A Man in Whom the Spirit of God Is (1 of 2)
I am currently reading Apostolic Foundations by Art Katz. My brother-in-law shared this article also by Katz with me today. I have placed it here by permission from the European Prophetic College. It is pretty long (18 pages MSWord), but well worth the read if you have the time. Katz has some keep insight with which I think we must wrestle. This is in two parts.
A Man in Whom the Spirit of God Is
By Art Katz
Part 01 (of 2)
I cannot imagine a more appropriate night for this message. This is probably as grand of a religion as can be experienced in our world. It cannot reach a greater pitch or peak than this –
the glory of this music, the worship and the spirit of cordiality that prevails in this sanctuary tonight. This is it. This is the pinnacle, the ultimate in religion. How would you like to let it fall into the ground and die?
Tonight, I am going to paint you a picture that so contrasts the glory you have just experienced that you are going to suffer cultural disorientation. In fact, you are going to have to make a rugged choice. Which of these two cultures will you choose? You will have to choose either religion, in all of its glory, or apostolic splendor, fresh out of the book of Acts, in all of its magnitude, grisly sweat, suffering, blood, vexation, distress, and calamity. I have purposely worn my jacket so that I might take it off before you, not just because I am warm, but because it contradicts the very tenor of all that God is giving me to speak tonight. If I could take this auditorium off as I take this jacket off, I would do it. Even this building is inconsistent with what is on my heart to speak tonight. Yet, in the same breath, can I say that I have never enjoyed such lovely hospitality? I have enjoyed tremendous, precious folk and gourmet meals; you are seeing to every need. This is religion at its ultimate, but there is an apostolic glory that far exceeds it. We shall never attain that glory except that we truly become men and women of the Spirit.
I heard a man make a remark not long ago. I was stunned by his remark and my spirit said, “That’s true!” His statement was, “Little of what is known to be the work or the activity of the Spirit of God is truly the Spirit of God.” Is that not a stunning statement? Suppose you could see as God sees. Imagine all the things that have excited and titillated your religious sensibilities: the glory of singing, music, instruments, the number of attendees, crowds, inspiring messages, etc. What would you say if I suggested that all of those things could be conducted in the realm of the soul? You would have a ball, enjoy it, and think yourself spiritual! Yet, it has neither a wit nor a grain to do with things of the Spirit! What would you say if I suggested that as a possibility? What would you say if I declared that that is the condition that prevails largely in Christendom today, especially in the charismatic world?
If I could speak French, I would say, “J’accuse!” I accuse the charismatic world for being a fraud, except that it is not conscious, willful, or knowing. We have all been seduced. We have all drifted into that nether world between the realm of soul and spirit, and we did not even know it. Some of us have never truly experienced or walked in the Spirit of God. No one has ever faulted you for it. No one ever detected it in you. You may go on being backslapped, bear-hugged, and applauded all the way to the grave and never know the realm of the Spirit. I want to give you a slab, a taste, a hunk of apostolic reality. I want to push it right into your maw so that you shall be utterly spoiled from this night forth – spoiled is not expressive enough – ruined for anything less than the pure presence of the Spirit of God. Do you want that? You may have to sell your building and hock your instruments. I would, if I could, pull the plug from the collective amplifiers of Christendom!
I think we all need to heed a book that is rarely read. I was probably not ready for it when I picked it up a few years ago. It said nothing to me at that time. It is saying much more to me now. The book is called, The Latent Power of the Soul by Watchman Nee. How prophetic this book is! Before the advent of the first electronic amplifier, Nee suggested that one of the greatest menaces for the children of God at the end of the age would be that soulish realm of activity that emulates, imitates, counterfeits, and gives every appearance of being the realm of the Spirit. He mentions that there is something about music itself that has inherent possibilities for danger. Of all people and of all generations, we need the sharpest kind of sensitivity and discernment to be able to distinguish between that which is soulish and that which is spiritual. That kind of discernment and knowledge is not born in a day, and every lesson in the practice thereof is costly and painful.
I am going to be speaking out of the Book of Acts, chapters 17 and 16. I will begin with 17 and work backward. Last night I spoke on the passage that says, “Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?” (Gen 41:38). The two words that leap out to my heart are man and spirit. Is that not a glory? Is that not incomprehensible? Does that not beggar your mind? A man, not some papier-mâché disciple, not some cardboard, grotesque snap off the assembly line, not some pert little character who has learned to quote Scripture! A man, full-orbed, flesh and blood, tempered, matured, seasoned, not some pipsqueak, not some graduate of some rush school of discipleship, but a man in whom the Spirit of God is! God is waiting for such a man. His end-time intention will not be fulfilled without him. The summary of it is that if it were only a single individual, I would have waved you “goodbye” long ago, but we are in this together. The man that God is awaiting is a corporate man. Therefore, I am bound by your immaturity, limited by your fleshliness, and affected by your soulish substitutes for the things that are truly spiritual! “Till we all come into the fullness and stature of Jesus Christ unto a perfect man” (Eph
My greatest disillusionment and heartbreak when I was saved many years ago was taking my place in the neighborhood Pentecostal church and finding the enormous divergence between the Book of Acts and what I had to experience every Sunday. I was naïve when the floodgates of credulity opened, and I could believe anything after my lifelong history of cynicism and unbelief, but what a disappointment! It was a mock and a travesty for one who expected that we would be completing and continuing the Book of Acts. I have a Jewish heart for apostolic glory and for the grandeur of God, not for my sake, but for God’s sake. I have a heart for the men that will shake cities again. These are the men who “turn the world upside down” (Acts 17:6), not deafen our ears with their amplifiers.
Acts
I want to ask you, children, are you are willing to wait till God shall stir your spirit? When you are a full-orbed man like this, even when you are in between assignments, brought by other men to a place that you did not expect to be, God will begin something that shall culminate on Mars Hill and challenge the intellectuals of this generation. God is simply awaiting a man whose spirit He can stir. From that point on, what a progression unto glory! “Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons and in the market daily with them that met with him” (v 17). “Therefore.” Can you see how you are in for a ride? Something begins with the ignition of God in the spirit of a man. Then there is a “therefore.” “He was roused to anger and grieved at a city given to idolatry, therefore he disputed in the synagogue with the Jews.” Now, are you students of the Word? What does the one thing have to do with the other?
If a man is vexed over idolatry, then what is he doing in the synagogue? That is exactly where he ought to be! That is the exact “therefore.” That is where idolatry is most flagrantly practiced. Are you thinking that idolatry is only bowing down before some pagan idol or doing some kind of icky, foul, orgiastic thing? Do you not know what idolatry is, children? Idolatry is bending to any lesser altar than that of the Most High God. The idolatrous religions are those of convenience that give men a copout opportunity to experience a modicum of religious, psychic, or emotional satisfaction and yet allow them to retain the lordship of their own lives. It is practiced everywhere: in synagogues, Presbyterian churches, Methodist churches, and Pentecostal assemblies. It is idolatry! Why, then, is your spirit not grieved? Far more often are we merely disturbed, bent out of shape, or emotionally affected, and we take that to be a signal from God. In fact, it may only be indigestion or some personal, idiosyncratic, subjective response. There is a difference between that which emanates from our flesh and that which has its origin in His Spirit.
There is a “therefore” that follows with the logical continuation that “he disputed with the Jews and the devout persons in the synagogue and in the market daily with them that met with him.” I will tell you what kind of a naïve man I am. I believe that every man who met with Paul in the marketplace was on a divine collision course. God intended for them to have that meeting. Don’t you love divine encounter? Don’t you like it when God sets it up? Are you preparing yourself to be a sensitive instrument in whom His Spirit can grieve? How foolish would you think me if I reprimanded a woman, a precious saint whom I have known for years, because she picked up the check at the table in the café where eight of us had breakfast together? “What do you mean you reprimanded her? You should have applauded her. She did a ‘good thing.’” “Good things” are exactly what kill us. Where, I implore you, is your divine discontent? Haven’t you had a gut-full of “good things”? Do you not hunger for that which is perfect? If you are not preparing yourself to see it in things that are mundane and everyday, then how will you know it when it comes and you are caught between cities, having been brought there by other men? You just keep taking the check off the table, keep doing “good things” that have their origin in your skull, and you will be completely incapacitated for the Spirit of God when He would have you to be moved.
Any one of us could have picked up the check, but she picked it up. I turned to her without thinking, which is when I am at my best, and said, “Did God have you to do that?” “Oh, yes,” she said. She thought I was going to turn and resume my conversation with the person on my right. Instead I turned to her again and repeated a second time, “Did God have you to do that?” She giggled a little bit more nervously and said, “Yes,” but it was not quite as convincing this time. Again she thought, “Well, I finally got Katz off my back. He’ll go back to his conversation.” I turned a third time and said, “Did God have you to do that?” “Well,” she said, “I thought it would be a good thing.” Children, are you only doing what God would have you to do? Are you refraining from good things in order that you might be reserved unto Him for that which is perfect? Are you willing to suffer the reproach of isolation in
As impressive as this service was tonight, it is not enough to persuade my Jewish people to cleave to the “Foolish” One. It is not enough to persuade them to embrace a way that has been polluted and corrupted for them by two thousand years of satanic perversion, distortion, and persecution, in the Name of Him who is salvation. No little glib entreaty is going to convince a Jew to walk away from the way of this world or to take upon himself the way of faith. No slick appeal will convince him to contradict all that he has esteemed, all that his life has been predicated upon, and to cast that upon the dung heap in order to walk in the way of foolishness. If he were to do so, a Jew would suffer unspeakable reproach from his own kinsmen, family, and community. Groovy religion will never induce him to do it! I am waiting to show my kinsmen proof of the life of God in a people that is fearful in its magnitude, a glorious Kingdom of people with such absolute honesty and unfeigned love that you would think they were another race of men!
“Repent for the
They only made one mistake that night: they let me speak first. The moment I opened my mouth, a holy hush came over that jammed fraternity house. I went on and on. Finally, about a half-hour into my presentation, these kids were nudging this professor and asking, “Aren’t you going to answer this man?” At last, the professor came up, made one or two lame, apologetic, intellectual remarks and left with his tail between his legs. No contest. That meeting went on for six hours. It was not a meeting; it was a war! I saw Jews so vexed that their eyeballs were popping out of their skulls. The spittle was forming at the corners of their mouths. They got up in disgust, left the room, but came back two minutes later to take another seat. They hated it, but they loved it. They were too Jewish to walk away from it. Around
What would you say to a kid like that? I was shot after eight days of meetings. I was wiped out. I just opened my mouth, and there was God, dipping a great Turkish towel in icy water and knotting it. It was saturated and knotted; it was a clout; it was a lethal weapon out of my mouth. I opened my mouth and the Lord let him have it right in the kisser. Whap! “You need not think you can receive anything from God; your spirit stinks!” “Is that the way you talk to your Jewish people, Art?” No, that is the way He talks to my Jewish people, when He will have a mouth that will not hesitate to be open to speak the foolish and ungainly things of God that contradict one’s own sensibility, taste, and intention. You will never be such an instrument if you keep picking up the check because it is a “good thing.” A “pass” on so-called “good things!” That kid just fluttered his eyelids and sank into his seat like a lamb. Fifteen minutes later, he was the first one to be saved. Fourteen other Jews followed him into the Kingdom trembling, shaking and weeping.
Well, we know what happened to Paul: “Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and the Stoics encountered him and some said ‘What will the babbler say?’” (v 18). I cannot tell you how embarrassed I have been by this gospel. Doesn’t the Lord know that I have something of an intellectual reputation? Couldn’t He have given me something a little more advantageous to talk about, something that would have shown my own gifts to a greater advantage? The utter foolishness of the gospel! The utter, unspeakable foolishness! God helped me to see that foolishness at
Then, to my utter amazement, the man said, “Yes, if you’ll be here by
I never felt so foolish, vain, naked, and absurd in all my life. I was going to tell this paragon of virtue, this man applauded by the Jewish community, this man who had been told by Gentiles that he was a better Christian than any Christian they knew, that the God of his fathers lay aside His glory and His deity and condescended to come to earth in the form of an infant that made doo-doo in its diapers, utterly helpless, trusting in the hands of those to whom He was given, and living a life of total obscurity? I was going to tell him that Christ had a brief tenure of ministry, where He experienced the rejection and reproach of His own people and concluded His life by being spat upon, beaten, pummeled, having His beard ripped out and His back filleted; then, finally, He was suspended on nails between heaven and earth, and if you believe that, by some kind of magical faith, you appropriate that blood and somehow you are forgiven, covered, and restored? Ah, come on!
“What do you want, Katz?” Under my breath, I said, “Lord, You got me into this. You answer the man.” You know, whether He got us into it or not, He will always answer the man! May we always be kept from giving our own answers. I opened my mouth and said, “Sir, I am a servant of the Most High God who has come to show unto you the way of salvation.” When I heard those words, I thought, “OOH! Talk about icky! Here it comes, a hand on the scruff of my neck and the other on the seat of my pants and I’ll be cast right down a flight of steps.” I thought that he must have been thinking that I was some kind of Jewish eccentric – but he did not throw me out.
The same man who said, “I’ll only give you fifteen minutes,” forty-five minutes later said, with trembling and white lips, “What time does your plane leave?” I said, “About
With his university degrees and awards on the paneled wall, he did not know how to pray. I said, “Just bow your head and follow me word for word.” So he did, just like a child. As the glory of God filled the office, my scalp was tingling under the presence of God. I led him through a simple sinner’s prayer, and as we came to the last line of the prayer, he gasped and quickly clasped his hands to his chest. As the prayer ended, he had his hands still on his chest with that stupefied expression on his face and said, “Art, what’s that strange feeling in my chest?” I said, “You’ve just been born again by the Holy Spirit of God.”
I can give you illustration after illustration of such ungainly things that God has performed. For example, He challenged a German Pentecostal audience not with a message, but with the utter foolishness of a man like me. I am quiet and reserved by nature, but that night I was leaping, clicking my heels and carrying on like a clown. I could not stop. I never did speak that night. I never even made it to the platform! What a pathetic condition they were in: proud Pharisees, stiff, unyielding. I heard their prayer and understood just enough German to know how wooden it was. As I was about to go up to the platform, I turned, looked at them and said, “Would to God that I could frolic with you on the grass!” You try that out the next time you speak to German Pentecostals!
Frolic I did. I leaped, danced, sang, cavorted, and carried on. My brother who was with me from the community did exactly the same thing, by the same Spirit. I could sense the bristling indignation welling up in that congregation. I stood up while he was performing, turned to them and said, “You Pharisees, indignant that you’re not hearing the Word of God. You wanted a message. God has given you more than you’ve asked; He’s made the word flesh. He is demonstrating what is missing from your congregation and from your lives: reality, truth, spontaneity, freedom, liberty, unfeigned joy.” They repented that night. Oh, children, “a man in whom the spirit of God is.”
“They brought Paul up to Mars Hill.” He did not send a letter, weeks in advance, to the full gospel director and say, “Listen, I think I’m going to be through
“I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious, for as I passed by and beheld your devotions I found an altar with the inscription ‘To the Unknown God’ whom therefore you ignorantly worship. Him declare I unto you.” How do you like them apples? Bold by the Spirit of God! Original by the Spirit of God! Cutting and compelling by the Spirit of God! I encourage you to review this later on.
You will find that his actual statement was not at all religious; it was utterly philosophical. He spoke about the purpose of existence. He told them that God has established bounds and nations and has given all men one blood for this one purpose: that they might seek after God and find Him. He spoke to philosophers philosophically. It was entirely appropriate, because God is always appropriate, if we would get out of the way and let Him be appropriate!
Do you know what happened when they heard of the resurrection of the dead? “Some mocked: others said, ‘We will hear thee again on this matter.’” It is likely that they never did. “So Paul departed from among them.” Do you depart when men are no longer listening? I think I have started more Jews on the path to the gospel by turning on my heel and walking away from them than by demonstrating my cleverness to them and manipulating the Scriptures. I am not in the business of vain disputation! When men are no longer hearing, I am no longer speaking.
I once went to a southern city, and some people arranged a luncheon for me with a Jewish business magnet. No one could reach him. He was tough. “But maybe Katz will bring him down.” He was willing for a little contest, so he invited us to lunch. I remember munching on that lunch, and because I did not say, “Boo!” this man became a bit irritated. He said, “How are you enjoying your free lunch?” I said, “I want you to know that, for me, this lunch is very costly.” I had already discerned his spirit and it stunk. He said, “Aren’t you going to say anything to me?” I said, “No.” “How come?” he asked. I said, “If God is not speaking, then I have no intention of speaking either.” I have seen a lot of stunned Jewish faces that have discerned for the first time that this gospel is precious, because I would not share it with them if they only had a mind to dispute.
“So Paul departed from among them, howbeit certain men clave unto him and believed, among them which was Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.” This is just a little episode from the life of Paul, caught between assignments, being taken by other men, fleeing from persecution, brought to Mars Hill, etc. It was an utterly consequential confrontation with the intellectuals of his generation. Some scoffed and mocked, while others said, “We want to hear of it again.” One or two believed. Dionysius means “follower of Baccus,” the god, the pagan deity of revelry and sensual gratification. Dionysius believed!
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