Has Jesus Made You Jewish? — Art Katz

Well, just now that the recording machine is on just to identify this article. I've never heard of the man myself. But he was a student of Karl Barth, and that's enough to recommend him to me. Here's what they say in italics Friedrich Wilhelm Marquardt M-A-R-Q-U-A-R-D-T.

Studied under Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth and did his doctoral work on Israel in Barth's thought. Imagine that this one aspect of Barth's thought on Israel, which should encourage me to say That there's more to be said About Israel in Karl Barth as an afterthought in fine print than others have said in total books.

If you've ever read Karl Barth, he makes Statements and then he goes on in finer print to To fill them out and you need a lot of patience to follow him in the fine print, but it's always Rewarding them and what he says in fine print about Israel is so remarkable that I wondered that no one had ever Cut that out from the body of his main work and made just books alone on that subject and maybe someone now will.

Because now I'm reading for the first time that this man got his doctoral degree on the study of Karl Barth and his thoughts on Israel. In 1972 he succeeded Helmut Goldwitzer. You've not know that name.

I'm familiar with it In the Lutheran chair at the Free University of Berlin this article it's a translation of an unpublished lecture Mark Watt gave at the Hamburg Church Day in 1981 it appears here with permission of the author which means that he's alive and I hope to look him up and find him and Introduce myself in her fellowship.

So Lord, we just thank you that this just happened to come yesterday Out of all the things that are stacked up. But I've not had time to look at or to read whole issues of the Jerusalem Post and other things that have come.

I somehow just Flipped through this and saw this in the table of contents and had to go through it immediately and it was rewarding so may it be rewarding Lord for a little Group here and give us my God fresh insight.

Understanding of this enormously sensitive complex matter of how the church ought to regard Israel and the Jews particularly with regard to its testimony and witness to the Jewish people and That the German believers are more sensitive on this subject than any other and likely so.

So my God, we thank you for this privileged time and for this dear man. Who's devoted his life to this study and That we have the opportunity to hear his lecture through this transcription. It pleases you that I ask as a bonus the privilege of meeting him and having a time To get acquainted and just before he passes this life that we might touch spirit with One who has this kind of rich background.

Jesus as the Jewish Messiah

Thank you for this privileged time now in Jesus name. Amen. Well just to leap in here. Talking about Jesus. He could not be an Athenian a Parisian a Muscovite or a hamburger. That doesn't mean something on a bun, but someone who comes from the city.

Not a Gentile but a Jew not a man as such but a man of this people. He cannot be understood from the perspective of general humanity only from the life of the Jewish people. If we wish to remain true to the old Christological dogma and to understand Jesus in Essence as from the true God and to the true God then we can continue to do this today.

Only if we understand him within the framework of the life of his people. This is why it has to be so important to us that our Lord Jesus Christ should be a Jew by birth. His unity with God depends on it.

Stop stop me at any time if this triggers any thought or question. If he becomes apparent to us. Nothing familiar becomes apparent to us. There is then a completely different world understanding a completely different self understanding and a completely different God.

Understanding that remarkable if you miss the Jewishness of Jesus, you're not only missing that you're missing a whole Continuum of things that issues from that understanding and boy if that is not true in the contemporary church I don't know what is to have missed that is to miss something So critical and so intrinsic to the understanding that God would have us to have for Jesus.

For the understanding of Jesus is the understanding of God. So it would lead us to a different world understanding a different self understanding how we perceive ourselves. And a completely different God understanding as non Jews by birth.

We are indeed without God in this world. Strangers to the covenants of promise and without citizen citizenship among the Saints the Jewish Saints. It's so it is first of all through Jesus that we are torn away and placed in a history.

That is not ours any of you who are astute and remember this morning's quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In life together he made the exact same statement that immersing ourselves in the Hebrew Scriptures Tears us he used the same word.

We're torn out of our Gentile context. In fact, it's the only provision given of God by which that radical separation can take place. Here he's saying the same thing. It's through Jesus. That is the Jewish Jesus that we are torn away and placed in a history.

That is not ours. It's not ours by virtue of Gentile birth, but it becomes ours by virtue of spiritual inheritance. But it's something that should be coveted and esteemed or you'll not have it. It does not come to the Gentile believer automatically.

In fact, I have been bold to make the assertion that unless we consciously see ourselves as grafted into their tree We do not receive the benefit of the life that issues through their root, which is God.

And that there are Gentile branches that have been grafted in but they are what they still remain wild which is to say Non-productive they cannot issue fruit unless the life of the tree that comes through the root flows through them and that requires a conscious acknowledgement of the privilege of being grafted into a tree that was not initially yours and an appreciation for that grafting.

The church lacks that today and therefore the church today is denuded. It's impoverished. It's wanting in real fruit for which reason it has had to Turn the amplifiers up and go into all kinds of programs and frenetic Activities to compensate for what they don't even understand is their loss.

Namely the life that would have issued if they were consciously and gratefully Recognizing themselves joined into the tree that was not theirs by the grace of God. And it's and it's this fruit that would have issued that in turn moves Jews to envy.

So he's saying the same thing he recognizes that in another way and I'm so grateful for that. For us the recognition of Jesus is an estrangement from parental home and friendship a break with an innate way of life.

Learned in a pagan culture. That's courage. That's a German not talking about Somewhere in darkest Africa. He's talking about the pagan culture of Germany. Though it's an impressive culture and has given rise to Celebrated figures of literature philosophy ethics music and it's still pagan Pagan this we'll look up that word in a dictionary.

Pagan is only not just beating with a tom-tom Around a totem pole. Pagan is a concert or an opera or going to a museum. That is celebrated as culture, but is separated from God and he's saying what has saved us and taken us out of our native pagan environment is this Estrangement that has come by being joined into the life of Israel.

We are transplanted spiritually and psychologically. What happens to us is what we express in baptism something that we do not reach with our own reason and strength. So as to understand this God the God of Jesus we are made Abrahamite.

Through Jesus. I've never heard that before made Abrahamite. I would say Hebraicized Same thing snatched from the power of the primal P-R-I-M-A-L myths of our people culture and politics. That Germany was not Snatched from it is the whole tragedy of the rise of Nazism.

It was a return to paganism. It was a return to torchlight parades. It was a return to book burning. It was a return to racial superiority and racial myths and the use of violence and the Emphasis upon brute force.

It's a reversion. It's going back into paganism because it's Hebraic roots. Were not Identified because the church had so long separated itself from those origins that it was a pushover To the powers of darkness that brought it again into paganism.

So we are made Abrahamite through Jesus snatched from the power of the primal myths of our people culture and politics. Belief in Christ is for us non-jews a break a revolution. We do not just recover our true selves.

For how many non-jewish Christians can this statement be made? That you are coming to Christ and you're continuing life in the faith was a break a radical departure from the origins of your life and the culture and civilization of which you were part and that you have been brought into an Abrahamic relationship with God.

That is God's definitive intention in conversion that the church has so notably fallen short of it. It's because it lacks the consciousness of Jesus as the Jew and what is represented in that context and has lost it.

So this is the whole sum of his lecture. I wonder how that went over with his German heroes. Again, and again a bad conscience broke through in the history of Christianity because of our domestication of the God of Israel and interesting To translate that I would say German Christianity Consciously Assimilated or processed the Hebrew faith into the German national culture.

I mentioned that earlier today and Remove those kinds of things that were not compatible with that desire they consciously wanted a Christianity appropriate to their German culture and civilization and therefore were required to eliminate either Deliberately or unconsciously those aspects of the Christian faith that were Hebraic.

He uses the word domesticated that makes me think of the word tame to try to tame them.

Yeah, take it. It takes the heart out of it. It makes it a Thing that you can control and put on a leash for your purposes. If ever you get a chance and you might inquire of Simon or Heather. To get a copy of my statement of a message given in Nuremberg on true and false German repentance toward the Jew.

Which I suggest by the Lord's inspiration. That the German sin never acknowledged is the same as the Jewish sin never acknowledged namely that both were culprits in Domesticating the radical faith of God and fitting it into their cultural commercial and imperial purposes.

They made God a Sunday phenomenon and the Jews made the God of Israel a Saturday phenomenon. But equally subservient to the pride their primary purposes business commerce culture and This and the judgment of God is the Holocaust on both the German and the Jew.

And when they heard that they went down like dead who? The depth of that breaking that night will always remain with me and Those the word of the wife of the pastor who is the worship leader. I never quite got along too.

Well with her Charismatic II type of woman. She said the moment you open your mouth. It was a sword and These believers went down they were part. They were proliferated also over the building on their faces with such depth of groanings like you've never heard.

They were repenting not only for themselves before their nation because I think one of the things I said was what has changed since the Holocaust. What has been altered in your contemporary Christianity even at its charismatic best?

That has really recognized the sin of the past and has rectified it and the answer is nothing. Nothing has changed. They're they're repenting for the wrong things. And out of the depth of that brokenness finally there came such a worship to the Lord in the spirit.

That was totally unprompted that when I heard that I said now the powers of darkness over Nuremberg are terrified. To hear this authentic praise that has come out of this authentic Reconciliation that has come out of this authentic repentance that has come out of this authentic Word of God Terrifies the powers of the air where they're only required to recognize what is authentic.

And if they're not dismissed and broken in their orbits by this authenticity They'll only wait the next opportunity to come and to influence and seize the organs of power yet again. So this issue of the church in Germany is very critical.

Repentance for German Christianity and the Holocaust

That word was inspired by four days of anguish Sitting in a conference in Berlin on Israel and listening to all of the schmaltz and sentimentality and and the various kinds of conventional wisdom Propagated by men who publicly denounced me from platforms, and I looked upon Adoringly by the German believers, and I couldn't bear to hear their conventional wisdom that is where there's not going to suffer loss.

And the last night was a Repentance for the sins of the German to the Jew and it was such a cathartic Psychologically Structured evening that I was not only turned off I was agonizing in the inner man.

Because it will give momentary relief to these Germans for their guilt conscience. But it but it will need again to be repeated because it's not a recognition of the ground for repentance. And it's only a device by which a momentary relief is obtained.

Israel is not benefited nor the German Christian himself. I left that meeting that night just Done in and went to the apartment where I was staying which was the former Jewish neighborhood in Berlin. I Also wrote another paper imagining Turning the clock back and imagining the former occupant of that apartment beautiful high-ceiling bookcases just the kind of a thing that a middle-class Jew would enjoy before the Hitler time and I've never written imaginary Things like this that the man is hearing the pounding on the on the staircase of these German stormtroopers coming up to get him and he has to make hasty last-minute decisions.

What do I do with the memorabilia the photographs of my deceased wife? The tickets to the State Opera did my favorite book the various kinds of things that a Jewish man would collect in his lifetime knowing he has only moments and that in the end he can't take anything with him.

Anyway, it's in that apartment. I came back that night I sat down at the computer and by faith I typed in true and false German repentance toward the Jew and when I finished I had about a page of Statement put it my Bible went to Nuremberg the next day and on the second and final night The Lord said take out that paper and I just spoke from that paper and down they went.

So pray again for that October 10th through 13th conference in Braunschweig and the other days of activity that I received on my internet today. Showing the various places will be also in Australia Austria in those days and Austria has a more deadly Anti-semitic heritage than even Germany.

The Jews in Vienna really caught it and Vienna was the city of the father of psychiatry. Freud what's his first name? Sigmund Freud. Viennese Jews were the high-water mark of German-speaking Jewish culture and civilization and There was a day of comeuppance that fell upon them so to both Germany and the Jew domesticated God.

Maybe that's a real name for reform Judaism. You guys know that there are three branches. Orthodox conservative reform. Orthodox, of course is the most biblically conformed. Conservative is like halfway house.

Reform is the most stripped-down form of Jewish religion that has that saves from embarrassment. Educated and erudite Jews from having to subscribe to a God who is supernatural in his power. And yet have some form of that which is a Jewishly identified.

That their Jewish identity can be maintained reform. Judaism was born in Germany. So was Zionism. Theodore Herzl was an Austrian Jew. Let's see how this insinuates itself in history and still remains.

The Exodus Pattern and the Abrahamic Identity

So we dimly begin to see that the God of Jesus and Israel has truth only in the journey. That we begin when we follow as disciples in which we are led where we do not want to go. To follow Jesus is for us Gentile Christians what the Exodus story was and is for Jews liberation from the house of slavery.

He's saying that German culture and civilization is Egypt and the Exodus out there's only one Exodus out that is Identification with the Exodus of Israel and seeing yourself in joint Participation with them for the same reasons or else there's no Exodus.

Therefore your religion is still in Egypt. Still using the vocabulary, but it becomes Corrupted Egyptian and Babylonian unless you have come out. And it's the coming out is to the proportion to the degree that you recognize the Jewish content of the faith.

Or the Hebraic content of the faith and embrace it in such a way that it has the power to bring you out. You might ask yourself if you've been brought out not from Germany, but from Missouri. Where so ever you are in culture and in origin.

But the way out is what he's describing and it's not that he stumbled upon something inadvertently. This is God's Design, this is God's normative intention. This is salvation of the salvation is of the Jews and it must necessarily be of the Jews if it is to be of any benefit for Gentiles.

To lose that connection to to fail to remember to recognize that salvation is of the Jews distinctly is to lose the value. And to have a conversion that is not really conversion, but only a domestication of God that still keeps you in Egypt.

To understand this we do not need to spend long Time looking back at antiquity in the Middle Ages. We Germans have experienced it in National Socialism. Well, I'll tell you This isn't some kind of Ivy Tower theologian.

This is a nitty-gritty guy who's got his head screwed on right and he's speaking truth. We don't have to go back to our pagan origins to prove my point. He says National Socialism is the evidence in itself that we had never come out.

It was a system that developed into a nature and blood idolatry. Into the legality of sin as Luther understood it an order that did not allow that the true God of Israel should be God. Because if we wanted to make ourselves God.

That's it right there when we will look at Japan and Germany later on next week. This is exactly the point why Japan crucified literally crucified Christian missionaries. 16 or 26 of them were actually hung on crosses.

They were Catholic Jesuits before the advent of Protestant Christianity and By edict, they were rounded up their noses and ears were cut off and they were forced marched from where they were into Nagasaki where they were crucified in mass.

Japan has always repudiated what has been sent them from God and why have they repudiated? The God of Israel, which is the God of the faith that is alone Saving because of their own national idolatry and own national purposes.

Their Shintoism is a state religion that Supports the aristocracy the nobility the some samurai the warrior class and the Emperor. It's a way in which men who are on the top of the social pile Continued their dominance through the implementation of a religion that suits their system and the priests of that religion are Totting figures who are paid off and Accommodate them.

There's some statements here about the Jewish law. I'll not read that now, but it's a particular interest for Reggie that may come to us later. How should I be able to recover a belief in Jesus Christ on the part of Israel?

I would have to sue for the Holy Spirit. For something to be obtained that I cannot fulfill Because of this misuse of God. Historically in German Christianity. Yeah, it's confusing. Because I am Jumping here and not giving the background to some of these statements.

I Believe that I cannot find my own reason or strength to believe in Jesus Christ. My Lord have come to him. How then should I be able to? Sue for the recovery of belief in Jesus Christ in the part of Israel.

How can I make a claim for that is I would have to sue for the Holy Spirit? In order to fulfill that need Jesus is the Messiah and in that he deals with us Gentiles first, but with him the salvation of the Jews Comes to us his messianic work begins with that.

He tears us out of our Gentile darkness out of an existence without God in the world from falling into the legalities of Glorious Gentile Stamped out a rear and in a reality that knows nothing either of the covenants or of the pledges of the true God.

And he calls us to be fellow citizens of God. If Jesus gains the Gentiles for the God of Israel this fulfills something of the purpose for which the Jewish people were called. It confirms Israel in the mission peculiar to it on the ground for its calling and election.

He is genuinely the Messiah of Israel in this respect. If we want to state that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, then we must attest him messianically. The confession of his Messiah hood implies exactly as much truth as we ourselves seriously Appropriate and live out here.

Christian Witness to Jewish People

He's talking about how do we German Christians relate to Jews today? How do we? Evangelize them. What is our message? Because we've a lousy track record and there's been much injury perpetrated against Jews in the name of Christ.

But he doesn't say what we all know is that Jewish blood has flowed in the streets of every German city in Hamlet. All through the Middle Ages and particularly in the Passover Easter season when the myth of Jews Employing the blood of Gentile children to make their matzah was a well-known libel and The plagues that took place in Germany Europe the black plague in the 14th century was attributed to Jews poisoning the wells.

Why should they be accused. Because they were the only ones living in Europe that were not dying by the plague. So therefore they must have been the perpetrators in order to get rid of Gentiles. Why weren't they affected?

Because they didn't eat pork. Because pigs were the garbage disposal system of Europe you tossed your garbage out the window and Roving bands of pigs consumed it that were later butchered and eaten rats and and every kind of thing only Jews Boiled their pots and pans and dishes.

Only Jews kept certain kosher hygienic practices. That somehow insulated them from these plagues. But what did the unbenighted Gentile think we're dying by flies these Jews are not even affected. They must be the culprits and so there'd be another mass murder.

So my favorite town in Germany is Esslingen in the Stuttgart area and the state church formerly Catholic now Lutheran Stands at the foot over the former Location of the synagogue that was burned to the ground at the time of the Crusades.

When the Crusaders went through Europe on their way to the Holy Land, they financed their pilgrimage by looting Jewish communities. Because the Jews were infidels and they were doing God's service By recovering the Holy Grail and all of these kinds of things victimizing Jewish communities all the way.

So the legend is that the Jews locked themselves up in their synagogue for protection and The Crusaders burned it to the ground and the entire Jewish community of Esslingen Was finished in one in that one act and over the ruins now lost to the history.

When you go to Esslingen today and go to Information Bureau and tourist there's not a word of this. They give you the information from 1200 and something on but it was an 1100 Somewhere that this devastation took place and as a German as a GI in German if you can picture this Before some of you were born 1952 53 Walking the streets of Esslingen.

I had such a haunting sense of Identification I could not articulate it. I felt more Bonding more affinity with this German town and Still retaining its Middle Ages complexion. It was never bombed in either World War one or World War two than I had ever felt in Brooklyn in Brooklyn.

I was a man without a country in Germany. I was a man in this country. So long have we had a two thousand year existence in that part of the world and then to learn later. When did I learn it when I got back to the States on the GI Bill and was in college?

I stumbled onto a reference on Esslingen and some encyclopedia that gave the information that I've just shared with you. But I never learned it there and every time I've been back there and go to the official tourist Information services, they know nothing about it.

It's lost to history. But it's in the bloodstream. Yeah, it's I intuited something it sounds very mystical. I don't know how to explain it. But I had an eerie strange sense of identification as if somehow I had lived there myself or that my forebears had come from that.

I don't know how and maybe that's true and The guy whom I did not yet know was already so disposing me to be touched by the melancholy strains of this mystery of the Germany and the Jew. You can't separate them.

You can't understand Germany without understanding the influence that Jews have had in that civilization and you can't understand What is Jewish without understanding its dramatic roots. Yiddish? Which is lingua franca the international tongue of Jews before the advent of Israel is German.

When I read the sermons of Luther in German, it was like reading Yiddish. Though the German of Luther's generation is today's Yiddish. It's a middle ages Expression of German that Jews picked up and made their into the international language.

So you can understand the sensitivity of this scholar. He's a believer and there's an obligation to the Jew. But how do you present it in a history like this that they can consider and and receive what would we as Gentiles have received?

That has been for us a saving grace and yet unknown to them. They don't have it by virtue of being Jews. They need to come out of their own Egypt by the faith in their own God. Centering in the faith of their own Messiah, but that Messiah has never been depicted to them as being Jewish when you see the portraits of Jesus and the Middle Ages with the halos over the head and the Aquiline features and the Middle Age backgrounds.

Middle Ages Settings there's nothing Jewish. Nothing Hebraically identifiable to which a Jew could respond. I myself felt that way growing up in Brooklyn, New York. But who's this Jesus? Well, it's Christ.

I don't know any Jews with that that last name so the church has failed to communicate the Jewishness of our own Savior and Therefore he's an alien to us outside of the compass of our experience. And why has the church failed.

Because it itself has lost this connection and this appropriation. Jesus is Messiah of Israel to the extent to which we Christian believers actually Affirm his kingdom for the people of Israel. Listen to the statement protect it and give thanks for it to them.

We cannot establish it for them. Let me read that again. Jesus is Messiah of Israel because what does Messiah mean Saints? Messiah is the English word for Christ Christos. But what does that mean? Moshiach is Hebrew.

What does that mean? Anointed King. Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews was the mocking statement above the cross. But at the same time the most profound statement of the truth of the man who was impaled there.

The Kingdom of God and the Kingdoms of Men

So listen this man says Jesus is Messiah of Israel to the extent to which we Christian believers actually affirm his kingdom. It's not that we make him Messiah. But we make him known as Messiah to his own people to the degree that we affirm the kingdom of which he is king if our Christianity is not in this context in the context of the kingdom if we have Extrapolated the faith and made it only a religious convenience that is domesticated and suits our national purposes.

There's no way we can commute could can communicate the Jews the Messiah ship of their own Messiah. For the Messiah ship is anointed King. And what does that mean outside of the context of the kingdom?

But why has the church failed to apprehend us? Because the kingdom of God is necessarily at odds and in opposition to the kingdoms of men. The word Reich. Hitler instituted the third life Re ICH. There were two Reich's before him and I would not be surprised that before they that's the age ends.

There'll be a fourth life more fearful than the third. The word Reich in German means kingdom. Kaiser is the German a form of the word Caesar or ruler. There's another English word Emperor Emperor. So this imperial ambition of kingdom is Intrinsic.

The Germany has been a powerful thread to its whole history. It explains the origin of World War one of which World War two is but the continuation and it is still a living strand. Why wasn't it cut? Why wasn't the nation freed from the tyranny of those who have these imperial kingdom ambitions?

Because the Christianity that has been historically established Even in the Germany of the Reformation failed to apprehend the kingdom aspect of the Christian faith and That Jesus is a king and a coming King and is a distinct and literal kingdom that is going to be established.

But the catch is be established where? Not in Berlin. But in Zion in Jerusalem and proud Germans for them. It would be a bone in their throats. It's humbling to think that another people are the locusts of the glory of God's rule in creation over the earth.

And not the German themselves. Naturally and humanly speaking the German would seem to be the greatest candidate and the Jew the worst. But isn't that exactly the wisdom of God and What we were talking about God choosing the filler the foolish thing and perfecting his praise out of the mouth of babes Infants and sucklings.

Why so as to stop the mouth of his adversary because what is the adversary saying that that that that that that? You'll never succeed by choosing the foolish and the weak thing. Kingdom requires power force Credentials authority threat intimidation and your kingdom is of another kind.

Remember Jesus said If all I have to do is call upon my father and he would provide 12 regions, but my kingdom is not of this world. I'm not going to extricate myself From the fix that I'm in and save my skin and my hide as any man would who had access to superior forces.

But my kingdom does not play that game my kingdom suffers the humiliation unto death. But if I wanted I could call my father and 12 legions would be at my disposal in a moment. But my kingdom is not of this world, but there is a kingdom.

And so we need to realize that the whole conflict and struggle in the world and with the nations is the resistance and the unwillingness to receive the kingdom of God and therefore to reject the faith itself or to accept it and to so mutilate it as to Domesticate it and make it to serve one's own national purposes.

Got the picture, but God is not finished so. To the extent to which we Christian believers actually affirm his kingdom. For the people of Israel and that is to say we know it's theirs. It's Davidic. It will be sent it in their land and in their Zion.

Protect it and give thanks for it to them. We cannot establish it for them. But if we spend our time in criticism of Judaism and theological liquidation theories which to this day are obstinately maintained in theological faculties.

Does that not in the end make it impossible for Jews to see their Christ in our Lord? We engage them in debates. You know that Jews have to sit in Easter seasons in the Middle Ages in churches and listen to debates between A representative of the Jewish community a learned rabbi and some converted Jew Dispute disputing with them over the messianic scriptures and if they dare doze off and not listen they were poked with a long rod as people paroled the Sanctuary to make sure that the Jews were listening and they were going to learn What's right and learn in this debate where the truth really lies.

So this is a history and the Jews still remember that and So he's sensitive to that. This is that's not the way in which we're going to reveal to them their Christ. Our confession of Christ is then nothing but an ideology Thank God, which does not have to be like that any longer.

Spiritual Identification Rather Than Religious Imitation

Our Lord Jesus Christ was and is a native born risen and living Jew. Whenever we praise him we praise in him his people Israel. We change from being enemies to being friends of Israel's God. We join this people spiritually and psychologically.

We struggle politically and socially for this people. We profess our faith in Jesus Christ and make the earth habitable for Israel down for the count. Would to God that this would be a proclamation of the church in all nations.

Let me read this again. I know you don't get it. There's a wonderful Masterpiece in Geneva one of the reformed churches an inspired artist painted a fresco on the wall of this Geneva Reformed Church showing Jesus bright Illuminating his light and his circled by his disciples who are looking like What you say look I'm gonna eat of your flesh and drink your blood.

I was so struck by the contrast between the brightness of the Lord And those to whom he was going to entrust the faith after his passion. Sometimes I get a little catch a glimpse of that of course everyone here is exempted.

To listen to this we we talked this morning about being good readers now we can talk about being good listeners. Really to actively be engaged and hang on and catch what's being said here. We joined this people spiritually and psychologically.

Well, how many of us can say that we have joined this people spiritually and psychologically. And I'm not talking about some Yiddish kite. I'm not talking about some schmaltzy External thing of wearing a yarmulke or starved David around your neck.

God bless you ladies who have it. But let's not give it any greater value than it deserves. But I have been in congregations where I've seen Gentiles Dovening you know the way Jews do in the synagogue they bob and weave and I look to see the guys as blond and freckled faces from Kansas.

But he's become thoroughly Judaized and has given to the yarmulke and the talit the prayer shawl a certain mystical value but there's a power and a valence of something in the The paraphernalia of the synagogue that needs to be touched with great caution, but if we embrace it too zealously We can actually be corrupted and adversely affected by the Negative if not demonic nuances that in here in that whole synagogue Antichrist culture, but what is this man saying?

He's not commending that He's after something much deeper. Something much more difficult to obtain and few there be who are non-jewish Christians who have obtained it. In fact, I would say few there be that are Jewish Christians who have obtained it because we have we don't we ourselves Do not have it by virtue of being born Jews.

We ourselves must acquire it and obtain it the same way as yourself by our own immersion into our own Biblical culture into swimming in our own songs and and getting into the genius of the faith. That's a brave content.

Maybe we do have an advantage as Paul says when they are grafted back into their own tree. How much more. There is a much more but the way in which it's obtained is the same way as yourself. But it needs to be obtained and I believe that this German scholar has obtained it or he could not write what he's writing and Say what he's saying.