Human, All to Human — Art Katz

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Walking as More Than Mere Humans

I can't remember where I read it. I think it's in Shakespeare. I'm quoting Shakespeare liberally since my arrival. He said, human, all too human. Paul says, why do you walk as mere men? I remember sitting in a room in Denmark, watching the believers coming in for a meeting.

And I was struck with that verse. Why do you walk as mere men? How else should we walk? As sanctified believers who are already trailing clouds of glory with them and giving evidence of a transcendence that is compelling to all who observe you.

You guys fall grievously short of that description. He kind of took the wind out of my sails when I see you corporately as mere men. Very little visible evidence of anything transcendent that would speak of the reality of your Christian lives.

Now, maybe I'm misreading it or it's true. But another impression that I have is that I'm standing before you in the same kind of relationship to which God will one day soon be sending Jewish messengers into the world.

We Jews are called to be a nation of priests and a light unto the world. And I can see how grievously the world lacks that reality. We have failed you and it shows. You need the unique distinctive contribution that God will bring into the nations and into the church by men like myself.

So I'm seeing the evidence of that failure. And you know what the end of it is that because of the input you guys are supposed to come to such a condition as to move unsaved Jews to jealousy. Then a remarkable thing.

I marvel at the Lord's faith. I probably is not a Jew around here in Dunville, but generally speaking, there's a mystery that's waiting for fulfillment of which Paul speaks in the book of Romans that have they stumbled that they should fall God forbid but through their fall salvation has come to the Gentiles.

So as or in order to move them to jealousy. One of the reasons why you guys look as bad as you do. Is because you've not taken that verse to your hearts. You've not received it as a mandate and you've lived beneath the radical requirement that God calls for from you.

That is to say to live in such a way and to exude such a spiritual reality that Jews observing you would be moved to jealousy and envy for what you have that they ought ordinarily to possess and have lost.

Got the idea. You're falling short of your responsibility your mandate and your glory, but don't be satisfied with it. So my job is to make you divinely discontent with things as they are and that you should contend for the faith once and for all given the Saints because if you're not content for it, you'll assuredly lose it even while you retain it.

You'll just be pew sitters. You'll just go about your business without any more distinction than men who are in the world and make no profession of Christ at all. So Lord God forbid that this should be cost you too much to purchase our salvation and you have a greater intention for us than merely filling out our days and avoiding conspicuous sin but not making a mark for you or fulfilling the mystery of the calling that is ours as the church.

So bless this short time and let it be significant for all the future and we thank and give you praise in Jesus name. Amen. Well, I've got some books that you desperately need. This first one is a must apostolic conversion.

Conversion, Truth, and Spiritual Reality

What does it mean to be converted? And I take up the thought many saved but few converted to be converted is a radical turnabout and very few have attained to it or even know that a distinction between being saved and being converted and this is the verbatim transcript of a spoken message given in California to a fellowship that had every appearance of having it together much more externally impressive than yourselves, but still falling short so short that at the end of two nights.

I was ready to throw in the towel. I despaired of going any further. They had an unspoken covenant with God this far and no further and and and the word could would just was coming back into my teeth.

And so we spent the day in fasting and in prayer and this is the message the Lord gave on the third night that brought virtually every single soul down onto their faces and when they got up much later, they were changed and have remained changed.

So this is in several languages. It deserves to be it's remarkable radical word that I commend to you for those who have greater courage and ability spirit of truth. You know, the church is called the ground and pillar of the truth and truth is much more than technical accuracy.

There's a spirit of truth and the way the Lord showed it to me was in Canada when I sat upstairs in the what do you call it the balcony of a Baptist Church brought by a Jewish brother that I should hear his pastor who is a magnificent speaker and I I went tripping with delight to hear a real word preached which is rare and I'm sitting up there listening and my head is nodding in agreement because everything is biblically and doctrinally sound but my spirit is going haywire.

I said why why is this dichotomy this contradiction that my mind approves but my inner man is violently agitated and the answer was that though the words were technically true the spirit of the speaking stank the spirit of the speaking even contradicted the words of the speaking the words were calling the believers to very serious walk, but the spirit of the speaker was saying cool it don't get excited.

You know that I'm not really requiring this of you, but we have an agreement by which you'll supply my parsonage and my standard of living and I'll supply you with a good biblical message every Sunday, but you're not to take that message seriously so as to threaten your lifestyle.

That's what his spirit was saying. Are you in a place where you can distinguish between what is overtly spoken and what is really spoken? Do you have that kind of discernment or would you have been taken in just by the words and would have missed the real truth that was being conveyed this book was born from that one experience and it's a remarkable statement.

This is inspirational reality. And the people I'm told there are people who read it once a year and the Holocaust that there's anyone here who has any interest in the recent. Greatest event of the 20th century the systematic annihilation of 6 million Jews by the most brilliantly civilized Christian nation in the world.

This book addresses that question. Where was God in a tragedy of that kind and there are other books out there, but I just thought to say a few words about these. Well, I want to share with you to begin with.

Psalm 14 and the Necessity of Seeking God

From Psalm 14, which was yesterday's Psalm. What do you mean yesterday's Psalm? I mean that every day. I'm in the Psalms early. It's part of my devotional life with the Lord and I keep up with the Psalms.

Today is the fifth. What is today's date? The fourth so then okay. I'm in the right Psalm or is it the 13th that I want to speak to you? Let's see tomorrow. I'll be reading the 15th Psalm because that's the way it works out in the system that I'm in and then I read the corresponding chapter from the book of Proverbs.

Then there are two or three or four devotional books. There's a time of prayer. I'm even insane enough to take a morning communion by myself. I call it a mini communion a little thimble full of wine even less than a thimble and a little fragment of unleavened bread as a morning to begin the morning that way with God.

In devotion. So I'm reading to you and speaking from Psalm 14, which was my devotional reading and it begins. Fool say in their hearts. There is no God. They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is no one who does good.

The Lord looks down from heaven on mankind to see if there are any who are wise who seek after God. God equates wisdom with seeking after him. They have all gone astray. They are all alike perverse. There is no one who does good.

No, not one. Have they no knowledge all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the Lord. There they shall be in great terror for God is with the company of the righteous and you who would confound the plans of the poor but the Lord is their refuge.

Oh that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion when the Lord restores the fortunes of his people. Jacob will be glad. Jacob will rejoice in Israel will be glad see the our problem is that we would read it just the way I read it and then go on as if we have fulfilled a requirement.

There's reading and reading devotional reading is not just I have done chapter 1 or I read chapters 2 and 3 devotional reading is a reading of another kind where you ponder what God is saying because the word of God and the Psalms especially are another kind of literature.

They're compact. It's they say much in few words. They need to be unpacked. You need the operation of the Spirit of God that inspired the Psalms to gain an understanding of what God was wanting to communicate or you'll miss it entirely.

It'll be dross. There'll be no nutrition. It will be like hay that's been left out too long and is robbed of all of its nutritional content and still has the form of something. Imagine feeding that the cows.

That's the way we're living full say in their hearts. There is no God. They may not articulate that but that's what they believe in their hearts and their conduct reveals it. Because they are corrupt and they do abominable deeds look at the linkage here.

What they say is what they are and what they are is what they do. So your attitude toward God you might be a nominal Christian but in your heart you're living as if God is not effectual. He's not taken in to your consideration.

Life goes on without him. We make our own decisions. Yeah, he's somewhere there but he's not factored in. He's not an effectual God. He's not present. He's not at the center. Nothing is being submitted to him or through him.

We're living independently of him. Although externally we acknowledge there's a God in our hearts and in our practice. What we're actually saying is there is no God and God calls men in that description fools.

And if that's your attitude, it's going to be revealed in your conduct. You're going to what you do will reveal what your secret heart in fact believes you'll do abominably. They do abominable deeds and they are corrupt.

The only thing that saves us from corruption is God. But only if he's effectually taken in if he's effectually considered if he tempers our thought our speech our conduct and all that we do we're saved from corruption.

But if he's only an article of doctrine or something that we give creedal acknowledgement, we will be corrupted even as we believe. There'll be no visible difference between us and Rotarians elk moose or any other kind of fraternal Lodge that makes no profession of knowing God.

We look like them. We talk like them. We are like them. We're corrupt corrupted and our deeds will reveal it. So the Lord looks down from heaven to see if there are any who are wise and what is he looking for?

What what is the factor that designates that he has found someone who's wise? The wise person seeks God. I can tell you from personal experience. There's nothing more difficult. Have you tried it lately seeking God is a requirement of an ultimate kind.

It's a strenuous requirement because everything in the world conspires against it. The phone is ringing off the wall. The kids are crying. The job is waiting. You've got a thousand practical things in your head that need to be considered for the day.

What you're going to get up early when you need your rest and it's yet dark and the house is quiet and you're going to slip out of bed and the warmth of your wife and your bed and all of those things that placate your flesh and you're going to get down on your knees and some quiet drafty place and seek God.

You're a rare believer if you do and God intends that as normative and definitive for every believer a wise man seeks God. He's not sought for us. It shows don't you know how visible that is with you that he's not being sought.

He's not being considered. What does that mean then that you are effectually the Lord of your own life. You're calling the shots. You're making the decisions. You're weighing things up by logic of what you ought to do the pros and cons the balance sheet.

That's the way the world functions. But believers seek God. It's not whether something is logical or that there'll be benefit having weighed up the pros and cons if I go this way rather than that way.

The question is what way would God have you to go often he'll have you to go in a way that is not profitable that is contrary to self-interest and does not and he doesn't even feel that he's obliged to explain to you why he would have you to go that way.

But have you sought him to find him the why seek God and it's painful and costly. It's inconvenient and you can become quite slothful and come to the Sunday morning service having stayed up late at night watching some trying to find polite language and all I can think of is four letter words some stuff on TV and that deadens your spirit and numbs your mind and then you'll come to the Sunday morning service like a lump sitting out there in the pew with a face down to the floor and this poor guy whose salary you're paying is struggling to find some kind of spiritual roulette that will somehow pierce through the denseness of your spiritual life.

That's a fair description of what takes place on Sunday mornings. We're not moving from faith to faith and from glory to glory. You like being passive you like seeking out the back row. You don't want to be a participant.

You don't want to be called on and yet Paul speaking to the early church says when you come together each one has a tongue and interpretation a prophecy a psalm a revelation. That's how the church fed itself.

They weren't looking to a paid functionary to deliver the goods. They look to the each other each one has Paul said where does he get that faith because he knows that God divides by his spirit severally among the believers what he will and believers came expecting to be quickened.

They were not watching the TV Saturday night. They were watching the Lord. They were on their knees. They were seeking the Lord. They were in fellowship. They were anticipating the coming together of the Saints where they expected to hear from God out of each other's mouths and that church was a glory.

The unbelievers were afraid to join themselves to it because the presence of God was so evident. What a contrast with our present condition. So God looks down to see if there are any who are wise who seek after God.

They have all gone astray. They are all alike perverse. There is no one who does good. No not one when God says they are all perverse. It doesn't mean that they have all fall into homosexuality. Just alienation from God even while you continue to be sexually functioning normally in God's sight is perverse.

You're perverse because you have fallen away. It doesn't have to express itself in what we think is perverse because our thinking and God's thinking are two different kinds of thinking and it behooves us to align ourselves with his thought.

He sees us as perverse if we don't seek him. And if you keep up like that, you will in fact become perverse in a way that will be an embarrassment in your own conduct and something you would not want to bring into eternity.

God is the issue of whether we're going to be saved from being corrupt. And the alternative to being sacred is to be profane. How the have they no knowledge all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread.

One of the conspicuous things in history of those who are alienated from God is the opposition and the persecution that they bring to the people of God. And in fact, the history of persecution has come more to the remnant people of God from within the church than from outside of it.

It's those that are nominal Christians who cannot stand an authentically spiritual person. They are offended, irritated, resentful. Instead of being moved and being contrite at the contrast. They want to remove this one whose very presence blows the whistle on the shallowness of their own walk in their own faith.

And if they can't do it in any other way, they'll remove that one by killing him. And claim they're doing God a service. So the end of those people will be great terror. But God is with the company of the righteous.

You know how you can know whether you're in the right place in God? And you're righteous. Righteousness seeks out the company of other believers. Enjoys the fellowship. There's no such thing as a solo virtuoso Saint.

If you're righteous, the very nature of the life of God, which is your righteousness, draws you to others who are in that life and God sees them as the company of the righteous. Because you're in a right relationship with God, you'll automatically and naturally be in right relationship with believers as the company of the faith.

The church. And for those people, the Lord is their refuge. Look at the last line of verse 6. The Lord is their refuge. Not what he provides, but what he is, is their refuge. How many of us can say that?

That whatever circumstances are round about us and however frightening, I can tell you that we need to brace ourselves for the frightening things that will come upon the earth in the last days. It says men's hearts will fail them for fear as they see what is coming upon the earth.

Economies are going to collapse. We're going to see racial rioting. There's such a proliferation of Muslims in all Western countries, including Canada, who are just waiting and itching for the first opportunity to spill out their vindictive hatred upon the Jew and upon the Christian.

We're going to see bloodshed. We're going to see violence. We're going to see the most corrupt, perverse, demonic generation as the age comes to its end. Men's hearts will fail them for fear, except those for whom the Lord is their refuge.

How do you come to a condition where this invisible God constitutes your safety, your place of security, your abiding? No matter what is external, he is your refuge. This is the language of the psalmists and it's not imaginative language.

It's the statement of the truth of their knowledge of God. He can be this for anyone who seeks him. Effectually and regularly, the Lord becomes a refuge. He is your safety. He is your sanity. He is your wisdom.

Then the psalm ends. Oh, that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion. When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, Jacob will rejoice, Israel will be glad. Well, we know from the present situation in Israel and the condition of Jews in the world.

It's lamentable and it will get worse. Pathetic. Their deliverance does not issue from themselves, but from Zion. Who is this Zion? The Zion of God from whom deliverance comes, that the deliverer will come out of Zion and take transgression from Jacob.

Paul says in Romans 11, Zion are the righteous, the company of the righteous, the true believers, those that walk with God, those who seek him. Somehow out of that reality will come deliverance for Israel and for the Jews.

And when that deliverance comes and they are restored and they'll be gladness and rejoicing, then Israel will again be, or maybe for a first time be, to the world and to the nations God's intention, a nation of priests and a light unto the world.

Their deliverance comes out of from you, if you will be the Zion of God and not a bunch of lackluster guys who can't be distinguished from Rotarians or any other fraternal order. Their deliverance comes out of your Zion when you will be the Zion of God and their return through that deliverance blesses all the families of the earth.

Deliverance Through Fasting, Prayer, and Spiritual Authority

Well, I still have a little time. There's a message that the Lord has quickened for me in Mark chapter 9. It's in other of the Gospels about that young man brought by his father for deliverance. Here's talk about deliverance coming out of Zion.

This young man is a lifelong epileptic, foaming at the mouth and being thrown at will by the powers of evil into the fire and into the water. And Jesus has just come down the Mount of Transfiguration with his two disciples and sees the whole commotion and wants to find out what's going on and he's told that this father has brought this son for deliverance to his disciples and the disciples were unable to cast it out.

So he said to the father, how long has this been going on and the father says since childhood you get the impression that there's a particular vendetta a a malicious intention from evil against this particular child that has been seeking since childhood not just to harass him but to destroy him and now in this last time is just about succeeding and the power of evil is so great on this hapless life that the disciples though they had been successful before remember he sent them out as 70 and they came back that even the the devils are obedient to us.

They could not cast this one out but Jesus did and later they said to the Lord how is it that we could not cast this one out? Oh, he said because this kind this ultimate kind this finally perverse kind that has bent an intent upon the destruction of this young man this kind cometh not out but by fasting and by prayer.

This is a picture for us of our of the last days requirement that will come before us all of the events of Jesus's life are a kind of parable for the last days. They are an instruction for us upon whom the ends of the age have come.

We mustn't just read them as episodes out of the life of Jesus and how interesting but what is the implication? What is God saying to us who are the disciples of the last days and before whom this child is going to be brought whom the devil has been seeking to destroy since infancy which I see as a picture of Israel itself and we can see the satanic forces that are mounting and are bent upon the destruction of this child and have kept it both from hearing and from speaking this child is mute and dumb and that's Israel historically and in modern times we can't hear we can't speak we are not in the place of priestly service to God because the powers of darkness have been consistently doing a number upon us and we can't save ourselves out of that predicament we're finished except a deliverance come out of Zion bring him to me Jesus said and he commanded the demon spirit to let him go and we read that the demon spirit took its sweet time it had to obey the commandment of the Lord in his authority but not before it performed a last shaking of this hapless victim that when he was finished and the demon spirit came out and left him they said he's dead.

He's a corpse he's finished. This killed him and says Jesus stretched forth his hand and raised him up. Why couldn't we do that? Because this kind will not come out except by fasting and by prayer. That doesn't mean prayer as a method or fasting as a system.

It means this kind will not budge until there's an authority expressed from the one who is delivering that is comparable to and equal to God himself. If you have a faith less than that and a relationship with God less than that you can say in Jesus name in Jesus name till you're blue in the face.

And that kid will lay there foaming at the mouth. And as good as dead we need more than a slogan. What this amounts to in the last analysis is a confrontation between two ultimate realities. The reality of Satan which is visible and fearful and intimidating.

Foaming at the mouth thrown into the fire helpless, rattled like a rag doll in a dog's mouth. Finished. And what is going to command that demon to cease that activity that's been at this kid since infancy, since childhood, since birth is a greater authority than the powers of darkness expressed through disciples.

Well okay Lord I can pray for somebody with a sniffle but don't ask me to pray for someone in a wheelchair or someone jerking with spasms and epileptic fits and furies. My faith is not equal to that task.

How come? Because you've not moved from faith to faith. Because you have unlike Jesus and John the Baptist not grown in spirit and in stature. Because you don't have a residue of past obediences that have built up in your inner man that gives you a density of of Christian character and reality and authority that even the demon spirits have to acknowledge.

They know whom to fear. Maybe the greatest prophecy that has ever been spoken over me and there have been many was that the powers of darkness would tremble at you. Art tremble at your laying on of hands, tremble at your prayers.

Don't measure your Christian success by how impressed men are with you. Measure your Christian success by how much the powers of darkness are in fear of you. And last night I said to the church Jesus we know the powers say.

And Paul we know. But the church at Dunville who? They know whom to fear. They see right through you. They know how transparent you are. They know the truth of your spiritual life. And when you'll say in the name of Jesus I command you to come out of them.

They go oh what else is new? There's no authority in your command. You're speaking out of your flesh out of well-meaning intention. But you have not the authority that Jesus expressed. And where did Jesus get it?

He got it by rising up while it was yet dark and in a mount apart he sought the father. Not just for the agenda for the day but for the communion for the day. This kind comes not out but by prayer which has gone beyond petition and is into the realm of communion and fellowship with God.

Listen you guys something happens when you get up at five or six every morning and seek the Lord that you of which you may not be aware. Not only are you praying and giving the Lord your petitions and having a time in the word but you're in his presence.

Something is being communicated something is being wrought. So a residue something is being filled up. And when it comes time to of a critical kind where authority needs to be asserted it's remarkable.

To what degree you have it. In exact proportion as you have been in communion with the God who is authority. In the last analysis what we are about at the end of the age is one reality in opposition to the other.

And the question is which of these two realities will be triumphant. The reality of the invisible God to whom the church calls Lord. Or the reality of the prince of this world. The powers of darkness that have held sway unbrokenly and uninterruptedly throughout all the generations.

Where is who's going to triumph. And God is putting all of his eggs in one basket. The church the believers the company of the righteous is the Zion of God through whom that deliverance and final showdown is going to take place.

But we will fail as the disciples of Jesus failed if we ourselves do not have an authority and a knowledge of God comparable to the Lord's. And we will not have it if we don't seek him. We're lazy indolent slothful.

We got plenty of time for the ballgame and the golf course and the fishing trip. But when it comes to the Lord we are very derelict. And I I want to save you guys from an eternal embarrassment. Those that know their God will do great exploits it says in the scripture.

But this knowledge is not cerebral. This knowledge is not doctrinal. It's the knowledge of God that comes only in one place out of an intimacy of communion when you'll sacrifice your your sleep and and and and bodily pleasure to be in the place of communion in the early morning hour seeking the Lord.

The deliverance of Israel waits upon it. The deliverance of the world waits upon it. The final defeat of the enemy will come from those who know their God morning by morning. Like for me this morning 4 .30 a .m.

Spiritual Growth Through Daily Obedience

For you guys here are some scriptures that I considered this morning out of the early chapters of Luke. Jesus grew and became strong in spirit. Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in divine and human favor of John the Baptist says the child grew and became strong in spirit if John the Baptist the quintessential prophet had to grow if Jesus himself had to grow in spirit and in stature.

What about us? I know you're growing in circumference but are you growing in spirit? There's a density and a weight. Some of us are lightweights in spirit and some of us are heavyweights. It all depends on the kind of personal history that you have with the Lord.

I can't say thus saith the Lord but I've been around for 36 years as a believer all over the world and I would say that every act of obedience to God particularly that one that costs us in sacrifice or humiliation brings a certain measure of the reality of God into the inner man.

Failed obediences or neglected obedience leaves us blank. We grow by faithfulness to the Lord from obedience to obedience particularly where there's sacrifice misunderstanding reproach suffering. Any willing obedience to God that costs like that will bring a measure of the residue of God with every such act.

Have you got a history with God? To what obediences have you been called? In Dunville? Well, I don't know. I'm not all over the world the way you are. Well, aren't there things that God is wanting to perform here?

How would you know what they are except you have sought Him? You thought your business was your own or your job or your profession. You didn't know that that was a very provision for God not for your sustenance and and putting clothing on your back and a roof over your head and caring for the family but as a redemptive means of God to penetrate this community.

This is the end of the age. Life and death is hanging in the balance. There are people that are going to perish unless there's a penetration from God in the place where they are. And I was saying to Mike we're sitting in the front pew waiting for you guys to come in.

Resisting the Deception of Ordinary Life

There's nothing more deadening to the spirit more deceitful no greater deception no greater opposition to God than the ordinariness of the everyday Canadian community. I'm looking around driving through these streets.

Hey, this is pretty nice. This is the best of all worlds. This is tidy. Why? It gives a certain impression which is actually deceiving. It does not at all indicate that there's a cosmic struggle going on that's coming to its conclusion at the end of this age in our generation.

It gives the appearance that there's no struggle at all that having a house and a car and a job is what the whole life is about. There's no subject no thought of eternity and no one has pressed that upon the consciousness of Dunville.

They're living in a fool's paradise of deception and saying in their hearts there is no God for they've never seen any effectual demonstration even in the church that there is a God. This deadliness of the conventional world about us needs to be resisted and recognized and identified as as much threatening to the faith as any kind of demonic attack more deadly because it appears natural and conventional and enjoyable.

But it's the world and all that is in the world is the lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh and the pride of life and those who love the world are at enmity with God. In the Seminaries of God pastor came down to the basement one day in Illinois.

I was speaking to the college age group and he said to the brother who invited me later he said, I've never heard anyone who more hates the world than this cat's because I know whose world it is. It's the prince of this world and it's vile subtle powerful deadly.

It conspires against the truth. It wants to keep men in a condition of unbelief and send them to their eternal peril without any awareness. So, I'll just repeat this. Every obedience at sacrifice every humiliation suffered in faithfulness to God every act of seeking all that is God would and across the grain and tenor of the world and the flesh promotes growth brings increase in the knowledge of God which is beyond articulation.

This knowledge those that know God will do great exploits is not a head knowledge. It's an inward knowledge. It's a sense of God as he in fact is as being greater than the visible intimidation of the powers of darkness and their demon activity thrashing this kid back and forth and throwing him on the fire as dead foaming at the mouth.

The inward sense that you have of God though invisible is greater than that visible demonstration. Where did you get it? Daily communion in fasting and in prayer. Fasting is not only the denial of food it's the denial of sleep.

It's the denial of pleasure of self-gratification and that's what it costs to seek God. It leaves a residue in our inward depths an increase in spirit and spiritual stature and authority in God that resonates against this world's darkness and compels it to flee retract, diminish and brings the greater reality into being.

It's worth getting up for to get thoughts like that. I want to pray for you guys. Oh Lord, save us from a men's breakfast. Save us from a little inspirational address that leaves us unchanged. Pierce us through.