Month: September 2024

Tozer Talks

“The Knowledge of God IV”

The Knowledge of God IV

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 15, 1956

Now this will be the last of four sermons on three degrees of divine knowledge. And I have used the same text for all of them. And just briefly to refresh your memory, I said that there were three degrees of divine knowledge corresponding to the three divisions of the tabernacle in the Old Testament ritual: the outer court, which corresponds to reason. And the text I read was Romans 1:19 and 20. Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them. For God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.

Then there is a second degree of knowledge, superior to the first, and that is, the knowledge that comes to faith. And I took for a text, though there are very many I might have chosen, Hebrews 11:3. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. And then. there is another degree of Christian knowledge which is the knowledge the Spirit imparts. And that corresponds to the Holy of Holies in the temple. And I read the Scripture, 1 Corinthians 1:9-14. I won’t read it all now, but only read this part. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God. That we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them because they’re spiritually discerned.

Now on three previous talks I have treated it like this. I’ve talked first about the knowledge of God. Then in my second sermon, two weeks ago, I spoke about what the old writers called natural theology, the knowledge that we may gain about God and heavenly things from nature itself; reason working on data furnished by reason. Then last Sunday morning, I talked about revealed theology, the knowledge received by faith through divine inspiration. Now today, I must talk about a knowledge that’s still more excellent, and that is the knowledge which Paul says, the Spirit reveals to our spirits. And this is so excellent that it belongs to heaven rather than earth. And is only given here as a little earnest of what will come.

Now, there are some things that God gives us that He just gives all of it to us, and there isn’t anything that He doesn’t give. But there are other things that he gives only in veiled measure and degree. And to this knowledge which is the more excellent knowledge, it is a heavenly knowledge and will be perfected and completed in heaven. And it belongs in heaven and is of heaven, but it is given here in small measure. And of course, the degree that we receive of it depends upon our response and our meeting the condition.

Now, it is so excellent this knowledge, this further-in knowledge revealed by the Spirit, that nothing more excellent awaits us in heaven than this knowledge, except that there it will be given in perfection, and here we have it only up to our imperfect capacity. There we will be enlarged and perfected to receive in full degree this knowledge of God. And John says, we shall be like Him and shall know Him. And the Revelator says that we shall look on His face and His name shall be on our forehead.

Now, this knowledge, this more excellent knowledge which I speak this morning, does not contradict the other two. Nothing ever contradicts anything else in the kingdom of God if we could only know it. It is only that we think it contradicts. Nothing in God ever contradicts anything else in God. There are no contradictions in God, so that when I say there are three degrees of knowledge, the knowledge given to reason, the knowledge given to the faith and the knowledge revealed by the Spirit, I do not mean that one contradicts the other, for they do not contradict each other and neither does one make the other unnecessary.

This last degree of knowledge of which I speak, the knowledge that flashed across the human heart by an afflatus of the Holy Spirit does not make the knowledge of reason unnecessary, for we are reasonable creatures. We’re logical beings though we don’t always live like it. And therefore, we cannot cancel out our reason. I do not believe that anything that comes by the Spirit will contradict reason, because reason is an attribute of God. And God can’t contradict Himself. Therefore, anything God reveals to us in our deep heart is bound to be according to reason, though it may go way beyond reason. And neither does it contradict faith. Now, there is nothing that the Spirit of God will reveal to the inner life of a man that will contradict faith. It will be according to faith and not contrary to faith. But it sets a crown upon reason and faith and leads them on to their perfection, but it does not contradict them, cancel them out, or make them unnecessary.

Now, what kind of knowledge is this? Well, this knowledge is by direct spiritual experience. You see, Paul very clearly mentions this here. He says, It is written in the Old Testament that eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit, for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. And thus, these things are divinely revealed by inward spiritual experience. An impartation of divine knowledge by a direct afflatus of the Spirit of God.

And this is what you don’t hear much about these days though it’s the common teaching of the New Testament, and it was the common teaching of the church fathers. And it is not heresy of any degree or kind. It is not a cult or a teaching of any cult, but the common traditional teaching of the fathers and the reformers and the martyrs and the mystics and the revivalists and the church leaders and the hymnists, all down the years. And I can take you to any hymnbook, be it Presbyterian or Methodist or Baptist or Moravian or Episcopalian or whatever, and I can show you everything that I’m saying this morning. We sing them, but we don’t believe them. Or, if we try to believe them, we don’t understand them. And so we sing truths which are scriptural truths, traditional truths, truths which have been believed by the fathers and written into the great books of devotion. We sing them and don’t know what we’re singing about, because we are so languorous and take things so for granted. But this impartation of spiritual knowledge by a direct afflatus of the Holy Ghost, is not contrary to reason I say, but it is immediate knowledge, not mediated knowledge.

Now, those are philosophical terms and I’m going to break them down for the young people. You older people know what I mean. But you know the difference between mediated and immediate, a thing that is immediate and the thing that’s mediated, that is direct or indirect.

Now, there is a knowledge of reason which is mediated to us. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. What mediates that knowledge to us? Two things, the heavens and the firmament and our reason, so that we know the heaven and the earth and the firmament, mediated to us by the firmament and by reason. So that the knowledge we get of the heaven and the earth, all of natural theology, all that comes by reason and the human intellect is a mediated knowledge. It is not immediate, it is mediated. It comes to us more or less by gadgets and by means of faculties and organs.

Then, the knowledge that we receive by revelation is mediated to us through faith. The resurrection, for instance, who here knows anything about the resurrection? You know absolutely nothing by immediate experience of the resurrection. There was only one or two men that ever lived, that knew anything about the resurrection by immediate experience, and that would be Lazarus maybe, and the widow’s son maybe, and the little girl. They were raised from the dead, so they’d had an immediate experience of resurrection. But all you and I know about resurrection is what the Bible tells us, and that’s mediated to us through faith.

Did you ever sit down and try to visualize the resurrection? What would happen to you when you rose again from the dead? It’s an impossible task. You can’t do it, because you have not had immediate experience. But there will be a time when you can do it. You can tell the archangel Gabriel all about it, he won’t know anything about it except by faith. Gabriel never died to rise again. So that he only knows by faith about the resurrection, Christ knows by immediate experience, because He rose from the dead. You and I know by faith. It’s mediated to us by faith. And so our poor minds stagger along under the burden of a gorgeous and glorious truth too much for us. And we say, I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and so we do. And we stand at the graveside and look down as our loved ones are being lowered into their quiet sleep and we say to ourselves, I believe I’ll see him again. I shall see her again. We say I know that my Redeemer liveth and I shall see Him in that day. But that is a knowledge given to us by faith and mediated to us through faith.

And now let’s look at another kind of knowledge. How do you know you’re alive? No, I’m not trying to be humorous. I’m serious. How do you know you’re alive? That is an immediate knowledge. Reason hasn’t anything to do with it and neither has faith. You know you’re alive, and maybe some of you never thought about that. Have you ever thought about it? Sit down sometime turn the radio and the television off and fold the newspaper, and all of them, all the newspapers, fold them all up. Put Time Magazine under the desk and see whether you can’t think a little about this. How do you know you’re alive? Well, you know because your mother told you. Some of you never saw your mother. Maybe she died when you were born. Do you know because you read it in a book? How foolish to go to the library and get a book to discover and learn that you are alive. The knowledge that we are alive is not mediated to us through reason or faith. It is an intuition that is immediate and direct.

Then, how do you know you are yourself and not somebody else? Now, am I being silly? Not the slightest, my brethren. How do you know you are yourself and not somebody else? You know it by immediate intuition. If there were some friends of yours, were to pull a little hoax on you and in your asleep were to carefully transport you to somebody else’s bedroom, take all of your clothes and all, everything that belongs to you away and put you there and then put another man’s identification card in your wallet and in every way possible try to make you out to be somebody else. You’d wake up and you’d be confused and irritated, but you wouldn’t in anywise believe you were the other man. Because nobody can prove you’re another man and nobody can disprove who you are, because you have it without mediation, by argument or reason or faith or knowledge. You have it by direct awareness.

Now, that’s exactly what I mean by this higher degree of knowledge. This knowledge which is not by reason, and while it is by faith, it is the perfection and crown of faith in that it comes by direct knowledge. The Holy Spirit illuminates the human spirit and brings it into conscious experience of God. Do you know that Methodism taught that for 100 years in this country? Do you know that? Do you know that Baptists by the hundreds of thousands taught it on our continent? Did you know it? Do you know that Presbyterians used to preach that? Do you know the Salvation Army still does? Do you know that practically every holiness group and every deeper life group teaches it, so that I am not fanatical, neither have I suddenly gone berserk theologically. This is ordinary teaching, but it just happens that the kind of textualism which is in the harness right now, or which is in the saddle and riding a high right now, ignores all this. And I’m trying to restore it to you, not to teach something new, but to joyfully point to something that’s been hidden.

When I was a boy out on the farm in Pennsylvania among the hills, we had snow in those days, real snow. Nowadays, we get a spotty effort at it, and then it disappears in no time at all. I don’t know whether it’s the administration or whether it’s the atom bomb or what it is. But we don’t have the old snows we used to have. We used to get the snow there and would lie there all winter. And then, it would begin to melt away. And as the poet William Wordsworth said, the snow would fair ill on the top of the bare hill and the ploughboy would be shouting anon–anon.

Well, then I as a lad would begin to find things that I lost last fall. Did you ever have that experience any of you? I’d begin to find things that I had lost last fall, a toy, a ball, a toy gun, or some little thing that I liked, a little wagon that had gone down under the snow that had come maybe when I was asleep and buried everything, I’d begin to find those things. And for a while thereafter the snow got off the ground, I was a rich boy. Same old things, but I had forgotten about them and didn’t know where they were. And maybe I had asked for them and couldn’t find them and nobody knew where they were. They’d been covered all winter by the snow. Nothing fanatical, nothing heretical about that. They were the same old treasures, boys’ treasures not worth five cents in the market, but worth two million to me. And I would find them under the snow and I’d walk on air for a few days discovering my old treasures.

Now that’s all I’m doing here today; I am telling you that which has been snowed under by the deep cold snows of textualism over the last years in our circles. And I’m reminding you only of that which now the snow is beginning to melt and we’re seeing again. They belong to you. They’re your treasures. And they’re worth a million dollars to you. The Holy Spirit illuminates the human spirit and brings it into conscious experience of God and of spiritual realities, so you don’t have to ask somebody do you think I’m saved? Neither do you have to read a book on seven ways you can know your converted. You know by the impartation of knowledge immediately without mediation. It’s not contrary to reason. It is in line with faith. But it is so to speak when the altar flames and when the fire comes.

Now, I’m afraid to a great many people, God is simply the sum of what the Bible teaches about Him plus what we’ve heard about it, what evangelists stories, evangelists have told and tracts that we’ve read. And so we add God up and get a sum at the bottom of the column. And that is what God is to us. He’s the sum of what we’ve learned about Him.

Now, suppose, young lady, that you are just married. Suppose you’ve been married a month. And I don’t know your husband, never met him at all, and you come to me and begin to talk to me about your husband. And usually, it is a pleasant experience when they’ve only been married a month. And you tell me about him, and you show me his picture. And you tell me about his background, how many years he spent in service and where he was and all about him, and you give me his height and his weight and his characteristics, eye color and hair color and all the rest? Well, I add him up. And then you tell me about various facial features and his ears. Now, I couldn’t do it. But a good artist could draw a picture of that man. A good artist could do it. And particularly, he could do it if three or four people came and confirmed each other’s description and added a few details the other one had forgotten. Police reporters do that, police artists, after they’ve had four or five witnesses tell what a criminal looks like. They can draw a picture of the criminal that’s simply astonishingly like the man.

Now, that is the way God is to most people. He is the picture they’ve drawn in their minds as a result of various descriptions they’ve heard about God from other people. But they simply don’t know God himself. But now young lady, let me still address myself to you. You know him in a way that I couldn’t possibly know him. All I know about him is what you’ve told me and what I’ve added up. And your husband, your young husband, is to me the sum at the bottom of the column. But what is he to you? You don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to reply. He is somebody you know. You know him immediately. And I know him only mediated to me through description and conversation and talk and reason.

Now, that’s about all most people know of God, and almost all church people know of God. God is simply a sum at the bottom of the column. They learned from one evangelist that God one time got mad and killed the baby because the father wouldn’t go to the mission field. Well, they put that down. Then they learn from another one that God made a dog bark under somebody when Uncle Peter died in Keokuk and they put that on the column. And then they learned also that the Lord answered prayer for a fellow one time that wanted to beat another fellow out of a business deal. And they put that down. And then they learn maybe that God is very holy, and they put that down inconsistently enough. And after they have learned about all he can know about God from books and songs and sermons and illustrations, and superstition, they add that up and they’ve got their God at the bottom, and they call Him Father.

I wonder if we ought not to send some missionaries from the Baliem Valley to Chicago to tell us Christian peoples want what God is like. I wonder if this God of the rank-and-file church member, this God that has been mediated through bits of information, true and untrue. I wonder if that God isn’t as wrong a god and as surely an idol as the old bulls of Egypt, or the cats that they mummified and worshipped.

My brother, there’s something better than that. In the first place, you can have a proper theological knowledge of God from the Scriptures. And the second place, you can have a direct knowledge of God through the Holy Ghost. Our God is not the sum of what the Bible teaches about Him. God is a great reality Himself. And just as you and I must be satisfied to know that young man by description, and his young wife can know him by warm, living, personal contact and fellowship, so the church people seem contended to know God by description. And you and I can know God by acquaintance, if we only will.

Now, that corresponds to the last degree of knowledge in the last department or compartment of the court in that holy place, there is not even a candlestick. In that holy place, there’s only the Skekinah glory, that awful holy fire between the wings of the cherubim. Thou that dwellest between the wings of the cherubim said the old Psalmist. And the Jews of olden days worshipped Him. They worshipped not a fire, but they worship Him who dwelt there.

And when the high priest once a year went into that place, he knew that fire by its warmth and by its light. And he could look at his hands and see them illuminated by that mysterious fire that had no origin on earth at all. It was not the sun or the moon or stars, for they were shut out. It was totally dark in there. It was not a candlestick, for that was in the compartment they called the Holy Place. This is the Holy of Holies, beyond the second veil. And there only, the light of God shines out. He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. And they knew God, the priest could know God, the shining out of God by direct experience. Do you think those priests were anything but awestruck. Do you think those priests ever came out of there with their chins down and gloomy? Never! They came out of there with faces shining and with eyes like stars. They had looked upon God, the awful, glorious God that fills heaven and earth, and yet, would shine out of the Shekinah between the wings of the cherubim.

Now, what are the conditions? I suppose I should break this up really, and make it a fifth sermon, but I won’t do it. I have kept you this far and I won’t push my luck, as they say. So I’ll talk about, about conditions and in 10 minutes be through. What are the conditions for thus knowing God? Well, of course, the first condition is to repent and be born anew. That’s the first condition. You cannot arrive at any such a deep knowledge of God by nature. The natural man does not know the things of the Spirit of God and to him they are foolishness. There must be a repentance from sin and a turning to God through Jesus Christ, and a believing on Jesus Christ so that your soul is renewed. That’s variously called regeneration, renewal, the new birth, but it’s all the same thing.

Then there must be a renunciation. As long as you try to carry water on both shoulders and walk the fence between heaven and hell, and pleasing God and mammon, and be half in and half out, you will never know anything about God except that which you reason to by logical conclusions. There must be a renunciation of everything that displeases God. There must be a turning to God in fullness of determination, to walk with Him and be His. And then there must be a separation from and a separation unto. We’re separated from everything that is unlike God, and we’re separated unto God Himself, and God must be all in all. Now am I teaching anything that’s too high? Flip your hymnbook open after I pronounce the benediction. Flip your hymn book open and go through the hymns and see whether you don’t sing it there and don’t know what you’re singing about. See if it isn’t there. Sure it’s there.

And then there must be complete confidence in the mediator. Now, there is no approaching into that holy place without the blood of the Mediator. You could approach into the first place by the light of nature. Into the second, only if there had been a sacrifice and into the third only with blood of atonement. So, there must be complete confidence in Jesus Christ, the Mediator. And there must be an anointing of the Spirit of God to illuminate us, and then a waiting on God with our open Bible. The Spirit can sometimes shine upon the Word and bring the truth to light. To cite precepts and promises afford a sanctifying life. That verse precedes the one we sang. Her glory gilds the sacred page. And who was that man? William Cooper, one of the greatest of the English poets, a great Calvinist, a great, I don’t know, Presbyterian, or maybe a Episcopalian, but a great teacher, a man who’s never been considered to be anything but sound in his theology. And he says that the Spirit of God shines upon the Word to bring the truth to light.

My brethren today, there must be, there must be an advance beyond this textualism that looks upon the cold text and says, I believe it. There must be an advance past that that says I believe it, and then moves on to a knowledge of God by the flash of divine light from God, so that I know within my heart and nobody can shake me. If you can be reasoned into salvation, a stronger reasoner can reason you back out of it again. If you know you belong to God by a reasonable conclusion, stronger reasons can cause you to conclude the opposite. But if by faith in the Mediator and the blood that He shed, you come to God and put away everything that’s unlike him and look into His faith with expectation, He will give you a knowledge of Himself and heavenly realities that nobody reasons you into and nobody can reason you out of.

And that’s what we’re missing today. That’s why we’ve got imitators instead of initiators. That’s why we’ve got men and women who follow like sheep instead of men and women who lead like shepherds. And God help us take our Christianity seriously. For me, as far as I’m concerned, it’s either a burning bush or I’ll walk out on the whole thing. No hodgepodge compound of Norman Vincent Peale and David for me. It’s either God everything or God nothing. And God turns around and says to us, either I must be your all or I won’t be your anything. Christ must be Lord all of all, or He will not be Lord at all. Think it over, brethren. It’s a serious thing.

Tags Faith, Holy Spirit, Knowledge

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date September 22, 2024

“The Knowledge of God III”

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The Knowledge of God III

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 8, 1956

The Daily News will have a man here next Sunday morning, to look us over and write us up. They were already here and took some pictures. So, you’d better come dressed tomorrow, next Sunday I mean, in the morning, for the occasion. The brother will be here and they usually are pretty frank about what they say.

Now, these mornings, I have been talking about three degrees of Christian knowledge. This is the third message on the subject and there will be one more next Sunday morning. And I pointed out that there are three degrees of knowledge possible, corresponding to the three divisions of the tabernacle. The first being that of reason. Romans 1:19,20, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them. For God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.

And then, faith, corresponding to the holy place. Through faith, we understand, Hebrews 11. And then corresponding to the Holy of Holies, the knowledge that comes by the revelation of the Spirit. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit, which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches. Comparing spiritual things with spiritual, for the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they’re spiritually discerned.

Now, there we have it, that there are three degrees of knowledge, reason, the outer court, the light of nature; faith, the holy place; and the Holy Ghost, the Holy of Holies. And about the first I talked last week about that kind of knowledge which comes to us by reason, working on data, furnished by the senses: observation, research, experiment, discovery, or just ordinary, practical, common sense, looking around us.

Now, there is a knowledge more excellent than the knowledge gained by reason; and knowledge further in and nearer to God, and it is the knowledge offered to faith. And that is what I want to talk about today. Next Sunday morning, I want to speak about that spiritual knowledge, that knowledge, which is intuitive, which comes by a flash of the light of the Holy Spirit in the human breast.

But now, I point out to you that revealed truth is addressed to faith only. And when I say revealed truth, I mean the Scriptures. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And they gave us revealed truth, which we find in the Old Testament and the New. And it is revealed to faith only. There was an old man of God by the name of Anselm, they call him St. Anselm now, who lived way back in the early days. He was known as one of the church fathers and is a great theologian. And he taught that in religion, faith plays the part played by experience in the things of the world. What experience will teach you of earthly things, faith will teach you of heavenly things.

Now in experience, we know as a result of data furnished us by our famous five senses, by the things of sight and sound and taste and touch and smell. And then we make deductions from these, and we piece them out, and we put them together and we draw conclusions. And we build up philosophies and sciences and common knowledge, farmer knowledge, the knowledge of the farmer sitting on the fence chewing the straw. Or the knowledge of the scientist in the laboratory, the knowledge of the philosopher in the library. All of it is only knowledge which has been gained through the five senses and then taken and compounded and made into other knowledge, which we drew from that knowledge. And that sound badly confused, but it’s not so badly confused as we go along.

Now, for that kind of knowledge, no faith is necessary, absolutely none at all. Let us reduce it to its simplest form. A little boy feels in his pocket and feels that he has marbles there. And it suddenly strikes him, he wants to know how many. So he takes them out into the palm of his hand and laboriously counts them, and finds he has nine. Now, he has counted his marbles, and he knows he has nine. Now it doesn’t take any faith, and it isn’t guesswork. It’s just knowledge gained by observation. He has counted them. And he knows how many he has.

Or a jeweler will test to see whether that metal before him is gold or not. Or, whether that thing he holds in his hand is glass or diamond. He has certain tests which he puts them to. And when they have met those tests or failed to meet them, he knows exactly what he has in his hand, whether gold or something else, whether diamond or glass. And it doesn’t take any faith. It doesn’t call upon faith at all. He knows. He’s found out by reason. He’s tested it. Experience has taught him and he doesn’t have to believe anything or take anybody’s word for anything. It isn’t a question of character or promise, it’s a question of finding out for himself.

That is the knowledge which reason has, or the naturalist observes the habits of, say, the ringneck pheasant. And after he has spent half a lifetime, and some of them actually have, observing this or that bird, and writing their observations in a book, he doesn’t have to have faith, he knows. He’s watched them until he knows how they act. He knows all about them. Or the chemist analyzing some sort of liquid to determine what it is. Finally, after putting it to careful tests, will be able to write down on a piece of paper, the formula he knows what he has there.

Now that doesn’t take faith. The simple fact is the data that reason furnishes is not addressed to faith at all. The scientist doesn’t have to have any faith unless you want to actually stretch it thin and say that he has to have faith that everything will remain as it is. Well, if you call that faith, then that’s faith. But that isn’t what I mean when I say faith. I mean something else as I shall point out.

Now we are discovering more and more facts about nature. And to do so men have worked out more and more, and finer and finer techniques. And we’re getting to know more and more about everything. And faith is not called upon. A man who spends his lifetime examining and counting and weighing and measuring and analyzing. That man doesn’t have to have faith. He finds out. He could put it down. He knows. He tests it. What a man has, why does he have hope for it. And what he knows by observation, why does he have to have any faith? Why is he trusting in anybody’s character, yet he doesn’t. He doesn’t have to.

But now my brethren, there is a body of knowledge, and that body of knowledge is too high for the human mind to reach. There is no technique by which it can be gotten at. It is super sensible in that it cannot be reached by any of the senses. Simply stated, it cannot be smelled nor tasted nor touched nor heard nor felt. And why, because we cannot through our senses get any data about it naturally. There is nothing that we can do with it. It’s just out there. It’s beyond us. Otherwise, God would not have had to send holy men and say to them, thus saith the Lord. There would have had to be no divine revelation. There is that revelation to reason. It is the heavens which declare the glory of God and the firmament which showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. It is the sun and the moon and the stars and all nature, they are addressed to reason. And so that is a revelation addressed to reason.

But the revelation addressed to faith is way above that and far beyond it and deeper down and further out and beyond so that reason cannot get to it. And that is the body of knowledge which we have no technique to discover, and which is addressed to faith alone. You either believe it or else you don’t. And there’s no way of proving it. Although men have labored lifetimes to try to prove it. But it is known to faith, and it receives its data, not by examination or research or observation, but by a direct statement of God Almighty. It is a revelation handed down and given. It is a statement made, or a series of statements made.

Now what are these data? What are these truths? I can’t hope to name all of them in one sermon. It would take two weeks to do it. But I can only, I shall name twelve if I get that far, just as samples and the major truths, but certainly not all of them. For instance, there’s the Trinity of the Godhead. Now, after we have had it revealed to us that God is a Trinity, then reason can go to work on that revelation, and can try to show that we knew it all the time. And there are philosophers and theologians who do that very thing. They try to show that the Trinity is revealed everywhere in nature. But until God Almighty revealed it in the Bible, nobody dreamed of it, which ought to be proof enough that it’s not revealed in nature. Nature revealed certain truths to reason, but the Trinity is not one of them. The Trinity is revealed to faith.

And it’s only by faith that we know there’s a Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. It’s only by faith that we’re Trinitarians and not Unitarians. It is only that we believe what God has said, that we can sing, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so that you either believe or you don’t. And you have no way of confirming it. We sometimes try to illustrate it so to understand it and break it down a little bit. And we show how water might consist of mist and rain and ice. And we show how man has his three dimensions. And we try to explain it, but we had to have it handed to us, ready made by divine revelation, or we never could have arisen to know it.

And then that man is made in the image of God. How could we know that? This is one of the sweetest doctrines in the Bible that God made man in His own image, in the image of God and likeness of God made he him. And I believe this with all my heart, but who would ever have thought of that? Who could have smelled that out, or thought it out or heard it or felt it or sensed or tasted it? How could it have yielded to the instrument of the scientist or to the prying mind of the philosopher? No, we had to be told that man was made in the image of God.

The Greek philosopher said that man showed that he was born to think and to practice virtue. And therefore, back of it all, there must have been a God who thinks and who is virtuous, but that’s about as close as reason ever got to it. That man was made in the image of God is a truth completely hidden to reason but gloriously revealed to faith.

And then there’s the fall of man. Now, how did we get here? Revelation tells us that we got here by creation of God as men, and then that we fell. Now, that’s the way God says it happened. And when we deny faith or have no faith, then we try to reason it out.

Some years ago, I read a book. What was this man’s name? He was a famous scientist. For the moment. I can’t recall. He’s gone now, but he was quite popular 20-25 years ago. {William J. Fielding} And he called it, The Caveman Within Us. And he denied divine revelation, but he began with reason. And he said, man, is two kinds of being. Now, I’m paraphrasing what he said certainly, but giving the gist of it. He said, Man is good and bad. He has in him so much of good, but he also is capable of being so terribly bad.

Now, he said, here’s the reason. We have come up from the beast by evolution. And we are slowly purging out the beast out of us, but we haven’t gotten rid of it yet. And the good in us is that toward which we’re developing, but the bad in this is the caveman, the beast, the animal that’s still there. And he said, now all of this growling and snarling and lying and violence and impurity and gluttony and drinking, he says, this is the result of the caveman. The old beast that hasn’t yet been purged out of us. But the love and kindness and mercy and patience and peace, that’s the good thing toward which we’re moving.

Now, isn’t it strange that he said the same thing that Paul said, only he said it upside down. Paul said that we were originally made in the image and likeness of God. Genesis says it and Paul accepts it, but that we failed because of one man’s sin. And that caveman within us is the fallen man inside of us. Not the man that crawled up but the man that fell down. But observation shows the same thing, that man is both good and bad. That he’s capable of love and kindness and self-sacrifice, or a nasty ill-tempered abuse and swearing and gluttony.

So, reason tries to explain it and comes up with a caveman. But revelation doesn’t explain it. Revelation sets it forth as a shining light and says, man sinned. And the day he sinned, he died spiritually, and that’s what’s wrong with him. And so, death came upon all men. And that caveman within us is no caveman at all. It’s simply the old fallen man. You’ve got to take your choice now my brethren, either try to reason it out or accept it by faith. I accept as a datum of knowledge that man is a fallen creature.

And then again, the doctrine that God so loved the world. How are you going to figure that out? Is it obvious to us? Is it obvious to reason that God so loves the world when the lightning will flash down and kill fifteen children picnicking? Is it obvious to us that God so loved the world, when the great ocean will swallow a ship with 900 people on it? Is it obvious to us that God so loved the world when the desert will swallow up a band of foolish travelers and let them die and be eaten by buzzards on the hot surface of the sandy desert?

Is it obvious that God so loved the world when that sweet woman, beautiful to look at, suddenly twisted out of shape with polio or cancer? No, reason doesn’t tell us that God so loved the world. Reason tells us that the God who made the world cares for it after a fashion. Reason goes that far. But reason never said, God so loved the world. That was a revelation from God, my brethren. You and I have heard this until it’s old stuff to us. And we imagine that everybody ought to know it.

You know, there are people, our good friend Ed may be in Baliem Valley today. He was in Hollandia yesterday, arrived there. And if he’s gotten into the Baliem Valley today, or as soon as he gets in, he will be trying to tell those people that God so loved the world. And at first, they won’t believe it, for they haven’t believed it. But when it slowly dawns on them that the God that made the world loves them, then we may be making some converts there among the Danis. But that will be wonderful news to them. To Ed, it’s just old stuff that he heard when he was a little kid. Little toothless Ed learned that when he was in Sunday school.

And so, it’s common to him and to you and me. But oh, what a revelation to those that never heard it before. God loves mankind. God loves the world. And in spite of the lightning and the sandy desert and the ocean and the wind and the flood, God loved mankind to give His Son.

That’s revelation, brethren. And that is a datum of knowledge which is given to our faith, not to our reason. Hymnology has been wondering about it ever since it was first revealed. How can it be? Oh, how can it be the hymns all cry? Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound? Oh, depths of mercy, can it be, God left that gated ajar for me? Brother McAffee and I have amused ourselves a bit in a spiritual way by looking at the old Methodist hymnal and finding out how many hymns start out, oh, and an. And can it be, and oh, the love of God. Why that’s revelation, my brethren. Reason never could get to it. You can’t smell that truth. No scientist can get that into his test tube. That’s a revelation from God to faith.

And then, that Christ was virgin born. I shudder deep in my heart when men talk about parthenogenesis and try to show how there are certain circuits possible in certain low levels of nature, to bring about offspring from a mother only as it is. Oh, my brethren, this is not something to be reasoned about. This is a burning bush to be knelt before. We get down on our knees and say, I believe in God the Father Almighty and in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord was born of the Virgin Mary. And we kneel there with our faces hidden and cry, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. But only the man who doesn’t understand, tries to understand. Only the man of unreason tries to reason in that holy place. There are times when reason is an affront to God Almighty. There are times when the brazen mind enters the sanctuary and tries to understand that which is ineffable and inscrutable. And when it enters there, it’s an insult to God.

So, the man who tries to explain the virgin birth, is insulting God Almighty. There’s only one thing to do before that miracle and marvel and mystery, and that is to cry, my Lord and my God, Thou knowest. And that Jesus Christ’s blood which was shed on the cross, saves men from sin. There is a revelation to faith, and we never should try to explain it. When men get up to preach about the chemistry of the blood, I want to grab my hat and get out of there so fast. Trying to explain how the blood of Jesus Christ can cleanse a man from sin. I sat one time and shuddered while a man preached on the chemistry of the blood.

Another man had written a book on the chemistry of the blood. One man is dead and the other still alive. And I wouldn’t hesitate to say bluntly that I don’t believe that any man ought to try to take it on himself to explain by natural processes, how the blood of Jesus Christ can atone for human sin. Never, never my brethren! The moment I can understand it, I can say I will arise and be like the Most High. I will exalt my throne equal to the throne of God. The devil tempted mankind when he said, thou shalt be as gods knowing. And the desire to know what was never intended to be understood, and to explain what can only be known by faith, has crushed the church from Augustine to the present hour.

So, how the blood of Jesus cleanses me, I do not know, but oh, I believe it. I believe it. In that hour, which may come to me as it may come to you, when everybody knows, and we know that we’ve only a little time. And tomorrow won’t matter because tomorrow we’ll be with God. On the eve of our coronation, we won’t say, get down that book and read the chapter about corpuscles. Get me down that book and read about the serum in which the white and the red corpuscles float. I want to have a little more assurance before I die. Oh no, no brethren, we look away from all man’s puny bird brain. And we look away to the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. And we’ll say the blood of His Son cleanses us from all sin. Thank God, I know it, I know it.

The old dying bishop, they said to him, Bishop, what have you to say? And he said, I have only this to say, that now that I’m about to go, my theology has been reduced to one text. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That’s it, my brethren.

And that Christ rose the third day. I wonder why the children of God won’t let this alone, trying to prove the possibility of the resurrection. Trying to show how men can be raised from the dead, can never be. We possess no technique to prove that Christ rose from the dead. And even if scientists could get to a point where they could restore human life after death, there will never be, but granted for a moment, it might be. Still, it would be no proof that a man, 2,000 years ago, rose from the dead the third day. That’s not a doctrine to be defended, that’s a doctrine to be proclaimed. And the Spirit of God never witnesses to defense. He witnesses to proclamation. The gospel evangel is the gospel of assertion and proclamation, never, never is a defense or apology.

So, it is told to us by the great God Almighty, that this Jesus Christ who walked in Galilee was virgin-born and that He was God and that He died for our sins and His blood cleanses from sin. That He rose from the dead the third day, and that He now sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. There isn’t any way to prove that. Not all the illustrations, not all the science films, you can quote that if you want to. They know what I think of their science films, my good friends down at 108th, whatever it is. Not all your scientific films will ever prove anything except to reason. It’ll help you to have a little more knowledge out in the outer court, out in the light of nature, out where Mohamedans can be and Roman Catholics and all the rest. Out there where there is no Holy Ghost and no faith. For no proof ever helps anybody’s faith from the beginning of the world. Never.

And if tomorrow morning, if God should take me aside and surround me by the angels, and prove to my intellect that Christ had been risen from the dead, it couldn’t confirm my faith at all. I already believe it with everything inside of me. God said it and I believe it. It’s a datum of knowledge given to faith. And faith grasps it and says, amen.

Back to Anselm again, in religion, faith takes the place that experience takes in nature. Just as a scientist can measure a star and know exactly how large it is and how fast it’s moving–and that’s by experience–so I know that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that’s my faith. I know my sins are gone. That’s a revelation of God to my heart, revelation of God to my faith. I know that, but I can’t prove it. It may be that it’s only gone underground. Reason would say, oh I know what’s happened to you. You got yourself all worked up and you had a psychological explosion and your sins went underground, and your sense of self-accusation and sin-consciousness just went underground. It’s still there in your subconscious. Not. That isn’t where it is Brother. I will bury your sins in the sea of My forgetfulness and will remember them no more against thee forever. That’s where they are. They have not gone underground, they’ve gone under sea, the sea of God’s forgetfulness. I believe that, and I can die with that. I can live with that. And I can face eternity with that.

A man’s resurrection from the dead. Go to almost any library and you can run onto a lot of books which aim to prove that there’s a life beyond this life. Some dear old widow, God bless her, she goes to Madame Zelia and they go through certain crossing of the palm with a nice bill and then a few eerie shrugs and the light goes out and Papa speaks from the other world. And it’s funny how dumb Papa always sounds. Everybody that dies gets so dumb, they always say the same thing. Do not worry. I am at peace. All is well. Then there’s a click, and the circuit is cut off. And they don’t hear from Papa, but she worries and goes back and pay some more, and he says the same dumb thing again. Nobody ever yet returns to say it’s hot here. Nobody ever yet said I saw Jesus. They always say, all is well. I’m at peace. Do not worry. It’s like flying to Florida and sending a telegram back to your worrying wife saying, we made it. Don’t worry.

Well now brethren, if you want to place your hope of immortality on that kind of silly business, you may. But I have something better than that. Listen, what I read about here. Listen, for our friend Paul, God bless him, he was just about to go. He’d finished his course, and here’s what he said. Jesus Christ was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began but is now was made manifest by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. That’s it. Then rest my long-divided heart, fixed on this blissful center rest and don’t bother Madame Zelia. She doesn’t know anything about it either. And when she comes to die, she’ll howl like a banshee and all her supposed knowledge will fail.

Man’s resurrection and Christ’s triumph and all of eschatology, all that lies out there. And that big ugly word eschatology, which mean future events. All of that I take by faith. I believe it will be. I believe that righteousness will triumph, that God Almighty will have his way. The sovereign purposes of God will be fulfilled. That Jesus Christ will sit and the earth will be His footstool and heaven will be His throne. And that the Jew will be back in Palestine. The church will be sitting as a bride of the Lamb. And the nations of the earth will be walking in peace and every man shall sit under his own vine and pick trees and none will make afraid for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. I believe it. Do you? That’s a revelation to faith. Reason can’t enter there. There’s the candlesticks, burning brightly. That’s revelation. It’s not God, it’s revelation of God. And there’s the incense table that sends up spiral prayer. And there’s the shewbread which is the Lord’s Supper. That’s in that holy place. No night light of reason enters there, it is faith.

And so, Faith is an organ of knowledge. Remember, reason is an organ of knowledge. Faith is an organ of knowledge, and the Holy Spirit. It is hard to say an organ of knowledge, but the human spirit is an organ of knowledge that to which the Holy Spirit can impart what He wants us to know. Now, these are facts that are known. And all the efforts to harmonize science and the gospel message is a tacit proof that the attempted harmonizers are not believers at all. They’re reasoners. They are rationalists.

And there’s a school of thought which has sprung up in the last fifteen years in America, and they’re busy proving it that Christianity is scientifically sound and philosophically correct. I believe it’s all that, but we can’t prove that it is. And the moment we start proving it is, faith lies down and dies. God doesn’t have to prove to me that He’s true. He doesn’t have to. He tells me. I believe it. If a man trusts his wife, he doesn’t have a detective running around after her proving anything. He trusts her. I trust God Almighty. I don’t have to have the detective reason nosing around to see whether God is telling the truth or not. I know He’s telling the truth.

There is further-in knowledge, and we’ll talk about that next Sunday. I hope you can be back. It is the knowledge beyond faith. It is the direct knowledge which through faith, the Holy Spirit imparts to the human spirit. And I don’t think you’ve ever heard a sermon on that, probably in fundamental circles in your life, and yet it is the common belief of the church fathers and is written into our hymns and our books of devotion. So, I hope you can be back next week.

Tags Faith, Knowledge, Reason

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date September 15, 2024

“The Basis for True Conversion”

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The Basis for True Conversion

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 26, 1954

Now please turn to the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to John, John’s Gospel, sixth chapter, verse 45. It is written in the Prophets, and they shall all be taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto me, verse 44.

No man can come to me except the Father which has sent Me draw him. And then verse 37, all that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me, and him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.

Now, this will be, I think, of all the sermons that I have preached and may yet preach on the book of John, this will be the most difficult. It will be the most difficult to preach because it deals with the deep profound of Bible truth. And it will be the most difficult to understand because it may sound self-contradictory.

And to use the language of Peter, it could easily be that the unlearned and the unstable might rest these words to their own destruction. But I notice that even though Peter said that he didn’t recommend that we forego reading Paul. He said Paul’s there and go ahead and trust God somehow that it won’t happen, but it’s potential dynamite for the people who come in the wrong spirit. I think the same thing might have been said about all the Scriptures, but it was said on Peter of Paul’s writings, and I would apply the same passage to the text before us tonight.

Now in what I want to bring to you, there will be many familiar truths appearing. But you know I think of the Bible like a loom with, say, about a hundred threads, each of a different color, each of a different color, shades of the same color, but distinct from each other in their shades and tone, about a hundred and no more than a hundred. And yet using that same loom and using no more than that hundred, and I might easily have cut it down to half a hundred; using no more than that hundred or half hundred threads, each of a different color, there can be produced in that loom, tapestries and rugs of the most exquisite beauty of shades and richness of tone, such as might make it worthy to hang in the palace of kings.

So, in the Scriptures, whether it be a simple pastor in some country church or whether it be some great world known preacher in some cathedral, if he is true to the scriptures, he has only about, I’ve said, a hundred threads to work with. They are the familiar threads of Christian doctrine. And no matter what he’s preaching on, and no matter to whom he’s preaching, no matter where he gets his text, and no matter what passage he’s expounding, he’ll always be using those same threads. But out of those threads, the Holy Spirit weaves the gorgeous tapestry that hangs in the church of the living God and makes it not only a safe haven for sinners, but a place of charming beauty for the saints.

Now, we notice here that nine times Jesus in the passages is read, nine times he refers to the Father. And He refers to Him in such a context as to present Him as Sovereign. And I want to talk for a little while about the Sovereign Father, the Sovereign Lord. For it always must be kept in mind that the Father was not incarnated. It was the Son who was incarnated. The Father and Jehovah are the same. Jehovah and the Son are not the same persons.

So that it is never proper to say, and right here I’m throwing a tiny little “zoop” bomb into the neatly made-up theology of the average fundamentalist, for I am myself a fundamentalist on the edges, and certainly an evangelical all the way through.

But there are those who say that the Jehovah of the Old Testament became incarnated in the New Testament, which is false. It’s bad theology. It isn’t so. The Father is the Jehovah of the Old Testament, but Jesus Christ is the Son, the second person of the Trinity. It was not God the Sovereign Father who became flesh and dwelt among us. It was Jesus Christ the Son who became flesh and dwelt among us. There’s a distinction there.

You say, how do I prove it? Well, take such a passage as this, Jehovah said unto my Lord, sit thou on My right hand. Find that in the 110th Psalm. Jehovah said unto my Lord, who was David’s Lord? Jesus. Who is it that sits at the right hand of the Father? Jesus. So that Jehovah said unto Jesus, sit thou on My right hand. Jehovah the Father said unto the Son, sit on My right hand.

That text alone ought to make it clear, but you’ll find it throughout all the Bible. You’ll find the Sovereign Father mentioned here, and it was the Son that became incarnated, not the Sovereign Father, Jehovah the Great I Am. And yet the Son was as much Sovereign and as much I Am as the Father. For as I have said over and over again from this pulpit, the Three are One. And what can be postulated about the Father can be postulated about the Son. And what can be said about the Father and the Son can be said also about the Spirit.

I received a letter this last week from a Presbyterian brother out somewhere on the California coast, and he ended up by saying something of this effect, God bless you and may the Lord the Spirit bless you and your ministry. I like that. I’d never had that in any letter that I remember, nor I’d never seen it in print except in the book of 2 Corinthians.

The Bible has no hesitation at all in calling the Spirit the Lord. He has no hesitation in calling Jesus the Lord, and he has no hesitation in calling the Father the Lord. For as the old creed says, the Father is Lord and the Son is Lord and the Holy Ghost is Lord, yet there are not three Lords but one Lord. This is also very wonderfully beautiful to me.

I preached one time in a Bible conference this summer on the Trinity, and when I was through, the man who ran the shebang said to me, shaking his head, he said, Brother, when you preach thus on the Trinity, it makes it sound as if there were three gods.

Well, I don’t understand how anybody can be so infinitely and exquisitely plain dumb as not to understand English when it’s preached in their presence, and when I have explained and explained that there is one God and that He is of three persons, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, yet there are not three gods but one God.

The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Ghost is Lord, yet there are not three Lords but one Lord. The Father is sovereign, and the Son is sovereign and the Holy Ghost is sovereign, yet there are not three sovereign gods but one sovereign God. That doesn’t sound like three gods to me. That sounds like one God in three persons. And so, we have the Father spoken about here, the Son is speaking about the Father, and He calls him nine times here, the Father, and calls Him and puts Him, I say, in the context of the sovereign, Most High Ruler, and God of heaven, earth, and hell.

Now, I want to talk a little bit about sovereignty.

I preached a sermon several years ago on the sovereignty of God, and if I ever get around to it and God ever delivers me from little duties that I can write my book on the attributes of God devotionally considered, I want to deal with the sovereignty of God. And when I do, I will have the Calvinists on one shoulder and the Arminians on the other pecking away at my poor, rapidly balding head. But tonight, I want to talk a little bit about the sovereignty of God and show you what it means as applied to God the Father.

Well, now I give you a definition. I like to give definitions, I like to define, because if I use a word and I mean it one way and when you hear it you mean it another way, I haven’t communicated with you at all. I might as well have been talking Sanskrit or Welsh. So that if I use a word and you don’t know what I mean by the word, not that you are not as well educated as I am, but merely that you may give a different meaning to a word. So when I use the word sovereign, I think it well that we define what we mean by the word sovereign.

So, I want to give it to you simply like this. I don’t borrow it from any book. It comes out of my own heart, and I trust out of the scriptures that God’s sovereignty is that by virtue of which He is free to do always as He pleases and fulfill all His goodwill without hindrance. That’s sovereignty. That turns God loose in his universe, free to do as He pleases in heaven, earth, and hell, and to have His final way and to carry out his eternal purposes to perfect completion in the time to come. Now that’s sovereignty. That’s what it means and that’s all it means or at least that’s an outline of all that it means.

Now God’s will, when I say that the sovereignty of God means that God is free to carry out His will, then we come to, what is the will of God? And I point out something to you here which you may not be familiar with or hear some places by oversight and that is that the will of God is on two levels. There is the primary will of God and the secondary will of God. The primary will of God is the sovereign purpose of God whereby He has His way always and always succeeds in getting everything He wills to have done. That’s the primary will of God.

Now, the primary will of God touches all of God’s eternal purposes. I’m a great believer in the eternal purposes of God.

They talk about our State Department. I saw a cartoon. You won’t think I’m getting political with you, but I saw a cartoon that while I don’t like the cartoonist, I had to admit he had something there. It showed a picture of Dulles, the Secretary of State under Eisenhower, our present Secretary of State, our peripatetic, traveling Secretary of State. It showed his desk there and here was he just disappearing on his way to catch a plane. He had his briefcase in his hand and one thing he had not, he had no head on. His head was still on his desk and his head was saying, well, you can’t blame a fellow for forgetting something sometimes. Here he was hustling off, but he lost his head.

Now that of course was the politicians, the political cartoonist way of saying that he was a no good and that he didn’t know where he was going. Brethren, I think he may be a good man, but you know, I wonder if he knows what it’s all about. And I think that these brethren, these men are all opportunists, and they are like a mother with 14 sets of twins trying to keep them in line. She never can predict what anybody’s going to do and the best she can hope is to block something when she sees it start. Junior starts over this way to knock over a quart of milk and she grabs him and blocks that and another one starts over here to wreck a mirror, and she grabs him, and she spends her blessed life just blocking, but she never knows ahead of time what she’s going to do. The best she can ever hope to do is to watch these, how many did I say, 14, that’d be 28 kids, to watch these 28 kids and get to them before they get it done.

Now brethren, my dear friends, without any political meaning whatsoever, that’s where dear Harold is. He has no more purpose in what he’s doing than the boy down the street, but he’s just hoping if he sees a commie jump out, he’ll block him and rush there and forget his head, but get to him in time and so we have a foreign policy of watch them and then jump and stop them before they get it done.

Ah brethren, if I thought God Almighty was like that, I’d fold my Bible, shake hands with my friend McAfee and leave the whole business and say what’s the use of being a Christian when all God does is stand up there nervously watching for the devil to make the next move and then blocking him.

Oh no, my brother, this is not a football game. God Almighty is the Sovereign Father and before the hills in order stood and received her frame, God had it all planned and in His primary will He is carrying it out and He will do His will and heaven and earth and hell someday will bow and declare that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God’s eternal purpose, the glory of God the Father.

So that’s why I can be as relaxed as I can ever get because I’m not worried about the future. I’m not scared because I know it’s going to work out all right. God has a primary will, and I can see now that I got two sermons instead of one but I’m hoping that maybe the people will hold on.

But brethren, God has a purpose for the universe. He has a purpose for the earth. He has a purpose for the human race. He has a purpose for the church, and He has a purpose for Israel, His people. And every one of those has a specific interlocking purpose which God Himself brought out of His own triune heart before the world was.

When there wasn’t a cloud in the sky nor drop of water in the ocean or the ocean bed there, nor a star in heaven or an angel beside the throne, when, as the poet said, thou didst live and love alone without creation. God had it all planned.

So never worry about God being afraid and rushing in and hurrying off and grabbing a long-distance phone and trying to get somebody blocked. Nah, God wouldn’t stoop to that kind of child’s play. His eternal thoughts move on His undisturbed affairs. And His primary will means that He is carrying on His purposes. That’s God’s primary will.

Then there’s a secondary will and that secondary will is that God has given people a will and He’s given them a right even to exercise that will even if one opposes the will of God. I wonder if we could illustrate it like this. I wonder if we could say that the primary will of God is like a great ship. It pulls slowly and majestically away from Pier 39 and starts out down toward the ocean, down the great mouth of the Hudson. Liverpool is its destination. The ship’s papers, the captain, whoever handles them, has the ship’s papers there, Liverpool. He’s responsible to get that ship in and have her pulled in and tied up at the dock in Liverpool in five days. About, I think it takes five days, does it? Or six for the great ships?

Well, all right. He’s going over there and he’s the captain in charge of that ship. So the purpose is that that ship should leave New York at such a day, pull into Liverpool at such a day. That’s the purpose. Now that purpose is going to be fulfilled. And the owner of the ship, all that are on board the ship in the capacity of crew and the captain and all the rest, that’s their purpose. And they’ll carry that purpose out.

But now in the meantime, there’s a great deal on that ship that doesn’t know a thing about that purpose. A little baby may be tumbling around over the deck and a weary mother may be lying out there trying to get a little sun. And a fat old boy that can barely see over may be playing the shuffleboard. And there may be rats running about the ship and sailors playing cards and people just naturally doing as they please. They’re not paying any attention to the purpose of the captain. He knows what the purpose is. His primary will is to get that ship into the dock at last.

But the secondary will is you can do as you please as long as you’re decent on board and I won’t bother you. So, God has a primary will. It is to bring the ship of his purpose to the ultimate goal, to the harbor. In the meantime, the rats run all over the ship. Brother, we’re alive with them today.

And somebody says, if God is God, why doesn’t He stop this? God knows where He’s taking the ship, and all of His purposes will be worked out. But in the meantime, His secondary will allows certain people to oppose His will, to be careless of His will, to be ignorant of His will, or to go directly against His will.

Now, if you were on board a ship and it was moving at so many knots an hour due east, and you decided to buck that ship and you’d start in the prowl, that’s the front of the ship, and walk to the stern. And you’d say to yourself, I’m not going, I’m not going, but you’d be going all right. Don’t imagine you wouldn’t. You’d just be getting some exercise. But even though you determinedly walked in an opposite direction, the great old ship would be carrying you there.

So, we have our Hitlers and our Mussolinis and our Stalins and all the rest of them, our Mao Zedong and our Zhou Enlai, we have them all. We have them all around over Chicago. They’re walking against the direction of the ship. But don’t you think for a second God won’t have his way with them at last. It’ll be heaven or hell. Heaven for those who do His will and believe His Son, and hell for those that don’t. God is in charge of His great purpose, and while He allows people to have a lot of freedom, He still will fulfill His purposes in that day.

Now, I want to give my definition again. I’ve given this definition in colleges and before people who are supposed to know the difference, and I’ve never had it challenged. Nobody’s ever come to me and said, how come? And yet I never read it anywhere. I don’t know whether it’s in print. It ought to be.

But here’s our difficulty, you see. If God is sovereign and has His will and can’t be thwarted, then how can man be free? There it is. You put a Methodist over here and a Presbyterian over here, and you ask a Presbyterian, how can it be? He says, Man isn’t free. God’s sovereign. Ask a Methodist, and he says, God isn’t sovereign. Man’s free, and they can’t get together. But I don’t think, I don’t see why they shouldn’t link up, because I believe in both the freedom of man and the sovereignty of God, and I’ll show you how it is.

God’s sovereignty is His freedom always to have His own way and to do His will. And man’s freedom is his right to say no to God’s will and to go the other direction. How then can you bring them together? You bring them together like this, that when God in his sovereign freedom created the heaven and the earth and all things that are therein and made man on the earth and put a soul within him, He said in His sovereign freedom, now to man I bequeath a limited freedom, and the right to oppose Me within limits. And I give you that right, and I hand it to you. Now use it. Use your own free will. I sovereignly declare that it’s My will that you shall have your will.

So, when man rises against God, he is exercising the free will which God sovereignly gave him. And when Judas Iscariot turned his back on God and sold the son of God for 30 pieces of silver, he was fulfilling this much of God’s will, that he was using the freedom God gave him, ladies and gentlemen. And so instead of canceling out the sovereignty of God, he was only using that limited freedom which God sovereignly had given him.

So, when I refuse to obey God, I am only doing what God has sovereignly given me the right to do. That’s God’s secondary will. He allows the rats to play over the ship and the winds to beat the across its deck, but He’s going to carry her through to the harbor, nevertheless. And that doesn’t mean that everybody’s to be saved. It only means that those are to be saved who are repentant and believe in Jesus Christ and are born again.

But it does mean that the overall purpose of God will be sovereignly fulfilled, and that man in his freedom has the right to make his own little choices on the little deck of that moving vessel. And if he makes choices that are contrary to the will of God, it’s because God said, son, you’re free to do it if you want to. I give you that freedom. So when a man raised his fist against God, he is not thwarting the will of God. He’s fulfilling God’s gift to him which made him free.

Now if that’s as badly confused as I’m afraid it is, come back next week and we’ll see what we can do. But I’ve never had that challenged. Nobody’s ever said, now wait a minute here, that isn’t true, it can’t be true. And I have given this little definition of mine before a great many people and before a great many theologians. So that’s what I mean when I say it that the sovereign Father is sovereignly carrying on His will.

Now, it says here, they shall all be taught of God. You see, men are in the hand of God and subject to the sovereign disposal of God’s primary will. Thine they were, said Jesus, thine they were, and Thou gave them to Me, and they have believed that Thou did send Me.

So, God deals with the men whom he has created. He deals with them as fallen creatures. And how does he deal with them? He deals by testing them and teaching them and instructing them.

They shall all be taught of God, Jesus said. And so, He teaches and tests and instructs. Now this is the Sovereign Father who does this, and He does it with these creatures by virtue of their creaturehood and His creator hood, not as Christians, but by virtue of their being creatures of His hand and beings whom He has created.

And so, God teaches and tests and instructs. They shall be all taught of God. How does God teach and test and instruct sinners? By the light of intelligence, working on natural creation, plus moral conscience, plus the mysterious presence of the Logos.

My brethren, I don’t know in all Christian theology anything that shuts my mouth tighter and makes my head bow more quickly and silences me when I am not forced to speak in the Lord’s name as I am now, but that makes me bow my head more quickly than the thought of the mysterious Logos, the Word that was in the world before Bethlehem, before Mary was born, before Abraham, before Adam, before oceans and seas, before stars and planets, that was in His universe. And when stars and planets and oceans and seas and creatures came into being, the mysterious Logos, the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world was present, instructing, teaching. And wherever there is a moral creature, that Holy One is there. This is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

And in Romans 2 we are told of that strange light, that strange moral knowledge that men have who have never heard of the law of God as given by Moses or the Scriptures as given in the New Testament. And so, God goes among men. They shall all be taught of God. And God goes among men, and He tests them, I say, and they are tested in a hundred ways for their basic reverence.

Now, there was Esau and there was Saul. What is the matter with Esau? Find a bad thing Esau did. He never did a bad thing. At least, I can’t find anything evil that he did. He got hungry and sold his birthright, but that was a bowl of soup, no more immoral act there, a man of porridge. I can’t find anything bad that Esau ever did.

But God was testing Esau for basic reverence and didn’t find it there and found that Esau was akin to the red clay, and they named him Edom red clay. He had no side of his soul open to heaven. The window at the top of his soul was shut and the blind pulled. There was no window open toward God, no reverence there, nothing basically reverential. Look at Saul, great strapping tall fellow, and the beginning of his life was all right.

But there was something wrong with Saul in that he was not basically a reverent man. God, before he ever brings a man to Jesus, before he ever presents Jesus to a man, God tests man. Now this is the doctrine you don’t hear, but brethren, if it isn’t here, and you prove it isn’t here, I’ll buy you the best chicken dinner at Walgreens. It’s here all right. They shall all be taught of God.

I better read my text a few more times. They shall all be taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto Me. No man can come to Me except the Father which has sent Me draw him. And all that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me. And him that cometh to Me I will unknow as cast out. And there you have the mysterious working of the Sovereign God over the souls of men.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is to my mind one of the most awe-inspiring thoughts in the Bible, that before I ever heard the name of Jesus, before the Holy Ghost ever presented Him to me as Savior, the Father was dealing with me, the Sovereign Father. They shall all be taught of God. And He was determining and finding out whether I was a basically reverent man, whether I was a greasy Esau, fond of the sticky, slippery red earth, or whether I was a man with the topside of my soul open so God could look down and I could look up.

And then God looks for humility in a man. The Sovereign Father goes among men, and as He’s going among you tonight, and looking for humility, and seeing if it is there. And He’s looking for that hidden something that I have said the topside of his soul is uncovered. I don’t say that saves any man. I know it doesn’t. But I only say that there are some people that God never preaches to.

It is a great mistake, ladies and gentlemen, to believe that every man who has heard the gospel has been evangelized. It is a mistake to believe that every man that has heard a Christian or heard a sermon has been talked to by God. There are some people to whom God can’t talk. Their ears hear, but having ears they hear not, and having hearts they cannot obey. They shall all be tested of God. They shall all be taught of God.

And the Sovereign Father who created them before He sent His Son to redeem them, as their Creator, is testing them to see which ones will go to His Son. And as many as hear the Father and are taught, they come to Jesus Christ, and He doesn’t cast them out, but He gives them eternal life, and no man can pluck them out of His hand.

Now, we make a mistake, and that is we urge the claims of Christ upon men that have never heard God. They are not prepared for Christ. They will not believe, and they could not if they wanted to. No man can come unto Me except the Father drawn. And he that has heard of the Father will come.

But, oh, the millions that hear the gospel without hearing the Father! The millions that hear the Truth without ever being affected by the Truth! But our trouble is that we rush in with our tract and try to ram Christianity down the throat of a person that has never had a moral preparation for it. There has been no evidence of humility there. There has been no repentance there. There has been no fearing and trembling there. There has been no willingness to break with the world and serve God.

But in our mistaken zeal, we try to make converts, and then we wonder why they backslide, or why the level of Christianity is so tragically low. It is so low because we have forgotten part of our Bible. We have forgotten that the Bible says they shall all be taught of God, that God deals with men as Creator before He deals with them as Redeemer. And that the light shines in the world.

Two men are riding in the same car, and they pass a church. They are both sinners, both lost and both on their way to hell. But one man looks up and sees the church, and instinctively something in him causes his head to bow a bit, and he is silent for a moment. The other man laughs as though it were a tavern and goes his way. Two women are playing cards together, both lost and both on their way to hell. The third person comes in and raises the religious question. One laughs it off, the other is strangely silent.

They shall all be taught of God, and the Sovereign Father that created them deals with them and prepares them. And as many as have heard the Father, they come straight to Jesus. And when they come, He gives them eternal life. Now, am I wrong on this? No man can come to Me except the Father which has sent Me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day.

It is written in the Prophets, and they shall all be taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto Me. Then He said, But I said unto you that ye also have seen Me and believe not.

And why have they not believed? Because they have not tested up, because there is no side of their soul open to heaven. They enjoy singing a fast chorus, I suppose, and they would enjoy a banquet, three-course banquet, five-course, ten-course banquet. They love religion all right. They like to be around where there is something nice going on. But there is nothing open to God in their souls at all. They hear the Word, but they don’t hear the Word. They have ears, but they hear nothing. They have not been taught of the Father. Then they get jockeyed into believing in Christ, and they make such poor, hopeless Christians. The reason is, that they are not Christians at all.

Every man therefore that hath heard and hath learned of the Father, he cometh unto Me, not that any man has seen the Father, save He which is of God, He has seen the Father. I am that Bread of Life, and this is the Bread which came down from heaven, that man may eat thereof and not die. I am the Living Bread which came down from heaven.

So, you see, my friends, there is such a thing as the mysterious workings of the Holy Ghost, of the Sovereign Father, through the Holy Ghost, before the Spirit ever presents the claims of the Savior to the soul at all. How different this is from our come when you want to, do what you please, think it over, and then decide. No, no, that is a modern heresy, and it is not Biblical, and there is no place for it in the entire Scriptures. No man can come to Me except the Father which has sent Me to draw him.

So, before God has tried and tested and proved, and at that hour then there is no impudent will of the man. The man has a will, and he knows it, but no more the impudent will that says, my will, my will, no more of that. There is conscience. The man that can’t sweat because he sinned can never repent, and the man who can’t repent can never be forgiven, and the man who can’t be forgiven must perish. And by sweat, of course, I don’t mean physical perspiration. I mean groan before God for his own iniquity. And I’ve said reverence and repentance and our general attitude toward God and the world above.

O Brethren, the Sovereign Father is here, and the Holy Spirit is exercising His right to select and test and try and prove and see and know whether we will or not; whether there’s anything here that can respond.

O Jacob, who would want to save you, you crooked conspirator? Jacob, you’re a wicked young chap, you’re a delinquent. Why don’t you be like your brother, a good, obedient fellow that smells of his work? The Bible says he did, says he smelled of the field which the Lord had blessed.

Esau was a good fellow. Jacob was a crooked, nasty little guy that you wouldn’t want to have lived around. But the difference was Esau loved Esau. And Jacob hated Jacob. Therefore, God hated Esau and loved Jacob. And though Jacob was deserving of death and damnation a thousand times, there was something inside the heart of Jacob that leaped to the voice of God, that leaped up.

The topside of Jacob’s soul was open to heaven, and he could look up, and God could look down. Esau was well thatched. He had no top to his soul. What top he had had no window in it. He was a pretty good man and a forgiving man and a nice, stodgy fellow, but he belonged to the earth. Jacob was a man who didn’t know where he belonged, but he was a miserable fellow, hated himself and his sin and all the rest, and he wanted to do God’s will and couldn’t and tumbled and fell. But all the time God knew he had a man.

So, no matter how bad you are or how crooked or what a sinner you’ve been, that doesn’t need to mean anything to you if you’ve been honored by God, if you’ve heard the voice of the Father. And in your spirit, there’s that basic reverence and a desire to do God’s will and a hatred, self-hatred for your sin, and you’ll want to come to the Lord Jesus. You’ll come, all right. They that have been taught of the Father, they come to Me, and them that come to Me I never turn away. I give them eternal life, and no man can ever pluck them out of My hand. They’re Mine because thine the Father’s they were, but He has given them to Me, and I have given them eternal life.

That’s how every Christian became a Christian, the mysterious working of God, conscience, repentance, and our general attitude toward the world above. Oh, how different from all this mechanical conveyor belt Christianity, this conveyor belt Christianity.

Do you know what I heard this last week, brother? You won’t believe this. I heard of a man, a soul winner so-called, who was too eager to make converts and to get the convert to say he believed in Jesus Christ, that he actually tricked sinners into saying, I believe in Jesus, but moved the conversation and got the conversation going around and got the fellow to moving and got him in a corner and jumped him, back on the checkerboard. And when the fellow finally admitted he believed in Jesus Christ, he said, there, you’re a Christian, there, I got you, you’re a Christian.

Now, that fellow, he’s supposed to be a Christian. I’m glad there aren’t very many men with ears that long in the world. We’d be worse off than we are. God knows we have hair enough on our long ears in a lot of places, but when they get that bad, brother, somebody ought to throw a net over him. But that kind of soul winning, I’ve heard that almost that bad; I’ve heard it talked from this pulpit on one occasion. It wasn’t my meeting, just a fellow in here preaching for some other organization, but I was present.

And I heard something almost that bad. You can trick a man into saying, I believe in the Son of God. All right, then, you’re a Christian. You’re a Christian, you hear? For the Bible says, he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. You said you believe you’re a Christian. Goody, goody.

But the Sovereign Father has never touched him. And the Holy ghost has never prepared him. And he’s never been taught of God. And he’s never heard of the Father. And the basic reverence isn’t in him, and basic humility isn’t there, and repentance isn’t there. But they’ve jockeyed him and tricked him into saying, I believe. And that’s why we’re as we are.

Oh, my brother, if God’s people would only pray and pray till the presence of God would become as thick as fog, holy fog, and men would walk around with a sense of reverence and fear and repentance on them so terrible that sin would become intolerable and the thought of hell and judgment and death would be unbearable, we’d get some converts that would come bounding out like a healthy child. But we jockey them and trick them and push them and massage them into the kingdom of God. And when they get in there, they don’t know what it’s all about.

How about you, sir? All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me. He said, verse 37, all that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me. All I want to ask is, are you of the kind of moral material God can give to His Son? Is there any repentance there, any sorrow for sin, any grief at your wrongdoing, any fear in the presence of the great, mysterious God? Is there anything there God can handle or deal with and you’ll have reason to hope? Turn thou to Jesus Christ, God’s Son. He is the Bread of Life. And as I said last week, believing is eating. Just as you take the bread into your mouth by eating, you take Jesus, the Bread of Life; into your heart by believing.

So, you can come tonight, and you can believe tonight, and you can be saved tonight. And He says, I will in no wise cast him out. Now whether that means, various translations have it differently. Whether that means I will not turn him away when He comes, or I will not cast him out after he’s in. To me it means both, because if He takes him in, He has no reason to cast him out. So, there he is.

When I think of how many, many years ago it is now, I came up out of a pagan home, a father that had no knowledge of God, a mother who hadn’t been but two or three times to church in probably thirty years but was surrounded by ungodly people. Not bad evil people, because my mother managed to keep the moral standards very high, very high, so high indeed that not one of her three boys ever smoked or drank, and not one of her three girls ever did anything that you could consider evil, perhaps except one. Apart from her, Mother’s family was a high-living family. And they were all that on morals alone. They didn’t have to get born again to live right; they were living right on simple, sheer morals alone.

And into that home, to a seventeen-year-old, gangly, ignorant boy, came the Sovereign Father in the Holy Ghost and talked to my heart. And I had no help from anywhere else and talked to my heart. And fear and terror of God, and reverence and a longing to be right, and a yearning to sin, all played like shadows and light over my heart. And then one day I heard a man on a street corner say, if you don’t know how to pray, pray, God have mercy on me a sinner. I went to my mother’s attic, got on my knees, stretched my two hands up to God and said, God have mercy on me a sinner.

And God saved my soul. Then, after that, it was all like the opening of a flower, like the developing of a field. Jesus Christ became all in all to me. I trusted him perfectly, as I do this night. Why did God come to the worst member of the family? It was generally and publicly stated.

I’m not trying to be humble now. Everybody knew that. Mother knew it. Everybody knew it. I was the only one who would swear. I was the only one who would sass my mother. I was the only one who would disobey my father. I was the only one that was a little devil. Why did Jesus Christ find me and my brother, seven years older, a gentleman, walk into his presence, and he makes me look like a hillbilly, gracious, suave, friendly, knows when to talk and when to keep still, and never a spark. Never a spark. And I dealt with him and talked to him and preached to him and dealt with him until I gave it up. Never a spark.

They shall all be taught of God. And they that have heard and have learned of the Father, they come to Me, and I give them eternal life. So, if there’s the longing, the dream, the aspiration, the want to be good, the fear of sin, the future, you’re already one upon whom God’s hand has been laid.

Oh, how wonderful. More than the check for a million dollars, more than being elected President, that God has laid His hand upon you. That out of those teeming millions, God’s laid His hand on you.

How about it tonight? How do you feel about it? What’s your response? Anything there? Any live nerve there? Or are you another Esau without a live nerve? You can jab and probe and not a lot of response. No live nerve. But if God the Father has taught and tested and by the Holy Ghost convicted you of sin and righteousness and judgment, there’s a live nerve.

You can come. No man can come to Me except the Father draw him. But if you’ve got that live nerve that the probe of the Holy Ghost makes you wince, come unto Me, all ye that labor under heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Will you do it?

Tags Sovereignty of God

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date September 8, 2024

“Abiding Elements of Pentecost”

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Abiding Elements of Pentecost

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

Speaking at the American Keswick Conference at Moody Church in Chicago, 1960

My topic tonight is the abiding element in Pentecost, and I want to read from the Book of Acts, Chapter 2. A very familiar passage, a very controversial passage, but I don’t intend to treat it controversially. Second chapter of Acts, when the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire and sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men out of every nation unto heaven.

Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded because that every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galilean, so how hear we every man in our own tongue, for in we were born? Then skipping over the list of seventeen nations to verse 11, they said, we do hear them speak in our languages, the wonderful works of God.

Now here in this experience, as in every, or almost every, probably every valid religious experience, there are these elements present. There is first the external element, and because it is external it is variable. Then there is the internal element, which is of the Spirit, and so tremendously important. And then there is the incidental elements, which are of relative importance. And the fundamental elements, which are vital and eternal.

Now I want you to bring this analysis to what took place here on that day called “the Fifty Days,” Pentecost, and I want to point out some things that can never be repeated, although my sermon, I’ll break it down and toss it out to tell you in case I don’t finish it, you’ll know what I started to say. There are elements which can never be repeated, and some which, according to my knowledge of history, never have been repeated. And then there are elements which are eternal, and while they are not repeated, they are perpetuated. For I’d like to say this, that I do not believe in the repetition of Pentecost, but I believe in the perpetuation of Pentecost.

Now, what can never be repeated? Well, the physical presence of all the Church in one place. The members remained together in Jerusalem. They were all there and that never happened after that, because Saul made havoc of the church, and they were scattered abroad. And they have never been all together since. I started to say, thank God, I mean by that, that there are so many of them that there’s no building and no town that could house them, so many of the people of God. So that could never be repeated. You never can get all God’s people together outside of heaven, and that in itself may be a blessing.

Now, the second thing is that there are elements, there are things that occurred here that, in addition to one I’ve named, that never have been repeated, according to my knowledge of Church history.

A friend of mine said to me one time, when I get up and talk at conference, why don’t they listen to me? He said, because you have a habit of speaking ex cathedra, and sometimes there’s more ex than cathedra.

So, it is entirely possible that I could be wrong here, though I never am deliberately so, but what has never been repeated, so far as I know, is the sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. Now, I’ve never heard that that happened. I’ve heard all sorts of things that were supposed to take place, but nobody ever said the whole house was full of a sound like wind.

Then I have never heard that the appearance of a great body of fire was seen by a company of people, dividing itself into flames like little tongues and resting upon the foreheads of each one. That seemed to be peculiar to that first coming of the Holy Ghost.

Then I have never heard that they all began, all the company present, began to speak languages which did not need to be interpreted, but which were understood by everybody present. Seventeen different languages of people there, and they understood it without an interpreter.

Now there’s a good logic back of all this, my friends. If these things had been necessary to the life of the Church, then they would have had to be repeated every time the Spirit filled anybody, or there was a company of people that was Spirit-filled. The Church couldn’t have continued without them. But if they were never repeated, then the Church must have ceased the day it was born, or at least ceased when the one who first composed the Church died.

Now those are the passing elements, the noise, the wind, the presence of everybody in one place, the sudden visitation of God in fire, visible fire that separated and sat visibly upon them, the out bursting of a joyous testimony in languages that couldn’t be understood by everybody without an interpreter. Now all this was there, but this is not the abiding element in this Pentecostal visitation.

What was, or what were the abiding elements? Well, we can discover them by going to the New Testament and finding what the Lord had promised that would come. He said, He shall send you another Comforter. And He said, when the Comforter is come, He will take the things of mine and will show them unto you. And He said, I tell you the truth, that I go away, and I send Him, and when He comes will convince the world of sin and righteousness and judgment.

And He said that ye shall receive power, and as every student knows, power means a moral ability to do. Now that, those are the vital elements in the Pentecostal outpouring, and these have been perpetuated to the Church and are ours, available to us as certainly as to them.

Now I want to illustrate this thing by showing you how when our Lord came there were certain phenomena which occurred, but which were never repeated in the ministry of our Lord.

You remember when Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the days of Herod the King, there came wise men from the east, and there was a star, and there were angels that chanted over the fields of Bethlehem, and there were the wise men, and there was the inn where the Lord was born, and the excitement, and later on the flight into Egypt.

Now, all these were external phenomena which surrounded the birth of the Lord Jesus, but they all passed because they were incidental and not fundamental, they were external and not internal, they were visible and audible and of the flesh, and not the invisible and inaudible deep workings of the Holy Ghost. There was a star out there, and there were angels, and there were wise men, and there was the inn, and there were donkeys, and there was the flight into Egypt, and all that.

But when all that was gone, the Lord Jesus Christ was still there, because the abiding element in Bethlehem was the presence of the Word to become flesh to dwell among us. After the wise men had gone back east again, and the shepherds had gone back to their flocks, and the star had gone wherever it went, and the inn had been forgotten, and the flight into Egypt was a memory, He was still there. He abode. He remained, and all that He came to do was perpetuated through his entire ministry and still continues.

That is an illustration, and I believe a valid one, of how it was when the Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity, came at Pentecost as the second person had come at Bethlehem. There were external and dramatic, colorful phenomena that surrounded the coming of the Holy Spirit, as there had been surrounding the birth of Christ. But when those external phenomena passed, the thing that God had wanted to do and had succeeded in doing, still abodes, still remains forever the same.

Now, what did God do there, as recorded in that passage which I read to you? Well, the Holy Ghost had come to dwell among men and had come to dwell in the hearts of His people to make His Church one and to forever inhabit the redeemed bosoms of those who believed on God’s eternal Son. Wouldn’t it have been a ridiculous thing if the people had heard about the phenomena that surrounded the birth of Jesus, and nobody would have believed that he was healed unless there was a star and a donkey and a hymn and a wise man and all of the external things?

The point is, God used all those things to get His eternal Son into human flesh, to get Him here. That was God incarnating His Son, and these things were external manifestations. But they all passed, and the Lord remained and healed the sick and gave eyes to the blind and unstopped the ears and drove out the devils and forgave sin and blessed mankind.

Now the Holy Ghost came as the Second Person came, and He came upon them in visible fire. He sat upon their foreheads; they broke out into languages that could be understood without an interpreter. It was a wind, or like a wind, that filled the building. But those, I repeat, were the external elements. The eternal element was that the Holy Ghost had come, the Comforter has come, we sing, and that’s what had happened there. That was the mighty truth.

Now, the meaning of it all is that the Holy Ghost now inhabits His Church in power. I’d like to point out that the word power there is ability, and it’s the ability to be and ability to do.

All the religions of the world that I know anything about, and I have made myself acquainted by reading the holy books, so-called, of most of the great religions of the world, and never could quite wade through the Book of Mormon. That was always a little too heavy for me, I began to nod about page 3. But most of the great religions of the East, I have read at least some of their books, and they are practically all the same in that they talk about what you do and don’t have very much to say about what you be. But the Scriptures talk about our being first and our doing second, and we do what we be.

Back in Pennsylvania where I grew up, they used the word be for do, and it’s a good word, it’s the verb I be, I am. God says that He was to give us ability to be, and because we have ability to be, of course it’s quite normal that we do. A bird has ability to sing because he’s a bird, and a Christian has ability to live like a Christian because He is a Christian. God has given him the power.

I want to analyze the power a little bit. We’re suffering in the day in which we live from two extremes. We’re suffering from the extremes of those who take the external phenomena of Pentecost and try to repeat it 19th centuries later, and nothing but trouble can come from this and nothing but trouble ever has; divisions and all sorts of things.

And then we’re suffering from another extreme just as bad, and that is that we’ve all gone into our holes and frozen over the entrance and sit back there blowing on our hands, afraid of the Holy Spirit. We’re afraid to preach about him and talk about him and pray to be filled with him, because some have gone to extremes.

They have misunderstood and they thought that the wise man and the star and the shepherds and the inn and we have to have all that. No. I don’t believe on a star to be converted. I don’t believe on a shepherd to be saved. I don’t believe on an inn or a donkey in order to be blessed. I believe on the One who came into the middle of all that and remains in mortal flesh.

So, I don’t believe on tongues, and I don’t believe on flaming fire on foreheads. I don’t believe on winds that fill buildings. I believe on Jesus Christ, and I receive the one who came in that hurricane of blessing to remain forever in the breasts of his people.

Now, I don’t hear any amens, but I love my own preaching, you know, I do. I enjoy preaching the truth, and if anybody says amen, he’s on, it’s all right. And if he doesn’t say amen, he’s either asleep or else he’s wrong.

Let’s break this down a little bit, keeping within our time. What is this power to be and this power to do? Well, there’s love, joy, peace. We talk about love. A fellow like I am, I couldn’t love anybody. Now, Stephen Olford, who will follow me, he could love anybody. He was born that way. He’s a lovable fellow, but nobody loves me for myself because there’s nothing here to love. And I couldn’t love anybody. But God gives you power to be and to do, and He gives me power. He can give me power to love people that just aren’t lovable.

And then there’s joy. Now, a fellow like I am, again I’m born gloomy. I see the dark side of everything. My friend McAfee, if you’re here, knows that. And if it is clears as a bell in the morning, I say that’s probably a weather breeder, it likely to rain by noon. I’m naturally pessimistic. And for me to have anything like joy and peace takes a power that isn’t in human nature, at least it isn’t in mine. But I enjoy quite a little bit of peace and joy because I have been given ability to be and ability to do.

Then there’s long-suffering. Now, long-suffering, of course, is the ability to suffer a long time. Everybody’s willing to suffer a little while but suffering a long time just to put up with things and ride them out and live them down and hope for the best and go on, it’s not natural, it’s not natural to me. I don’t think it’s natural to any American, really.

A Chinese person might because they’re a very quiet, slower people, but an American wouldn’t. And an American complains if he misses one section of a revolving door. So long-suffering, it takes something out of heaven to make a man suffer long and be kind, a disposition to bear injuries patiently.

Then there’s gentleness, which is the opposite of harshness and severity. Then there’s goodness. Now, I’m quoting, of course, from Galatians. There’s goodness, which is morally good. Now, here again we’re a victim of extremes because none is good save God. We’re unwilling to say he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost. We’re afraid of the Bible itself. We run and hide from the words of the Scripture. We say nobody is good, nobody is good.

A friend of mine preached one time on righteousness. He preached that people ought to be righteous, and an old fellow came down the aisle walking fast, and he said, why do you preach goodness? Don’t you know there’s only one good and that’s God? You’re preaching legalism. He said, people can’t be good, they aren’t good.

This dear old brother was hurt so badly by the criticism, and I called him aside and I said, don’t worry, Doctor, God has his treasures in earthen vessels and some of the vessels are cracked. Don’t let it bother you at all. Some people are afraid of goodness, just sheer downright goodness.

Do you want me to say a radical thing? If all of you listening to me now were just ordinary, plain, downright good people, your testimony would be stepped up a hundred percent. Goodness is a virtue given by God to the human heart.

Then faithfulness, that’s ability to keep right on being faithful, opposite of instability, fidelity to a trust. And meekness, which is the opposite of arrogance and temperance, which is the opposite of intemperance.

I had hoped I might be able, while I’m here, to preach on discipleship, but it didn’t fall in the scheme of things that I should. But I believe that the Lord wants us to be disciples and learn from him and learn by the power of the indwelling Holy Ghost. He gives the power, and we give the willingness and the determination to be Christlike, and temperance is one of the virtues, living temperately, to be strong and masterful in control of ourselves.

Now, the will of God for us is that we should have all these virtues, that is, this power which God offered, this power which the Holy Ghost brought, this power which the Holy Ghost is. For I’d like to make it very clear that God never gives anything away. When God gives, He still retains what He has given, and He gives Himself along with His gifts.

It would be a tragedy from the highest, farthest out celestial body down to Moody Church; it would be a moral tragedy that would be vast and cosmic if God should shuffle off gifts and throw them to his people like Rockefeller used to throw dimes. Never does God separate the gift from Himself.

When God gives you a gift, He gives you Himself. When God gave us these precious virtues, He gave us the Holy Ghost who brought these virtues to us, and so it is the indwelling Holy Spirit that brings these virtues.

Don’t think for a minute tonight that I’ve read the Keswick program and that I’m preaching this because Keswick believes it. I preached this before Keswick ever reached Chicago. I preached it for years and continue to preach it because I believe it’s biblical, that it’s the indwelling Holy Ghost who came at Pentecost and enables all of His people in whom He dwells to be virtuous, to have love and joy and peace and gentleness and goodness and faithfulness and meekness and temperance. I believe that this is the secret of godliness and the secret of the victorious life.

Now this, I say, can only be done by divine indwelling. It’s impossible that this should ever be given to us from the outside. You can’t take a gorilla and put up a sign and say, Be human. In the first place, he couldn’t read. In the second place, if he did read, he wouldn’t know how to go about it. How could a gorilla be human? He can’t. He belongs to another world of life. He’s not. He can’t be human.

And so, you can’t say to a sinner, Be holy. That’s an impossibility.

A sinner can’t be holy any more than that gorilla can be a man. But if we had the power to say to the gorilla, I can extract the spirit of a good man from him and I can fill you with him, that would take care of the gorilla. Just as soon as the spirit of a good man entered the gorilla, say the spirit of Eisenhower entered the gorilla, he’d be a kindly gentleman and a man you’re proud of when he stands up. He’d be a man.

But as long as you can’t give the Spirit, the power to be and to do, you’ll still be a gorilla. You can put a bib on around him and put pants on him and teach him to eat with a knife and a fork. But when he begets his kind, they’ll be little gorillas. And he’ll be a gorilla until he dies. And when he dies, you’re putting him down in a gorilla grave, because gorilla he is, gorilla he’ll be forever, as long as gorillas last.

And I say now, my friend, you can’t take a sinner, no matter how well he’s an educated sinner. A Ph.D., for instance, a Ph.D., that’s a Doctor of Philosophy. You take a Doctor of Philosophy and say to him, Be holy, be Christlike, and he’ll look at you and he’ll be nice and friendly, because he’s educated, but he won’t know what to do. He just won’t know what to do, and it’s impossible that he would know what to do.

The flesh of Adam can’t produce holiness. The flesh of Adam cannot produce love and joy and peace and longsuffering and gentleness. It can produce all sorts of imitations and write books and sell books. And if you write a book on how to be loved and have longsuffering and gentleness and be good, you can sell them by the millions; people want to know.

But nobody has ever been able to produce Christ’s character in Adam’s flesh. The nearest thing is Stoicism, I suppose. I’ve been a great lover of the Stoics. But some people think the “stoic” is the bird that brings the baby. But they said the Stoic. But the Stoic was an old philosopher. But it’s no use, brother, you can’t do it. All it did was make zombies out of them. And they walked around hard and stiff.

When Socrates was dying in the prison at Athens of hemlock, they brought his wife in. She came in sniffling, and he didn’t even kiss her good-bye, he said, take her away. He was in control of himself, it was self-control, and they controlled themselves by becoming as stiff as icicles and just as unattractive and as cold.

And then there’s the contemplative religions of the East. You hear a lot about it now, Zen Buddhism and Yoga. Don’t waste a dime on it, but you hear a lot about it. But they haven’t done anything for anybody much, really. And if anybody does get any help from them, it’s because they’re pretty good people to start with. You know, as Adam counts people good.

But the fruits of the Spirit are only the fruits of the Holy Spirit and cannot possibly grow in unblessed, uncleansed and unfilled and unregenerated human nature.

So, most Christians, I think, and most Christianity; it’s only Adam at his best, really. You go to the average church now, even good churches, and it’s just Adam at his best. Everybody comes dressed up, looking out over his collar with a narrow tie on. And he looks all right, and he smiles and bobs his head, but you don’t know what he’d been doing the week before. He’s not necessarily a holy man because he’s in church. But as for being holy, that’s another matter.

When Pentecost was fully come, the Holy Ghost came into human nature to make people holy and to keep them holy, that they might live holy lives and reproduce in human beings the character that had been and is in Christ. That’s the abiding element in Pentecost.

It is not to be repeated, it is to be perpetuated. It is to be carried on from generation to generation, but we must tell the truth to the people and not let them down. Some people don’t believe in the Holy Ghost, nor believe they ever ought to be filled with the Holy Ghost at all. Some people say it’s just an ideal. He is not an ideal. No, no.

He’s no more an ideal now than Christ was an ideal when He walked around on earth. He was born in that dramatic setting, but when the dramatic setting was passed, He was still there healing the sick and raising the dead. The Holy Ghost came in that dramatic setting at Pentecost, but when the dramatic setting passed, He still remained and still remains, and He’s here now.

All He needs and wants is that His people should want Him bad enough and that they should yield to Him and let Him have His way, and He will reproduce all the essential spiritual and everlasting elements in us now that He produced on that historic day of Pentecost.

Tags Holy Spirit, Pentecost

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date September 1, 2024

“Trials and Disappointments“

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Trials and Disappointments

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 26, 1954

Summary

A.W. Tozer’s sermon titled “Trials and Disappointments,” explores the concept that all events and circumstances in a Christian’s life, including trials, temptations, failures, and disappointments, are from God and part of His divine plan. He draws from biblical examples, such as Rehoboam, Joseph, and Peter, to illustrate how God’s hand is present even in adversity, shaping and guiding believers for their ultimate good and His glory. He emphasizes that Christians should view their challenges as opportunities for spiritual growth and trust in God’s sovereignty, understanding that even the most painful experiences are orchestrated by God for a greater purpose. Mr. Tozer concludes with the encouragement that what may seem like disappointments are, in fact, God’s appointments, meant to bring about His will in the lives of believers.

Message

In the book of 1 Kings, the 12th chapter, in verse 24, Thus saith the Lord to Rehoboam, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren, the children of Israel. Return every man to his house, for this thing is from me.” They hearkened therefore to the word of the Lord and returned to depart according to the word of the Lord. Rehoboam was the son of Solomon, and he had become king at the death of his father and had listened to the bad advice of his counselors and had taken certain political action which had alienated a part of the nation from him.

Jeroboam, an ambitious man, had taken part of the nation and had become, or was to become, the king. Rehoboam felt that he wanted to try to stop this by war. But he had just enough ability to hear God left, but he didn’t have much. But he had just enough ability left to hear God say, Ye shall not fight against your brethren, the children of Israel. Go every man to his house, for this thing is from me. That is, God had told Solomon that his kingdom would be divided. And now Solomon was gone, but God was working out his plan nevertheless, and it was taking place under the eyes of his son.

And his son was going to throw himself in to try to straighten out this tangled skein, and God said, don’t you do it, this thing is from me. Now that’s the historic circumstance that gave us this beautiful text. And the truth which lies hidden here in the text is one of the most liberating and consoling truths in the entire Bible.

And the thought suggested here is not alone, but it is developed and strengthened throughout the entire Bible, till in the New Testament it shines like a health-giving sun, bringing light and warmth and health to all of us. And it is simply this, we might condense it for our own use and good into these words, that whatever comes to a Christian is from God.

Now you and I know that the natural world is governed by natural laws, and these laws are administered blindly, and from all we know, impartially, so that the sun rises on the just and the unjust, and the rain falls on the good and the bad. Grain and the fruit of harvest come to the man of God and to the man of sin about alike. And sickness and pain visit not only bad people, but good people as well.

There is loss and there is sorrow, and the loss and sorrow come as certainly and as frequently perhaps even, to the Christian as to the sinful man. And even death finally visits the man of God, for it is appointed unto all men once to die. And all the good who have died in generations gone have gone to their death according to the law of cause and effect that governs the natural world.

And it looks as if we were pieces, helpless pieces. You know, this thought has given some sad and beautiful poetry to the world. Man has likened himself to many things. He’s likened himself to shadows. We are but shadow shapes that come and go, says one of the poets. We are but shadow shapes, a moving roll of magic shadow shapes that come and go. They’ve likened themselves to checkers, but helpless pieces of the game God plays upon this checkerboard of night and days.

Now, all this fails to take Christ into consideration, but we are thinking for the moment that there is a natural world filled with people, and that this world is governed by natural laws, and that an observer might well and accurately conclude that mankind is simply a roll of magic shadow shapes that come and go, or each being a checker which is played over the checkerboard of life. And that is accurate, not pessimistic, it is rather realistic.

And if we take our Lord Jesus Christ out of consideration, I do not see how any human being, if he has any realism in his system at all, if he has any mental or fiber or intellectual courage, can deny that we are but checkers to be played, that we are but a football to be kicked, that we are but corks to float and bob around on the moving surface of the water, but thus to be blown through the valleys of this world, and slaves to the law of cause and effect.

But my friends, I have very good news for you this morning. I have the news that a Christian does not fall wholly under this law. A believer has entered a new kingdom, and here all things are different. He may poetically describe himself now as a football, but he may smile wryly when he feels himself being kicked. But he knows that he’s being kicked toward a certain goal.

He may still feel that he is a checker being played over a great board, but in this new place in the kingdom of God, he knows that he’s not subject to the laws of chance. He knows that the great player in the heaven is playing a game for the glory of God and the good of mankind. He may feel that he is but dust, as the psalmist said that he was, but he knows now that he is being blown gently toward home and heaven and God.

He may feel that he is a cork and bob up and down in depression and boom, and in sickness and health, and in loss and gain, and in sorrow and joy. He may feel himself upon the undulating waves of time, and yet know positively that he’s under the watchful eye of God, and that though he’s a cork bobbing on a great surface and couldn’t find his way alone, that the Father knows the way and was taking him through.

Now my friends, I was thinking about that song, If I Had My Druthers. Did you ever hear any hillbillies sing, If I Had My Druthers? Of course, as you city people probably don’t know, druthers means rather, rather. If I had druthers, I’d rather had druthers. So, we say I had my druthers means what I’d rather have.

So, when the cowboy sings If I Had My Druthers, and twangs his harp or guitar, and puts a lot of tears in his voice, he is giving plaint to that which mankind has always wanted. He’s wanted the ability to lay hold of things. And the same poet I quoted a while ago said that, how does it run, oh could you and I with him conspire, and grab this sorry scheme of things entire, and break it down to its component elements, and then put it together again after our heart’s desire.

Now I paraphrased it, but that’s the way to run. And this is the same plaint that the cowboy wants when he says he wants his druthers. He’d like to have it his way. And when we want things our way, did you ever stop to consider, ladies and gentlemen, what a world we’d be in in 24 hours if God said, now I’m going to give everybody everything he wants. All he has to do is wish and he gets it. We all go back to Anderson’s fairy tales, and what a world we’d be in.

Well, Chicago weather, for instance. If it’s baseball season, they want it warm. If it’s football season, they want it cold. If a church is going to have a picnic, they want it dry. And the people who own lawns want it to rain. The farmer wants the calm, still, hot air to make his crops grow. And the city dweller with the fog and smog wants a wind to carry all the fog and smog away.

So, you’d never find people agreeing. The old man wants it quiet, and the young fellow wants it noisy. The young fellow puts two or three noise makers on his old jalopy and goes down the street sounding like the charge of the last brigade. And the old fellow would want everything set in foam rubber so there wasn’t a sound to disturb his tired old ears. You couldn’t get together at all for the simple reason we don’t know what we want. We only think we do.

The reason we don’t know what we want is that we don’t know ourselves, we don’t know the world around us very well. We don’t know the future at all, and we don’t know the past except sketchily. And we don’t know what’s good for us. And so if we had our druthers, it would be one of the worst things that could possibly happen to us because we’d all kill ourselves.

It would be like a three-year-old having his druthers when it comes to the meals. He would fill up on cake and suffer for the rest of the night. And he would never eat anything good, he’d never drink his milk, and he would never go to school when he gets old enough, he would never accept discipline, he would never grow up to be even an average kind of citizen, but he would be a little impossible hellion if he had his druthers.

You have to impose discipline and the grown-up who’s supposed to know what’s good has to tell the youngster what’s good for him until he finds out for himself.

Now that’s exactly where we are in the kingdom of God. Even though we’re Christians and born of the Spirit, we still don’t know always what’s good for us. So, God has to choose for us. It says in one place that he chooses our inheritance for us. I like that chapter, that verse of the chapter. He chooses our inheritance for us, and he chooses and sends us the things that we ought to have.

Now that doesn’t preclude prayer, because the Spirit can tell us what we ought to pray for, and thus we can help shape events by intelligent Spirit-inspired prayer. But if you think of your life in the long sweep of circumstance between the time you were converted till you die or the Lord comes, you’ll be glad somebody else is hunting out your inheritance for you, and you’re not forced to choose yourself.

And you’ll even be glad in the day to come that you didn’t get that prayer answered that God refused to answer for you. You’ll be glad then, but now you’re wondering and worried about it.

Now I have, I think, about seven. If time gets away, I’ll shorten it, cut out some. But I want to go to the Bible itself and show you about seven different things, circumstances, that have come to men. And we can write after every one of them, this thing is from me, for this is what God does. He picks out our inheritance, and when we look at it and say, I don’t want that, God says, son, this thing is from me, and blessed is the Christian who knows how to accept it.

Now, first, there’s temptation. People don’t want to be tempted. I get letters, and I get phone calls, and I get people visiting me personally, and they want to know how come. I’m a Christian, and I’m being tempted. How come? And I always feel, though I don’t do it, unless I know them very well, but I always feel that I’d like to answer in the language of the young officer who said to the rookie soldier who started to run when the bullets, he said, they’re shooting at me. And the young officer said, what do you think you’re out here for?

And so, when a Christian comes and says, why, pastor, I’m being tempted, I feel like saying, well, son, you’re a soldier now, you’re a big boy, and what do you think you’re here for, if it isn’t to get shot at? But notice, when our Lord was tempted in the wilderness, He was tempted cruelly, and His temptations were real, regardless of what some theologians may say, they were real and valid. And He was tempted there by the will of God, for two reasons that I know, that He might be perfected for His life work and learn obedience by the things that He suffered, and the second being that He might force approval, unwilling testimony even from hell itself.

For don’t think that Satan, when he gave up his, our Lord, his master, our Lord, when he gave Him up and found he couldn’t get Him to sin and sulked away into his cave, don’t you think the story of it didn’t go throughout all the nether regions, and that Jesus Christ was proof against the temptations of the devil, caused that same devil to lose face, and caused hell to shudder to her foundations? How else could God thus have given a testimony of hell and earth to Jesus if it had not been in temptation.

But when our Lord went forty days hungry and was in great anguish of body, and now weariness of mind, and was tempted so bitterly, don’t you think His human heart might have said, why must this happen to Me? And if it had, God’s answer would have been, this thing is from me. I’ve allowed this to come to you, you’re not alone, I’ve been with you, and you’re being tempted in My will.

Now that ought to encourage anybody, and if you’re being tempted, let me say to you as a company what I couldn’t possibly say one at a time, there’d be too many, that if you’re being tempted, cruelly even, and bitterly tempted, don’t let it get you down. They don’t tempt dead men.

I remember the colored brother who was hunting with his boss, and they were in a boat, and the colored man was a real Christian, and yet he was in trouble all the time. Something was always going wrong. His wife was ill, or his children, and they broke a leg, his cow died, something was always wrong, and the man, the white man with whom he was hunting, or with whom he was fishing in this instance, they were in a boat together, and they were hunting, as I recall, and it was a duck hunting arrangement, and they were in the boat. And the white man got to philosophizing, and he said, Sam, you’re a Christian, you go to church, you attend every prayer meeting, you never miss your chapter, you pray at table, you talk and testify all the time, and yet you’re in trouble all the time. And he said, me, I haven’t had any trouble for years and years, everything breaks my way, everything turns to money for me, I have friends, everything breaks my way.

He said, now how is it? You belong to God, and I don’t. You get the troubles, and I don’t. Well, Sam said, boss, it’s like this. He said, when you shoot at a duck and kill it, and it drops plop into the water and lies still, do you shoot at it again? He said, no. He said, which ones do you shoot at again? He said, I shoot at the ones that are wounded and are getting away. And Sam said, that explains it, boss. He said, the devil knows that he has you, and he lets you alone, but he sees me escaping, and that’s why I get a bullet every once in a while. I’m getting away.

Now, that’s it precisely, and it’s good sound philosophy. Temptations, this thing is from Me, says God. Now stop that worrying and abusing yourself, lashing yourself like the flagellantes, and saying, I’m no good, I’ll whip myself, I’m being tempted. Of course you’re being tempted. The servant is not better than his Lord, this thing is from God.

And there is persecution. Some people do get persecution, and then there was Joseph. You remember Joseph in Egypt, that passage back in the last chapter of the book of Genesis, tells us a wonderful thing. Joseph was sold, you remember, down into slavery into Egypt for a small amount of money, and went down there and was put in jail, and went through two years, or at least a long period of imprisonment.

And later on, when his brethren came down, and Joseph was second to the king, running all Egypt as sort of a prime minister, the brethren came down. He made himself known, and they wept, and he said to them, don’t weep, it’s perfectly all right. As for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring to pass as it is this day, and to save much people alive.

If when poor Joseph was going through his persecution, he had thought it over as no doubt he did, he’d have wondered why God allowed it. He was being persecuted by his brethren. God says, son, don’t get excited, this thing is from me, to perfect you and save many people alive. So, persecution is from God, either directly or indirectly.

Then there is failure. I hesitate to say this, some people want to leap on me for it, but I believe in being real. And here was a man named Peter, and you’ll remember that he denied his Lord. And you’ll have to admit it was a failure. But long before Peter lied and used bad language and denied his Lord, his Lord had foreseen his coming failure and had said, Satan has desired you to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith fail not. The prayers of Jesus had been prevenient prayers, and they had been put up to heaven effectually for Peter before he was put into the sieve.

Our Lord Jesus saw Peter as a half bushel of chaff and wheat, and Peter saw himself as a half bushel of wheat. He didn’t see the chaff at all. And the devil wanted to destroy Peter. So the Lord said, all right, devil, you go ahead and shake him and sift him and blow on him a while. And the devil no doubt smiled one of his rare devilish smiles and said, I’m going to actually get at this prime apostle. I’m going to get at Peter.

So he got at Peter, and he shook him and sifted him. And Peter, in the middle of it all, got morally dizzy and denied his Lord. And when the sifting was over, the chaff was all gone and Peter was reduced to what he had been all the time, a quart of wheat and 50 quarts of chaff. Peter thought he was all wheat, and the devil thought he was all chaff. But Jesus knew he was part chaff and part wheat. So, he got rid of this chaff. This thing is from me.

Now I’m not talking, I suppose, to oh, a very few people. But what overrates yourself? We all tend to overrate ourselves. We like to brood over our successes and what people think of us and mull over our mail. Editors are tempted to do that. Occasionally somebody will write one that sort of take a quart of chaff out. But mostly they’re praising you for this and that. And you’re likely to get a notion that you’re more valuable. That’s not the way to put it now, really, because your value is infinite before God. But at least I mean greater than you are.

The only way God has to do, he can’t tell us. We won’t believe it. God comes and said to Peter, Peter, you’ll deny me. Peter said me? Deny you? Oh no. He said these others may, but not I. you’ll see. Peter wouldn’t believe it when the Lord told him he was one fifth-sixteenth wheat and fifteenth-sixteenth chaff. Peter didn’t believe it. He said, oh no, there’s a mistake here someplace, Lord. They’ve got, you’ve got, you pulled the wrong card out of the file. It isn’t I. So, the Lord smiled and said, this thing is from me, Peter. And when poor Peter had been loved back into fellowship with his Lord, he never made that mistake again. He found his right size.

There is such a thing, brethren, as stepping on a scale. Some of you growing youngsters want to believe you weigh more than you do. And some of you youngsters that were once youngsters but are now not anymore and are growing in the wrong directions. You want to believe that you don’t weigh as much as you do. I recommend a scale. Step on and stop arguing. You know how much you weigh after the scale gets done with you.

And so, this thing is from me. There’s your nice, lovely, streamlined scale sitting there in a corner. And you’ve got an inflated notion about yourself. You like to think you’re as willowy as the breeze-blown bush down by the riverside. And the scale says, this thing is from me. Step on. You step on and you’re instantly disillusioned. Then that’s what failure will do for us. I don’t think we ought to fail. And I think if we were spiritual, we ought to be. There’d be other ways to teach us, but it seems there isn’t. So, the Lord used Peter’s failure.

Now some of you have failed maybe this last week. I wish you hadn’t. I hope maybe you didn’t. But if you did, there’s no reason why you should wear a black armband for the rest of the month and say to yourself, oh, I’m no good, I’m no good. Of course you’re not. But you have one who thinks you are. And He thought it so fully that He died for you. And He made you the apple of His eye and He wrote you in His hands and in His heart and on His shoulders.

So, you must be worth something after all. And if you failed him somewhere this week, I’m sorry. This thing is from me. Now if you’ll bow your head and ask him to forgive you for failing him, you’ll know how small you are and how weak you are and how to trust your Lord better than you did.

Then there is bereavement. Look at this man, Lazarus. He died while Jesus tarried. And Jesus came way late. And when he got there, Lazarus was in the grave. And Jesus went to the grave and said, Lazarus, come forth. And Lazarus came forth. But he didn’t come forth alone.

Do you know what came forth out of the grave with Lazarus? The 11th chapter of John. When Jesus said, come forth, out walked Lazarus. And trailing close behind, out walked the 11th chapter of John. And the 11th chapter of John has set alight in more graves than you could count on a summer’s day. And has given hope and cheer to more people who’ve lost their loved ones and has made dying easy for the souls of a million Christians from that hour to this. Oh no, He didn’t come out of that grave alone, but that hopeful, cheerful, buoyant, vibrant 11th chapter of John came out with Him.

This thing is from me. I let you die, said Jesus, in order that this might be a ladder to coming race, coming ages to climb on. This might be a star of hope over the cemetery. This might be a light for all Christians.

And there’s tribulations. Paul had his tribulations. I read this morning about how the front part of the ship stuck on the sandbar and the hinder part of the ship, the stern, they say now, was caught in the waves and wind and broke into pieces. The ship went to pieces, and everybody fell out and grabbed a board and got ashore. Well, it was pretty tough. Paul had said two nights, 14 days and 14 nights, there hadn’t been a sun or a star. And they’d been practically without food and without hope in that little old-fashioned ship being tossed in the terror of the Mediterranean Sea. But God said, don’t worry, Paul, this thing is from me.

And what was the result? The result was that the light of Christianity reached to pagan Rome and all the lives were saved into the bargain. To Paul, it looked as if somebody was picking on him. But to God, it was all a part of a far-looking purpose. This thing is from me.

So, you’re in tribulation. You’re having your troubles. Things aren’t doing so well at home. Well, you can take it one of two ways. You can get out your crying towel and say, why does this happen to me? Or you can hear Him say, this thing is from Me. Hold still and wait. Watch Me. And then you will see the miracle.

And there’s illness. Now, I have an example or two from the Bible. There was a man born blind.

When his parents noticed that the little chap couldn’t see, I suppose their hearts grieved terribly over it. They said, our little boy can’t see. And when he began to stumble and fall and run into things and hurt himself, no doubt bitterness came to his parents’ heart. Or if they were good believers and God lovers, if it wasn’t bitterness, it was a wonderment and a puzzlement. Why was our baby born blind? But that same man born blind found Jesus Christ through his blindness. We haven’t any way of knowing, nor do we have any grounds for believing, that he’d ever have found Jesus if he’d been a seeing man.

If he’d been a seeing man, he might well have been out working when he was rather sitting by the wayside. But because he was not a seeing man but was shut up in the dark precincts of his own mind, his ears were sharp, and he heard the sound of passing footsteps. Who is it? It’s Jesus of Nazareth. And he cried, Jesus of Nazareth. Thou son of David, I think the language he used, have mercy on me. He found the Lord and rose and followed him in the way and became a disciple. And he’s in heaven tonight with both eyes bright and seeing. This thing is from me.

So, the sickness you don’t like, everybody would like to be as healthy as Carolina, what’s his name, Carolyn, that big football player here down at Notre Dame. Everybody would like to be in state of perfect health. I wish we all could be. That is, my human heart says, I wish you well. But I don’t know, but what maybe some of us are kept in the way because we just don’t have energy enough to get out. This thing is from me. Make something of it, please.

And there are disappointments, and I’m finished. Disappointments, oh, we want our own way. You know the acme of all disappointments? I’ll tell you. A 12-year-old boy, Saturday morning of the Sunday school picnic, when he jumps out of bed, 12 feet from the bed and lands, a foot for a year, and then looks out the window, it’s pouring it down. That is the acme of disappointment. What a time he was going to have that day. And suddenly the sharp bite, the sting of disappointment. I can’t, we can’t go. There’s no use even to call. It’s out. We’re finished. That disappointment to a 12-year-old, that’s pretty serious. And it can hurt like everything.

And when we get older, we don’t get any better, we just get tougher. We’re just as quickly and as easily disappointed later on. Mama, you were going to shop today, or not today, but maybe Tuesday you say. You’re going to go to Marshall Fields, Boston store. And if nobody’s looking, you may even sneak into Woolworth’s. And you’re going to, your husband has given you a check, and you’re going to stop at the corner currency exchange and have it turned into good green. And Tuesday’s going to be your day. And the baby comes down with an infected throat. And you can’t get out of the house now.

Don’t look at me honestly and tell me that doesn’t hurt you. Of course it hurts. You’re disappointed. You don’t like it. You say to yourself, I never get anything that ever goes my way. And you reach for the crying towel. And you begin to wipe it off. Wipe off the bitter tears that start, as the poets say.

Now that’s the way we are. You men, you got a golf game coming up. You’re just about to break 80, 82, 83, 84. You’ve been able to get around those 19 holes, 84, sometimes 90 when you’re not feeling too well. You’re after 80. And you’ve got a fellow who’s going to give you some tips, and he’s a semi-pro, and you’ve got a morning, oh I’m going out there and I’m going to learn today. And by next week it’ll be 80 and maybe even under 80.

And the next day your wife said, listen, it’s impossible. Look, look what’s got to be done. Look. And you give up. But you don’t give up gracefully. You say, but listen, I can only have the benefit of this man today, this semi-pro, who’s going to give me some tips. I can break 80. And she says, if you break 80 at the expense of the house, and the home, and the children, and the car, and the lawn. All right, he gives up, but he doesn’t talk much that day. Now, he doesn’t sulk. He’s a Christian. But you know, he’s just sort of meditating. He doesn’t say much. He just sort of meditates as he goes around doing what he doesn’t want to do.

Now those are only trifling disappointments, but dear people, there are other kinds of disappointments that you don’t laugh about. You laughed about the ones I gave you as an example, because they’re shallow. But there are disappointments you don’t laugh about. They cut so deep in and so deep down.

I’ve had women come to me, a few of them in my time, white, gray, chalk-faced, and sit and say, Mr. Tozer, my home’s finished. It’s finished. I have no longer any reason to believe that my husband has any regard for me, and it’s only a matter of days until the whole thing blows, and our children will be separated. You don’t laugh about that. That’s not surface. That goes way to the deeps of the being.

A man worked on me once, and I groaned, and he said, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it. He said, what you felt there is what surgeons call surgical pain. Surgical pain isn’t a skinned knuckle. Surgical pain goes clear down to Adam and shakes his teeth out, and you’re hurt into your ancient family tree, cleared down to the roots.

And there are disappointments that you don’t laugh about. It isn’t a skinned knuckle, a disappointed golf game, a picnic that didn’t come off. It’s a grief that wrings you like a towel. What are we going to do with it? The answer is, child of God, this thing is from me. You can’t believe it now but try to believe it. Believe it in your grief, and the day will be when you’ll believe it in your joy. Believe it in your tears, and the day will come when you’ll believe it with your smile. This thing is from me.

Somebody wrote a doggerel poem, which I’ll spare you, but in too many verses and too many lines, there is at least one thought embodied. It is this thought, that disappointment needs only to have the letter D taken off and the letter H put on, and you’ve changed it from disappointment to his appointment. What is disappointment to you may be God’s appointment for you.

And if you’ll remember what I told the Sunday school, if you want to be happy in the future, do now what you will in the future wish you had done. So, if you want to get the best of your disappointments; incidentally, there’s a Methodist preacher who is going to write a series of articles for the Alliance Weekly. He’s an evangelical Methodist preacher from the East, calling it with New Jersey, First Methodist pastor. And he’s going to write a series of getting the best of, getting the best of your illness, getting the best of your disappointment, getting the best of your losses, and so on. I look forward to reading them myself.

If you will want to get the best of your disappointments and tears and griefs and temptations and all the rest, then hear God say now what you wish you’d heard him say then. Hear him say now, this thing is from Me.

Tags Deliverance, Disappointment, Trials