Dvd 19 - the Agony and Ecstasy of Paul — Art Katz

Jesus and see their intents and their nature and our hearts call upon them for the kingdom of God that they might be an end-time people of God proclaiming his salvation throughout the earth. The issue of history which is the issue of donations.

Full night's sleep. The marvel is if i've had any but that there's a necessity that i would stand before you in a kind of crumpled condition because i can tell you that when you'll be called upon to give a climactic final moment of utter and eternal significance you're not going to feel any better than i'm feeling presently.

And you'll have to be obedient in the want of vim and vinegar strength and inspiration that you think you ought to have to the uttermost because the moment is so critical. But you'll have at least you'll have to be obedient in your weakness.

And so i'm required this as prophetic man not only to speak but to demonstrate the thing to which you yourself are called. Got that picture. So even here we're talking in the car what shall be said. And how shall we conclude.

And what text. I'm not even sure. Now there are moments away from having to open my mouth the lord our confidence is in you if we're jealous for this conclusion for this finale as if it will never again be our privilege.

What ought to be spoken lord in your so great wisdom who alone knows the end from the beginning. You know the destiny my god of the church and this expression in this city and in this nation. What ought to be spoken lord.

And how come have all the more opportunity to express yourself. Because i'm in a condition of weakness because i'm my mind is fuzzy because i can't humanly put it together exhibit my god your wonderful grace that resurrection power and life which these children will be called to fulfill in their weakness what it is that you're setting before them in mind.

And we thank you for the mystery of it and your provision through it. And your wonderful grace that we're as one who has gone before in exactly this way where you are crucified in weakness. So we thank you and give you praise for this conclusion.

Now lord let every word be a sword and a dagger every piece of punctuation your accent your voice the disposition of your heart and mind that nothing my god will fall to the ground. We'll cherish it we promise.

Romans 11 and the Mystery of Israel and the Church

And thank you for the privilege of it in jesus name. Amen. Well it would almost be criminal to have passed through these days and not one time to speak to you out of romans 11. Are you aware what romans 11 signifies for the apostle paul.

It is his very heart. Are you aware what the book of romans signifies for the apostle paul. It is the most systematic statement of his whole apostolic creed of his whole perception of the faith and of reality.

The book of romans is classic beyond all estimation and scholars have rightly said that chapters 1 through 8 are the preliminary or 9 through 11 which is the heart and that 12 through 16 is the aftermath the working out the application of what is spoken at as the centerpiece which is romans 9 through 11 the subject of the mystery of israel and the church.

Can you imagine what a statement it is of god's wisdom that the church that is gentile would take to its heart this great burden and this great mystery not just as an aspect of its consideration or concern but the very heart of its purpose call and being that a gentile church should be preoccupied with the destiny and fate of a jewish nation is a remarkable statement to the principalities and powers of the air who preside over mankind in that premise that men are only goaded and provoked by their self-interest and will only seek what pertains to themselves their pleasure their security and all the rest.

God wants to bring that false wisdom down not only to contradict it but only to destroy it. Because it has made of captive nations and races of men who live for number one for themselves their security their self-interest their satisfaction as an unspoken premise that this is the principle for life that if you have any kind of reason you know that you take care of number one first.

And if you have anything left over you might consider a bit of philanthropy and an altruism. But god contradicts all that and says that the utterness of the divine wisdom is a consideration other than yourself contrary to yourself.

That does not only does not promote your self-interest but threatens it. And so i can tell you with confidence anyone who will take up paul's burden of the mystery of israel through the church in the last days makes himself an especial candidate for suffering powers of darkness will hate this determination on your part not only because you're gentile but because you're chinese because you're oriental because you're asian which is to say you're the least ones from whom anyone would expect some kind of identification with that semitic people in the other part of the world uh whose representative representative is standing before you.

Why should you have any affinity for the jew any interest in the destiny of that nation. All the more when its track record stinks when the lord himself acknowledges that you have blasphemed my name in every nation where i have sent you where i have cast you in judgment.

And now in these last days you're even doing it in the land that you presently occupy. And you'll continue to do it until i bring that final last day sifting a judgment by which the great majority of you will not survive.

And the remnant will constitute the redeemed nation who returns to zion with everlasting joy upon their heads sighing and mourning passing away. So will you take my word for it. You dear saints. I know that this is a strange subject you're not acquainted but i want to introduce it.

The Church’s Call to Receive Paul’s Mystery

I want by the grace of god to sound a theme. There's no way that we can begin to develop this. This takes a three five day seminar at least to dwell upon this and draw this out. What i'm hoping for in the brevity of time which means shortness that the theme will so be sounded that it will ruin you that it will haunt you.

It will come back into your thought your consciousness israel. Why should we be preoccupied. It's as distant and as remote as subject and a concern as could ever be put before us as asian christians. And yet if we don't take it up we've it.

We will contradict the very mystery that was at the heart of the great apostles consideration that to remove this from paul is to remove paul. And what are we if we do not reflect and take to our heart what was central to him.

What is the church if it's not built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. So we want to probe and feel and identify and grasp what what pulsated in this great apostle's heart what was given to him as revelation over which he was a steward of the mystery.

And nowhere else does he say brethren i my desire is that you should not be ignorant of this mystery lest you become wise in your own conceit. There's no other place where he warns that the loss of a mystery will have any negative consequence except here to lose this mystery not to obtain it opens you to consequences that are undesirable and change and threaten the entire character of the church itself.

He said i would not have you to be ignorant of this mystery lest you become wise in your own conceit. Something pompous something inflated some swelling up of your christian egotism will necessarily follow the absence of the lack of this mystery.

This mystery is calculated to temper you to humble you to bring you into a sense of god in the majesty of his mind. And will because paul ends this remarkable statement in romans 11 with three verses that are the most magnificent poetic paying of praise to god stated anywhere in the whole corpus of the bible old or new testament.

The Glory of God as the Church’s Ultimate Purpose

There's no greater ecstatic statement that stretches language to breaking. Then paul's spontaneous eruption at the end of his final statement in romans 11 all the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of god the man is staggered he is reeling his breath fails him.

All the depth of the riches what has he seen that he would exclaim something so ecstatically that it defies language to comprehend who has been his counselor who has given to him and it shall be given again for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever.

You dear saints if you trifle with this if you think that paul is employing only a little piece of flourish and rhetoric style some stylistic thing to end his remarkable statement in romans 11 with the glory of god forever because it has a nice lofty sound you are condemned.

You're you're a short-changing god. You're you're crippling yourself you're losing some the hot and nub and genius of of apostolicity itself is the issue of the glory of god forever. Don't you understand.

And then we'll if we don't if we miss what paul is saying and why he's ecstatic and why he concludes like that we turn the word glory into a piece of traffic. We make it a little piece of convenient verbalism that we can write put into our choruses our songs talk to pray.

But we don't know what it means. It doesn't pierce us through. We don't understand the the ultimacy of the word glory which is at the heart of church that is church it's very purpose for being beyond any and every other consideration of any benefit that it derives from believing is the purpose pertaining to the glory of god.

If i can only make that point if i can only sink that home if i can only drive it into your corporate consciousness and into your deeps i will heave a sigh of relief and feel that i have discharged my obligation toward you.

The church that is not jealous for the glory of god is ipso facto not the church. It can call itself that it can have services and programs and all the rest. But it has lost its apostolic distinctive.

It has lost its reason for being. And how. How do we understand this. The glory of god. The phrase itself defies every concept. We can't even summon humanly an understanding let alone an appropriation of a phrase like the glory of god forever.

I want to tell you flat out that there's no way that you can even aspire to it or consider it unless it is given you by the grace of god. Isn't it remarkable contradiction that we can't live for the jealousy of the glory except that god himself communicates something of the substance and spirit and meaning of that word that we're dependent upon him even to catch some sense of the thing which is to be central to our own reason for being.

That's why he says for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. I'm pleading with you to wrestle with that that paul is not just going on a flight of fancy and getting poetic to bring a nice lofty sounding conclusion to a great epistle.

This is the heart the genius of what is apostolic because it recognizes that the remarkableness of our call the ultimacy is so beyond our ability even to understand it let alone to fulfill it. Because it's of him.

Identification with Israel and the Cost of Suffering

It's not from our cats or any man however clever. This is of him this mystery that no man could have conceived that there is a relationship in god's wisdom between the jewish people that nation that is despised and even now stirring the hatred of the world toward it which will increase in torrents.

It'll be an anti-semitic um inundation worldwide. They will be the most hated and despised of all peoples like the lord before them. And you're going to be identified with them in those last days. It'll threaten your future.

It'll mock you. It'll make you an object for persecution. Because whoever hates them and wants to drive them into the sea and to obliterate them once and for all and blame them for every malady and failure of world and society will will bring upon you some measure of that same vitriolic hatred as upon them if you are seen to be in any way sympathetic toward them or identifying with them or willing to extend yourself for them when they are universally hated and despised and looked upon as the enemies of mankind got the picture that you should yet be willing to suffer that risk and counter privilege to identify with the people who in no way has have ever done anything for you for which you have received the benefit.

And yet you're willing at the sacrifice and peril of your own life and family to be so identified with them whom you have never even seen in the flesh. That's a mystery. That's an extraordinary phenomenon that can only be understood out of the counsels of the wisdom of god which paul being the apostle that he is and the steward of his mysteries has seen not to see it dear saints is to condemn us to charismatica is to condemn us to predictable services oriented for our enjoyment our pleasure.

They're good. It's biblical it's it brings a dimension of something that is desired but it falls short of the glory or of him. This mystery only god could have conceived it in the divine mind. This reciprocal relationship between not only two different kinds of people but peoples who have been in historic enmity throughout the whole chronicle of the ages.

The jew and the gentile i know you don't know anything about that. Will you take my word for it that i grew up as a jewish boy in a jewish home with a jewish mother who when she was a kid in in london england and and they had to take swimming her gentile teacher threw into the pool and said sink or swim.

You fat jew. My mother in her 90s still remembered that and never forgave that gentile insult. Jews carry with them a history of the enmity of the gentile world against them. Where have they been safe.

In what nation in the world where there have been aliens and cast out. At what moment would the bottom fall out even when they achieve a measure of security. And then suddenly something turns as in germany and they become the object for annihilation.

Can't understand how deep and savage has been the history of enmity fear suspicion between jews and the gentile world. And yet god says in his mystery that there's a necessary relationship between a gentile church and this people so necessary that if you don't enter it consciously and willfully even though there are a few jews in your midst to whom you can demonstrate this presently you forfeit the possibility of the fulfillment for yourself as church.

The issue of what you are as church is altogether related and totally identified with this people. You cannot even understand yourself as church or fulfill your purpose as church if you have not the consciousness of the intended relationship with that people nor can they come to the fulfillment of god's intention for them independent of you.

And that's humbling for any jew who wants to make it alone and independent and show himself morally and in every way superior. God in his wisdom has created these differences that requires a reconciliation a union an identification which only he can affect.

Living Sacrifice and Ultimate Commitment

He calls us to the impossible. With man this is impossible but with god. So then why cats are you bursting your your jugular vein to communicate this. If it's but god do we just lean back and sit and wait for the magic of his performance.

No there's a required participation of a conscious willful kind. It's a it's an agreement to pay for this and sacrifice. Because what is the first verse after romans 11. Brethren therefore i beseech you make of your bodies a living sacrifice as an altogether proper worship unto the lord.

What is that. What is he saying. This is not going to be fulfilled by sitting on our haunches. This is going to require ultimate sacrifice which is your proper service. But it cannot be fulfilled. And how you don't.

How many times have i has i used now already the word ultimate. How many times have you ever you used it. I would bet dollars to donuts. The american idiom that there's hardly a soul in this room who has ever once breathed the word ultimate or has spoken about ultimacy.

And yet the prophetic heart cries out for that word. Especially because if we will not be ultimate in the intention of god we will be predictable ordinary mundane mediocre. And that is a contradiction in terms because unto him be glory in the church not mediocrity got the picture you would sink into a necessary mediocrity of predictability of religion as a sunday addendum where your first purpose is really the success of your career and the attainment of your education and the finding of a wife or a husband and having family in a nice home and car etc etc.

You would necessarily go the way of all flesh if god in his mercy had not just called you to religion but to ultimacy the things beyond your ability. That requires an ultimate sacrifice an ultimate determination an ultimate understanding an ultimate jealousy for the glory of god which itself is an ultimate subject.

And the heck of it is this. You can't even perform that by yourself. It is of such a nature and kind that it requires corporate fulfillment or no fulfillment at all. That's why he had you out here on the floor the other night you young ones.

Because unless you are incorporated in those purposes and come early to the recognition of the ultimacy of your call and destiny in him we all the ones cannot fulfill it without you. We're in something together.

Those that believe we're together is more than being alongside each other in in chairs looking up at a platform and enjoying a service. Whole issue of the church is the issue of this mystery its comprehension and its fulfillment which is of him.

But if it's of him it must necessarily be through him. All of your well-meaning intention all of your brittle ability well-meaning clever. You did well in school. Now you'll do well in church. You'll fulfill this mystery out of your capability.

No way. This is so requiring so ultimate that has been conceived of him that it can only be fulfilled through him. That's why i'm in my crumpled condition this morning. Because the speaking itself of the mystery cannot issue out of human expertise and ability not even human energy.

It's got to be through him or not at all. Even the proclamation of the mystery the setting forth of it has got to be through him through his life through his power through the resurrection reality which is at the heart of the whole genius of the faith and not just the expediency by which jesus was removed from his tomb and elevated to the right hand of god resurrection through him.

Which means that you are now under obligation to move from the mere acknowledgement of the truth of resurrection as doctrine to the appropriation of resurrection. As the the germans have a good word they always do the ursprung the the the motivation the the animation the spring of life itself.

But i know that i know there's hardly one of you in the room that have ever tasted that reality. So you thought you had done god's service by acknowledging the truth of it as doctrine. You've got to live through the resurrection you you've got to live through that life through that power through its enablement which is given all the more opportunity in weakness which is to the human flesh humiliating everything that is human in this wants to strive on the basis of our ability our strength our clarity our clear-headedness.

We've got it together. God will never allow the greatness of his mysteries to be fulfilled even so much as an iota from that which springs out of man himself with man it is impossible. That's why it's to the glory of god you dear saints that he should triumph in the fulfillment of this extravagant vision to resurrect a nation being brought to a death as the consequence of its own sinful rejection of its own god the breaking of its own covenants that has every reason to be forsaken of god and cast away and discredited.

That's why the first question that paul takes up in romans 11. Has god cast away his people whom he has foreknown. The church thinks that he should have for every reckoning. They've had their opportunity and blown it now let the church take over and and and be the israel of god.

He says god forbid. They should think that that would be your natural tendency to replace israel as if they're finished and have had their chance and have blown it and have full opportunity because that's total human worldly reasoning.

But god is god when he extends mercy to whom he will extend mercy. Not because they're deserving but all the more because they are undeserving. Because what does mercy mean. It cannot. It's not something that is obtained on one's merit.

It's exactly to those who have no merit have no deserving. Because when god extends mercy he's being who he is in himself i am that i am and i will have mercy upon whom i will have mercy i will elect whom i will elect.

And the way that in which i show myself in the utter sovereignty of my own will that can never be conditioned by man or by need is by choosing a nation where which least deserves this consideration. And in that do i display the genius of who i am as i am that i am.

And if i can do this with jews with israel that has blasphemed my name in every nation failed again and again in covenant faithfulness and even now a totally secular nation that is not even willing to consider me in view of their impending destruction.

Then there's hope for any people and any nation anywhere. The issue of israel is the issue of god and it's the issue of the communication of that which alone can be hope for the nations who will observe both israel's judgment uprooting casting out and restoration and return by the mercy of god.

That's why he says in romans 11. By your mercy they may obtain mercy. How many of you dear precious chinese saints have mercy to extend. Where will you find it. It's not a commodity. It's not an abstract aspect of our credo.

But there's got to be a palpable substantial mercy which is the very character of god exuded by chinese singaporean asian saints the jews who will be coming into your midst in greater numbers than you can ever imagine who have been uprooted from nations elsewhere in the world and will find their way here somehow in the mystery of god because he says in amos chapter 9.

I will sift you through all nations. And not the least of the reason for that sifting is to sift you. What will you do if you will find them in your midst uprooted disheveled unkempt cast out broken in spirit absolutely disheveled in not knowing what hit them.

Because when it comes it will come suddenly. And what are they doing in your part of the world. How do they get here by some process of god. God knows. He said i will sift you through all nations so that in the day of my judgment i will separate in the nations the sheep and the goats over one question what did you do with the least of these.

My brethren i want to announce in whatever measure authority i have as a prophetic servant of the most high that this will be your test. This will not be an abstraction and it'll come in your generation and your time.

The conditions for it are already working and it is at the door they themselves don't know it. There's going to be an upheaval of a kind that could hardly be imagined after the nazi holocaust that will eclipse the nazi holocaust and bring the devastation greater than that by which six million jews were systematically annihilated in europe.

But now the extent of this of which jesus spoke in matthew 24 that there's coming a trouble for the nation such as exceeds anything that they have ever previously known nor will again know. And if that time were not cut short no flesh will survive.

But for the elect's sake for the surviving remnant that time will be cut short. Whatever that means i want to tell you if i know anything if i am anything in god that is future but it's a near future.

I think the only thing that prevents its eruption now is your unpreparedness. Everything is in place for jewish catastrophe. But the church is not yet ready to receive them and to extend mercy that they may obtain mercy.

Because the church only knows mercy as a category only as an abstraction only as a article of faith it does not know it substantially as a palpable reality. So how can it extend it. You know what's happening to me right now with my headache and condition i am experiencing the mercy of god.

Can you see it. I should be in bed or some other place where you put old withering men. But if you're receiving anything and it's so critical that you will or you will be doomed to being just another expression of church as it is conventionally known but performing a little better than your neighbor god has a greater destiny for you.

Or i would not be here i would be someplace else. I'm here because his eye is upon you because he's seen the investment the preparation the intention because you're ready and prepared for a word now for what by which you can come of age.

God forbid that you should only be a successful christian work. God forbid he has greater intention than that. You dear saints that touches the issue of forever. How does paul end that of him. Through him and to him are all things to whom be glory for ever.

Eternity Versus the Tyranny of the Present

So i don't know about you chinese because there's something about ancestor worship. Are you. Are you better prepared than caucasians than occidental to understand eternality of things that lie beyond time beyond the present moment.

And at the present moment though it seems so engaging and so total is only a transient thing and a time of preparation for that which is eternal. Brother art. You sound like you're right out of the middle ages.

Isn't that what they thought. That this life is a veil of tears in the time of preparation. And it's all for that which is future and eternal. Yes. And they were right. It's you moderns who are all wrong.

You've bought a bill of goods from the wisdom of the world that has its origin from the pit that says this life is what it's all about success. Now your life you have. You only live once your marriage is unhappy.

Well dump her and try try again. Because there's only the one life that you have now. This is the now generation. Instant. Boy have you been deluded. So the word forever needs to come into your consciousness not just as a category but as a pulsating central consideration that brings the now moment into its present perspective that is appropriate in god's sight.

Or else you will be slaves victims jerked manipulated palpitating for a toyota or something even a little better. Why not. This is only the one life. And how is it measured. And how is it satisfactions obtained by what you possess what you own what you use.

The only thing that will free you from the power of now is the consideration of that which is eternal. You'll never be a great expression of the body of christ until eternity has come into your heart as pastor himself spoke and prayed this morning.

And how do you obtain it. How even the consciousness of it only in conjunction with the mystery of israel and never independent from it or or apart from it. God and his wisdom has locked you in. You're doomed to be merely charismatic and only successful unless you take into your deepest consideration what paul took into his the mystery of israel and the church in the last days.

You cannot be eternally minded and glory forever conscious independent of that mystery. It's all wrapped up together. He'll not allow you to have it separately except as vocabulary. But if you're going to have it actually and existentially it's only in conjunction where he has set the mystery himself.

Am i getting too fancy. Sorry about that. But you'll have the tape to ponder and the pastor and others to elaborate the foundational premises that must come to you through prophetic because it has to do with your foundations.

Paul’s Sorrow and the Prophetic Burden

How much time do i have pastor b. How much. 30. Wow. Oh i don't think i've got that much to say. Well let's begin with the beginning of paul's great mystery chapter 9 just to show you the remarkable sweep of this that ends with an exclamation of unparalleled praise.

We need to begin where paul begins with unparalleled sorrow. Dum-dum-dum-dum. You think this is accidental. You think paul plotted this. No he was only writing to the church at rome. He never thought it would be in the bible.

And not only is it in the bible but it's a text central to the consideration of the church of every age and every location especially the church of the last days. Are you that church. Are you last days conscious.

You think that we're moving toward the end the consummation of the ages. Are you expecting apocalyptic fury of the powers of darkness who know they have but a short time and will ventilate it in the earth and seek to destroy this people.

Why. Because if this people succeeds after ages long apostasy of a return to zion and to the god of jacob then the king who is contained in the heavens in acts 321 waiting for the restoration of all things spoken by the prophet since the world began is released to be the king at zion on the holy hill where god says i have set my king on the holy hill of zion and i've given him the nations and the heathen for his inheritance.

Where am i. Quoting psalm 2 the great eschatological psalm that speaks of a very literal kingdom and rule in the one place in earth where it is appointed which we would not ourselves have chosen. And that one place is zion.

That one place is israel. Not as it is presently constituted but as it will be when the lord will restore them and renew covenant with them in a neverlasting way and give them his holy spirit and forgive them their iniquities in the day of their restoration after they have been rescued and saved out of death by the mercy that they have received through you.

There's no isn't remarkable just as there's no greater exclamation of praise. They call it a pain p-a-e-a-n of praise. And at the end of romans 11 33 for 36. And if you provoke me i'll sing it. That'll be memorable.

But isn't it remarkable. That's something that ends with this ecstatic statement that where paul is beside himself in joy in the depth and riches of what he has seen of the wisdom and knowledge of god because he has seen something more than israel's own restoration.

What has he seen that makes him flip out. He has seen the transfiguration of the church a bride prepared for the bridegroom through the conditions that will will bring the church to its final maturity and preparedness for its own eternal destiny as the bride of the lamb by the crisis brought to it through israel.

Don't get scared. I'm not expecting you to understand me. I am under obligation to speak this later on it will come into your consciousness and into your understanding. Now you can just look bewildered.

This is the prophetic predicament which itself is a suffering and a cross and a form of death. Because what speaker does not want to be gratified by being understood. But after 40 years i still have a wife who's scratching her head.

And one week what kind of husband has she got who never wanted to marry a preacher. And if he if she had to why can't you tell jokes like the others. So there's always a necessary suffering that precedes the glory.

But we need to give at least a few moments remarkable way in which paul opens the heart of the book of romans for which everything now from chapter one through eight was preparation and now commences the elaboration of the great mystery from nine to eleven and ends with this ecstatic outburst of praise.

But it begins with the most pathetic cry of sorrow for his people to the point where he would wish himself accursed. I say the truth in christ. I'm not playing act. I'm not putting on a performance. I'm not getting dramatic.

But paul is saying i lie not my conscience or also bearing me witness in the holy ghost. God knows he's looking upon me. I'm not affecting something. I'm not getting sentimental schmaltzy. I'm not getting emotional for effect.

This is deep in my apostolic consciousness and needs to be so in hours that i have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For i could wish that myself were accursed from christ for my brethren my kinsmen according to the flesh.

Listen dear saints unless the issue of israel begins with this cry the rest cannot follow. There cannot be the great climax or the depth of the riches of joyous exclamation unless it begins with the depth of this sorrow.

And this saves you from shallowness. You're such candidates for shallowness like i've not seen anywhere. What is it about you in this singaporean culture and civilization for which i am the antithesis that is calculated for your shallowness for your reduction to make you either objects of commerce and trade employment to fit into the economy as i was being told yesterday.

So many places was for those who become engineers or lawyers or doctors according to the need of society. I said. How many singaporean students take liberal arts as their major philosophy english literature ethics morality.

I'll bet there's not one in ten thousand who would misspend a university education for the luxury of a subject realm that has nothing to do with personal success. You're on a train you're on a track. You're being groomed for use for exploitation to fit into the economy to produce it and to buy it.