as God. They see as God sees. They understand the situation as God sees it as it really in fact is in truth and not as we would desire it to be.

That's prophetic.

No seeing authentic seeing which is a painful seeing neither speaking for God.

The seeing precedes the speaking and the prophet had to be brought down in order to see it because he's a son of man and shrinks from unpleasant truth and doesn't want to see it. And that's true of us all not just about Israel about our churches our marriages our families our nations.

We want to see it in a better light more hopeful, more wishful.

Who has the courage the love for truth that alone will keep us from deception.

For the Lord warns us that He will abandon us to deception.

Except we love the truth not enough just to respect it we've got to love it.

And if you're not too experienced I'll tell you the truth is always painful.

Before it's glorious it's not a picnic.

The truth is painful if we would see things as God sees them and be willing to be brought down and in the midst of it.

By the Spirit and the hand of God we are self-deceived.

The whole world lives in the prince of darkness, the father of lies. The whole world abides in a lie.

The whole world abides in a lie it's false and even the church is affected to say the right thing.

The pleasant things the polite thing.

And to shrink from the true thing I plead with you I beg you love the truth however painful it is about yourself.

The church the nation, the family, the marriage.

For we will not see the truth there.

How shall we expect to see it in Israel?

This beginning is unspeakably significant.

And it's not easy.

To be brought out of our categories our conventional understandings comfortable and familiar. To be brought out that we might be brought down that we might be brought into the valley the place of depression.

Where the bones are.

Not Israel's condition as we would hope it should be but as it in fact is one of the indictments of the church in the book of Revelation. You think you're rich.

And have all things but you're poor and naked and you don't even know it.

And the church is called to be prophetic and to be the prophetic presence of God within the nation and speak to the nation the truth of its own condition not as it thinks itself to be but as it in fact is and must be warned.

Isaiah's Indictment of Israel

Look at chapter one of Isaiah. Hear oh heaven and give ear oh earth for the Lord has spoken. Why is the prophet addressing the dumb elements. Because men don't want to hear religious men. Hear oh heaven and give ear oh earth for the Lord has spoken.

Then comes the indictment of Israel. I have nourished and brought up children, they have rebelled against me.

The ox knows its owner, the ass its master's crib.

But Israel the chosen people of God the nation of priests the light of the world does not know. My people don't even consider.

Oh sinful nation laden with iniquity.

People of evil do as children with their doctors.

They have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel they have turned away backwards. The whole head is sick in verse five.

The whole heart faints.

From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it.

Wounds, ruses, crucifying sores.

That have not been closed or bound up or soothed with ointment.

Your country is desolate your cities are burned with fire.

Strangers devour your land in your presence desolate, overcome by strangers. The daughter of Zion is left as a shack in a vineyard a wretched miserable hut of the seed city and doesn't know it. The prophet is speaking to Jerusalem.

To the nation at a time when it is prospering and what is being spoken.

Is not the description of things as they see them where there is an external prosperity where the sacrifices continue to be made every day by priests.

Where the new moon and the Sabbath and the feast are being kept religiously which God says is an abomination but the prophet speaks the truth of their condition.

As it one day soon will be who sees it as present reality and speaks the truth of their condition while there is yet time to hear it and to repent of it before it becomes fulfilled. In fact this is prophetic seeing.

Of what is already true that has not yet become apparent but the eye of the prophet sees it and as God sees it and that's what he speaks.

Seeing has to precede speaking. Are you ruthless in your seeing?

Do you see through appearances? Through the shallow and deceptive things.

That would give the impression this is the best of all worlds. Do you see what the real condition is? As God sees it that needs to be identified for those who do not see before its judgment comes it's not a welcome task.

Painful. The prophet and the apostle are nothing but a series of deaths. They prefer to be away. That's why they have to be brought out and down.

By the spirit of the Lord when they allow his hand to come upon them.

Faith Beyond Human Ability

He brought the son of man right into the valley and made him go all around and it was full of bones they were very dry. And then God says to the man son of man can these bones live? Impossible even to prophetic faith let alone charismatic faith the prophet could not bring himself to say.

But of course the visible thing was stupefying. This is facticity itself. I wish I had a dry bone to give you.

A really dry bone that we would start here and pass it from hand to hand right down and through the room.

There probably might not be anything left to reach the first few because when you handle a dry bone it is so dry it decomposes in your very hand becomes dust. It's very dry because it's very dead.

And you need to know that that there's no hope for it except God who raises the dead by the word that you will speak for him. Son of man, can these bones live? Know what we have to say?

The prophet is being brought to a place beyond his own faith.

Charismatic faith will not suffice. Prophetic faith will not suffice.

What kind then? The faith of the son of God himself. Have you ever come to his faith? When you've been brought to places beyond your own faith? That's ultimate faith and true faith and it shall not fail and few of us have ever touched it.

We're still at another place and another level functioning and serving out of ourselves.

Acceptably even admirably for the situations we've had to face until now but we're coming to an ultimate situation where that will not suffice.

And God is the creator of that situation.

Not only for Israel's sake but for our sake.

For we shall not exceed eternally in the realm of heaven any place or position that we have not obtained in this life.

We shall not go beyond the position or the place that we have attained on this earth. Are you ready to go to the Lord now? in this condition that you're in? If it will be fixed in that place.

Eternally? Oh you thought heaven was democratic? We're all going to heaven one place, one status, one condition.

You think that we're all going to be around the throne of God? Who can bear that light?

Hell and everlasting darkness is a mercy mercy to those who are not accustomed to the light.

And who have preferred darkness.

This is a graduated thing. We're not in the same place now and we'll not be in the same place then.

But then it will be fixed and eternal we will have a reward.

Proportional to our works in this life and to the quality and the depth of the faith.

And the knowledge of Him and the love of truth and light established in this life.

It's a mercy that the Lord does not come now.

And take us now.

We would be eternally mortified and ashamed. So here's what I want you to know the crisis of Israel is for your sake.

It compels you to be a saint it compels you to have an authentic faith. It will not let you buy with shallow credos. It's got to be an authentic faith and a faith that works by love.

Or it will not work at all.

None of this shabby sentimental stuff. Oh brother. I really love the Jews.

I love Israel. I love Israel sentimentally it evokes certain pleasant images for me.

More imagined than real that so called love will go up like a puff when Israel disappoints you. The love of God is never disappointed. It's an unconditional love that cannot be offended against. I know you only too well I know that some of you esteem me.

You've been blessed in these days the Lord has touched you but let me miss it once.

One failed sermon one questionable reference one comment about the organ player.

And the whole esteem can come down in a moment like a nosedive because it's conditional.

So long as I perform impressively or let there come a moment of disappointment finished that's not God. Can you imagine how far God will go. Who knows what eternity really means and what is fixed and absolute and unchanging there.

There's no redemptive possibilities there so far as I imagine. And it's safer not to imagine that that puts all the emphasis on this life this life this time these realities is the format, is the redemptive matrix by which we are being shaped for eternity.

It's not a taking of a test to get a grade it's yet another opportunity a God given occasion.

To develop something to bring us to something that will enhance our eternal life who will rule and reign with him.

Forever he says. Some will be given five cities some ten. Whatever. That means, this much is clear. It's relative. We don't all get the same thing. We don't all do the same thing.

Some of us will have a more honored place more significant more eternally gratifying.

That whatever the cost of that in this life whatever the humiliations whatever the sufferings that fitted us for that place.

For eternity we will have said it was worthwhile.

We're apostolic. We're prophetic.

We live in the present with the deepest consciousness of eternal reality. We bring the eternal thing into the present and it heightens every issue of life.

Radicalizes it changes it enables us more to be the fools for Christ's sake than we would otherwise be.

Cruelty in Service of Kindness

Enables you to be cruel before you can be kind. That's from Shakespeare the play Hamlet maybe the greatest tragedy ever written.

You have an obligation to study it. You know the story? Hamlet was a prince.

In Denmark and his father was killed while he was away by his own ambitious brother who marries the widow. And there comes a moment when Hamlet has revealed to him what had taken place. His own mother was an unconscious participant in a conspiracy against his own father that this scummy ambitious brother.

Could appropriate his kingdom and marry his own queen.

What should a son do about that? That's where Hamlet speaks the great lines to be or not to be that is the question because the man is even contemplating suicide to be or not to be to suffer the slings of outrageous fortunes next to the Bible.

I don't know a greater literature and I'm saying all that to say this one scene where the son confronts the mother.

This silly, shallow, sensual woman whom he accuses of lying between incestuous sheets and she's wearing a locket around her throat.

A locket that opens up to two pictures. The husband that was the husband. That is no comparison. The first was noble a man of stature.

A giant in righteousness the other one scummy.

Scheming, ambitious, vile.

And Hamlet takes his mother's locket and opens it and pushes it right in her face so much as to say look at what you've chosen and the truth breaks upon her.

Painfully and she can't bear to see it and she cries out in the most pathetic way oh, it tears your heart to hear it. Your sympathy immediately goes out to this poor woman.

This mother, Hamlet, no more.

Hamlet, no more then Shakespeare puts these words in Hamlet's mouth.

Sometimes he says one must be cruel in order to be kind. I wish I had a peso for every time. I've had to be cruel in order to be kind. One occasion came very recently when a nice Christian woman came up to me wanting me to answer a question.

But I first had to listen to long details and I was exhausted standing on my feet taking valuable time to hear the whole background.

Till I finally had to say what's the question? Well, she finally asked me the question that the Lord gives her things to say.

But she somehow is not able to say them.

Evidently, fear of man.

It's a problem that afflicts us all. So I said, you know that's only the symptom. The fear of man is only the symptom.

Of a much deeper condition of a self-life that doesn't want to offend that needs to be acknowledged and gratified.

You know what I think your answer is?

The cross not just against the fear of man but the self-life itself. That's the good news that's the deliverance, that's the freedom.

Because I perceive that your problem is more than the fear of man it's an egotism which was even revealed in your willingness to take my time.

To weary me with all the unnecessary details. Was that necessary, brother? Wasn't that a bit harsh? Even cruel? How far will we go if we know that time is short and eternity is at hand.

Sometimes it's not an everyday thing but don't withhold yourself when it comes.

When the Lord wants to speak that way when one must be cruel in order to be kind or else when the final moment comes to speak to the bones as you are commanded you will not be able.

Obedience to the Prophetic Command

So I prophesied as I was commanded.

Not a beautiful statement. The Lord commands, the prophet prophesies not what he would like to speak but he is commanded to speak. What if he was not in the mood? What if it was an off day? He didn't feel particularly spiritual.

Lord, come back and try me another time.

It's like us. Are you coming to the service?

I don't know if I feel like it.

That's at least what they say in North America because it doesn't happen here.

I'm amazed how much the conduct of believers serious believers is predicated on feelings.

I don't know if I feel like coming if I feel the Lord commanded.

The prophet prophesied because it was the consistent pattern of his life. Are you accustomed to that? To being commanded.

And obeying instantly without qualification or conditions or questions it's not something that we like. Oh, I've been through the furnace.

Living in poverty chosen in northern Minnesota 40 below zero.

We didn't have adequate housing pregnant women inadequate food living beneath the poverty level.

Established by the United States government.

And somebody sent us a check for $5 ,000.

Glory to God.

We had made no public acknowledgement of our need.

Pain of a doubt from God.

My mind was ticking off how it's to be spent housing, food, shelter, clothing.

And we were celebrating before God and Friday was our fast day prayer for Israel. And while we were together rejoicing the Lord whispered to me in an ever so small voice.

Ah, you know that $5 ,000 check you got? Send it to such and such a couple in Israel.

Who are in ministry there.

Who have a brand new Volvo.

Leather jacket who live in a lovely apartment.

Have exquisite musical instruments send it to them.

I cleared my throat I said, excuse me saints but as I was sitting here.

I hope I'm wrong but I think I heard the still small voice of God.

That said, send the check that you've just received.

That you're already spending in your mind to this couple in ministry in Israel who don't begin to have your need. It was like a man taking the pin out of a hand grenade and rolling it down the middle of the aisle.

The shrapnel was everywhere.

The shrieks, the cries the anger, the hatred.

I could not believe that saints were capable of that and I was the leader and the founder and the principal elder but then all of a sudden people began to question about my marriage. It's not all that good now that we think about it and your family and your children now that we think about it your condition is all that much to be desired.

Are you really qualified to be an elder? Do you have your house in order? They were challenging the authority hoping to find some contradiction that would absolve them from the responsibility of obeying what God had given the head to that body and all hell broke loose a demonstration of rebellion selfishness.

Self-will that was always there but never would have been revealed if we were not living together from the same income that God had given.

So I said look I could be wrong. The fact that I've had 15, 20, 25 years of experience being led by the spirit. That's no guarantee of anything. We can always be wrong. I hope I am. I'll tell you what.

We're on a fast day today.

Let's go out into the woods find a quiet place seek the Lord. There's after all only one God he has only one mind one will he's not a series of contradictions. Let's find what the will of God is and he'll give it to us together and then we'll know.

Oh that's a great idea. They went out all day.

And we came back that night. It was worse at night than it was in the morning.

I never heard so many scriptures quoted each one to defend his own position. If you don't provide for your own you're worse than an infidel. I thought this is it we're finished. Where's the unity of the body of Christ.

It was a jungle.

And these were not your everyday Christians. These are people that have left their comfortable homes and their businesses for the love of Christ and their identification with the cross.

To come up as community in that remote place and they were coming apart at the seams. What could we hope for. What a revelation.

Of the truth of the condition of the church as it in fact is and needs to be recognized acknowledged or the grace of God will never come.

He's a God of truth he'll be cruel in order to be kind. He's not going to pamper us in our self-deception.

But when we will acknowledge the truth of our condition we'll experience his grace and his mercy.

Unity Through Submission to God's Will

What happened that day brother. Well we had a young Jewish believer with pimples. Awkward. This all got out. The kind that only a mother could love.

I had brought him from New York myself and as a student he didn't even have his own bed. He used to rotate the use of his bed with two other students. Talk about God taking beggars off of dung hills young in the faith.

Immature high-pitched crack voice and we had come to a log jam.

It was an insoluble dilemma threatening the whole continuation of our life and in that terrible agony where you stop breathing the unspeakable pain where there is no pain greater than that which we experience in the church.

The church is not given for our enjoyment it is given for our suffering to prepare us for eternity. This brother spoke up.

Well he said I don't profess to hear what brother Art says he has heard but I say that if he thinks that he heard from God we have an obligation to go with him.

Because God has put him as the head of this body.

And I think that we need to believe that that was God silence God had spoken.

Unmistakably and authoritatively through the weakest youngest member of the body we'll never forget it.

We didn't walk out of that room that night.

We were off the ground it was heavenly.

It was joy unspeakable because we were willing to bear the pain.

And the suffering of the church.

In its rebellion, its self will.

In the truth of its condition. Why did I tell you that? Forgot the point.

How far God will go if we will allow him to prepare us for eternity.

And the faith which is the faith that will yet be required to express.

Or Israel remains in her death.

And the Lord does not come nor his kingdom to the nations this is the faith saints there's a cross at the heart of it.

Come on, let's get real the time is short.

We have a call only us a son of man company a corporate reality. I ruined through the whole body a true faith that can be commanded in the moment that God chooses to obtain obedience.

To raise the dead. Do you like being commanded?

Let me pray for you Lord, who likes it?

We'll question the authority of that one who commands.

If the command is not pleasant to us if it threatens our self interest we'll find some way to absolve ourselves from the obligation to obey it.

We're not habituated to obedience.

We're self willed we don't like to be told we don't like to be commanded but we're asking you to deal with that and lay the axe to the root.

That you might have a son of man whom you can command to an immediate and total obedience the moment of your choosing without hesitation because it is the final sum.

Of all of his obediences as it will be ours. Lord we ask command us we want to be commanded we want to learn to obey prepare us for the destiny that must come in Jesus name. We pray Amen.

Apostolic Calling and the Persecution of Jews

Someone is asking what might the circumstances be that will cause hatred and persecution against Jews in the whole world. We can only speculate it will not take much because this hatred is just under the surface of modern life.

Probably it will have to do with economics or finances.

Some collapse of the world economy which Jews could be blamed.

Because we are sufficiently involved in finance to make us a likely candidate. Some Zionist conspiracy to take over the world. I tremble for the number of prominent Jews in the government of the United States today one by the name of Rubin the secretary of labor I think.

Financial post.

Greenspan the head of the Federal Reserve.

Throughout the whole of the Clinton administration.

Are Jews in significant places.

That will redound against us if there will be a collapse and we are conspicuous in cultural places. Who would you say is the most famous film maker today. What's his name. Steven Spielberg and the head of the Time Warner Corporation.

Throughout the whole of culture economy. Jews in significant places affecting nations and will be conspicuous.

And be blamed as they have historically been.

Because they are in an unhappy predicament as a conspicuous minority who stand out in the world as they did in Europe throughout the whole Middle Ages as the indigestible lump that was non-Christian.

So there was the great black plague of the 1400s.

Then when the black plague of the 15th century came.

The bubonic plague. Millions died but not one Jew.

So of course they were responsible. They poisoned the wells. The fact of the matter is they didn't eat pork which was medieval Europe's sanitation system. People threw their garbage out the windows and the pigs wallowed in them.

The Jews kept kosher.

They would not eat the unclean thing and they washed what they ate and they would not eat the blood of it.

So the very condition of their Jewish life and culture.

Which preserved them made them the object of suspicion. We will not be able to get away from it.

Which means a sent one. So does that mean that anyone who is sent is apostolic? Yes that doesn't make him an apostle. An apostle is an office like a prophet. They indeed are sent ones but the genius and the character of what is apostolic is available to anyone who is sent of God.

In the purpose of God so the whole church itself.

Is apostolic in its character and its foundation though there are individuals who bear that office lost to the church for many centuries.

And now being restored something to pray for the church desperately needs such men.

Israel as God's Elect People

Now back to Ezekiel 37. Someone asked me another question about the scripture. And so all Israel shall be saved. Does that mean that the old Jews will survive and be restored? No because Paul says in Romans 9.

In verse 6.

For they are not all Israel who are of Israel Israel is a remnant or an elect called out people from within the total world. Jewry Paul goes on to explain that in chapter 9 not all the children of Abraham but in Isaac your seed shall be called because they are the children of the flesh.

Natural descendants of Abraham who are not the Israel of God but the children of promise are counted as seed.

It has not to do with any man's virtue.

Or what men have done or not done but that which is according to the purpose of God.

According to election in verse 11.

Not of works but him who calls.

That's the genius of the issue of Israel itself. Why Israel? Why Zion? The holy hill of Zion is going to be the very epicenter of God's theocratic rule over his creation. Yes the law must go forth out of Zion as God's appointed place as Israel is God's appointed people.

But have you seen Zion lately? It's not anything to look at. It's not Mount Olympus hardly Mount at all more a temple. What gives it. Its distinction is that God has chosen it.

And he always chooses the things that are weak and foolish.

That's why he has chosen Israel. That's why he has chosen us to contradict the wisdom of the world that celebrates what is ostensibly wise and mighty. But why do the heathen rage and imagine a vain thing in Psalm 2.

Because they don't agree with God's choice. Certainly Germany is a much more reasonable choice.

Or any other number of nations or places.

The rage and the fury of men.

Is really against God who elects and chooses.

It's called the scandal of particularity. We cannot bear that God is explicit in this choice. So Israel is the issue of God as the choice of God's election and don't even choose to be chosen.

The issue of God's election is the issue of God who is who he is and will be who he will be. I am that I am.

Who should I tell the children of Israel ascending me.

Moses asked tell them that I am that I am and I will be who I will be and that is my name.

Forever. Israel is the point of God's election.

In a world that hates a God who chooses.

The question for us is do we choose what he chooses. There are two particular things in Ezekiel 37.