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“The Sense of the Presence of God”

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The Sense of the Presence of God

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 4, 1956

In Matthew, the 18th chapter, verses 19 and 20, again, I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.

And in John 14:9, these words, Philip saith unto Him, Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. And how saith thou then show us the Father. Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in Me. The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works. And then, in the eleventh chapter of 1 Corinthians, he that eateth and drinketh, unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world.

Now there has been, I suppose, since Adam fled to the trees of the garden, an age-old longing to find God. Philip expressed it when he said, Lord, show us the Father. And this longing seems to be universal. Though, along with it, there is also a sin-born fear of God so that the fallen race of men is caught between fascination and fear. Fascination, I wonder if it does not root back into the Biblical doctrine of the Divine Image, that we were made in the image of God. And that which was made in the image of another, has a desire to look in on and see that Other in whose image he was made. It is the desire of the flowing river to look back into the fountain from which it came. This is the fascination, the longing to find God. But because man has sinned, he is also afraid of God, and so like Adam flees among the trees of the garden.

Now, some particularly, the Greeks, thought of God as dwelling in the local habitation. And so, they had their sacred mount, or they had their grove or rocky peak. And they thought of God as dwelling there. And they came betimes to worship God who dwelt in the mount or in the grove or on that rocky peak. And as they approached it, the thought that God was actually there, transported them. And history tells us of some of their ecstatic songs and dances as they approached the holy place as they considered it. And they brought along with them heifers with garlands of flowers around their necks as the poet says, lowing to the skies. And they’re in front of that mount or grove or peak, they sacrificed reverently, these heifers. And the poets of the day wrote verse to their deities, and sang them and the people saying them. This was the effort of men who are lost and away from God, but who are caught in the strange fascination that God exerts over the minds of men, and long to find Him and could not.

And then God brought the Truth to the world. And He swept away errors and fancies and shadows. And He showed what the Old Testament had hinted at, what it had pointed to and what it had prepared us for. That God should appear, not on a mount or in a grove, but that He should appear in the form of a man. And His name shall be called Emmanuel. And He could say, he that have seen Me hath seen the Father.

And so now, instead of there being a holy mount where they lead the lowing heifers, instead of there being a holy grove where the poets compose their hymns to the deities, God now dwells in a man, and that Man is the focal point of manifestation. As man, He is I say, that focal point of manifestation, and as God, that point may be anywhere. So, that where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.

Now, this is the truth as over against all of the dim ideas that were wrought out of the darkness and confusion of unregenerate minds. That God has given us a focal point where He dwells. That God is everywhere, I think, is believed by Jew and Christian, but that there is a point of Manifestation, is believed also by Christians. And that point, that focal point of manifestation is Jesus Christ our Lord. And as God. I repeat, that point may be anywhere. He that seeks the throne of grace findeth that throne in every place. And so, He says, if you’re gathered in my name, I am with you. And if ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it.

Now, the practice of the first Christians was very simple. They met in the name of a Man who they conceived and believed to be the focal point of God’s manifest presence. They met in His name. That was their mount and their grove and their bush and their mercy seat and their Sanctum Sanctorum, their holy place. That Man was all that the Greeks had looked after and wanted and all that the Jews had sought after if happily they might find Him. He was all that. And so, when they met together, they met in His name. And that Man, they said, had died to take away the separating wall of sin, and so removed the fear, but still preserved the fascination.

So those early Christians were not afraid of God. They did not bring blood, for that blood, they said, was already shed by the man who was also God and the God who was also man. And therefore, they were not afraid of God, but they still had that reverent fascination that brought them as a magnetic attraction. As by a magnetic attraction, it brought them to God. And they could not find this God by going into the mount, for He was not in the mount. They could not find Him and satisfy their desire for His presence by going into a grove somewhere, for He did not dwell in groves. They could not satisfy themselves by going into a building, because Paul plainly said, God dwelleth not in temples made by hands. But they satisfied that by coming together in His name. And wherever they came together in His name, He was there, so that their holy place was wherever a group of Christians were. Their sacred mount was wherever Christians came up together in the name of the Lord.

And now they said, this Man is back from death. And though He died, He’s dead no longer. And though He was in the grave, He’s out now. And He’s in full life and power forevermore. And so, they gathered to Him knowing that He was there. Not trying to persuade Him to come, but knowing that He was there, and knowing that all Deity was present. Hidden from sight, as He was hidden once in the pillar of cloud and fire that hovered over Israel. Hidden from sight, but all Deity there. He that has seen Me hath seen the Father. And they were all with one accord in one place.

And while they thus were gathered together unto Him, the focal point of the manifested Diety, suddenly, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. And in the 13th of Acts, they ministered to the Lord and prayed, and the Spirit said, separate me, Barnabas and Saul. Remember that in gathering together, they had no other purpose. It is wrong for Christians to meet with any other purpose, than to minister to the Lord. To recognize that here is their Holy Mount. Here is their Sacred Grove. Here is their Promontory Peak sticking up against the sky where the ancient Greeks used to feign that the deities dwelt and look down. And now, this is all swept away, I repeat, and this assembly, this gathering together is the Holy Mount. This is the Holy Grove. This is the Sacred Hill, and they ministered to the Lord. It might have been hidden away somewhere for fear of the Romans or the Jews. It may have been in somebody’s house. It may have been in a synagogue. It may have been in a building, rented or borrowed or bought. Wherever it was, it was not the building. For being God, He could be anywhere. But they ministered to the Lord and they prayed.

Now, I read the passage from the book of First Corinthians that says that there was trouble in the Corinthian church, because they met without recognizing that Presence, not discerning the Lord’s body. I was afraid that I could be wrong on this, so I looked it up very carefully, to see whether I was right or whether this was simply speculation on my part. And I find that the Ellicott Commentary says almost the same thing, that they met without recognizing the Presence. They did not, were not required to believe that the bread and wine were God. But they were required to believe that God was present where Christians met to serve the bread and wine.

And because they did not recognize this and would not, therefore, they were in trouble. And they met together for other purposes than that of finding God at that focal point of manifestation in the person of His Son. He that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation, judgment is the word, to himself, not discerning the presence of the Lord. Not knowing that this is the Lord’s body, of which He is the Head. And he said, the result of this unworthy gathering together was that some of those Christians were weak and sickly, and some actually died. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world.

Paul, in another place said that he turned a certain man who was a Christian, over to the devil for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. I am not of those who believe that all sickness is of the devil, but I am of those who believe that God sometimes chastens and causes His people, actually, to be sick and to die, perhaps before their time as a judgment upon them lest they should go on to be condemned with the world. And in this instance, the judgment was upon them because they were too carnal, too worldly, too social-minded, too unspiritual, to recognize that when Christians met, they ought to at least have the reverence that a Greek had when he led a heifer to the sacred grove. They ought to at least have the reverence that a Greek poet had when he lay irreverently under the trees and compose sonnets to His deity. That when they came together, they ought to have at least the reverence that a high priest of the Old Testament had when he approached the sacred holy place, and with blood, put blood upon the mercy seat. And they didn’t. They came in another way. This sense of the Presence wasn’t in them. And so, the purpose and meaning of the communion dimmed down.

And it was not only true there, but in other churches as set forth in Revelation one, and two and three, it really is, Revelation two and three, the letters to the seven churches. He said that their love cooled. You’ve left your first love. And he said that their moral lives had degenerated. And he said their doctrines had wavered, so that they suffered that woman Jezebel to teach them to commit spiritual fornication and eat things offered to idols. And he said that they had the name that they lived, but they were dead, because they recognized not the Presence and the gathering together as believers to the holy mount, the coming up to Zion’s Hill, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. This had passed away from them, and this was why Christ appeared with eyes of the flame of fire and feet like unto fine brass to trample, and with a two-edged sword in his mouth to slay. Where just before the opening of those condemnatory letters, in which he praised and blamed and pleaded for them to get right, he revealed Himself as a judge and showed the two-edged sword and the feet like unto burnished brass.

And I tell you, my brethren, that there must be judgment before there can be blessing. And I pray that we may be wise enough to escape the sharp edge of that sword. I pray that we may be wise enough to avoid the frightful crushing of those trampling feet. I pray that when the eyes of the Flame of Fire look into our hearts and question why we’re here, that our motive will be found pure and holy.

Now, if this church is a real church, it is a communion, not an institution. Not an institution set up merely organized and established. Anybody can organize a church–anybody. Anybody can set up a church, get a pastor, elect a board. Anybody can organize by getting a group together, voting in a constitution and getting thus established. Anybody can set up a church. And anybody can give the offices, the body can give to the officers certain authority. The offices of authority may be set up, pastors, deacons, elders, and so on. Anybody can thus organize an institution. But unless that institution is also a communion, it is not a New Testament church.

Now, a New Testament church must be, and if this church is to be a New Testament Church, it must be a company drawn together with a fascination, the magnetic fascination of the desire to see God, to feel God, to hear God, to be where God is, as the Greeks in reverence approached their sacred place. As the Jews in reverence approached their holy place, their Sanctorum.

So, a church is a company of people who have been drawn together by the age-old and ever-new desire to be where God is. A company drawn together, I say, to see and hear and feel God appearing in the Man. Not in the preacher, not in the deacon nor elder, but God appearing in that Man, back from the dead, eternally alive.

That is the Bush before which we kneel. That is the Mercy Seat to which we approach. That is the Presence. And remember that He is literally present, though not physically present. It is a mistake to imagine that He is physically present. Some people approach the communion with great awe because they think they’re approaching the physical presence of God. But the Bible teaches us, not that He’s physically present, but that He is literally present, and this then is the Bush. God was not physically present in the burning bush. He was not physically present between the wings of the cherubim. He was not physically present in the cloud and fire. But in all three, He was literally present.

And so, our Lord is literally present. This Man who is the focal point of divine manifestation, is here. And if we are here for any other reason, there may be two kinds of reasons that could bring us here. If the reason is humanly worldly, but not spiritual, then, we may not be judged or punished. That is, if we come to hear a man, or if we come to hear music, or if we come for social fellowship, that is a humanly worthy reason, though it is not a spiritual reason. And therefore, we may not be judged, but we will miss the glory. That is all. We will miss the glory. And if our coming together is an unworthy reason, then we had better heed Paul’s warning. If there’s anybody present, I don’t think it’s true of this fellowship. I want to be fair and say that. But if, and those times when women go to church to show their garments, they had better look out for the warning of Paul when he says, for this cause, many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep. If they’re truly Christians, they will be judged severely lest they perish with the world. And if there are other reasons. If there should be those who attend a church because it affords them a group that they may exploit to sell life insurance or real estate, or books. If that’s the purpose, if that’s it, then, my brethren, I say that we had better look out. For those reasons are unworthy reasons. And the warning of Paul is for you and me.

So, I ask you this morning before communion, let us try to confront the Presence. Let us try to, by faith, not bring Him here. For we don’t have to do that. He is here. He is here in the presence of that divine Man who is the point of manifestation. But that we might have faith to know and discern that He is here. I think “discern” is the word Paul used and discern is the word I want. Let us have faith to discern the Presence and that this is the body of which He is the Head. And that this is a holy place after the manner of the holy place of the Old Testament temple. And let us forgive each other as God hath, for Christ’s sake, forgiven us.

Will you look in your own heart and see? Is there a grudge which you hold against anyone? You say yes, there is, but that person has never repented. You must not wait to let a person repent. But you must, you must forgive, waiting for that person to repent. And then we must vow obedience before our God. We must put away this scattering of our attention, this scattering of our attention.

Last Sunday night I preached with a young man and a young woman on the back seat over on this side, near what we call the booth, who smiled at each other and passed hands back and forth all during my most serious sermon. I don’t know who they were. I don’t see as well as some people. That is, as far as some people, so I could only see them. I could not make out their faces. I know this happened.

Now, I’m not saying this churlishly, because I suppose there isn’t an old staid deacon anywhere in the world that at some time in his life maybe didn’t steal a hand over, to hold the hand of his girl or his young wife while the service went on. So, I’m not condemning too severely. I’m only saying, brethren, that those are not good reasons for going to church.

This old man who used to be pastor of the little church that met in the building next door, his name was Joseph Hogue, a sharp-tongued old Irishman. And during the sermon, he suddenly stopped and said, young man, if you want to hold that girl’s hand, take her out back to the tabernacle. And I can see what he meant. If this was their reason for being in church, then they had no ancient tradition behind them at all. They were poor mavericks, poor, spiritual mavericks, unbranded and unowned and unclaimed. They had no tradition behind them. They had no Scripture behind them. They had no, they had nothing behind them or underneath them. They were simply there for another purpose, a purpose incidentally, which certainly isn’t evil. But a purpose which has nothing whatsoever to do with this fascination that brings men to the holy place, and that made the man of God say, show us the Father and we’ll be satisfied. And the answer was, have you been so long with me and you’ve not yet discovered the Father? Don’t you know that I am the answer to all the longings of Greeks and Hindus and Egyptians and Persians, and Jews? Don’t you know that I am the Holy Place after which they longed?

Don’t you know, that they sought the Father with fascination? Don’t you know you found Him? Don’t you know that He’s here, and that, I, the Son of the Eternal Father, that I am the Holy Place? Haven’t you found that out, Philip? Well, Philip hadn’t and I don’t think they did until the Holy Spirit had come. But when the Holy Spirit came, they certainly knew it immediately, then. And after that, they only met in that sacred Name. My brethren, shall we not this morning try not to bring, but to have a sense of the loving nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed.

Now, I say this to you, that if you could have a baptism of a sense of the presence of the ancient God who made the heaven and the earth and holds the world in His hands, the Ancient of Days, Jehovah. If you could have a sense of His presence, it would change your life from this moment on as long as you live. It would be like giving a weak, tired, sick man an injection of the elixir of life. It would change you so completely. It would elevate you and purify you and deliver you from the primals of carnal flesh to a point where your life would be one, radiant fascination from this hour on. May God grant this to us. Not His presence, but a sense of His presence.

We’re met here as Christians. We’re met here. The Communion will be celebrated. Somebody would say, but that isn’t the way they celebrated communion in my church, and I don’t quite think that the way you do it is the way it was done in the New Testament.

Well, my frank answer to you is, dear brethren, I don’t know. I know that the Bible tells us that we’re to drink of the cup and break the bread, but it doesn’t tell us how. And it’s very careful not to lay down a rigid, how to do it rule. For if the Bible had laid down that rigid, how to do it rule with all the ingredients carefully present, we would have worshipped it as the Jews worshipped the old brazen serpent. But he left it to the sanctified wisdom of any local assembly that ever met.

I remember when dear old Mrs. Jefferson was still alive. That I think brother McAfee and I went out to serve her communion. She was an old Lutheran, And the sense of the presence being in the communion was strong in her mind. And when, though she was a quiet little woman, when we unwrapped what we call the elements and knelt before her, something came over that little woman that was awe-inspiring. She felt God was there. God was there.

I know of a Roman Catholic, who still lives down here, who went by this church one day when the prayer band was meeting, and heard them sing and came in and came to a service and was converted, and still lives down there. That little old woman who until recently was sending her money to missions through the church and does write to my wife occasionally, happy, joyful, Christian letters.  We took communion down there to that little old lady. And she said, oh, oh, I didn’t bathe this morning. She said, I should have bathed this morning if I’m going to have the communion. And she’s so tired and little and old, and her poor messed up house is such a mess, that we assured her, oh, you don’t have to worry about that. The Lord doesn’t look on the body. The Lord looks on the heart. But imagine will you, the reverence that that little woman had, that she didn’t want even to take communion without first she had done all she could do to put away any soil that might be on her.

Well, it’s not the body, but it’s the spirit, it’s the soul. And so, here we’re gathered. And I pray, I pray that this sense of a loving nearness of the Savior may be instantaneously bestowed upon some of you. And we’ll do the way we know, the best way we know. There might be four or five other possible ways. Some places, everybody comes to the front. Some places, they have one cup. Some places, they come down in sections and groups. There are different ways of doing it. Some places they sit up and sit around and there’s no nothing like this physically. But that isn’t important.

What is important is that a company of believers, drawn by the fascination of the person of God to the focal point where that Presence is manifested, even Jesus Christ our Lord, that we gather here. And the best we know how, that we celebrate His death, till He come. And that we say, O Sacred Head, once wounded. By sin and grief bowed down so scornfully surrounded by thorns thine only crown. O sacred Head, what glory, what bliss till now was Thine! Yet, though despised and gory, I joy to call Thee mine. If there’s an irreverent thought. If there is an unforgiving thought. If there’s a disobedient heart, I can only pray, God have mercy on them for they know not what they do. Shall we discern the body and acknowledge the Bush this morning.

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Tozer Talks

“The Knowledge of God 2”

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The Knowledge of God 2

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 1, 1956

This is the second in a series of four talks on the three degrees of divine knowledge. I spoke last week, in a preliminary sermon of what I mean by the knowledge of God. And then, today and next Sunday and the next, I want to deal with these three degrees of divine knowledge.

Now, briefly I’ll sketch that there are three degrees of knowledge possible to a Christian, that gain by reason. And I will use as a general text, 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 which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.

Now, this is tight writing, there’s no poetry here. This is the philosophy of theology. This is theological philosophy. This is a Christian philosopher thinking tightly about truth and revealing it. And he says in effect that reason can know through what it sees in nature, the invisible God, and His eternal power and Godhead. The second degree of knowledge is that which is revealed through faith. And in Hebrews 11:3, we have one text out of very, very many. So many that we’re embarrassed to select one and leave a whole book full of them not read. This is Hebrews 11:3; through faith we understand that the world was framed by the word of God. So, the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. There’s an invisible source back of the visible creation that is revealed through faith.

And then, the third is, that which is revealed to our spirits by the Holy Spirit in spiritual experience. 1 Corinthians 2:9-14, but as it is written, eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath 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. 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.

Obviously, here, it takes the Holy Spirit to lead us into this third, and furthering degree of knowledge, further on than reason, even further than faith. It is the Holy Ghost Himself. Which thing also we speak not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches. Comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man, receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. The natural man can know God’s eternal power, the Godhead through reason. But the natural man, that is the unregenerate man, cannot know the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them because they’re spiritually discerned.

I pointed out that these three degrees of knowledge corresponded to the outer court of the temple, which was open to the sky and enjoyed the light of the sun by day and the moon and stars by night; that is, natural light. The second degree, corresponded to the holy place–faith–where there was light from the candlesticks, but no light from the stars nor sun nor moon. No natural light came there. We have to believe whatever reason says. And then, the Holy of Holies, the Sanctum, where there was no light from the sun or moon and no light from the candlestick made by man, but the light came alone from the Divine Presence, even the Shekinah which dwelt between the cherubim. And that corresponds to the third and last degree of knowledge, which is the immediate, unmediated knowledge the spirit can have of God through the Holy Spirit.

Now, nature is a teacher of theology, and I want to talk about that this morning. Next Sunday, I’ll talk about that knowledge which is revealed to us by faith, in which reason can neither support nor deny. The third Sunday, I’ll talk about that knowledge which is given to us by the Holy Spirit.

Now, the knowledge of God by reason. And I say again, that nature is a teacher of theology. It was Dante that said that nature is the art of God Eternal. And if nature is the art of God, then we can learn much about the Artist from the art. That is so well known that I hardly need to repeat it. Pascal, the greatest mind probably that France ever produced, certainly the greatest French theologian that ever lived and Christian, said that nature is an image of God; so is near perfect because it is an image of God, but not all together perfect because it is only an image of God. I’ll repeat that another way. That nature being the setting forth of God, the garment of God, is near to being perfect, because it is God’s image. But it is not absolutely perfect, because it is not God, but only the image of God. And you remember that Milton when he was blind in that magnificent Paradise Lost, bemoaned the fact that he was blind and said something to this effect that, from the book of knowledge, the fair book of knowledge presented a universal blank to him now of nature’s works. And wisdom at one entrance was quite shut out because he could not see. Therefore he said, this universal Book of Wisdom has been shut, one page has been shut to me because I can’t see.

Now my brethren, I do not quote these men only to say what I want to say better than I can say it. And in speaking of the knowledge of God in nature, I would have it understood that I am not trying to show off any learning or am I trying to go exhibit any particular penetration, but rather I would approach it on my knees. And I would approach it in the spirit of Sir John Bowring who wrote this great, these great words. Almighty One, I had bend in dust before Thee, even so veiled cherubim, in calm and still devotion, I adore Thee, all wise, and all present Friend. Thou to the earth it’s emerald robe hast given or curtained it in snow, and the bright sun and the soft moon in heaven before Thy presence bow. Thou Power Sublime, Thy throne is firmly seated on stars and glowing sun. Oh, could I praise Thee; could my soul elated waft Thee seraphic tones. Had I the lyre of angels, could I bring Thee an offering worthy Thee, in what bright notes of glory would I sing Thee blessed notes of ecstasy. And I only want it understood that I bend in dust before Him as veiled cherubim and in common still devotion I adore Him. All-wise, all-present Friend.

So, nature teaches us certain things about God. And reason can understand them. And this is one of the reasons why man is guilty before he ever hears the gospel at all. Some people say, why send missionaries to the heathen when they even are in innocence. And if they don’t hear the gospel and don’t hear about Jesus, they will not be able to reject Jesus and thus bring guilt upon themselves.

Now, this saying comes from a misunderstanding of the whole thing. The heathen are not lost because they reject Jesus. They are lost because they have known from the beginning that God is, and certain things about God. And yet have loved darkness more than light and have continued in their darkness and have loved sin and iniquity and have exalted their own ego above the throne of God and have lived wicked, opinionated, self-contained, godless, unbelieving, and obscene lives. And when they hear of Jesus, if they reject Him, they will add one more final sin to their terrible list, but it will only be one. The heathen are already lost, because that which can be known of God is revealed in them so that they clearly understand it, even His eternal power and Godhead.

Now, I will point out some of the things that nature teaches. One is, that God is. By looking around on the world, every people and tongue and tribe has concluded that God is. And there is not a language among the thousands of languages spoken by man in all history and in all the world today that does not have a name for God. Reasonable beings gazed down or up or out or around and whispered God. They knew that God was. Only the fool says in his heart there is no God. And there are not many of such fools. There are many sinners, certainly, and there are many millions who will have their own way whether God is or is not. But there is scarcely one in a million, that will say, there is no God. Mostly God is found in the language of mankind, whether it be the language of a forgotten tribe, or whether it be some great language, such as Latin or English. And thus, the nations of the earth, and all times and places and under all circumstances, have looked out and up and around and down, and have exclaimed–God is. But it teaches us more than that God is. It teaches us that God is eternal.

Now we are soul constructors that we must ask, where did this come from? You know, my brethren, we think what we think and are as we are because of the way we’re constructed. Any anatomist will tell you that you walk the way you walk because of your body structure. I couldn’t, for instance, walk like the big tall usher here for the simple reason I don’t have his body structure. And he wouldn’t want to walk like me, because he doesn’t have mine. We walk the way we walk because of our anatomical structure. And so, we think the way we think because of our mental structure. God has made us a certain way. And one thing that God made us to ask is, where did this come from?

When we look at a thing, or discover or run upon it, our minds make us say, where did this come from? How did it get here? And experience teaches the antecedent. Always remember that. That experience, even from the newborn babe to the ancient sage, always teaches the antecedent. The Explorer goes far into the hidden jungles of South America, and there he finds a building. And long, long it’s been forgotten and gone and it’s almost rotten down. But he says, where did it come from? How did it get here. And into his mind comes the thought of antecedent intelligence. And he says, this didn’t make itself. It didn’t pile itself up here and make its windows and doors and its roof and it’s entablature and its arches. It was built by somebody. So, the idea of antecedent comes into their minds.

A man is traveling where he believes no man has ever been, and he sees a track and he knows it to be a human footprint. And he says, who put it here? Somebody was here before that track was made. So, he goes back to antecedent again, and says, before the track was the foot, and before the track was made, the foot was here. Or he looks about him at the fauna of the earth, anywhere from the great mastodon or the whale that swims in the sea or the tiny mouse that runs under the rock, and says, how did it get here? And you can trace it back and back and back and back and back through generation and generation and generation. And through the simple knowledge of biology and the facts of life, he knows how that mouse got here, by its father before it and its father before it.

And so, he goes back to the first mouse and says, antecedent again, and puts a capital letter there. He says before the first mouse was a God who made mice. Before the first elephant, was a God who made elephants. Before the first bird spread its wings, was a God who made birds. For he gazes up into the heavens above and sees the stars and says, who put that there? Where did that come from? It’s as natural for him to ask that question as it is for a lame man to limp. It’s in his structure. He can’t help it. It’s in his mind. Who put that star there? Where did that sun come from? And then again, the word antecedent leaps into his mind. Something was before that star was there. He looks out at mankind, and sees men running up and down in the earth, and says, where did we come from?

We all know we can trace our genealogy back. We can know where our father was, our grandfather, our great-grandfather. Most of us Americans are lost after we get back about three generations. But we know that whether we can identify our ancestors or not, we had ancestors back to the first one who stood up on the earth. And before that first one, was a God who made men. So we have the word antecedent. Always, always we look in any direction and say that He did it, He did it, He did it. And we may have different names for Him and different conceptions of Him, but always reason cries, He did it. He was there first. He created the world, so He must have been before the world. He created time, so He must have been before time. And if He was before time, then He is eternal.

So, His eternal power and Godhead are revealed simply by looking around about us. We don’t have to hear the gospel or know the Bible, we only have to see around about us a bit, and we know this, and all our excuses are taken away. And there we stand with the veil pulled aside and in the presence of the great and Almighty God, all-wise, all-present Friend.

And then also, that the theology of nature teaches us that God is omnipotent. Now, reason says so. Reason cries out that God, who must contain all things, and who must bring into being such awful forces as these. Imagine the force of the wind. The poets write of the breezes, of the zephyrs as they like to call them. They kiss the cheek of the child as he plays in the meadow or makes daisy chains beside the brook. Poets have always loved the breeze and the zephyr. But when the breeze and the zephyr rise in a wild, mad fury and hurl themselves upon a town in Kansas or Missouri; In one minute in what was a smiling little helpless, sleepy village, lies a wrecked rubble and the dead are dug out for days out of the rubble. No sun is smiling down. Now, the wind is gone, but still the stretchers carry out the dead. And the wind did it and did it in one minute. Did it in forty seconds, sometimes it will do it.

And the great God who made those mighty winds to roar out of the deep and hurl great chunks of the ocean up onto the seashore. That God must be an omnipotent God. And the lightning that flashes down out of the dark cloud and rends the oak that has stood for 100 years against the storms. That God must be a mighty God. And that God who put gravity in everything and holds the suns and stars together, and holds the pebbles down on the beach and holds the great mountain there on the plain and holds the building down in the city. That great God who made gravity must be a great God.

Think about life itself. Think what power it must take to perpetuate life and carry it on and carry it on. Only rarely, rarely in the course of history has there ever been an extinct creature. Mostly they perpetuate themselves on and on and on. The tiniest little insect that may crawl on your book as you read in the park. And you reach over and carelessly touch it. And then getting rid of it, you crush it unintentionally. And it’s crushed away until it doesn’t even make a mark on the book. A little insect it was. It had a life there, a real life. But before you crushed it carelessly on the corner of your book, it had laid an egg somewhere; begotten itself again. And so, its species goes on and on and on. And think of the power that carries on all grain and all fruits and all life and all birds and fishes and people, and carries it on and on. This great God must be an omnipotent God. But my brethren, it means more than omnipotence. It means that God must be also omniscient. That is that He must have all knowledge.

Have you ever stopped to think that if a man put a machine together and missed on one point, left out one wheel or left out one shaft or one cam or one anything, the machine would probably rip itself apart or at least it wouldn’t work. It’s got to be all there. And the man who puts it together has to know all about that particular machine. And so, the God who put this machine we call the universe together, He had to know all about it. Ignorance of even one thing would ruin everything and bring the universe down in chaos. So that God had to know at once and perfectly all that could be known or can be known about spirit and matter and mind and life and feeling and sensation and space and time and relation and directions and events and deeds and words and thoughts and all the doesn’t fall in those categories. He must know everything absolutely perfectly. For ignorance of any one thing or at least division of one thing somewhere, the wheels of the universe would have ground on and then ground themselves apart.

But the God who made this universe and made it all, from the galaxies to the cutworm. That great God knew all that was. And so the invisible is revealed in the visible, and we and they who know not God, and we who do know God by faith know this at least, that God is an eternal God and that He’s an omnipotent God, and that he’s an omniscient God and knows it all or else his own world would fall apart. But it means more that He’s omniscient. It means that He’s all-wise. They’re not the same. Omniscient means that He has all knowledge. And all-wise means that He has all wisdom to know what to do with the knowledge.

Have you ever run across a well-educated college fellow who couldn’t make a living and his wife had to support him. And he couldn’t get along in society. He wasn’t adjusted. He didn’t know how to say good morning, hid behind a post and slunk down the street. He was completely unadjusted. He couldn’t do anything. And yet, he might have been a PhD. He knew all about Aristotle and Plato and Homer and all about mathematics, but he simply was a learned fool, if I might be so brash. He had a head full of bookish knowledge, but he was ignorantly read and had loads of learning lumber in his head. And he knew nothing really as he ought to know, because he didn’t have wisdom, which told him what to do with the knowledge.

So, God might have been all-knowing and have all the knowledge there is, but lacked the wise skill to make it work. But the great God who had all knowledge, also has all wisdom to know what to do with that knowledge as you know. Observation discovers design. Those who dig in the bowels of the earth for the old races that have passed away and dig up civilizations that are long, long been extinct, they find machinery or hunks of machinery or bits of machinery or flecks of stone chipped out. Or they find funny, little old-fashioned things that they can figure out what they were for. They say design, design, design. They made it. They made this. They find two rocks standing up like this and another rock laying across the top. That’s the first art, and they say design, design.

And the greatest and most beautiful cathedral on the North American continent or in Europe, had to begin with a little rock standing up and another little rock standing up and another little rock laying across. That was design. That was the arch, and from that, all the grandeur of architecture grew; design they say. And if 10,000 years from now, if things should continue as they are, 10,000 years from now, some strange race which you and I can’t figure out, should come upon our Chicago, now covered with the dust blown from the dust bowl of the West, and should go down and down and down, and at last find Chicago and find a kitchen and find the can opener and find a can of salmon still lying there after the passing of the centuries. And the wise diggers into the past would pick up the can opener and brush it off, and say, I wonder what that’s for. There’s design there. And a bright young student would come forward and say, Professor, I see, give it to me. Around and around he’d go and open the can of salmon. Design is the word and everywhere, everywhere from the microbe on up, everywhere design, design.

As a boy I used to see the design. As a boy we used to knock down, or the frost would do it for us, the great chestnut, from the great chestnut trees that used to make beautiful Pennsylvania green, but were later destroyed almost completely by the blight. You used to see those burrs. Some of you have never had in your hand a chestnut burr. Smaller than my fist and almost completely round. And it’s spiked like a porcupine all the way around, as if Mother Nature were saying, let my babies alone. Don’t you bother my babies. And many and many a boy has given up the battle. He’s not able to open that chestnut burr because there were just too many spikes. And so, Mother Nature protected the seed there. And it fell finally and nature opened that burr and the seed fell into the ground and pretty soon a chestnut tree came up. Mother Nature was protecting her seed that she might make another chestnut tree and another one, on down the years.

Well my brethren, all throughout nature I see that design. But you know something else? You know that when you once have broken through the burr and gone past the spikes and have gotten inside that burr and break it open on the great rock and falls apart, you know what you find in there? You find two beautiful chestnuts if they’re ripe. They’re beautiful brown from which we get our word chestnut. You’ve heard of chestnut furniture and chestnut horses and chestnut colors, this and that. Well, that’s where they get the word. It’s a brown that I do not think any artists could quite imitate; so beautiful and rich it is. And it has been all this time held and protected by the softest velvet.

That burr that comes down there, cut down by the squirrel or knocked down by the frost or knocked down by a boy. That burr is a spike on the outside to protect it from its enemies, but a soft velvet on the inside to protect itself from the burr, kept there in perfection. Never was there a baby, what do they call it, lined more beautifully and soft than Mother Nature lines the inside of a burr where she keeps her chestnut. She must love chestnut trees. And I’m glad they’re finding their way back again; and small chestnut saplings are found again all throughout Pennsylvania. She’s coming back. In another generation the boys will be back again knocking chestnut trees down as I did 40 years ago.

Now, what does that mean? It means design. It means that in details we see design. And reason cries, if there is design in the details, then there must be a grand design in the whole of nature. The grand total must add up to design. And the great God Almighty in his balance of nature, must be a God All-wise.

And then there’s the God who cares. And this is the last I’ll speak of this morning. I could go on for five hours, but I’ll stop off here. That God cares for His world. God cares for His world, and He put care in the bosoms. He put care in the bosoms of everything. The old cow out in the field with her mellow breath, and her long, mellow, trombone that she blows at milking time. That cow is only a common beast, but she cares for her babies. And when they’re taken away, she’ll bawl for two or three days; literally bawl for two or three days and run up and down and try to get through the fence. She cares. Everywhere in nature, there’s care.

And if I might not be accused of being senile, I might point out that we had four kittens at our house. Three of them are pretty things. And one of them Mother Nature was, I guess, careless or angry, so she put together the homeliest little mutt of a kitten you ever saw in your life. It was supposed to be black, but didn’t quite make it. It looks as if it was streaked with ugly mud. It looks as if it had been born to ride the rumble seat of a broom with a witch on in front on Halloween. That’s what it looks like. But you know what? Last evening, we were sitting out taking a little air. The old momma cat, we had gotten rid of all the other ones. People wanted them but they didn’t want the ugly one. And the old mama cat came with a piece of liver and deposited it down for her little ugly baby. She didn’t think it was ugly, she liked it. She still likes it. And when it goes, finally, if anybody would be foolish enough to take it, she would weep in her poor cat way. Care is found everywhere.

How oft did Jesus say, would I have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathers her chicks. You that never lived in the country, you don’t even know what that means. But I know what it means. And those that have visited or lived even a short time in the country know. Why, there’s a dozen maybe, little furry fellows with their little, round beady black eyes pecking away for whatever they can pick up. And there’s the old hen carelessly scratching and going about with a restful cluck, cluck, cluck. I don’t know what she’s saying to them.  Just sort of reminding them that she’s around.

And then the farmer boy, hears something that the average person wouldn’t hear it all. He hears a high whistle out of sight, way out of sight, but a high, piercing exciting whistle. He knows what it is. He knows it is the hawk. And that old hen knows what it is. She changes from the restful cluck, cluck, cluck, to a high, rapid cluck, and every little chick dashes for her wings. She spreads those wings out and fluffs out all her feathers and they all gather in there. And I have watched with amusement to see, out between the feathers, out in front of the wing, out behind the wing, out in front of the breast, out in all angles, little, white beaks and little, beady eyes. They’re wondering what it’s all about and what’s all the concern about. They know that the mother has gathered them in.

And that’s what Jesus meant. He would have gathered them in. But I mean to give at this application, that that hen has a care there. And so, you’ll find it everywhere. The bees bring in the nectar that the future generation of bees might have honey to eat. And the egg contains not only the germ that will be the bird, but also the food that will feed the bird till it hatches. So, through all nature, there’s care, care. He is the God who cares. He looked at His world and said, behold, it is very good.

And sin came in, and now we have that strange admixture of sin and nature, and sin in nature. But nevertheless, our Heavenly Father cares. I grumble a little because it was going to be so hot today, but I checked myself and apologized to God.

God made his sun and made it to shine down on the earth. And He made moisture. We call it humidity. But if it wasn’t here, we’d all dry up and die, and future ages would find the dried, blackened bodies. But God has given us the sun and the moon, and He’s given us all His beautiful trees. And He’s taught the birds to migrate and the beast to hibernate, and He’s taught man to build and dress against the cold. God cares. He’s the God who cares. I say nature teaches us theology, and that’s taught in the outer court. That’s taught out there where the light of nature beams down. And reason cries and says the Hand that made us is divine.

Now I close with these testimonies. For I’ve only given you an imperfect sketch. It was Pope, Alexander Pope said, all are but parts of one stupendous whole, whose body nature is, in God, the soul. There he had the thought that God was the Soul of the world as you have a soul in your body. The world would be dead, except that God lives in it and makes it live. I think that’s a lovely thought and a true one. And Solomon said, go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise. And Christ said, behold the birds of the air. And He said, consider the lilies, how they grow. And the seraphim that Isaiah saw and heard, chanted, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. And in our famous hymn that we sing, holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabbath, heaven and earth are full of the majesty of Thy glory.

Oh, brethren, nature is a great teacher. And life is a great instructor. And all around about us, whether it’s the bird that flies to our window, or the leaf that flutters outside, or whether it be the great desert of Arizona, or the rocky peaks of Switzerland, or the great broad, undulating ocean. Whether it be farm or city, village, or desert, the invisible God is crying out to us His eternal power and Godhead. There’s something better, and there’s no salvation there. And no one in a million years could be saved by knowing this. We are saved by the next degree of knowledge, that which is revealed to us by faith, and of that we’ll speak next Lord’s day. But today, let us say together Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty of who is God.

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“The Separated Life”

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The Separated Life
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
November 30, 1958

In 2 Corinthians, the man of God is deeply concerned over the church at Corinth. We talk romantically about the early church. The early church had its faults and its flaws. And it broke the heart of some of the early church leaders, including Paul, who wept over his churches frequently.

In the sixth chapter, Second Corinthians, verse 11. Oh, ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you. Our heart is enlarged. You are not straightened in us. But you’re straightened in your own bowels. That is, you’re not hindered by us. You’re hindered in your own heart. Now, for a recompense in the same, I speak as unto my children, be ye also enlarged. Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? What concord hath Christ with Belial? What part has He that believeth with an infidel? What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God. As God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye separate saith the Lord and touch not the unclean thing. And I will receive you and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises dearly Beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

Now Paul, here commands all the Christians, or lays upon the Christians the duty of the separated life. Without this, religion is powerless. Without this, prayers have practically no meaning at all. The church attendance may be entirely vain. And without this, even right belief is inadequate. Wesley said, right opinion is but a very slender part of religion. He didn’t say that right opinion, that is, right doctrinal beliefs were not an important part of religion, but he said, it was a very slender part, they made up a very slender part. And without separation, there can be at last, and finally, nothing but weakness. There can be no power in religion.

There are those who do not care much to hear about the separated life. And I can understand why. But you know, if you read your Bible very carefully, if you have time to read it, and you read it very carefully, you will note that separation was critically necessary at various times and they stand, these times, as a sort of landmark for us. For instance, there was the ark of Noah, the time of the great flood. There was only one way to be delivered from the Flood, and that was to be separated unto the ark. God separated Noah and his wife and his family, and the entered into the ark, and were in the world but not of it. On the world, but above it. Present, but not part of the world, and they were saved by their separation.

Go on to the day of Abraham and Sodom and Lot. Sodom was destroyed by the fire of God, and Lot’s family, all but one, was saved, and they were saved by separation. Escape to the mountains was the sharp imperative command. Escape to the mountains. And if they had not done this, they would have perished along with the rest. No amount of praying would have helped them. They could have had prayer meetings all over this populated earth before Noah’s Flood. They could have had all kinds of conferences and conventions and meetings. They could have edited magazines and run Bible schools. They could have been religious, added up their numbers and said there are more people going to church than ever. And they could have had all sorts of dramatic news about religion, but Noah’s Ark was the only place where there was safety. And it was out of the ark and lost. In the ark and saved. Separation was imperative. It was not simply something that we better do. It was something that became necessary to do.

So, with Sodom when God said I will reign fire upon Sodom. There lay Sodom, and they could have, as we often do, they could have had little prayer meetings all around over Sodom. And the man Lot could have said to his wife, now let’s have family prayer here this morning by the gate. But if they’d have stayed in Sodom, they’d have caught the fire. It was escape to the mountain and get out. And so, it is in the New Testament teaching. It is, take the cross, follow me, be separated, free yourself, and it’s this and by this alone that there is salvation.

Now he said, be not unequally yoked together. This is all familiar truth, but I want to patiently once more lay it before you, particularly for the sake of the younger Christians; the new generation of believers, be not unequally yoked together.

Now, a yoke you know, is a strong beam that fastens two necks or more together and make them one. It unites two so that they are one. Now if the two are equal, there is harmony. If there is a difference between the two there is disharmony. And the greater the difference of course, the greater the disharmony. If these two are yoked together want to go the same direction will, but if they want to go different directions, there can be only trouble. Two people united, yoked together, can only have trouble if they’re going to go different ways.

Then there’s the acknowledging of the same master. If you’re yoked to the same Lord, then of course, you have no trouble because you’re going the same way and all is well. But if the one obeys the Master and the other chooses another master, why, there can be only difficulty all down the way. If one is bad and hinders the good one, and the good one can’t make the bad one obey. And so there is trouble all down the line.

Now, with the unbelievers there is what we would call moral incompatibility–a great gulf fixed–righteousness and unrighteousness says the Holy Ghost. What is the fellowship? Fellowship as I have explained you know, is a state of equality. Fellow is an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning an equal and ship means a sharing. So fellowship is a sharing equally in something by equals. But if one is righteous and the other is unrighteous, how can there be any equal sharing of the same thing? There is no equality in anything. Therefore, righteousness and unrighteousness stand against each other forever.

Then we have light and darkness. The Bible has a lot to say about light which always it makes out to be truth and goodness; and darkness which it makes out to be error and evil. And he said what communion here? We have almost the same word. It’s strange how language moves about, shifts itself like clouds across the face of the sky. But the word fellowship and the word communion are almost the same word. “Co” we have cooperate, and such word meaning joined. And we have here the state of being joined together in intimate fellowship. And how can you join light with darkness? If the darkness is there, the light is not and if the light is there, the darkness cannot be. One drives the other one out.

And then there is Christ and Belial, Belial the evil God. How can Christ have any concord? And we have the same, almost the same word again. The translators are ringing the changes on good words here, but we have concord, a oneness, a getting together, a harmony. How can Christ be harmonious with Belial? How can it be that the devil and the Lord Jesus Christ should ever have any concord? It cannot be. And how can the one who believes have any concord with the unbeliever? How can they take part together? The believer wants to live for the world above and the unbeliever wants to live for the world below. So they have two different worlds in which they’re interested. One wants to lay up his treasures on high and the other wants to lay up his treasures below.

So again, they have two different worlds and two different storehouses. One wants to talk to the invisible and live in the light of eternity, and the other wants to commune with the visible and live for time. How can therefore be any communion or fellowship? One wants to live right and seek to do good all the days of his life, and the other one is careless about it, if not downright wicked. He’s at least careless about being good. So how can the believer and the unbeliever ever hope to be together?

The unbeliever who says, I have doubts about there even being a God. How can he have warm, heart fellowship with a man who says, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth? The unbeliever who says, I doubt that Jesus Christ was anything else. But just a good man. I don’t know much about him, but I just think he was a good man. How can that man have warm heart fellowship with a man who says, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord, who was begotten of the Holy Ghost, conceived by the Virgin Mary? How can these agree? And how can the temple of God have fellowship with idols? What agreement, it says here again, and still, it’s the same word, fellowship, communion, concord, agreement? How can there be? The temple of God that is dedicated to the one true God and the temple of idols dedicated to the base, low fetishes of the world? How can there be any fellowship?

Well, now let’s make a practical application of this. A practical application would be, say, in marriage. Maybe I’m talking to somebody this morning that is thinking at least about, you’re a Christian, you’re a real Christian and you’re thinking about marriage with someone who’s not a Christian. My advice would be a blunt, unqualified, no, don’t do it. It could only be advice. I am not a pope and I can’t threaten you with purgatory. I can only tell you that if you marry on another level with someone who is given over to unbelief and to the world, you’re going to have trouble as long as you live. Honeymoons don’t last forever. And after the first blush and excitement of being married is over with, you’ve settled back to trying to live some kind of a life under the same roof and get along with a man or with a woman who doesn’t believe in God.

You say he’s not saved, but he tells me that he’s interested. I’ve heard that story and I’ve listened and looked at faces all twisted with weeping. And I’ve seen tears streaming down cheeks. He told me that he would get right and that he wanted to go to church. But as soon as we were married, he refused to have anything to do with it. He won’t let our children go to Sunday school. That’s the old story and it’s rarely any other kind of story. You say, but I think I can win him. I’ve heard that one too. I think I can win him. Now my brother and sister, it would be a thousand times better for you to not be a Christian.

Old Dr. Morrison, that great old Methodist orator of a generation ago told about when he was a young fellow, he was converted and he was thinking about marrying a certain woman, but she would not give her heart to God. So, he said, I quit her and let her die an old maid, bless God. Well, that was dear old Dr. Morrison, the old-fashioned slam, bang, Methodist preacher who could soar on wings as he preached but could also get pretty salty as the aforesaid quotation was explained.

But now in business, Sir, we have it again. How many have come to me and said about this business. Do you think it’d be all right? This man knows his business, and I’m a Christian, he isn’t. My earnest, earnest advice is no, don’t enter into business with a man unless he’s a Christian, if you’re a Christian. Don’t enter into business with him. That is, don’t link yourself so that there’s a yoke on you, because he’ll want to open on Sunday, and you will want to shut up on Sunday. And he will want to joggle the books and you will want to be honest. And so it goes.

Then there are clubs and lodges. You know, I’ve never been an anti-lodge man, very much, but I don’t believe in secret societies for Christians. I think Christians ought to keep out of secret societies. And I say that even though that might hurt some of your feelings very badly. As a young man I said it and a man got up and out of my church and he was so mad, he wouldn’t even let me talk with him afterward. I couldn’t get to him to talk with him. He was so mad. He evidently was putting his lodge above the above the church, above the ministry, above a serious word of advice by a preacher. Well, nothing anybody can do, I suppose. People want to do it. They want to do it. But my earnest advice to all young Christians who will hear is keep out of it. Keep out of it.

You remember our friend Charles Bloomer here, who’s now living down in Arizona or New Mexico, whichever it is Nevada, one of them states down there. He was 30 years an organist in the Masonic Order, somewhere meeting here. Then he got converted, the Lord had to get him down on his back on the floor in a currency exchange with two bandits with guns in their hands standing over him, and he was lying down there looking up while they’re trying to open the safe. And as he laid down there, they threatened him to kill him. He said, O God, if you could get me out of this deal, I’ll give my heart to Thee. So, God got him out of that, and they left without harming him. And he promptly got down on his knees and gave his heart to God.

So, he went back down to where he’d been for 30 years, an organist. He asked for permission to get up and talk. They said, sure, Charlie. So, Charlie got up and talked, and his talk was something like this. Dear friends and former brothers, I have an announcement to make. It is that I have become converted. I am now a Christian born again and I will not be back. I love all of you. You’re my friends. I have nothing against you. I’m not mad at anybody and everything is fine. But I’m a Christian now, and as a Christian, I’m through. Well, they let him go. And they told me, some people told me that afterwards, there were those who would go to his wife and say in a kind of low voice, is Charlie any better mentally than they used to be? They thought something had snapped inside of his head, but it hadn’t. The chains had snapped inside of his heart. And Charlie’s never been back. He’s down. He’s down now in Nevada, and if you get Charlie started writing letters to you, he doesn’t write letters, he writes treatises. He could publish them, long, happy, bouncing, joy as letters. I don’t know any Christian anywhere happier than Charlie. But that cost him a little price there. He gave it up.

Well, then, there’s amusements. I have said a lot about that and I’m not going to say any more now. But I want to call attention to this, that there are situations under certain conditions where a degree of mingling has got to exist, and the Bible takes note of it. First Corinthians five explains this. Paul said, I told you not to company with fornicators. But he said, now don’t misunderstand me, I didn’t mean that you weren’t even to work with or live beside or have any fellowship at all, socially, anyway, with people like that. Because he said, if you left all the evil people in the world, you’d have to withdraw from the world. The monks incidentally later on did that very thing. In order to escape the world, they withdrew from it and lived in caves and monasteries. Paul said he didn’t mean that. What he meant was, don’t have fellowship, Christian fellowship with them, or try to have. Don’t make them your warm, close friends. But you have to live with them.

And there’s First Corinthians seven that concerns, not mixed marriages, but marriages that got mixed after they were contracted this way. A sinful pagan couple, heard the gospel and the wife believed it and was converted and blossomed out into a real Christian life, but the pagan husband refused to believe. And so they were in trouble. Paul wrote and in First Corinthians seven he explained it. He said, now if you’re married to an unsaved husband. He didn’t say, if you marry an unsaved man, but he said, If you are married to a man who is not a Christian. You’ve just become a Christian. Why, don’t leave him because possibly your life before him will help to win him.

Now, of course, you will have your difficulties there. You will have the lack of concord, the lack of fellowship, the lack of communion. You will have to keep your conversation to light bills and babies and whether their refrigerator is working and whether you put the cat out or not. And you will have to keep your conversation to things mundane and earthly. You’ll never have any high conversation cause that unsaved man won’t listen. He won’t listen. But says Paul, don’t leave him. Some of them were for radicals, some of those women, when they got converted, they were so happy in God.

They said, well, that old pagan husband of mine, I can’t stand him anymore. Look, down on his knees to an idol. Paul said, don’t leave him. Don’t leave him. You have no right to leave him. If he’s a pagan, and you’re a Christian, you shouldn’t marry him. But if you’re stuck with him, keep him because you may win him. Besides that, you got the children to think about.

Paul was a good, salty, downright fellow with a lot of common sense. And he explained that. But now there are other instances besides the two that I mentioned. There’s buying and selling on the market. When I go to buy something in a store, I don’t ask whether the man is a Christian or not. Working on a job with unbelievers or having somebody work. I don’t ask that when a plumber comes whether he’s a Christian. He can turn that wrench just as well if he isn’t. And such obligations of citizenship as we may have in the common social relations, we must carry them on and we must carry them on with unbelievers. Because unbelievers are in the world and they’re the vast majority, and we are a minority group.

But Paul said, remember, don’t take these as your friends. Don’t make these your companions. Remember to stay with those that are like you, that believe what you believe, that go all the way you go, that’s walking on your path, whose Father is your Father and whose Savior is your Savior, and have your friendships among God’s people. There are some of you older people here now who’ve reared families and they have gone and you will never stop thanking God until your last breath and conscious thought, that your children found Christian fellowship in this church or some other church. But some of you to whom I speak now right in this church. I could name if I wanted to start naming names. I could name families who found, their children found fellowship among God’s people here. And you will never stop thanking him as long as you live. It doesn’t mean the church is perfect, but it means there is a fellowship of saints.

Then, I’m also talking to a few, I regret to say, who have wept bitter tears into the long night seasons because your children found fellowship out of this church and fellowship with the fringe people, young people whose lives were not right. Maybe later they got all right and came to God, maybe they didn’t. But almost always, it’s the way out. It’s the way young people start. They get with the wrong people. They get friendly with the wrong people and pretty soon that friendliness cements into friendship itself, and then that friendship cements and hardens up until they’re bound together. And the church person doesn’t lead the other one, but the other one leads the church one down. That’s too bad, but it’s so. So, there’s only one way to handle it, young fellow. And that is, find your boon companions among God’s people. But you say they’re dull. Better be dull and right than to be smart and wrong.

One of the great poets, which one was it, Milton or Wadsworth that wrote a sonnet to a young lady. This young lady had been accused of being dull and dumb and lacking in personality because she insisted on being right. And he wrote a quite a long poem to her, telling her, urging her to stay by God and righteousness and morality, and be good and decent and let them call you dull. You can make up in your life in your inner life, for all of their freshness.

Well, maybe some of God’s people are dull, I find some of God’s people dull, I do. I don’t find any of you dull, but I find other Christians sometimes dull, and I’m sure that I have bored some Christians to the point where they could weep. But better to keep company with dull saints than with smart sinners. For the dull saint will shine finally in the kingdom of God and the smart sinner will burn in the fires of hell. And the strong reason given here is that you are the temple of the living God. As such a temple of the living God is sacred. Just as you would not desecrate a church. Just as you would not have gone into the Jewish temple and desecrate the holy place. So says the Scripture, you are not to desecrate the temple of God. Always and at all times, you are to be holy.

There are never any open seasons for Christians. There’s never any period when the lid blows off and you’re allowed to have a wonderful time for a while, never. You can have a wonderful time in God if you know how to go about it. But there never is any serious weeks or days that you’re supposed to be very spiritual and after that, they can relax it on you. No, God’s people are to be good all the time, all the time. Gold is gold all the way through, wherever you find it. Sunshine is always sunshine wherever it is. And righteousness is always righteousness wherever it is.

Now, he gives exhortation here and bases his exhortation upon the trues I mentioned above. Come out from among them is his exhortation and be ye separate. And of course, you will be known as a separatist. And I don’t mind at all, for I am one. I believe in it. Come out from among them and be ye separate. Now, we won’t argue this point nor defend it. Those whom God has enlightened will understand and those that God has not enlightened will not see it and wouldn’t believe it if they did.

So, I’m not arguing the point. I’m saying come out from among them and be ye separate. And blessed are your ears if they hear what the Spirit says unto the churches. Touch not the unclean thing is the second exhortation. The worldly-hearted will defend themselves and argue. The Spirit-taught will obey. We won’t have to say much for the Spirit-taught man, he hears the Spirit say touch not the unclean thing and he knows what he means. And he won’t be drawn into a debate. He will just go and touch not the unclean thing.

The chosen of God will ask no more. He’ll ask for no discussions, ask for no debates, ask for no conferences about what we should do. Just do what we’re told, that’s all. And God says, I will be a Father unto you. And you shall be my sons and daughters saith the Lord Almighty, sons and daughters of God. Did you ever stop to think of it, sons and daughters of God, God’s sons, God’s daughters? Beautiful, beautiful, isn’t it? To be a son of God, to be a daughter of God. And to have God say I will be your Father and you will be my children. To have the great God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, a former of all space and time, who made all things that be, Ancient of Days without beginning in without end, stoop and say you will be my daughter, if you will listen here and be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, but come out from among them and be separated from them. And touch not the unclean thing but believe in my Son, and live a life dedicated to His glory, I’ll be your Father. How wonderful.

Better then to be a son of a king. Better then be the daughter of a queen. Better then to be queen for a day. Better then to be Miss America. Better then be known around the world for some talent or gift that may be yours. For men die you know, they die of heart attacks while making pictures. They die on airplane crashes. Great leaders, political leaders, leaders in the entertainment world, the philosophic world, Great leaders, great musician died. One almost wants to stand a moment in silence, at attention, out of respect to a man in whose heart there was a harp. So they die. They die like Christians die. They die everywhere, the good and the bad die.

But oh, how wonderful to walk around on the earth in constant danger, but knowing that if you die, God has said, I will be your Father. What more do you want? What more could you ask? How could you hope to be any more, or have any more than to have God say, I will be your Father and you will be my daughter. You will be my son. This I think is wonderful, and this is what’s offered, but it’s not forced upon us. God doesn’t argue it. He just states it. He doesn’t debate it. He just places it before us. And blessed are the ears that hear and blessed is the heart that obeys. God grant that that describes you and me. Amen.

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“If Any Man Sin”

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If Any Man Sin
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
November 1, 1953

Now, this being a communion morning, it has been in recent years my practice, not to intrude into the communion service a long sermon, but to try to lay the emphasis where I believe it properly belongs on a morning like this, on the communion service itself. So that, I want merely to bring a meditation from the Scriptures.

In the book of John, the first chapter, that is, the first epistle of John, the first chapter over into the second, these familiar words. If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. My little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Here are the words of the sin-hating John whose epistle bristles with condemnation of everything evil. And by no stretch of the imagination can it be said that John is excusing sin. But John, along with all other Bible writers, was a realist. And he took things as he found them and dealt with them as they were, rather than as he liked to have seen them. And his experience with human beings, even redeemed human beings, taught him that there would never be a time when there would not be at least a possibility of sin. So, in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, He here gives us the truth about this. And if there’s any time we ought to consider it, it is on a Communion Sunday when we partake together of the body and blood of our Lord.

He tells us here that if we walk in the light as our Lord is in the light, that we have fellowship one with another. And the translators do not know whether that “another” means with God or with people. I believe it means with people. The “we” is the antecedent, probably we, if we walk in the light, the pronoun “we.” And then we have fellowship, one with another, property the “we.” But we also have fellowship with God as he tells us earlier in his epistle, and says that if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth isn’t in us. But if we confess our sins, He’s faithful and He’s just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And then says that he writes this epistle in order that His children, God’s children, may not sin, but that if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.

The great factories have clinics or hospitals. They do not put those hospitals in there as an encouragement to accidents or illness. But knowing humanity, they put them in there because experience has taught them that for so many 100 people working for them at a given time, there will be a certain percentage that will either get injured or need medical attention. So they have their hospitals for the sake of the accidents.

Now, in the kingdom of God, these verses are not here to encourage sin. But they’re here as a kind of spiritual clinic that says, watch out and do not sin. But if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the Righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sin. And then he adds more or less as in parentheses, not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Now, I read earlier in the meeting this morning, a passage from the fourth chapter of Leviticus. And I want to connect the Old and the New Testament together here and show how the same Holy Spirit inspired them all the same. Christ walks through their corridors, never knowing the difference between the Old and the New.

I’m sure that in the fourth chapter of Leviticus, there was provided for Israel this clinic were injured Christians Jews, in the case of the Old Testament, were where believers who got into an accident where congregations that became infected with wrong, might find an immediate and efficacious remedy. Notice what they did about sin in the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, as revealed in the Book of Leviticus. It says Moses said, and the Lord spoke to Moses and told him to say to the children of Israel, if a soul sin through ignorance against any of the commandments of the Lord. Now don’t allow that word “through ignorance” there to picture for you a starry-eyed, honest-hearted person who sinned, but sinned accidentally, or through ignorance, as it says here. Think rather, that here is a careless soul who has neglected the Scriptures and neglected to hear the Word of God and who has followed more or less his own heart and has sinned against the commandments of the Lord concerning anything that ought to be done, and shant do them, there’s a remedy for that man. It says later on, that when the thing becomes known, that is, when his conscience awakes to the fact that he has sinned.

Now, he divides up Israel into four or five categories here. He says, if the priests that is anointed do sin. Now I wish this wasn’t here. I wish it didn’t have to be here. I’m glad it is, but I wish it didn’t have to be here. I remember that it was St. Teresa who said that she felt that she was the least of them all because she remembered reading about the great saints of the past, that as soon as they were converted to God, that ended their sin. And they didn’t any more grieve God by sinning. And she said, I can’t say that. I can’t say it. I have to admit that I grieved God after I was converted, and that makes me less than they, she said. A very modest, very humble way to put it. But I think if the truth were known about any of the saints, St. Teresa’s confession, would be their confession too.

I wish it were possible to anoint the head of a preacher so that he would never sin again while the world stands. It would be a most convenient way to deal with the whole thing. But if it were, then you would not have a man before you. You would have an automaton run by pulleys, wheels, and push buttons, morally incapable of doing evil, and by the same token, morally incapable of doing good. For I have insisted here in my preaching, that if man’s will is not free to do evil, it is not free to do good. That freedom of will is necessary to the concept of morality. That if we are not free to do good, then we are not free to do evil. And if we are not free to do evil, then we cannot do good in the very definition of the term. That is why I have never accepted the doctrine that our Lord Jesus Christ could not have sinned. If he could not have sinned, then the temptation in the wilderness was a grand hoax, and God was a party to it. Certainly, as a human being, He could have sinned, but that He would not sin was what made him the holy Man that He was.

So that it is not the inability to sin, but it is the unwillingness to sin that makes a man holy. The holy man is not one who cannot sin. A holy man is one who will not sin. A truthful man is not the man who can’t talk. He is a man who can talk and could lie, but won’t. An honest man is not a man who is in jail where he can’t be dishonest. An honest man is the man who is free to be dishonest, but will not.

So, it says here that the priest that is anointed, if he do sin. And the priest that stands before you and ministers to you in any given church. If that man of God, I mean of course here, it’s the minister. We don’t use the word priests. We’re all priests of God in one sense. But this man was especially set aside to serve publicly. And if he could not have sin, then he could never have understood his people, never. He never could have known of their difficulties and troubles. A physician that never felt a pain could never sympathize with a patient. But if the priests do sin.

And what is that priest to do? Go into discouragement and gloom and lie down and say I am not like Wesley and Simpson and Augustine, therefore, I give up and quit? No, it says, then let him bring for his sin which he has sinned, a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin offering. And he shall bring the bullock into the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord and shall lay his hand upon the bollock’s head and kill the bullock before the Lord. And the priest that is anointed, shall take of the bullock’s blood and bring it to the tabernacle of the congregation. The preacher should dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle of the blood seven times before the Lord, before the veil of the sanctuary. The priest shall put some of the blood upon the horns of the altar and sweet incense before the Lord which is in the tabernacle of the congregation, and shall pour all the blood of the bullock at the bottom of the altar of the burnt offering, which is at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

Now, there you have atonement. There you have God dealing in a work-a-day, day by day, dealings and remedy. You have it here. Then it says in the 13th, And if the whole congregation of Israel sin through ignorance, and the thing be hid from the eyes of the assembly, if there is sin in the assembly someplace. And there never was a lovelier word invented than the word “assembly.” It’s been taken more or less by one or two small denominations. And we don’t use it much, but it’s a beautiful word. It is the assembly of the saints. And if the whole congregation of Israel sinned through ignorance, that is, they don’t know it’s there, and the thing be hidden from the eyes of the assembly. And they have done somewhat this assembly has, or someone in it, against the commandment of the Lord, concerning the things which should be done and are guilty, when the sin which they have sinned against it is known.

Then the congregation shall offer a young bullock and they go through the same process here as they did before. And the priest shoved up his finger in some of the blood and sprinkled it seven times before the Lord, even before the veil. And he should take all its fat and so on. It is an explanation I’ll not go into. And the priest shall make an atonement for them and it shall be forgiven them. In verse 22, it tells about the rulers and says, if any ruler has sinned and done somewhat against the Lord. Then in verse 27, it comes to the loveliest of them all. Priest and ruler, those words I don’t take too kindly to. Priest, because of its association with Romanism, and ruler because of its association with swords and crowns and dictatorial conduct.

But this I enjoy. And if any one of the common people sin through ignorance while he does somewhat against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which ought not to be done and be guilty. If his sin which he had sinned comes to his knowledge, like the man who went into the far country and at last came to himself. Before he had just as been as deep a sinner. But now he came to himself and recognizing, it came to his knowledge. And here we’re dealing with a common people. I love the common people. I don’t necessarily love ugliness or ignorance nor crudity nor vulgarity. And if when we say common people, we mean the vulgar people, the dirty people, and I certainly don’t say that I enjoy being among common people. But if when we say common people, we mean people like you and me that aren’t known very far abroad and aren’t having very great gifts. And we’ll never get probably in the halls of fame, or many of us in who’s who. Why that’s what I mean. The plain people who aspire, but will never be knighted and will not win the Pulitzer Prize, nor the Nobel Prize likely, just that great multitude of people that God made.

When we look at a chrysanthemum in a show window, or in a vase, were astonished at the beauty of it. But God had a lot of help in making a chrysanthemum. People helped out on that. And for simple, plain people, I recommend a field of daisies or a field of goldenrod, nodding in the balmy autumn sun. Those are common flowers, the plain, simple flowers. The flowers that cost so much and require nurses and attendants and teachers and somebody to be always working over them, jockeying them around, they’re not to my mind much worth the trouble.

But a goldenrod doesn’t require anything but God’s spacious heaven above and His bright sunshine and a little room. And it’ll nod there in all its beauty. And the daisies that bloom and the Black-Eyed Susans that nod, they will be there and they were there 500,000 years ago, and they will be there another 500 or 1000 years if the Lord tarries and things go on in the time to come. They don’t require much there. They’re the common flowers. And I believe there’s more joy in coming on to a common flower in the Spring when you’re scarcely expecting it, than there is in going and paying several good dollars for some flowers that have been carefully tended by horticulturalists. Now, that’s not to speak against nice flowers. I like them too. But sometimes I think that they cost more than they’re worth. But the common flower costs you nothing but an eye to see it, that’s all. It just costs you an eye to see it. God has His chrysanthemums, I guess.

We write the stories of the great saints, and I’m a great admirer and lover. And McAfee here is a perfect worshipper of the great of the past. But I don’t know. I think maybe in the long run, I’m more at home with God’s common daisies than I am with the great, carefully cultivated chrysanthemums that are showpieces for the centuries.

Wouldn’t it be tragic if we had to say, now God, we just have a few people in the world, just a few. We’ll give you Paul and Chrysostom and Augustine and Francis and we’ll give you Knox and Luther and Wesley. And that’s about all we can muster. God would smile and say, no, those are my chrysanthemums. They are the great fellows that had somehow more potential and they’re all right and I’m glad for them. But I’m not so poverty stricken for spiritual things that I’m going to have to tie myself up and say I have no others. Behold, gaze, look, an innumerable company that no man can number. The nodding, common flower of field and meadow that just somehow grew and nodded in the sunshine and looked heavenward and gathered the rain and the dew and loved God for His own sake. Their hands may have been grimy, and they might not have known all the learned allusions of the hyper-learned preacher. And maybe they have no degrees to their name, but there are a lot of them, and they’ve got upon them the marks of the family. The family resemblance is upon them. They belong to God. And maybe they didn’t grow up in an atmosphere where they could cultivate themselves as others, but they were true in their day; plain people about which Gray writes in his “Elegy,” the simple mute, unknown; and Milton and the plain people that shed their fragrance on the desert air.

That’s my crowd. All the time, that’s my crowd. I go around among the big preachers and I speak with them a little and sit down and talk with them if they want to, the big leaders and college presidents and the rest of them. And if we can talk about God or books, why, we’re at home for a while, but I wander off and end up with some butcher from Atlanta or some carpenter from Detroit or some rubber worker from Akron or machinists from Minneapolis or small time farmer from Ottumwa. I feel more at home among them, because they’re God’s plain people, God’s common people, and there’s so much more of them. If you want to cultivate quantity, cultivate the plain people, the common people. And if any one of the common people sin through ignorance says the Holy Ghost, while he doeth somewhat against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which ought not to be done, and be guilty.

Now, here we are this morning, and I don’t know but it could be that some of us common people have sinned. And I trust this morning that before we receive the Lord’s body and blood, that it’ll come to our knowledge, that we won’t be careless about this, that it’ll come to our knowledge. And if it comes to our knowledge and we know that we have sinned somewhat against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things that ought not to be done and be guilty, then what shall we do? Bow our head, like the bulrush and go to pieces and say, I can’t be a Christian. It isn’t possible. This is too tough. The world is too full of temptation. I am too weak. I’m too busy. I can’t get anywhere. It’s alright for you to talk about the great, but I can get anywhere.

Well, do you know what you’re to do Brother? It says, let him bring his offering. Let him bring his offering. That offering has already been made. It doesn’t mean bring your money? No, no, I wouldn’t trick you like that. God help you. I’d live on rolled oats the rest of my life before I would identify giving to the church with this. Keep your money, but bring your offering. And what is your offering? Your offering has already been made, the kid of the goats or a bullock or a lamb. And he shall lay his hand upon the head of his sin offering and slay the sin offering in the place of the burnt offering. You’re not to quit. You’re not to give up and say it’s no use. I’m worse than other people. No, you’re not. We’re just God’s common people. We believe in His Son. But it’s just now maybe coming to your notice that you’ve sinned somewhat and are guilty.

Well, I repeat and I exhort. Don’t lie down and quit. When you fall on the ice, you don’t lie there. You scramble around, look a bit sheepish and get up and dust the snow off and go ahead And if you’re so badly hurt, you can get up if somebody helps you. And that’s what Paul meant in the sixth chapter of Galatians when he said that if there was anybody that was hurt out a joint. I have used the word out of joint, for that’s what it really is, so much that I forget what the King James version calls it. But if there’s anybody that’s sinned, you know, then bear one another’s burdens. And if any man be overtaken in a fault, you which are spiritual restore such a one. It means out of joint like a bone. If you merely bruise yourself, you can get up and go away on your own power, but if the bone breaks or goes out of joint, you have to have help. That’s why the Scripture says let other people pray and help you.

But for yourself, don’t lie there. At least call for help. And then bring your lamb. Bring your offering. There’ll be none other than the offering that has already made forever, forever efficacious. Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altar slain could give the guilty conscience peace nor take away its stain. But Christ the Heavenly Lamb takes all our sins away. They sacrifice a richer blood and nobler Name than they. Instead, the old man of God, my faith would lay her hand on that dear head of thine, while like a penitent I stand and there confess my sin. My soul looks back to see the burden Thou didst bear while hanging on the accursed tree and knows her sins were there. So, it isn’t the Jew that must go out and find a lamb. The Lamb has already been offered. But the Old Testament Jew, he had to bring a lamb. To the New Testament Christian, the Lamb has already been offered.

But you only have to lay your hand upon the head of the sin offering. My faith would lay her hand on that dear head of Thine. Why? What does it mean? It means identification. In the New Testament, there is much said about the laying on of the hand. It was symbolic of identification and union. We lay our hands on the head of the young minister being ordained to identify ourselves with him and with those who laid their hands on our head on back to the apostles, apostolic succession, really apostolic succession. And when we lay our hands on the head of the offering there in the Old Testament, they did it to identify themselves with the offering.

And the common man who had sinned was saying, O God, I deserve to die. Through the mystery of atonement, I am going to live and this lamb is going to die. But I lay my hand on his head and confess my sin. My sins will go out of me into the lamb as it were. And then by slaying the lamb, God is saying, that’s the way I’m telling you that there’s a Lamb coming sometime that will not only symbolically take away sin, but actually take away sin, because His blood will be richer and His name will be nobler. So now we look back and lay our hands on that Head. All the sins of the world died that day when He died. And all the sins of the ruler and the priests and the common people, all were blotted from the face of God if we only will identify ourselves with Him by faith. Believe in Him this morning.

Let a man examined himself and if in self-examination it comes to you and is discovered that you have sinned somewhat, don’t get up and leave. Don’t softly pass the communion plate by and sit and stew in your sour juices. Don’t be like that. Dare to believe in the sacrifice. Dare to believe in the blood. Dare to believe in the identity of the returning sinner with the dying Savior. You can be cleanse this morning, completely cleansed. No matter how you came in, you can be completely cleansed. The common man who sinned came in with sin on his heart, but he laid his hand on the head of the lamb. They slew it and sprinkled its blood and he went out completely clean. You can do the same this morning. So don’t let discouragement and gloom and innate pessimism wear you out, beat you down, defeat you. He is the propitiation for our sins and for the sins of the whole world.

Sometimes when I am alone with my Bible, I get on my knees and go to the 53rd of Isaiah, and for every pronoun there are put my three names in. Sounds silly and if you were to hear me you would wonder if I were right in my mind, but I am. I know what I’m doing. Surely he has borne our griefs, there’s your pronoun, our, I put my three names in and read it aloud. And carried our sorrows and I put my names in. But He was wounded for “our” and I put my names in, transgressions. And He was bruised for our, and I put my name in. And that’s laying your hand on the head of the sacrifice and identifying yourself with the dying Lamb. You can do that this morning.

Not the holiest man in all this wide earth has anymore right to the cup and to the bread than you this morning if you will lay your hand on the Sacrifice and there confess your sin. For the worth of the Lamb will be your worth and the merits of the blood will be your merits and the rights of the Holy Savior will be your right. No man, however much he fasts and prays, however holy he lives, has any more right than you, God’s common people, you and me. Make no pretenses and ask for no big place in the sun, only the right to live and bloom among God’s in God’s meadow among others, like ourselves, always looking upward to the Lord.

Now, the communion service will be carried on from this point. And we want to tell you that if you’re visiting us, you may feel perfectly free to partake without any thought of where your membership is, we never ask any questions about that.

Let a man examined himself, that’s all. Only be sure that you do nothing carelessly. And be sure above all things, you do nothing cynically or in unbelief. Whatever you do, do it reverently and meekly. And your heart will give worth, by the grace of God, your act, and the precious blood will cover, and God will strengthen you in your spirit and your mind. Then, we’ll gather to the front. We’re going to sing this Isaac watt number, “Not all the Blood of Beasts.” We’re going to quietly wait while we sing that song after we’ve gathered here and while we’re gathering, we’ll sing. And then when we’ve gathered, we’re going to sit and quietly sing that whole song. Sing it with meaning and prayer before we proceed further with the service.

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Tozer Talks

“The Christian’s Strange and Fiery Trails”

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The Christian’s Strange and Fiery Trials

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 27, 1954

Now we’ll continue with 1 Peter, chapter four, beginning with verse 12, and reading the rest of the chapter. Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you, but rejoice in as much as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye. For the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you. On their part, he is evil spoken of, but on your part, He is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or as a thief or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf. For the time is come, that judgment must begin at the house of God. And if it first began at us, what shall be the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.

Those words of Peter continue his epistle upon which I have been preaching sermons now for some time. He says here in the opening verse, beloved, think it not strange. Now here is a curious and lovable twist in human nature that we can bear adversities better if we can get three things straight. We can bear adversities better; first, if we can identify them. Strange evils, are always more terrifying. We’re always afraid of that which we can’t identify. If we don’t know what it is, we’re scared. That’s human nature. And I suppose it isn’t anything for us to worry about.

Or imagine that we need to see a head doctor. It’s just humanity that half the victory is won over fear when we can identify the object of our fear. When we know what it is that’s troubling us, much of the trouble disappears. I might add that that is one of the half-dozen, maybe four basic tenants upon which psychiatry is established. And they are right that far, that if you can identify your troubles, you have them half-wiped. Maybe not the other half way, but at least half. And Peter said, beloved, think it not strange. He was identifying their troubles for them and pointing out that these were not strange, but that they were familiar, and that these persons were suffering along with all the rest.

And the second thing that helps us to bear adversity is when we expect them. Unexpected blows are always the ones that do the deadliest work. A blow that is expected, we can brace against both physically and psychologically. But a blow that comes out of nowhere is the one that does the greatest harm.

And the third thing is if we know that the adversities are common to all. It is I say a lovable, if queer twist in human nature that, if we know that everybody else is as bad off as we are, it makes it easier for us to be bad off. Now, I can’t explain that, I only know that it works that way. The last three weeks we have had frightful heat. And let me ask you, suppose that you had been cut out from all the 4 million in the Chicago area and subjected to three weeks of that frightful heat knowing that everybody else in the city of Chicago, from the greatest to the least, was comfortable and relaxed and going about in comfortable clothes. It would have stepped up the intensity of your suffering very greatly. But there’s something half humorously comforting in the knowledge that if you’re sweating, everybody else is too. And that if you have to go out and face the hot breath of nature, everybody else does. And even if they’re in an air-conditioned office, you know, they’ll step out onto the street and nearly fall over. And somehow you get a restful feeling well. I’m not alone in this.

Now I say, that is not a divine thing, and it’s not a spiritual thing, but it is a natural thing. And remember this, that there are three things that God takes account of in human life: those things that are natural and good; and those things that are natural and bad; and those things that are spiritual. So there are some things that are natural and bad. That is, they stem out of an evil disposition, which is natural, but bad. Then there are things that stem out of nature itself and that are not tainted, particularly like this. These things of which I speak are part of our human nature. They’re neither to be apologized for nor repented of it. It’s that it comforts you to know that you’re only one of 4 million other suffering people. Don’t let that bother you. Just take what comfort you can out of it when it gets hot.

So, Peter identified the fiery trials for them. And this cooled the fire of the furnace very great. He said, little children, beloved, think it not strange concerning the fire, a trial which has come upon you, which is to try you as though some strange thing happened unto you. No. This that’s happening to you isn’t strange, it’s familiar. It’s a part of the pattern of life under the sun. Then he said, rejoice ye, and they are told here to rejoice that they are given a part in the pains of Christ.

Now this knowledge took the rest of the fire out of their sufferings, that they were not only suffering familiar sufferings. That their adversaries were familiar adversaries known to all good peoples since time began. But that they were given the high privilege of suffering and bearing the pains of Christ. These first Christians were uncritically simple. The involved reasoning with which we overcast everything now. The pale cast of thought, that takes away the simplicity of our living, wasn’t known to them. Those first Christians trusted the sufferings of Christ. And they related their sufferings to His. Christ was the great Sufferer, they said. And when we suffer for His sake, we’re relating our suffering to Him and bearing His suffering along with Him. Then they related their reward to His. Peter said that plainly here. Rejoice because you know that you will also be partaker of the glory that follows. And so they rejoiced in the great honor that was done them in being permitted to suffer for Christ’s sake, and thus endure the pains of the Lord Jesus after Him.

And then he said, if ye be reproached for the name of Christ. Now it’s hard for modern men to understand this, if ye be reproached for the name of Christ. But if you will imagine a man whose whole person was wonderful. A man around whose head clustered miracles and healings and deliverances and kind deeds and forgiving words and consolations and encouragement. Who shone like the sun on men. Who fell like the gentle rain on the hearts of men. Who breathed on men and made them strong again. This man, whose bold claim was that he was the one whom the world had long expected. The one whom the prophets wrote about. This one who is adored by children and outcasts and honest men and serious women, and yet was hated by organized religion. Institutionalized religion could not find a place for Him. He was the stone that didn’t fit into the building. You read that in the Bible; of the stone that they couldn’t make fit. They had all the stones they wanted. And when the Chief Cornerstone appeared, the architects got busy but they couldn’t find a place to fit this stone in.

So, they threw Him aside and rejected Him as being useless. And then they finally executed Him by trickery and sent Him out to die on a cross. And now worst of all for them, it was claimed that many had seen Him alive. And that this criminal who had been put to death wasn’t dead anymore, but that He was now alive and was more at the head of His followers than He had been before.

Now, can you imagine the violent effect that that name would have. That name would have not only reasonable meaning, it would have violent emotional explosive power. Because the name of Christ, divided to clave asunder like an earthquake cleaves a mountain. And every man stood to be counted. He was either for Christ or against Him. You either reverently worshipped him and believed that He was God indeed and knelt in quiet worship, for the clusters of healing and hope and consolation and peace and rehabilitation, were around the head of Jesus, or they accepted the beliefs of organized religion. And they said, He was a madman filled with the devil and was out to destroy organized society. There could be no neutrality there. They had to get on one side or the other. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, He said.

Now you can see under that simple, quick sketch, against that backdrop, you can see how it was that they were reproached for the name of Jesus in this smoothed over age, it’s not so violent, not so sharp. Men are not so lined up as they were then, because they’re not so simple, not so direct, not so human. In this age of plastic, men are not so simple. And yet it was this simplicity that Jesus Christ praised above all human virtues, when he said, except ye become as little children. It was a simplicity of childhood, not the ignorance of childhood, not the dirt of childhood, not the noise of childhood, but the simplicity of it.  Little children have lots of qualities that we’re praying they will outgrow as fast as they can. You know how that is. But the one thing that we don’t want them to outgrow, but yet grievously, with great grief, see them outgrow, is simplicity. That direct immediacy that belongs to the unspoiled human breast.

So, they got on one side of the other, and His detractors flared into fury at the mention of His name. And His followers bowed their heads and said, my Lord and my God. That was the division, the sharp cleavage, and it’s existed wherever the church has been pure. It’s existed wherever men have put away their half-knowledge and have come like children to look into the face of God.

 And he said, here now, let none of you suffer as an evildoer. And here we see the salty practicality of the Christian way. The Christian faith is not to provide immunity for wrongdoers. It’s often done it. We admit that. It has often done it. But according to the Bible, it’s never to be so. Let none suffer as an evildoer. If you suffer, remember, it’s not a strange thing, but easy to understand. And your Lord went that way before you. But if any of you are being reproached for wrongdoing, don’t hide behind your Christian immunity. The Deacon who doesn’t pay his bills. The pastor who leaves the city owing debts. He cannot, he dare not hide these evils behind clerical immunity or Christian immunity. The Bible says no, let nobody suffer as an evildoer. To use the faith of Christ to hide evil is to prove ourselves false and bring down judgment on our own heads. And judgment must begin at the house of God.

Now this is a club often used against Christians. Judgment must begin at the house of God. People shrug their shoulders, toss their nose in the air and turn away from the church saying, let judgment begin at the house of God, or more simply, sweep your own doorstep first. But I wonder if they read the rest of that verse? Judgment must begin at the house of God, and if it begin at the house of God, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?

There is one thing brother that God won’t permit. He won’t permit an outsider to interfere in His family affairs. He just won’t permit it. He will not allow the outsider to quote or misquote garbled or emasculated Scriptures. He won’t allow them to use a club over the head of His child. He says judgment must begin at the house of God. And the angry unbeliever says, yes, judgment must begin with you. Why don’t you mind your own business. And then God adds, but if it begin among My own children, how terrible it will be for those who did not even care to become My children. The ungodly and the sinner, where shall they appear? One of those dramatic questions that has no answer, a rhetorical question that carries its own answer rather in it, where shall they appear? For the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, David had said centuries before and now Peter repeats it almost word for word.

And now we come to the conclusion. Wherefore, let them not suffer according to the will of God. Commit to keeping of their souls in well doing unto a faithful Creator, whatever kind of suffering that may be. If you suffer out of the will of God, you have no reward, no encouragement from heaven or earth. But if you suffer according to the will of God, then we’re told plainly what to do. Commit your soul in well doing unto a faithful Creator.

I love words. And I love to unwrap them and unwrap them and find out what they have. Sometimes by unwrapping a little further, you will find a buried gift there you didn’t know is in it. Commit says here, and what does commit mean? It means to deposit for protection.

A man buys a safe deposit box and puts deeds and insurance policies and things he wants to keep. He puts them there for protection, knowing that by and large, they’re safer there in a bank surrounded by guards and with steel gates and all the rest. They’re safer there than they would be in his bedroom or in a cookie jar. He puts them where he thinks they’re safe. He commits them. He deposits them for protection. And so, salty old Peter says, your sufferings are not strange. They’re familiar. Everybody’s had to endure them. And if you’re suffering in the will of God, why, turn your soul over to God for protection? Deposit it. Make a deposit of your soul. Deposit means take your hand off the thing.

Some people, some old misers we hear about sometimes in the newspapers, love their money so much that they will not give it up. They want to count it when the lights are low and the window blinds are tight and the doors are locked. They want to take it out and feel it. They can’t deposit it because they feel if they can’t keep body contact with it, it isn’t safe. They don’t know that it’s more safe away from them than it is with them. But that’s peculiarity of people sometimes.

So we must deposit our souls. Turn them over to God. I have likened committal to God to the mailing of a letter. You take a letter and drop it in a mailbox, and you hold on to it and pull it back out and look to see if it’s stamped and addressed correctly. Give it that last minute look. You still have your letter. Uncle Sam can’t touch it. Not all the soldiers in Cook County dare lay a finger on that letter. President Eisenhower could not under the law take that letter out of your hand, nor McCarthy. Nobody can take that letter from you. That’s your letter, and you hold it. It’s yours to do with as you please. You wrote it. You addressed it. You stamped it. You sealed it. You carried it there to the corner. If you finally put it back in your pocket, you’ve still got your letter.

But if you want to deposit it, you have to let loose of it. Put it in there, at least through the slot and then let go. And until you’ve let go, you have not made your deposit. When you let go, then you don’t dare touch it. Then, any cop in the city can arrest you if you touch it. After you drop it in, Uncle Sam has it. His big star-spangled hand closes on your letter and you’re through with it. And if you’d reach your arm in there, if that were possible, and pull out that letter, you can be arrested. Committal means committal brethren. It means depositing for protection. Then it means something else. It means to deliver to another’s charge and to mark an absolute transfer, or make an absolute transfer to a superior power.

So, Peter says, now make a transfer of your soul to a superior power. Turn yourself over to God. Have you done that? If you haven’t, then I do not know that I have much consolation for you, because you’re a victim of the ebb and flow of circumstances. You’re a victim of every new fear that comes on the horizon. You’re a victim of luck and chance and happenstance and perchance and possibility, enemies known and unknown, the latest germ that slips in. You’re a victim of all the uncertainty of the world if you have not made that deposit. But if you have made that deposit, you’re a victim of none at all.

Nobody ever worries about a letter that he’s dropped in the mailbox. It will get there all right. It’ll get there. For four years and over, I have been sending almost daily packets, letters, packages, air mail special delivery mostly and we’ve never lost one. And there’s never been one sent us, that we know about, that ever has been lost. It always gets there. Uncle Sam is pretty trustworthy when it comes to the mail. It may be a little slow, a little expensive, but he’ll get it there, if you’ll commit it.

So, you commit your soul in well doing unto a superior power and then you won’t have to worry about yourself. Now that’s the only true peace I know and the only way I know how to tell you to find peace. If I tell you death isn’t real, I’m lying to you. If I tell you there are no enemies, I’m lying to you again. If I tell you that you have absolute assurance of so many years ahead for you, I’m lying some more. If I tell you that pain isn’t real, it’s only thought to be so, you know I’m not telling the truth. But if I tell you yes, death is real. Pain is real. Adversaries are real. But I know where you can put yourself, like a document in a safe deposit vault, where nobody can get to you, where you’re as safe as the character of the bank that holds you. Not a bank this time, but Almighty God called here, a faithful Creator.

Turn yourself over to a faithful Creator through Jesus Christ. Put yourself in His hands by one final act of your soul and say, Lord, suffering or rejoicing, whatever the circumstance, I turned myself over to Thee and you will be as safe as the throne of God. For God is a faithful Creator. A dollar is only worth as much as the government back of it. You buy a government bond and you’re assuming the government is going to stand. But if it falls, your bond will be no good. Your bond, the currency of a country, is only as safe as the government of that country. Let the government fall, and your bonds and your currency and everything else falls to the ground.

Now, when I tell you, you commit your soul to God in well doing, turn yourself over, take your hands off, and deliver over to that Higher Power for keeping, then I have to qualify it by saying, you’ll only be as safe as God. Is that enough for you? If that isn’t enough, what can you add? Where can you go? Where can you turn? If God isn’t enough, where will you look? But God is enough.

We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship Thee, the Father Everlasting. To Thee, all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein. To Thee, seraphim and cherubim continue to cry, holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabbath. Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of Thy glory. If he isn’t enough, better had we never been born. But God is enough. He upholds the heaven and the earth.

I quote to other congregations occasionally. Maybe I ought to quote to you again that wonderful saying of the Archbishop of Tours where he said, God is above all and beneath all and outside of all and inside of all. He is above, but not pushed up, beneath but not depressed, outside, but not excluded, inside but not confined. He is above all, presiding, underneath all, sustaining. Outside of all, embracing, and inside of all, filling. This is God. He’s enough. So, commit the keeping of your soul to your Creator. Turn yourself over to God, through Jesus Christ, and you will be all right. Amen.

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“The Act of Worship”

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The Act of Worship

Pastor and author, A. W. Tozer

January 16, 1955

Quite a number of years ago, I spoke on the subject of worship. But a new generation has risen in Israel and many of those who were here then have moved to all parts of the country and out of the country. And new friends are with us. I feel that I want to speak again on worship today and emphasize at least some of the same truths which I gave then. This is of deliberate intention and purpose, because I feel that the truth here is too important to neglect.

I want to read that very celebrated, and oft repeated Psalm, or part of it, the 45th Psalm. My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee forever. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty ride prosperously, because of truth and meekness and righteousness. And thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies, whereby the people fall unto thee. Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right scepter. Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above my fellows. All thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces whereby they have made thee glad. King’s daughters were among thy honorable women: upon they right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir. Harken, O daughter, and consider and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people in thy father’s house; So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him. Now, those words I want to repeat. He is thy Lord, worship thou Him.

Now the impulse to worship is universal. If there is a race or a tribe anywhere in the world that does not worship, it has not been discovered. And yet the act of worship, for the most part, is so imperfect, so impure, and so far astray, that any word that might be spoken to help us to worship God more acceptably, would indeed be well-spoken.

Now, we want to speak a little of the act of worship and the object of worship. And of course, the act of worship has degrees in it. There are ingredients that make up worship. We worship that which we admire, or rather, we admire that which we worship. We can admire without worshiping, but we cannot worship without admiring, because worship is admiration carried to infinitude, and it is to honor. We can honor the one we do not worship, but we cannot worship the one we do not honor. So, worship carries in it an ingredient of honor.

And then there is a spirit of we call fascination. We can only worship that way which fascinates us. And we are fascinated by the object of our worship. The old poet said in an oft-quoted passage: in our astonished reverence, we confess thine uncreated loveliness. There is an astonishment about reverence. If you can explain it, you cannot worship it. You may admire it. You may honor it. But there is a mysterious fascination that carries the heart beyond itself, and then we are near to worship. And of course, maybe I should have said first, that we love. We can love without worshipping, but we cannot worship without loving. And then, love when it lets itself go and no longer has any restraints, it becomes adoration.

We need a thorough housecleaning, and I don’t know how it could be given. And I think it rather could never be given. But we certainly stand in need of refining our definitions a lot. We use such words as honor and love and adore, and yet those words don’t mean what they’re supposed to mean. We use down on the common level such exalted divine language, that when we try to rise to the exalted and divine level, we find ourselves with a bunch of common-used words that do not express anything. If there were a pope, or some kind of a priest that could decide the use of the English language, I’d recommend that a bill be passed ruling out such words as love and adore and all such related synonymous words, and they would be permitted to be used only in prayer, in Bible teaching, or preaching or in song, because we have spoiled them and made them a common, and yet they belong to God. And worship would seek union with its Beloved. And an active effort to close the gap between the heart and the God it adores, is worship at its best.

Now, the object of worship of course, is God. The old creed said that we worship one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. That is Who we worship. Now, if we could set forth all of God’s attributes and tell all that God is, we’d fall on our knees undoubtedly in adoring worship. It says in the Bible here, that He dwells in light that is unapproachable; Whom no man can see or has seen or can see, and who no man can see and live. It says that God is holy and eternal and omniscient and omnipotent and sovereign, and that he has 1,000 sovereign attributes. And all of these should humble us and bring us down.

I cannot accept with any sympathy, the idea that we go to church to soothe ourselves; that we go to church to calm our spirits. We do calm our spirits and there is a soothing effect in worship, but the primary objective of church attendance is not to relax. The primary purpose of church attendance is to offer worship which belongs to God; unto the God to whom it belongs.

Now, David sees this God incarnated in this 45th Psalm. He sees Him as God of the substance of His Father, born before the world was, and man as the substance of His mother born in due time, a radiantly beautiful, romantic and winsome figure. And here are some of the adjectives he used to describe this Man who is God and this God who became man. He calls Him fair and kingly and gracious and majestic and true and meek and righteous and loving and glad and fragrant.

Certainly, there is not the stern-browed Jupiter or Thor sitting in some high Olympus. Here is a God of fragrant, glad, loving, righteous, a friendly God and yet majestic, dwelling in light that no man can approach unto, striking awe to His enemies and terror to His foes. And this is the God we adore. And here is the Lord, worship thou Him. I think that even announcing that we’re going to preach about worshiping God must start the wings of the seraphim in heaven to waving. I think the organs must start to play there, because heaven exists to worship God. And the atmosphere of heaven is, the very breezes that flow out are filled with divine worship.

And the health of the world is worship. And when all creatures, all intelligent moral creatures are attuned in worship, then we have this symphony of creation. But when anywhere there is not worship, then there’s discord and broken strings. And when all the full, redeemed universe is back once more worshiping God in full voice; happily, and willingly and out of the heart, then we’ll see the new creation and the new heaven and the new earth. But in the meantime, you and I, as belonging to another creation, are called upon to worship God. And it says, He is thy Lord, worship thou Him.

I want to point out also, that worship must be all-entire. I mean by that, that the total life must worship God. The whole personality has to worship God or our worship is not perfect. Faith and love and obedience and loyalty and high conduct and life, all of these must be taken as burnt offerings and offered to God. If there is anything in me that does not worship God, then there is nothing in me that worships God perfectly. I wish you might jot that down at least in the back of your memory and think it over. That if there is anything in me that does not worship God, then there is nothing in me, that worships God perfectly.

I do not say that God must have a perfection of worship or that He will not accept any worship at all. I would not go so far if I did. I would rule myself out. And we would all hang our harps on the willows and refuse to sing the songs of the Lord in a strange land. But I do say that the ideal God sets before us is that we should worship as near to perfectly as we can. And that if there are areas in my being that are not harmonious and that do not worship God, then there’s no area in my being that worships God perfectly. There is a great delusion among religiously inclined people these days; it is that we imagine that a sense of the sublime is worship.

I happen to be reading again or trying to read, I find it hard going, not because it’s profound, because I don’t agree with it, a book called “Nature Mysticism,” written by some old fellow with a DD. He should have known better than to write that book, but he did. I’m trying to read it. And it talks about the sublime, but it doesn’t talk about Jesus nor God nor the blood nor the Incarnation, but always the sublime. And we’re supposed to walk out under the stars and feel a sense of sublimity, like a crackpot poet. And that’s supposed to be worship. I do not believe it, Sir. A man utterly corrupt, crawling with the maggots of iniquity, when the great thunderstorm breaks on the mountain, or when the sea and the storm booms on the shore, or when the stars in their silver beauty shine at night, that man feels a sense of sublimity.

When you walk into a cathedral where the candles burn fitfully, all bank upon bank, and where there are sections that you can’t enter. The sign says please do not enter the sanctuary. That throws over some people a sense of awe and sublimity. Now awe and sublimity are ingredients of worship if their worship is there. But we can be awestruck and not worship God. We can sense the sublime and not be worshipping God. There are poets whose faculties for the sublime were developed far beyond yours and mine. And yet who dared to write that there was no God.

I think of Lucretius the Roman poet and his great, great work on the nature of things. Why he launches into beautiful passages. He was a man in rapport with the universe without any doubt, but he was flatly against belief in God, and I believe, in any gods though he were a Roman. A man who doesn’t believe in God, can’t worship God. But some sissified mentality might say, now just a minute, don’t be so severe dear brother. Maybe we worship God and don’t know that we worship Him. Well, if you take the Bible for it, we have to say such a thing is an impossibility. You cannot worship a God at the same time you do not believe that God exists.

So, all this sense of awe that we feel in the presence of nature, or in the silence of the night. All that is natural, but it’s not spiritual. It can be spiritual. A man filled with the Spirit and who has met and encountered God in living encounter, can worship God in the silence and in the storm. Spurgeon preached a great sermon on God in the silence. I haven’t read it, but I understand it’s a great sermon. He couldn’t preach any other kind, on God in the silence, and then God in the storm. It’s all true. The heart that knows God can find God everywhere. But the heart that doesn’t know God can feel the emotions of nature worship without rising to spiritual worship at all.

So I repeat, Sir, that no worship is wholly pleasing to God until there is nothing in us displeasing God. Now, if this discourages anybody, I do not apologize. I think that what we need is discouragement. I think some of us need to be discouraged in order that we might get straightened out. A little boy playing with blocks or running around the house believing that he’s Hopalong Cassidy. That little boy, that little boy may do that up to ten, or you may be even twelve If he’s a bit slow. But if when he’s eighteen, he’s still running around with a Hopalong Cassidy hat on, somebody needs to disillusion that boy and say: Sonny, you are not Hopalong Cassidy at all. You just think you are. Now, it’s alright for the little ones, and I like to see it myself. I get a grin when I walk down the street and some fellow gets down behind a hedge and says, die, I’ve got you. Well, he’s Hopalong Cassidy. But if he’s eighteen and still thinks he’s Hopalong Cassidy, he doesn’t need consolation, he needs to be disillusioned.

And, if in the twilight of the race, men worship the sun and the stars. If in the twilight of the world, men got down on their knees and prayed to the bushes and the trees and the mountain peaks. That was one thing, but we’re not now in the twilight of the race. We are now at full maturity. And Christianity and Judaism have been in the world now for thousands of years. And science and philosophy and education and progress have surely brought us to a point where at least we’re able to know we’re not Hopalong Cassidy. We ought to have gotten by that even if we’re not Christians at all. So, I think instead of consoling men who believe they’re worshipping God when they’re not, we ought to disillusion them and show them they’re not worshiping God acceptably.

What are we to do? Well remember one thing, there is no magic in faith nor in names. You can name the name of Jesus a thousand times, but if you will not follow the nature of Jesus, the name of Jesus will not mean anything to you. We cannot live after our nature and worship after God’s nature. We cannot worship God and live after our nature otherwise stated. It is when God’s nature and our nature begin to harmonize, that the power of the name of God begins to operate within us. And the power of the name of Jesus begins to move us as it was said so quaintly, that the Spirit of God moved him betimes in the camp of Dan.

And as old Samson was moved to betimes in the camp of Dan, I believe that God’s people ought to be moved to betimes to true worship. But we can never be. We cannot pray toward the East and walk toward the West and then hope for harmony in our being. We cannot pray in love and live in hate and spite and grudge, and still think we’re worshipping God. No, sir. If in the olden times there had been rubber, suppose. Let’s take a grotesque, upside-down illustration that nobody else would use. Let us suppose the old high priest in the old days, who took incense into the Sanctum and went back of the veil and offered it to there. Let us suppose that there had been in those days, rubber. It was there, but they didn’t know what to do with it. I choose rubber as the worst smelling thing I can think of at the moment when it burns.

And let us suppose that bits of chipped rubber had been mixed with the incense. So instead of myrrh and aloes and cassia and the sweet-smelling myrrh and puffs and ringlets of white smoke going up to fill all the area around about with sweet perfume, suppose that there had been the black, angry, rancid smell of rubber mixed with it. How could a priest worship God by mixing with the sweet-smelling ingredients, some foul ingredient? That would be a stench in the nostrils of the priests and people.

So how can we worship God acceptably when there’s that in our nature, that when it catches on fire, gives off not fragrance, but a smell? How can we hope to worship God acceptably, when there is that in our nature: undisciplined, uncorrected, unpurged, unpurified, which is evil and which will not and cannot worship God acceptably? And even granted, which is a strain on my faith, even granted that a man with evil ingredients in his nature, might with some part of him worship God half acceptably, even grant that. What kind of a way is that to live?

And I would say again to you, Sir, and I hate to say this, really. Believe it or not, I would like to be decent. Believe it or not, I would like to be nice. And if I could, I’d join Norman Vincent Peale and thinking about roses and symphony orchestras, but I can’t join the good brother, so I have got to tell you that if you do not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship Him on one day a week. There is no such thing known in heaven as Sunday worship, unless it is accompanied by Monday worship and all down the line.

Too many of us discharge our obligations to God Almighty in one day. Usually one trip to church, sometimes nobly, we make it two trips to church. But it’s all on the same day when we have nothing else to do, and that’s supposed to be worship. I grant you, sir, that that is true worship provided, on Monday and Saturday, they were also worshiping God. I don’t mean being in church. Uh ah. You can worship God at your desk. You can worship God on an elevated train or driving in traffic. You can worship God washing dishes or ironing clothing. You can worship God in school. You can worship God on the basketball court. You can worship God in whatever is legitimate and right and good.

So, I do not say that you must be at church all the time. How could you be? Our Lord Himself went up to the synagogue or the temple as His want was on the Sabbath day. Other days, He had been a carpenter and worked and shaved and sawed and driven nails with His supposed father. And like the Jew He was, He went one day a week and worshiped. And certain other times, He went for a whole eight days at a stretch, but he went only one day out of the week to worship in the temple. So that’s all right. We can go to church and worship. But if we go to church and worship one day, it’s not true worship unless it is followed by worship six days after that, until the next Sabbath comes. So, we must see to it now my listening friends, my brothers and sisters. We must see to it and we must never rest until everything inside of us worships God.

I think God has been saying something to me. I get on a plateau every once in a while. I seem to have learned all I can learn and have risen as high as I can go. Not all there is to learn, but I think my capacities filled for the time being. Then I don’t make any progress. And then I beat the air and then God will do something for me, and I’ll have a new, a new, I take a new level.

I think I’ve taken a new level recently and I’ll share it with you. I have been thinking about how important apart my thoughts are. And I have been thinking that I can get under awful conviction from just thinking wrong. I don’t have to do wrong to get under blistering conviction and repent. I can lose the fellowship of God and the sense of His presence and a sense of spirituality, by thinking wrong. And God has been saying to me, I dwell in your thoughts. Make your thoughts a sanctuary in which I can dwell. See to it. You can’t do anything with your heart. That’s too deep, but you can control your thoughts.

And so, I’ve been trying to make my thoughts right. And when I thought of people that didn’t like me, or I didn’t like, I have tried to think cheerfully and charitably, in order that God could dwell in my thoughts. God won’t dwell in spiteful thoughts. He won’t dwell in polluted thoughts. He won’t dwell in lustful thoughts. He won’t dwell in avaricious, covetous thoughts. He won’t dwell in proudful thoughts. He will only dwell in meek and pure and charitable and clean and loving thoughts. Positive thoughts, certainly, aggressive thoughts, fighting thoughts, if need be, but pure thoughts and thoughts that are like God’s thoughts. God will dwell in that as a sanctuary.

Your theology is your foundation. The superstructure is your spiritual experience built on that foundation. But the high-bell towers where the carillons are, those are your thoughts. And if you keep those thoughts pure, the chimes can be heard: holy, holy, holy, on the morning air. So, I want my thoughts to be towers and basilicas and bell chambers and chime chambers where God can dwell. I share that with you. How perfect I have managed to do that. I’ll wait and see. But at least it’s something positive that I want to do, make my thoughts a sanctuary where God can inhabit.

So, see that you do that. And don’t let any of the rest of your life dishonor God. See to it that not a foot of ground is unholy. See to it that there isn’t an spot nor an hour nor a place nor a time nor a day nor a location that isn’t consecrated and given over to God. Then you will worship Him and He’ll accept it, allows accept it. And the beautiful thing is, He’ll be accepting it when you don’t know it’s arising. He’ll be smelling the incense of your high intention even when the cares of this life have you pretty well snowed down and busy. Even when the telephone is jangling and appointments to be made and people to see and all the rest, keep you from thinking too much about God. If God knows your intention is to worship Him with every part of your being, God will be smelling the incense of your holy intention, even if the world for a time claims your interests, legitimate interests. For God says we’re to take care of our family. And the man who won’t work and take care of his family, says the Scripture, is worse than an infidel.

So now, how do we attain it? We come to all this by cooperating with God. On God’s side is love, grace, atonement, promises, the Holy Ghost. On our side, determination, seeking, yielding, believing. And our hearts can then become chambers, sanctuary shrines, where a continuous, unbroken fellowship of communion and worship is rising to God all the time. And they worship God in the temple day and night without ceasing. Do you think that means that they never did anything else except repeat songs? No. Their presence was worship. Their attitudes were worship. Their thoughts were worship. They worshipped even when they were doing some legitimate thing, flying on swift wings to help an apostle. They worshiped Him nevertheless, day and night in the temple.

So, you can do your work, marry, and bear children and rear them and send them to school and suffer them through. And you men can take your jobs and worry over them and trust God and go ahead and get old and at the same time, your whole life can be a fragrant altar of worship that God is pleased with even when you’re embroiled with and engrossed in earthly activities. I think that’s a wonderful truth. And I gave something like it, I say, some years ago and deliberately bring it to you this morning. That the new generation of worshipers might hear it and new friends might. And you that have stayed by this stuff since way back in the 20s, you wouldn’t mind, I’m sure, hearing it again. Because in spite of my intention to say about the same thing as I said before, I ended up by preaching a different sermon.

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“The Hidden Life of Faith in the Smitten Rock”

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The Hidden Life of Faith in the Smitten Rock

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 3, 1954

In chapter 33 of the book of Exodus, verses 21-22. The Lord said, behold, there is a place by me. And thou shalt stand upon a rock, and it shall come to pass while my glory passes by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock and will cover thee with My hand while I pass by.

Now, here in this chapter are the sections of the two chapters, which we read this morning, there is depicted one of the most charming and beautiful scenes found anywhere in the entire Bible. And this I would not say as a type of anything, but I would say that it is a marvelously beautiful illustration. It doesn’t preach to us maybe, but it seems to us. And it seems to us the song of the hidden life, I will hide thee in a clift of the rock while my glory passeth by. And it sings to us of the hidden life of faith, the song of the man and or a woman who has found the hiding place in the smitten rock.

Now, faith in the gospel oracle, has certain clear specific results. And I might say that faith is a gift of God to contrite hearts. It is not a conclusion drawn from facts. It is a spiritual ability imparted by the Holy Ghost. I keep bearing down on this wherever I go and telling the people, because it is one of the doctrines that has been lost by a de-emphasis. It is not denied, it is de-emphasized, with the result that it, for all practical purposes does not exist as a valid Christian doctrine today, that faith is not a conclusion. We do not say, you believe God wrote the Bible. Yes. This text is in the Bible. Therefore, did God write that text? Yes. If God wrote the Bible, this text is in the Bible, and God is true, therefore, is that text true? Yes. Well then, you’re a believer.

Now, that is one kind of faith, certainly that’s a kind of intellectual conclusion drawn from a set of facts. But faith in the gospel oracle, the faith that transforms men, is a gift of God, a spiritual ability to trust Christ, imparted by the Holy Spirit to the penitent man and withheld from every other sort of man.

Now, the man of faith, that is, who has this real faith, this imparted faith, enters an immortal kingdom at once. He is born into the Kingdom of God, and he joins a select circle. He joins the circle of the elect. It is not the ecumenical circle that we hear about so much recently. It is more than that. It’s bigger than that. It is the select circle. It is the circle of the elect, of those who’ve entered that immortal kingdom. And when a man thus does enter that Kingdom, he becomes what I might call a God-hidden man. I will hide thee said God. I will put thee in a clift of the rock. And this was, I repeat, perhaps not a type, but at least a beautiful illustration of the God-hidden life.

Now, I want to say four or five things about this man of faith, that he is a God-charmed man. If he’s a real Christian and hasn’t been wrongly taught, he lives in the center of the miracle, and he becomes in one very real sense, a true Bible mystic. He feels that the whole world is his. And he comes into accord with it. When our Lord Jesus Christ was in the wilderness, it said that he was among the wild beasts. And I suppose the average reader of that passage, might pity the Lord or say, how wonderful that he was protected by the beasts. But G. Campbell Morgan, in his book, “The Crisis of the Christ,” he says this, that it’s all wrong to think that our Lord was surrounded by beasts bent upon destroying him. He said that those beasts dated back to the early creation, and that they recognize their maker, and that they were tame in His presence; that they could not harm the one from whose hand they had come. So that the Lord among the beasts was as safe as the Lord among the angels. Now, I add that sentence. That was not from his book. But the idea is there that it was perfectly safe there as He would have been in heaven, because the beasts of the forest shall honor Me, says God. And they glorified Him by lying down at the feet of his Son.

Now, this God-charmed man sees the miracle, where everybody else sees no miracle at all, only the crass laws of nature and matter and form. But the true child of God sees the miracle everywhere. It is not a sign of senility or a sign that a man’s mind is bad, when he insists upon seeing God in a drop of water or a grain of sand, and of hearing the voice of God in the sighing of the wind or in the roar of the storm. God is in His world and He is in charge of it. And the God-charmed man finds God there. He is charmed and entirely safe. It was said about Jesus, you remember, that His hour was not yet come. They could not harm him while he walked among them, because His hour was not yet come. He was a charmed man and bore a charmed life.

In the Old Testament, there’s that passage, typical again, or at least a picture of how a sample of how things are, where Elisha was in Dothan the city, and his servant became frightened because the Syrian king had sent a great host with chariots and horses and soldiers against him. There they were surrounding the city, a great host. The margin says, a heavy host. I don’t know how many that would be. And the young, inexperienced man, who hadn’t learned that he was living a charmed life, and inhabited a perpetual miracle, he came running in excitedly to his master and said, O Master, Master, they’re surrounding us. There is a great host.

And the old experienced man said, don’t worry young fellow. They that are with us are more than they that are against us. O Lord, he said, open his eyes and let him see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man. And he looked and lo, in the mountains were horses and chariots of fire surrounding Elisha. And Elisha went on and prayed, O God, send these men in and make them temporarily blind and they became temporarily blind. And he led them into Samaria, and captured the whole army. These two men, this preacher and his associate, they led the whole army in and captured them. And the young associate, full of zeal and some ignorance said, Father, what will we do? Kill them? No, he said, give them something to eat and send them back home. He had inhabited a miracle too long. He didn’t need to kill men. And he said, now Lord, let them see. And every man saw and said, how did we get here? They were in Samaria, captured.

Now, that’s an example at least. It’s a sample of how God works. I have a lot of illustrations drawn from church history which I shall not at this moment give you, but which couldn’t be given in proof of the fact that the man of God lives a charmed life. And I repeat what I have often said and hold as a part of my living creed. That if a man obeys God, he cannot die until his work is done, if he obeys God. Now, if he leaves the way and goes among the wolves of his own deliberate sinful intention, I have no hope then that he shall fulfill the will of God. But if he obeys God and goes where God sends him, he is a safe man until he’s ready to die. And who wants to live five minutes after the Lord says, come up hither. Who wants to be asleep when the clock rings and the voice of the Lord says, come on.

Now, he is not only a God-charmed man with a charmed life, but he’s a God-defended man. I get great help from Moses. When Moses used to get into a sudden jam with Israel, Cora, or somebody was after him. It said in solemn, slow language, the Shekinah cloud came and stood before the tent of meeting. And Moses stood back behind that cloud, and the angry, murderous men and women that surrounded him, withdrew like wolves when the woodsmen builds a huge roaring fire. You could see their eyes shining in the dark, but not a one of the murderous crew dare come through the circle of light, the God-defended man.

And the Scriptures says, woe to that man by whom the offenses come. And he says again, no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper. And every tongue that rises against thee in judgment, thou shalt condemn. If the tongue that rises against thee is a true tongue, and what he says about you is true. The Lord won’t condemn that tongue. But if it’s not true, the Lord will condemn that tongue. And then He says, I will go before thee.

L.B. Compton, whom I quote sometimes as being one of the greatest preachers I’ve ever heard, an uneducated southerner from North Carolina. This man had experiences, that if they were written up in the slow, stately language of the King James version, might well be misunderstood as a last chapter from some of the books of the Bible, Compton at one time was sued by a rich townsman for something or other for which he was not to blame. And his friends came and said, you know, this man has influence on his side. He has everything on his side. Why do you not hire a lawyer and get your witnesses going and do something. He said, I can’t. God won’t let me. All God will let me do is pray.

So, he prayed, and it came right down to the wire, I believe the day or not more than the day before the suit was to be aired in court, and everybody knew who’d win. A poor preacher, what could he do against an influential townsman who had brought suit against him. It would have meant the loss of everything to the man of God. But he waited on God in holy prayer. And the day before, or the same day, I’ve forgotten which. But a few hours before the trial was to come up in court, there was a call. Would this preacher please come down and pray for a man who was desperately ill? He hurried down and you’ve guessed it. The desperately ill man was the man who was suing him in court. He got down on his knees beside the bed and prayed for his deliverance and the suit was called off and everything was made up. And everybody said, what has God wrought?

The man is a God-defended man when he belongs to this charmed circle. But he’s also a God-taught man said Paul, in Corinthians 2:7, we speak the wisdom which is of God, the hidden wisdom, a mysterious wisdom, which was ordained by God before the world for your salvation. And that wisdom of God sometimes leads men in a way that we know little of.

I think I’ll tell you what I heard at conference. I spent three days of last week at conference. A good brother, a man without much education, but a deeply spiritual man of God, a Swede by the name of Olson preached and he told us this story. And it’s so good that I must share it with you. He said that when he was a younger preacher and was on the radio, singing, he says he doesn’t do it anymore. He’s found he can’t, but then he didn’t know it. And he was singing. He said, he got a call one day saying, would you please come out to such and such a home just outside the city, and have a little meeting with us there? So, he said, sure, he would. And he took his guitar, if you please, and some hymnbooks and a friend, and they drove out.

When he got there, the yard was full of cars, and the house was full of people jammed and sitting around in borrowed chairs. He said when he walked in, they looked at him as if he was a stranger. But he said that God had sent him, so he passed the hymn books around and got the key on the old guitar, and everybody sang. Then he said, he asked his friend to testify, which he did. Then he said he launched in and preached a rather, I don’t suppose very eloquent, nor very learned, but a good gospel sermon. And he gave the altar call, and they went down on their knees everywhere and began to pray. And some of them found God.

After he gathered up his hymn books and started for the car, somebody ran out and said, Brother Olson, come back and pray for my sister. He said, are you saved? She said, No. Is your sister No. Well, he said, you’ll both get saved before I’ll pray for her to be healed. So, he got them both saved. And he said that he personally knows that a large number of those who were saved that day, still are walking with God and some of them have died, but lived for God down to the end of their days. And he said after he had gotten safely away and the circumstances were known, he had gotten in the wrong house. And it was a family reunion of the Nelson clan. And nobody expected him. But being good Scandinavians, they had enough religion somewhere to let him have his way.

Now, that’s what I mean, a God-taught man. Here was a simple-hearted fellow that wouldn’t know a Greek root from a root of ginseng, or carrot. But he did know the voice of God when he heard it. He says, I pretty near faint when I think about that now after these years. Oh, brother, he said, was I ashamed. But the Lord had had his way with a man who was simple enough. And God spoke to him in the mystery which was before the foundation of the world. And the man that’s hidden is a God-led man without a doubt, because he is led by a kind of instinct if he’s a prayerful man.

I have read some touching stories, and have reason to believe they’re true. They’re not all quite alike, but they have one central likeness, the story of the instinct of animals. I read not long ago of a female, a dog they had had around the place and she was much appreciated and loved by all of them. But something happened, and they sold her. And they took her hundreds of miles across the continent west. Three weeks went by, and at the end of about those 21 days, she came limping in, the pads of her feet bleeding and sore. And she herself a complete wreck and skin and bones, but came in and put her nose across the threshold and lay down and looked up and whimpered. She was back home. How did she find her way over the unknown highways for hundreds of miles. Nobody can tell you that.

Out on the steps of Russia when a man is lost, he doesn’t try to find his way home. He speaks to his horse, puts the reins on her mane and braces himself against the storm. And she finds her way home. The bird finds his way back to Capistrano, and nobody knows how. There is a spiritual instinct that’s like that. You’re so puzzled your brain doesn’t tell you a thing. You comb your intellect, nothing registers. No bell rings. And after a few years have gone by, you see you did the right thing. Why did you do the right thing? There is a hidden mystery which is ordained before the foundation of the world. And the instinct of the Holy Ghost in the breast of a man will keep him right.

I’ve been meeting men from all over the world, literally, meeting men. and I find a wonderful thing. I find that God is speaking to them about the same thing He’s been speaking to me over the last ten years and is saying to me the same thing. And I get letters from people and they’re hearing the same voice and going the same direction. A few aren’t. Occasionally, somebody will barge in and take over, who is in the rut and who has heard no voice for years, except the hard voice of authority or theology. But those who’ve listened and know the sound of the other world, they’re saying about the same thing here and there.

Brother Dave Enloe met me and did some red capping for me yesterday morning in the station downtown, and told me of a Christian businessman, one of the leaders of the CBMC, who was hearing from God on the same thing he’s been talking to you and me on. Another man writes me from Addis Ababa. That’s the way you pronounce it? Close enough. And way over there, and tells me in a long letter, what God’s been saying to him. The same thing He’s been saying to us.

And I run into the Africa Inland Mission crowd at Keswick. And we pray and talk together, and I find God’s been saying the same thing. He’s not saying it to everybody, but he’s saying it to enough. And now comes our Keswick here in the city of Chicago. How’d that get here? Twenty years ago, they couldn’t have got past Cicero, or Hammond. The theological police who would have been down there and had them all in jail. Nobody who would believe in a second work of grace and the victorious life could have ever gotten where we’re getting. But we’re in there now. And they’re bringing men here who believe that very doctrine. And I am to have the joy of being on their program and preaching that which this church has stood for, for 25, nearly 26 years of my full ministry. God’s speaking and there’s a mysterious wisdom that’s moving among men. And God is saying, if you don’t get life among your bones, you’ll rattle yourself to death. And He’s beginning to give life back to us again. And if the Lord will let some of us live a while longer, and keep on and keep low, good and right, I believe the day will come when we will yet direct evangelical Christianity away from Hollywood and away from hard dispensationalism back to the charm life. The Spirit-filled life, the God-blessed life.

Now, I may be too optimistic, but I am hoping. I might say he’s a God-fed man, though I’m going to skip that, the hidden manna. I will give you the hidden manna. And didn’t Elijah get fed by the ravens.

And the sixth is, he’s a God-privileged man. How privileged he is, this man of mystery. For he knows and is not known of anybody. It says that in 1 Corinthians, the second chapter, that we are, how does it word it there exactly? I read so many versions I don’t always remember how a given version reads. He that is spiritual, judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who knoweth the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him. But we have the mind of Christ. And here is the God-privileged man. This man of mystery who lives in the circle, hidden under the hand of God. And he lives a life too deep for the flesh to analyze him.

I’ve just been reading a book over the last couple of weeks, an exposé, really, of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, you know, that has spawned this psychiatry, and psychiatry and I don’t get along. But for 25 years, I have been familiar with psychoanalysis. And they’re supposed to know all there is to know, you know, about your insides. But brethren, there is a place where Sigmund Freud and his followers never penetrated. When they come up and begin to take us apart and pull us bone from bone to see what makes us tick, the Holy Ghost comes down as a cloud and fire and they stand and stare and say, behold these Christians, what weird people they are. We can’t analyze them. They won’t talk. They pray. They know God in a mystery.

And I might point out that he’s a God-enriched man. I will give you says the Holy Ghost the treasures of darkness. If Shakespeare had written that, he would have said, the treasures of life. Who would have thought of the treasures of darkness. It took God to think of that. I will give you the treasures of darkness, not in the darkness do men usually hope to find treasure, but in the light. But God says, I will enrich you by the darkness. And the very troubles that come to you are the dark clouds that will break in blessing on your head.

And I close with the text, I flee unto Thee to hid me. Will you this morning, find the hidden place? Maybe you’ve had a tough week this week. It doesn’t always go as well for you as it might. Maybe you’ve had a tough week. Well, and maybe you didn’t acquit yourself quite as well as you wish you had, and you feel a bit low about it this morning. Don’t stop there, and don’t let that get you down. I will flee under Thee to hide me. Moses didn’t always come off in the most saintly fashion, but he was a god-hidden man. Will you be? From every stormy wind that blows, from every swelling tide of woes, there is a calm and sure retreat. It’s found beneath the mercy seat. There is a place where Jesus sheds the oil of gladness on our heads, a place then all the world more sweet. It is the bloodstained mercy seat. Will you find that mercy seat with me this morning?

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Tozer Talks

“Inspiration of God’s Word Versus Tradition”

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Inspiration of God’s Word Versus Tradition

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

March 23, 1958

Now, I want to read the rest of chapter one of Titus beginning with verse 14. Well, I better read 13 too because I don’t want to break into a semicolon. Paul says, this witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply. that they may be sound in the faith not giving heed to Jewish fables and commandments of men that turned from the truth. Because unto the pure, all things are pure. But unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure: but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God, but in works, they deny him, being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.

Now, I am sorry that this isn’t going to be what they call an inspirational sermon. In preaching the Bible, if you stay close to the Bible, it’s like staying close to the score of a musical composition. You can’t take too many liberties or else you’re not playing Bach, you’re playing somebody else. And if I’m giving expository sermons on Paul and I take too many liberties with Paul, then I’m preaching Tozer and not Paul, which isn’t a good thing. So, I have to stay by Paul. I don’t apologize for Paul, he doesn’t need my defense. But it so happens that this Crete crowd was a bit rambunctious and they needed some pretty severe apostolic correction, and they got it. But this is instructive if it’s not inspiring, and you will find after all, that inspiration comes out of information.

Now, he says in verse ten above he said, there were vain talkers and deceivers, and I talked about those last week. And then he added this melancholy little phrase, especially they of the circumcision–poor Jews. I am not antisemitic. I love the Jews. I love them for Christ’s sake. The blood that flowed on Calvary, from its human side and standpoint, was a Jewish blood. Jesus our Lord, was the son of a Jewish maiden, as well as of God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And my love for the Jews cannot be challenged. But the poor sons of Sarah and Abraham, never seem to keep out of trouble, especially they of the circumcision, said Paul–too bad. 

This island of Crete had a very large Jewish population as I’ve explained, and of course, they travel a lot. Jews get around a lot. And some of them got converted to Christ, while they were elsewhere on around over the country, or around over the world. And some of them were converted there in Crete no doubt. And they had become Christians, at least by profession. But they had made the mistake of bringing their Judaism over into the church with them. And they were still strongly influenced by Judaism. That was so strong in Palestine, of course, it would be strong there, that they had to have a conference, a council, we call them now, and decide on whether they did or did not have to go through the Jewish ritual before they could be a Christian. And they decided they did not. The fathers had met, James Peter, and the rest of them, and they decided that for the sake of not offending the Jews, they were to do four things. For God’s sake and Christ’s sake, they were not to commit fornication, but also, they weren’t to eat things offered to idols. That was a concession to the standards of the Jewish people, so they would not offend them. But they said, you do not have to keep the Law of Moses. By faith, our hearts are purified even as the rest. But these Jews, the circumcision, they followed the church around, everywhere, causing trouble. And Paul said, they were vain teachers. And they were teachers, these are Jewish Christians.

Now, I’ll have to explain how this was and then we’ll be informed and we hope that we’ll get some inspiration out of information. These Jewish Christians taught this. They said there was a written law. And that law consisted of two things. It consisted of the ten words written on stone by the finger of God. And it consisted then of the additional which was inspired by God through Moses. It was the Pentateuch, the five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy we say now. But they said also that there was another law called the law of the lip. And that was an oral law. And they believed in that oral law just as certainly as they believed in the Ten Commandments. I don’t know if they had been put up to take their choice which they would have chosen. But at any rate, they taught the oral law, the traditions, just as vigorously as they taught the law of Moses. But they said this oral law of the lip was passed on by memory, and it was passed on by memory. We know that it was tradition. That’s the difference between tradition and written Scripture, or written beliefs, if they pass it on by tradition.

In some countries I’m told, in certain Arabic countries and Oriental countries, a great deal of their literature is passed down by memory. Education consists of memorizing the great classics in China, at least for many years until the modernization of China. And if they destroyed all their books overnight, all the books in China had been destroyed at certain times, they could have all been reproduced out of the memory of the scholars. And they say the same is true in Arabia, that the book of the Mohamadan Qur’an could have been reproduced out of the memories of the people. And so, they had here these Jews, an oral law many, many times larger than the Old Testament itself. And it was passed on by memory by tradition, and each family gave it to their children, they grew up and gave it to their children, along with the written law, which we believe to be the inspired Word of God.

Now this grew in volume through the years. The great rabbis added to it. And it became part of the canonical law. And it regulated every act and every day and every relation, almost every thought, where God had left men free to do as they pleased within the framework of righteousness and truth. They insisted on following that man and putting yoke on every minute of his time. And these regulations took the character of the law, and they even superseded the law of God in some people’s minds.

Now, those were the vain talkers of which Paul writes. The Jewish fables and commandments of men that turned from the truth. And this later on was reduced to writing, this oral law was reduced to writing about the time of Christ or a little bit later. And it’s known now as the Talmud. Oh, for thirty years I’ve been a little bit acquainted. I’ve had nodding acquaintance with the Jewish Talmud. I bought their books and read them, and I know what they have. They’re special, there’s much good in it incidentally. There’s much good in the Jewish Talmud, much good. But they have a strange way of interpreting Scripture. They make jots and tittles mean things. They take a certain sentence, which is obviously means just what it means, and they add a certain, strange interpretation to that that makes it mean something else. And then that became part of the tradition and part of the Law. And these brethren were coming to the Christians and saying to them, now, it’s nice, I’m a Christian too, of a Jewish extraction. But you must understand that you can’t just come roaring in out of paganism and become a Christian, believe in Jesus Christ and be saved just like that. You have to come by way of the law of the lip, the Jewish tradition, because salvation is of the Jews. Jesus himself said it was, and you’ve got to listen to us.

So, they began to lay these Talmudic, rabbinical laws upon the Jews. About the sixth century, it was collected and written down, so we now have it as the Talmud. And one man said about it, it consists of countless ceremonies and the practice of elaborate ritual which never was written in the book of the Bible at all. And to these Talmudists, righteousness, or a holy life, lay in living according to these rabbinical laws or rules. And when our Lord Jesus Christ came to Jewry, He found that the Law of Moses, the Old Testament Law, which was inspired of God, had been pushed into the background, and that this, this oral law or tradition had taken over and the Jews were under what Peter called yoke of bondage which neither we nor our fathers could bear.

Now, let me give you an example of it from the 15th chapter of the book of Matthew. Here’s a perfect example of how Christ met this head-on. He didn’t fool with it. He didn’t try to find the common ground and do all that they tell us now we should do. He simply butted into it head-on.

Then came to Jesus, Scribes and Pharisees. And they of course were the rabinists, the Talmudists, those who were traditionalists. Then came to Jesus, Scribes and Pharisees which are of Jerusalem saying, why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? There it is, the tradition of the elders, the law of the lip, the Talmud? Why do they transgress the tradition of the elders, for they wash not their hands, when they eat bread?

And He answered them by asking them a question. Why do ye transgress the commandments of God by your traditions? They said, why do you transgress the tradition? And He said, why do you transgress the law of God by your tradition? There we have it. So long as there are human beings alive in the world, we’ll be, at least, under the shadow of traditions. There’s great deal of tradition in this church, a great deal of tradition. We do things because our fathers did, and we’re too lazy to change it. And after a while, it begins to take on a certain form. Because we do it a certain way, there are churches, where if you didn’t have an altar call with people kneeling at the front of the church, they think you’d backslidden. And yet, you go back as far as the Wesleys, and you will find no altars, no place for people to kneel. Finney, when he came along, had to argue and fight to have a anxious seat. That was the front row for people to come and sit if they wanted to be saved. That’s how tradition takes over. Now, there are people that come to this church and because I don’t give an altar call every Sunday night, and say now, come down here and kneel, walk out and say they’re backslidden there. You don’t baptize nine, three or four weeks ago, and eight or nine tonight, and not have God doing something in people’s lives. And yet, because we don’t follow the tradition, they don’t like it.

Well, they said, why do you transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? Then He said in verse nine, in vain they do worship me teaching for doctrines, the commandments of men. Now, they carried that same tradition, you’d think a crucified Christ, the risen Christ and the coming of the Holy Ghost, would have swept that away as a wind sweeps away the mist, but it didn’t. Those Talmudic Christians followed along, believing in the traditions of the elders, the love the lip.

Now in Paul’s mind, and in the mind of Jesus our Lord, there’s a line sharply drawn between those who believe that righteousness is a formal thing. And those who believe that righteousness springs out of the heart. The Talmudists, the traditionalist believed it to be a formal thing. Now, I’m not condemning. I’m not scolding, I’m not adding anything. I am explaining what sound scholarship will confirm, that the Pharisees and Scribes of Jesus’ day, the Judaizing brethren of Paul’s day, which Paul writes here, call them circumcision, they believe as all religions believe that there has to be righteousness, that you’ve got to be righteous to please God. But now the question is, what is righteousness and what does righteousness consist in?

Well, they believe that righteousness was dietary, seasonal, ceremonial, and maybe ascetical. And there were four words here: what, when, how and how much. The dietary, that is what men eat or do not eat. And Paul said, they come and try to bother you with their eating and not eating. And he said, rather, I wouldn’t say angrily, but sharply in verse fifteen, unto the pure all things are pure. But unto them that are defiled unbelieving, nothing is pure. But their minds and consciences are defiled.

So Paul said, now, I want you to appoint elders and appoint bishops in Crete in order that they might by bringing the sound Word of God to bear, they might clear the air and deliver these new Christians in Crete from dietary traditions. You’re good if you eat this. You’re not good if you eat that. I won’t say it because I want to be kind, but can you think as we go along about certain great church or two, that are also under bondage or traditions, diets and times and seasons. Well, here we have the seasons that was when. What men do or do not eat, that’s a dietary. When they’re supposed to eat or not to eat that seasonal. How they dress and kneel and hold their hands and when they wash their hands or don’t wash their hands, that ceremony. And how much they suffer and give, and how often they pray, and how long, and how often they fast and deprive themselves and punish themselves, that’s ascetical.

So these four things, they all sprang out of self-righteousness and a misunderstanding of the grace of God: dietary, what men eat and what they don’t eat; season, when they eat it and when they don’t eat it; ceremonial, how they dress, how they kneel, how they stand, how they rise, how they get up; ascetical, how much they punish themselves. All of this was a part of the law of the lip, the tradition of the elders. And Jesus broke it, right and left. And they said, why do ye break our traditions? He said, why do you break God’s law with your traditions?

Now, some examples, by way of illustration from the Pharisees. You remember that passage where the disciples walked through the field on the Sabbath day. And as they walked, they reached out, the King James Version says corn, but it was wheat, they reached out and the heavy heads of wheat are hanging there. I can just see them from my boyhood days, heavy and yellow, ready to cut. And they just reached out as I’ve done a thousand times as a boy, took a couple of head roll, blew the chaff off and ate the wheat. That’s the way to get it, you know, with none of the vitamins taken out. And those disciples did that.

And the Pharisees saw them do it. They should have been somewhere praying or helping the sick, but they were out spying on Jesus and His disciples to see if they could catch them on the breaking of the tradition. They said, now wait a minute here. We have a law that says you shan’t thresh wheat on Sabbath day, and your threshing wheat. And Jesus turned on them and said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, and He defended his poor, hungry disciples who had rubbed out some wheat and eaten it. But there you have it. They weren’t interested in hungry disciples, they were interested in not breaking that law of the lip that says you can’t rub, they actually went so far as to say, some of them did, I don’t know whether it was universal or not. But some did, go so far as to say that you’re not to walk on the grass on the Sabbath day because you’re likely to trample on a head of grass and the seed will be crushed out of the head and that will be threshing. Therefore, stay off the grass and walk on the concrete on the Sabbath day, lest you thrash and if you’re thrash, you’re a sinner. You’re ceremonially unclean, you’re broken the tradition of the elders. Now that to you and me sounds silly. But to somebody brought up in that, it isn’t as silly as it sounds. And they followed over the creek, mind you, and taught this kind of crazy business.

Then, Jesus here, you’ll remember, He and his disciples didn’t eat, didn’t wash. I’ve seen men working in factories. They only had half an hour to eat, and they wanted to read a little or chat a little and they’d sit down, their hands are all covered with grease. I’ve seen fellows eat their lunch with greasy hands, perfectly harmless. To a Jew, it was terrible. They said, why, according not to the law of Moses, mind you, but according to the law of tradition, you’re supposed to wash your hands before they eat. Jesus said, I don’t want to recognize your traditions. I recognize the law of my Father and you’re breaking the law of God all the time with your tradition. That’s my answer to our friends over on the other side, the Catholics, I’m not against them. I love them. I’d cut their lawns. Lend them my hose. I’d do anything for them. But I am not going to allow them to put a yoke on my neck.

Now, remember another time, Jesus sat down with some sinners. Now, who were the sinners? Were the sinners. men who committed adultery, stole, lied, cheated widows out of their property and had bad tempers? No, those weren’t considered sinners by the Pharisees. The sinners were those who didn’t wash their hands before they ate. Who walked on the grass on Sunday. Who rubbed wheat in their hands and thrashed, and thus broke the love of fathers. Who didn’t tie their clothing as they said they should have and who thus broke the law of the tradition, their law of the lip, the oral law, they were sinners.

But the Pharisee, who hated with a black hate that finally crucified Jesus, he was ceremonially clean, and that’s a holy man. He kept a lot of the fathers. And a evil man who would rather a poor sick man would lie and suffered and died a tortured death than to be healed on the Sabbath day, he was not a sinner. He was a good man. He was a holy man because he kept the law of the fathers. And the men who finally crucified Jesus as Billy Sunday’s old song used to say, passed off for moral men too. Righteousness to them, were those who are clean according to the ceremony. They did the thing they were supposed to do. They got up when they’re supposed to get up, sat when they’re supposed to sit, put their hands up like this when they were told to, appeared when they were told to and did everything just as they were told to. They said, that’s the tradition of the fathers.

Well, we have it on our hands today. It isn’t affecting us here much. But wherever I see it, I like to leave the main path and go out and hew it down. We used to have a weed when I was a boy. My father called Wild Parsnip, but it was really a wild carrot. And he hated it so bad that if he was driving along the road, along the lane, and he saw one over in the field, he’d stopped the wagon, jump off, jump over the fence, go out, take an axe and cut it out at the roots, throw it up, and then drive on. And I feel that way about all these traditional laws they want to put on God’s people and place righteousness where it doesn’t belong.

I say there’s a sharp line of demarcation drawn between those who believe that righteousness lies in formal law keeping and those who believe that righteousness springs out of faith, that it’s a moral thing. That a liar can’t be holy a man no matter how often he goes to church or makes his confession or gets confirmed, or how much he avoids meet on Friday or how he keeps the traditions of the elders. He’s not a good man, if he’s a liar. He’s not a good man if he has hate in his heart. He’s not a good man. If he has a churlish temper. He’s not a good man. Let him be baptized anyway he wants to be baptized, sprinkle, poured, three times once, simmers, anyway, and he’s not a good man if he’s an evil man.

For faith, righteousness comes out of faith and out of love. And it has its source in the heart. That was the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s worshiping in spirit and in truth. And such have only one question. Those who worship in spirit and in truth have only one question. It isn’t what shall I eat? When shall I do this? How shall I dress? How much shall I deprive myself? I’ve never asked those questions. That belongs to the traditions. You ask only one question and that is, why, why. That’s motive, you see? Why? Why do I do this? Why? What’s your motive for it? If you do it out of love, it’s right. If you do it out of hate, it’s wrong. If you do it out of faith, it’s right. If you do it out of self-righteousness, it’s wrong. What’s the motive for this?

There’s the liberty of the Christian my brethren. You can walk upright on the earth and look at God’s sunshine, seeing the spacious firmament on high, and worship God and delight in his world and everything His hands has made. And you’ll be all right before God as long as you keep your motive, right. Your motive is to do the will of God, to follow Jesus Christ as best you know how and to love everybody and to love God, your motive is alright. The question to not how much shall you eat but why, what shall I eat, but why? Not shall I go to church so many times a week, but why do I go to church? Motive is everything.

Now, by placing sin and holiness in formal ceremonies, these people destroyed the true meaning of both sin and righteousness. Because just as soon as I believe that I can cheat in a real estate deal, lie, abuse my wife, and do other things that are not right, hate my enemy, and yet I’m right with God provided I am baptized, fast at stated times, appear at the church at certain times, wash my hands before I eat and follow the ceremonial laws of the tradition of my church, I’m all right. I don’t do that, I’m a sinner.

Who were the sinners in Jesus’ day? They were the people who neglected the, they were the men on the street, the people who neglected the ceremonies of the Talmud. And Jesus said He came to save sinners. They were the ones that came to Him, the common people heard Him gladly and flocked to him. But the people who stood by the traditions, the law of the lip that over shadowed the love of God, couldn’t reach them.

Now, in a climate, in a climate such as the Pharisees had and as these traditionalists tried to take to Crete, Christianity couldn’t grow. The conscience couldn’t live. It had to die because the conscience tells you, not what you’re doing, but why you’re doing it. Some little lady doesn’t show up at church. Now I believe we ought to go to church every Sunday, I think it’s the day, the first day of the week. And I think nothing short of sickness should keep us away from the church of God. I believe that. But many a person has been condemned for not being at church. Who is obeying the higher call of love? Who stayed by the bedside of an ailing aged father or mother? Or who did some other kindly deed for Christ’s sake?

Now I think the wise thing to do is to try to do that at other times and get to church anyhow. I think the wise thing to do is to appear at church because the Scripture said to forsake not the assembling of yourselves together. I think God has given us the first day of the week as a time to appear, not as we’re compelled to do it, but we do it voluntarily. But at the same time, there are occasions where a higher law of love keeps me from being at my wanted place. And God recognizes that higher law of love.

I’ve told it I suppose a hundred times, but old Meister Eckhart, somebody asked him, he said, how about praying and how do you how do you manage to harmonize prayer and service for the poor? Well, he said, here’s the way I harmonize it. He said, if I’m in prayer, and I’m even caught away like Paul to the third heavens, and I happen to remember that I had forgotten to take a widow some food, I break off my prayer and go take her the food. He said, God will see you don’t lose the thing. He said, when you come back, you can start right in where you left off and the Lord will see you don’t lose thing. I believe in that. The law of love my brother, dictates that I do out of love, deeds that may not be written, may not be prescribed, may not be found at all in the law of the church, but there are the obvious wise, right good thing to do, and I do them for Christ’s sake. That’s the righteous man.

Now, Paul said I want to read that I’m about finished. He said that these Jewish fables and commandments of men that turn from the Truth, he said unto the pure all things are pure, to the pure person, everything’s pure. They came and said, now you can’t eat this kind of meat and Paul said, don’t you believe it. To the pure everything’s pure. But unto them that are defiled and unbelieving in their heart, you see, nothing’s pure. To the Pharisee, he fasted but his fasting was impure. He prayed, but his prayers came back and slapped his own face. He deprived himself but his deep privation was a sin because his motives were rotten. They profess they know God but in words they deny Him being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate, that’s terrible. That’s terrible.

And spoken about the poor Jews, they of the circumcision. Do you often pray for Israel. Do you often pray for the Jews. You should. You should often pray for the Jews. Remember, they gave us our Bible. They preserved that Bible and died defending it down the years. Remember it? Remember, they carefully preserved it and went over it and put every jot and every title in place, the old scribes. We use the word scribe almost as an epithet of opprobrium. But those scribes, we owe them a lot just as we owe are translators a lot. Careful scholars who spend days over sentences. We owe them a lot. We thank God for Moses and Isaiah and Daniel and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and sweet David with his harp. We’re grateful for the Jews. We’re grateful for those twelve apostles, all Jews who went out to the four corners of the earth to preach the Truth. We’re grateful for Paul that great Jew. We’re glad. We ought to pray for them, and pray for them off, and much and pity them. And don’t feel superior to them.

Because after all, you’re a gentile grafted into the wild, to the olive tree. Paul would have none of this stuff in Crete. None of this, none of this tradition out of which he escaped by the skin of his teeth. It took a knock-down and drag-out conversion on Damascus Road to save him from it. Now that God had taken him out of it, I’ve been getting letters recently. Some time ago, we published an article, “How to win, one of our missionaries, “How to Win Roman Catholics to Christ.” I suppose I’d get skinned for that. My poor hides all spotted with what I get. But I’ve got nothing but the most gracious, the most enthusiastic letters from people saying, some of them saying to this effect, Oh, you don’t know how glad we were to read this, that your people are interested in winning Catholics to Christ. And they have written articles for me about how to win them, all the kind things they said and gracious things they said. How never to offend them, but how always to take the word of God and your own testimony and go to them and try to win them. But almost all of them said the same thing. How we thank God we escaped. It was almost like a concentration camp. And when they got out into the liberty of the gospel of Jesus Christ, they only could use one word and that was the word escape. They said we escaped.

And how we thank God we escaped. So, I’m glad I’ve escaped, that I have escaped from the laws of the elders. But we must pray for those who haven’t. And we must by love and faith and grace and careful walk, not to offend people. We must live such lives as shall be worthy of the liberty we claim to hold and not use liberty as a license for the flesh. But in meekness and humility, follow our Lord Jesus Christ. If we do that, God will bless us and we may be used by Him to deliver some who are now in bondage.

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Tozer Talks

“How We Can Have a Personal Revival”

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How We Can Have a Personal Revival

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 11, 1955

Now, I want to do, and relax because we’ll not be late. I want to do what I promised I would do. I’ve been speaking on revival though I hesitate to use the word. It’s fallen into bad use and has been wounded in the house of its friends. But I want to talk about how we can have a personal revival. You know that I have already said that revival can occur on one of three levels. It can occur on a personal level when the individual is revived. It can occur on a church level where a whole church comes under the new spiritual impulse. It can occur on a community level where the church overflows and the impulse within the church goes out to the community.

Now, a solitary person can enter in and have a revivification of his spiritual life and have an upsurge of power and a down-coming of grace and can enter into an experience that’s as wonderful, so wonderful that his words won’t be able to describe it, and yet not affect the church very much where he is. That has happened. Individuals within pretty cold churches, have been greatly revived. And yet that did not extend to the church because the church resisted or opposed or neglected or considered this person a fanatic or an extremist. And rather, it throws him out.

Now, a church may experience an awakening. On the other hand, other members of the church may catch fire from this individual or increasing numbers of individuals. And the whole church is lifted up and refreshed and the frost gets out of the stream, and the ice breaks, and the waters begin to flow. And yet, that can fail to reach the community. Often, it does fail to extend beyond the local church. Many, many local churches have wakenings and refreshings and times of great grace. But it does not get beyond the church to the community.

But then, there’s such as a community revival where it does get out into the community and goes from one church to another, and the whole city, the whole neighborhood is revived. Now, it can occur in that order, the individual, extending to the church, and the church extending out to the community. But it can never reverse itself. It can never come to a community unless there has been a church that has been revived. And no church has ever been revived until individuals in that church have been revived.

Now, by personal revival, what do I mean? Well, it’s best taught by analogy I suppose. It’s like a sick man returning to abounding health. It is like a man whose blood count is low and who is hardly able to get out of bed; can sit up only an hour at a time, and getting to a place where he’s now able to go out and play on the tee and do a hard day’s work and do anything he has to do–abounding in health. For it is like a low battery that will barely turn the engine over, being taken in for a recharge, and get to a place where it’s simply sizzling with power, and where a flash of power will fly out from it on the least occasion. Now, that’s what it is to be a Christian that has been revived, that has had a new uprush of power from God. We had some around here, and I run into them occasionally here and again, and you know what I mean.

Now this can only happen to the individual. This can’t happen to a church. It can’t happen to a mass. It can only happen to the individual. My brethren, there are some things that can only happen to an individual. For instance, birth can only happen alone to each single individual as if there had been no other individual in the world. The statistics may say, well, 150 babies were born in this town, this little town last year. But remember, that you cannot and dare not fall a victim to statistics and think of 150 babies being born en masse as though it were one act. No, no, there were 150 of them. Each birth was as unique and single and peculiar and alone as if there never had been anybody born before or ever would be again. And even though there are multiple births, twins or triplets, it is still the same. Each individual comes into the world himself alone, an individual cut out from all the universe, alone.

And so, it is with death. You can only die by yourself. A train wreck comes and fifty people are killed in a train wreck, fifty people are killed in a train wreck and all of it happens at once. And yet while they die at once, they die, alone. And while they’re all written off on the newspapers as having occurred within one minute’s time. They did not die together, they died apart separately, each individual went out alone to meet his God.

And so, at Pentecost, there were 120 in the upper room, and suddenly the place was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. That sounds as if it was a mass thing, but the Scripture says that there appeared unto them cloven tongues as of fire and it sat upon each of them. They could only be filled with the Holy Ghost separately. Ten men can’t be filled with the Holy Ghost as one act of God. They can be filled simultaneously. As there might be ten babies born while I’ve been talking here, but each birth was alone, there might have been 100 People die while I’m talking to you, but each death was alone. And so, the Holy Spirit falls upon 75 people as it did in Dusseldorf in 1727 for the Moravians, yet each one received by himself.

Now, I want to make this very clear, because it’s important we think right about this, that there is no abstract church. We pray, O Lord, fall on Thy church. And we imagine there’s an abstract church somewhere, the kind of woozy extract of the church, and the Spirit can come on that without individuals being helped. No, no, my brother. The Holy Spirit can only fall on individuals, on people, that’s all. There is no such thing as a mystic church that can be blessed, with the members of the church not touched. No, no. We pray, Lord, bless Thy mystic church and we imagine, we project a church out of, among the individuals, an ideal church for which Christ died. And nobody gets help and we say, well, God is pouring His spirit out on His church. God can’t pour His Spirit out on His church, except as He pours it on individuals within the church.

The Holy Ghost sat upon each of them. And so, He’ll sit upon each of us, if He ever comes to the church. This church is only what the individual members are, not one bit better. If God had some IQ tests or spiritual tests, whereby He could test us, or He had some way of taking our spiritual pulse, then we might add up all and divide by our membership and get the average. But the church would be what the average is. Always remember, the average of the many individuals will make what the church is, for the church is composed of the individual.

Now the lone soul can be revived. I’m so glad to be able to tell you that. God can send waves of glory and power and life, a new quickening to the lone individual, that solitary individual as one man wrote, whether anyone else does, receives or not. Don’t you wait around and say, I’d like to see our church blessed, and then hope that when the church is blessed, you will be blessed. My friend, the church can never be blessed until you or other individuals are blessed. And whether the church ever gets any further on or not out, whether we peter out and backslide and turn liberal, you can be blessed as an individual. And not all the rest of us put together can prevent you from being blessed. And you can be blessed whether or not. A man can be blessed alone, whether or not his pastor or his church approves. I personally know that.

When I was a young fellow about 18 years of age, God came on me in a wonderful way and did wonderful things for me and my church did not approve it. It was not an Alliance church, but another, and they did not approve it. In fact, they as good as told me that they thought I was a bit extreme and maybe that my room was better than my company. I wasn’t thrown out, but I was invited not to be around so frequently. And I left and went into the Alliance and I’ve never been thrown out of the Alliance yet, though that could happen.

But the point is, my brethren, that no matter whether your church believes or not, you can have all that God has for you as an individual. And whether your wife will go along with you or not, or whether your husband or father or mother or friend, whether they will agree or not, it doesn’t make a bit of difference. God always is ready to help the lone individual. And the story of the Old Testament was the story of lone individuals meeting God, lone men, lone women meeting God. The story of revival down the years has been the story of lone men meeting God; going out and finding God all alone. Sometimes they went to their bedrooms, sometimes to the church basements, sometimes to the caves, sometimes out under trees, and sometimes in haystacks. But one or two or three, or one alone, met God, and then it went on from there.

I say you can be blessed and yet not have revival in your church if the rest resist. But you can be blessed nevertheless. Don’t you ever give up to the general, dead level of spirituality in any church, whether it’s this one or any other church. You say, by the grace of God, I’m going to be what I should be regardless.

Now, how, that’s the big question, how. How can I have a personal revival. Well, you want to take some notes on this, any of you? Let me, let me give you, I’ll try to make it brief, but I’ll give it as much time as I feel I must.

First of all, set your face like a flint that you might have a transformation of your whole life. Weak experimenters are already tagged with defeat. They already have the label of defeat upon them, the taster, the experimenter, the weak fellow that tries it out, like Mr. Pliable who says, I’ll go, and then the first trouble he runs into says, I won’t go. You set your face like a flint. A plowshare that is going to cut the sod has to have a sharp nose. And a Christian, if he is to go against all the streams and drifts of the world, he has to have our hard nose too. He’s got to set his face like a flint and say, regardless of what others do, by the grace of God, I want all the New Testament has for me.

Then second, set your heart on Jesus Christ, and go to Him wherever it takes you. Go to Jesus wherever it takes you. Wherever it takes you, go to Jesus. Wherever it takes you away from, go straight, go to Jesus, not up in heaven but down here on earth. Go to Jesus. And whoever you must ignore and whatever the cost may be, set your face like a flint to be all God wants you to, and then go straight to Jesus. And whoever gets in your way, pay no attention of them. I will always thank God that he put that passage in the Bible where the blind man said, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And His proper disciples in their longtail deacon’s coats, they went and said, shoosh, this is not done in churches. Keep still, shoosh, be quiet. And the Scripture says, he cried all the more because of this. Instead of this discouraging him, it fired him up to yell louder. And the Lord heard him and turned around said, what do you want? He said, I want to be healed. He said okay, here, you get it. And he went out a healed man with his eyesight because he had the boldness to pay no attention to the timekeepers and referees that kept people away from Jesus Christ the Lord.

I opened again and read a page or two, just more or less for the style than anything else, but you can’t read Bunyan long just for the style. It was the story of Christian and how he read that book that got him in trouble, you know. He said, oh, I find by this book that I am living in the city of Destruction and that fire is going to fall on us, and that there’s a heavenly home. And he started out. And he was in such terrible distress before he started, that he finally broke the news to his wife and children. And he said, oh, my dear wife and thou the children of my bowels, the old-fashioned English way of putting it, he said, I’m in an awful condition, awful. Well, they said Papa, we know what’s wrong with you. You’re just tired out. So, they put him to bed, there, there in Bunyan. They put him to bed and the next morning he got up and they said, how are you feeling Papa? Oh, he said, worse than ever. I never slept a wink. He said, I couldn’t forget that we live in the city of Destruction. Well then, Bunyan says that when they found they couldn’t just get him quiet and console him, you know, and pat his back and say, now go to bed and sleep it off. Why they started being harsh toward him and surly. When that wouldn’t work, they started to deride him. And then when he wouldn’t give up to their scorn, they ignored him.

I thought as I read it, I wrote this down. That’s the way they do. First, they sooth you, pat your back and tell you you’re excited. And then after that they use harsh words to you and tell you you think you’re better than other people. And then, when that won’t work, they deride you and start making fun. And when that won’t work, they ignore you. That’s exactly how it happens, Brother. And if you decide in your heart that you’re going to go through with God and meet Him and yourself alone, and have a new and refreshing from God, and get rid of the old barnacles and the old weights and hindrances and get back new spiritual health you’ve never had before, you will find some people that will say, well, you’re excited. You allowed that man Tozer to stir you up. Then when you won’t stop, they will start being harsh toward you. Then when that won’t do, they’ll make fun of you. And when that won’t do, they’ll ignore you. Bunyan said, when they treated the Christian like that, he went off by himself and had long season of prayer. You know, that’s the way to handle it, Brother.

Well, third now, take this third. Expose your life to His examination. The trouble with us is, we keep ourselves all covered up. We cover our hearts. He that covereth his sins shall not prosper. He that covereth his leprosy, shall not have it healed. He then covereth his diseases shall not be delivered. But we habitually cover ourselves. I say, expose your whole life to Jesus Christ. Expose in prayer. Expose yourself in Scriptures. Expose your heart in obedience. Expose it by confession. Expose it by restitution. Restitution, a forgotten word, a word that nobody uses anymore. It’s gone the way of all the earth. Why can’t we think of another? But it’s in the Bible still, restitution. Get straightened out with people, brothers and sisters, and it’ll be amazing how it will work out with you.

And then, fourth, take some holy vows. Let me give them. I preached some sermons on this some years ago, but let me just catch them. Take some holy vows before God today. Vow never to own anything. That is, vow to get rid of that infernal bunch of trash you call, your goods. That infernal bunch of trash. Why, there are pack rats out in the West, so I learned, and they gather everything. They go out and bring in everything, little shiny bits. And now, you read in English literature about the magpie, doing the same thing. They find a magpie’s nest, they’ll find a mirror and a coat hanger and a shoe buttoner, in the days when they used them, and a shoe horn and a piece of glass and a dime. They can’t use them, they just collect them. It’s just trash they’ve collected. And people have that same thing. It’s the covetous spirit.

So, they collect around them all of this like the magpie, all of this useless material. I don’t mean you’re to get rid of it if you can use it. It wouldn’t be useless if you could use it, would it? Remember this, that if you feel you own it, it’s dragging you down. Get free from the ownership of it, and then God will let you have it. Get cut loose from it inside and God let you have it outside. I’ve said it’s all right for you to get in your automobile, and the Lord will bless you. But if the automobiles get in you, you’re ruined. And so with your property and so with everything you have. Take a vow to never own anything. See that God has it, not only a skinny tenth. Don’t you imagine for a minute that you keep books with God that way. You’ve got ninety percent and God’s got ten. God’s got 100% and he lets you keep a certain percent to look after your family. But, it’s all God’s and God has a right to command it the moment he wants it.

And if there’s anything you own that God can’t have, you never can have a revival, sir. If there’s anything that you own that God can’t have, you can’t have God. But the moment that God knows that He can have anything you have, and you, anytime he wants it, then the Lord will let you keep it probably, but it’ll be blessed now instead of cursed. It will be a balloon to lift you instead of an anchor to weigh you down.

Then, take a vow never to defend yourself. That’s a tough one for us Americans, but if you don’t do it, oh, I’ve taken more people to the 23rd chapter of Exodus and taught them how to trust God and never worry about your enemies, nor worry about the opposers nor the enemies. If you try to fight people, you will be bloody and bruised and miserable and you’ll stay little and you’ll never have a revival. But if you will let God do your fighting for you, you pray, you’ll be alright.

And then, vow never to defame a fellow Christian. Never defame a fellow Christian. Never defame him by believing evil about him. Never defame him by spreading an evil report about him. And never defame him in any way, remembering your own past and remembering your own proneness to temptation. So, let’s not defame our fellow Christians. I think that sometimes the Spirit of God shuts Himself uptight and cannot fall upon us, because we’ve defamed our brethren, we’ve defamed some Christians.

Now, as a pastor, as a member of an executive committee, I am forced under God. If I know that a man has serious charges against his life, I am forced to protect the church of God from that man. But I am not to defame that man or any other man by believing gossip or spreading it.

And then, vow never to seek or accept any glory. Oh, how we love the glory. If we could take just a little of it for ourselves. May God deliver us from it brethren. He shall have all the glory, we sing. Thou shalt have all the glory for He sets me free. And when that comes to us, that all the glory is God’s, it will be a new flow of power in our lives.

And then, vow, we will not wait for tragedy to drive us to God. You know, tragedy may never come. There are some maybe listening to me now that started to get cold in your heart and then some tragedy struck you though your family. And out of that terrible tragedy and the stony grief, you raised your Bethel and said, forgive me God and started over. But must it always be like that? Must we always wait for God to chastise us? Must we always come to God with bleeding back? Vow that you won’t wait for tragedy to drive you to God, indeed if ever comes. Take your cross voluntarily. Let me give this simple illustration and I’m through.

Many years ago when I was very young preacher, I preached in a town named Despard, West Virginia. Despard, West Virginia was commonly called “tinplate” because the great tinplate factories were there. It was also a coal mining area. We went into a little old wooden structure and had our meetings. And it was quite a meeting, although it wasn’t what some people thought it should have been. So some people got burdened. And in that meeting, there was a coal miner. A great, tall, handsome blonde, good looking, smiling young fellow as I recall him now after these thirty years, he was. And after it was all over, I learned what had happened. He went home after a meeting one night and said to his wife, he said, you know, our people need God. They need God. This thing isn’t going well and we need God. We need His help. And he said, Honey, if it’s alright with you, I’m going to take tomorrow off and wait on God and pray all day long, and I think “fast,” though I would put that in with only a question mark. But he said, I want to pray all day long and wait on God for revival for this town. So, it’s all right. So, instead of going to work, that great big fellow got down on his knees and waited on God with his open Bible all the day long.

The next morning, he went to his work. He worked on the tipple. Now, the tipple is a word not many know. He worked on the tipple where little cars brought the coal down. The heaviest pulled the light empties up you know. And he was working on that tipple, and suddenly something went wrong and a car, a number of cars jumped the track and crashed and splintered. They were wooden cars, old fashioned wooden cars and they splintered. And a great, ragged chunk of splinters, sharp as a dagger on the end, ripped through his thigh and cut one of the great veins there. And there he lay on the slag and coal and dirt, this great big, gorgeous fellow, about twenty-seven years old, and bled to death.

The day before, he had spent all day with God. And that struck me as a message from heaven above. And I thought ever since, dear God, how wonderful it would be, to spend your last day with Thee alone in prayer. Now he couldn’t continue. He had to work and support his family of course. But wasn’t it wonderful that he was near enough to God that he could carry a burden? And the day before he died, he spent all day with God. You can’t spend all day with God, brother, and not be ready to go to heaven the next day. He was all ready to go. Now don’t ask me why God took this dear man away. I don’t know that. God has never allowed me to look over his shoulder at his secret plan. I only know that in the course of things, easily, he could have died anyway. But suppose that that day, say Wednesday, suppose when the Spirit of God urged him to spend a day in prayer for his own soul and for His church, suppose he had been too greedy for money to listen. Suppose he’d been too cold to hear or too far away. Suppose he had been like some of us, running on routine and couldn’t hear from God. He’d have died on the tipple the next day alright, but, oh, what a difference.

Maybe God’s calling some of you to do something extraordinary, something that’s out of the usual, something that doesn’t appear on a calendar or a clock, something to revive your own soul. God may be calling you to do something radical and extreme for your own soul. I hope you’re not so far away that you don’t hear Him. I hope that the love of money and that the pleasures of the world are not so great that you don’t hear Him.

Oh, brother, the biggest thing in the world isn’t whether you die tomorrow or live a hundred years. The biggest thing in the world is, can I hear God speaking to me now? That’s what counts. Do you hear God saying anything to you, my friends. You can have a revival, whether the rest of us ever get it or not, whether you accept it or not, in this or any other church. There’s no reason why you can’t set your face like a flint and start toward Jesus Christ wherever it takes you. And when you find Him, you’ll find floodgates of mercy. You’ll find oil poured from the throne above. You will find a wonderfully new revived life for yourself, just yourself. And after that, it’s up to God and you what you shall do with what you have, but wonderfully, it can be yours now. I hope you can hear Him speak.

Let’s pray. O God, O God, Thou knowest, the world is spinning on. Time is getting less and running out. Children are becoming youth, and youth becoming middle-aged, and middle-aged are getting old and dying. And Thou hast said redeem the time for the days are evil. Lord, please don’t let us fail here. Lord, Thou dost want us to be revived again. Thou dost want to revive Thy people, Lord, individual people. And then, if numbers of individual people can band together, then the church has been revived. God, revive Thy people. Grant, Lord, to help.

Now, as we have our heads bowed, dear people, just for a minute more of prayer. Who will say, Mr. Tozer, please pray for me, that I might have in my lonely soul, alone, apart for my relation to others, if I might have a new inflow of God’s power and purity and grace that I might be a revived soul. Pray for me. Would you raise your hand? God bless you. God bless you.

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“Revival-The Glory is Gone”

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Revival, the Glory is Gone

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 4, 1955

This is the first of two talks. The one this morning and one next Sunday morning, following and completing it, though each talk will be complete in itself. If you miss one you would still have received the advantages or benefits of a complete sermon. The 85th Psalm, the prayer of the man of God for revival among his people. Now, and tonight incidentally, I want to give the second of two sermons on how to cultivate the Spirit’s companionship. And we’re expecting a fine crowd. We hope that you can be present. The 85th Psalm describes conditions, verses one, two, and three. Lord, Thou hast been favorable unto our land. Thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob. Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of Thy people. Thou hast covered all their sin. Thou hast taken away all Thy wrath and Thou hast turned Thyself from the fierceness of thine anger.

Now, that apparently is a description of a time which has been, when God has been favorable and the people had been removed because of God’s displeasure, but brought back again because of His mercy. And some historic period gone by, under Judges or Ezra or Nehemiah is described here, when God was favorable to his people. But verse four says quite bluntly that the need has arrived again. Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease. It seems that they had gotten into a place where they needed again this same resurgence of spiritual life which they had had under Moses or the judges or under Nehemiah. And they knew that God was going to have to use strong measures to bring them where they should be.

And the next verse draws hope. Verse four draws hope from the past. And that is the habit, the way the mind works, that we draw hope from the past. Actually, we ought to draw hope from the Word. That is, if God made a promise, we ought to believe the promise if we had no historic proof that He had ever fulfilled it in the past. That would be faith in God without any confirmatory historic proofs, but apparently, we don’t work like that. And our minds need the collateral help that historic proof brings. So, we remember the past; Thou hast been favorable in times gone by to Thy people. Thou hast turned our captivity. Thou hast blessed Thy people in Thy land. And now Lord, we need help again. And we draw mercies from the fact, or draw hope from the fact of Thy mercies of the past and believe that Thou who didst turn our people in days gone by, will turn Thy people again. That seems to be the logic of the prayer. And in verse five, they’re living under a shadow. Wilt Thou be angry with us forever? Wilt Thou draw out thine anger to all generations? So, there seems to be an admission that there has been a long displeasure of God upon the people. And then in verse seven, or verse six he says, wilt Thou not revive us again?

You know, I’ve been hearing everywhere I go that word “revival.” I just got a letter yesterday saying we’re going to have a meeting at such and such a lunch hour and we want to discuss how we can have revival in the city of Chicago. And wherever you go, you’ll run into men who are talking about revival. There is a feeling I believe that revival is a sort of a fragrant wind that blows in over us and marvelously quickens us and helps us like an oxygen tent to a sick man, and leaves us about where it found us. There is no moral change. There is no cross-bearing and no separation from the world and no death to our evil natures and no restitution and no straightening out with people with whom we’ve quarreled. No getting right with God anywhere, but simply a revival. And we want that benign, fragrant breeze to blow so bad that we’re willing to spend hours on our knees in gatherings praying for revival.

Well, I don’t know whether I can go along with this at all or not. I can’t see how it can possibly be scriptural because I remember a man who once lay on his face, because the armies of Israel were being defeated. And he was praying, O God, what’s happened that we have been sent in headlong flight and our people have been defeated. And God said, don’t lie there on your face Joshua and pray for revival. Get up, there’s a cursed thing in the camp. And if you will get up and find that cursed thing and get rid of it, why I’ll go before your armies as I did before, and there will be no difficulty. And you can cut down your time in prayer, if you will get up and get rid of the accursed thing. So they got up, brought the tribes before them and they found Achan and his golden wedge and goodish Babylonish garment. And they grabbed up some stones under Mose’s direction and they wrought capital punishment upon Achan and his tribe. And then the next day they went out to the battle and won. God is not to be coaxed into doing that which is in violation of His laws. And when we are in accord with His laws, we can get on with a great deal less coaxing and spend a lot more time thanking and praising.

Well, there’s a lot of revival praying that isn’t going to do any good, and I, for my part, don’t like to waste anything. I’ve wasted so much money and I’ve wasted so many years, and I’ve wasted so much nerve energy in my day. And I’ve wasted so much time and so much of everything that I don’t want to waste anything more. I don’t even want to waste a prayer. So there is no new reason in the world, no use, for us to get on our knees and pray for God to send or blow a divine breath over us and quickened us when it’s obvious that we’re not going to go along with God in the thing. We’re living so that His shadow lies upon us and there’s a coldness upon our hearts. So therefore, we think to break that down and literally storm heaven by violence and get God to do which God has sworn He would never do, and avoid doing the thing that we have been commanded to do.

Well, the man says, show us Thy mercy, O God, show us Thy mercy. And my brethren, if ever there was a time when we needed to be constantly saying, O God, be merciful unto us, be merciful unto us. In these modern times we’re taught to, we believe in Christ and that settles it, and after that we’re not to pray for mercy at all. I think that the old Catholic Church and some of the old brethren of days gone by may have carried it too far in other direction, but we’re certainly going too far in our direction. They were always begging for mercy, but apparently never quite sure whether they got it or not. But nowadays, they say ask for mercy and then believe you have it and get up and go on from there. Well, that’s good and it’s true, but it isn’t true enough and it doesn’t go far enough. The fact is, I need the mercy of God on me every day I live.

When I get up in the morning and begin to say in my heart, Let Jesus Christ be praised, I need the mercy of God to make that prayer acceptable. And when I get on my knees to ask God for anything, I need to be bathed in mercy and supported with mercy and upheld with mercy and, and, and that I need to roll and turn in mercy like a gear in oil. I need to have mercy underneath me as the hard earth upon which I can walk and is the atmosphere that I can breathe and the sun to shine on me to give me light and warmth, and all the help I need. I need the mercy of God. Show us Thy mercy is verse seven, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation. And every church ought to be thus praying, God, show us Thy mercy. Have mercy upon us, O God. David said in one place, have mercy upon me and hear my prayer. Why even his prayers had to be bathed in mercy. And the holiest thing a man can do has to have the mercy of God underneath it or it will amount to nothing at all.

And he said in verse nine, that glory may dwell in our land. Now, woe and alas for you and me, for we have not seen the glory in our land. We know only one kind of glory, the vulgar glory of the world, its coarse tastes and its low amusements and its sights and its noises. And God’s people always ignore it and tolerate it. The glory is not in our land.

And I heard the other day on an interview or somewhere that, or read it that there are a thousand juvenile gangs in Brooklyn alone. One thousand gangs that do everything from mugging people, that is, grabbing them and beating them up and stealing their money–to murder. And you heard, you read yesterday of the two-hour siege that was laid to the, by young people to the prison, or to the palace at Atlanta where the governor lived? Well, those are only samples. Thank God for all the fine young people there are. Thank God for all these young people that sit along here; will never we’ll never know these things. Thank God for all of them.

But nevertheless, our country knows little of the glory that our fathers knew, the glory that our fathers knew. There is a preacher of the gospel, so I understand, who either has given or is going to give a talk–and what do you suppose the subject of his talk is? The theology of jazz! He is the man who won $32,000 on “Ask Me an Easy Question” for $64,000 here the other day. And he knew more about jazz, I would be willing to wager a plug nickel, than he did about the Holy Ghost, or that he did about his Bible. And he is going to give a talk on the theology of jazz.

Well, sir, I know a good teacher to teach the theology of jazz, Brother. If you would rather have somebody teach the theology of jazz and teach that tough when you got Wednesday night on the teleological and ontological arguments for the existence of God? I’ll tell you where you can get a teacher. There are artists of the past who have painted him with a long tail and horns and spiked feet. The devil is the best teacher for the theology of jazz. And yet there are those who are so intimately stupid and so spiritually blind, that they have accepted all of this and nervous, sexually inspired communists, fostered business that’s going on in our country as being the very way of God itself; as been geared to the times and as being a part of the total picture of the gospel of Christ.

Well, my brethren, the glory is not in our land, of that, I’m sure. The coarse amusements and sights and noises that are heard everywhere; the pipings and peepings and rattlings and gutturals and the grinding and, and jumping that is said to be music. My brethren, the Holy Ghost isn’t in it. Such things as that are not heard in heaven. You will hear them in hell, certainly, a lot of that’ll be heard in hell. And those who go to that place of fire and everlasting remorse, may be able in the midst of self-accusation and self-hatred and everlasting sorrow, to beat to their hot hands together, and grind and roll. They wouldn’t be doing it for Jesus. There’s no jumping for Jesus nor grinding for the gospel. My brethren, that is hell taking over and coming in, smelling of brimstone into the house of God, and saying, now, let us, let us be religious for the time being. And so, we’ll get the support and the applause of these blind saint-lets, half in and half out of the Kingdom, afraid to get all the way in for fear of what it will cost them and afraid to stay out through fear they will perish in hell. And so, hanging halfway in the ropes between yes and no, between the gospel and the world, between heaven and hell? They grin and applaud while Satan claps his bony hands and grinds and rolls the gospel.

Oh, my brother, the glory is not in our land. The glory has departed, and it’s not in our land. O God, in mercy let the glory come back again. The Christians are pushed around and their conveniences are never sought. Always they’re ignored and tolerated, except for their votes, of course, and for what they can do by way of a financial lift. Everybody comes to them that wants a little financial help, because they’re supposed to be a generous people, and God bless them, they are. But they’re helping to support an infinite number of things that were never inspired by God. They’re helping to fumigate trees that were never planted by our Father in heaven. And the axe lies now at the root of those same trees, and there’ll be a mighty crash in the forest when they go down, never to arise again.

Well, the poor church is forced to get along and beg nickels. The people of God, the church of God, will always have to take second best; always, or third or tenth best. What we do is always bound to be amateurism, always, because we can’t do, we don’t have the money. The money goes to the world. And the church of Jesus Christ struggles along the best that it can.

O God, where is the glory? Where is the glory? The glory is absent. Times have been when Christians were so zealous that they changed the life of communities, the whole life of communities. There was a missionary who went into a certain Island or set of islands, and they said about him when he went in, there wasn’t a Christian, and when he left there wasn’t a pagan. It was John Payton, the great Englishman.

My brethren, there have been evangelists in days gone by who have gone into cities, and when they went in, there was hardly a crowd in any church. And when they left there wasn’t a man in any saloon. When the gambling dens closed up, and their chagrined and frustrated leaders left town. And the gospel of Christ came and overflowed and purified like Ezekiel’s river, even the little towns. But that day seems to be over now. Meetings come and sweep over and get the headlines and leave the town right where it found them before. There isn’t one less man in a theater, not one less woman in the saloon, not one less young man in a gambling den, not one fewer person at the racetrack, not one fewer divorce, not one change for the best, or the better. But they’ve had a huge time. My brethren, the glory is not in the land and oh, that God might bring it back to us again, again.

When our habits, when habits and moral standards and the things that we’re amused by are elevated habits when habits and moral standards, and the things that we’re amused by are elevated and changed and some say, there goes Tozer. He’s against amusements and entertainment. I am not. I think that there are some things you can’t always be under strain. The old philosopher said that if you don’t unstring your bow, it’ll soon weaken. They used to pull that bow and bend it. And then of course, tie it. And if they kept it like that all the time, it would slowly change its structure so that it had no more zing in it. But when they weren’t using their bow, they took the cord off of it and let it go straight. So said the philosophers of old. The bow that is always bent will soon lose its power. And we human beings have to have some diversions. We’ve got to have them. You can’t always be thinking on holy thoughts and you can’t always be straining after highest things and you can’t always be carrying upon your heart the thoughts of the glory leaving the land and the woe entering. You can’t always be deadly serious. If you are, you’ll die. There has to be diversion.

One fella said sarcastically about me, he said, Tozer believes in amusements. He’s a marvelous checker player. He meant that to be sarcastic, and I think I’ve played one game in the last year. But my brethren, diversion is one thing. But the whole country has gone wild for diversion. Instead of having 95% serious talks of God and life and death and heaven and hell and our work and our serious obligations and 5% diversion, we’ve changed it until it’s 95% diversion and five stingy percent to think about serious things. I believe that if God revives His people as we’d like to see it, that we’ll have it changed. We’ll have a changed percentage, as they say percentage-wise, an expression I thoroughly detest, but at least know you know what I mean? I believe it’ll change us percentage-wise.

Well, you say, now Brother Tozer, here you go again. What do you want us to be? What do you want us to be? What kind of people do you think we should be? And if this church should be revived again, if there should come a rejuvenation, a resurgence of spiritual life, an upper rushing of spiritual power, what would we be like? What would we be like? Well, I want to describe it. I want to describe this church, if we could have what I’m talking about and praying about and hoping for. I would I would want such an act and work of God among us as would make us a clean people, a people that are pure and holy.

Now, is anybody here going to get up and object to that? Is there anybody here that is ready to say, I can’t go along with the pastor that our people ought to be a holy people, a truer people, so good that nobody can make an accusation stick. Anybody here that will get up and say, Mr. Tozer, I don’t believe in that? That’s fanaticism. That’s extremism. Surely, you don’t expect us to be a people so morally clean and pure and holy and so good that nobody can charge us honestly and make an accusation stick, that we can get up and say about our present and future lives as Jesus did? Which one of you charges me with sin, our past? God knows. We like to talk about that only with hushed voices, because the blood of Christ had to cleanse us from that.

But our present and our future, anybody going to get up and say, I object, sir, Mr. Chairman, I stand to object to this motion, that the people of this church ought to be a clean people, a pure a holy people, capable of good works again. My concept for us is that we’d be a loving, kind, charitable people, forgiving and big-hearted and tight-mouthed about each other’s faults, mine and yours. Anybody going to get up and say, Mr. Chairman, I beg permission to make a speech against that. I don’t want to see our people as forgiving, big-hearted, kind, charitable people ready to overlook people’s faults and tight-mouthed about things they hear. I don’t want a church like that.

Well, there’s no church like that in hell, brother. There is no church like that, I think anywhere but where the blood flows and the Spirit of God has unhindered right of way. That’s my concept of what a church ought to be. Do you think it’s extreme if I say that I want our people to be a glad, joyous people, filled with heavenly joy? Not mere pleasantry, not mere, not mere hand shaking, not mere cordiality. Why, cordiality is something you can learn from books. You can go to any library. These ushers of ours can go to any library and take down a book on how to be an usher. Just how to stand and how to smile and how to comb their hair, if any, and just how to do it.

Why, you can learn that. And they teach that to kids when they’re selling in the stores, and they teach that to girls behind the counters in 10-cent stores. They teach that to Fuller Brush salesman, and radio announcers learn that. Cordiality, congeniality, the magnetic handshake and the flashing smile and the toothy grin; all that my brother can be right along, and go along with a church that has no power and no purity and no presence of God and no worship. The church that is headed not for heaven but for hell, And yet they can be a social crowd, learning to be jovial and friendly. And yet if you want real joviality and real back slapping congeniality, don’t go to any church, go to a lodge, or go to some group, where men meet in smoke-filled rooms and tell off-colored stories. There’s a place to find real congeniality brother. They’ll make you feel that you’re a part of the outfit and you belong.

That isn’t what I’m talking about at all. The man who wrote “How to win friends and influence people died the other day. He left behind him that book, and if that’s what we wanted, why we could afford to put on the campaign and you would pay for it. You’d pay for anything I suggest, I found that out. That’s the reason I wanted to be most prayerful and cautious before I ever commit to anything because you’re so fine and generous. But you’d pay for books so that all might read how we might be jovial, congenial, affable, amiable, and all those long words ending in el. And when you had it, you wouldn’t have anything at all.

But I believe that the people of God are to be a glad people. A joyous people, glad with a heavenly joy. Not mere pleasantries, but glad with a heavenly joy. I think of that man {Paris} Reidhead that preached here for us. Why, maybe most of you, I think very few of you know him personally. You only heard him preach and you enjoyed him a lot; hearing him last Spring. But you ought to know the man in person. You ought to go around with the man. He’s one of the happiest men I ever met my life. He’s joyful to the point of tears; happy and yet he can say a witticism and, and turn a funny remark that will bring you the house down with laughter. And yet he’s no clown, no comedian, no humorist, but a serious-minded man, full of the Holy Ghost, and one of the happiest men I’ve ever met.

The happiness that man has is not the happiness of this world at all. It isn’t the happiness of conviviality nor congeniality. It is the happiness that God brought out of the tomb when He raised His Son from the dead and set Him at His own right hand. It is the joy of the new creation living in a man’s heart who belongs to that new creation, down here in the old creation. That’s what I mean, a happy people, people that you don’t have to grind and roll in order to get them worked up to joy, but whose hearts are alive with the joy of God. Oh, brother, that’s something else altogether.

Are you’re voting against that if we were to take a vote this morning and I were to put the question and say, would we have all those in favor of our people being a glad people, joyous with heavenly joy and radiant with the Holy Ghost? All in favor say aye. Would we get a unanimous vote or would there be some who say that’s fanatism? All right, then I can see this people to be an eager and enthusiastic people. Excuse us for having my conference here. But an eager, enthusiastic people; now that’s what I like. Not a worked-up people, but an eager, enthusiastic people.

Against that, my brother? If you’re against that, I don’t know where to put you. I believe God’s people ought to be enthusiastic. And I believe that if we were as spiritually enthusiastic as we ought to be, that we could send out one, two dollars for every one we’re sending to missions, and we could send out two missionaries for every one we’ve sent out. And we could win two souls forever to one we’re winning. And we could hit the city just twice as hard as we are hitting it.

And then, hungry Bible devouring people. That’s five. Anybody here going to get up and vote against that? Did you read your chapter? You say, all right, very good, sir. But a hungry, Bible-devouring people that delights in the law of the Lord. I might pass on this little word to you and keep it anonymous, so not to embarrass anybody. But I’ve had a lot of conferences over the past weeks with people who come to see me. And I regret to say that almost all of them are persons that are either in very great spiritual trouble, or else are actually mentally and nervously going to pieces, or in danger of it.

But the other day, I had another kind of visitor.  A lady asked whether she might come to see me a few minutes before the prayer meeting, and I said, Sure, run upstairs and we’ll have a word together. So, she came up. And she told me a wonderful, heart-engaging story, the story of her spiritual life, being brought up in a home where everybody was strait-laced and careful; and where she ran with only religious and the best people, and never committed wrongs or did anything at all that she shouldn’t be ashamed of. But that all this time, out in the eastern city, even in the Alliance, and all this time did not know what it was to have the Holy Ghost inside her bosom. It was all external, right and good and scriptural and according to the law of Moses and the prophets and the New Testament. But now she said, and the tears ran down her face. Now, the Holy Ghost has come. There’s new light inside. This Bible has become a new book and she held it in her two hands. This Bible has become a new book to me now. It’s wonderful. Now, that woman is modest and she’d hesitate to get up and say it herself, but I’m giving her testimony for her. Now, I want to ask you, can anybody can hug this Bible and say the Holy Ghost has made this for the first time, a new living book to me. Does anybody object to that? Would anybody rise and say, I don’t believe in that. I object, sir, and I vote against it. I don’t believe there is.

Then, I believe that we could become a generous people. Great grace should be upon us all and that we could give freely, more freely than ever, all of our wealth to the Lord. Anybody object to that? I think not. And then a reproducing people, the people who will win people to God, that can win souls. Anybody object? I think not. Now, that’s what I mean. O God, if glory should return to our land?

Well, I don’t know that glory will ever return to America. I don’t know. There are two sinister forces of work tearing America to pieces, two sinister forces. I don’t say much about them in public. I do not want to get a reputation any more than I have for being a radical or extremist. And these are partly political, so I do not discuss them. But there are two sinister forces that are working to tear America to pieces: brainwashing a whole population. Brainwashing, by midst of books and magazine, by the use of books and magazines and television and radio and all this. Brainwashing and conditioning psychologically a generation for the coming of communism, or Catholicism or the Antichrist.

So, I don’t know whether America can ever raise her head again. She’s bleeding to death. And whether she’ll survive as a Christian nation, another generation, I do not know. But revival can come on three levels. It can come on the community level, which would be our land. It can come on the church level, which would be our church. It can come on the individual personal level, which would be you or me or you and me.

So next Sunday, in the morning, I want to forget America, and I even want to forget this church. And I want to talk as one man to another one. How can you have a personal revival? How can you have a resurgence of Pentecostal life surging up within you and show you how you can have, not next year, not next week, but now. I hope you’ll be here and that you’ll pray for me in the meantime.