K-065 the Suffering Before the Glory — Art Katz

As you invite us to sift your Word, my God, and to probe and plumb the depths of it and to find its application. Thank you for this privilege, Lord. It's something uncommon in our Church experience. We ask such a grace by your presence, through the operation of your Spirit, to do it, to sift, to refine, to examine, to turn over, to bring to the light the full amplification, my God, of your Word.

Thank you for that. May we even receive something more than the examination of the Word today, but that certain skills, certain modes of thought and approach to your Word will be engendered in us that we will carry as a permanent mode of living and being hereafter, that you'll make us more apt students of your Word because of the facility that you'll give us today to open, to explore, and to bring up, my God, the depths of it.

Thank you, Lord, for our precious privilege and your Spirit, without which it would be vain. Receive our gratitude, my God, as we commence today in the holy name of Jesus. Amen. Last night you got the outline of the message, the bare bones, if you'll excuse the pun, and this morning I want to read a statement that I have written and from which we will have a springboard to comment and examine this message.

It was written because of the misunderstanding and the backlash that had come in the sharing of that message in Israel. Just as a prophetic glimpse of something, the visit to Israel that preceded the visit in which this message was spoken seven times, and not to be symbolical, but seven is a symbolic number of completion, that in the visit to Israel two years ago, I've not been back since, Lord only gave me one message, it was Ezekiel 37, spoken seven times in the land, three times in Jerusalem, with a tremendous backlash by people who have known me 15 to 20 years or more.

And when I got back and began to realize and even was surprised by the backlash and the anger that this word had provoked, I felt that I needed to write something and send it back to those in Jerusalem that were still disturbed and had not maybe perhaps understood my point.

And so that's what I have before me now. Going over the message and the underlining of the key points so it should not be misunderstood. I think it will be helpful for us. So Ezekiel 37, the necessary death and resurrection of Israel, underlined the word necessary.

Seeing Israel as God Sees It

As with the prophetic son of man of this dread and glorious chapter, so also are we the prophetic people of God required to be set down in the midst of a valley full of dry bones. Here one is required to dismiss all wishful thinking of things as we would like them to be, and to consider them as they in fact are, which is to say as God himself sees them, indeed, as they must be seen, or we later forfeit any prophetic use by which these bones can be brought back to life again.

For to prophesy, that is to be as God's mouth, to speak the creative life-giving word, requires an identification with God that is total as against a begrudging condescension to a necessary obedience.

Be encouraged that this is being duplicated today, and by tomorrow you'll have a copy or even this afternoon of what we're now reviewing. So we'll go paragraph by paragraph, puts a premium upon you to hear something, and you can stop me at any point, we'll go over what's being said, and because I think that these are really concise statements that go over the message given last night and underline it for our consideration.

So the beginning of that chapter, the prophet being brought down, is not just a little bit of posy, it's a pivotal key point, there's no speaking except that it first begins with an identification with God in the thing as it is as he himself sees it.

To speak as he speaks requires first a seeing as he sees, and that implies a going down, a coming out of some other kind of a view to which we are all disposed that is more amenable to the flesh, that is not as painful to consider, more the expression of a wishful thinking of something as we hope it to be.

Sometimes in the speaking of this I give this illustration, you may have heard it from me, an episode I'll never forget, sitting with my brother Lenny in Brooklyn in a bar, watching the last Joe Lewis fight with a up and coming heavyweight from Massachusetts by the name of Rocky Marciano.

It was a pathetic fiasco, Lewis should have retired in dignity rather than been brought out of his retirement to fight this bull, and he was just being lambasted, he was being knocked from pillar to post, you almost had to turn your head away, it was just painful to see.

But there came one little flurry, I don't remember in what round, where Lewis pawed at his opponent and my brother, to my utter astonishment, leaped out of his seat and he cried out, that's it, he's got him, he's got him, and I turned to look, my God, this is pathetic, but from my brother's wishful thinking, he brought an interpretation that was a distortion of the reality.

He wanted so much to see the venerable old champ pull it out of the coals, you know, in a last moments heroism that it distorted the very thing that he was saying. I'll never forget that, I don't think God wants me to forget it, because it's a human propensity to bring something into the seeing of it, colored by our own expectation, our own desire.

Few of us have the gut to see something as it in fact is. I mean, I can't tell you how loaded this is, that those of us who are quick to pick up the fallacies, the failures, or the heresies of others, are living with problems and issues of a more menacing kind, and are not even aware of it as threat at all.

So seeing, no accident that prophets were called seers, and what a distress and a vexation for Israel to have someone to see something that is not only disparate and different from your own seeing, but antithetical and totally opposed, and to say that that's God's view.

That's uncomfortable, because Israel did not see itself as Isaiah saw it, as we mentioned once before in the first chapter of that book, that the city of righteousness had become a city of harlots. They saw it still as a city of righteousness.

They saw their feast days and their sabbaths and their celebrations as pleasing to God, but he saw it as a stink and an offense and an excruciating pain for God even to have to look upon it. What are your feast days and sabbaths to me?

So this chapter rightly begins where it should, the necessity to see as God sees, which is an identification with him, and this will come up again, that by the time the smoke clears that the one who speaks for him is so one with him that you can hardly tell where the prophet ends and where God begins, and this is not required of teachers.

A teacher can still be an independent, that's not the word to use, an entity unto himself serving God by the spirit of God, but still a distinct thing within himself working for God, but there's something about a prophet where his own personality somehow has to be obliterated, he has to come into such a union that maybe that scripture, that the spirit of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy?

The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. This gets at it, there's something about the union of the man and the word that is at the heart of what is prophetic, that distinguishes it from other callings in God, so what is implied in that whole Ezekiel 37 chapter is something about that son of man, that though there's no text to indicate it, evidently there's a remarkable requirement to bring that son of man into such a union with God, it is not just rendering an obedience, how do I say it here, as a begrudging condescension and a necessary obedience, that will never do, it's not because I got to, that kind of obedience will not raise the dead, and that's more or less where we are, religiously speaking, I guess I got to, but there's got to be such a union with God's heart that we desire what he desires, see as he sees and speaks as he speaks, and that is a process that is only obtained through death, because we're self-willed, because we're individualistic, because we have our own fanciful thinking, because there's more fantasy in our life than we know, because we've lived in a Disneyland of unreality that God has got ruthlessly to strip away, so we can perceive from this text that the object of God's intention is not Israel alone, however glorious her restoration, but that of the son of man, so this Ezekiel 37 text shows that God has a double preoccupation, one is with the restoration of the dry bones, but the other, which is of equal importance in his sight, is the son of man, and the genius of that text is to show that the son of man cannot come to the place of God's desire except in the requirement that comes to him through Israel's death, it is a requirement of so ultimate a kind that the only way that the son of man can perform it is by passing through something himself, a death himself, of a coming into another life, the power of which will raise Israel from its death, it is the requirement of Israel's death that brings the son of man into the place of God to which he would not otherwise have come, except by the ultimacy of the requirement that Israel presents, now that's a statement, it was so well spoken that we probably missed it, we have to unpack that, okay, it's on tape, I don't know that I can say it again quite that way, the son of man would never have come into the place that God intends for the church of the last days, except by the requirement imposed upon it by Israel's own condition, that condition is so destitute of life that it cannot be met by mere religious obligation, however well meaning, but only by a son of man who has come into such a place of union with God that he can speak for God and as God with the authority of God that God will not confer to any flesh, that means that the flesh of that son of man has to be dealt with much more drastically than would be required of others who are in God's service, so we shouldn't be quick to relish the prophet's call, the prophetic call, because there's a death implied in that, I don't believe God requires of others, so what I'm saying is that the son of man is brought to that condition by the very urgency that Israel in her helpless death requires from outside herself, by the ultimate prophetic faith and the obedience of the other.

Israel, the Church, and the Necessity of Mercy

Restored Israel will take an eternity of eternities to express gratitude to that church that submitted itself to the deaths required of it, that it could be to that nation God's restorative voice. Picture what that means, that an Israel that has historically hated the church, been persecuted by the church, that the word church is anathema in Jewish experience, it is so suggestive of everything that Israel has suffered historically, forced conversion, exiles, inquisitions, pogroms, every kind of thing that we identify with church.

You say, but Art, that's not really the church, that was the Catholic church, that's not really the church, it's some heretical institution, that's true, but in the understanding of unregenerate Jews, there's no distinction made, it's all the church, it's all Christendom, it's all Christianity.

My mother thinks that Adolf Hitler was a Christian, because he's not Jewish, he's not a Muslim, what else should he be? So for this people to learn that their eternal redemption has been obtained by the mercy of God expressed through that church that it has so long feared and detested, at the price that the church has been required to pay in order to be God's voice to it, namely multitudinous deaths, to bring it into such a fusion and union with God that its speaking is his speaking that has raised it from its grave.

For it knew and will know that we are cut off, we are without hope, we are as dry bones, and unless something comes to us from outside of ourselves, we have had it, and notice that in the text it says, and these bones are the whole house of Israel, and breathe upon the slain, indicates that they've been brought to that place of death by a violence which is very much in keeping with what Reggie has been sharing with us and what I have spoken previously, a last days desolation scheduled for Israel that will bring it to a death, not only of a physical kind, but a moral and spiritual kind of hope, because the last hope of Israel is not yet the hope in God.

Remember what is said of Abraham? When every human basis for hope was gone, Abraham hoped against hope. The issue of hope is critical, but every basis for human hope had to be gone, and Abraham being now a hundred years old and contemplating his body now dead, where there is no prospect at all that from him could come the fulfillment of God's own word, that he would be the father of many nations, when that hope was absolutely destitute of being fulfilled on the basis of his own humanity, then God became to him righteousness, and that same experience is required for the sons of Abraham, whether it's ourselves as the church, or Israel itself as the nation, that they might fulfill the promise given to Abraham on the same basis by which Abraham himself entered, namely the utter destitution of himself and the totality and dependency on God for life.

This theme of the reciprocal relationship between Israel and the church, by which the one is not made complete without the other, is the very heart of Paul's discourse in Romans 11. So there is such a remarkable arching and touching of Romans 11 and Ezekiel 37, the same heart of Romans 11, the mystery of the relationship, the reciprocal relationship between Israel and the church, that by your mercy they might obtain mercy, that you move them to jealousy, that when the fullness of the Gentiles become in, all Israel shall be saved as it is written.

Who's responsible that the fullness of the Gentiles become in? The church. In every place, the whole premium is put upon the church for Israel's restoration. But a church of what kind? A church that can move Israel to jealousy.

A church that can extend mercy because mercy for that church is not merely a category or a piece of its vocabulary, it is its palpable experience. It's a church that lives by the mercies that are new every morning, as we have already experienced this morning.

What we received this morning is not something elaborated by man before we came together. It was given by God on the spot as a mercy. And nothing will more underline for us the necessity for mercy than to be to Israel what we are called in the last days, the most obdurate, difficult of all peoples, the enemies of the gospel for your sake, opposing themselves in contradiction and looking upon us as the greatest threat to their Jewishness, when what we represent actually, ironically, is the very hope of its true fulfillment, spiritually speaking.

We'll be opposed by them and we might even be persecuted by them. We might see a reiteration of the persecution of the apostolic church by the Jewish people at the church's inception coming again at the church's end.

So how do we meet that except by the mercies that are new every morning? And as I think I mentioned when I spoke this message in a church that it's by your mercy they might attain mercy, some woman involuntarily cried out of the congregation.

She said, but Archie said, we don't even have mercy for each other, the church. And I said, that's right. Nor will we, except we see what is ultimately being required of us that we need now to attend to the thing that is immediately before us.

There's a conjunction between what is ultimate and what is immediate. And it's only in the light of what is ultimate that we set ourselves to extend mercy to each other immediately. I mean, there's that tension of connection.

So we will have a mercy to give because we will need the mercies of God every morning. And any man who has ever stood to serve God, even addressing the people of God, let alone those who are opposed to him, knows how much he's dependent upon that mercy.

I'll always remember sitting alongside Ron the other night before he spoke and the table where we sat together was continually trembling from a man who was in fear. And yet out of that trembling still was obedient to speak before people whom he thought to be hostile against him and who would shoot him down.

Paul spoke about trembling. Don't think that Paul is some kind of heavyweight who never felt a tremor and sailed through everything with a remarkable courage. He was in tremblings often, but it never deterred him from his obedience.

So mercy has got to be elevated from being merely a word in our lexicon to becoming the palpable daily experience of our life and our real dependency, the mercies of God. I need it right now. I needed it last night.

We need it through the whole five-week experience together, seeing that we've never ever been this way heretofore. We need it in our marriages. We need it with our children. We need mercy. And unless we have experienced that palpable mercy, we will not have it to give.

Merely to offer Israel in the day of its extremity a definition for the word but not be able to extend it in fact will be a horrible failure at a critical moment that will not come again. One thing that distinguishes what is prophetic is such a reverence for the sense of time, such a sense that the present moment is always the eternal moment.

There's a now that has come that will never come again. It's once and for all. The world doesn't have this mentality. It's a spendthrift. It lets time go through its fingers. But for those of us who have and are being apprehended by a sense of what is eternal, there is that sense that something comes once.

It's once and for all and it's a moment not to be missed. I feel that way now and I'll feel that way again tomorrow. I'll feel that way again tonight. It heightens everything with such a remarkable enlargement of meaning and significance because it is for time and for eternity.

Life and death is at stake. Great issues are being propounded. Who knows what the consequence of these five weeks will be for the nations from which we have come, for the church, for the souls unsaved, for the Greek as well as for the Jew.

Life and death hanging on everything that is being wrought and perpetrated in these days. We have to cry out with hope. Who is sufficient for these things? We need the mercy of God and it's a very real and substantial thing.

And when we will have a reservoir through our dependency upon God because we have put ourselves in a place of extremity that without that mercy we could not have made it. Why is the church so bereft of the knowledge of God's mercy as palpable experience?

Because it has lived timidly. Because it has not lived on the apostolic extreme edge of dependency upon God. Because it has set the parameters of its life in such a way that it's not required to take the risks of a kind that require the mercy of God.

Our life is safe, circumscribed, prescribed and we don't need mercy for that. We can get by. We have raised up a whole generation of 25 -30 year old pastor whiz kids who are conducting congregations of thousands and doing it with a great flair.

But to be out on the extreme edge where you are beyond your ability and over your head and if God be not God you will perish. That's the place where his mercy has got to be real or you do perish. And yesterday when the Lord came through with his mercy does not prepare you for today.

Have you noticed that? The experience of yesterday's mercy does not allow you to walk through today with a sense of calm and you've got it all in hand. However gracious that was we need a fresh installment today for the exigencies, the extremities and the needs of this day that the Lord has made.

We'll always be dependent upon that. By your mercy that they may obtain mercy is a critical statement in Romans 11. For the mystery of Israel is not only her restoration but the transfiguration of the church that is accomplished thereby.

The Transfiguration of the Church

Another great statement. I can say that. The mystery of Israel, we'll never understand why Romans 11 ends with all the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. This is I think the most ecstatic statement in all holy writ.

I can't think of another spontaneous eruption of praise to God. It's called a doxology, a p-a-e-a-n of praise where language itself is stretched to the breaking. Something just breaks out of Paul's heart.

He has seen something that all the depths of the riches and until that cry comes out of us we have not seen what Paul has seen. We only have a text. We've only done a Bible study. We have not seen the glory of what God is after.

Not only Israel's restoration, how much, how be it that that will be life from the dead but also the church's transfiguration. Two things are being worked at the same time and the one through the other, the transfiguration of the church that is accomplished thereby.

It's the requirement of Israel, the insuperable requirement of a people who are the enemy of God for your sake. Requiring from us such a transcendent thing in mercy, in grace, in love, in wisdom, in courage, in obedience, in prophetic faith that we would never have attained or even sought or even realized as necessary except by virtue of the requirement that Israel's death presents.

That's the genius of what Paul claims and God is the author of the whole thing to whom be glory forever. He'll have glory not only through a nation that has been restored to its original call but it will have glory by a church that has been transfigured in the very process of fulfilling its mandate to that people.

To see that is a remarkable thing. This will be no small accomplishment requires us to be reminded of the church not as it is presently in all its fragmentation and divisiveness but as the whole people of God in their true corporateness speaking as with one voice in an agreement that cannot be the product of ecumenical arrangement but is the statement of apostolic authenticity itself.

I'll go over that. What kind of a church will move Israel to jealousy? The same kind that will make the powers of darkness to tremble and to break and will ultimately displace them in the government of God from the heavenly places.

Not the church as it presently is in all of its fragmentation and divisiveness because this church has got to be a church that speaks with one voice out of one agreement of being of one heart and one mind and one will.

Aren't we glad that the book of Acts describes a church that was once in that condition? That we're not speaking about some hypothetical and theoretical thing but there actually historically was a time when the church and the Jewish church, don't forget that.

What do they say? You get two Jews, you get three arguments. You don't know what Israeli politics is because there are no Indians there, they're all chiefs. For that church to be of one mind, one heart, one soul and one will and Paul could say, now speak the same thing.

What was Paul wanting the church to be? A bunch of automatons? Quite the contrary. Paul wanted God to be glorified by a church in all of its rich diversity. In fact, the Antioch out of which he came that was the first apostolic sending was such a church and God even takes the pains to detail that by telling us that of those who were found worshipping together were Jews, Romans, a man from Cyprus, a man called Niger who was evidently a black man and when they ministered unto the Lord together, the Holy Ghost said separate unto me.

So Paul is not wanting a church of automatons, mindless bobs, blobs who say the same thing because they have no choice in matter, all stamped off the same assembly line, but individuals. Isn't it a remarkable thing?

He who loses his life finds it. God is not wanting faceless automatons who are cut out of the same cloth, but the remarkable diversity of God, the richness and yet in that of one mind, one heart, one soul, one agreement, speaking the same thing.

And it's clear, we'll never come to that except by the operation of the cross. So that this will be no small accomplishment requires us to be reminded of the church, not as it presently is in all its fragmentation and divisiveness, but as the whole people of God in their true corporateness, not some phony baloney ecumenical hug, but whatever it takes to take individuals and to bond them and weld them and to bring them into the genius of what is corporate.

That's what that church will be. Speaking as with one voice in an agreement that cannot be the product of ecumenical arrangement, but is the statement of apostolic authenticity itself. The church that was of one mind, one heart, one soul, one will, one voice was an apostolic church.

That's what apostolic is. That's authenticity itself, but it's not a thing cheaply. Such a church would comprise such present extremes as those who are indifferent toward Israel, if not hostile, and those who, whose celebration of the nation is extravagant to the point of near idolatry.

There are such diversities in God's people. There are people foaming at the mouth over Israel with anger and indignation who are Christian, spiritual, and there are others for whom Israel can do no wrong.

They can bury Palestinians alive and break their bones and you find a way to justify and to explain it. Such a diversity can be found in God's church, either in almost bringing Israel to a point of near idolatry or to condemning her.

And yet out of that has got to come a people of one mind, one heart, who see as God sees and will speak as he speaks. So everything is resting on a church coming to such a place. Both degrees of exaggerated views will require appropriate depths of dealings from God that will constitute virtually their own death and resurrection from those unplumbed subtleties of heart and will that cannot escape the cross.

How does God deal with those who are off this way and off that way, that they might be in the room with him? By bringing them virtually to a death and a resurrection of the unplumbed subtleties of heart and will.

We had a little bit of that this morning in our devotional time. The subtleties of it, how self will insinuate itself and even disguise itself even in the spiritual place, but there's something about the cross that is unerring.

It finds its mark. The death of Jesus was not partial, it was total and that's the meaning of the cross. Nothing is exempt. It doesn't just go for the jugular vein of our vices and our defects. We would gladly bring that to the place of death, but it finds also our virtues and we said over the breakfast table that we're beginning to realize it's not our vices that are our worst problem, but our virtues.

It's our virtues that do us in. Our zeal for God, our jealousy to defend the integrity of the church can be the very thing that is the undoing and the missing of God at very critical points. So in a word, only the cross can do that totality of work that will bring us to be a people of one mind and one heart and will with him.

So little wonder that many of us till now have been so quick to affirm and to congratulate Israel in her present condition. She has been the projection more than we could have understood of our own satisfaction and self-acceptance as the church.

That's an interesting statement. Those who have been quick to affirm Israel in her present condition, unbeknownst to themselves, are really speaking out of a kind of projection of the affirmation of themselves and the church as it presently is.

If you can congratulate Israel as she is, you're unconsciously congratulating the church as it is. And I want to say as a spokesman for God, neither Israel in her present condition or the church in her present condition is yet acceptable to God.

We want to find out where we are. Our view of Israel is really a projection of ourselves more than we have realized and is a giveaway that we're not willing, not only for them to be brought to a death and resurrection, but for ourselves to be brought.

Are we mindless about the larger questions of God's glory and unconsciously unwilling for the sufferings and deaths by which it is to be obtained? We're more jealous for Israel to succeed or the church to succeed than to ask, is God obtaining a glory from either Israel or the church?

When we move to the ground of glory, right away the issue of suffering and death is introduced. But if we're only satisfied with the issue of success, we don't have to consider suffering or death. But Paul does not say at the end of Romans 11, unto Israel be success.

He says, unto him be glory. And not only glory, but glory forever. It's the last time that God will have his opportunity. It's got to be worked in historic time, but the consequence of it reverberates into the eternity of eternities.

It's the last episode, the final episode involving the church in an ultimate way as being the instrument of God's raising up of that nation that will bring him glory forever. And when you move from the issue of success, where our church mentality has been, its program, its numbers, its budgets, did you like the services, all the way in which we view whether it's good, and move to the issue of glory, we're on another ground altogether.

And when we've come onto the glory ground, the question immediately becomes understood, by what suffering shall this be obtained? There's a suffering that precedes the glory, that is not required for mere success.

So the issue is the issue of glory, and the church that is not occupied with the question of God's glory is ipso facto, not the church. If you want a single criterion to distinguish true church from false church, it's this.

That which calls itself church employs the word of God, conducts services, meets the needs of its people, and does all these things, but is not occupied with consciously the issue of God's glory is not the church.

The single distinctive that makes something apostolic and prophetic is the preoccupation with the issue of God's glory forever. Remove that, and you have removed the apostolic and prophetic distinctive.

Do you know what the heck of it is? How do you obtain that jealousy? How do you obtain that distinctive? You cannot fabricate it. It is something that must come from God himself. And I'll always cherish that one statement that you might hear a dozen times before you finish here.

In one of our prayer meetings at Momburger's trailer, one of the brothers blurted out, when something broke upon his consciousness, he said, you know, it takes God to love God. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy mind and all thy soul and all thy strength.

It is such a requirement that only God can fulfill it by those who are in union with him. That's exactly the same issue as the Sabbath. One of these indexes of Israel's failure is that the Sabbath became a legalism of rabbinical requirement.

You can only carry a bundle this far, you can do this but you can't do that. This is defined as work. How come they needed all of those legalisms to establish what a Sabbath is and what its violation is?

Because they had lost the relationship with God by which we would know how to seek him in order to find what is his good pleasure on that day. Because on the Sabbath we were to desist from seeking our own pleasure, speaking our own words, and doing our own thing.

So is that to say that on a Sabbath you can't have a picnic, or play softball, or go for a swim? No. If that's God's good pleasure for you, it's a Sabbath at rest. It did not emanate from you, it's from him.

It pleases him. You're not seeking your own pleasure, though you may enjoy it. But for the next guy to go for a swim and have a picnic, who has not consulted God, and just arbitrarily is doing his own thing, thinking it's his right, it's a violation.

In a word, the Sabbath requires such a union with God. That last Sabbath's conduct can be entirely different from this Sabbath's. In a word, the only one who can really keep the Sabbath is that one who is in such union with God as to know what is his pleasure at any given time.

And what God gives us as the once in the week, he intends for all of our days. And it's a Sabbath at rest. If you're doing his good pleasure and speaking his own words, then from what are you laboring?

And the ironic thing is that there's no day that is more desecrated and more profuse with sweat than Sunday, particularly for ministers, in labors that are theirs more than God's. Why did Jesus seek to do his most extraordinary exploits and miracles on the Sabbath?

Because he's trying to make a point before his kinsmen. It's the Father who doeth the works. I'm not violating anything. It's not my labor. It's the Father who doeth the works. Same thing with the issue of the glory of God.

We cannot have it any more than mercy, as a mere word in our vocabulary. It's a jealousy which is God's own jealousy for his own name and his own honor. And we can only have it to the degree that we're in union with him.

And that's why the apostles and the prophets are the foundation of the church. They are men who come to men out of that relationship and out of that business, that can communicate God himself and his own jealousy for his own glory and his own honor.

Anything other than that is a near miss and becomes religious. So here, talk about restoration of all things. If this is not restored to the church, how is it then the church? And here's what I want to say.

Only on the basis of God's glory will we be able to make the sacrifices that will be required of us in the last days. It will never be made out of obligation, out of religious necessity, out of begrudging condescension.

Only the jealousy for the glory of God permits or releases the quality of sacrifice unto death that nothing else can give. And a sacrifice that will be made gladly, even with a rejoicing, because it is done in the light of and the anticipation for the glory of God.

This glory is not just a word, it's a key. And when Paul ends Romans 11, for of him, there's this whole scheme, this whole scenario, this remarkable reciprocal relationship between Jews and Gentiles, Israel and the church, is of him.

Only God could have conceived it. Only God could have taken these ingredients that have been so antithetical, so opposed, that have been rubbed into our very being, we've grown up with it, we've taken it with our mother's milk.

There's an instinctive antipathy between Jews and Gentiles. There's an instinctive distrust and suspicion. There is a historic weight of things to support it, to justify it. And yet he takes that least amenable thing and makes that the basis for the revelation of his glory.