Month: June 2022

Tozer Talks

“The Mistakes of Israel and Possibly Ours”

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“The Mistakes of Israel and Possibly Ours“

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

April 13, 1958

I want to talk a little about Israel and a mistake she made, and that you and I can make if we don’t watch out. It’s in Hosea, the 10th chapter. The first two lines in my Bible read like this, Israel is an empty vine. He bringeth forth fruit unto himself.

Now, the prophet Hosea was sent to Israel in one of her low times, or times of declension. Declension is a nice word for backsliding and that’s what Israel was doing. She’d forgotten some vital things. She’d forgotten her origins in the covenant of Abraham and she had forgotten in a large measure the God of her father’s. And according to this prophet, she had a divided heart. That’s 10:2. She had a divided heart. And wherever there is a divided heart there is a civil war. A house divided against itself cannot stand said Jesus. And a divided heart means civil war within, what Bunyan called, The Little Kingdom of Mansoul. Jesus said, ye cannot serve God–and. You cannot serve God and, but Israel was trying to serve God–and. She had not quite the courage to reject Jehovah, but she was adding other gods and putting up other altars and she was trying to serve God–and.

Now that’s to be double-minded, and James warned about being double-minded. Jesus said, a single eye. We were to have a singular, that is one, single focal point to which the eyes look. And another prophet said, son, give me thy hearts. God was speaking through this man. And Israel, according to 9:4 had put herself in a position where God rejected her offerings. And so the Prophet said about Israel. Israel is an empty vine. She bringeth forth fruit unto herself. Look at that a minute.

Now, what’s the purpose of a vine. It is to bring forth fruit unto. The fruit of the vine is never brought forth for the vine. The fruit of the vine is not for the vine. The fruit of the vine is a gift from God and the vine receives it as a gift for others. The vine is to bring forth fruit unto others. Israel’s mistake was she brought forth fruit unto herself. The vine is to bring forth fruit unto the food of man and the food of other creatures and for the creation of other vines. Every grape has two or three seeds in it capable of producing other vines, and so any given vine produces fruit, receives the sweetness and fragrance and nourishment from God in order that she might give it to others. She’s backslidden when she produces it to consume it herself. She brought four fruit unto herself. This was true of Israel and it’s true now of many, many churches and many people.

Many Christian people who claim to be God’s children, they nevertheless are bringing forth fruit unto themselves. Now, that was Israel’s failure. She kept her treasure within herself. For it was not God’s wind overhead nor God’s rain. It was not God’s soft soil. It was not the laws of nature nor anything that you could lay the blame to. It was something wrong with the vine, that instead of the gifts of God externalizing themselves and flowing out into fruit for others and for the production of other vines to come, they stayed within the vine. And the vine had nothing but leaves and no fruit. So the fruit was actually brought forth unto the vine for the vine, and this was the mistake. So, the vine missed the will of God and was an empty vine.

Now applying this to the Christian church, applying it to this church, I would say that our lives can become wholly selfish. Good, honest, Christian people can, unknown to themselves, little by little, become wholly selfish so that it’s all in-flow and no out-go. Remember those two rhyming words in-flow and out-go. Ye shall receive power and ye shall be witnesses said the Lord Jesus, and out from within him shall flow. There’s the in-flow and the out-flow or the out-go and this is normal. Because what you receive you do not receive for yourself. If the Lord’s people could only remember that.

We are not like the Dead Sea to receive always and give nothing off, except what is taken away by evaporation. But we are channels to give. We are not lakes not lagoons. He did not say, when the Holy Ghost comes, you’ll be like a lagoon. He said, when the Holy Ghost comes, you’ll be like a like a river, and the rivers always flowing. That is why you can hardly pollute a river. You can pollute a pond or lagoon or a little lake. But it’s very hard to pollute a river, because it’s always flowing.

There was a little saying back among the hills of Pennsylvania where I grew up, that if water flows over two stones and purifies itself. I think that perhaps was overstated. But that was the way we boys decided whether we could drink out of a stream we happen to come to. If it was flowing, and there were two rocks there, we said it’s clean. Well, the river keeps itself clean by flowing. And the Christian and the church, for what is the church? It’s a lot of Christians working together. And what this church is, is what we Christians are.

There isn’t any mysterious, mystical third thing called a mysterious church. There isn’t any invisible church here. The church is you and me in this congregation. And therefore, whatever we are, the church is. And the total cannot be greater than the sum of its parts. The total at the bottom cannot be greater if it’s properly added up, than the parts above it. And so, this church is what we are. It is no less than that, but is no more than that. So, it’s true of us that there must be in-flow and there must be out-go, out from within him shall flow. But we often are like the vine that brought forth fruit, but kept it inside of itself, and had nothing but leaves. Our lives are selfish, wholly selfish.

And then, the second thing is, that it reveals itself in this, that we’re careful to spare ourselves. I was thinking, somebody said to me last week in New York City, this doctor’s orders business; and he gave me quite a little lecture, not talking to me. He was talking about somebody else, but I was getting the lecture and I enjoyed it; this doctor’s orders.

There are so many preachers sitting around afraid to move for they’ll drop over. There were two men out on the West Coast. One of them, a great tall fellow, Robert Kilgore, a good friend of mine and a hard-working Christian brother. The doctor said to him you have, I forgot what of the heart, and you’re going to die. You take these little tiny white things. What is it? I started to say dynamite. No, not digitalis. Anyway, they put them on their tongue and dissolve them and that, nitroglycerin, that’s it. And he said, now, Brother Tozer, we were out to the council out there, and he looked down at me, for he was a great, tall fine-looking man. He said, Brother Tozer, there are three of us preachers out here on the coast, and he said, we’ve all got heart trouble. We are cardiac cases.

Now he said, if I slow down and take it easy, retire and don’t do anything, I may be can stretch my life a little while. He said, I’m not going to do it. I’m going to serve God. He lived about a year, and they found him lying quietly on the floor beside his bed. But he served God that year. He didn’t vegetate. He didn’t sit around and rust. He served God that year. Two other fellows are still out there waiting, waiting, looking every day down the street wondering if that long black car is coming for them, waiting. Doctor’s orders they say, doctor’s orders.

Now, brethren, I wonder if there doesn’t come a place in the Christian’s life when he stops listening to doctor’s orders and he begins to hear God say I count not my life dear unto myself. We talk about Dr. Jaffrey. Dr. Jaffrey never should have gone as a missionary in the first place. He had an enlarged heart and diabetes. And the AMMO, which has kept a great many people home, would never, never have sent him out, but somehow, they got him through in those early days. And you know what he did? He went over there and shook a continent and the islands. Then when he got old and they said it’s time for you to retire, he said I’m going to do that very thing. Retire means put on new tires. So, he put on new tires and opened another whole world, we used to call Indonesia. Doctor’s orders would have said you go back to Toronto, that beautiful Canadian city with all her parks and beautiful buildings. One of the cleanest, most beautiful cities in the world that I’ve ever seen at least is Toronto. And he owned stock and was part owner of the greatest newspaper in the city.

He could have gone back there, had a fine apartment or an estate outside the city somewhere on the edge where you could have lived in the suburbs and all would have been well with him. He might have stretched his life a long time, but he put on four new tires and went back to Indonesia. He died out there as you know. He died in a pig pen, where the Japs put him. He died, well, he didn’t actually die in it. He died in a poor homemade hospital on a cot. But he had been kept in that pigpen by the Japs. But in the meantime, he opened all that area, and there are Christians over there now because he went there. Ed Maxey’s out there with Shirley because he went and opened it up. Walter Post’s out there and Harry Post because he went out and opened it up after he should have according to doctor’s orders, gone back to Toronto and waited for the end. No, my friends, as long as we keep sparing ourselves to bring forth fruit unto ourselves, you are to bring forth fruit unto others. And then we refuse to inconvenience ourselves.

So, the Lord’s work is carried on like the birdwatcher’s society. The tattered edges and the leftover pieces of our time and strength and abilities, or like a crocheting guild, where when they’ve slept all they can and sat around and eaten all they can and nothing else to do and they’re bored with being at home. They go to the crochet guild and sit around gossip. And the crocheting guild gets the tattered remnants of their time.

Well, the church of Christ is being run, and mostly like a birdwatcher’s society or a tatters or crocheters guild, from the tattered remnants of what is left of people’s time. And so, because we refuse to be inconvenienced, we’re bringing forth fruit unto ourselves. When I heard that organ there with that offertory, I raised my eyebrows at Mr. McAfee and I said to brother Jake Hoeber, do you know what that is? That was one of Simpson’s numbers. That was put in my feet to go and put in my heart the woe.

Now, that doesn’t sound like a birdwatcher’s guild. That sounds like somebody given up to something. They have a word they’re using here and there in the world now. It’s too bad the world had to teach it to us. It’s the word committed. They say, he’s a committed man. They say of the communist leader, they’re committed men. They believe in their devil’s philosophy, but they believe so fully that they’re committed men, and they’re ready to be expendable and die for it. And some of them do. They put it across because they’re committed men. But we who know the Red Cross of God, who’ve seen Jesus die on it for our sins and know that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, we insist upon giving God the tattered fragments of our time. And Christianity for the most part is run by a bored, blaised, burned out people who’ve been Christians so long, the joy has worn off. Like an old, married couple sitting around behind their newspapers, the freshness and beauty of the dream has worn off and the glory has departed, or as Hosea said here in this book of his, thy glory has flown away like a bird and always centering around ourselves.

You know what the cure is my friends? The cure is found in the twelfth verse. Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it’s time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you. I’m not going along with all of those who are saying, let’s meet and pray all night for revival. Let’s meet and pray for revival. I said to the man that approached me about it, all right Brother, the day that the evangelical forces of Chicago will come to me and say, we have been bringing forth fruit unto ourselves. We have been astray from the Scriptural pattern. We have added a thousand anti-scriptural gadgets to the pure work of God. We are careless about the Lordship of Christ. We are not living as we should live and I want you to join us in the prayers of repentance. And then we promise to go back to our churches and straighten out and get right and clean up from the ground, and from the bottom up. Clean up our churches and cast the money changers out of the temple and the sellers of bulls and cows out of the temple and start clean according to Book of Acts New Testament Christianity. I’ll join you. I’ve never heard from them since. Nobody wants to do that. We want to revival but we want it the cheap way. We want God to come roll over us with a huge wave of emotion. And if we have a huge wave of emotion, each go to the other and say I thought a bad thought about you two years ago, forgive me and everybody have a good cry, and then go back to our idols and back to our selfishness and back to our carnality.

No, there’s only one way to repent and that is to reverse our ways. And instead of doing the way we’ve been doing, do the way we ought to do. You don’t have to notify God. He knows. Those two boys that Jesus told about, the father said to the boys go work in the vineyard today. One of them flared up and said I won’t go. The other one said all right, Father, and then he went fishing. But the boy that had got angry and said, I won’t go, he saw sadness and hurt in the Father’s face. Twenty minutes later, and he was down on his knees saying, O God, what a scoundrel I was and he went right out into the vineyard and worked all day. The father came back and found the boy that said he would go didn’t, and the boy that said he wouldn’t–did, and Jesus said, that’s repentance. There’s repentance. We say, let’s meet and have an all-night of prayer. Yes, Father, yes, Father we’ll work in thy vineyard, but the next day we go back to the old rule again.

Now, I want to tell you about two men. Two men that talked to me this morning. Those two men never dreamed that I would mention it. And I’m not going to mention their names and I’ll keep you guessing for the rest of your lives. I will not tell you. Two men saw me today. And they’re men who are honored in this church and who are in official position. One of them met me and said, Pastor, my hours are such that if I work, I can’t attend the meetings of this missionary convention. So, I’m taking one week of my vacation now in order that I can stay home and go to every meeting of the missionary convention this week. Now, he doesn’t have to send a telegram to heaven. God knows that kind of activity. God recognizes practical doings. He recognizes actual doings. That man is doing his Christianity. He’ll be here at every meeting, because he’s taking his vacation now, part of it, half of it, now, so that he’ll be home able to, instead of sending back cards, wish you were here, he’ll be here.

Now I don’t say you have to do that, but I point that out. As long as we’ve got our hard cores, the Baptists call it, I’m a little afraid of that expression. I’m afraid it’s a little too hard, often, but as long as we got a hard core of that kind of spiritual men in this church, I’m not afraid to stay around here.

Another man said to me, and he’s in a position where he could have lots of lectures. He said to me, you know, Pastor, I think he included his wife in this. I don’t remember for sure, but I know he said himself, that I’ve decided on fewer luxuries. He said, I’ve decided on fewer luxuries. The work of God needs it. And I’ve decided fewer luxuries and more self-sacrifice. The kind of works I believe in.

One of my friends and I met last week in New York. He had written me a letter, one of the most wonderful letters about what God had been doing for him. And I saw him. He lost weight actually. He said, look here and showed me his belt and said, look, I’m losing weight. He said, you know why? He said, I’m getting up early in the morning and meeting God. I’m eating less. I’m missing some meals in order that I might meet God. And his church is going like a prairie fire. Lean godliness, that’s what we need ladies and gentlemen, lean godliness. We got too much fat in our spirit. We need lean godliness. Too much being careful to spare ourselves, and excusing ourselves on the ground that it’s doctor’s orders. I’d spend three fourths of my time in Florida if I listened to doctor’s orders. And I’m not going to listen to doctor’s orders. I’d rather die five years sooner and get something done while I live than to vegetate like an old cabbage.

So, let’s remember. Let’s reverse our ways of selfishness and let’s bring forth fruit not unto ourselves, but unto others. I have confidence in this church. You know this church has suffered over the last two or three years. You know what’s happened. It’s not been from within. It’s not been from the pulpit nor from the board nor from any of the congregation. It’s been from a changing social order here. And almost every other church has fled the neighborhood. We’re still here. And somebody would say, well, we’re down. This is going be a low convention. I don’t believe a word of it. We may, times ahead, we may have to relocate. We’ve got our committee. We’ll talk about that later next fall, but now we’re here and you’re here. And God has sent his messengers here. And we own this place and we don’t owe a dime on it. And in spite of the fact, we lost a whole church in numbers over the last two years who have moved away and out into the suburbs, into Wheaton and all over the country, we still had $36,000 for missions last year. So there isn’t any reason in the world why we will reverse our laziness and our love of luxury and all the rest. There isn’t any reason why this can’t continue to be one of the strongest and most godly and most Christ-like churches.

Israel brought fruit unto herself. Too bad. She had all the light. She had the sunshine. She had the soil. She had the rain. She had everything. But she turned in on herself and she never got a grape for some for weary bird. God wants you and me to keep pouring out of our life and love and sacrifice and money until instead of it saying, that Alliance Church brings forth fruit unto itself, it can be said that church brings forth fruit unto the ends of the earth. Amen. Amen.

Tags Fruit, Hosea, Israel, Vine

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date June 19, 2022

“Ye Are Babes”

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“Ye Are Babes“

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

March 24, 1957

To be a spiritual Christian, I discover that almost everybody, almost everybody, thinks that a spiritual Christian, if they think of a spiritual Christian at all, they think of him as being a rather cautious, timid, mousy, soft-walking, soft-spoken, gentle and harmless person who walks about with a permanent smile and who cannot be roused to any kind of spiritual indignation. But I, curiously enough, do not find this to be the Scriptural definition of spirituality. If so, then Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, Paul, and John and Jude couldn’t be said to be spiritual men.

There is another definition for the word and I want to speak about it this morning, rather negatively approaching it, and showing how a carnal Christian is an immature Christian, regenerated, yes, but carnal nevertheless, in that he is spiritually imperfect, retarded in his development. And it’s possible to be spiritually retarded just as it’s possible to be spiritually retarded in our physical development, our mental development, and thus having the characteristics of a baby or of a very, very young child.

Paul uses the word “babes” here and said, I couldn’t speak unto you as unto mature Christians, but as unto carnal Christians, which he then gave this synonymous description, descriptive word, babes in Christ. So, there are evidently in the church of Christ; there are three classes usually, or four, there is in the average church persons who attend all the time, but for some reason never do get converted. They come and they seem to enjoy it. They have friends among the religious people, the Christian people, but they themselves never pass from death unto life. That’s one class. Then, there is another class, those who claim to be Christians, but are not. And then there are those who are truly Christians, but are carnal. And then there are those who are Christians and are spiritual.

Now, we can best know what an unspiritual Christian is and what a spiritual Christian should be by contrast, by noticing the characteristics of a baby. No doubt I’ve mentioned this in illustration or sermon, in times gone by. But we want to focus attention on it for a few minutes today. Let’s look at a baby and there isn’t anything I’d rather look at myself. And I feel just a little bit like a traitor saying the things I’ve got to say about babies this morning, because I am something of an expert on babies, I think. We’ve had enough, enough grandchildren and enough of little adopted friends all around. And I’ve enjoyed dedicating so many in my time. The few minutes I hold them in my hands I consider a ministerial privilege. So, I love the babies, but after all, they’re little human beings. And as little human beings they have certain characteristics and not I, but Paul said those characteristics were unspiritual. He said they were carnal and that when those characteristics are in a Christian, you’ll find an unspiritual Christian.

Now, the first thing about a baby that I note is the self-centeredness of the little thing. The baby has a little world all of its own. And it hasn’t any idea that there’s any other world but its world. Its mother, its father, its brothers or sisters, its crib, its highchair, it is a self-centered little thing. And it is the central sun and everything else revolves around that little central sun. All others are but bodies in its orbit. And thus, we see Paul’s concept of an unspiritual Christian as being somebody that is self-centered, living a self-centered Christian life, being born again certainly, but living so that everything takes its significance from that Christian. Now, that’s one characteristic of a babe and it’s one characteristic of a carnal Christian.

Another is that a baby is affected unduly by its senses. It hasn’t learned to discipline its senses or to ignore them. It draws conclusions based upon evidence rather than go along with its feelings. So, this is a characteristic, and unspiritual Christians are the same. They tend to live by their feelings. If there’s what they call a good atmosphere in the church, then they’ve had a good time. If there isn’t, they haven’t had a good time. And thus, they are more or less victims and fools of their environment. A baby is a victim of its environment, a willing victim because it senses tell it if it pinches a finger it howls like a banshee. Although the finger may stop hurting and the babes continue to cry long after it’s forgotten why it started. Because it’s unduly affected by its feelings or it’s too hilariously, it gets too exuberant for no reason in the world.

I discovered that our little Judy, Judith, if you put your nose down on her nose and mumbled words such as she mumbles, she’s a little over a year, why that she would go into hysterics of laughter. And of course, I practiced on her and we had a good time together. But I wonder why. What’s so funny about that? I don’t know what’s so funny about it. But she thought it was one of the richest pieces of humor that had ever come within her little year-old circle of interest or attention. And she and I do that now. That’s our fun together. But I don’t think it’s funny. It’s humorous to see her go wild about it. But now that’s a child, cast down for no reason; hilarious for no reason, victims of their feelings and of their senses. And Paul said, ye are yet carnal. Ye are babes. And this is also the characteristic of a Christian that is carnal. He is too easily exhilarated. He’s too easily lifted up and too easily cast down. After a while a Christian should learn better, but we’ll look at that later.

Then, a third thing about a baby is its propensity to rest in externals. Now, a baby has no inward life at all. There are even psychologists that say, I don’t believe this, but psychologists say that babies are born without minds, their minds develop. I don’t believe that. But I do know that they’re born with capacities, mental capacities, but without anything in it; and without anything in their little minds. But as they get older, of course, it develops, but they have no inward life. They rest completely in externals.

Now, this also is characteristic of a carnal Christian. He lives too much in visible religion, and it’s externalism. He goes by things on the outside, colored lights and strange sounds or pretty sounds, and garments or the certain uniforms or certain decorations. Anything to please the childish mind by calling it out from the center to the outside, from the internal to the external. Brethren, you may be sure of this, just as sure of this as you live, that just in proportion as we are affected by external circumstances, we are carnal. For Jesus said, that the Father is worshipped in spirit and in truth. No other way. The externals can be a prison. The external can be any unlovely place. But, if the heart is right and the Spirit dwells within, worship and communion with God can be real and can be unaffected, and the tranquility remains the same because the spiritual Christian does not rest in externals.

Then, I noticed this point about a baby too, is his complete absence of purpose. You never saw a baby that ever had a purpose, or if he did, it was the next thing he saw to do. He wants that red ball that lies just beyond his reach and he hasn’t learned to crawl yet. And so, he’ll howl for that. But when he gets it, he’ll throw it down, because he has no purpose. He didn’t want it for any purpose. And when he got it, no purpose was fulfilled. And that of course is characteristic of babies, sweet as they are, and I wouldn’t want them different. But they’re the loveliest thing left on earth. But there’s absence of purpose in the life of a child.

When a child gets a little older, he gets to be ten maybe, or twelve, he’ll begin to save things, or he’ll begin to put things away. He can save stamps or save pennies toward something. He’s beginning to get purpose into his life. And by the time he’s in his teens, he’ll learn how to work after school to lay up money to go further to school. And by the time he’s in his 20s, he will have had a life purpose worked out for himself as far as this world is concerned, but babies have no purpose at all.

And I find that the Christian has no purpose either. He lives for the next blessing. He wants to know where the good preacher is going to be and he goes to hear him. He wants to know where the fine choir is going to sing, and he goes and sits down and tickles his carnality by listening to the finest choir that he can find. Or, he wants to know where the biggest crowd is assembled. And he gets a charge, if you’ll excuse the slang, out of the crowd. Well, there’s no purpose there. He never went aside and got on his knees and said, God, why was I ever born, and being born, why have I been redeemed? And what’s this about?

And then the fifth thing is that the baby lives a life of play and trifles. The most unproductive creature around the place is the loveliest and the most loved, the baby. They have a life. They live a life of play and trifles all together. And everything they do; they’ve got to turn it into play. Did you ever see the babe nurse violently on his bottle for a while, and then when he gets enough, begin to spin it around or play with it or toss it clear out on the floor, and then he’ll laugh uproariously when he sees the milk spilled and the top come off down on the rug. Now everything has to be turned into play with the baby. And I want to be nice about this. I’m trying hard to be nice. Please pray for me so that I can be nice. But brethren, if we’re realistic at all we’ll have to say that the modern generation of Christians, they’re living for play and trifles, play and trifles.

I got a folder from a certain Bible conference, you don’t know where it is, so don’t ask me to tell you. They are going to take a trip and go out on top of the bounding billows on a luxury liner. And they’re going of course to have everything that the heart could wish. And they have pictures of beautiful palm trees and all the rest like Florida and California. And it’s going to be a strictly chaperoned luxury liner with a chaplain on board to give talks on Romans just before the shuffleboard game every morning to give it a religious flavor. And they say, what is the purpose of this? It is to promote an interest in missions. And they say, walk today where Jesus walked yesterday. And a certain evangelist friend of mine wrote yes, but not with the same purpose. We want to play you see. We have no hesitation in advertising our Bible conferences as religious playgrounds. So that’s a proof of how carnal we are. We live a life of play and trifles.

And then petulance, fretfulness and quarrelsomeness. The sweetest baby that ever lived is not sweet when he’s hungry. None of you mothers ever tells me now that your baby is a nice little angel when she’s hungry. She’s not. She takes and makes ugly sounds when she’s hungry even though she’s only two months old. Now this petulance and fretfulness is strictly an immature reaction because it is a temptation to blame secondary causes. I can always tell a carnal Christian because he blames secondary causes. If he is a preacher and he loses his job, he blames his Board instead of blaming his sheer ineptitude and inability to come through, he blames his Board. Or he blames his District Superintendent or he has blamed, old Adam was like that. This woman that Thou gavest me, she did it.

And some of you dear Christian women that aren’t making it very well, you say if you had a good, spiritual husband you would be a better Christian. No, you wouldn’t be. You would just think you were because you would have less reason to know you’re not. Can you figure that one out? Well, that is what I mean. So long as there is nothing there to tempt you, you’ll think you are better than you are. But a grouchy husband that won’t shave Sunday morning and sits around in a t-shirt and plays jazz, you say he’s your trouble. No, he’s not your trouble. He could be your sanctification if you knew how to use him. Wesley said his wife was his sanctification. And if you knew how to use opposition, you could turn it into a help upward toward God. That’s one thing a baby always does, he always blames secondary causes. You never knew a baby that was to blame for anything. It is always somebody else.

And then there’s the restricted and limited diet of a baby. The baby marks its Bible, but it’s always the tender little passages that they mark. They skip over those rough and vigorous passages that tear you apart and bring you down and discipline you and chasten you. And so the baby lives on a diet, the diet of milk and strained vegetables. It has to. Now that my brethren is the picture of a baby.

Now this is not a baby-hater. This is a baby lover. From the time I was old enough to know that I had little brothers and sisters I have been a sentimentalist, complete victim to the smile of a baby. I had a brother seven years, eight years younger than I and we slept in an unheated upstairs and I slept with him. And I remember taking him in my arms and taking him to bed when he was a little chap. And I would put my face down on the pillow and warm it and for him. So, he didn’t have to put his face on the cold pillow. I’d rub it real hard with my hand. I even had sense enough to know in those days that friction would raise heat. So, I’d warm his pillow and then lay him down there and I looked after him, just looked after him as if he was my child out of pure love for him. And when he got a little older, I hated to think the time would ever come when I’d get old enough to leave home, because I wanted to stay with my baby brother.

Well, that’s how much I love babies. But you would just have to admit Brethren that we described a baby here this morning. A self-centered little guy affected unduly by his senses; resting in externals without any purpose; loving to play and having no serious purposes in life, and living on a simple diet. Well, there we have a baby.

Now, what do we do? Well, nature takes care of the baby pretty soon. Nature begins to shift the baby out from the center. And it never gets delivered from being self- centered of course. That’s a part of sin. But it gets interests away from itself and learns to stand up and defy its senses. And learns to reason instead of by its senses. It learns to live for the character within, rather than for external things. It learns to have a purpose in life, even if it’s only to be an actor or a ballplayer or something else to get a purpose. Nature takes care of that for most of us as we mature. But now in spiritual things. That’s an illustration drawn from nature, fallen nature.

Now, in spiritual things, what shall we do? Well, I’ll tell you. I know of no single experience that will instantly transform a carnal Christian into a spiritual one. Now, I like to be able to tell you that I do. I wish that I could say to you, now, here I positively know how you can come to the Lord and meet certain conditions and instantly cease to be a carnal and become a spiritual Christian. Well, it just isn’t that way. We must let the Spirit teach us and discipline us and mature us and grow big within us and to let God walk within us, and learn by trial and error and prayer and repentance and tears and sorrow of heart for our carnality. And then believe in the power of God to fill us with His Spirit, and begin to work with the soul that He leads us away from self-centeredness, and leads us to love the whole world.

They used to sing, I’ll live the world around back in Simpson’s day. They believed a Christian ought to live the world around and pray for the whole world. Somebody said Dr. Simpson lost his mind as he got older and therefore, they don’t believe that healing ought to ever be taught because Dr. Simpson who taught it lost his mind. My Brethren, I examined into that most carefully when I wrote about his life. I talked to those that knew him, his secretary, his warmest personal friends, and I got the facts right down. You know what? He got arteriosclerosis when he was about 75 years old and lived two or three years and couldn’t be used. But you know what? He never forgot the name of one of his missionaries. And they tell the story, certain people do, that Dr. Simpson in his last hours, repented because he hadn’t accepted the teachings of such and such.

Well, now I happen to know what happened in the last hours of Dr. Simpson. The last hours of Dr. A.B. Simpson where these, he sat with his wife out on the front stoop or porch of his house, his modest house. And then he said, Now, Margaret, it’s time that I should pray for our missionaries. So, he got on his knees, he didn’t have 787 then, but he got on his knees and without missing one, he prayed by name for every missionary in the Christian Missionary Alliance, went in and lay down on his bed and died. That’s how he died my brethren. He was not living for himself, but he was round the world with it.

Now, the second thing you got to ask God to do and expect Him to do is to teach you to live above your feelings and your senses. Often in the morning, as three young men came to see me from one of the religious institutions within the Chicago area here some time ago. And oh, how hungry boys they were. They’re the ones that God filled with the Holy Ghost until one of them couldn’t sleep nearly all night for the joy of it. After our meeting, and they’ve sought the Lord. Well, anyway, they were having a tough time of it. And one of them was in trouble, because he said some times when he gets down on his knees, he doesn’t have any desire to pray. And they thought, because I was as old as Methuselah’s twin brother that I never had any difficulty like that. And I just began to testify to them. I said, boys, do you know there are times when I have to force myself to prayer. It’s dull, and for a little while, there’s not much juice in it. And their faces began to shine. One of them said, oh, what a relief he said. I thought I was backsliding, because I have troubles like that. I don’t always feel spiritual. And I said, boy, if you don’t feel spiritual, you’ve got company. There are a lot of others that don’t, but you’ve got to pray through that. You got to pray past that. And it comes after a while, and God met these three young men, but they wrote me a letter and told me what a great relief it was to know that you never get to a place where you’re just sort of an angel waiting to be recognized. You’ve got your fight down here. And you’ve got to learn not to trust your feelings. When you get up in the morning feeling as if you didn’t, or wish you hadn’t. And in the evening, wish still more ardently that you hadn’t. That often happens. Why don’t let that get you down. A baby won’t worry about that and howl for mother. But a grown-up Christian says, well, this wasn’t my day. This wasn’t my day.

No doubt Paul had his days when he stuck his finger with his needle and things weren’t going right. And so we keep our faith in God and Christ and know that no matter how we feel, it’s alright anyhow. And then resting in externals. You’ve got to change that. The spiritual Christian has to stop resting in externals. I learned long ago to preach wherever I stand up. I can’t change. They say, Tozer, why do you go and preach for that crowd. Look at the things they do. I am not responsible. I go to churches and other gatherings and I see things that, I just sit there and wait it out. I hear songs that I can’t see why they were ever written; sung by people that never should have been permitted to do it. And yet, externals, you’ve just got to tune them out you know. Just get on another wavelength and wait it out. Then when they give you a nice long flowery introduction which you don’t deserve, then get up and preach. But if you live in externals, brother, it’s too bad. Babies do, grown up Christians don’t. And then grown-up Christians get a purpose. They know why they’re here. Often my friends, so confusing are the circumstances, so self-contradictory, that if I didn’t know my Bible and know I know God and know certain things and be able to point back to certain markers where the stones were set up at the Jordan to say this was where God blessed me, why I could easily blow my blessed ministerial top. But I don’t do it because I know there are certain purposes I’m fulfilling, poorly, but I’m fulfilling them. So have a purpose.

And then stop playing. God’s poor, playful kittens. They’ve got to have their religion turned into play for them. They drink a while and then throw the bottle on the floor and laugh about nothing and get blue about nothing. That’s carnality. That’s not spirituality. A spiritual Christian has a life of labor. He looks upon the world not as a playground, but as a battleground.

And then the diet, the real Christian reads his whole Bible. This will make some of you mad. but if you’re living on your morning daily devotions taken out of a book somebody compiled, I warn you, that’s pablum. I don’t care who wrote it. It’s still pablum. Read your Bible brother. Read all your Bible, read it all. I don’t say these other things are harmful. I just say that if you have them and nothing else, you’re not nourished. Read all your Bible. Read all the begats, and back in the Kings, so and so begat so and so and so on. Read it. You say, what’s it there for? Well, I don’t know. God put it there, read it. Read the Chronicles and Job and the books you don’t like. Read the whole Bible. A real Christian ought to be able to take a full-rounded diet.

Now that’s a spiritual person as contrasted with the carnal person. Not the mouse, but the person who has grown up in God and who’s mature and has grown in the Spirit. That’s the Christian. So, let’s ask God to make us mature Christians and grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. What do you say? Amen. Amen.

Tags Baby Christians, Carnal Christian

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date June 12, 2022

“Three Words-Alienation, Propitiation and Reconciliation”

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“Three Words – Alienation, Propitiation and Reconciliation”

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

October 27, 1957

Now, there are three, many, many, but there are particularly three great mountain peaks of truth that stand out, each tall and snow-capped and sun-kist shining in the beauty of the morning. But they’re not separated from each other. They’re part of a range joined at the base. And they are described in three words, or summed up in three words, and I want you to get these three words. Communists are indoctrinating their people. Catholics are indoctrinating their people. But only the protestants are trying to run on inspiration. You can’t do it my friend. Inspiration grows out of information. And without information you have only emotionalism.

So here are your three words. And not one of you listening to me, not one, from smallest, youngest, to the oldest, but should be able after this morning stand up before a communist or an unbeliever or anybody in the world, to tell them what these three words mean, and then tell them what they stand for in theology. The words are alienation. propitiation and reconciliation. They are long words, more or less rumbling, sonorous words out of the Latin into our English. But never be afraid of a big word. I have found that big words are usually either necessary, as here, or in many instances the effort of a man who’s a bit unsure of himself, to cowl his audience. The man can say a simple thing with big words, when people don’t know what he’s saying, is rather shallow. They are overawed by the size of his words. But here we have these three, and you never need to be afraid of them. The one is alienation. We find here a vast alienation. And then we find the universal propitiation. And then we find that effectual, and efficacious reconciliation.

Now the alienation, of course is first. And Paul talks about being alienated in mind, and this is the worst kind of possible alienation. In fact, it may be the only alienation there is. An alien of course, means a foreigner, stranger. Alienate means to make a foreigner and a stranger out of you. And therefore, to say that there has been an alienation means that two persons who were close, have become separated so that they are strangers to each other as Jesus said, let him be a publican and a sinner unto thee. That’s alienation. And this alienation doesn’t necessarily need to be physical. It is mental or physical.

We have what we call alien laws, meaning laws governing persons who come from other countries. And yet I have met people from other countries speaking with an accent or trying to speak our language with an accent, having difficulty, with whom I felt an immediate affinity, or for whom I felt immediate affinity. And there was no alienation, no sense of being an alien. I knew it once that I belonged to them and they to me, because we were not alienated though they were aliens. And if I were to go to their country, I’d been an alien. But if they had met me at the station, there’d be no alienation, because the world wants to draw lines around its nation. Draw a line between here and Canada and between here and Mexico. And then say now north of us they’re aliens and south of us they are aliens.

Actually, you can go to Canada and if you’re careful, nobody will suspect that you’re an American. And sometimes they will say after they find it out, why we wouldn’t have known you weren’t a Canadian. That is their way of complimenting you, making you feel at home. There’s no sense of alienation. It would be a little more going to Mexico because you have to jump the language barrier. But you can take care of that with lots of American money and you will find you’re not an alien. But because distance and space and imaginary border lines don’t make aliens. They do in law, but they don’t, the human heart jumps over border lines. But when the human heart is alienated, then you have something as deep as hell.

And it says here, you’re alienated in your mind. We were strangers to God, foreigners, aliens, broken off from God by a vast alienation that separated us from God. And the world is thus separate. The world has nothing but its racial memories of God and perhaps a little evidence or vision of God somewhere in nature. Further than that, the world knows not God.

We Christians are going to have to stand up, grit our teeth and be true to the faith here, because we’re being brainwashed by a lot of soft talk about everybody being God’s children, everybody in his own way moving toward God. We got to watch this because the world is alienated and they will remain alienated until they are reconciled through their propitiation and His blood. They’ve got to keep this in mind and stick to it and stick to it even if you have to anger people. And even if you have to alienate people, stick to it. We’re already alienated. We’re alienated from God. Broken off from God by the fall, by sin. That’s first.

Somewhere, sometimes, a universal dislocation took place which threw everything out of harmony with God, everything out of harmony. Like someone were to come here, some vandal come here and get under the lid of that piano and twist and turn bolts and screws and pegs. And when we come in here next Sunday morning, every string was out of tune. No harmony there. No music there. They just throw their hands up and say we’ll use the organ until we get this thing fixed. Then if somebody had come and taken out tubes or gone up to the sound chambers and wrecked them with screwdrivers, we wouldn’t have any music except the vocal music which is the best after all, but that’s not part of the sermon.

But the point is, the world has been worked on by the devil with his screwdriver of sin. And he’s gone into the music room of God and He’s broken strings and twisted and turned and pried out pegs, and the whole world lies without harmony. That’s a vast alienation. It’s the alienation of the mind and this alienation antedated man. It went back of man. It went back to the beginning, back somewhere among those strange creatures of which we know little now that we read about, principalities and powers and dominions and demons; and the angels had kept not their first estate, back there it went, back there, this alienation began and it got to us. We were involved and the earth was involved through the sin of man, and death entered the world. And so, the dark shadow lies across the world. And we live in the ruins of a bombed-out city.

This is the Bible explanation of the condition of things and of the world we live in. Don’t you ever believe anything else for that is it. Don’t ever believe anything else. Those who’ve traveled in Europe and have come home since the second World War say that there are still, despite of the recovery made there, there are still great sections of the cities lying in ruins. They have never gotten out from the rubble.

If I were to make a trip there to some of the cities of Germany or England and say, what is this section here? What is this? Roofs are all down and the walls are burst out. What is this? They’d say, oh, that’s the architects plan. That’s all planned this way. Give it time and it’s coming up. It’s coming up. It’s not coming up at all. It went down, bombed down, leveled, and rubble where there was beauty.

So, the human race says, what’s all this we see around about us here? Why, why, what’s the matter with it? Somebody says, oh, its man struggling upward from the, from the protoplasmic mist. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s man in his condition of loss and ruin. Man has fallen; and we’re all fallen creatures. What happened to my hair? It’s not serious. It’s more humorous than anything else. But what happened to it? God put hair on your head when you’re born. He said, hair grow there and then we lose it. What happened?

What happens that a child of three or four years can tumble around, fall off the things and twist and turn like a pretzel and get up and never noticed? In your 20s already, you start stiffening up. By the time you’re in your 40s, you keep everything off the floor because you don’t like to pick anything up. Why? Why? You say it’s not dignified? Not dignified I’ll admit, and it’s not comfortable either. Your body’s going to pieces on you. That’s all that’s happening to you. God gave you that wonderful thing you call a human body. Did you ever pick up a newborn baby and examine him? Did you ever pick up a little wiggly fellow and look at his little fingers? Every nail in place. Everything in place. Look at his little feet. Examine him all over, perfect, perfect, God made him. He’s perfect. And he’ll grow.

And if he could just be assured that there was nothing in him killing him, what a joy it would be but every mother knows but she won’t admit, but every mother knows that with the first baby cry begins the first wail of death. Alienation, alienation, sickness and age and every kind of disease, delinquency and crime. It’s all here. It’s because there’s been a vast alienation. We live in the ruins. We live among the rubble. We’re like house pets rushing about, hunting here and there for scraps among the rubble of a bombed-out city. And worst of all, it’s hit us too. That’s the world we live in. You can see then what a condescension for Him to come down from heaven above?

Pretty soon, Christmas will be upon us and everybody will be beating the drum for Christmas, telling about Jesus coming down, saying peace on earth. The angels sang peace on earth. But did you ever stop to think of the condescension? To come down from that heaven above to this rubble we call the world, this bombed-out, fallen city. This city crawling with disease, the vermin of iniquity, and the rodents of crime and sin. Here He came. He came down from above and took on Him not the nature of angels, but the nature of Abraham, the form of a man, how wonderful. He came because of the alienation.

Then the second word, propitiation. And what does that mean? It means that an offended God, an offended God who was justly and properly offended. An offended God had something happen somewhere in behalf of the one with whom He was offended. That could allow His mind to be changed so that He could not be offended anymore. Propitiation, that’s what it means. It means that when Christ died on the cross, He did something out yonder. Don’t ask me what. I’m glad it’s a mystery. I’d hate to explain it. I’d hate to be able to explain it. I would hate to think that I, in my condition, could explain the mystery of that propitiation. I don’t know how He did it.

Don’t write any books about the blood, the chemistry of the blood, and don’t try to tell how Jesus did it. Nobody will ever know how He did it. When He was doing it, nature in shame and all, pulled the dark veil of secrecy down and He died in darkness. Nobody saw and nobody knew what the angels desire to look into it and can’t, but that propitiation was effective. That’s all I know about it. It’s an efficacious works. The universal propitiation was made. The old prophets taught that there was a golden one coming, that there was one coming about whom all the prophets did write. And He was going to be born to propitiate mankind and to undo the alienation, and to build again the Golden City.

This the New Testament declares was done The Old Testament declared it would be done. The New Testament declares it has been done. And Christ made peace through the blood of His cross. He made peace through the blood of His cross. There were difficulties there. I tell you, difficulties there. Nobody talks about that much now, but the old theologians did. They say there were difficulties with moral government.

The judge that sits on a bench and lightly charges a jury, or influences a jury to set a man free that he knows is guilty, has tampered with the basic foundation of his country. And where there’s a moral government, and where within that moral government there are men and women who are being alienated against the government and against the God of the government, there’s real difficulty. You can’t get it by praying soft prayers and writing nice poetry. There are real difficulties that shape heaven and earth.

And Jesus Christ, when He came to make that propitiation had to grapple with those difficulties and solve them. And He did it. He did it there in the darkness in some way that I don’t understand, but all of the requirements of moral government were met in the Son of God. He had to be Jesus. He had to be God to do it. A man couldn’t have done it. I was thinking as I read over this passage and other such passages, I’m wondering about those who claim that Christ was a good man and did a wonderful thing, but He wasn’t God and that the Bible doesn’t teach He was God.

How my friend? How? Let me ask you. How, let me ask you, could it be that anybody less than God could do what He’s said to I have done? In whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins? Could that had been said of Abraham? Would that have been said of Jacob? Could we have written Moses, in whom we have redemption through his blood? Why, our hearts cry out against it. Could we have said that that man whose soul was like a harp who wrote the 23rd Psalm and the 103rd Psalm? Could we say, David, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. The whole human heart would scream, no, no. Don’t desecrate a holy thing. And don’t put David in danger by saying that David’s blood and David’s redemption, never. Not a man that ever lived could write Augustine’s name in here or Anslem or Aquinas. Wesley never, never. Only His dear Son who is the image of the invisible God.

Then again, verse fifteen, who is the image of the invisible God? Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature? Could it be Charles Wesley? Could it be Augustine? Could it be Chrysostom? Could it be David Livingstone who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature, for by Him are all things created that are in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers? When you will read that, every man is on his knees from Adam down to the newest child born five minutes ago.

And all the human race must come to its knees before this dominant Being who fills the universe. Principalities and power were created by Him and for Him, and He’s before all things and in Him all things hold together. They say the Bible’s New Testament doesn’t teach the deity of Christ. If that’s not the deity of Christ, then it’s the most insane piece of writing ever written outside of an insane hospital. No, no my brother, this was done, this was possible. The difficulties with the moral government had to be handled by somebody able to handle it. Nobody was. Nobody from Adam on down.

So, He came, Jesus came, the glorious Christ of God, He came, and all the demands of pure justice He met. And all the problem of sin and God’s holiness were all met in Him. We can sing about it and pray about it and thank Him and all the rest of it, but we don’t know how He did it. We only know He went to a cross and God pulled the dark curtain of silence down around Him. And there He died and cried, it’s finished and gave up the ghost. On the third day He rose again from the dead.

And have you noticed friends that at the cross were present all the evidences of the great alienation? First, there was the hate and the tyranny, and the antagonisms of men were all there around the cross. There were the thorns upon his brow, symbolic of all that it was wrong with the diseased and fallen nature. There was the suffering too great to name or describe, symbolic of all suffering from the hour that Eve looked at her murdered son and burst into her first tears. There was darkness symbolic of all the night of hell that settles around the world. And there was separation, bleak, grim separation when He cried, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me? And there was death. There are the marks of the alienation, hate and thorns and suffering and darkness and separation and death, and they were all there. When God pulled the curtain down, He did something there between Him and His God. It meant propitiation and the alienation was ended.

And now the reconciliation. That’s the third word. What does that mean? Reconcile means to bring two things or persons together in harmony by means of a change, The change may be in both parties or one. Or if it’s in two parties, alienated parties, the reconciliation may be a compromise, or by a complete change on the part of one only. And that’s exactly what the Bible teaches. It teaches that God was propitiated by what He did there on the cross. It teaches also that man was potentially reconciled by what He did there on the cross. But that man must be reconciled to God one at a time now and turn to God in reconciliation.

God changes not. Only man changes. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he’s a new creature, old things are passed away, behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. To wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not even imputing their trespasses unto them, and committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now we’re ambassadors with Christ, be reconciled to God. We see the reconciliation was done by God for us. And the propitiation in Romans 3 is God’s propitiation. This reconciliation includes all who during this age are reconciled. I don’t know who they are, but all who are reconciled in this age unto God, by faith, by receiving and believing upon Jesus Christ the Lord. The potential reconciliation made by Christ on the cross makes it possible for us now to change, and the change is all ours, not God’s. God doesn’t need to change. He didn’t go wrong. We need to change because we did go wrong. And we need to change 100%, because we went 100% Wrong.

All I say, who during this age are reconciled, and the earth when Christ comes again as King. Read the 72nd Psalm and see He is the King. Thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king’s son and on it goes rising higher and higher until it shows a King, a glorious King ruling over all the earth. All the oppression is put down. All evil is banished. He reins from the river to the ends of the earth. That’s the 72nd Psalm. It’s the story of the Christ who reigns over a reconciled earth.

And then, in 1 Corinthians, the fifteenth chapter, we learn that not only man and the earth are to be reconciled to God, but we read that there has to be a reconciliation that is to include the universe. 1 Corinthians 15:23, 24, then cometh the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when He shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. He hath put all things under His feet. But when he says all things, he explains he doesn’t mean God. God isn’t put under Christ. And when all things, verse 28, shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that is God; that God may be all in all. So, there is the reconciliation of the universe.

So, we saved ones are sent out with only one message really. It is the message of propitiation, because the alienation, we don’t need to tell them. The missionary say we don’t have to tell them, they’re sinners. We don’t have to preach sin to them. They already know it. It’s all about them. And the lowest tribes, the most primitive groups, they have their sense of sin, laws and taboo and the rest showing what’s wrong with them–sin. No one has to go with the message of sin. They know it. But go with the message of universal propitiation in Christ Jesus the Lord and say, be ye reconciled to God.

So now we have the three words. I hope you’ve gotten them. Alienation, propitiation, and reconciliation. In these three words, we have summed up theology faster than all the philosophies of men and as eternal as the throne of God. Amen.

Tags Alienation, Propitiation, Reconciliation

Messages

Tozer Talks

“An Exposition of Psalm 121″

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“An Exposition of Psalm 121”
Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer
December 2, 1956

The 101st Psalm, I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills of whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil. He shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore.

Now the man of God says, I lift up mine eyes unto the hills. And if you have other versions, you will notice that they try to correct the King James and they put a question mark there. Of course, there are no, there are no punctuation marks in the original. And they make it read, shall I lift up mine eyes unto the hills? Why, no, certainly not. My help cometh from Jehovah. But I reject that reading with an explanation. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, perfectly fits the 121st Psalm because it’s a song of degrees. Now a song of degrees, is a song of accent toward the temple. And these songs came to be written as short hymns which the worshippers sang as they marched upward.

There were 10 steps leading up to the temple, not stairsteps, but broad rises one above the other, making room for choirs and orchestras. And as the high priest moved slowly with his incense up to the temple to enter and make atonement, the choir followed behind, or choirs, followed behind singing as they went facing toward the hills and towards the temple. And naturally, they were lifting up their eyes, watching the high priest as he went into the temple. And they would sing there on those different rises, and then step up again on to a new rise and sing another anthem. And they sang these songs of assent, or songs of degrees. And thus, the worshipers moved ever toward the temple and ever toward the high hill there where the temple stood and ever toward that holy sanctum where the Great Jehovah dwelt between the wings of the cherubim. And the high priest was on his way with blood not his own, to sprinkle it upon the holy mercy seat, and thus make atonement for the people for the year. And thus, these songs were born.

So, we need not juggle punctuation marks. We can understand easily how it was. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, not looked down at his feet, but gaze upward where the temple stood, where high the Holy Temple stands, the house of God not made with hands as we sing. Well, that one was made with hands, but it was the picture of the heavenly.

Now he says, my help cometh from Jehovah. And though he said, I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence my help cometh, he wants us to know that his help did not come from a hill or even from the temple. But his help came from the One whose dwelling place was in Zion. Toward the holy Presence they were marching, and they said, my help comes from Jehovah who made heaven and earth. And don’t think this is merely a word. I noticed sometimes anthems are written. Now this happens to be something that I had said more on than I have, than I know, and I have information on. I’ve talked just because I felt that way. But I noticed that when some composers write an anthem, they get stuck. They’re genius. They run out of gas, and so they start yelling, Jerusalem, hallelujah. And you can sing an anthem on two words, you know, hallelujah, Jerusalem. You can sing three quarters of an hour and not say any more than that.

But the Psalms were written by the Holy Ghost. They were inspired by the Spirit and He didn’t waste any words. And he said that my help cometh from Jehovah which made heaven and earth. And that’s not a phrase thrown in there as a filler. There is no filler in the Bible. If you publish a magazine, your article will run to within two inches of the end of the page. And rather than leave a corner white, why they put in what we call filler, a quotation usually by Andrew Murray or Spurgeon. But there is no filler in the Bible Brother, none whatsoever. The Holy Spirit has no filler. So, when he said, which made the heaven and the earth, he meant exactly that.

Now, the heathen around about them had local gods with limited jurisdiction. You will read your Old Testament and you will find how many gods there were. They named them, many of them, and they were all local gods. You had to get a passport, you know, a visa in order to get in to worship them, because they had local, there were boundaries, and you couldn’t get past those boundaries, and they didn’t have any jurisdiction outside their boundaries. Baal had his limitation and Astarte had her limitation or was she a he? I’m not sure. And all the gods had their limitations, but Jehovah made heaven and earth and he had no limitations. My help cometh not from a local God, but from the God that made the heavens and the earth. And if He made the heaven and the earth, hence He had sovereign universal authority and power. And these marching Jews, marching upward toward the temple behind the high priest, were thanking God and worshiping and looking forward to help knowing that they were talking to the God who has absolute sway, and who is not limited in His jurisdiction.

Now, the Christian believer is like this, he goes past all secondary things. He goes back of all matter and all motion and life and all mind. And he goes to the God, the un-beginning One, the uncreated One, the primal source of all things that we call our Father which art in heaven. Not a law nor principle, but a Person who made the laws and the principles, and whom we call our Father which art in heaven.

Remember that the praying Christian never deals with subordinates. It’s wonderful to learn that, because down the years, some people have been afraid to go straight to God. They have thrown up a series of subordinates; office boys and clerks you have to get by before he can go to God. But there are no office boys nor clerks to a true praying Christian. He never deals with subordinates. Isn’t it wonderful that you, riding on a bus or washing dishes at your kitchen sink, isn’t it wonderful that you can look up and say, our Father which art in heaven and address directly and without the intermediary, the Deity? The only intermediary is the man Christ Jesus, who is also God, and whom you are addressing, so that when you address the Trinity, you address God at the summit. And every praying man is having a meeting at the summit. That is, we don’t work in degrees of importance upward, but go straight to the summit and talk to God our Father Himself.

Now they said, my help comes from Jehovah which made heaven and earth. And once the blood was on the mercy seat, any Jew anywhere, any place in the world, could look up and say my Father and could look up and say the God of our fathers. And we can say, God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that no Christian ever deals with subordinates nor secondary things. You can go straight to God and address God Himself. Because now the blood is on the mercy seat.

Then they consoled themselves as they stood there and sang and played their instruments, He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. Now this doesn’t have too much meaning for a generation that were born in hospitals and raised on sidewalks, because you don’t slip on the sidewalk as a rule. But to travelers in Palestine who made long trips and found their way on foot to the temple to worship at certain seasons, they could easily fall by stepping on a round stone and having it go out from under them. On some mountain paths, they could easily step on a rock that they thought was solid and find it was only a bit of shale, and would give away and let them go down to break a bone or kill themselves. But it says here, He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.

Now the word “suffer” here is a good word. It means permit, allow, that’s all. But it does mean that, and then it means a good deal more by connotation. God will not permit thy foot to be moved. He will not allow it. And he doesn’t say he will not permit, but he says, He will not suffer, because suffer is to permit with a connotation of pain. If your child, say, has to have a surgery, you don’t want him to have surgery, but you’re suffer him to have surgery. You don’t want him to have to undergo the pain and the fright of the knife, but if he must have it, or if she must have it, then you suffer it to be done. Even as Jesus in one occasion said, suffer it to be so now, permit it with suffering. And so, he says, He will not suffer, that is, God will not endure the pain of seeing your foot slip. Now, that’s what the Bible says here. He will not endure the pain of seeing your foot slip. Not only will He not endure it nor permit it, but He will not suffer. And then he says, He will not slumber nor sleep.

Now, the pagan gods, and you and I don’t understand this as we should. It doesn’t hit us as it should, because in America, we don’t worship idols. At least we don’t worship visible idols. But the pagan gods encircled Palestine except for the Mediterranean, and then beyond they did, they encircled the Jews with their idolatry. And those pagan gods could be caught asleep. You remember that when the man Elijah was on the mountain and the Baal priests were praying and they weren’t getting any answer, he got sarcastic with them and said, well, maybe he’s asleep and you must wake him up. Maybe he’s taken a journey and isn’t home. He’s out of his jurisdiction. But he says here, He will not slumber nor asleep.

Now, Jehovah’s eyelids never close. I wish you could keep that in mind. And the reason, there’s a reason back of all this. I said to Brother Reidhead, you know, I don’t have the interest in study that I used to have, that is, I have interest in spiritual things, but not in other studies. And because I said, why should a man who’s getting along in years study more? Well, he said, remember, you’re learning for eternity. And that was the answer. I had no reply to that one. You’re learning for eternity. And I’d like to find a reason for everything God reveals. Brother, I would, I really would. I’d like to penetrate below the surface and find a reason.

You know something? I don’t believe we’re as good as Christians as we ought to be until we not only accept what the Bible teaches, but until we try to discover why it teaches it, and get at the root of the thing. Now, I think I know why God never sleeps. I believe I know. Sleep is a recouping of spent energy. Sleep is necessary to recharge the batteries. And when we have worked eight hours and done some other things, necessary things, our energy is down, and then we must go to sleep in order that nature can recoup her wasted energy. But Jehovah never expends energy and therefore, he never needs to sleep.

Now, the man Jesus slept in the back of the boat because He was a man, and being a man when He walked ten miles, He had expended some energy and He had to sit down weary on the well or sleep in the boat to recoup His energies. That was the human Jesus. But the God-man and the eternal Godhead, never sleeps, because they never, that is, God never expends energy. How could God expend energy when God is the source of all the energy there is? Where would the energy go? And then if God recouped His energy, that would mean He would have to get energy from somewhere. Where would he get it from?

You say, where do I get my energy from? You got it from food, water and air. You get your energy from something you’ve taken into you. And that’s why we have to eat all the time, to me a bothersome necessity, but we have to eat. And that’s to recoup our wasted powers. But God doesn’t recoup his wasted powers, because He hasn’t wasted them. He doesn’t recharge, because He hasn’t lost anything. And the energy that God gives you to live hasn’t left God. It’s still in God, because God surrounds all things and holds all things.

So, there I think is the answer to why Jehovah never sleeps. And the God who sleeps or has to sleep is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He’s a local god with a limited jurisdiction that’s dependent upon somebody. You can catch him napping. And a lot of the stories, and they’re beautiful stories without a doubt of the old Greeks. They turn up in Shakespeare and in many of the other poets and in Homer and the rest of them. The gods who tumbled off to sleep and somebody slips up while they were sleeping, and did something that they wouldn’t have allowed if they’d been awake. But thank God for One who never sleeps. He slumbers not nor sleeps.

And then he says, the Lord is thy keeper. He is thy keeper and thy shade. And now it says, the Lord is thy keeper, not the Lord will keep thee, nor the Lord will give thee shade. That is true also. But notice that it is not what the Lord will do, but what the Lord is. And we are kept not so much by what God does as by what God is.

The new Christian and some people never get beyond that, the new Christian is greatly taken up with what God will do for them. Tracts and booklets and books and testimonies are given and songs written about what God does for us. And it’s legitimate, I suppose, just as it’s legitimate to walk around on your stubby one year old legs, if that’s the best you got. But to walk around on stubby year-old legs when you’re twenty-five, would be a bit incongruous, and yet Christians for twenty-five years Christians have never gotten beyond what God does for them.

But as you go on into God, brethren, what God does for you becomes less and less important, and what God is to you becomes more and more important. It’s not what God does so much as what God is that matters. Jesus did certain things, and I believe along with my brethren in what we call the finished work. But I think that by always mouthing the phrase, the finished work, the finished work, I think that we can reduce salvation to a job done, a contract fulfilled. It was that but it was infinitely more than that. Jesus not only did something for us, He became something to us. He is our righteousness. He is our wisdom. He is our sanctification. He is our redemption. He did not say I will raise you from the dead. He said, I am the resurrection.

There is the difference between being the resurrection and merely using the resurrection, a vast difference I say. And in our day, in these terrible days of making the Lord your servant instead of being the Lord’s servant, and always emphasizing what the Lord does for us, I tell you, you’ll never grow spiritual giants in the earth with that kind of teaching. We’ve got to turn it around and begin to talk about what the Lord is to us, He is to me. The young wife isn’t so concerned with what her husband gets for her. If she’s unworthy of a decent husband, she is concerned with what he is to her. And children, if they are properly trained, will not be so concerned with what their parents get for them but be concerned with what their parents are to. So, the Lord is thy keeper, the Lord is thy shade. And the Lord will preserve thy going out and thy coming in now that He’s guard and shield and secure and that’s what the word preserved means.

Now this idiom, thy going out and thy coming in is quite common in Hebrew. And it’s quite common to us in our language too. The going out and the coming in. After all, you think about it a little, that’s about all you do. You go out and come in. You go out in the morning and come in at night. The next morning you go out and the next night you come in. And our going out and our coming in, that’s just about it. That about covers it. And the Scripture says here, with a sweeping it in, it takes all of life in. The Lord will guard thy going out and shield thy coming in, and secure thy going out and coming in. Now what more do you want? He not only is thy keeper and thy shade, but He will guard, shield, and secure because He is all these things, Thy going out and they’re coming in.

Then he ends, from this time forth, even forever more. Did you notice God never stops with time? Everything people do, some people wonder why I do not take to politics more and preach politics from the pulpit. Well, there are several reasons. One is, I have no commission from God Almighty to preach politics. And the other is that politics deals with time and God has sent me to deal with something else– eternity.

And I never like a sermon or never like to have anybody come to me and say Brother Tozer, that was a timely sermon. I’m not dealing with timely things. I’m dealing with timeless things. And a Christian is not concerned so much with time. He’s concerned with eternity. From this time forth, even forevermore. Ultimately, only forevermore will matter. Ultimately, I say only forevermore will matter. Time will not matter.

Four years, I thought that the time of the election, when everybody was pushing and two men were seesawing to get a job. But Cal Coolidge had the answer to that long ago. He was walking somewhere with a friend and he saw the White House and the gentleman reminded Mr. Coolidge, who was then President, that it must be a wonderful privilege to live in the White House and be President. Well, he says, it has its disadvantages. And they said, what are they? Well, he said, there’s no chance for advancement. And second, he said, you can’t keep your lease. You got to get out of there.

Now, here we were fighting over who got in there. But how long will they stay in? Four years more and the law says I can go to your farm and settle down and raise Angus cattle. I don’t want anymore. And if Stevenson had been elected. At the best, eight years and we’d said, go back to your farm and raise Berkshire hogs, we don’t need you anymore. So, no matter who gets in or how, or by a landslide, it’s all got time on it. And that’s why I can’t get enthusiastic about anything that has time on it either.

Even from this time forth and forevermore. There you have it. God Almighty is forevermore and He made you forevermore. And all that really matters is forevermore. From this time forth and forevermore. I want to warn you beware of the treacheries of time. Time will get you down. I know that I might as well be singing bass in an angelic choir as to preach this to some of you young people. Because old Mother Nature is making you think you’re going to live forever, you sixteen-year-olds and seventeen-year-olds. You know it hasn’t been more than two weeks ago that I was seventeen. It seems like it, just a little while ago. If my father we’re living now he’d, or my mother we’re living now, she’d be over a hundred. And there we have it. I believe I figured it out right. Time goes by and you think you’ve got all the time in the world young fellow. You have a pitiably short time. And if you get bogged down in time and all tangled up in the temporal, woe be to you. And don’t let anybody get your tangled up in the temporal or in time.

Here’s a story you’ve heard before, but they say that it is true. Some years ago, some sheep perished and were thrown into the Niagara River just above falls at wintertime. And the water wasn’t frozen yet, and it was freezing, but the water was still flowing. And they said that the bodies of these sheep were plunging over the falls. And somebody said he saw some eagles. And those eagles were swooping down, tearing at the flesh of the sheep. And then just before the sheep went over the falls, the carcass went over the falls, scream and fly away and dip and turn and go back and get the next sheep and pull out a hunk of meat and hold it in his beak and then just before it plunged over the falls, leap up again. Something was happening the eagles didn’t know.

And a man said, I saw this thing. I saw an eagle floating and with her great talons deep into the wet wool of the sheep and unknown to her, the freezing was going on. And just when the race started swift and the sheep carcass began to dip, she screamed and spread her wings, but she was frozen into the wool. And so with a scream she plunged over into the rapids and rocks beneath and it was destroyed. So, we fool with time. And we get tangled up in time and we say, well, we’ll get away from that, but slowly we freeze in. And finally, one last scream, and we find that time has ruined us.

Every great thing goes on into eternity Brethren, every great thing. Somebody made fun of a hymn one time in my presence, of a sermon, and said, why these sermons that always end in heaven, I don’t like them. I think they’re the best kind myself because they’re the most Scriptural and in keeping with all Christian tradition.

Look at their great hymns, Rock of Ages, a great hymn. Do you know where it ends? When I rise to worlds unknown and behold Thee on Thy throne. That’s the last verse. Look at Jesus Lover of my Soul. spring Thou up within my heart, rise to all eternity. Love Divine all Loves Excelling. The last verse, stanza says, till in heaven we take our place, till we cast our crowns before Thee lost in wonder, love and praise. Guide me O Thou Great Jehovah, prays in the last stanza, land me safe on Canaan’s side. My Faith Looks up to Thee, the last stanza says, oh, bear me safe above a ransom soul. And My Hope is Built on Nothing Less says, when He shall come with trumpets sound, oh, may I then in him be found. And Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound the last stanza is, when we’ve been there 10,000 years bright shining as the sun, we’ll have no less days to sing His praise than when we first begun. So, the great hymns almost invariably end in heaven, where they ought to end, where a Christian ought to end.

And then look at the 23rd Psalm. Did you ever read it? It starts out that about the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, and it goes on to say, and I shall dwell in, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. So, the 23rd Psalm ends in heaven, and anybody that criticizes a sermon that sweeps on down the ages and ends in heaven has to criticize the Bible itself. For it begins, In the beginning, God created the heavens, and the earth and ends, and I saw a new Heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away and there was no more sea. And I John saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. So the Bible that began with the creation, ends with the new creation and the holy city and the land.

So, my brethren, don’t allow yourself to get involved with anything that’s got the taint of time on it. You will have to handle some things that have time on them without a doubt. You’ll have to handle some things. Your job, your work, your house, your car, your body, your family, they’ve got time on them, but never let them get a hook in you that you can’t get free from. Every child of God should be like a fireman. While he’s sleeping, his ear is geared to the sound of the alarm, whatever it is in the fire houses and he’s ready by just putting on one garment and sliding down the pole. He’s out onto the car and gone. He isn’t twenty seconds away from slumber until he’s on his way. Every child of God should be like that. You ought to be fixed up so in ten seconds even be ready for heaven. It doesn’t have to wait.

Some of you have to cram like a lazy high school student that’s forgotten your homework and your exams are coming up and you have to cram and sit up and cram into the night hours. Maybe you won’t have any night hours to do your cramming Bud. Maybe you’ll go suddenly, the alarm will sound and you’ll be gone. And maybe on a little page in the Tribune it’ll say, such and such died at his home last night of a heart attack. He was forty-seven years old. He was fifty-two years old. He didn’t have any time to cry. He didn’t have any time to make up.

So, the child of God should use time very loosely. And as they say around the camp meetings, wear time as a loose garment. Never button up your garment. Always have it ready to loose and in a second and throwback the garment of mortality, the robe of temporal things. Leave them loose so they can be thrown away, and you can rise to worlds unknown and behold Him on His throne and say, Rock of Ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee.

Tags Jesus Christ, Psalm 121