The Origin of the Nations — Art Katz

Revelation by the Spirit Rather Than Human Understanding

I'd like for us to look at a text that Willie quoted, just to underline a few things in it, in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. I think it's important for us to consider this at the very outset of the school.

If we're going to receive anything of God, it will have to be that which is given and revealed by the Spirit and not by any other means. Because we want the things which God has prepared for us that love Him, which is in verse 9 of 1 Corinthians 2.

This will be the first school in which God has not prepared things for us. If it's different from any of the schools that have preceded this, every school has been outstanding and exceptional in its own way.

There's been a unique content or a theme, a thrust of God in every school. So what will it be for this time that the souls of God have convened now that He has prepared for them that love Him? But how shall we receive what He has prepared?

Of course, they are revealed, it says in verse 10, by His Spirit. How jealous God is that we should not appropriate or seek to obtain something except by His Spirit. The primacy of God centers upon His Spirit.

He'll not allow any other faculty, and that's what soul is. Soul is mind, reason, thought, emotion, feeling, will. These are enormously significant human attributes. You could not live without them, but you cannot obtain from God by them.

And we need to be clear about this because we have young men here who are attending college and are being schooled in the world to learn and to obtain by the exercise of soul. So much so that spirit is discredited.

But here in this text, God singles out and underlines and gives uttermost significance to the operation of His Spirit and our spirit, without which we cannot receive anything from God. It's really interesting to say that because I believe that this school is going to be considering, what shall I say, secular or cerebral matters.

Intellectual, thoughtful things about society, the world, nations, the church. But how do we understand those things and what is God wanting us to see in them must be the issue of the revelation by His Spirit.

Look how jealously God, G-O-D, guards, G-U-A-R-D-S, the treasure and the things that He has prepared for us. But God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit. So just do what I did, put the word revealed in a framework, in a box.

Revealed means that it's something given by God that can only be obtained by an operation that He also grants by His Spirit, that no man can know. It says, so the things of God knoweth no man. The issue is man or God.

And the great paradox is that God who has given us soul will not allow us by that same means to learn the hidden secret and precious things of God, for they are revealed by the Spirit that no man can know.

Talk about humility. You cannot by what is in you as man know the secret and the hidden things of God that He has prepared for those that love Him. They are revealed. God is the one who reveals. We cannot compel that revelation.

It is something given to those who will, in verse 12, receive. Now we have received. See how man is helpless and dependent upon God for what He reveals and what we can receive by the operation of God and not the employment of our own soulish faculties.

Because these we have always at our disposal and at our use. We can will. We can think. But God says we have received not the spirit of the world but the spirit which is of God that we might know. I'm cutting it off right in the middle of the statement.

That we might know. We cannot know by man or by soulish faculties but by the receiving of that which is revealed by the Spirit that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. In chapter 1 in verse 29, that no flesh should glory in His presence.

We just need to underline in our own hearts how God looks upon this issue of soul versus spirit. And to know that this is under attack today. That everything that is in the world and even in the religious realm has been accentuated to get believers to operate out of their soul rather than their spirit.

But God in this text clearly underlines what the means or the mode is by which we receive anything from God. No man can know. It's an insult to man. It's an offense to man. Man wants to know on the basis of his own manhood.

On the basis of his own ability, human faculty. But God says no flesh shall glory. No human attribute shall be the key to obtaining those things that can only be received because they are revealed by God.

We're helpless and dependent upon God. We even have to distinguish then between words that we can produce out of our humanity that might be instructive as against spirit words which give life. And many of us can live entire Christian lifetimes and even serve God out of words that we produce out of our skilled humanity.

But they are not life-giving words. So if you'll just give me a moment or two more as a companion text, look at John 6 where the Lord himself will not speak anything other than the word that is spirit and life.

Spirit and Life in the Words of Christ

Because in John 6, 63, it is the spirit that quickens. The flesh or the soul or that which is natural profits nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. Even what I'm sharing now, however correct they might be biblically, if they are not issuing out of God by the spirit, they are not life.

And they profit nothing. It does not even instruct us. And Jesus asks in the same text, does this offend you? Because he spoke mysteriously about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Does this offend you?

And many moved away from him at that time. And then he asked his own disciples, will you also go away? And Simon Peter, verse 68, answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.

You can even just put eternal in parenthesis and just center on the word life. For you have the words of life. Where shall we go? Your words are spirit and life. There are many rabbinical words, pharisaical words, and religious words, but they don't quicken.

It's interesting that many heard Jesus in that day speaking about eating his flesh, drinking his blood. But not all believed. Some turned away on that very word. Which is, does this offend you? It's the word of spirit and life.

It was a mystery word. It has every natural, it's calculated to offend every natural category. It's abrasive, it's offensive, it's even disgusting. To speak to Jews about eating flesh and drinking blood is the epitome of offense that is central to their whole history and tradition.

And yet he spoke that offensive word, but it was the word of spirit and life. But many did not believe and turned away. But the disciples said, where shall we go? You have the word of spirit and life.

We don't understand it yet. We are equally offended with our Jewish kinsmen, but we are not turning away from it. And trust that if it's a word, I'm paraphrasing or filling in, that if it's a word of spirit and life, it will subsequently come into our understanding.

Not by the operation of our soul, mind, but by the revealing of God. This is a paradigmatic text. It's a one instance, but it encompasses all instances and may encompass the instances of our school in these very days.

I don't know what is coming forth. I'm less prepared to begin it than at any previous school. But I know that if we're going to be hearing the words of God, they will offend us or violate our categories or upseek what we think and believe and know to be true about God.

And yet it will be something that has to be factored in. So may we believe, may we be open for the spirit that reveals. May our spirit prevail over our soul and keep it in place. Because the world is encouraging us to exactly the opposite, particularly in young men, particularly young men in worldly institutions of education.

So I'm encouraging you and the Lord is encouraging us at the very first statement that we should hear at the commencement of these days is the issue of soul versus spirit. Man cannot know. God has seen to that.

It's humbling, makes us totally dependent on that which is revealed that we can only have by receiving because it is given by the spirit. Got the idea, guys? The Lord is not just wanting to give you an instruction of a particular kind.

He's wanting to refashion you and fit you for your call and function in the last days in this world as the conflict between the world and the church, between soul and spirit, between darkness and light, become the prevalent issue of the last days.

Which you'll not be able to negotiate, nor to discern, nor to address, except you be in the spirit. It's interesting that the development of soulish faculties increases pride. I know, I understand, I think, I speak eloquently, I feel, I'm sensitive, I, I, I, I, I.

But what is given of God has no quotient of pride in it at all. In fact, it requires a humility because it can only be received by the spirit which God himself has given. See what I mean? So I just want to pray, especially for the young men, the young believers whom God has sent to us in these days, that they might be encouraged to be the men and women of the spirit, who are willing to be humbled, to be dependent and wait on only that which is given, when it will be revealed, as it pleases God, that you might receive the things that he has laid up for us, which are to be treasured and cherished.

Prayer for Revelation and Spiritual Dependence

So I thank you, Lord, precious God on high. Thank you. For the note that you have struck, and don't think, Lord, that we were not mindful this morning as we began. It was so sluggish, pitifully sluggish, that there was every temptation to become soulish and personable and turn up the juice and be cute and winsome and get things revved up out of soul.

But we prefer to suffer the death of the sluggishness and whatever it was, my God, that was caught. Maybe you yourself, even right from the outset, giving us an issue to see if we would lapse into soul and not wait for that which is revealed, that which is quickened, that which will become joy for us, will become reality, will be true praise and true worship.

So long as we don't lapse into what we can produce out of our own humanity to improve the morning. We'd rather suffer the death of a failed service, and even that failure is a success, than we should move out of the realm of spirit and be engaged, my God, in our soulish faculties that want to take over the show to improve it.

So we bless you, Lord, for the testing that has come, at least I'm reading it that way, and perhaps more significantly than we understand. Thank you, Lord, so may your spirit prevail in these days. We desire revelation, Lord, not that we should become astute and look at me and what I understand, but because it will equip us for those things for which we are called in these last days.

You have things saved up and prepared for us in these days that cannot be obtained by man, but only received by that which is given by your spirit. And Lord, we ask that the heavens would be open to us tomorrow morning when we assemble, Lord, in that deathly silence of beginning.

That from the first word, you'll be the Alpha, to the last word, two weeks later, of which you'll be the Omega. And the whole thing, my God, will be a givingness of God, of something prepared for this time and this place that has not been given before, and for those whom you have assembled.

Oh, we bless you, precious God Almighty. We trust in the operation of your spirit. We thank you, my God, that you're the Lord over all. You give, you reveal, we receive. Thank you, my God. Bless the young ones.

Bless your saints in this room this morning, my God. Encourage our hearts and teach us and equip us and establish us as your people of the spirit. We thank you and give you praise. Bless your great name.

Even as we sing the great words that Jesus first pronounced, that was critical for all that followed right to the cross, the spirit of the Lord. And, in fact, it will bring us to the cross, the obedience to speak and to do according to the spirit.

Israel as God’s Provision for the Nations

Well, Christ, the nations, the powers and the nations, the faith of Israel is not some parochial, narrow, nationalistic interest that pertains to Israel alone. Israel is the provision of God for all nations.

From the very first, the intention of God for the redemption of the world was the selection of Abraham. And out of Abraham and out of his seed, a people. And out of a people, a kingdom for his name. We'll go over this several times.

So, I'm just making it an opening statement that the subject of Israel is not some isolated ethnic consideration of a particular people. It is the issue of the nations. The issue of Israel is the issue of the nations.

For according to the divine wisdom and providence of God, the law, and I'm not talking about some narrow legal code. The law, the Torah, the instruction of God for nations for sanity and righteousness must go forth out of Zion.

The law must go forth out of Zion and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem. And I know that the church has been guilty in spiritualizing this direct, literal statement of God away. It's a form of anti-Semitism.

It's a form of Gentile unwillingness to receive the wisdom and choosing of God. God has made this choice in his divine wisdom. He could not give to the whole world at one time the revelation of himself.

But he has chosen in the selection of a people and a nation to make himself known to all the ends of the earth. And when you read the Psalms, you come again and again to the recurring theme of the cry of the psalmist that all the earth shall know you.

In the New Testament, every knee shall bend, every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Every. So the faith of God is not a narrow provincial thing. It is God's universal intention for all mankind, all the world through the structure of nations.

Paul says in Rome in Acts 17, he has given to, he has made of one blood all nations of men and established their bounds and their habitations that they might seek after God. If happily, they might be found with him.

Paul sets forth before the Greeks God's cosmic intention for his creation. He has established the nations. He has set their parameters, their boundaries, their limitations. There's a structure and a design and it behooves us to understand it as Paul did.

Because he challenged the Greeks in their own lofty self-centeredness to know that they are only part of a grand design and that God will fulfill it. So the nations, the issue of the nations is in the last analysis, the issue of God.

And the nations have been from their inception in rebellion against God who has made them and established their parameters and their borders. And so the whole struggle, the whole, the German word for salvation history is the struggle and the conflict over the nations as to who indeed shall prevail.

The God who created them or the false gods of this world under their prince to rule and jerk and manipulate the nations. And the instrumentality which they employ, the mode of it is called the powers.

The principalities and the powers of the air that reside in the air over all nations. And it assert their influence upon all nations that they might be in active rebellion against God. So we need to come into the framework of this.

The nations are not a geophysical or geographical accident. Their design, their structure, their relatedness, their races, their nationalities, their cultures are all distinctive elements of God's making.

That will redound to his glory, but which the enemy plays upon to bring strife, discord, envy and violence one against the other. That's why the gospel, the gospel and the apostolic genius of the church had its inception not so much in Jerusalem as in Antioch.

Antioch as a Model of Reconciled Nations

The first sending forth were out of Antioch. Why? Because Antioch was representative of the nations. You read in Acts 13 and there were at Antioch certain prophets and teachers and then he names them and shows from their name, their nationalities.

One was called Niger, who's evidently black. That's what the word means in Africa. And there was Saul, a Hebrew, and Barnabas, and there was a Roman and one from Cyrene from the Mediterranean. They were different in nationality, color, cultural origins, but they were together in one place.

They worshiped the Lord together. And when they came to that place of overcoming national discord and enmity and strife, which had characterized those national cultures since their inception, Jew and Gentile.

Enmity, abrasiveness, discord, because differences are naturally the ingredient for division and strife. We are comfortable with those who are like us, but those who are not like us are an object of suspicion or fear or envy.

God overcame that at Antioch by his spirit. And when they came to a reality in the spirit where they worshiped the Lord together, you could believe it was not that they were singing something off the projector.

Their worship was the statement of the reality of their life together. And the scriptures don't tell us how. It just tells us that they had come to a place of this attainment. And then the Holy Ghost spoke to them, separate unto me.

Paul, Saul, and Barnabas for the work unto have called them. The first apostolic sending into the nations is a church of the nations in its diverse constitution, different from the early church in Jerusalem that was exclusively Jewish.

That was an achievement in itself that Jews can get along together. Something that present Israel has not obtained and never will obtain until the Lord comes. There is a division between Sephardic and Ashkenazic.

Those Jews who are of Sephardic is the Hebrew word for Spanish or Latin in their origin, from Spain, from Portugal, and Ashkenazic, which is the Hebrew word for German, those that have come from Central Europe.

Lighter complected, more education oriented, very different in their appearance and even in their culture. And they can't get along. And the Orthodox and the secular, and they can't get along. Isn't it remarkable?

Jews who have been an object of persecution and oppression in the lands where they have been alien, when they have their own land, do no better with themselves than by which they were received in other nations.

But Antioch was a jewel in the Lord's crown. One of my messages in Singapore on this recent trip, the Lord woke me up at 4 a .m., that Singapore is the Antioch of Asia. Why? It's English speaking, but essentially Chinese, but there are other, a compound of other racial and ethnic strands in Singapore that can go out to all Asia.

They will be ascending forth as it was out of the Antioch of Acts when they will worship the Lord together. So why? Because they represent God's ultimate design. Antioch in itself is a microcosm of God's macrocosmic intention for the world.

Nations dwelling together in unity, centered in the Lord. Okay. So I think we ought to begin at the beginning, which is what book? Genesis. Genesis, and see the origin of the nations and their rebellion against God from the beginning, which remains to this day, and will be the climaxing issue at the very end of the age.

The Nations in Genesis and Revelation

In Revelation, is it 20 or 21? The river of life with the tree of life on both sides of the river, and the tree has 12 kinds of fruit and gives its fruit every month, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.

We need to become nation conscious. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, and the nations and those that dwell therein. These are not places for us to go as tourists. These are places for us to go understanding who is their creator and what their ultimate destiny is with God.

And we're going there to speak to the church of the nations and sometimes to the nation itself about who their Lord is, and that they will one day bow their knee and acknowledge him. And there will not be peace nor prosperity until they will.

So I've already had a foretaste. You'll excuse me if I get biographical from time to time and share a little something. But in Tanzania, in Africa, I was speaking out on an open field, competing with blaring loudspeakers from the other end where the saloons were that were playing rock and roll.

And I'm standing on a rickety slapdash stand that was raised for my speaking. And the message that the Lord gave me was out of Acts, the Ethiopian eunuch. His conversion before Paul. He had the black men and the Jew.

And when I came down off the stand and there were a lot of people milling about, a man came to me and he said, I'd like for you to speak with my employer. I said, gladly, who's your employer? Oh, he said, she's the chief justice of the Supreme Court in Tanzania.

The next day I was in her house. And as I walked into her house, I came to the portal of her house. The Lord quickened the scripture. Righteousness exalts a nation. And sin is a scandal or a shame for any people.

And I came in. That was my message. Righteousness exalts the nation. Because though you have won your independence from your imperial British colonial powers, your condition now is worse than when you were under their authority.

You're more poverty stricken. You're suffering from drought, corruption, failed crops, internal dissension, because you have not walked in the way of righteousness. Righteousness exalts a nation. God doesn't even say you have to be converted.

But you do have to avoid graft, corruption, misappropriation of white-owned lands, intimidation, all the kinds of things into which governments can lapse, whether they are black or white. We have a message for the nations, even before they come under the sovereignty of God.

And a message to the church in the nations to be for their nation the spokesman that brings to them the divine perspective. Are you guys following me? I lost all, I don't want to say all, my closest German friends when the Lord gave me the message on Acts 17.

That someone needs to go to the Reichstag in Germany, to the seat of German government, and to tell them what Paul told the Greeks in Athens. That God has winked at times past, but he now commands all men everywhere to repent.

Repent of what? Repent for not having sought the Lord who has established your nations. What do you think it is, your playground? You think he gave you that, that you can do your thing and have your imperial designs and your ambitions?

God is a creator, but he is a purposive or purposeful creator. The nations are established by God, not for our amusement, our enjoyment, or our playground, or let alone our exploitation, but to fulfill his purposes and his glory.

And I said, you have an obligation as the church to confront the rulers of your nation as Paul did at Athens, and tell them that God has winked at times past, but is commanding now men everywhere to repent.

Of not having sought him for the purpose for which their nations were created. That offended my German Christian friends. What about the gospel? What about Christ? As if I'm somehow negating the gospel, but they had a narrow view that somehow we don't bother the nations, we leave them alone.

That's their secular business, so long as they leave us alone. And that we can have our Sunday services, we can have our programs, and we can have our evangelism. That is an inadequate understanding of God's redemptive purpose for the church in the nations.

So I want to encourage you, and I'll be saying it many times, the earth is the Lord's, and the nations and those that dwell therein, who have no biblical perspective. We have an obligation to bring to them the perspective which we enjoy, for they are completely bereft of it.

They are secular authorities, and yet they are responsible for the God whom they do not know, because they have not sought him. And we need to tell them that God will judge them for that grievous neglect, and to show them in their history what has been the consequence of that neglect.

World War I, World War II, Rwanda, genocidal tribal murder. Every kind of horror that has drenched this earth in blood is through the issue of nations acting in their own selfish national interest at the expense of another, because they have not considered God.

Serbia, the whole of the Balkans, the Albanians versus the Serbians, the Croatians, all of that are men acting out of their own self-will, in their own prideful identification with their own unique national ethnic identity at the expense of another.

And that it eventuates in violence shows who, in fact, their real Lord is, the Prince of this world, who loves chaos, destruction, bloodshed, and devastation, based on racial and ethnic hatred and enmity.

We have a message to the nations, saints. We have an obligation to the nations, because we have a perspective that they cannot conceive until we communicate it. What is wanting is someone of Paul's authority, as a sent one, to address the philosophers and the rulers of our nations, and to bring to them an understanding of the divine perspective for which they will be held accountable and in judgment.

Noah’s Sons and the Origin of the Nations

Okay, Genesis, we won't go all the way back, but past the flood and the sons of Noah that come out of the flood, because out of these three sons come all of the divisions of mankind and subsequently the nations.

So from verse 18, the sons of Noah, chapter 9 of Genesis, were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Here are the three basic divisions of all mankind. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was people.

Now we have a choice right here. Does this stand scientific scrutiny? Will the anthropologists agree to this? They'll give us a much more complex explanation of the origins of nations and of men and of races, so we have a choice.

Whose testimony do we subscribe from the beginning? This is God's statement of the origin of nations. So for me in my house, I'll stand with God's explanation. I don't care what the anthropologists say, this is God's statement of origin.

Genesis is the book of origins. So Noah was a man of the soil, was the first to plant the vineyard. He drank some of the wine, became drunk, and he lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, told his two brothers outside.

Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away. They did not see their father's nakedness.

When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, Cursed be Canaan, lowest of slaves, shall he be to his brothers? And he also said, here's a prophecy, Blessed by the Lord, may God be Shem, and let Canaan be his servant or his slave.

May God make space for Japheth, that is to say, enlarge him. Japheth is the father or the origin of all the European nations, Caucasian European nations. Shem is the father of the Shemites, Semites, the Hebrews, the Jews, Arab peoples.

And Canaan, Ham of the Black, maybe even the Oriental, I don't know. And so, and let him live in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. After the flood, Noah lived 300 years, all the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died.

I don't want to major in this. It's critical, God giving the configuration of the three basic stems of all mankind, and something happening in a very sparsely described event, where the father is uncovered.

What does that mean to us? Where we have nudist colonies, and the nakedness is nothing, but evidently something about the dignity of a father, even in his drunken state, that needed to be guarded by respectful sons.

For thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother. Even before the commandment is articulated, there's something instinctive and in the conscience of men, with regard of sons to fathers, that is critical.

And evidently, the youngest of the sons, who was less sensitive to this obligation, peered in or saw his father at a disadvantage. Now maybe he exulted in that. Sons would have that tendency, to elevate themselves above their fathers, and he allowed himself an indulgence in seeing his father in that condition, that became for him a curse, and therefore was transmitted through the generations.

The other two sons, having heard this, would not even look on their father's nakedness, but carried the covering on their shoulders, and covered his body without looking upon it. Can we understand this as modern people?

Some of the commentators say that it was more than just looking upon his father's nakedness, dwelling on the word in verse 24, and knew what his youngest son had done to him, that there's a hint of some kind of homosexual abuse of the father by the son, in the helplessness of his drunkenness and in his nakedness.

That's only a speculation, but some commentators suggest that. I don't know, but the word done seems to suggest something more than having looked upon him in his nakedness. Whatever it was, it was sufficient to bring out of Noah a curse against that son, and to condemn him to a role of servant to the other brothers.

But in the prophecy he says something very significant. Japheth is to be enlarged, and what have we seen in the history of the world but that Japheth has been enlarged? European nations, European civilization, European industry, European culture is foremost in the world.

The descendants of Canaan and Ham have not been enlarged in that way. They had been more the exploited peoples by the Europeans to take from them their raw materials or their labor. But Japheth has been enlarged, and yet God says Japheth must come under or into the tent of Shem.

The Tent of Shem and the Need for Humility

So just giving you another little anecdote out of my recent experience. In Russia, a young man who started at the age of 19 with a Bible study in his living room, today is the pastor of a congregation of over a thousand, and he's not yet 30.

He's young, obstreperous, conceited, because of the remarkable spiritual success that he has had. And I had to say to him, and he treated me, how shall I say this, suspiciously, looking me over, and to what degree is he going to allow me to speak at his church or so on.

And I said, you know what you need? You need to come into the tent of Shem. I'm Shem. And you need to come in. You know, to enter a tent means you have to bow low. And this proud son of Japheth, this European who has really got it all together, he's impressive, he's clever.

He goes, look what he's done with this church, and he's a good preacher. But until you bow and come into that tent, you're missing a vital dimension from your whole countenance that will be a loss to those people under whose authority, who are living and serving under your authority.

But for him to bow, to come into this tent, was a difficult thing to do. Maybe, could anybody take a shot at that? What is there in this blessing, in this requirement? What is the wisdom of God that has not been fulfilled by the Japheth nations to this day?

Humility. Humility required of them. And until it is obtained, they are going to remain obstreperous, conceited, arrogant and defiant. You know why? Because to be enlarged necessarily tends to make you that.

If you're enlarged, you're successful, you have technology, you have science, you have culture, you have learning. Of necessity, that is going to be self-exalting. You need to be tempered by the one thing that God himself has required, and nothing else will suffice.

How are you to be tempered? You've got to come into the tent of Shem. And Shem is not technological. I've had a long-standing controversy with technology all my life long, especially as a believer. Often, the sound equipment goes out, the taping equipment goes out, the lights go out, whatever it is.

I don't have a mechanical bone in my body. I'm celebrating, I just hung up a towel rack in the bathroom by myself. Something goes wrong, I have to call for another brother. I just don't have it, and I know I don't have it.

And I contend not to have it. See, we need to know how God has defined us and called us, and not to exceed or go beyond his limitation or usurp another calling that is not our own. One of the great dangers and problems of the Church today are men usurping prophetic calling who were never called.

Maybe they have a gift of gab, maybe they have other natural, promising characteristics that people will seize upon, but what a presumption to take to yourself an office or a calling that God himself has not given.

And maybe one of the problems in the world with the Canaan nations is their unwillingness to be servants. When I've seen in Africa, African believers who are submitted to God, they are a servant people.

There's something very precious about that servanthood. It's God-given. In fact, Jesus says later that it's the servant. You want to be a ruler? You want to be a head? Be a servant. Servant is not disgraceful.

It's ultimate honor. It's not a curse so much as a benediction if it is rightly received and walked in. But what if the servant wants to be like Jacob? What if he has ambition? What if he presumes? What if he wants to be as Shem?

We have got to recognize God's definition and submit to it. As this Russian pastor was unable to do, and yet it would have been his making, you must come into the Temple of Shem. Shem doesn't have it in any impressive way technologically, but he does have it in a very distinctive way because Paul says, If the falling away of them has been the blessing of the Gentiles, what shall their return be but life from the dead?