Antioch, Apostolic Sending and Setting - Part 3

You need to know that because in the confrontation you are going to have with Jews, and I'm not speaking about the present nuclear Jewish community here in this city, but those that will come, don't be disappointed if they seem to be unaffected by what you say or even react angrily or in a hostile manner is not the evidence that you failed but that you succeeded. Don't look at their faces. We Jews are so intimidating. But what the man didn't know was that while I sat there overtly, unmoved, inwardly, my spirit had fallen out of my body and was whimpering and weeping on the floor because in a moment of time when he said that, I had a flash of inspiration of all of the arrogant, hot-shot, hot cats of the world that are ready to save it and end up by bringing it into rivers of blood. And that this washing of one another's feet, of which I had never heard, how should I have heard of it? I had never read a New Testament. The fact of the matter is, university graduate teacher, I had never read an Old Testament. You say, well Art, weren't you born in Mitzvot? Yeah, at the age of 13. And I chanted my little piece out of the Prophets appropriate for that Shabbat selection, but I didn't understand a word of it. We didn't learn something to understand it. We learned something to perform it. So I'm hearing, wash one another's feet. What a devastating concept. And I saw somehow by the eye of the inner man, the proud men who are going to save the world bending and washing the feet of the enemy. At that time it would have been teachers washing the feet of administrators, parents, children, their parents. Today it would be an Israeli washing the feet of a Palestinian. And I realized in one moment that spirit of humility would save the world without any program, without any shedding of blood. And before I could recover from the enormous impact of that one statement, this man went on to speak to me about the Gospel of Jesus Christ in German. So because of the inadequacy of my German and the limitation of his English, the few words were yet more cogent and powerful. So powerful that when he finished with me, I wanted to protest and say, hey, that's for the Gentiles. We have our God, you have your God, we have our book, you have your book. I had no voice. I could not register complaint. And I knew that I knew I was hearing the words of truth and life. Well, you can buy that book. And it's soon to be published in Chinese. Why? Because I think there's a whole generation in China who have come now to a place to which I had been brought 37 years ago. Ideological disillusionment. Who are now open to consider an alternative, even the unthinkable alternative, the reality of God himself. And what makes that book so powerful is that it's not a retrospective book where a man thinks, well, 20 years later, 30, I'll write what I remember. It's the actual journal that I carried 37 years ago, making my entries of a man picking me up off the side of the road. It's an extraordinary book. And the literary quality of that book is so unusual that the publisher in England, Hodden and Stoughton, the three-century-old distinguished publishing house, told me, the editor of the religious books department, when your book came to my desk, Art, I realized that the literary quality of that book was so unusual, it would never be a commercial success, but that it required one edition from us. And they published it. So when I later came to New Zealand, Australia, other places in the British Commonwealth, the book had preceded me. So I praise God that it will come out in Chinese, which may well be a door of opening for this servant into that nation at some future time when they're ready for my kind of work. So, bless the Lord. You love the word apostolic? I say, until it evokes saliva. You don't love it sufficiently. You've got to drool over the word. And I know that you Chinese are too circumspect to be that abandoned to anything, but I'm asking you to cultivate such a love, such a jealousy, such a love for the word. For this word that lies beyond definition, that is the summation of the glory of the faith itself, that Jesus, being the high priest and the apostle of our confession, bears that designation. Any church that is less or other than what is apostolic necessarily falls short of the glory of God. And until the church that bears his name is apostolic, we will not move Israel to envy, nor defeat the principalities and powers of the air that still continue, though having suffered an initial setback at the crucifixion of Jesus, still continue to be the usurping of the glory of God. We are the false rulers of this world and the gods of this age. Only a church that has come to apostolic maturity and authority can recognize and discern this invisible spirit reality and have the authority to defeat it. So it's remarkable that the same church that has come to a place that can move Jews to jealousy is by that virtue the same church that can defeat the powers of the air. And in fact, meeting Israel and the Jew in the last days is the defeat of the powers. For why should a Gentile church extend itself sacrificially for Jews who have not only, not necessarily done anything for the Gentiles, but have been the object of their envy or displeasure or resentment? This is totally to be unexpected. It's unnatural that a Gentile should be willing to bear sacrifice, even the possible loss of life, for a Jew. But when a Gentile will be brought to such a place by the operation of God through the Spirit, the end of the age has come. Because not only will that Gentile believer be willing for such sacrifice, but bear it ungrudgingly and even rejoice over it as being privileged. If you can understand that and understand me, you're really an impressive congregation. But it's being recorded and we'll come back to some of these statements that I'm making and I'm just throwing it out as the Lord gives it. So, I'm saying all that to say this. Let's roll up our sleeves and get into the text. Let's become competent exegetes, which means rightly dividing the Word of God, drawing out its meaning, comparing Scripture with Scripture, looking upon every nuance of the Word. Why does God choose this Word rather than another? Why does He take a certain Word and repeat it two or three times? Nothing is haphazard in the Word of God and we have been reading it much too casually, if we have been reading it at all. As a matter of fact, we have been reading it only as Bible study, and not reading it with the urgency and desperation of a people living on the sharp edge of collision with the world and its opposition.