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“The Benefits of God’s Grace

The Benefits of God’s Grace

Author and Pastor A.W. Tozer

June 29, 1958

Now the difference between a classic and anything less than a classic is, that which is less than the classic gets tiring after you hear it a good many times, a few times. But the classic never wears out. It’s good anywhere, anytime, and continues through the years. And though heard, over and over, never loses the freshness of its youth. I mentioned this because I want to read again, for I guess about the fifth time, that beautiful passage from which I have been preaching lately.

Titus 2, beginning at the 11th verse. For the grace of God, that bringeth salvation to all men hath appeared, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world. Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee. Our Savior, Jesus Christ, you see, we have dealt with the earlier part of this passage. So, we begin with the last line of verse thirteen. It’s the last line in my Bible. Our Savior, Jesus Christ.

I read the other day, and the children of this world are often wiser in their generation than the children of life. And I read the other day by a Polish writer who was writing about communism. That is, he was writing about how he’d escaped from it and was writing against it, but not from a Christian standpoint. He was a child of this world with such light as a child of this world may be expected to have; an unusual degree of it, for he was an unusually brilliant man.

And he said this, that the only teaching worthwhile is that which is valid in the face of imminent death. He said that because he had been, and mentioned others who had been at times, faced with instant death. And he was forced to say, what do I believe now? Here, death’s facing me. It may be a matter of three heartbeats away. What is this that I believe? And he said, no teaching is worth your time unless it stands solid and true and valid, faced with immediate death.

I mentioned this because I begin with the words, our Savior, Jesus Christ. And I would like to guess, if I might be allowed, how many have faced imminent death with these great, beautiful, meaningful, strong words in their mouths, our Savior Jesus Christ? If you knew that death was three heartbeats away or five or seven, I’m sure you wouldn’t try to remember what the Greek baptizo was and what form of baptism was the proper one? I’m sure that it would make very little difference to you whether the Presbyterian or the Episcopal form of government or the congregational were the right form of government. I’m sure that there would be an infinite number of things that clutter up your spiritual thinking now, that would fall away from you instantly if you knew that death was a heartbeat away. But there is one thing I’m sure that you’d cling to and repeat over and over and over until you could repeat it no more, our Savior, Jesus Christ. I know you’d want to say those words, because they’re valid under any circumstance, you see. Those words are good any time, young or old, our Savior, Jesus Christ; beautiful, wonderful words. Then Paul goes on to say, who gave Himself for us, who gave Himself for us.

Now, we may learn the value of a thing by the price men are willing to pay for it. That is, we may learn its value to the individual who’s procuring it. I remember when Charles E. Dawes, the great American general was Vice President. I’m not sure he was vice president at that time, but he had been Vice President, or was of the United States. And that was the least thing he did. He was a great general in the First World War. And I remember what he said when they had him before some kind of a committee accusing him, or at least inquiring, why he had paid such vast, huge prices for horses in France. And he settled the whole business and set his inquisitors back on their heels by this abrupt expression. He said, I’d have paid horse prices for sheep if they could have pulled my guns where I wanted them. It wasn’t a question of how big the horse was, it was a question of a desperate and critical need, and though he did pay huge and exorbitant prices for French horses, he used those French horses to win a war. And he said I’d have paid that much for sheep if they had done the job for me.

Now, what I’m trying to illustrate is this, that a need, a value, determines the price you’ll pay for a thing. Even though a man is wrong in his appraisal, personally, I think that we human beings have set a wrong value on jewelry. I think for instance, we’ve set the wrong value on diamonds. A piece of glass can’t be told across the room from a diamond. And yet the difference, it runs up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in some instances. It’s because we have set an arbitrary value upon jewelry. I don’t mind people wearing it. I don’t own any except this thing to hold my tie down so it won’t flap around when I get to preaching. But outside of that, I haven’t any and don’t want it, but I think that we have set wrong values on things.  But the illustrations still holds.

We can tell how precious a thing is to a man or woman by how much they’re willing to pay for it. We can learn that. And so, when it says here, He gave Himself for us, we learn how dear we are and were to Christ. Remember, when we say “are” about Christ, or “were” about Christ, whether we’re using the past, present, or future tense, we’re using all the tenses there are. Because Jesus Christ, being Himself very God of very God, embodies in Himself all the tenses there are. Or better still, He has no tense. There is no yesterday and today and tomorrow with Christ. There is a yesterday and tomorrow and today with us. The Bible says Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. But it’s not talking about His yesterday and today and forever, it’s talking about ours.

We have a yesterday, and really not a very much of a yesterday. The oldest one of us has much of a yesterday compared, say, with a mud turtle or a crow, or a sequoia tree in California. We haven’t much of yesterday, but we’ve got a little yesterday. We have it today, which is getting away from us fast, and we have an eternal tomorrow. So that our yesterday and today and tomorrow are valid. But when we apply that to God and Christ, we invalidate the meaning of it. For we cannot say that Jesus our Lord has no tenses, because all that He is, He ever was and all that He ever was, He ever will be.

So, when we say how precious we were to Jesus, we mean how precious we are to Jesus. And when we say how precious we are to Jesus, we mean how precious we will always be to Jesus; for I, the Lord change not. I, the Lord, change not. Now, we can learn how precious we are to Christ by how much He was willing to give for us. What was the price that He paid. Don’t forget that all through the Bible, Old Testament and New and particularly in the New, the idea of redemption is found. The idea of the paying, the giving of value for value, the giving of price for something precious. And Jesus Christ gave, says the Holy Ghost here, gave Himself for us. What was He willing to give for us? Let’s look back at the book, say, of Colossians. No, Philippians. Look back at Philippians.

He says, Jesus Christ, second chapter, fifth verse. Jesus Christ, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, O Lord, in the form of God. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God and the Word was with God. Thou, O Lord, art the Eternal Word, the Eternal Son, begotten of the Father before all worlds, by the mystery of eternal generation. Wilt Thou then O Lord, give up this mystery and wonder even for a while, that men might be redeemed? He answers, yes. He considered it not something to be held on to, but made Himself of no reputation by becoming for a time, less than God. He made Himself of a reputation less than God and thus being of no reputation. O Lord, how far will you go? I will take upon me the form of a servant. He had been before in the position of the Master. Now, He stoops to the position of the servant. But how much more will you pay for men O Lord?

The answer is, He will be made in the likeness of men. And how much more Lord, for the price is going up. He will be found in fashion as a man and even then, He will humble Himself. Not only be a man, but be a humbled man. Not a humble man only but a humbled man. And how much more wilt Thou pay O Lord? I will become obedient unto death. But all of the sons of men are obedient unto death. Yes, but for their sakes, I choose the worst death that ever was invented, death of the cross. So that is how much He paid for us. And the Scripture says then, Jesus, our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, and who advertised to all the intelligent universe, how precious we are to Him by how much he was willing to give for us.

Now, if you’re ever tempted to think little of yourself, I want you to know that it’s never a godly thing to do. I want you to know, that if you’re puffed up and think you amount to anything, then that’s wrong. I want you to know, if you overlook your sin, and imagine you’re good, that’s wrong. I want you to know, that if you were inclined to compare yourself with another and put yourself above that other, that’s wrong. And all these wrongs should be repented of and amended so they don’t occur anymore in your life.

But this idea of voiding our preciousness, and writing down our value, and putting a price tag on us that’s cheap; cross out the value that used to be and put a lower one on, that never occurs in the Bible anywhere. Never. When God wants to talk about man’s weakness, He says, that man’s breath is in his nostrils. When he wants to talk about how little time he’s here below, He says, that time, like an ever-rolling stream bares all its sons away. And that a thousand years in God’s sight are about as yesterday when it is past. When God wants to talk about how weak we are, He calls us grass and says we’re like the grass that grows up. But never anywhere in the Bible does God say anything derogatory about the nature of man. For the Scripture says, so God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them.

And the passage we read from James this morning said, why curse ye man, who was made in the similitude of God. That is why it is so sinful to call a man of fool or to say raca, because it is heaping contempt upon man. And remember, that there isn’t an order of angels before the throne of God, that is as high as man will be when God is thrown with him. Remember that there isn’t a cherubim nor seraphim, there isn’t a creature before the shining throne of God that gazes upon the sea of glass, but what must be beneath man when God is through with man. For God has made man in His image, and when man sinned, turned around and made Himself in man’s image, that He might thus dually and forever unite Godhead and manhood, so that man is the creature nearest to God, nearest equal to God, of all the beings that fill the vast universe.

So, if you imagine that you’re humble, by thinking little of yourself, you’re all wrong. Why callest thou unclean that which God called clean? Why callest thou worthless that which God called worthy of giving himself to die for it? No, no. We must remember how dear we are to Christ by what He gave for us; and He gave Himself for us.

Why did He give Himself? It says in the next phrase, to redeem us from all iniquity. Iniquity was our problem, you see. We were caught in the meshes of iniquity. And He gave Himself to redeem us from all iniquity. Notice the prepositions, and they’re actually there, not in, but from. He shall save His people from their sins. Let me repeat, and I’ve said it, I guess 1000 times that any interpretation of New Testament Christianity that allows sin a place in the human life, is a false interpretation. Let me remind you once more, that any interpretation of mercy or grace or justification by faith, that allows any kind of sin, external or internal, to live unrebuked, unforsaken and unrepentant of, is a travesty on the gospel of Christ, and not the true gospel at all. He gave Himself, and the price was Himself, that He might redeem us and purify unto Himself–purify.

Now, the one deep disease of the world you know, is impurity. And by impurity we mean, anything that is unlike God. Sexual misconduct, yes, but that’s only one facet of this impurity. Contentiousness is another. There are some people that you can’t say it’s a nice morning, isn’t it, but what they will say, no, I don’t think it is and start an argument. If you compliment, they will start an argument and no matter what you say, they’re contentious. I’ve met that kind of contentious people. They live in the world by the mercy of the people who aren’t contentious. And they imagine themselves wonderful, when they’re merely the recipients of an almost infinite amount of patience on the part of people, who would like to tramp on them, but won’t. And so, these contentious people are impure people.

Then there are hatreds, hatreds of every sort, that’s impurity. Gluttony is impurity. And slothfulness is impurity. The lazy person is impure. Or the person who works only that he can play, is impure. Self-indulgence is another form of impurity. Pride is another form. Egoism is another form. Self-pity and resentfulness and churlishness, I’ve named only a few. But all that is not of God. This is all impurity, and the work of Christ is to purify a people.

Now, remember it my brethren, you can quote Scripture by the yard, but if you haven’t been purified by the fire of the Holy Ghost and the blood of the Lamb, you are of all men most miserable. Because you will find in that day, that you will be rejected from the presence of the Lord, because it will not be your belief, so much as the state of your heart, that will tell where you go in that day, though your beliefs will certainly take you to purity. The work of Christ is to purify a people; by blood and by fire, and to rid them of these things.  The churlish Christian excuses it, and calls it by some other name. The resentful Christian, says he’s nervous, but he walks around with a chip on his shoulder. And I have been informed, that if you find a chip on his shoulder, it’s very likely to have come off of the block further up.

But resentfulness and self-pity and egotism and pride; all these we are to be purified from. And if we had as many Bible teachers, trying to teach how pure Christians can become as we do, trying to teach that they can’t become pure, we would have a better church than we have.

Now he says here, he purifies unto Himself, a peculiar people, a peculiar people. Let’s look at that a little bit, that word, peculiar. Well, that word has been used. It’s gotten into the hands of the enemy, and it’s been used to cloak some very weird goings on in the Christian church. But the word has no connotation of strange or irrational or queer or ridiculous or foolish. No, Jesus Christ was the perfect example. And He walked among men with utmost rationality. Everything He did was as logical and as clear and salty and sane as the sunshine on the grass of a June morning, Jesus our Lord was the perfect example of a mind that was poised and balanced and symmetrical and in perfect adjustment to itself.

And yet, of course, He was our example. He was our sample man. And He never did or said anything, or left anything unsaid, that would cause the raising of an eyebrow, or the wondering if we might not be quite there. Now, they said He had the devil because He healed the sick on the Sabbath day, the false teachers and those who believed in commandments, instead of people; who loved law instead of men, and those who loved text in place of children, and those who would rather take the evil woman and hurl her into hell than see her forgiven. They of course, said He had the devil. But read if you will all four Gospels and see, in not one instance did Jesus do or say anything that was not sane and salty and completely normal and right.

So, those who do irrational things in the name of the Lord have their own selves to blame. And those who are queer and ridiculous and foolish, and then flippantly say, I’m a fool for Christ’s sake, they’re not. You know, you can’t do anything you want to do and say, I do it for Christ’s sake and make it all right. Keep that in mind, brother. You can only do for Christ’s sake that which Christ told you to do. You cannot do what you’ve decided to do and then make it good by saying it’s for Christ’s sake. That is offering a swine on the altar of the Lord, and it will be rejected abruptly by great God Almighty. So, let’s remember that Christians are not to be weirdies, strange people, odd balls, not at all in any sense of the word.

But, what does the word peculiar mean here? Well, it means the same thing in Greek as it does in Hebrew, so the scholars tell us. And it’s found in Exodus 19:5, thou shalt be a peculiar treasure unto me, above all people, He told Israel. A peculiar treasure unto Me, above all people.

Oh, if you’ll allow me, indulge me again. My own family laughs at me. But if you’ll allow me. This afternoon, God willing, about 1:30 I’ll see a little boy, five years old, blondie, a brown-eyed blonde. His name is Paul, and he’s, my grandson. And I’ll see him, well, if we both live that long. Now, there’s a boy, really, there’s a boy. And you know, there isn’t anything peculiar about him. He is sensible, sane, good natured, poised, balanced, symmetrical in his character, so far as a five-year-old can be, and is already learning to read and is allowed mathematics and can connect with a ball every time it’s tossed to him. And he’s just a boy. And there’s nothing peculiar about him at all. If he was playing on the lawn with a half a dozen other boys, you wouldn’t pick him out. Except of course, he’s better looking, but you wouldn’t pick him out. He’d just be one more boy there playing on the lawn. And yet to his father and mother, and to us at our house, he’s a peculiar boy. Why? Because he’s peculiarly ours.

I saw him when he was just a few hours old in the hospital, a terrible, homely-looking mess of something or other there. But now he’s blossomed into a grand boy. Well now he’s peculiar. How is he peculiar, little off? No. Because he acts queer? No. He’s peculiar because he belongs to us. He is ours, as God said of Israel, a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people. And every mother knows what I am talking about. Every mother knows her little crow is the blackest. And every cat knows her kittens are the softest. And every father knows his son is the sharpest, his grandson the brightest. Everybody knows that. A peculiar treasure unto me. Love has made you mine in a way that logic can’t explain, that you have to feel it to know it.

And so that same word peculiar came on over into the Greek and then into our English, that same word. That same meaning, I mean, a peculiar treasure. Etymologically, it means, shut up to me as my special jewel. Imagine that, shut up to me as my special jewel. I have you under my hand as my specialty jewel. Buddy Robinson used to say, that dear old saint. One of the few modern saints that I’ve ever known. Buddy Robinson said that the Lord holds him in the hollow of His hand. And every once in a while, raises His hand a little and says, are you alright, Buddy? Now, that was Robinson’s simple, childlike way of telling what a Butler or a Calvin or a Wesley would have cloaked in great, heavy, resonant, resounding English phrases. But Buddy just simplified it. Moody had a way of doing that too, take some great profound doctrine and simplify it.

Well now, that’s what it all means, that the Lord has us as His peculiar treasure, and He is purifying unto Himself, a people to be His as special jewels. And yet, Israel in the Old Testament, they were different, but they were not different in a queer or ridiculous way. When Daniel, say, went to Babylon, he was different. Daniel wouldn’t eat the meat of the Babylonians. And Daniel prayed several times a day facing toward Jerusalem. If that made him mentally disturbed, that nowadays you know, they’d have sent out a booklet on that. And they would have said that that’s, a mental health outfit would have wanted to take Daniel up on that because he prayed three times a day facing toward Jerusalem. But was there anything crazy about that? No. Daniel simply recognized a higher loyalty than Babylonian kings, and he stayed by that loyalty even to be cast into the den of lions.

And so, in the New Testament, Christians are God’s special jewels marked out for Him to be peculiar, but not queer; to be peculiar, but not ridiculous; to be peculiar, but not foolish. And yet, they are different. They are different. Somebody told me he’d heard a sermon on the air recently where some preacher, I suppose he was a young preacher, I hope he was. God forgive him if he was over 21. But he preached anyhow and said, people think to become a Christian you’ve got to be a square. But I tell you, you don’t have to be different to be a Christian, oh, brother, if he had said five times five equals 99 and three fourths, he couldn’t have been any wronger than he was.

To be a peculiar treasure unto God does make you different. And you do live differently. You have a higher loyalty, and you’ll recognize the right of God to tell you how to live. And men’s philosophies come and go. Religions come and go. Quasi-revivals come and go. Healing campaigns come and go. And new ideas come and go, and scientific notions come and go. And all the time, this Christian has got in focus the heart of God and He’s living just like the way he had been, going on doing the will of God and recognizing only one final loyalty. Thrones and crowns may perish, kingdoms rise and wane, but the church of Jesus, constant shall remain. And that constancy is because of her. She’s got God in her focus.

And so other things come and go. They’re like the winds that blow and the storms that come and pass. But we go on. That makes us different, but it doesn’t make us queer nor foolish. It makes us right. Put one sane man in a ward where everybody else is in a bad, advanced state of paranoia, and the one man who looks right, and is right, will look wrong. H.G Wells wrote a book called “The Country of the Blind,” just a simple little story; and it was just to bring before his readers an idea. A man fell into a little valley somewhere, where people had no eyes. He of course had eyes. And there among these blind people who had learned to live without eyes. They were scientists and philosophers and poets and all the rest without eyes; and he had eyes. And it wasn’t very long until they were preparing to operate on him, to get rid of those strange protuberances that were just beneath his eyebrow, because they said it made him act queer and say queer things. But his queerness was his own sight. He saw, and therefore he was different from those who did not see.

And so a Christian is one who sees, and because he sees, some people who don’t see, say he is all wrong. But when God says He makes a peculiar people, He doesn’t mean that He makes a lot of ridiculous and queer people. He merely makes them His peculiarly, His shut up unto Him. And of course, the world won’t like them because they’re His.

Lastly, zealous of good works. These peculiar people, they sing loudly, but they give generously. They pray along, but they work hard, zealous of good works. The Bible knows nothing of armchair Christians. The Bible knows nothing of ivory tower Christianity.

I maybe could mention this. Just within the last two weeks, I’ve had at least a partial offer, and if I cultivate a little bit, it would become a valid offer, of a foundation’s $13 million in it; to be turned out to pasture, like a fine old horse that has seen his day, and just write and have my time; just do nothing but except the big salary and just be retired to write and have fun. I give you three guesses whether I’m going to accept it or not. An ivory tower Christian? For me to move out among the blue birds and sit with an electric typewriter in an air-conditioned study done in knotty pine? You couldn’t sell me that, my brother. You couldn’t give it to me. You couldn’t get me to take it. I’m not for sale. And furthermore, if I lived, I don’t suppose I’d live very long at that rate. But if I lived even a year, I’d become an ivory tower suburbanite, a Christian that just couldn’t live unless I was looking on green things. And I’d just have to have a birdsong in order to be happy. No, my brother. The Bible teaches that we are to be zealous of good works.

I talked last evening to a woman. I don’t know too much about her, and I’m not setting her up as an example. But she was here at our meeting. And her husband told me of how in the pursuance of her work she goes through all these areas north of here into places where it looks dangerous for anybody to be. He said, she’s got faith, Reverend. She’s got faith. She goes in anywhere and she’s afraid of nothing. He said she was a little afraid, but she went. And yet she belongs to a congregational church somewhere in the suburbs. But, she comes in where the need is, and goes from home to home. And I say, God purifies unto himself a people peculiarly precious to Him. And while they’re down here, they’re going to be zealous of good works.

Now the church can silence her critics by good works, and she can silence in no other way. Take doctrine, and they’ll turn your doctrine against you. Quote scripture, and they’ll say that isn’t the right translation. You can silence your critics only by godliness and good works. And nobody can argue down godliness and good works. The devil himself wouldn’t try it. He wouldn’t try it. He knows better. Godliness and good works shut the mouths of everybody. They may take you out and hang you, but they’ll respect you while you die; godliness and good works. And yet not to be seen of men, but to imitate our Lord who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.

So, we have it again, this beautiful passage that can’t be worn out. Our Savior Jesus Christ who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity; and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. Then Paul adds these words. I don’t know why they’re here, but they’re here. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. And don’t let anybody despise you. Amen.

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Tozer Talks

“God’s Word Manifested Through Preaching

God’s Word Manifested Through Preaching

February 9, 1958

The book of Titus, the book of Titus, Titus 1. I been reading just from the introduction, really, Paul. Paul, he says he is a servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Then he refers to the faith of God’s elect and the truth which leads to godliness, and the hope of eternal life which God that cannot lie promised before the world began and made known in time. Promised in eternity and made known in time and has manifested His word now. This will be the message for the morning.

A little prepositional phrase tagged on here, it could have ended, but hath in due times manifested His Word, and put a period there and ended it, but he didn’t. He added “through preaching” and then explained that this preaching was committed to Him according to the commandment of God, our Savior. So, I want to talk a little bit about this. And have prayed and hoped that it will be helpful to us all. These two great truths we dealt with last week that the plan of God to redeem mankind was rocked out in eternity. It was planned in eternity and worked out in time and delivered in time, but was made manifest, that is, proclaimed, declared in due time, then through preaching.

Now, I don’t think in all my years I ever felt the weight of a thing quite like this, those two words before–through preaching. And I thought of the condescension of God that He should use these words at all, that they should be here, that there should be any reason for their being here. How remarkably sure of Himself God must be, to entrust such a perfect plan to such an imperfect medium. This perfect plan, the plan of God drawn up between the persons of the Godhead before the world was; a perfect plan to recover man from his lost condition, to reclaim him after his fall, to reinstate him after his disgraceful expulsion, and to give him eternal life, and at last, immortality.

This was not an easy thing, the laws of God being what they are, and God being who He is, and His nature being what it is. This was not an easy thing, but it was more involved here than things political. Things involved here were moral, and they had to do with the structure of the universe. They had to do with the very foundations upon which rests the heavens and the earth and all things visible and invisible, and to work out a plan to lay its blueprints, and then build according to those blueprints, and then unveil the structure. It took God to do it. It took God to do it and God did it; and He did it in a manner infinitely perfect and excellent as might be expected of God. Infinitely perfect and excellent beyond all the power of language to describe. That’s the perfection of the plan. And now he makes this known, wonder of wonders, he makes this known through preaching, one of the most imperfect of mediums.

Why is preaching imperfect? Because language is involved. And wherever language is involved, there’s imperfection; always there must be imperfection for the simple reason that language is fluid, it changes. Language tends to localize itself and mean in one place what it does to a particular word, and mean in one place, what it does not mean in another. I mean in one locality. And even the nations that use the same language, use different words to mean the same thing. As for instance, such a simple thing as you get into an elevator in America and into a lift in England. You ask the conductor if this is the right train in America, and you ask a guard in England I understand. That’s a simple illustration only. And it doesn’t affect anything very profound, but language does become profound and highly significant, tremendously so when it deals with religion and the soul of man.

And this perfect, infinitely excellent plan of God was entrusted to the imperfect medium of preaching. Preaching which uses language I say, which the speaker himself may not always understand fully, and which the hearer may not understand fully. And which the hearer having been brought up in one area or locality, may mean by a word one thing and here may mean another. And so, they make no contact. They fail to do what they say now, communicate. And then, because of the many languages all over the world, our missionaries tell us rather heartbreaking as well as humorous stories of their effort to get ideas across, efforts that simply cannot be gotten across.

I remember when my older brother was in China when he was a young fellow. He came back and told us smilingly about how he’d gone into a department store and asked to buy a cow when what he wanted was some garment or other, what a sailor might want, a handkerchief maybe. But he had had a wrong inflection, or wrong tone, and so what he asked for in a dry goods store was a cow. And that’s only one of the 1000s of changes and odd angles and facets of meaning. It is not only between languages, but within languages.

And so He committed the eternal hope of mankind for recovery and reclamation and reinstatement and eternal life and immortality. He committed it to the imperfect medium of preaching. And it’s imperfect because language is involved. And it’s imperfect because preachers are involved. And preachers are men and hence faulty and defective. Paul recognized this in 1 Corinthians 1:21 when he said it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

Paul knew very well that for one man to stand up on a raised platform and address other men and talk about things he couldn’t see and refer to historical incidents which there was no proof for and to offer gifts which he could not, you could not weigh nor measure and to talk about the unseen things and demand they be seen, and unheard things, and insist they ought to be heard. He knew this was a foolish thing to do. And yet he said it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. And while we do not underrate the printed Word, we say that God hath said here in 1 Corinthians 1:21, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save people, and in Titus 1:2 that in due time He manifested His plan through preaching.

Well, what a noble army they have been. I have a great big book on the history of preaching which I have lent to brother Milton Moore. And now I’m almost sorry I did because thinking over this, I’d like to have checked just this thought over again. The great men who’ve stood up in the earth with all their imperfection using an imperfect, fluid medium such as language. They have moved generations and changed the course of history. Think of the man Noah way back there before the flood, who for a long, long time, probably the longest pastorate any man ever held, 120 years while the ark was in preparation.

This man was a preacher of righteousness. Where he got his text I don’t know. Whether he read it or whether he memorized it or whether it was extemporary, I don’t know. I don’t know what type of preacher he was, but I know that he was a preacher of righteousness. And certainly, this old man of God back there before the flood, you say he didn’t win many, and not many were saved, no, but what he did was this. No, he didn’t win many back there, but he did deliver his soul and delivered God Almighty from any remote shred of accountability for those who heard him. If there is such a thing you know as God sending a man to a place and say, now, you go and preach to these people and don’t expect converts. You won’t get them. Don’t expect results. You won’t have them. But I want them to know a prophet has been among them. He told that to Ezekiel the man of God. Now there’s such a thing, Noah was that kind of preacher. And in hell today, in hell today, those anti-diluvian ones are deeper and more tragically, terribly and eternally responsible because Noah preached to them.

And then there’s the prophets, the old men of God, they were not students in pastor’s studies, these prophets of the Old Testament. They were mostly great, rough fellows who with the exception of one or two, a priest and another one a courtier, Isaiah. But mostly they were rough fellows that God had laid His hand on as He did on a Billy Nicholson or Billy Bray in later times. And they stood up and declared the Word and declared it roughly and coarsely and they struck out, and in their striking sometimes they hit posts, and they hit people that weren’t guilty, but they struck hard, these mighty prophets of God. And God loved their sermons, and He had given them the sermons to begin with, and then had them recorded so we have the prophets, major and minor, giving us the sermons that were preached. And how those sermons must have changed man. And yet God said, I raised my prophets up and sent them and stretched out My hands and you wouldn’t hear. And so, God delivered Himself and the prophets delivered themselves.

And we come to the New Testament and we see first of all, Jesus, a preacher, and we see those apostles who went about preaching, and those disciples in Acts 8:4, which says that because of the persecution that had arisen about Steven, they went everywhere preaching. I don’t know what kind of preaching it was, but it was effective. They went everywhere preaching that Christ had died, and now lives and is at the right hand of God. And then in post-biblical times, we have the great preachers down the years, the silver-tongued preachers. In later times, 12, 13, 14, 1500s we have Johannes Tauler, that great German orator who went about all over Germany preaching Jesus Christ and preparing the ground for the Reformation.

In Spain, a little later we have Molinas who went about preaching that you could get to know God yourself, that you could, that you could pray in your heart and God would hear you; that you didn’t have to pray through beads and forms and stated times, but anytime you lifted your heart to God through Jesus Christ, God would hear you. He later paid with his life for teaching such doctrines as that, because it made it tough for the priests. The hold the priests head on men was, that priest had to be around or you couldn’t pray, or you had to pray according to His prescription. But Molinas said God will prescribe for you son, go ahead and pray. So, the Spanish Inquisition put him in prison. Shortly afterward, he died and historians think he was poisoned, but nobody can prove it. The judgment day will reveal it. But, Molinas was a preacher known all over Spain, and now known all over the world.

And there was Richard Rolle, one of my friends. God, in His great mercy, allows such things to happen in heaven, and I am not so completely overcome with a sense of my own inferiority that I’ll be afraid to speak, I want to hunt up Richard Rolle. I want to hunt up the man who gave up his monastery and walked out of it, took a guitar bless you, a guitar, an instrument we kind of look down in our day, usually, I guess, because the way it’s been abused. But he took a guitar and went all over England preaching, preaching the love of God in Christ Jesus the Lord. And he said, if you let the love of God come into your heart, it’ll fill you with sweetness and fragrance and song. He went everywhere preaching. And I didn’t know until I looked it up recently, but I could have suspected it, that before he died he got in trouble, because he wrote himself a good stiff book in which he denied that the Pope had the authority he claimed he had. And he managed to die in his bed. But think of that preacher and what he did for England.

And later on when the preachers came to England after the Reformation, they found soil, pretty-well prepared. And there was Luther, we’ll skip Luther because everybody knows about him. And there was John Knox, that mighty Scotchman who preached with a burr, but who was such a frightful, such a terrible and terrifying preacher that Bloody Mary said she feared him, feared him worse than she feared the armies of Egypt. She feared his prayers, to say nothing of his sermons.

Yes, there’s been a lot of them. But they are the stars of the first magnitude. Think of the thousands of little stars that barely shine, that takes a whole Milky Way of them to make a little light, but they’re there and they’ve got some light. Thank God for every one of them. And I thank God for every one of them today in this city, big and little, poor and good that are standing up to declare the Word. For God has made His Word known through preaching. Now, that’s the condescension of God.

And then, think of the mighty obligation of the preacher. Think of the weighty, enormous, crushing obligation that rests upon a man who stands to declare the Truth, anywhere, at any time. Why? Two reasons. One is that he is the messenger of the Most High God and he comes clothed with the authority of the Most High God with a message from the Most High God. No secret document ever carried in any portfolio by any ambassador, top secret though it might be from one country to another, can even compare with the seriousness and weight of the message carried by the simplest, poorest preacher that stands today to preach to a little flock. And the future of millions of moral beings lies in the hand of the preacher. It always has. You say millions? Aren’t you getting a bit exaggerated? No. Suppose that a little unheard of Methodist preacher, say, up in Wisconsin that nobody will ever hear of but his own superintendent and hundreds of people who might hear him. Suppose he wins one man to God. Suppose that man wins another. And suppose then that man wins another. The next man wins two and somebody else wins three or ten. Multiply it and see how by multiplying it runs into hundreds of thousands.

Paul saved one, two to Christ, and the man, each of those two won two more and each of those two more, won two more. All you have to do is take a pencil and sit down and figure it out, you’ll see that the conversion of one person will run into hundreds of 1000s in the course of years.

So, the future of millions of moral beings lie in our hands, the hands of the man who stands up to preach the Word. The teacher who stands up before his class to declare the Word, that’s a form of preaching too. Don’t rule it out. It is a form of preaching. It’s giving the Word, teaching the word, instructing man, exhorting men; inspiring men and women and young people. If you could only know. I wonder if we will know. If you could only know who it was way back down there, what Swede or German or Scotsman or Englishman, or maybe even some other country we’re not thinking of now, that a man got up lazy one morning, head aching and said to himself, I don’t think I’ll pray today as much. I think I’ll kind of rest and so he puttered around the house, and before long the Spirit of God began to move him, and he said, I’ve got to pray. And he got on his knees and began to pray. And as he prayed, the light of God came to him. He went out that night maybe and preached, or the next Sunday, and somebody is a result of his hearing God’s voice and got converted. And the conversion of that person resulted in the conversion of one of your ancestors. And the conversion of that ancestor resulted in the conversion of one of your less-remote, and so down to you, and you now are a Christian, and your home Christian, because somebody back there didn’t fail God. Think of it.

But how can, how can preachers be what they are sometimes? I’ve said and I’ve gotten in trouble for saying, but I kind of thrive on it. I don’t mind it too much anymore. But I say that if a man is lazy, the best place in the world to indulge his talents is the ministry, because nobody checks up on him. He can sleep until noon. And if he gets a phone call at 10 o’clock, he can get up and try to sound alert. But, how can a man from whose head God has laid His hands ever be lazy when you consider the condescension of God; that He made His perfect plan, made through the imperfect medium of preaching. And with the mighty obligation that lies on the man of God, how can he be lazy? How can you be careless, and yet men are? How can he be cowardly? And how can it be covetous?

When George Fox came to England, he had one category for all ministers. He called them priests. And he had one place to put them, as far down in the pit as he could shove them; putting his hand on their bald head and push it. And I read his writings years ago, and I thought, oh, George has been rough on people. But George knew to whom he was speaking. He knew. He saw them. He saw them stand up drunk and had to have choirboys to hold them up so they could deliver their sermon. He saw how careless and utterly worldly they were, and how they cared for the pulpit, only as a man cares for a bench in a factory, as a means of making a living. So, I’m not going to be too hard on George. He may have pushed a fellow in the face that didn’t have it coming, but that was just an accident mostly. They had it coming.

Well, think how could a man be cowardly when he considers that God has given him the message to deliver however poor he might be and however few might hear him, he’s given a message. And when you think that message carries with it such tremendous obligation from God, how can a man be cowardly and back up and say I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you, and back out on his message, back out on the Truth. Now, if he is honestly wrong, he ought to apologize. The preacher is not above apology. And of course, as a Christian man he ought to apologize if he’s hurt anybody. But never be afraid.

And then, the covetous man. I don’t understand the covetous man, the man who allows the offer of the board, so much money, so long, determine whether he will preach or not. I don’t understand it, but how terrible it is. Listen to this, I want to read it to you.  Son of man, I’ve made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel. Therefore, hear the word of My mouth and give them warning from Me. When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. And again, send a man, when a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block for him, he shall die because thou hast not given him warning. He shall die in his sins, but his blood will I require at thine hand. Think how terrible this is. And yet, we can dare to think these holy thoughts and mingle them with money and popularity and what people think and what they’ll say.

Well then, next is the overwhelming responsibility of the hearer. The condescension of God that He should make His Word known through preaching and the mighty obligation that lays on the preacher; and the overwhelming responsibility it lays upon the hearer. What puts the hearer under such obligation? The source of the message for one thing. God said this, the Most High God, son of man, I said this, go tell them I said this, the God in whose hand you’re held, and the God out of whose hand you’ll tumble into hell, or in whose hand you’ll rise to heaven. Son of man, go tell them I saith. Think of this message itself, a message of the eternal deliverance with approaching death and judgment. This is the terrible, wonderful, glorious, all inspiring message which the simplest, humblest preacher; that he gets up and humbly gives a little interpretation of John 3:16. Maybe he’s never gone any further than that. Maybe that’s as far as he’s gone, but he does his best with the elementary things of the gospel. But he’s God’s man anyhow.  And it puts the preacher, he puts the hearer under obligation.

Remember one thing my brethren, nobody’s done with a sermon even when the benediction has been pronounced. Nobody. Nobody’s finished with a sermon when the preacher said, and now lastly, amen. Nobody. Nobody’s finished with the sermon. They here may sleep and some do. And they hear me scorn and some do. The hearer may resist, and some do and reject, and others do. But he will face his responsibility, certainly, surely, in that Great Day. He’ll face his responsibility. Do you realize you’re children of eternity? Do you realize that you’re not born to die once down here? You’re forever. You will rise again in heaven or hell, and you’ll face up to things.

I don’t know how they do it now; and if this doesn’t conform to what you younger men know about the services. Why, you’ll believe that I’m accurate anyhow, because I remember this very well. They did it with that first World War. They took young rookies in around 21. I think they didn’t take in at that time, take anybody in under 21. And the young men went in at 21 and I saw them. There they would come out of the woods, out of the factories, out of the coal mines, out of the offices.

I remember washing dishes alongside of a professor of chemistry and university. And I was, I don’t know what. But there he was, we were washing dishes together, he and I back and forth. Well, they took them, all sorts. And some of them of course, being Americans, when some sergeant told them what to do, they said, you and who else? America, you know, that’s American. And then they’d be taken in and they would say, now, line up here and they would all line up. And then an officer with some kind of affairs here on his shoulder to give it the punch, would stand up and read what they called the Articles of War.

The Articles of War, I don’t remember, I think I couldn’t recite a phrase of it, but what it meant in essence was this, your country is now at war with an enemy. And whatever you do from here on will be considered as having been done in time of war. And any crime you commit in the Army of the United States, under war conditions, is stepped up in its intensity and its degree of guilt and the punishment that much the greater, Articles of War. And when a young fellow who wasn’t used to being pushed around, fought back. They said, have you heard the Articles of War? If he said no, they said, all right, come on, they took him over and let him read the Articles of War. If he’d heard it, he went to the guardhouse. It depends on whether we have or haven’t heard.

So, there’s an awful lot that this illustrates. Let me read again from this same chapter. Listen to this. Yet, son of man, if thou warn the wicked, and he turns not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul. He’s heard the Articles of War. He knows how serious it is now. He’s not an innocent Dani in the valley there stark naked. He’s now a man who’s been in some major illuminated. He knows how serious the charge of God is. And he shall die in his iniquity. And over here, nevertheless, if thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live because he’s warned. Also, thou hast delivered thy soul.

There you have the two sides of the same mighty coin. The preacher with his obligation to tell and the hearer with his obligation to hear. Think of the overwhelming responsibility of the hearer. Not the hearer of Billy Graham, or Paul Reese, or Robert G. Lee, or any of the great preachers, but the obligation to hear the simplest preacher that preaches today and Chicago United mission, or Pacific Garden, or any hall, storefront hall down the avenue. The simplest man who gets up under the anointing of God and dares to tell the whole truth, he lays an overwhelming obligation upon the hearer to do something about it.

So I say, God have mercy on us all. God have mercy on a preacher who fails. God have mercy on that son of man, that prophet called of God who thinks more of his home and his car and his salary and his comforts than he does of the souls of men. God have mercy on that cowardly man who edits out the offensive things out of the doctrine for fear some hierarchy will rebuke him or he’ll get a reputation for not being sound.

Any of you young men who are going to be preachers, let me tell, you can live down reputations that have killed some people if you’ll just want to do it. They’ll say first, you don’t believe in eternal security, therefore, it’s too bad for you. Later on, they’ll forget that. Or they won’t know whether you do or not. Or, they’ll say that you don’t believe in dispensationalism, and they’ll give you the cold shoulder for a while. And the Holy Ghost comes on you and you get blessed and you bless people and the people begin to demand you. And then those that are trying to stand in your way, they can’t stand in your way anymore. And so, they accept you, pat your back and say, well, I don’t see it quite with you, but okay. You don’t have to be afraid in America. Now, there are some places that I suppose it would be dangerous to stand for all the Truth, but certainly not in the United States. We’ve got enough of the blood of our Puritan ancestors in us yet and enough of the blood of the rebel in us that we don’t have to be afraid.

Well, God have mercy on us preachers, and the preachers who fail. I think of the time I’ve wasted and the time I’ve used wrongly. I’m not looking forward to the coming of Christ with as much hilarity as some people do. I’ve heard sermons preached by men cold as ice, but they were trying to show with what great joy they’d meet Him. I hope they do. But I don’t look forward to His coming personally with anything like assurance. When I consider as a man called of God when I was 17 years old, and I’ve had all these years and how much of it I’ve wasted. And what a poor wretch of a preacher I am compared with; what I could have been if I had obeyed God.

Son of man, says the Holy Ghost, I’ll require his blood at your hands. And then, God have mercy on the hearers who ignore, who take for granted, who like a skillful batter have learned to hit every offering the pitcher makes. They’re used to him now. They know every curve. And they can hit him every time. And after you have preached to people long enough, they either get right with God and get blessed, or else they learn all your curves. And they stand up there and bat them back to you. Nothing gets passed. God help such hearers who ignore, who toss every offering back to you and who refuse to be affected by it.

I can’t get over this statement I quoted the other day about my brother here who said some people won’t let you help them, this terrible thing. Some people just won’t let you help them and no matter who comes, they won’t let you help them. Son of Man preach to them. Either they will or they won’t, but whether they will or they won’t, you’re free. And if they will, then they’ll be delivered. If they won’t, then they shall die in their sin. How terrible, both for the man who speaks and the man who hears. God help us all. You teachers help us all. It’s more than standing up before a few squirming people. It’s holding holy things in our hands. And we’ll all have to give account in the day of Jesus Christ. God help us all. Amen.

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“God is Wisdom

God is Wisdom

January 12, 1958

In the book of 1 Corinthians first chapter verses 22 to 24, Paul says, The Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified. Unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks, foolishness. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. And then Colossians 2:2 and 3, Paul prays, or indicates his desire that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Now, as some of you know, this is the second in a series of Sunday evening messages to be called “The Voice of Eternal Wisdom and I don’t mind telling you that this should be given by a fire-baptized scholar. We need an Anselm or an Augustine. We don’t have it. A large book should be written about this voice of Eternal Wisdom; none has been written. I know of none in the last 100 years.

And Christians should be exposed to this truth. Not over a period of a half dozen Sunday nights, but for a long, long time. We should sing about it, pray about it, preach about it, understand it from the Scriptures until it becomes a part of our lives. And I have nobody to guide me much, because nobody’s written on the subject much. But my heart has stirred me up to talk about it. And I shall do the best I can. Let’s pray.

 Heavenly Father, we pray that thou wilt Illuminate us and enlighten our mind. For they are dark, and we pray with thy servant, Thy blind servant, what in us is low, raise and support. What is dark, illuminate, that to the height of this great argument we may assert Eternal Providence and justify the ways of God to man. We pray that Thou wilt help us as believers this evening to throw our hearts open to the Voice of Eternal Truth. And we pray for the unsaved man who’s out of the fold living for the flesh. We beseech Thee that thou talk to him too and may he decide that he ought to be a follower of Christ. We ask this in Jesus’ name.

Now, last Sunday night I said that there is in the Old Testament and in old Hebrew literature, a doctrine called, well I’ve called it the doctrine of Eternal Wisdom, but it is the doctrine of wisdom. And it is a Hebrew concept. It is this, that somewhere, out there, in God and with God and beside God and yet being God, there is an afflatus, a fullness of wisdom of word and idea and concept and expression of that wisdom and word and idea. And we find it of course in the New Testament in John the first chapter, particularly. And up until not too long ago, I had to somehow, to try to twist myself out of a bit of a dilemma. I had been told that the doctrine of the Logos, the Logos, the Word, where John says, in the beginning was the Word, that that was a Hebrew concept borrowed from the Greeks. And I didn’t know why John would borrow a concept from the Greeks. But if he did, and the Holy Ghost wanted to borrow from the Greeks, I wasn’t going to complain, or at least, I kept my heart right about it.

But you know, a further study of all this shows me that that’s liberalism that teaches that. It is not, simply not true. The doctrine of the Word, the Eternal Idea, the Eternal Thought, is a Hebrew concept. Look at David’s Psalm 33:6. Now look, what David said here, by the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. Now, that’s quite different from the idea that God made everything by hand. Here it says, He made it by mouth. He made it by the breath of His mouth, by the Word of the Lord were the heavens made. That’s 33:6 of the Psalms written by the man David. And that was written 1000 years before Christ, around 1000, maybe a little over.

And then, in the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, we find the same idea of that Eternal Wisdom which gave birth to everything. We find it in the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, particularly. And that was about 1000 years before Christ. And then in the book of Job, which was written at the very least 900 years before Christ, and most people think it’s the oldest book of the Bible, which would put it of course, way beyond that, so that Job believed the doctrine of the Eternal Word, the Eternal Wisdom, at least 900 years before Christ. And Solomon believed it and wove it into his proverbs and into the Book of Ecclesiastes, 1000 years before Christ. And David taught it not only in the text I have quoted, but all through his Psalms at least 1000 or more years before Christ, but now it was introduced into Greek thought, only 600 years before Christ by an old chap named Heraclitus.

So, Heraclitus was at least 400 years later than Job was or Solomon or David, so that the Christian doctrine of the Eternal Logos, the Eternal Word is not the Greek concept borrowed by the Holy Ghost. It is a Hebrew concept which dates way back, long before the Greeks ever began to think about such a matter at all. So therefore, shake your head and see if you can shake some of the fog out. And the next smart fellow you meet that tells you that you’re a follower of Plato and Platonism and that the ideas of the New Testament particularly the book of John, were borrowing from the Greeks, you tell them that you happen to know that before old Heraclitus was ever born, who in the mature life introduced into Greek thought the idea of the Word, that it had been believed and taught by David and Solomon and Job and the prophets long, long before there was any Greek idea about it.

Now my Brethren, the teaching of the Old Testament on this is that there was a creative impulse, that God had an idea, that God had a thought. And you know, when you get to thinking about it, Scriptures come to your mind. I know the thoughts that I think about you, saith the Lord. And My thoughts are not as your thoughts. As the heavens are higher above the earth so are My thoughts high above your thoughts.

Well then, John and Paul were illuminated to see this. In the Gospel of John, in the beginning was the Word, which was just what the man David had said. The Word of the Lord, by that Word were the heavens made and all the hosts then by the breath of His mouth. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And I said and repeat that the idea of this Eternal Wisdom which was with the Father, and looked at another way, He was the Son. And looked at another way, was the Fountain, the Creative Fountain out of which everything came. That was the teaching of the Old Testament Hebrews, the old fathers, the rabbis, and the old men of God who lived and studied the Scriptures. And John simply picked it up, not from the Greeks, I repeat, but from the Hebrews.

And then Paul was illuminated in Colossians 1:15 and 17 to see the same thing. He said, Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature. For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers. All things were created by Him and for Him.

Now, that’s what Paul said about it. And this was the flowering of the Old Testament teaching. It flowered over into the New Testament. And so, Jesus Christ came, who was Himself that Eternal Wisdom. And He took upon Him the form of a man and He was incarnated in mortal flesh, and he walked among men. And they said, how hast this man learning, having never been to school? And He needed not that any man come and snitch on anybody else, because He Himself knew everything that was in man. And at twelve years old, He put the doctors to flight and asked them questions which they couldn’t answer, and answered questions which they asked Him. And Paul says that the Jews were after signs, and the Greeks were after wisdom, but Jesus Christ is both the power of God and the wisdom of God. And in Him, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden away.

So, my brethren, don’t you see that this doctrine, this beautiful doctrine of the Presence of something the old mystics called her. They said was a woman and I’ll show you in the Old Testament that, they’re almost the same thing. And they’re called her Sophia, which of course is to make her equal with wisdom. So, if your name happens to be Sophie, well, that’s where you got it Sister. And we hope that you’re touched with some of that divine wisdom. But I asked you to notice here now what the the prophets taught, what the men of God back there taught. They said, the Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth. That’s Proverbs 3:19. By understanding, He hath established the heavens. Jeremiah 10:12, He hath established the world by His wisdom and has stretched out the heavens by His discretion.

Now here are three triads. There’s the earth, the heavens and the world, founded and established and stretched out, done by wisdom and understanding and discretion. Now, I wouldn’t stand here and say it, but I have a perfect right to believe it. And I do believe that this is a hint at the Trinity. This is the Old Testament doctrine. Here is the earth, which was founded by wisdom; the heavens, which were established by understanding, and the world, was stretched out by discretion. And if you read Job, Ecclesiastes, the Book of Proverbs, you will find that this wisdom and understanding and discretion was a person, that this was a person; that it was somebody that you wooed and won. It was something, an afflatus, a holy oil that God poured out on people. You find that there. And all, that same thing David said when he said, by the Word of the Lord, and by the breath of His mouth.

Now, I read out, a little out of an old book called, “The Wisdom of Solomon” last week, and I was very careful to show you that the wisdom of Solomon is not an inspired book in the sense that the Proverbs is an inspired book, but it represents the good word. Nobody would complain if I were to quote from Spurgeon. Nobody would complain if I were to give you a paragraph from D.L. Moody. Nobody would care at all if I were to stand up here and say, this is what Augustine said. Here’s what Luther said. Nobody would complain about that. They were the fathers. We would skip Moody on that. But they were they were the fathers. And we would say, while that’s what they said, it wasn’t inspired. It represented a distillation or a condensation of truth from the inspired Scriptures.

So, I want to quote from a book called Ecclesiasticus, not Ecclesiastes, but Ecclesiasticus. It was written about 200 years before Christ. And here is what the brother said. Now, he wasn’t writing as he was moved by the Holy Ghost; neither was Augustine or Luther. But he was giving the beliefs in the teachings of the fathers, about what the inspired Scriptures taught. And here’s what this sole gentleman said. He said, all wisdom coming from the Lord, and is with Him forever. Who can number the sands of the sea and the drops of rain and the days of eternity? Who can find out the height of heaven and the breadth of the earth and the deep of wisdom? Wisdom hath been created before all things. And if you wonder about that word, created before all things, you’ll find it again in Colossians 1:15, where it says, who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature. And some have tried to make out that that meant that Jesus was a creature. It means nothing of the sort. That idea of first born, it’s first born from the dead. And Jesus Christ is the first born, in that He, out of the dead, He’s the firstborn of the creation, because, what He is, the creation sometime will be. And what He is, you and I are going to be. And what He is, He’s going to make this world over in His image.

Now, I scorned to spend any time on the Sputnik. I don’t want to bother with that hunk of hardware, because I don’t think it’s worthy of my attention as a preacher of the Word. But the reason I’m not disturbed about satellites and all that is, that all this is temporary anyhow, for the heavens shall be dissolved with a great noise and shall melt with fervent heat. And we look for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. And when God’s busy melting down the universe, He won’t need to mind melting down an extra hunk of Russian hardware. It will be easy to do, and if by that time, brother John Foster Dulles has got one up, why, He’ll melt that one down too. We won’t have to worry about it.

And that’s why I don’t get excited and stampede and start preaching sermons about it. I can’t because I see that all wisdom cometh from the Lord and is with Him forever. And who can number the sands of the sea and the drops of rain and the days of eternity? Who can find out the height of Heaven and the breadth of the earth and the deep and wisdom? Wisdom hath been created before all things and the understanding of prudence from everlasting. The Word Most High is the Fountain of Wisdom, the Word of God Most High, and Her ways of everlasting commandments. To whom hath the root of wisdom been revealed? There is One, wise and gravely to be feared, Jehovah sitting upon His throne. He created her and saw her and numbered her and poured her out upon all His works.

You know, there’s a Christian answer for almost everything. And while I don’t go into it, I think that we Christians have some answers. We wonder how the wild bird finds its way north in the spring and south in the fall? We wonder how the The Orchard Oriole and the Baltimore Oriole managed to build their beautiful swinging nest. We wonder how the bee finds its way across the meadows to its hive. We will wonder about what men call instinct. I believe, and there are some verses I’ll quote maybe later on in my series where that it says that God poured wisdom out upon His creation. And I believe that what the bee has is a touch from the Hand that made the bee.

Now don’t look down your nose and say, what does God care about a bee? God made that bee didn’t He? And also, God made the birds. And He even says in one place why you’re dumber than the ox that knows his master’s crib and the bird that knows her nest. And my people do not know, neither do they consider, they, made in the image of God, had lost the wisdom, but the very lower creation has that wisdom. That’s why I don’t worry about the universe. It’ll run all right. God has poured out that wisdom upon all His creation. So everything works alright and everything does all right because God made it that way.

Now, this is the doctrine. This is the doctrine of the Eternal Wisdom, which was incarnated in Jesus Christ. And that’s why He’s so hard to understand. A man named Bruce Barton one time, wrote a book called, A Man Nobody Knows. I read that book and came to the conclusion that there was at least one man that didn’t know Him, and that is Bruce Barton. Because he was writing about somebody. Somebody sent the book to me, an editor and said, Will you review, will you review this book? Well, I wrote back and said, Bruce Barton, writing about Jesus Christ would be exactly the same as Esau writing about Jacob. They just couldn’t make it. There was something that he didn’t understand.

This fellow Jacob, he wasn’t a nice chap, and he certainly wasn’t a straight fellow at first. God had to straighten him out. He’s name was, supplanter. He was crooked. But, he was touched with divine wisdom. The great God Almighty had reached down with His wand and touched his shoulder and said, rise, Jacob, and Jacob, got up Israel. He had a wisdom given to him. And Esau, a far nicer chap than he was; and was more socially acceptable that he was, nicer to live around, if you could stand the smell. He smelled of the field you remember, which the Lord has blessed and it’s all right in the field, but it’s not so good in the house and he came in with that smell on him.

And the fellow, Esau, a nice chap, lived in the flesh and died in the flesh. And Jacob, who wasn’t as nice a fellow had seen light and he had been illuminated and the Divine Wisdom had touched him. And Jacob came out all right, and became a prince with God. And men and women today name their babies Jacob, but they never name their babies Esau, because Esau, the name Esau is of the flesh and belongs in the flesh. And yet he was a nice chap.

Well, there we have it, my brethren. It’s the root of it and the base of it. It’s the old Hebrew doctrine that God is wisdom. And we sing it in our song, God is wisdom, God is love. And you will find it all through your Bible; run the references as we say. Go to your concordance, and you will be enlightened and illuminated and delighted. Perhaps even ravished as you see how back before Mary ever had her baby, back before ever the little baby Jesus wailed his tiny protest to the world in Bethlehem’s manger, way back before that in what the theologians called pre-incarnation times. Jesus Christ was, and He was the Wisdom of the Father. He was of one substance with the Father, equal with the Father, as ancient as the Father, eternal with the Father, having all the attributes of the Father, He was the Father’s outgoing, He was the Father’s expression. And that’s what the book of John says, in the beginning was the Word and everybody knows the Greek students have an awful time. What a deal of throwing around of brains takes place when some fellow starts to translate John, because John went so far up and so far in, that it takes a lot of sanctified imagination to understand John. Most people don’t have sanctified imaginations. They’ll just settle for a footnote. And that’s about as far as we go.

Well, now what do we learn from all of this? What is this? Is this Christianity? Of course, this is Christianity. In our day, we’ve degraded Christianity to be a kind of Salk vaccine shot against hell and sin. We round them all up and stick a needle in them and say, if you’ll just accept Jesus, you won’t go to hell and you’ll go to heaven when you die. Keep living as long as you can, but when you die, you’ll go to heaven. And we preach a kind of a lifeboat salvation. We even sing about it, about the lifeboat. I suppose it’s permissible, maybe, I don’t condemn it, but it certainly is an inadequate concept of Christianity, Brethren.

The purpose of God in redeeming men was not to save them from hell only. The purpose of God in redeeming man was to save them on to worship, and to let them be born through, into that Eternal Wisdom which was with the Father, which is synonymous with that Eternal Life, which was with the Father and which was revealed unto men, in which John said, our eyes have looked upon and our ears have heard and our hands have handled of that Word of Life. For you’ll find in the Gospel of John that the Holy Ghost through the mouth of the man John, mixed up in an holy and happy confusion, light and life, Light and Life and the Word, the Spoken Word was life and life and light, and the light was the light of men, and In Him was life.

Well, it’s all one because it is Jesus Christ our Lord, this Eternal Life. And doesn’t it touch you my friend? Doesn’t it touch you, or have you been brainwashed by footnotes to a point where you can’t think this way? Doesn’t it touch you that the Greeks sought after this and couldn’t find it? Doesn’t it touch you? It did Paul. In the 17th of Acts, Paul preached on the hill in Athens, and he said, I see that everywhere you’re very religious, not superstitious, you’re very religious, for you have an altar to the unknown God. You’ve put up an altar to every god you know by name, and then for fear you will slight some god, you put up an altar to an unknown God. And then, happy, smart Paul said, He whom thou dost worship in ignorance, I now preach unto you. Well, Paul understood and he said, in Him we live and move and have our being, and that we stretch out after Him, they did, stretch out after Him, if per chance they might find Him.

And I don’t think there’s anything more unbecoming, than for an evangelical preacher to get nasty and tough and say a lot of harsh things about the Greek philosophers and the ancient religions. Brethren, they did what they could with the light they had. I wonder if we can say the same about ourselves. Old Heraclitus who lived 600 years that I say before Christ, perhaps he had never heard of Solomon’s proverbs. Maybe the Book of Job was unknown to him. And maybe he had never read a Psalm in his life. But somehow in his dreaming and crying after the Most High God, he thought his way through to the idea that the eternal life, and that that word out of that word, everything came and he gave the Greeks the doctrine of the word which Plato and others brought to perfection.

Some years ago, I preached of all places at the noonday meeting down with the Christian business men. And I preached from the text, Jesus Christ is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. And I said that the Jews sought after righteousness. And Jesus Christ came, and was that righteousness; that the Greeks sought after wisdom, and Jesus Christ came and was that wisdom. And the religionist sought after redemption and sanctification, and Jesus Christ came and was that redemption and sanctification. And I gave an altar call. I got a letter from a professor at Wheaton College and he said, Brother, I have believed this all my adult life, but I never hoped to hear it turned into an evangelistic sermon. I didn’t know it either. But I did my best on it.

But that’s the fact my friends, that the quest of the human race; the Jews sought after righteousness; the Greeks sought after wisdom; and the religionists sought after redemption. And when Paul was preaching Jesus, He said to these people, I’ve got news for you, I preach unto you, Jesus, who is the incarnation of all the Jews sought, and the incarnation of all the Greeks sought, and the incarnation of all that the religionists sought; wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And the Greek scholars tell us that when he said, He’s made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, that we don’t get quite the right meaning in the King James. They said, what Paul actually said was, Jesus Christ is made unto us wisdom, and that wisdom is our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption. They say that’s what he actually said. He said, this wisdom, this that we call Ancient Wisdom, which the Greeks and the Hebrews before them talked about as a Uncreated, and yet somehow created strangely. But, is it any stranger than that passage that says, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God? Now, which was He? With God? Or was it God? Well, He was both.

And so, we say that that same truth applies to the ancient idea that there is a Fountain of Wisdom, the Womb out of which was born all things that be. I can live in this world believing that and not worry about it and not get into too many jams intellectually, because this world is beautifully put together, Brother, beautifully put together.  Talk about a watch. I have a watch here given me by the church for 25 years and I carry around it. It’s a Lord Elgin, a good watch. It’s magnificently made. I haven’t looked at the jewels. You never look a gift horse in the mouth. I don’t know how many jewels it has you know, whether it’s 17 or 21, or how many. I’ve never tried to find out. But I know it’s expensive and I know that it is beautifully made. And it’s a tribute to the genius and skill and patience and perseverance of men who can sit down and screw a telescope in their eye and go to work, and do work so fine. But it’ll last 100 years, and if this isn’t dropped and smashed and thrown around, my grandchildren or great grandchildren can be carrying it.

Wisdom, where did they get it? There was a man named Bezaleel at one time. Bezaleel, if you like. Bezaleel I like to call him. It is easier. He was a Jew. And God said, we’re going to build a temple here and a tabernacle. And we’re going to have a veil, a veil, and that veil is to be thick, and it’s to be embroidered, embroidered so beautifully. And you would have thought, now the way we’d have done it when we were making that veil, we’d have run to the women and we’d have said, Mrs. Henderson, you make your children’s clothes and you’re good with the needle, could you give us a half a day to work on the veil? But the great God Almighty wasn’t going to allow anybody to simply turn loose his human skills or hers. So, we picked a man by the name of Bezaleel and He filled him with the Holy Ghost and wisdom. What for? In order that he might ply his needle to make beautiful embroidery work on the veil.

So, the very veil of the temple was wrought by the wisdom of the Holy Ghost. So that all that you see. This is a great time for this series, because this is the time when we are materializing everything. We’re materializing everything. I lay for an hour last night and listened to a one hour, eight to nine, summation of where we stand. Did you hear that, put on by the Columbia Broadcasting Company? Everybody was quoted and spoke on tape and told us where we were. Everybody’s scared until he’s shivering. Generals and admirals and all the rest are just shaking. Because you see, they’re conquering outer space.

And I even heard in the radio the news just recently, well, in fact it was released only today, this afternoon. I heard this broadcast that the President of the United States, one General Dwight Eisenhower, has written Bulganin. He’s premier something or other. He may be running a filling station in Siberia one of these days, you know. But he’s got a job over there, and he wrote a letter tonight. And Ike wrote a letter back. And Ike actually said and suggested in his letter that we and Russia get together on what we’re going to do about outer space. We can’t even run Washington, and we’re working on outer space. And the first fellow that puts a flag up there on the moon just as sure as you live, now watch it. We can do it they tell us. We actually have what Truman used to call the know-how, a terrible Missouri word, but we’ve got the ability to do it, and the rocketry and the rest. That little word rocketry, that’s a new one. And we’ve got the rocketry to send a, something to the moon. Well now, if they will listen to me, which they won’t, here’s what they will do. They will put a copy of the Constitution of the United States and a silk American flag in that little hunk of hardware. And when they showed it to the moon, it’s ours. We stake out our claim and say, you lay off.

 I don’t know where I got there, but I’m just saying this is the time when space and moving bodies and matter and law is on everybody’s mind. Well, back of all that, you see, God made all things, and all things came out of wisdom. Now, what does this teaches us? Well, I’ll give you a sketch of what it teaches us and then that will be all for tonight.

From this, we learned a number of things. We learn that the universe is basically spiritual. Now, we learned that, basically spiritual. A few years ago, back in the time of Lucretius when he wrote his famous, what did he call it, The Nature of Things. He said that there were atoms, and he lived about, oh, a little before Christ’s time. And he said that there were atoms and that they were a little hard, square balls, like dice. And they were little hard things. And a ball, not balls but were square blocks, blocks, that’s the word, like dice. And he said that everything was made up of these little square blocks. And that was the first, so far as I know, the first, at least he popularized the idea of the atom. And then 3000 years nearly went by over 3000 years, I think went by before we discovered that Lucretius had an idea, but he was wrong. He said everything is made up of atoms. He was right about that. And when he said atoms were square blocks hard as diamonds, tiny beyond all belief. And everything was made out of those little square blocks, he was wrong. Because modern scientific technique has discovered that these tiny little blocks that Lucretius saw 3000 years ago, nearly, were not hard blocks at all, but disembodied bits of energy, and that you can keep breaking them down and breaking them down and breaking them down until you find exactly nothing at all. And I know they’re right, they proved they’re right by their ability to run a ship by atoms and put up and send an atom bomb on Hiroshima.

So, the modern idea of the atom coincides perfectly with the Old Testament idea of the creation, that all things are, come out of spirits. And that if you go back far enough, and back far enough and back far enough, you come to Spirit. Things are spiritual basically, that the earth is not a solid thing. And then there’s Spirit that hovers over it. But that the earth is an emanation of Spirit, and that all things that are, came out of Spirit, even that Eternal Spirit which we call God, and Who was incarnated in the form of a man and lived among us. And was so wise that He astonished men though He’d never been to school.

The second thing we learn from this doctrine of the Eternal Wisdom as the source of all things is that man is a spirit and sheathed in a body, not a body having a spirit. How do you think of yourself? Do you think of yourself as this being you? Is this you? Some of the movie actors, they call them, the body. That’s an awful thing to say for them, because if that’s all she’s got and usually it is, that’s going to get old on her one of these days. She’s going to get arthritis and gray hair and teeth will come out, and then she won’t have anything. But is that the way you think of yourself? As a body with a spirit? No. That’s not the Bible teaching. The Bible teaching is that we are a spirit, living in a body. And it’s vastly different Brethren. If I was a body having a spirit, then I could worry about this body. But knowing that I am a spirit made in the image of God, and God is Spirit, and God made me and made me spirit, made you spirit, and said, now live for a while, in what William Jennings Bryan called, this tabernacle of clay.

So we’re here. The greatest thing about you is not your body, not the house you live in, the car you drive. The most awesome and all inspiring thing about you is you are a spirit. You’re a spirit. Bacon said, God made the angel spirit, and he made the beasts, flesh. But he made man greater than all compounded of spirit and flesh, so that man is a spirit which has a fleshly tabernacle to dwell in. You’ve got to remember that, that all things came out of spirit. And Jesus Christ was incarnated, and He was that Eternal Wisdom, and that man is a spirit ensheaved in a body. You see, that fixes your values for you. That decides what’s valuable and what isn’t.

The trouble with this is, we don’t know what’s valuable. Did you ever have this experience, and we’ve gotten all of two houses full of grandchildren. We’ve seen this happen. A couple of times happened this year. It happened a couple of years ago when everybody was hilariously happy around the Christmas tree onloading gifts and giving gifts and unwrapping gifts. Here would be a little 18-month-old baby sitting somewhere quietly playing with a box that the present came out of. Well, the little thing didn’t care. I remember one sitting there chewing the little red box having a time of her life and everybody else was “ooh, just what I wanted. Ooh! How’d you know what I needed? Just the thing.” And everybody was looking at what they got, and she a box, and was chewing on the box. It happened twice in our house right down where we live among our grandchildren. That is I mean happened among them.

And why, you see they don’t know what’s valuable. This watch I referred to, it came in a box. But I don’t carry the box around with me, because the box is relatively unimportant. It’s the watch that matters. A stale fish head is a precious treasure to a cat. Why? Because he is a cat. A bowl of the same red pottage was of great value to Esau. Why? Because he was Esau. And the everlasting covenant was a value to Jacob. Why? Because he was Jacob. He was touched with heavenly fire. And the man Paul found value only in Jesus Christ our Lord. Only in Jesus Christ. Why, I give up all things he said and count them but dung, that I may win Christ and be found in Him. If you understand this Eternal Truth you’ll know why what is valuable and why it’s valuable.

Now the truth, that the Word was made flesh, stands as a warning, lest we forget who we are. And it stands as a rebuke. It stands as a rebuke to us for living as animals, for living as people of one world when God made us for two. Living for time, when God made us for eternity. And back in the Book of Proverbs we find a beautiful woman. In the ninth chapter, she’s said to be a woman, here she’s not. She’s just called wisdom. But in the ninth chapter she’s called a woman. Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets. She crieth in the cheap places of concourse. What is this? Oh, it’s nothing but the voice of Jesus, the voice of the Holy Ghost. In the opening of the gate, she crieth. In the city she uttereth her word, saying how long, how long, ye simple ones. Will you love simplicity. And the scorners delight in their scorning and fools hate knowledge, turn you at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my Spirit upon you. I will make known my words unto you. And those terrible words, because I have called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no man regarded. I will also laugh at your calamities; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation.

My dear friends, you’re not an animal. God made you a spirit and gave you a body to cart you around in, to live in, carts so that you could, that spirit could be carted around. And it’s a rebuke that we live as if we were animals. We live as if we belong to this time. I’ve known old men. Old man, so old that they had all of the characteristics of old men. I have a few, but these men had them all. And yet, they were worried right down to the last about their property. Right down to the last, worrying about their property. Great God, how awful it is. To have been made in the image of God. To have had that eternal Ancient Wisdom which was with the Father, in which was God, come down and become one with us and be made flesh and die and rise and live above, and stretch out His hands and say, come, come, come ye foolish. Come ye foolish for I have set my table. I have prepared my feast. Come. Why will you die? Come ye simple, foolish ones in your wisdom.

We walk about on the earth thinking about our car and how high the tailgate is. Tailgate is an old farmer word. These things are called fins I think now, fins. How many lights are on the fins? And some of you if you didn’t have four lights on the fin, you couldn’t sleep tonight because the fellow across the street has four lights on his fin. Some of you women with your clothes. Some of you women with your gifts and your property. Great God, that we should be like this, that we should be a dove, made to soar and sing, or soar and coo and be a dove and act like one. That we should find ourselves in the garbage heap digging like a buzzard. And yet that’s what the world is doing. And they’re doing it because Christianity hasn’t told them what I am telling people tonight. Christianity has told them, come and accept Jesus and you won’t go to hell. And they said, oh, hell, I don’t care whether I go to hell or not. We’ve cut the ground out from under the Truth. We’ve cut the foundation out from under it with our materialistic theology and our carnal approach to things. When you walk out onto the sidewalk tonight, look up at God’s stars and say, I’m part of the everlasting universe. And I will not, I will not respond to the Voice of Eternal Wisdom as if I were a man made for time, for God has put eternity in my heart; not as if I were a man made for this world because God made me for another. Not as if I were a man of flesh, because I’m a man of spirit. I will respond as a man made for eternity.

Dear friend, if you don’t have it straightened out about eternity, the yellow curd that looks, that digs in the garbage can for food is better off than you are. Listen to me now. Don’t get mad at this. It’s terribly brutal, but it’s true. If you, made in the image of God and destined to be conscious through eternity, an individual, a conscious entity through eternity, with God having given you birth out of the Ancient Womb of Eternal Wisdom, and then incarnated that Eternal Wisdom in the power of a Man and sent Him to die for us. And if you go on your way and live your lives as if you were a beast, and Esau, I say the yellow curd that digs tonight in the alley for a crust, is better off.

When John Bunyan was under the great conviction of the Holy Ghost for sin, they didn’t get saved so easy in those days. And when they did get saved, it mounted to so much. We get saved so easy now. I told the Youth for Christ’s outfit over here that I spoke to Wednesday. I nailed 13 Theses on the door and one of them was this, that we have no right to make Christianity ridiculously easy when Jesus Christ made it tremendously hard. But we’ve made Christianity so easy.

Well, John Bunyan lived in the days when Christianity wasn’t easy. You carried a cross if you were going to go to heaven in those days. And he got under such blistering conviction that he was sure he was going to hell. And one day as he walked down the street, a man in despair, he saw a dog loping along. And he said, O God, I wish I were that dog, then I could die and be no more. But I’ve got to face Thee in judgment. Well, it didn’t take God long to straighten him out and saved him and made the great John Bunyan out of him. But he had to come there first. I say that though you walk all up the Gold Coast and all out in Beverly Hills and everywhere you want to go and see them out with their Cadillacs on the highway, Brethren. If they don’t know who they are, and if they don’t know why they’re here, and if they don’t know out of what they were created and back to what they will go, they’re as ignorant as Dani in the Baliem Valley. And all of their high fins won’t do them any good. Better be a living dog than a dead lion, said Wisdom. Better be a humble Christian who knows God than a big shot who doesn’t even know who he is himself, who doesn’t know he was made in the image of God to go back to God again.

You oughtened to go out of here tonight a man. You ought to go out of here a man in God. You oughtened to go out of here tonight and an Esau looking for the same red pottage. You ought to go out of here tonight a Jacob, changed and transformed by the power of God. Let’s pray.

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“The Hebrew Doctrine of Wisdom

The Hebrew Doctrine of Wisdom

January 5, 1958

In the Book of Proverbs, the eighth chapter, verse 12 says, I wisdom, I wisdom dwell with prudence and find out knowledge of witty inventions. Verse 17, I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me. Still wisdom is talking, and says, the Lord Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of His way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was, I brought forth. While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there. When he established the clouds above: When He gave to the sea His decree, verse 30, then I was by Him as was one brought up with Him. And I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.

You cannot in the reading of this, if you’re a student of the Bible, you cannot miss the similarity with the first chapter of John here. Hear instruction and be wise and refuse not, O ye children. For blessed are they that keep my ways. Blessed is the man that heareth me watching daily at my gates and waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso find me findeth life, and shall obtain the favor of Jehovah. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. That’s an Old Testament passage.

In the New Testament, we find this, 1 Corinthians 1:22 and 24, to 24, For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks, foolishness, but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Colossians 2:2,3, That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. There’s love, understanding, mystery, wisdom and knowledge all wrapped together there.

Well, I will quote more Scripture, and I will read a little passage from the Old Testament apocryphal book, the Wisdom of Solomon after a while. Not that it is inspired, in the sense that canon of Scripture is inspired, but that it does represent the beliefs of men who lived before the time of Christ, Hebrews, students of the Word.

Now I am to deal with the Hebrew doctrine of eternal wisdom particularly as it relates to Jesus Christ our Lord. The Hebrews believe, and you can take only what I’ve read already here tonight and there’s much more. Because you will find this taught in Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the prophets. The Hebrews believed that there was an ancient, uncreated afflatus, a breath, and that it was variously thought of. Sometimes it was thought of apart from God. Sometimes it was thought of as being God. Sometimes it was thought of as being brought into being and other times it was thought of as bringing all things into being. And in this, it is very close to John 1 where it says, strangely says; Have you ever thought how strange this is? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. There, John thinks of the Word as being with God in one breath, and being God in the next breath. So, it’s the same with this doctrine of wisdom as found in the Scriptures. It is considered to be the womb out of which all created things were born.

Let me read a little of what they thought about this doctrine back in the days about the time of our Lord, a little before and a little after; oh, 130 years before Ecclesiastes was written. And it was a translation from something that had been written two generations before. So, that would take us back maybe 200 or 250 years before Christ, but this is a little later. It says this about this wisdom. Now, Solomon didn’t write this, but it represents the teachings, the beliefs of the Jewish teachers.

And it says, wisdom is the worker of all things; for in her is an understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold subtil, not subtle, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subjected to hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be hindered, ready to do good, kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing all things, and going through all understanding, a pure and most subtil spirit. For wisdom is more moving than any motion, and she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness, for she is the breadth of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty. Therefore, can no defiled thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of the Everlasting Light, the Unspotted Mirror of the power of God, and the Image of His goodness. And being one, she can do all things and maketh all things new. And in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and Prophet, God and prophets; for she is more beautiful than the sun and above all the order of stars: being compared with the light, she is found before it. For after this cometh night, but vice cannot prevail against wisdom.

Now, I don’t quote this because I think that it’s inspired even in the sense that the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are inspired. I quoted as I might quote Spurgeon, or Ironside, or Augustine, or anybody, who while they were not Bible writers, nevertheless, were keen students of what the Bible wrote, and therefore can be trustworthy teachers of what the Bible teaches.

Now, that is the belief that the ancients had about this. And here’s a strange thing. It is this wisdom, this I, wisdom dwell with prudence. I was with God. I was brought up before Him. And when He laid the foundations, I was there. And John says, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. And He is in the bosom of the Father and He’s revealed unto us. The language is the same you see. You’ll find that Old Testament and the New Testament staying close together there. And then the Scriptures teach, and the fathers believed, that this Spirit that they talk about here, this, this, this Spirit which is called the breath of the power of God, the pure influence, flowing from the glory of the Almighty. This that is the brightness of the Everlasting Light. The Unspotted Mirror of the power of God and the Image of His goodness, that this is Christ; that Christ is the wisdom of the Old Testament. Sophia, they called Him in mystical days.

But this is what the fathers believed, many of them believed, and I think it was pretty generally believed. And so when John wrote, in the beginning was the Word, he was not identifying Christianity with Greek thought. You see, because the word elogious is Greek. The liberals claim that when John wrote the Gospel of John, he was under the influence of Plato, that he was being, and early Christianity was being strongly influenced by the Greek doctrine of the Logos, the thought and expression of God, for one word will not take it, thought and expression of God. And therefore, they’ve tried to tie Christianity in with Greek thought. And they said, you cannot trust, you cannot trust Paul. You cannot trust those writers that identify Christianity with Greek thought. You’ve got to go to the Gospels. Take the gospel, Sermon on the Mount and the teachings of Jesus and go back to Jesus. That was the cry a generation ago, back to Jesus, which meant back to the simple teachings of Jesus, such as the Sermon on the Mount.

Now, the simple fact is, when John wrote this, John was not identifying Christianity with Greek thought, for there isn’t one line anywhere in the New Testament that would allow us even to hint that John knew anything about Greek thought. John was a brother of James and a simple workman. And he didn’t know about Greek thought. Palestine was an occupied country. And John was not a scholar. And he had not gone to Athens or studied somewhere as Paul had studied under Gamaliel. But he was identifying the doctrine of the Word with Old Testament doctrine. He was identifying Jesus Christ with Old Testament doctrine, the doctrine of the Creating Word, for that is not a Greek thought; that antedates Greek thought by hundreds of years.

You take the Book of Genesis for instance, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God called the light, day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the heavens and it was so. And God called the firmament, heaven. And God said, that the waters under the heaven be gathered together, and it was so. And God called the dry land, earth, and it was good. And God said, let the earth bring forth, and it was so. And all through this, it was the Creating Voice of God. It was that Greek elogiouis, pronounce it as you please. I was taught to pronounce it logos. They call it logos I think now.

But this ancient Word that said, let there be light and there was light. Let the earth bring forth and it brought forth. And the Scripture says that it is through the Word He commanded and it stood forth. He spoke and it was done. It was the commanding voice of God that brought things into being. And it is written again that He upholds all things by the Word of His power. It is the speaking voice of God in His universe that holds things together, my friends. It is in Him all things are held together, not by adhesive, or by law, but they’re held together by the voice of God.

Is this awful dull? No? To me, this is just wonderful, but I don’t know. I guess you have to preach about Sputnik to get anybody to hear. Maybe after I’m through with this series I’ll preach about what the Bible teaches about Sputniks. And when I do that, I’ll just be as dumb as all the other preachers that are preaching about Sputnik. They don’t know anything about it either, only they know that’s the way to get people interested. And I’m so naive and stupid that I think God’s people ought to be interested in what I’m preaching now. I hope they, a few of them will be anyhow.

Well, I say that John was identifying the, Jesus Christ with the old Hebrew doctrine of the Creating Wisdom; the Spoken Word, the Creating Voice created all things; and not with Greek thoughts at all. Now, the church fathers believed this. And they saw in Jesus Christ, the incarnation of this ancient afflatus, this brightness of the Everlasting Light, this unspotted mirror of power of God, this image of His goodness, this that maketh all things. And in all ages entering into holy souls, she makes the friends of God and prophets.

Now what was it that entered into holy souls and made them prophets? It’s written that it was the Spirit that did it. It was the Spirit and the Spirit of Christ speaking in the book of Psalms, testifies, and David’s, the Spirit is speaking in David. He makes David sometimes sound like the Messiah, so that it’s the voice of the Messiah speaking. My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me? Well, that was David writing, but it was the Messiah, the Spirit of the Messiah, the Ancient Wisdom of God, the Word, that was speaking in the man David.

And so, it says that entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and prophets. Then you come to this, for after this cometh night, says the Holy Ghost, says this man, but vice shall not prevail against wisdom. Doesn’t that remind you of that passage that says that the light dwelleth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. And if you’re a student of other versions you know, that what he said there was the darkness lays not hold of it, or the darkness does not rise up and prevail against it. The darkness cannot prevail against the light. And so we identify the Hebrew doctrine of the ancient and eternal wisdom with the New Testament.

Now Paul taught this. And Paul distinguished it sharply. He distinguished Greek thought from Hebrew doctrine. The other apostles wouldn’t have known how to do that. But St. Paul did because he was a learned man and he had studied Greek philosophy, but the other gentleman hadn’t. And so, they were forced just to stay by the text. But Paul could talk about Greek thoughts. So, Paul said this, for the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks, foolishness, but unto them which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. And he said, a little further down in that same chapter, first chapter of 1 Corinthians, that Christ is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And he distinguished sharply in those first two chapters, Greek thought from the Hebrew doctrine of the Messiah. And he said, when I came unto you, I came not with words of man’s wisdom. You will remember that in the second chapter of 1 Corinthians. He said, I didn’t come preaching unto you the speech of wisdom, excellence of speech. For I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ. And I was among you in weakness and fear and much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom.

There he was writing to Corinthians and Corinth was a learned city and the city of a great many philosophers. And this man was deliberately inciting here he got in past their guard. He was giving it to them where it hurt. And he said, this is the demonstration of the Spirit and power that we’re preaching. For in order that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men.

Always remember my friends, whenever we begin to equate Christianity with any current philosophy, or any ancient and honorable philosophy, it loses its power immediately. As soon as we begin to equate Christianity or show how that it can be made to fit into any of the doctrines of the fiery store of the Greeks and the Romans. Just as soon as we do that, we, it loses its power, Paul refused to do it. Paul distinguishes the doctrine of Christ, the wisdom of God, from the doctrine of the Greek doctrine of the Logos, the Word, the Wisdom of the Word, they got pretty close to it. Sometimes those old Greeks, and I saw in His magazine just this week, this came this last week, and I saw an article there about Hinduism. And the brother said, there what’s usually dangerous to say, these times, that the old Hindus sometimes managed to get awfully close to truth. And they said, some very noble and wonderful things. I’ve been saying that for a generation now, that not only the Hindus, but the Buddhists, and the you know, the men who wrote the laws of Manu and the Egyptian Hotep. And many of the others were very close to truth.

And I’ve been thinking about writing an article about Marcus Aurelius and show him how Mark Aurelius an unredeemed Roman was a better man than 99% of us Christians, and he had no redemption at all, and we have redemption. That’s an amazing thing, Brethren. And it proves to me how completely down, how down our Christianity is, how weak it is, how meaningless it is, how, how undistinguished and insignificant it is. When the whole power of God, the whole wisdom of God as it came down and took incarnation and went to a cross, can’t produce men as good as this stoic philosophy produced when it produced Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves before God Almighty and we ought to lie all night between the door and the altar, and repent and grieve before our God that we’re so unlike Christ, and that there’s so little spirituality, and so little godliness in us. That wasn’t part of the sermon, but I couldn’t help but say it.

Now, Paul, I say, taught that, that the doctrine of Jesus Christ, incarnated idea, the incarnated Word, the incarnated Wisdom, was Hebrew and not Greek. And he said, I reject all your Greek ideas, and I give you Jesus Christ and Him crucified the Messiah. He is the fulfillment of the ancient Hebrew doctrine of the internal wisdom out of which, out of whose womb came all things and that is worth more than jewels and silver.

Now, I have read you some from the book of Proverbs. Now I want to read a little from the book of Proverbs again. This time from the ninth chapter. Wisdom has builded her house. She has hewn out her seven pillars. She has killed her beasts. She has mingled her wine. She also has furnished her table. She has sent forth her maiden. She crieth upon the highest places of the city. Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither. As for him that wanteth understanding, she said to him, come eat of my bread and drink of my wine which I have mingled. Forsake the foolish and live and go in the way of understanding.

Now, I read you a passage in the New Testament. Jesus answered and spake unto them by parables and said, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king which made a marriage for his son, and send forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding. Tell them which are bidden, behold, I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and my fatlings are killed and all things are ready. Come unto the marriage. Almost word for word from the book of Proverbs. So that the Lord Jesus Christ literally was the incarnation and the fulfillment of this voice of wisdom that cried out to the sons of men.

That my brethren is not only the Lord and Head of the church. He is that, but that’s not all He is. He’s not only the coming King of Israel and King of the world. He is that, but that’s not all He is. He’s also the Enlightener and the Illuminator and the Quickener and the Annointer. Somebody said that there is no better commentary on the Scriptures than a good hymn book. I think they’re right. And I think that anybody will, that’ll borrow them, you can’t borrow them. You just can’t. I’ll try to find you one. But I won’t lend you mine because my friends are good bookkeepers. And I’ve gotta have this, but I think that the man, was it Watts and Wesley just to mention two, were better commentators than the fundamentalist writers that have written over the last half century. And if you will get their hymns and read them and study them, you know. They didn’t stick a lot of stuff in to fill space the way they do now, to make it rhyme. Everything was thought out carefully and set down and cut like jewels. At least, all that’s been saved for us it is so, that it’s commentary.

I have at home a book sent me by Leonard Ravenhill from England. It’s a book of I would suppose 300 pages, quite old, leather bound, and the leather is getting old and cracked, but it is this. It is Charles Wesley’s commentary on the Scriptures done into hymns. Not the whole scriptures, but the salient passages of Scripture down from the beginning Genesis 1 on down through to Malachi. All the outstanding passages of Scriptures instead of preaching a sermon on them, he wrote a hymn on them. Why, you’ll get more information and more light by reading it than you do in all of this so called commentary business.

And then He is, I say, our Enlightener. I got off onto those hymns by starting to say this, that when Isaac Watts said, the Lord pours eyesight on the blind. Incidentally, he didn’t say that John Wesley added that and made him say it. The Lord pours eyesight on the blind. Now there’s what I, can’t you think of that wonderful thing? Can’t you think of a man sitting over there blind from birth. And here comes someone with a vessel filled with a fine liquid, he just pours it on his temple and it runs down onto his eyes. He shakes his head twice and says, glory to God I can see. God pours eyesight on the blind.

My Brethren, that’s true. He’s a bringer of eyesight. The colored brethren say he’s a mind regulator. And He’s all that. He’s a regulator of the human mind. He’s an Enlightenment. So, that when the Scripture says that they that sat in darkness saw a great light, and they that sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned upon them, they’re quoting from the old Hebrew doctrine of the Eternal Wisdom, the Wisdom that created all things, that which was God and that which was with God, and that out of which came all things that are. That which had all the attributes of Deity. Have you noticed how they make wisdom to have all the attributes of God, or I don’t say all, but so many of them that you couldn’t give them to anybody else? Listen, an understanding spirit, holy, one only, one only. There you have the famous Hebrew doctrine, hear O God, hear O Israel, the LORD thy God is one Lord, and which cannot be hindered. There’s His sovereignty. And having all power, there is His omnipotence. Overseeing all things, there’s His omniscience. And going through all understanding, there’s His all knowledge.  Pure, there’s His holiness. And, it is the breadth of the power of God and influence, pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty. For the brightness of the Everlasting Light, she is on the unspotted mirror of the power of God in the image of His goodness.

Who else can you talk about there? You can’t put the Virgin Mary in there. You can’t put Paul in there. You can’t put David in there. They weren’t describing David. They were describing none other than their Messiah, who was born of the Virgin Mary, to suffer under Pontius Pilate, and arise after His suffering from the dead and take His seat at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He is an Illuminator it seems to me, like the Enlightener of the mind, he is an Illuminator of the heart. He is an Anointer that pours eyesight on the blind, and we don’t know it.

Now, Paul’s prayer in Colossians 1:9, let’s look at it a minute here. Paul prayed in Colossians, a little prayer and He prayed it for those Christians. And he said, for this cause we also since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

Now, what would wisdom and spiritual understanding make out of a man? If a man was filled with wisdom and spiritual understanding, would he write poetry? I hope not. I hope not. There’s too much of it now. Too much of it now. I get too much of it already. What does he do? What does he do? Walk around in a brown study and pull loose from the world and hide in a cloister or in an ivory tower? No, no, what’s the purpose? What’s the purpose of this baptism of the ancient wisdom of God into the heart of a man? Well, the old wisdom man said was to make a man a friend of God. But Paul said, that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God and strengthened with all might according to His glorious power and to all patience and long suffering with joyfulness. It had this practical meaning.

This that I’m preaching to you tonight, is not something that once or twice a year you take out as you take out one of Mozart’s little pieces of chamber music and play it for a friend. This is not something like that at all. It’s as practical and hard and sound, and you can gear into it and it means something. It means something to the whole church of Christ. If we only saw this and understood it. And it says in Ecclesiastes, which is older than the wisdom book I read from. It says into a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter. Wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul. And he says that this is poured out. This is poured out upon men. And she’s pure, and she won’t come upon any of this, this wisdom won’t come upon any other. But she will not dwell in the body that’s subject to sin. The inner heart and the outer body have to be clean. We have to be right inwardly and outwardly before we can have this, this afflatus, this anointing that Paul prayed the Galatians might have.

Now, there’s this little poem, I’m just about finished for tonight. So, really, this is introductory. And this is the hard, this was the grubbing out, the laying the foundation. But we’re going on next week. But here’s a little poem and I don’t know where I got it. It’s got only four lines, which is in its favor, three better and two still better. But there are four here. It says this, wisdom and goodness are twin born, one heart must hold both sisters never seen apart, never seen apart. Wisdom and goodness are Siamese twin sisters and you’ll never see them apart. And if you’re going to have wisdom in your heart, you’ve got to take the other sister along. And the other sister is goodness. Wisdom and goodness are twin-born. One heart most hold both sisters and they’re never seen apart. I don’t know who wrote it. It’s not very good poetry, but it’s wonderful theology, that when the Lord redeems man and saves him, He takes him out and not only that he might go to heaven at last and escape hell. This frightful effort to get across that bridge and escape hell, it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. But that isn’t the purpose of God in redemption, to save us from hell. The purpose of God in redemption is to save us unto heaven. It is to save us unto something not from something; although to save us unto, He’s got to save us from.

And so we are saved. We’re saved from sin, but that’s the negative side. We’re saved unto holiness. We’re saved from hell, but we’re saved unto Heaven. We’re saved from the devil, but we’re saved unto Christ. And that’s the teaching of the Scriptures that we Christians, we Christians are followers of One who came to the world and claimed to be the fulfillment of all the ancient teachings of prophet and sage and seer, and men who walked with God. And we are followers of One who claimed that He was with the Father in the beginning, and that out from His bosom there flowed all things, that He was the fountain out of which came all wisdom, all knowledge, all light. He had no hesitation in saying I’m the Light of the world. He has no hesitation in saying Wisdom said when you meant some prophet had spoken. He said wisdom said. Do you remember that? Jesus used that word, wisdom said so and so. And he quoted it from, He had no hesitation in saying you that look on me, you’re seeing that ancient afflatus, that ancient Breath of God, that Ancient Word. In the beginning was the Word.

I don’t know what this does to you. But this is wonderful for me. If any of you are students in colleges where the professors don’t believe in Jesus Christ and you’re ashamed to speak up for Him, you ought to be deeply ashamed of yourself. Because that poor man is ignorant. He may be a PhD, but he’s ignorant. He doesn’t know that Ancient Wisdom, which was with the Father, and which stood up before the world was, he doesn’t know Him. But you know Him and you you’ve been introduced to Him by incarnation, by atonement, by resurrection, by the new birth you know that Ancient Wisdom.

And as Spurgeon said, let a man, let a man build himself a house on the hillside under the shadow of Calvary and he would be wiser than the Seven Sages of Antiquity. He’s perfectly right. And yet some of you are ashamed. You hide away and you try to try to keep covered up that you’re an evangelical. Brother, I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not going to stand up before Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer and all that gang and say, now I’m a poor little dumb evangelical. Please forgive me. I won’t say it at all, because there’s no reason for apology. The only thing we have to apologize for is our sin.

When we’ve got rid of our sin and the Lord has taken our sin away, we are as wise as the angels, and as discreet and as knowing as the seraphs before the throne; for we have an afflatus of that wisdom. It won’t teach you mathematics. It won’t teach science. It won’t teach you chemistry. It won’t teach you English literature. But it will teach you something vaster and wider and deeper and grander and more wonderful. It will baptize you into that Light, that wonderful Light.

I just can’t get enough of this what the old man said. He said this is the breath of the power of God, that pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty. She is the brightness of the Everlasting Light, the Unspotted Mirror of the power of God, and the Image of His goodness. And in all ages entering into holy souls, she makes them friends of God and prophets. And I’d rather have a baptism of this in my spirit than to have the biggest church in the world and to be known widely around the world. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you? Yes, yes, yes. Seek not fame, seek not popularity, seek not publicity. Seek only to know Him, to know Him.

That’s why Paul said, that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering, that I might know Him. That’s why Paul said that. That’s why he pressed on and pressed on to know Him better and better. That’s why because in doing it he was going back to the fountain of everything.

Do you know this Savior? Do you know Him tonight? Do you know Him? Remember this and I will read this passage and quit for the night. Do you know this? You don’t find this out in school. In fact, I don’t suppose anybody mentions it in school, anywhere, from kindergarten on up to the PhD, but here’s what it says. Jesus answered and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and the prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight. All things are delivered unto Me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father. Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son. And he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. Babes, children, humble people, meek people, they know! And the wise and the prudent and the learned and the proud and the arrogant think they know. Let’s pray.