By Art Katz
If we are called to anything, it is to be the bearers of God's word. There is a profusion of speaking, welters of tapes and videos, yet in the midst of it all, there is little that can be labeled the word of the Lord. We need a deep and new perception of this ‘holy sacrament.'
The first statement of the anointed ministry of Jesus took place in the synagogue at Nazareth, where He was handed the scroll of Isaiah, and commenced to read from the sixty-first chapter.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He anointed Me to preach ... (Luke 4:18a)
There is a conjunction between anointing and preaching, and any preaching that is not anointed is not preaching, but mere oratory. There is, therefore, a peculiar and particular quality that distinguishes apostolic or true proclamation from all other speaking. This is a remarkable life and death phenomenon because:
How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? (Romans 10:14-15a)
This is the heart of the whole mission calling of the church, particularly to the Jew. The unbelieving world is waiting for a certain kind of speaking which I want to call ‘apostolic proclamation.' It is the preaching of one who is sent. He whom God sends is given the Spirit without measure. This sending is critical, therefore, for which reason God establishes sending communities.
True preaching, or the devising of a sermon, is to be confronted with a contradiction. Preaching is a category unto itself. It is in the realm of the impossible. We have many men today who are glib, and who know how to play on words. They have even made careers out of their ability to speak. If you are attractive, have the gift of the gab, and a winsomeness with men, you can go far in the religious world today. True preaching, however, cannot come from this world. It is altogether a divine and supernatural phenomenon. It is the word of life. It quickens the dead. The hearing of it constitutes an ‘event.' It sets in motion things that have a myriad of consequences, and has a power and a life unto itself. It is a word that is sent.
Ironically, this kind of speaking has to find expression through the mouth of an earthly vessel standing before men, and that is a formula for disaster. It is the bringing together of the most disparate contradictions, that if you really understand it, or have to perform it, it is nothing less than excruciating. There is, however, no greater joy than expressing the burden that God has given to people who draw out His heart, and who therefore hear and receive God's word. Likewise, there is no greater anguish than the word to be stopped up in your mouth because your listeners are not hearing. Neither does yesterday's success guarantee today's. It is the same trembling, the same fear, the same uncertainty, and the same overwhelming sense of the patent impossibility of the task. This paradox, and the terrible contradiction of it, have got to register deeply in our consciousness, namely, that the word of God is going to come out of the mouth of an earthly, human vessel, but the word itself is divine and heavenly. It is not as if the instrumentality is some utilitarian thing that is objective, and does not participate in the process. The speaker is very much involved, because the Lord employs the man's personality, his accent, his disposition, and his heart.
Preaching is a struggle and an ultimate challenge every time it is undertaken. One can make many good biblical statements, but that is not the same as communicating the word as God's word. This latter phenomenon alone has the power to constitute ‘an event' instead of merely communicating biblical knowledge. We need to distinguish between the two things, and probably ninety-five per cent of all Christian preaching and teaching is teaching about God, or making biblical statements of interesting and insightful kinds, but does not constitute the expression of the word as God's word. We have become so attenuated to hearing the ‘other,' that if it is biblical and doctrinally sound, we think that that is true preaching. We have, however, misunderstood the utterly supernatural character of communicating the word of God, and therefore our hearers remain unchanged. We are not going from faith to faith, and from glory to glory, because we have not gone from ‘event' to ‘event.' We have only gone from the predictable to the predictable, and if it is clean and biblically sound, we come away with some measure of satisfaction, but we will remain unchanged.
It is a mystery, and the whole church needs to have a standard set before it higher than what it has understood, and to realize the patent impossibility of the word of God as the word of God. We dare not come up to the platform, open the Bible, clear our throats, call the congregation to attention, pray a prayer, open our mouths and commence without a terrible sense of foreboding of all of the great weight that falls upon that moment. If it is not the word of God, there will be a form of death going forth, instead of life. There is no neutrality here. Either it is going to forward the life of God, or there is going to be a numbness and dullness by just hearing something that is ‘merely' good. We would probably be better off not to hear it at all! Silence is more to be desired than a mere good sermon, which cannot communicate the Life of God as God's word. The result is a deadening of spiritual sensibility.
The Word of the Cross
For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. (1 Corinthians 1:21)
It is my contention that the word of the Cross is the power of God, that is to say, it contains an inherent, divinely penetrating ability to register divine truths despite the severest religious, cultural and ethnic resistance. Furthermore, it creates faith so as to believe unto salvation. It is the word of God as event, not under auspicious circumstances but inauspicious, which is to say, an event despite resistance. It performs a work in them that believe, or a work that has brought them to the place of believing. It is a heavenly word proclaimed in the earth, not only to those who are willing hearers, but also to resistant hearers. Earth resists heaven, and every power of darkness wants to cloud the minds of men, and keep them from understanding and responding. It requires, therefore, a word of an ultimate kind.
The phrase ‘word of God' is not so much a generic terminology but more literally a word ‘of God.' This is how we turn a holy thing into a cliché. We are apt to assume that anything that is biblically orientated, and seemingly correct, is the word of God. This is false assumption. The word of God is rather a divine communication of a uniquely powerful kind, expressed through a human vessel. Paul's own acute awareness of the phenomenon is expressed in the first epistle to the Thessalonians:
And for this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the word of God's message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. (Chapter 1:13)
Paul could rightly boast, and we need to read this, not as generous rhetoric, but as a literal and accurate description of a particular mode of speaking, rare in our own time. If the distinctive nature of this communication is its power, what then is its character? Paul is careful to instruct his Greek correspondents, contrary to their own culture and love of rhetoric, that the preaching of the gospel can actually be voided of its power if it is expressed in the eloquent wisdom of men. The word of God is something altogether and qualitatively different from that, and if we lapse into a human eloquence, we void the statement of its power.
The word of the Cross is not necessarily the statement or description of the actual crucifixion of Jesus. It should be better understood as the word describing the Cross. There is another meaning implicit in it, and though the Cross itself may not be the subject matter, it can yet be ‘the word of the Cross.' The substance of that event, replicated in the humiliation of the preaching itself, is the reenactment of the ‘Cross experience.' Every time the Cross is reenacted in any humiliation that comes from an obedience, the power that was demonstrated at the Cross in the first, is again given opportunity to be expressed proportionate to the degree to what is actually borne or suffered in that humiliation.
True preaching is humiliation; true witness is humiliation; true prayer is humiliation. Humiliation is another word for suffering unto death, and wherever that dynamic takes place in truth, then the power of God will always attend it. The reason we do not see the power of God in preaching is that men take pains to avoid humiliation by being assured that they are going to get through the moment by using preparatory notes, outlines and other dependencies that will ensure that they ‘get by.' We are unwilling to take the risk of failure by standing with our face sticking out, and trusting the operation of God in the moment for the word. There is a place for preparation, but in the event itself, room must be made for God. And if we insulate God by our own religious, human and professional preparation, we void the operation of the Cross, and the foolishness of it, namely, the suffering and the humiliation, and therefore the power of the Cross.
The Scandal of the Cross
The preaching, or proclamation, that is salvational is more than the transmission of information or knowledge about the gospel. It is not the relating of information about salvation, or how to attain it, or the facts of the gospel per se, but rather a supernatural event that creates faith in the hearer through the operation of the power of God. It is the demonstration of its power because it is very God as He chose to reveal Himself in His own final and ultimate extremity.
Crisis reveals, and what was revealed at the crisis of the Cross was God, not as we think Him to be, but as He in fact is. Christ on the Cross is a scandal. God hung naked unable to cover His private parts because His hands were nailed, and all the while listening to the jeers and taunts of His people, "Come down and we will believe You." It is an unbelievable scene of uttermost degradation and humiliation, and God bore that. "Learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart." It is a revelation of God as He is, and instead of railing back at those who were taunting Him, He said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."
A preacher who thus intentionally voids himself in trust for a word of God to be given experiences a suffering in measure akin to that of the crucified Christ. He is dying to his own ability to speak, and becomes foolish in a humiliation like the Savior's-unto death. This is the heart of all true speaking. The man speaking sees to it that his own ability will not be his dependency. He is the humble recipient of something that is to be given. There is a suffering, a humiliation and a death in the speaking that releases the same quality of power that took place at the Cross, and will again, in every reenactment of that event. God does not want the faith of men to be established on eloquence, but on the basis of the power of God, which is released through the one who is willing to suffer the terrible humiliation.
The preaching that is power comes when a man abandons himself, and will not lean on his own expertise or ability. Pulling out that plug is the death. It is something one can never get used to, but is to be tasted again and again. It is as terrifying, contradictory, and mortifying as if you had never done it before. Every occasion is a fresh experience in death, and only one who is dead to himself will bear it. Who is there that is willing to taste that death? Who is willing to abandon his trusted ability and confidence, and trust that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead will now raise the speaker and his message?
In a word, the very obedience of suffering unto death by which the veil of the Temple was rent, is again, by the obedience of the preacher, sundered over the understanding and darkened mind of the hearer, not only to emit light on what is otherwise patently foolish and offensive to human sensibility, but to birth or create the grace of repentance and faith unto believing. The veil was rent in the crucifixion of Jesus, and is rent every time again, when the same power is released by the same humiliation. This time it is not the veil in the Temple, but the veil over the heart and understanding.
The Creative Word
A correctly recited word out of the Bible does not make it the word of God. It is only the word of God when it is the word given, and that word does not necessarily have to be a scriptural quotation to be the word of God. It could be a word of mocking, insult, confrontation, or a strange and foolish word, but it is a word that must be given, and that word is attested to by the power of God. Those who speak the words of God have already come to a sufficient death to themselves that the power, or life of God, can be meted out to them without any fear that the glory of God will be touched or misappropriated. A man who will bear God's words and speak them can be trusted-however offensive they might be to the hearer and even to himself.
In the absence of the deep conversions effected by the preaching in our own generation, one wonders if we have sufficiently considered the meaning of the word ‘sent,' and have naively assumed that any promulgation of the gospel is as blessed and honored of God. Likewise, it is perhaps wise also to consider whether any message, however correct, is indeed the word of God, especially if it was humanly contrived to avoid the very humiliation which I am suggesting. If ‘preaching Christ' is more than the message about Him, but the showing forth of Him, then the God who sends may yet be waiting for suitable candidates. The issue is the issue of the Cross, and one might rightly suspect that it will not come to men with full conviction, except through the lips of those who know the Cross in their own experience, and are willing to suffer the humiliation of it again and again in the very foolishness of their speaking. If our speaking is not a foolishness, it is not a true speaking. It may amuse men, it may even inform and inspire, but it will never be an event.
Our own generation, like that of the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote, bears a greater affinity for sophistication and self-adulation than the God who made Himself of no reputation. A true preaching requirement, rightly considered, will enable us to think often of our wretchedness and a healthy contempt for ourselves and our ability. To preach is not the issue of skill or learned technique, but a divine mystery, and the very word ‘preaching' is derived from the Latin word praedikare, which means ‘to make known.' Whenever Christ's humiliation is explicated in the foolishness of preaching, He is again revealed and set forth to be a Savior. For just as God gives grace to the humble, so also does He, who is full of grace and truth, have opportunity to intersect time and eternity, heaven and earth in the moment of authentic meekness when a preacher ceases from himself.
A familiar illustration of this cruciform life is to be found in 1 Corinthians where Paul exclaims:
And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:1-2)
For all of Paul's erudition and religious knowledge, this kind of self-imposed limitation required a painful determination. The trouble is that we know so much, and there is so much that we know that wants to find expression. It requires, therefore, a determination to put away what is so accessible and available to our preaching.
True preaching, or the authoritative word, is a word that produces change, and establishes a reality that was not there before the speaking of it. A whole respect and reverence for the word of God, as preached, needs to be elevated in the church. God says that He has exalted His word above His Name. In the beginning was the Word, and it was the Spirit of God who brooded across the face of the deep before a creation that was yet without form, and God spoke and said: "Let there be light." We need increasingly to have an anticipation for this kind of apostolic speaking, of men bringing us the word, not just to strengthen our understanding, but to actually establish our foundations.
The Word that Performs a Work
Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 2:11-13,
Just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own Kingdom and glory. And for this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the word of God's message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.
This was not some abstract believing. They believed that the word that had come to them through a man was not the word of man, but the very word of God itself. And because they believed that, it performed a work in them. This is how God changes us from glory to glory-by the word that performs a work.
That word had nothing to do with Paul's own selection. He had only one thing before him and that was to be obedient to speak the word that was given, and which alone performs a work in those who hear and believe. If we choose not to believe that, then that same word becomes for us just another word, one that we like, or do not like, one that is interesting, or not interesting, and thus we lose the entire value, and the word, therefore, cannot perform its work.
All too often we come to the place of assembly with a weary kind of resignation, and the mentality that it is just another service, but it was not so in the beginning. They came in anticipation of a ‘creative event' by the word that was spoken, and by such continual speaking, they were moved from glory to glory. How else shall we go from where we presently are to where God bids us ‘apostolically' to be, except by the word that is sent, and by the word that is spoken. That puts an incredible responsibility on the bearer of the preached word. His union with the Lord needs to be of an authentic kind, or else his listeners are merely sermonized from Sunday to Sunday.
We need a whole qualitative elevation of our faith, and a jealousy to not speak anything other than the word that is given by God. There has got to be for us a motivation more than our reputation as speakers, or the fear of men, or our concern not to offend, or disappoint. Perhaps there could not be a healthier tonic for the church itself than to introduce them to silence, and to announce to their astonishment that the one who is going to speak has not a word to speak from God, and that he is not going to fill the silence with some merely good thing. This is the type of jealousy to which we must return if we are going to have what Paul speaks of in his first letter to the Thessalonians.
The Place of Communion
And there I will meet with you; and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak to you about all that I will give you in commandment for the sons of Israel. (Exodus 25:22)
I am glad that the Lord uses the word ‘commandment' rather than the word ‘suggestion.' This is why we as the church at large are so infantile, that is to say, nothing is required of us other than to bring our bodies to the Sunday service, put a few dollars in the collection plate, and sing a few choruses. There is no requirement, no authoritative word expressed toward us, and no demand made. The sermon becomes a performance, a part of the requirement of the ‘church-hour.' It is a sermonizing rather than an event, and we pay a heavy and severe price for these things. We are not receiving the creative word that changes, and therefore something negative is happening-a dulling of our spirits, a dulling of our discernment, and the creating of an atmosphere of drowsiness in our congregations. There has been too much professionalism, in both the preachers, and the laymen. The word that is ‘given' is weighty, and we know it when we hear it. It makes a particular demand upon our attention, and likewise a requirement in our obedience. That kind of word can only come out of the council of God.
This same principle must apply in the words we speak, even in conversation, or as we exhort one another daily, or speak the truth in love. Is it mere human opinion that is being expressed, or God's very word? We need to call a moratorium on all casual speaking, and wait upon God for a renewing of our reverence for the spoken word, not just from platforms and pulpits, but even in our daily conversations, and even what we are speaking to the world. I have seen the judgment of God come to fellowships on the basis of words that I have spoken. I never used the wording, "Thus saith the Lord, such and such will happen to you if you will not do this or that." I merely spoke to them a word from God, and they chose not to receive it as God's word. They discounted it as being only a man's opinion, and now those fellowships no longer exist.
The Requirement of the Word
The coming of God in His word has a consequence. Jesus said,
If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. (John 15:22)
In other words, "My appearing and My speaking have removed from you all pretense. The truth has come in Myself, and now you are responsible. Before I came, you had an excuse for your superficiality, and for your religious ‘carryings on,' that you thought was the real thing, but now that I have come, now that I have spoken, you have no excuse. The divine standard has fallen. The reality of God, the revelation of His purposes has been presented, and now you are responsible for that. You cannot go on as you were before."
I am increasingly experiencing the audacity to say to congregations, "You are going to be sorry you invited me, because after I have spoken, you will now be responsible-and that eternally. If you choose to reject what comes, then be assured that you cannot go on as you were before. You will either fall back to something much less, even than you had before, or you go on to a qualitatively new thing." The apostolic word is a revelatory event for the fellowship or individual, coming from one who is sent, who bears the word of God, and to whom has been given the Spirit without measure.
When God speaks, something has got to give. If we do not want to give that something, then there is going to be a tension of resistance and rejection of the word. If people cannot find their opportunity to oppose the word by virtue of rejecting the word, they will find their point of opposition in rejecting the man. It seems God always gives them something to fasten on. There will always be something if men want to find a way to absolve themselves from the implications and requirements of God's word. Yet at the same time, for the man who is bringing it, he is not to employ it as an excuse, where if he has defect he says, "Well, that is what God uses." He needs to be grieved over the fact that there is any defect, and seek in every way to rectify and make right, and to be impeccable and without offense before God and man. However earnest he will be in that, men will still find offense. They found it in Jesus, and they will find it in us, but "... blessed is he who keeps from stumbling over Me" (Luke 7:23b)-or "from stumbling over him whom I send, which is the very expression of Myself."
True Preaching Waits on True Sending
Everything rests on the one preaching as being ‘sent.' The community, therefore, who sends him must be of one kind with him, and share the same mentality and Cross-centeredness. God would not say, "Set apart for Me ...," except that the man was already set apart and separated, and could therefore be sent by the laying on of hands by people of like mind, heart and spirit. The man sent is being sent in place of Christ, and those who are hearing him are hearing exactly what they would have heard had Christ come in Himself. To be sent is much more than being commissioned; it is rather to be sent in place of another, and the Other is Christ Himself, and it is through us that they hear Christ's voice and speech.
But what does it say? "the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart"-that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, "whosoever believes in him will not be disappointed." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon Him; "whoever will call upon the name of the lord will be saved." How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, "how beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of good things!" However, they did not all heed the glad tidings for Isaiah says, "lord, who has believed our report?" So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. (Romans 10:8-17)
This can be reduced to some kind of formula by putting before the consideration of the hearer something they can repeat, some kind of mechanical knee-jerk action, a kind of ‘easy believism.' Regrettably, this methodology characterizes most of our modern day evangelism, and has left many outside the kingdom. They have recited something they were encouraged to repeat, and have missed the whole profound point. There is a certain kind of hearing that is required for a certain kind of believing, and requires, therefore, a certain kind of preaching, and a certain kind of word.
Paul is actually citing from the Book of Isaiah where the prophet says,
How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who announces peace and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation, and says to Zion, "Your God reigns!" (Isaiah 52:7)
This verse, however, is preceded by something remarkable in verse 6,
Therefore My people shall know My name; therefore in that day I am the one who is speaking, ‘Here I am.'
I want to take the liberty of saying that ‘announce' means pronounce or proclaim. It is not merely an announcement, but a word that constitutes an event in the sounding of it. ‘Announcement' does not quite get at the distinctive of true preaching. The word is not merely informative, or something inspiring, but a creative ‘rhema' breath of God, in the hearing of which an event occurs. Faith is established where there was none before.
God does not say a word to us about propounding the faith to others in some systematic way by which their logic can be satisfied, and that they can be won over by some kind of invincible logic of statements. He says rather that the key to their believing, and their calling on the name of the Lord, is the hearing of a particular word, namely, the word of Christ. It is not the word about Christ, though necessarily that will be the subject, but the word of Christ Himself. The feet of those who bear good news are called ‘lovely' or ‘blessed' because, "I am the one who is speaking, ‘Here I am.'" The One who is speaking through those whose feet bear the good tidings, is not the earthen vessel on that mount, but the One who possesses that life, and is speaking through it. It is actually Christ's own word. They hear the voice of God, and His word is as creative as it was in the beginning-He spoke and it was.
They are our feet-the lowliest part of our body; but the voice, the speaking, the content and the words that constitute the creative event, and that establishes faith to believe, so that those who had been hostile and resistant can call, is actually His voice, His speaking and His words. We might believe it through some giants of the faith like Paul, but can we believe the phenomenon through ourselves? Can we believe that God would have so much the possession of us, who are the sons and daughters of resurrection, that we might say with absolute certitude, "It is not we that speak."? The whole consummation of the age waits upon the restoration of a remnant from the people Israel, so historically and adamantly opposed to this very gospel, and who are the enemies of this gospel to this day. How shall they believe what they have so long rejected? God says, through Paul, that they shall hear a word of a particular kind.
Unless they hear Him, Christ's message and voice, they will not believe the truth of His death and resurrection. If you believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, and God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved. How shall they believe on Him unless they believe that He was raised from the dead? How shall they believe that He was raised from the dead except that the evidence of the resurrection is in the words, the demeanor, the voice, the disposition and the constitution of the person who stands before them? The hearer cannot believe unless we show forth as children of the resurrection the truth of the resurrection, and whose words are resurrection words of creative power. That is the issue of the salvation of the unsaved, and particularly of the Jew in the Last Days. It is ourselves and what we present to them that is the issue of their salvation.
Resurrection Life
The issue of the resurrection is the issue of the authenticity of Jesus' Lordship.
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself to becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed upon Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:8-11)
The resurrection of Jesus is the exaltation of the One who experienced an ultimate humiliation unto death. His Lordship is His being exalted above every name, and that is what is conferred upon Him, through His resurrection, for His obedience unto death, even the death of the Cross. That is why whosoever shall believe that Jesus is Lord, and that God has raised Him from the dead, shall be saved. Those are the two principal doctrines, and they are inextricably joined together. If there was no resurrection, there is no Lordship.
In seeing, therefore, the resurrection of Christ, and hearing the voice of the resurrected Christ in the messenger, the unbeliever, who has had no preparation for this encounter, is faced with the end of his lordship over his own life. It is the end of his bank account, his business mergers, and of what he is going to do-all that is finished. All of that pseudo stuff is ended when Jesus becomes Lord and says, "Now you'll do My bidding." The reason people balk at God, who would otherwise enjoy God as God, is because they do not like the ‘Lord' part. It is the lordship that catches us in the throat, and especially my Jewish people, because they like to be their own lords. To acknowledge that Jesus is Lord requires the power that raised Him from the dead.
To hear and see, therefore, a messenger, who speaks Christ's words, is to give evidence that Christ is resurrected, for the messenger himself is the son of the resurrection, or he is not a messenger, which is to say, he is not yet authentically God's. The Body out of which he comes must be a Body of a resurrected people, who live in the power and the reality of resurrection, or there is no sending that constitutes a ‘sent' one. The whole issue is the truth of resurrection as it is experientially known by a people in the earth, or both Jew and Gentile remain locked in their unbelief. Nothing else will free them.
To believe the resurrection is to believe that Jesus is Lord. To believe that Jesus is Lord is to believe the resurrection. To believe at all is a miracle that takes place by the operation of God through the speaking and hearing of one who is sent, who brings the glad tidings, that those who hear it might believe, and call upon the name of the Lord. That is more than just giving Him a little honorific acknowledgment, but the surrender of the independent life to the totality of God's authority once and for all. That is salvation, and anything less and other than that is false.
Why does God bless the feet of those who bring good news, and whose word actually constitutes peace and establishes salvation, and who says to Zion, "Your God reigns"? It is because the one who is saying it is the one in whom God in fact reigns. Though the one who is hearing him does not know the particular circumstances, the truth of the lordship in the man who is speaking is evident. There is a God who reigns, and the truth of His reigning as Lord is demonstrated in the posture, the voice, the face, the demeanor and the character of the one who brings the glad tidings. And so, the messenger is everything.
God puts a great premium on the voice of His spokesmen, because the voice carries the urgency of God, the divine seriousness, and if you change that and yet retain the technical word, you have lost the message. That is why Jesus could say that if they receive you, they receive Me, and if they receive Me, they receive Him who sends Me. We are the vital linkage with the living God, but we have got to be something more than well-meaning, evangelical Christians or charismatic cream puffs. We have got to be a piece of the resurrection ourselves.
God will not give His glory to another or share it with flesh, but only when it is exclusively Himself, and that is why we do not see that glory. There are not many of us who are willing to live on that razor's edge. We are not so much concerned with the glory of God as avoiding the embarrassment of failure, and that is what we see every Sunday from the pulpit. That is why we have so little ‘resurrection event' in that preaching. That is why the apostolic preaching is different from conventional preaching. Conventional preaching can never be an event in God. It does not raise the dead. As someone has said, and I believe it out of my own experience, every true preaching is a raising again of the dead. We need to have an enhanced appreciation for what resurrection means as ‘God event' in the word that is spoken in resurrection power. We will never be a mouth for that if there is anything we are trying to preserve that has to do with our reputation. In our fear, we reason, "What if the word fails? What if, having trusted God absolutely, and not leaned on our own resources, He does not come through? What if we are left with our face sticking out, and instead of a powerful resurrection word, there is just a little beep, and it falls to the ground with a thud? Then what?"-and that is why we do not see the glory of God.
The only one qualified to preach a word like that is the one who wants to run the other way, like Jonah. The man, however, who loves to talk, loves to be public, and enjoys being seen and heard, need not think that a word like this will ever be emitted from his mouth. The man who sighs and groans when called upon to speak, who does not want to be there, who feels terribly uncomfortable, who knows that he is not going to be understood, is the man out of whose mouth the word of true preaching is most likely to come.
An Elijah People
God is actually after an entire apostolic church that can command the elements just like Elijah, "There shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word." Imagine a mere man commanding the elements with the authority of God Himself! This is not a privilege to be allowed a man who is still jerked around by his own subjectivity. When God will allow such speaking through a mortal mouth, you can be sure that the vessel has been adequately dealt with at the hand of God in such a way that you cannot tell where the man ends and God begins. His thought is God's thought, and his word is God's word. And God is wanting a people in the earth, who have this deep reverence for the spoken word.
I gave a message many years ago at a conference in Washington, DC. I was a young believer then, who had barely gone beyond the giving of my own testimony. I fasted and waited upon God for two days for the message. In the simplicity and naiveté that I had as a young believer, I simply spoke the words that God gave. The organizers thought that I was going to give a nice Jewish testimony, but the Lord gave me a message entitled, Eunuch for Christ's Sake, and I myself was too young to realize how radical this message was. The sword of the Lord went into hundreds of people, and split them into two groups. One half were ready to hang on my neck with gratitude for the word that for them was very life, and the rest were ready to take my life.
I was astonished by the effect, and I knew that something very deep had happened. It was the final day of the conference, and that night all of the speakers and their wives were invited to the penthouse apartment of the president of the organization. That was the night I learned what it meant to be a stranger and a pilgrim. When we came to the buffet table, men turned their shoulders, and I felt like the offscouring of the world, like some misfit who had brought such a terrible word of offense, and caused this painful controversy.
The moment, however, I finished speaking the message that night, a man came up to me, telling me he was a Jewish prophet, sent of God, and an officer of the hosting organization. He said that he had a word for me from the Lord, and that I had missed the mind of the Lord, and had done grievous damage to God's people. He told me that I needed immediately to go back to the microphone, and recant the message. Do you know how I felt when I heard that? If I had a choice, I would have preferred to have been physically stabbed than to receive the standing accusation that came forth. The first thoughts that came to me were that it could be true, and that maybe I had missed the mind of the Lord, even after waiting on the Lord and fasting. And then, how about the past? What about the other things that I had spoken? Could I have been wrong in them? What assurance had I for the future?
It was a devastating accusation, and the Lord was not there to grant me any relief. I went into self-imposed exile for a time, and eventually left the country and moved to Denmark, my wife's country, a land where I could not understand a word they were speaking. ,My children had to take me by my hand to interpret for me as if I was an imbecile. It was a ‘wilderness' experience for a man who was jealous of words and their meaning. I refused all invitations, never again desiring to go up on the platform, and the Devil used this opportunity to ride me relentlessly, "Whoever said you were a preacher? You never should have gone beyond your testimony. You should have remained a High School teacher. Whoever said you were called? Look at all the damage you have done! You thought you had the mind of the Lord, you egotist!" And I would say right after those thoughts, "Yes, that is right."
For six months, I groaned in that condition, burning with the unspeakable shame that this "prophet" might be right, and he was calling me long distance to remind me to recant. It was a trial by fire in the silence of God. After six months, I was invited to speak, and having a release from the Lord, I began to prepare myself by reading from Watchman Nee's trilogy on The Spiritual Man. To my utter astonishment there was a reference to the "Eunuch for Christ's sake"! He used the very same Scriptures that I had used in my own speaking, and then he added, that if we missed the Spirit's meaning and considered it only ‘carnally,' we would be profoundly offended! When I read that, a great release came, a lifting of the burden, and a deep vindication from God that I had indeed spoken His word.
I am describing this episode for one reason only, namely, that if the word of God is going to be restored to its exalted status as a word that is given to us as event, we need to be reminded that the price will not be cheap. There is a cost for this kind of word, and periodically God will require it just to remind us how holy a thing it is to speak the word He gives.
Proclaiming the Word that is ‘Given'
"The spirit of the prophet is subject to the prophet." What does it take to hold something and not to express it, however true and however much we think it will serve the purposes of God, and bless people in the hearing? If it is not God's moment, then we need to hold it. Why is God like that? If He gave it, and does not want it expressed now, then why does He not give it later when it is time to be expressed? Why give it now merely to be held? Does not God know that that is going to be a frustration and an inward kind of discipline of a very demanding kind? Yes, of course He knows it, and that is exactly why He is doing it! Something happens to the individual when he contains and holds his own spirit, and does not just spit it out. An ejaculation is always a great relief, but to hold it until the appointed time is beyond the issue of what relieves us. It is the issue of what glorifies God. There is still a ‘you' involved when we blurt out something. To come to a place where there is no self interest or satisfaction, and it is all the same to speak or not to speak, to be seen or not to be seen, to be used or not to be used, to be set aside or to be employed-then we can be used.
God's purpose is not the alleviation of our tension, but the revelation of His glory. We tend to be more alleviation-minded than glory-minded, and so long as we remain in that condition, we will never be used to minister the Life of God. We have a question, and so we expect an answer. The question may even be good and interesting, so why not ask it and get an answer! We have a need and we want it met, but that is not being ruled by the Spirit of God, only self-interest. Everything is predicated on our interest. The fact that it is a spiritual interest does not void it from being self-interest. We are not to operate by our own curiosity, and though something is good or valid, that does not justify expressing it. The only issue is what God gives in that moment.
We are not to proceed by our own seeing, our own hearing, our own subjectivity or our own impressions. We are the Lord's, and our life is not our own. We have no life until God gives it, and God gives it for His purpose and glory only. Even when we see those who are being addressed falling like flies, and going down on their faces under the power and impact of that word, we experience absolutely nothing in that moment. We are absolutely impervious, and totally unaffected by what has brought others down on their faces. We are simply ‘out of it,' because it is not our word. We cannot exalt in it, because it is not our work. It is the strangest of feelings to be somehow detached from the power and effect of your own word, nor are we allowed in any way even to draw forth any satisfaction for ourselves.
When we speak on that basis, we are challenging everything to which men have given their endorsement. Either our word is God's, or we are some wild freak who is doing damage to the Body of Christ. That tension is with us always, and the Lord will even allow an occasion here and there where it will not be Him, and we have acted in a way in which we thought it was the Lord, but it was out of our own savvy. God wants merely to keep us honest, and we must not presume that on every occasion we can be confident that it is God, as that will remove the tension and dependency. God will allow a humiliation and a failure, all the more to charge our hearts anew with the enormous gravity of what we are about, and the requirement to be cleaving to Him, and dependent upon Him, for our every word.
There are situations where we are not sure what to say, or what to do. It is a remarkable kind of suffering to be in that kind of predicament, and then even after the moment passes, we are still assaulted by the thought of perhaps having missed the moment, when we should have done something, and we did not. That is a suffering, but I want to say that that suffering is at the heart of church life. There is a suffering that remains to be filled up in the Body. This kind of suffering is inevitable, frequent, and we need to learn to bear it. Many of us have agonized over the condition of the church, and the Lord knows it, and there is a certain inevitability about it, a certain tension of not knowing. We will always wonder if we did rightly, and in bearing that suffering, the Lord will honor our part. When the redemptive answer comes, it will come out of the willingness to bear the suffering as being part of the faith.
Our Preaching Mandate
We need to repent of the casual way we have been speaking up until now. We must stop the shallow abuse and misuse of the word of God and ‘playing' with the Scriptures as if they were God's provision for us to perform a sermon. Paul did not say to Timothy, "Sermonize!" but, "Preach the word! Be instant in season and out of season. Reprove and rebuke with all long-suffering." Here is our mandate! This should be the essential substance of all our preaching. The purpose of preaching is not to construct interesting sermons, or to enjoy the word of God, as if we are spiritual sensualists. The word of God is given for practical purposes, namely, to reprove, to rebuke, and to exhort, but how many of our congregations can even accept this most elementary thing? They are coming for something else on Sunday. They want to be ‘comforted,' or hear a calming word. After all, they say, they have had a heavy week. Can you see that the whole construct of our church, and its whole mentality is warped?
"I charge you before God," Paul says, "and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge ... preach the word."
In other words, sermons, though they may well be doctrinally sound, will have the effect of dulling the audience. It is this that makes one a professional performer. If we are going to have an apostolic word, a creative word that works a work in those that hear it, then it is going to come through men and women who are not ruled by the fear of man. God seeks those who will wait for His word, and who will not find it in their concordances. There is a place where God bids us come to commune with Him¾within the veil, in the holiest place of all, between the cherubim and above the Ark of the Covenant. He is a real God with a real purpose for mankind, and He says,
"I will speak to you about all that I will give you in commandment for the sons of Israel."
This is why Paul could say to his listeners:
And pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. (Ephesians 6:19-20)
If Paul had to plead for such prayer for himself, a man who had an encyclopedic knowledge of apostolic things, and who had been a student under the Rabbi Gamaliel, then how much more must we discard any casual approach to the ministry of God's word! Paul would not dream of fashioning his own words.
The Voice of the Preacher
There should be the resonance of God in our speaking, conveying not only the content and the meaning, but also the disposition of God's own heart, and how He feels about what is being said. I often pray, "Lord, so possess me that Your word will have full expression, even the mood of the speaking." The mood has nothing to do with the preacher's choosing. There are times when he is like a piece of cardboard, or a straight monotone, and he cannot alter it. He is uncomfortable speaking like that, and wishes he had the liberty to give the word the flourish that it needs. He is, however, as much bound in God in the manner of the speaking as the content of the speaking. Other times the same man is beside himself, unable to be contained, falling off the edge of the platform in the intensity of the moment. In both cases, it is not the man who makes that determination, but God.
There is something about the resonance of a voice that bespeaks the history and the quality of the person's relationship with God. I know that our voices are as distinctive as our personalities and our appearances, but all of these things are tempered by our relationship with God. When I look at certain faces, I know that they do not reveal the grace of God, nor do they reveal the evidence of a relationship of a continuing or deep kind. There is something lacking in the face. In other faces, however, they are not even conscious of a radiance emanating from themselves. When you are in God's presence, and are a seeker after God, and there is a life of communion, devotion and pouring your heart out, then the reflection of that will be both in the face and voice of the believer. A voice is like a signature, and someone said that by the time we are forty years old, we are responsible for the lines and expressions on our faces. We are also responsible for our voices, and God held Israel responsible for failing both to heed His words and the voice of His speaking as it came to them through the prophets.
The Mood of the Speaking
A preacher's mood may often be in violent opposition to the mood that has already been established in the congregation, especially by the ‘worship team.' Worship teams and leaders often seem to have an independent purpose for their being, attempting to establish some kind of mood. Instead of working in conjunction with the word that is to come, or sensing the mood and heart of God, they have already got their choruses numbered, and what they are going to sing and do. They have their musical talent and amplifiers, and they are going to ‘do their thing,' and leave you to make the best of it as well as you can. Worship ministry, then, becomes celebrated as a thing in itself. If I could, I would pull the plug out of every overhead projector and amplifier. Let us rather just splutter and choke along, and miss a word here and there, and come into the spirit of God's worship, than that we should be led with choruses and more choruses. What they are really trying to do is to effect an atmosphere for a service, rather than touch the heart of God, let alone prepare for the receiving of a holy word for those assembled.
There is a struggle going on right within the church, and no man feels it more acutely than the ‘freak' who is bearing a strange word with a mood contrary to that which prevails, where everybody wants to go home feeling good, and nobody wants to go home in tension. An apostolically-minded preacher will often send people home jarred and unhappy, with many unanswered questions. He has not that mentality that wants everything to be wrapped up in one package with a ribbon on it, in one service, and send people home happy. He will let the people go home jarred, pained, and even agonizing. He will raise questions that will induce his listeners to wrestle and fight their way through to a place in God. There are very few pastors, maybe one in a hundred, who would be willing to allow his congregation to suffer that kind of stress and tension. "Send them home happy" is the unspoken premise of contemporary religion to which we, who have the apostolic mindset, do not subscribe. We are of a kind to send them home agitated with questions they are compelled to consider and that cannot be answered in one service. If we were given three days, we might be able to bring the listeners all the way through. How many churches, however, are willing to submit to such a man for that length of time? One service at best and, "Get him away!"
My suspicions are alerted if there is any ‘bombast' or ‘hype,' any exaggeration or sensationalism that conjures up a manner or a mode of excitement that the ear loves to hear, that would draw out those who are bored and want some kind of alternative to their boredom. We do not have to bring to the word an additional quality so as to make it compelling to the hearer. The word itself speaks for itself. Anyone who would seek to bring an extraneous element through his own personality or manner of speaking is likely false. If we are highly individualistic, and want to cut a swath for ourselves, or do our own thing in our own way, then we are disqualified. "I will put My word in your mouth, and that is what you will speak, and you will speak it in the manner that I want it spoken." This is not a surrender of identity, but an establishing of it. The man in God may loses his life, but actually he has found it. God does not call us to be automatons, who bear the word of God as a mechanical contrivance. They are formed even from the womb, and that forming is at the hand of God.
Come Up and Be There!
Are we secure enough in God that we have nothing to prove, nothing to demonstrate, because our identity is so established in God? Are we so accepted in the Beloved that we do not have to prove anything for our ministry or for ourselves? We do not have to exhibit our intelligence, our spirituality, our experience, but rather we wait for the word that is given. If Jesus would not so much as speak His own words, what then shall we presume to speak? Indeed, it is humbling to wait for that which is given, especially when you are naturally clever in yourself, and even have a flair with words. To be utterly dependent upon God, for that which is given, is a humiliation for man in his pride.
We must never be satisfied with a mere ‘good thing.' God invites us to an apostolic jealousy for a word that is given in communion with Him. Moses received his instruction at the top of the Mount of God, where he spent forty days and forty nights neither eating nor drinking. He came up into the presence of God that he might receive the tablets of the Law, and right from the very first invitation, we see the whole genius of God with man: "Come up unto Me, and be there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the Law and the commandments which I have written that you may teach them," God says, to all with any fleshly ambition, "and do not think that you are just going to come up and grab them from Me and go. I know your craven religious ambition to establish your preaching reputation, but I am a holy God, and you are not going to be preaching some abstract thing from My Word."
The first requirement of apostolic preaching is ever and always this: "Come up unto Me, not for what you are going to receive from Me, but unto Me, for My own sake, and be there in totality, all that you are in union with all that I am, and then I will give you the tablets of the Law."
This is the requirement of God, and yet the majority of us seem to feel that we have the liberty to violate His Word, and to extract Scriptures and to ‘make' sermons. God is calling us to a higher thing, through the restoration of apostolic reality and glory, by men and women who do not take their liberty with the Scriptures, but receive from God the explicit word that is given in only one place-His presence! "Come up unto Me, and be there" is in itself the apostolic message. What the world is dying for is not information about God, but men and women who will communicate God as He is in Himself. This is the only thing that shall save us from becoming mere technicians, and from being the victims of yet another religious phraseology. The world needs the knowledge of a God that is exuded by men and women who speak to them out of the presence of God. The world does not know how to live, and that is why it chases after its drugs, eroticism, and sensuality. They have no idea of what it means to be there. They need to see apostolic reality in those who will teach them how to live, and how to be there in totality, and to enjoy the depths of fellowship with both God and their fellow man. To ‘come up' is not an easy coming, and indeed, no ‘going up' is ever an easy going, yet it is the only place of true communion.
We must speak the word of God in the sight and presence of God at all times. It requires an apostolic consciousness and coming to a deep revelation of the sacrament of the spoken word. Paul says that we shall be held accountable for everything we have done in our bodies, both good and bad, including our speaking. In 2 Corinthians 3:4-5 he says:
And such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.
To have a reliance and confidence toward God are not something that is based on our own ability-as if anything could come from us that could accomplish the work of God-but that all of our power, ability and sufficiency are from God. "For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To whom be the glory forever!"
We must have a reliance and confidence through Christ, and we must know that we are not qualified within ourselves, and indeed, we must know what a piece of foolishness we are in ourselves! If we are speaking His word, we do not have to buttress it with our own natural personality. It does not require our charm to make it succeed, for He gives the Spirit without measure to those who bear His word. We need desperately to come to an apostolic place, that we might be permanently ruined, and never go back to anything less. We should insist on His word and His word only from this time forth, for He is quite able and willing to give it if we will come up unto Him and be there. It is He who has qualified us, and made us fit to be worthy and sufficient as ministers of the New Covenant!
Oh, for such apostolic men again as Paul! Men who will speak the creative word into the very foundations of the church of Jesus Christ, words that are given in commandment out of the presence of God by men and women, who will come up to Him and be there! Are you determining something in your heart, namely, that this word may be an event for you because it comes to you as more than a word of instruction? That it comes to you as a call and challenge, and as an invitation and command to, "Come up unto Me"? Up from the fear of men, up from the concern for your petty reputation, up from the emphasis of the traditions of men, and the kinds of things they want to hear? I pray that this is coming to you as a personal word, an apostolic invitation and command from God to be a minister of His uncompromised word, both in the church of Jesus Christ, and to the world. God will thresh you in sever dealings in order to bring you to a place where you recognize in your deepest innermost being the irreverence that many of us have for the word that is given. He will be with us in our affliction, but He will not alleviate it. He wants us to feel the full brunt of what it means to be a man through whose mouth either life or death can come. This is not preaching to entertain, but a serious bearing of the word of the Lord. The responsibility is enormous, and we need to know the consequence of it. But when it is spoken, in the moment that it is given of God, then it is life for the dead!
Where that boldness or authority is not expressed, then the sermon stands in jeopardy of becoming mere ceremony, an adjunct, a piece of familiar and unchallenging predictability. It requires nothing from its hearers and it makes no demand, but only fills the space that has been made for it, and there is no glory in the church. The word has not come to us as event, and to that measure, we are incapacitated as God's agents in the world and constitute only a sleepy, Sunday religious culture that the world can well afford to ignore. The faith is holy, and we cannot live, transact, and operate at other levels, and think that it is without consequence of one kind or another. As nature abhors a vacuum, the space that should have been filled with godly content and the Holy Spirit, now invites murky and dubious substitutes only too eager to provide themselves.
Authority is relative to the knowledge of God in intimate communion, or it is not authority, and it is this that distinguishes false preaching from the true. Our ability to discern the one from the other is relative to our own communion with God. In the last analysis, the world is dying for the lack of the communication of very God Himself. This knowledge, and this sense of God, are not only the apostolic message, but also the foundation of the church, and all reality itself.
Apostolic Foundations - Apostolic Proclamation: The Mystery of Preaching