Turning Aside to See — Art Katz

Channel: Sermon Index

Tender as I'm getting older, or are you just looking better? I'm impressed with the saints of New Zealand and with the nation. So I'm a privileged man. And Lord, how do I rate that you have allowed me this privilege to stand before this people and to bring your word?

Stunning, an astonishment. So let them hear your voice, Lord, not just your words, the voice of your speaking, and become so attuned to it. And love, my God, your accent, the intonation, the spirit of your speaking, and spoil us, and we thank you.

Save us from mere successions of Sundays. May we be waiting to come in, Lord, breaking into the house of God, knocking the door down in our eagerness, anticipation to be met by the living God and to receive the word appointed.

You guys realize what this is about? Oh, God forbid it should ever be reduced to predictable religion. So, my God, shake who needs to be shaken, wake who is sleeping, and then altogether, Lord, come and give us the event that your word is.

And we thank and give you praise for the privilege of a God, a living God who speaks, and speaks with effect, speaks with purpose, has ends to serve, and has called us to them in Yeshua's holy name. Amen.

Moses at the Mountain and the Burning Bush

Well, I started last night with Moses, and I can't get away from him. So, I think this is a two-part series. If you missed it last night, everything is recorded. It was Moses being called up to the mount of God.

Come up unto me and be there. So, the two critical words for this congregation and through you, the church at New Zealand, is to be and to see. This morning, Moses turned aside to see a burning bush. I'm just struck with remarkable parallels.

I'm turning it over on my tongue, enjoying it. I want to edify myself in what I'll hear out of my own mouth this morning. I've never seen these parallels quite this way. The mountain wreathed with fire, come up and be there, and the burning bush to see.

The same God, the same fire, one in a remarkable, terrifying, give me a word, terrifying display. Too modest. A sensational exhibition of God. And then, Moses' whole inception and call into the remarkable thing to which he's called nothing less than to deliver his nation, to confront Pharaoh, the ultimate enemy of God.

Moses feeling himself terribly inadequate. He's a failed man because he took a shot at it once before, 40 years before, to rectify the visible wrong. After all, he saw his kinsmen being pummeled by those Egyptians, and he interceded by killing an Egyptian.

It says he looked this way and that way, and he didn't see any human thing to interfere, and he went and he slew the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. Then his crime was detected, and he had to flee, and 40 years in the wilderness.

Only the Lord knows what those 40 years contained. Are you astonished at the brevity of Scripture? It's so absolutely terse, T-E-R-S-E. I never fail to stagger at how much God can say in so few words, so unlike us.

We're so loquacious. We tumble out at the mouth with such volumes, with such sparse content, and God is exactly the reverse. So few words and such content. Just listen to this, Exodus chapter 3. Now Moses kept the flock.

Hey, let's just stay right there. Moses kept the flock. You know, what is it with me this morning? I'm just in one of those remarkably tender moods, appreciating your pastor, appreciating all pastors.

So often my adversaries, men who are suspicious of this prophetic personality, should we even allow him in? And I'm just feeling so remarkably benevolent and kindly disposed toward pastors, churches, institutions.

You better pray for me. I think I'm losing my sharp edge. But here's the point. I have a profound respect for those who keep the flock. Hot shots like me come and go. We're a flash and we're somewhere else tomorrow.

But the man who's there every day, the patient week after week attention to the flock, commands my respect and my esteem. And the first verse of Moses begins with that. Moses kept the flock. And when the angels had to announce the advent of the birth of Christ in the city of Bethlehem, the message did not come to the high priest or to the religious establishment.

It came to the shepherds who kept the flock by night. So there's something about keeping the flock that is dear to God's heart. Just this regular patient attention is as maybe it's more commendable than the exciting and occasional prophetic proclamation, which is altogether important.

But that's steady keeping of the flock. I'm just so grateful for men like that, not being a pastor myself. So he kept the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the backside of the desert and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.

And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. And he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why this bush is not burnt.

And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses, and he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither, put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

Moreover, he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people, which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.

I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land and unto a good land, unto a lodge, unto a land flowing with milk and honey, unto the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites.

And now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come unto me. And I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppressed them. Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

And Moses said unto God, Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, Certainly I will be with thee, and this shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee.

When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God upon this mountain. If I sat down now and did nothing but read that glorious text, that is sufficient for the service. But to do this any justice and give this any kind of commentary and examination will require three days.

Did you bring your lunch? We must not rush this. This this is awesome. Even the word sent you. I have sent thee because that's the apostolic distinctive. That's what the word apostolic means sent. God does not debate with Moses when Moses defers and said, Who am I that I should go?

God Sends the Unqualified

Oh, don't get carried away with this false modesty. You're a prince of Egypt and you are a man of astounding credentials of a Levitical kind. You have all of all that is required. And God does not in any way dispute with Moses.

He agrees with him. You're not qualified. Your qualification is a disqualification. You're not even being allowed to go on the basis of your commiseration with your own people. Look what it got you 40 years ago.

It only ended up with a dead Egyptian and the requirement of your flight. When you're moved by your own identification or compassion or concern, it results in death. I will send you. Their cry has come up to me.

You're not to go because you have seized upon something that needs to be rectified and the need that needs to be met. You're going because you're sent. It's remarkable when we leap from here right into the book of Acts and examine the first apostolic sending in Acts 13.

It's identically the same. The voice of the Lord, the spirit of God coming into the congregation at Antioch. Separate unto me Paul and Barnabas for the work where unto I have called them. The work is not even identified.

Separate unto me men who are already separated, not from their ethnic and national prejudices, but even from their own religious ambition. That it does not matter where they're sent or even when they're sent.

As a matter of fact, they would have been just as content to remain in the place of worship unto the Lord, which is what was taking place when the call came. But to be sent is to turn the world upside down because God says, I will be with you.

It took 40 years to empty Moses of the very credentials that would have impressed us and thought him qualified to be the one to be sent. But after those qualifications were negated by 40 years in the backside and out of circulation, and a man comes to the consciousness that he has nothing and is nothing and can say with Paul, I'm the least of all saints, then God will send.

See why we're not sent? We're presumptuous. We're ambitious. And we even find many causes that are worthy of our attention. But God says, the affliction of my people has come up before me. I have seen.

I have heard. Now I send you. You don't go because you have seen. You go because you're sent. This will save you, dear saints, from last day's deception, from running hither and yon in the multitudinous needs that will be omnipresent, that will engage you, that you think you need to attend if you don't wait on God who sends.

You see how instructive this is? This isn't just a little moment in historical time quaint for us to examine how the call of Moses came. It's replete with timeless wisdom in the way of God that changes not.

I will send you. So what was God waiting for? Something had to come from Moses that was critical. And I believe it's this. When he saw the burning bush, I will see why this bush burns, but it's not consumed.

This great site. Verse three, I will now turn aside and see this great site and why the bush is not burnt. You want to know what the true apostolic credential is? The disposition not to pass something over and to disregard it because it's only a bush.

But not only to turn aside to see, but not for novelty's sake, but to ask why the bush burns, but is not consumed. I'm astonished that my Jewish people, so sophisticated, so erudite in so many areas of learning and expertise and knowledge and business.

But when it comes to the things of eternity, they are so infantile. They're biblical ignoramuses. And I condemned, I point my finger in their chest and I say, I can't believe how little sincerity and concern and interest you have in truth.

For all of the way, painstaking way you'll invest yourself in career and business, culture, academic academia. When it comes to the issues of God and eternity, you're dum-dums. What is it with you? Why aren't you serious enough about life?

Then the rest will follow. If only you're serious enough about life, the rest will follow. But if you're casual in the New Zealand, Australian mode, you'll miss it. And you'll miss it in the place where God waits to be found.

Finding God in the Ordinary

Not in the spectacular, but in the ordinary, in the bush, in the everyday. That's where he waits to be discovered. He's burning. The reason that that bush is not consumed is because he doesn't need it for fuel.

He's a self-existent God, but he's abiding in the midst of the ordinary. And that's exactly where we're missing him. We've overlooked. We've not turned aside to see. We've not been occupied with the ingredients, the raw material in which God abides.

And to find him there is to find him ultimately and deeply and profoundly. To miss that is to have God as a slogan, is to use the name Jesus as a catchword, is to have a body of doctrine and a credo, but you don't have the substance, the vitality, the reality of God as God.

If you haven't found him in the midst of the bush, if you've not turned aside to see, and every one of you have opportunity in those failed occasions, in those distasteful things, in those frightening things like failed marriage, divorce, family breakup, children have gone astray or freaked out, difficulties in the fellowship and we've left it to go elsewhere where we don't have to face problems of that kind.

Oh, I'm just scratching the surface. There's not a soul in this room or in this nation who has not had an occasion in some circumstance of their life where they could have found God in such a revelation of himself that would have been for them a calling if they had but turned aside to see.

No, we pass it on. It's uncomfortable. We don't, this strange phenomenon. Better keep your nose clean. Do you use that expression in New Zealand? Don't take any risk because, listen, we've got this thing nicely planned and it's working well and we have a Sunday service and our business and everything is nicely arranged in a respectable and polite Christian way.

Let's not risk it by turning aside to see a strange phenomenon, let alone we should turn aside to see to ask why. So the Holocaust could take place and six million of my people can go up like a crisp with smoke in ovens, not in some backwater nation of a primitive kind, but the most illustrious civilization of all nations.

Germany, the land of Goethe, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Wagner. Who's the great ethicist, the moral imperative, Kant? Hey, how come you never once asked the question, how come? Why don't you ask why?

Why do you let history take place as if it's some accumulation of accidents, strange aberrations that we can cluck our tongue for a moment and turn the page to the sports section or turn on the telly or go and have a cup of tea as if nothing has happened.

No wonder we have a little impact in the nation. No wonder we're dismissed as a little Sunday addendum that the world will allow you to indulge because you constitute no threat. You have no consequence.

You're just a pleasant little entity. You're not a prophetic presence. You're not an apostolic presence. You're not sent into the world. Why should you be sent? What can you convey? What can you bring?

You have not the requisite condition of being for which God will call your name because you have not turned aside to see. You've let the divorce take place and you've married again or whatever it is and you sweep it under the carpet.

You have not even derived the wisdom of why the thing failed. So you carry the seeds of it with you into the new situation which hopefully you'll not have to experience if this time by accident and circumstance you're more temperamentally disposed to each other.

But you've lost a value. You've lost a significance. You've lost meaning. Am I bawling you out? Well, I'm not just addressing you. I'm addressing the entire Church of New Zealand and more than that New Zealand itself because you need to recognize, dear saints, the powers of darkness that prevail over your nation and will allow you the modicum of comfort and security that you enjoy, will allow that to continue so long as you don't become troublesome and ask questions and look to see the root of the matter or why something is taking place or is not taking place and you're quite content that one day should be like another and one Sunday like another.

You're not concerned for meaning. You're not concerned for value. You don't ask why. When God saw a man turn aside to see, oh, it must have warmed his heart because that's rare. Well, my book on the Holocaust is out there.

What a devastating statement. What a theme, what a thesis that the Holocaust was not some aberration of history that would not have taken place if that madman Hitler had not been born, but quite the contrary, that the madman Hitler was quite in keeping with the sovereign purpose of God in order to fulfill judgments spoken in our Hebrew scriptures that would befall us in the latter days if we didn't turn and recognize our covenant failure and that the sins of our fathers as our own and seek Him.

These are the things that would happen in the latter days. And because I have turned aside to look in to the fire of the judgment of the Jewish nation, painful, I can tell you it's painful. I have visited virtually every concentration camp and place of extermination in Europe, every opportunity.

I've been in Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Bergen, Belsen, you name it, I've been there. I rub my face into the grit of the horror of that death, not because I'm some masochist who wants to luxuriate in self-pity for the demise of my Jewish people, but because I want to know and I want to understand lest these tragedies take place again because God is wanting to communicate something.

If we have not received it in a word, then we have to experience it in fact. You know what the rabbis say about Moses, why God so honored Moses and said, Moses, Moses, when he turned aside? Sometimes the rabbis get it right, not often.

But here they say, when a man turns aside to see, there's no assurance that he'll ever be able to turn back again to where he was before. There you go. Boom. There goes your nice evangelical pet doctrines and the way that you have understood the faith.

Once you turn aside and see this, God in the midst of fire, in the midst of a humble, ordinary burning a bush, you'll not come back to where you were before. Things will be changed radically. Who knows that if your name then is called, that's the end of your stable career, location, business, an uprooting, a moving, ascending.

So better to not even take the risk and circumvent and not look. And that's where you are. Nice Christian respectability. But meanwhile, there are numbers who are groaning in Egypt and feeling the lash.

I'm speaking metaphorically, of course, but they're building phantom cities for a pharaoh and spitting out their life, their energy, their time. They're losing their minds, their insanity. They're suffering tumors and cancers and mental breakdowns, emotional upset.

They're ravaged all around us in the world. And who is going to deliver them? But one who is sent because God sees that he's turned aside. If Moses had not turned aside to see this fire in this bush, he would not subsequently have been invited up to the Mount, wreathed in fire, to be with God.

Come up unto me and be here. There's a seeing and a being, saints, that is critical to life. This is life. If you don't see and you don't be, what then are you? The seeing and the being is salvation because people are living lives of futility.

I'm trying to think of the quotation from an American philosopher. All men live lives of quiet desperation. It may be quiet, but it's still despair. I understand that suicide is a problem in New Zealand.

Your statistics are outrageous. And probably the instances of divorce in the church like America are as great as those in the world. There's a world dying, saints. There's a world in darkness. There's a world that does not know how to live, does not know how to be, does not know how to see, doesn't know how to examine.

It has no purpose. No wonder that they take their lives. There's no meaning, no significance. And we were made for exactly that. Don't you know? This is salvation, is to have purpose, meaning, call, understanding, significance.

Our days are not a mere succession of days. We're not just a manipulable thing to be consumers. We have purpose in God. In this life, there are things to come. There are things that need to be transacted.

There's an Israel that's going to be tested and brought through a time of Jacob's trouble. There's a church that must anticipate, be ready, and be able to communicate with this people and explain to them even why they're suffering the ultimate distress that they will.

So, may we be a people who will turn aside to see and ask why. God waits to be asked. And the moment that Moses turned aside, his name was called twice. Moses, Moses. I think the commentators say, when your name is called twice, tremble.

It's an ultimate call and one that will eventuate not only in your suffering but likely your death. It's a historic and ultimate call. But ultimacy is what everything is about. Can you imagine a church that is only pedestrian and predictable and not ultimate?

We ought to be conveying a reality of an ultimate kind. Not just waiting for the kingdom to come. It is here already. Not waiting for eternity. We're in it now. There's something about our faces, our eyes, our voice, our manner that indicates that we have been taken into something of a remarkable and eternal kind.

And that it needs to be communicated to those who are dying everywhere around us from boredom. The sociologists say, from Anwi, E-N-N-U-I. It means purposelessness. And the thing that underlie the rise of Nazism was an abject sense of purposelessness.

Nihilism. I'm getting fancy with you guys this morning. But it doesn't hurt. It's long overdue. You should know these words. Nihilism. Because it's taking place now in New Zealand. Nihilism. It's such a total loss of meaning and purpose that you're a candidate for anything.

It'll start with perforations in your nose and your belly button and your lip and eyebrow. But where does it stop? After tattoos. And after that novelty works off, what other new bizarre and novel thing for the board?

Those kids that we're raising up and whom we have not engaged in the most holy faith are the candidates for the neo-Nazis of this last days. What does God tell us in the last days? Perilous times shall come.

Men shall be lovers of self and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Without natural affection, despises of that which is good. Hateful to their parents. Hey, we're raising up such a generation.

They are incapable even of remorse. They don't know pity. They don't know compassion. They can murder. They can carve themselves up. They can perform the most bizarre things. They are in a nihilistic frame of mind in a world for them that is absent from meaning and purpose because we have not conveyed it.

We have not engaged them. We have not persuaded them that what we are about is ultimate and worthy of their attention and their consecration because we ourselves have not turned aside. We're bourgeois.

We're middle class. We are affirming of things as they are. We like the things that are respectable, polite, nice, pleasant. And we're not willing for agitation. We don't want to be disturbed. It's a rare pastor who will allow a man like me to come and get the congregation ruffled without ending on a pleasant note and tying up the message with a pretty ribbon at the end so you have it all complete in one session because, of course, you've got to go home happy.

Isn't that why you've come? You certainly are not going to go home agitated. Well, I think a little agitation would not hurt New Zealand a bit. And I'd love to be an agent to that end because you have a destiny, dear saints, that is not going to be fulfilled on the basis of middle class Christian respectability.

You'll have to be sent once. And he will be with you as he was with Moses because you've turned aside to see knowing that you'll not go back to where you were before. Something is going to be revealed in that seeing that puts in jeopardy all that you have previously understood.

However correct that understanding is, it's not correct enough. Because what it lacks is the dynamic of the reality of God himself as is to be found most profoundly in the fire, in judgment, in the holocaust, in the thing that we have passed over because it was ordinary and trivial and we didn't think it was worthy of our consideration or it was distasteful and painful and we didn't have the stomach to occupy ourselves with it.

We've missed God. He waits to be found in the midst of that bush. So, there's a nice book out there. My own. And I was looking it over. What I'm saying about Moses is about as good a commentary as I've seen anywhere.

I recommend it to you because I like to read something more than merely hear it. And it says there's something in God's heart that is tenderly disposed to those who watch the flock by night. That what's in God's heart was this morning in my heart who are dutiful, faithful, and unprepossessing.

Shepherding sheep was the most disgraceful vocation in Egypt. Nothing lower in Egyptian value than tending flocks. And that's what Moses did for 40 years. But there is something that is served in monotony and regularity and something that is predictable, that has no variation, that lacks any kind of flamboyance or charismatic excitement, but requires a steadfast patience of faithful performance day after day after day.

Be careful for the flamboyant and attractive things that are knocking at the door, usually coming from America. It's a vapor. It'll pass. But the thing that is in the ordinary... There's something in my heart this morning about the ordinary.

If you want a title for this message, the celebration of the ordinary. Because the ordinary is extraordinary. Because God is in the midst of that very bush. Of all the things in which he could have resided and flamed out in majestic oaks and impressive trees, he chooses a scrub bush.

And that he inhabits in the midst. He's trying to tell us something. That the ordinary is not to be dismissed. It's extraordinary. Well, I'm just an ordinary Christian. Oh, fancy that. What a contradiction in terms.

There's no such thing as an ordinary Christian. By definition, a Christian is extraordinary. Oswald Chambers says a Christian is a sacramental personality. And it's a sacrament for the nation. To bless the nation, you're an endowment.

You're a blessing. You're very presence. Your look, your word, your gesture is a sacrament to an entire secular and unbelieving nation. If you're a sacramental personality. And not a bump on the log. So, 40 years in the backside of the desert is a wonderful preparation for apostolic sending.

One man told me, when he read my introduction... This is the introduction. Wait till you get to the rest of this. You'll not go back to where you were before, I'll tell you. He said, when I came to the word, backside of the desert, it leaped off the page.

That Mount Horeb and the Mount of God is not on the front side. It's not where the neon lights are and the most exciting Christian personalities and televangelists and men who have international reputations if you can only touch their jacket, which they throw off and fling into the congregation.

God is on the backside. The scrubby, little, unattractive and unexplored. That's where he is. That's where the Mount, the holy place is. That's where Moses was apprehended by him. So, you have to make a choice.

Where are you going to feed the flock? The front side? The most recent fad? What is it now? Church growth? Power evangelism? Chasing God? What's the most recent thing that has some titillation and a note of excitement?

You'll not find God there. He's in the backside where he has ever and always been waiting for those who will tend the flock and bring it there. Do we have a stomach for such a place? And can we be weaned away from the front side with all of its four-color brochures and all of the other attractive glitter that draws us to the wrong side?

Big stars, names, activity. So, God is Horeb. You know what that word means? Mount Horeb? Shrub, dryness, arid. Nothing that tantalizes the flesh. Nothing attractive or opulent for the eye. Because he's the God of humility.

And it's this revelation alone that can save men out of Egypt. Those that are dying everywhere about us and are building cities with spilling out their lives of pointless labor need to be saved. Not by something of a...

What's the word? Dramatic kind. But the revelation of God as he in fact is. That knowledge is salvation. To know God is life eternal. And he's in the backside. Because he himself is simple. And we're going to be breaking bread and having communion this morning.

I trust it's not leavened. Flat. Unprepo... Imposing. Nothing opulent for the eyeball or sensational for the taste. The simplicity of Christ himself. Does this sound like a paradox? Here I'm talking simplicity of God and that a Christian is a sacramental personality.

That the ordinary is the glorious. The weakness of God is greater than the strength of men. And the foolishness of God is greater than their wisdom. Egypt was the epitome of human wisdom and civilization.

But Horeb is the antithesis in the wilderness and in the backside. That's where God is and that's where salvation is. Good book. But the price has just gone up. So when God says, Moses, Moses, what does Moses say?

Answering the Call With “Here Am I”

Here's the man who turns aside to see, to ask the question why, now responds in a way in complete keeping with what the texture and quality and character of the man himself is. Moses, Moses, here am I.

Hineni, here am I. Oh dear saints, do you understand what that means? Here am I, no holds barred, no conditions required, no strings, no attachments, no guarantees required, no assurances. Here am I, your God.

And here am I, a man, I'm a piece of earth and dust. You've called. Here, do with me what you will. I don't even know how to speak. I stutter. I'm a failure. For 40 years I've been brooding over my failure.

I'm not worth anything. You're going to send me. Here am I. Have you ever said that once? Once. And all of your believing wife pulled out every stop without any reservation, without any need for assurance or guarantee, and made yourself totally disposable to God.

Here am I. I think Egypt would have been rocked and shocked and affected long before if this kind of reply to God had been spoken by his people. We're full of reservation, don't you know? Full of limitations, full of conditions.

We don't articulate them, but they're there. Yes, he's Lord, but not for everything. Just the major things, like the world and its political crises, but the little things like career, what I do with my money, my leisure, my retirement, my choice, my marriage.

That's my business. And if he interferes, I will... What's the word when you have a veto power? We have never prostrated ourselves before God in the totality that he deserves without any thought about what it will mean for us, what the consequence will be.

He's free to uproot us. He's free to send us to Pharaoh. That's terrifying. Pharaoh is the ultimate God of this world, but I will be with you. You know what, dear saints? If you think that this is just a quaint sermon, you are mistaken.

You know what this is? This is a flaming bush. Are you looking? Are you hearing? Are you turning aside? And are you hearing your name called? Are you willing that your name should be called here this morning that only you can hear?

And oh, God did that for Moses, but I'm not expecting he'll do it for me. Do you know why I'm saved? Out of atheism and ex-Marxist communist card-carrying radical? Because in Jerusalem 37 or 38 years ago, May 26, 1964, I walked into a bookstore being lost, and they sold Bibles and New Testaments.

And I looked at that woman's Jewish face. I said, what is this place? Oh, she said, this is our bookstore joining our chapel. We're a congregation of Messianic believers, Jewish believers in the Messiah, Jesus.

What? Didn't know there was such a thing. There are others upon whose neck Jesus had breathed beside mine. And in that moment, a voice heard only by me, ought, knew me. That calling me by name was so unequivocally an assurance that I'm hearing from the God with whom I have to do who knows me.

Ought, you are not to leave. The first speaking direct to my life in my 35th year as Jewish atheist is a commandment. You are not to leave. The one who led the first strike in the U .S. Army in our training and a rebel from the beginning, hears God once calling him by name and obeys without question.

Four days and nights with Pentecostal Jews. What an induction into the faith. To watch Jews with their hands above their heads, praising God in their sleeves pulled back into tattooed numbers from the concentration camps, a blaze on their arms, and they're praising God in the name of Jesus with tears rolling down their face.

Hey, this is beyond religion. Awesome, awesome demonstration. That was my privilege because I obeyed the voice who called me by name and walked out four days later believing, born again of the Spirit of God, the Ruach HaKodesh, and on my way to the 37 or 38 years that have followed that have taken me all over the world.

Are you being called to this morning? Are you willing? Will you hear? And what will you answer? Here am I? God says, this is holy ground. Yes, in New Zealand. It's not because it's Israel or Palestine or Sinai that makes the ground holy.

What makes the ground holy is that there's a God who is calling and waiting for men who will hear and turn and say, here am I. In that moment, this ground is holy. Take your shoes off. I'll bet you, you think that this is a little different kind of preaching.

I'll tell you, dear saints, this is this morning a call of God. And I will assure you with everything that I know and am in God that anyone who chooses to hear such a call and will say, here am I, is on the holy ground of God.

And God will receive that, honor that, fix that, and send you. May not be sending you far, maybe into the same community where you presently are, but it will be an altogether different presence than what you have heretofore been because to be sent is to know and to enjoy the God who says, I will be with you.

Everything is transformed. Everything is qualitatively different. Everything now is a dynamic in God. Everything now has consequence. That's the faith. This is foundational. This is prototype. This is paradigm of the sending of anyone by the same God.

Tender as I'm getting older, or are you just looking better? I'm impressed with the saints of New Zealand and with the nation. So I'm a privileged man. And, Lord, how do I rate that you have allowed me this privilege to stand before this people and to bring your word?