Author: pshappard

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“Be Ye All Of One Mind”

PDF DownloadDownload

Be Ye All of One Mind

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 11, 1954

Now though this is the Sunday, which is by the ritualistic churches called Palm Sunday, I see no reason whatever for changing the steady progress of our, to me very enjoyable, trip through 1 Peter. So in 3rd of Peter, 3rd of 1st Peter, verses 8 and 9, these words. Finally, be all of one mind, having compassion one of another. Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous, not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, but contrarywise, blessing, knowing that ye are there unto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.

Now he says here, finally. I never could discover why the Apostles put a finally in, every once in a while, when the preachers have a smiling joke about St. Paul bringing one of his epistles to a close three different times. Finally, brethren, he said three different times, then went on. And Peter says finally brethren and says that we are to be of one mind.

I want to talk a little bit about what it is to be like-minded. And Ellicott, who is the latest, the fine, the great commentator at Zondervan Publishers, has given back to the world again of English people. He says the word means unanimous. So, I want to ask you, or ask and answer, what did Peter mean when he said finally be ye all of one mind? Finally, be ye unanimous.

Well, I’ll tell you what it isn’t to begin with in order that we might discover what it is. Unanimity, spiritual unanimity, is not regulated uniformity. I could never discover, nor do I know to this day, how the churches have fallen into this error of believing that unanimity meant uniformity, that to be like-minded meant the imposition of a similarity from the outside.

Now this has been a great error, and people have tried to secure harmony in religious bodies by imposing uniformity. The very word uniformity, if you take the last syllable or two off, you have uniform. And uniform, while it is a descriptive word describing a certain situation, it’s also a very blunt noun referring to a garment or a series of garments worn by members of certain bodies, or groups, to show that they are members of those bodies or groups. We have the uniform of the United States Army, the uniform of the Navy, the Air Corps, and Marines.

We have various uniforms, that is, garments that are formed in one uniform, and it’s a uniformity imposed from the outside. But everybody that’s ever been in the United States service knows that under the uniformity there is a world of disagreement and grousing and definitely lack of uniformity. So, the putting on of a uniform does not in any sense make a body of persons one. And yet people have tried to achieve it, that uniformity, by putting on a uniform. They’ve tried to achieve it by all adopting the same tone of voice. For they have tried to adopt it or have adopted it by all reading the same books or doing the same things. That is imposed uniformity, and it is a great error because it assumes that uniformity is an external thing and can be achieved by imposition and forgets that the only valid unity is unity of the heart.

If you could conceive a regiment of soldiers, each one dressed differently, they might look odd, but if you could conceive of a regiment of soldiers that by some miracle had been tuned like several instruments all to one pitch pipe and were all alike inwardly, you’d have then perfect uniformity, and you wouldn’t need the uniform on the outside. But I suppose there is no particular harm in all dressing alike if in the first place everybody’s thinking alike and feeling alike on certain things. But the error I say, lies in believing that we can achieve inward unity by imposing external uniformity. Now actually, variety and not uniformity is the hallmark of God. Wherever you see God’s hand, you see not uniformity or always even similarity, but you see variety.

Paul says that a star differs from another star in glory, and if it would clear up some time, as I hope it may, and the ceiling lift, ceiling is a word we use for all the tobacco smoke and grime and smog that lies over the great cities. But if it would all lift some night and we could all see the starry city of God, you would note that there wasn’t one star exactly like another. They differ from each other in glory and God made them. If God had made all the stars in heaven to be the same size and the same distance from the earth so they presented a uniform appearance, it would look when you gazed up like the marquee of a theater and not like that mysterious wonderful heaven of God that you see when the skies are clear.

Everybody knows or can find out in five minutes that no two leaves on any tree are alike. They all differ, they’re somewhat alike, they may even be basically alike, but God allows them a certain, so to speak, freedom of choice. Anybody that gazes at a seascape, or better still, gazes at the ocean, will notice that even when the winds are high and the waves are running, they are no two waves alike. If you look carelessly, you’ll say they look alike and there’s a monotony and uniformity about them as they beat in nervously over the sand. But if you look a little more sharply, you’ll find that no two of them are alike and no one is quite like any other one.

And the artist who makes them all alike has imposed something out of his own mind upon God Almighty’s ocean, for the ocean is never guilty of stewing up 10,000 little billows, all the same size and shape and all the same angle. Each one differs from the other.

And it’s so with the birds. We say we hear a bird; we say that bird is a cardinal and that one I hear singing is a warbler and this one that I hear singing is a robin. But if you listen again and a little more closely, you will find that no two robins sing alike. Everybody that raises canaries knows that there is a basic likeness in certain, say, of the role or type of canary, but they do have different songs.

And it’s so with people, that’s too well known to need any explanation here; and Bible Saints are the same. We make a great deal of the similarities between Bible Saints, when actually the variety were still more marked in the similarities. Who can conceive of two men further apart than Isaiah and Elijah? Why, if they had been sitting in the same church pew or had been somewhere together, they would not even have been recognized as belonging to the same race, let alone the same faith. Their similarities were internal, they belong together inside, but they certainly were different outside. Or take a man like Peter and Moses and stand them up together or even stay within the little circle of Peter’s own little group, the disciples there.

Look at Philip, look at the lovely feminine John, almost feminine in his refinement, and then look at that noble, strong Elijah-like Peter. Altogether unlike each other, and yet their likeness was real because it was an internal likeness. They were alike inside, but they certainly weren’t alike outside.

When God gave his church to the world, he gave a church that was basically to be one, but He also gave a church that was to provide as much of a variety as a flower garden, so that they might present an attractiveness.

I used to a dear Black man of God by the name of Brother Collet. And he used to preach and say, God makes His bouquets, and He has all colored flowers in them. He said, if they’d been all your color, they wouldn’t have had any variety. So, God put me in there in order to give a little variety to it. He was perfectly right. God has his variety throughout all the Church of Christ, not only in looks, but in personality and tastes and gifts and all the rest.

And yet Peter says, be like-minded, be unanimous. What did he mean? He meant that we must all be alike in certain things. Did you notice what we’re to be alike in? Be alike compassionate, be alike loving, be alike pitiful, be alike courteous, and be alike forgiving. He names it. I didn’t put that in there. He said it.

Finally, be ye all one mind. This is the way to have one mind, and in these things have one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous, and be forgiving, not rendering evil for evil.

So, there you have the uniformity of the man of God, the unanimity the man of God was looking for. It was an unanimity of compassion. All of God’s people must be alike in that. Unanimity of love, they must all be loving. Uniformity of pity, they must unanimously be filled with a pitifulness, that is a tender heart, and courtesy, and forgiveness.

Now let’s look at them then. Compassionate, and as you know, compassionate means a feeling with one another, that is a sympathetic understanding. Wherever one life touches another, because this is what unity means, it means a likeness at points of contact. We must agree wherever we touch, wherever hearts touch, wherever minds touch, there must be there an agreement, a loving agreement. And that was true of all the Bible characters.

They were alike in that they touched God, and where they touched, they were alike, but in all other things they were unlike. And it’s to be in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, that wherever we touch each other, there’s to be unity, but in all other things there can be diversity, and difference, and variety, and the variety itself is an artistic scheme that God has introduced to bring beauty into the body of Christ.

But dissimilarity that goes through to the heart, and differences that go through to the mind, and variations that touch the throbbing heart, is like throwing a piano out of tune.

Not all the strings are alike, but all the strings are alike in this, that they bow to a certain pitch. And so, the people of God are alike in that they bow to and recognize the one holy divine pitch to which they’re to be set and keyed and then after that they can be just as unlike and as free to be themselves, and be individualistic, and have complete freedom.

I suppose there never was a body of Christians that succeeded in being freer than the Quakers, and yet they did the best they could to kill it. They imposed a uniform, and they also imposed a certain address, a certain use of language. But in spite of that they had so much of that inner flame that they succeeded in presenting to the world a wonderful flower garden variety.

So, we must be alike compassionate, and that is sympathetic understanding wherever we touch, and agreement that we can disagree where we don’t touch, and where it’s nobody’s business. And we’re to have a feeling for one another, that’s compassion.

And then it says loving, that we are to love the brethren, and love is, oneness where hearts touch. And there must be, there is a unity, feeling the two have become one where there is love.

Now one man, I think if I recall, it was an old bishop whose name for the moment slips me, pointed out on this verse that unanimity was to be achieved not by freezing people together, but by loving them together. He said that you can get oneness out of variety by freezing it. You can do that, you know.

You all know how if a thing freezes hard enough and solid enough, it’s a unity. But it’s a frozen unity. And there are churches where nobody ever disagrees with anybody else, because they’ve started out by agreeing that nothing really matters anyhow.

There’s a church down on the south side, they’ve put out some literature, I suppose they all do, but I have gotten a hold of this, and they say that the basic tenet of their church is that there is no basic tenet, that you can believe anything that’s decent and still be a member of their church. Well, it’d be pretty hard to agree when you had started out by agreeing that you couldn’t disagree, because nobody believed anything anyhow. Now that’s what you call freezing together, you see.

You can freeze four fellows together, or you can bring them together by love, and one is divine and the other is the devil’s way of making people one. I don’t want to be on the side of any disruptive element, certainly, and all this emphasis on unity, it’s a strange and ironic joke that must have had its origin in the seventh hell down, that the generation that makes the most of unity is also the generation that has the greatest numbers of hates and suspicions and the biggest bombs and the largest armies. They can’t kid me.

I can smell them from a distance, however mellifluous they sound on the radio, brother. They still don’t fool me, because I know that there is no unity in the earth. There is division and hatred and hostility and borderline war. Yet they come and say, all men are brethren, there’s a brotherhood of man and a fatherhood of God, and we must all forget our differences and only feel to see if the lump is still on their hip there, that lump that means a gun.

Well, we Christians don’t pay any attention to the latest fad, which happens to be uniformity and everybody being like everybody else. We Christians know that there’s only one way ever to achieve uniformity, and that is by loving, by compassion, by the work of God in the breast, in the soul of man, and then there can be unity even where there is a blessed and free diversity. Now, we love each other, and I say love is unanimity where hearts touch.

And then we are to be pitiful, and that word means tender-hearted according to the Greek. Now, I might say that religion will either make us very tender or very hard. There isn’t anything that’ll tender us like religion.

I don’t like to talk about individual men, but it happens that one of my favorite people is Tom Hare, and Tom is a very tender man. I think he’s so tender he’s imposed on a lot by neurotic people, but nevertheless he’s a tender man. But being Irish, he wouldn’t have been a tender man, maybe, if God hadn’t tendered him. He has enough spirituality to make him tender. But the Pharisees had enough religion to make them hard. And religion will do one thing or the other. It will either make you very tender, or very hard. And it’s entirely possible to be very severe, to be indeed cruel, and do it all in the name of religion.

My rule is, whose side am I on, principle or people? Is it principle or people? Principle has been a hard, rough cross upon which human beings have been nailed through the centuries.

Principle, we say, and nail a Man up, and His blood and His tears and His sweat never affects us at all, because we pride ourselves. He’s dying for a principle. Any man who’ll die for a principle ought to have his long ear shaved. It’s not principles that hold the moral world together. It’s the presence of a holy God, and love for God and mankind.

Moral laws exist in the world. Nobody preaches that anymore with greater emphasis than I do. But to extract a principle from the holy loving heart of God and then nail man on it, and say, I’ll die for that, I won’t. I trust I would die for love. I trust I would die for those I love. I trust I would die for the Church of Christ. If I didn’t, I’d be ashamed. But I trust that I would give my everything to the love of God and the love of mankind. That’s one thing, but it’s quite another thing to extract a stiff iron principle and then nail a man on it.

The Bible says, be pitiful, be tenderhearted. And you know, Christ never talked about principles. He always talked about people. When He made His great little stories to illustrate, they’re called parables, never talked about principle. He always talked about people. There’s always some person there, somebody that was in trouble, or somebody that was astray, or somebody that was lost, or somebody that was sent out to bring in folks, always there were people there.

Jesus Christ didn’t come down from his heaven above riding on the steel beam of the divine principle, hard and stiff and cold, walk from the womb of the Virgin to the cross of Golgotha, upright as a ramrod, stiff as a beam, and die for the moral government of God. He did die for the moral government of God, but, oh brethren, He achieved His ends not by hardness and harshness, but by love, and by caring for people. It was the people he cared for. Back of it all was the divine principle, certainly. Back of it all was the moral righteousness of God.

The holiness of the deity must be sustained if the world falls. But our Lord walked in and out of that with all the sweet smoothness, the lubricated tenderness that never irritated nor scratched. Love lubricated His spirit, and He walked among men loving men, and loving people, and loving children, and loving women, and loving the low as well as the high.

We had a great President once. We’ve had numbers of great Presidents, certainly, and we never know for a generation or two whether they’ve been great or not. We all must admit that. But we had a great president once who was a man first and a president second. They called him Honest Abe. He had a big sense of humor and a heart that could cry easily over other people’s sorrows. But he had some generals who stood on ceremony and lived by principle.

And so, these poor boys taken out of the hills and away from the farms and out of the factories, conscripted and jammed without much training up to the front to fight. Being young fellas and still boys, some of them deserted. When the terror and the screaming and the dying and the blood and the sound of the gunfire got too strong, some of the boys couldn’t take it. So, they turned and fled. They caught those boys and sentenced them to die one after the other.

And all the time the war was going on between the North and the South, Abraham Lincoln was busy doing everything he could do to get those boys off. On one occasion, they came in and found him sitting sad faced, turning over papers off a file, writing at the bottom of them one after the other.

Somebody said, what are you doing, Mr. President? Oh, he said, tomorrow’s butcher day in the army, and they’re going to shoot my boys. And he said, I’m going over these papers once more to see if I can’t get some of them off. We love Abraham Lincoln for that. He was a man who loved people.

On one occasion, he had the sly, humorous effrontery to advance an argument to save a boy’s hide that I suppose nobody ever advanced before nor since. And some of those stiff, hard-hearted old boys that had a principal rammed up their back tied to it so they couldn’t bend, they thought he was a fool, a clown, for even advancing it. But he advanced this one time. He said, I don’t want this boy shot. They said, but he ran away under fire. Well, he said he couldn’t help it. He said he didn’t want to do it, but his legs ran away with him. And he actually tried to push that through as an argument. The fellow’s legs took him away.

Well, that was Lincoln, a combination of tenderheartedness and humor, and above all things, a great love for people. Now, I bring him in not because he was a great Christian. I doubt whether he was a great Christian. But he was a great man. And he had much that we Christians could borrow. And one of them was he was a tenderhearted, pitiful man who put people ahead of principle.

Then he says, be courteous. Now, that doesn’t mean etiquette. I know that Peter had never read a book on etiquette. I got a book on etiquette one time and started to read it. And I got so discouraged about halfway through that I put the book away. I don’t even know where it is now. I don’t know about etiquette. It’s just too much for me. Have Emily Post walking at the head of the etiquettical parade. I can’t even keep in step.

But there is what the world has called nature’s gentlemen. They are not bred to the palace, but they have in them a humble-mindedness and a desire to put the other person first. And they are courteous in the right sense of the term. I have been to the hills of West Virginia and of Georgia and of other states in the Union. I have gone up among the plain people, the old lady who had one dress and the half-grown daughter who had maybe one, and who went barefooted much of the time so she wouldn’t wear out her precious shoes.

And as she went barefooted, her feet got big, and when she put on her precious shoes, they didn’t fit, so she gave them to her smaller sister, and she ran it through the same process. That’s the way they had to live. I’ve slept in their homes, slept in their homes where several people had to sleep in the same room, and where one little room was living room, kitchen, everything.

And I am prepared to say to you, ladies and gentlemen, that I have never elsewhere found such perfect courtesy. They were courteous almost without a single exception, those hill people, those mountain people, for they were actuated, motivated by one thing, this man’s our guest, and we’ve got to please him no matter what it does to us. That’s courtesy.

That’s the kind Peter had. If Peter had been put down at a Washington function, he’d have disgraced the whole place because he wouldn’t have known what knife to use or what fork or what spoon.

Peter Cartwright, the great Methodist preacher, was a man of great courtesy with no etiquette. He was eating with the governor one time, and the governor’s wife said, Reverend, would you like a cup of coffee? He said that stuff scalds my stomach, I can’t eat it, or can’t drink it, no. And the friends around him were horrified. But the governor’s wife grinned, she knew it was Peter Cartwright. And they were having chicken, and the hungry little dog sat with his head off on one side and his ears cocked by the governor’s chair.

Peter cleaned each bone carefully and clipped the bone to the dog in the governor’s palace dining room. And everyone was blushing with chagrin except the governor and the other folks that were big enough to know they had a man on their hands who was in all essential things a courteous man, for he put everybody else ahead of himself. But what was a little thing like throwing a bone to a dog? Dogs and bones go together. Peter had never read the book. Emily hadn’t written yet when Peter lived. Be courteous.

So courtesy, then, is an unselfish regard for other people, even if it costs you something. And brethren, if we’ll ask God for that kind of courtesy, humble-mindedness really is what the word is, if we’ll ask God for that kind of humble-mindedness, you never need to worry too much about Emily.

Then forgiving, he says here, not rendering evil for evil, but blessing, in order that you might obtain a blessing. There’s the forgiving spirit. So now you see where our uniformity comes in, our oneness. It comes in in being all alike compassion, all alike loving, all alike pitiful, all alike courteous, and all alike forgiving. And after that, you can be just as different as the leaves on the tree or the stars in the sky. And it’s all right with God. He made you to be unlike other people.

Now, we come to the communion service, and we don’t shift mood, for it’s all of one here. Forgiving each other, not rendering evil for evil, but blessing, that you might bring a blessing. A like-minded people, unlike in a hundred ways, tastes that vary as wide as the whole scale of human thought, but all alike in being compassionate, and all alike in loving, and all alike in pity, and all alike in courtesy, and all alike in forgiveness. That’s being unanimous, rather. Not unanimous in prophetic interpretations, we vary on that, and I wouldn’t respect you if you agreed with me on everything. Not on modes of baptism, for there are differences of opinion amongst us. Not on interpretations always of all verses of scripture, but unanimous in forgiving, in pity, in loving, in compassion.

But if there is one negative vote, if there is in the fellowship one negative vote, one person who, when you say, who’s in favor, compassion, love, pity, courtesy, forgiveness, and there is one null, unuttered but felt in the heart, one negative soul, remember that the body is harmed and the spirit is grieved and the individual himself is injured beyond all description. I trust we may give to God the unanimous consent to be all alike in all these things.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“The Enabling Power Of The Holy Spirit In Our Lives”

PDF DownloadDownload

The Enabling Power of the Holy Spirit in our Lives

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 1, 1956

Summary

A.W. Tozer’s sermon, “The Enabling Power of the Holy Spirit in Our Lives,” emphasizes the essential role of the Holy Spirit in empowering believers and the church to live effective, spiritually vibrant lives. Mr. Tozer outlines three distinct periods in the lives of Jesus’s disciples: before the cross, after the resurrection but before Pentecost, and after Pentecost. He parallels these periods with the current state of the church, arguing that many are stuck in a phase of instruction without power, characterized by aimless activity, intermittent fellowship with Christ, and a lack of spiritual vitality. He urges believers to seek personal and collective repentance, purity, and the fullness of the Spirit to move beyond mere religious activity and into a life of true spiritual power and purpose.

Message

After these things, Jesus showed himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. And on this wise showed he himself. There were together Simon Peter, Thomas called Didymus, Nathanael of Cana and Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples.

And Simon Peter saith unto them, I go fishing. They say unto him, well, we’ll go with you. So they went forth and entered into a ship immediately, and that night they caught nothing.

But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, Children, have you any meat? And they answered him, no, no, we haven’t. So, He said, cast your net over on the other side, and they did, and they got fish.

Now, I want to talk tonight about these opening verses here, and with this we’ll bring the talks on John to an end. The seventeenth chapter of John was considered some two years ago, quite at length in a series of sermons, so naturally we’ll not repeat that. And the story found in John 18, 19, 20, and 21 have occupied our thoughts over the last weeks, the arrest of Jesus and the death and the resurrection, so that there scarcely it would not be proper to continue through these chapters, having been dealt with quite extensively. So, with this tonight, we will leave this blessed book of John, often, often to come back to it, but not to preach any longer in this series.

Now, this has to do tonight with the forty days in Tyrium, which is covered in Acts 1:1-8. The former treatise, said Luke, the former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken up after He had, through the Holy Ghost, given commandments unto the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom also He showed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and being assembled together with them, commanded them they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith He, ye have heard of Me.

For John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.

That is Luke’s story that parallels John’s story here in the twenty-first chapter of his book, the closing chapter of his book. Now, this forty-day interim period after Jesus had been raised from the dead, but before He had sent the Holy Ghost, it was a time of instruction without power.

Now, there was power in the Instructor, but there was not power in the one instructed. And it is an axiom, I think, of theology that it takes the same degree of power to understand truth as it does to preach truth. So that Jesus was instructing the minds of His disciples, but they had not the power to grasp it fully. And it was a time of intermittent fellowship with Jesus our Lord. He had risen from the grave, but they were with Him only part of the time. At one place, Thomas was not present at all. And at another time, there would only be one. At another time, there would be two or three. In another case, five hundred. And James at one time saw Him, and Peter saw Him. And the fellowship with Jesus was real, but it was intermittent. And it was a period of considerable uncertainty for these disciples.

They were uncertain about exactly what they should do. They reached a period that was something of a vacuum. It was quite empty, because it was between the death and resurrection of Jesus and the coming down of the Holy Spirit. And it was a time of fruitless activity. You will notice in 21:2 that they were together aimlessly. It says here almost nonchalantly, aimlessly.

They were together, Simon Peter and Thomas called Didymus, Nathaniel of Canaan in Galilee and the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Now, they were not together by the Lord’s appointment. They were just together. They were there rather aimlessly. And being aimlessly together, naturally they had to do something, so the strongest one of them suggested they do something. He said, I’m going fishing.

He had forgotten that he had left his fishing boat to follow his Lord three years before. But now his Lord was coming and going. He was there, and then He was gone. He was present, and then He was absent. He was visible, and then He disappeared. And Peter, being an active, strong, aggressive type of man, couldn’t take this inactivity and particularly this uncertainty.

So, he said, I’m going fishing. And naturally what he suggested doing was patterned after the old life. And the strongest one, having suggested something for them to do, the ones not so strong followed their leader. So, they went along with him. And of course, it was a waste of effort and time. Verse 3, they caught nothing. And when He asked them if they had anything, they said no.

Now, I want to talk to you a little about three periods in the lives of these disciples, and three corresponding periods in churches and in individuals. There was the period before the cross and the resurrection, after they had become disciples, but before Jesus had died. That was a period of our Lord’s flesh. They went about with Him. They heard Him teach, and He was preparing them, mentally at least, for His passion, as they call it, His death and resurrection, and for the coming of the Spirit. But He was the Lord after the flesh to them. That period, after they had become disciples, but before Christ had died and risen again, we call the first period.

Then there was a second period after the cross and the resurrection, but before Pentecost. That’s the period we’re dealing with tonight, Acts 1:1-8, and John 21:1-8, or for that matter, to the end of the chapter. Then there was a third period after Pentecost, when there came to them a power and a radiance and an enthusiasm and a success that they had never known before. Now those three periods, any church or individual may be in any one of these three periods.

The first one, knowing Christ after the flesh as those disciples did. They never quite understood Jesus. They knew Him after the flesh, but they never quite understood Him. He was telling them things always that they couldn’t grasp, and He said they couldn’t grasp it. He said these things that I’m telling you, you don’t understand now, but you’ll understand when the Holy Spirit has come. We can have this same kind of situation today as individuals and as churches. Know Christ after the flesh. Know about the rest, historically, of course. But put the emphasis on the manger and on good deeds and on moral teaching, but not experiencing the cross, not experiencing the resurrection or the triumph of our Savior.

Now there are churches that are in that condition. They know Christ after the flesh. I wish I never had to rebuke or protest. I wish that always that I could avoid that, but how can you avoid it? How can you possibly avoid it, when it’s perfectly obvious that churches know Christ after the flesh, but never seem to be able to grasp the Christ, the risen Christ, the Christ who had risen and been glorified and who had sent the Holy Ghost down, never grasp that Savior at all, never experience his cross, talk about it, put it on top of the steeple, wear it around the neck, but never experience that cross in their lives at all, and never experience the power of the resurrection, then smell the Easter lily, and go through all that we do to celebrate the resurrection, but still the only Christ we know is the Christ after the flesh.

Now that can be true of a church, I say. It can also be true of an individual. Then there’s that second period, which the disciples went through back there, and which we may go through now as churches or as individuals, to know Christ and know the cross and the resurrection, and believe in the finished atonement, and know the peace of sins forgiven, and believe in the bodily resurrection, and believe His promise to return, but never experience Pentecost.

Then there’s the third period that any church can go through, or any individual can go through, when they pass on through to the other period, when the promise of the Father is fulfilled in the hearts of individuals, and they are filled with the Spirit of God. A congregation of Christian believers can also know this.

Now I want to ask the question, where are we? Which period do we find ourselves in as individuals and as a church? I would first eliminate one period and say that the situation that the average fundamentalist church finds itself in does not accord with what we call that period between Christ’s death and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Ghost.

It accords not with that first period before Christ died, but with that second period after the resurrection. Let me explain it like this now. I said that that period, that interim period, before the Holy Spirit came, but after our Lord had risen from the dead, was a time of instruction without a power.

And we have that almost everywhere these days, theological instruction without power. In the case of Jesus, there was power in the Instructor, but no power in the listener. But in the case of many churches today, and I would say the majority of them, there’s neither power in the instructor nor in the hearer, but there is an effort to rationalize the gospel of Christ and to teach it.

I hear it sometimes on the radio, and I listen here and there where I go, instructing, but no power in the instruction. Nobody’s angry, nobody’s glad, nobody’s mad, nobody’s helped, nobody’s transformed, but it’s simply instruction without power and of intermittent fellowship with Christ.

Now I want to ask you if that does not describe the present situation–intermittent fellowship with Christ. The average Christian in our time does not have an unbroken fellowship with the Savior, but an intermittent fellowship. They’re with Him today and tomorrow they’re not, and tonight it’s very sweet and wonderful, tomorrow morning it’s gone, and two days later there is some sort of an experience, and then three days later that has evaporated. So, the experience, the fellowship, is intermittent. And then in the church of Christ today there’s considerable personal uncertainty.

I find this astonishing thing, that there are hundreds of people, hundreds, I suppose it runs into the hundreds of thousands if the truth were known, but my experience doesn’t cover that many, of persons who have had theological training but don’t know what to do. They don’t know what to do with themselves. They have gone to this or that Bible school, they hold a diploma from this or that theological institution, but they don’t know what to do with themselves. They’re in a state of personal uncertainty. They’re where the disciples were after Christ had risen from the dead, but before the Holy Ghost had come at Pentecost, and therefore they are running with other Christians, and much of their meeting together is aimless.

Now there were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of His disciples. There was a little meeting going on. I suppose strong Peter called that meeting together, and there they were anyway. I hear the announcements, let’s come and have a good time in the Lord.

We’re all going to meet at such and such a time, and such and such a place, and a good deal of our religious activity today consists of gathering all the sheep in one place, and then later, next week or next month, gathering all the sheep somewhere else. But never anybody quite knowing what it’s all about, personal uncertainty and fruitless activity.

Coming together aimlessly is the weakness of a lot of us Protestant Christians. We don’t know why we come together. We’re here, and we like it in a way, but just what’s it all about? And so the strongest one suggested they do something, but he hadn’t any orders from the Lord about what to do, so he scratched his fisherman’s head and said, now let me see.

The Lord’s here today and gone tomorrow. He appears now, and then He’s gone, and we’re not certain of anything, and we’re in this vacuum. We ought to be active, Christians ought to be active. We’re followers of the Lord. Let’s do something. But what was there to do? Well, naturally, he drew upon his experience of the time before he knew the Lord and said, let’s go fishing. And these weaker ones gathered around him.

Brethren, I’m describing fundamentalism today. I’m describing evangelicalism. It is where we’re unsure of ourselves. We have no afflatus. No voice has spoken. Nobody’s hearing anything. And so, the strong-willed ones are saying, let’s do so-and-so.

So, we gather over here, and we do that. And then a strong-willed one over here will say, well, I think we ought to do this. But the whole thing is uncertain. There’s no prophet to say this is the way we should go. This is what we should be doing. This is why we come together. This is the meaning of it all.

But we subscribe to magazines. We read books, and we go about here and there to conventions and Bible conferences. And usually some strong-willed fellow has said, let’s start this, or let’s do that. What do you say that we begin this?

And so, fundamentalism is a world of wheels within wheels within wheels within wheels. Ezekiel saw a wheel in the middle of a wheel. But Protestantism has not only one wheel in the middle of a big wheel, but has wheels within wheels within wheels, world without end.

But there seems to be a lack of specific direction in the thing. We turn out students from our schools, give them their diploma. They don’t know. Most of them don’t know what they went there for. A lot of them go to escape. Some parents send them there because they want to have them somewhere where they’re safe. And some of them go because their friends have gone. And some go because it’s romantic to do it. And some go to get out of the army. And some go because they’re lazy.

I heard Dr. Mosley say one time to a group of the students, if we learn, if we learn of one man who has come to this school to get out of the army, we’ll throw him out on his ear. But nevertheless, that does happen, and it’s because of the period we’re in spiritually.

We’re in a period after Christ has risen from the dead, but before the Holy Ghost has come. And we know He’s alive. We know He’s risen. We talk about Him on His throne. We expound Romans and Colossians and Ephesians. We know the truth all right. Historically, we know He’s at the right hand of God the Father Almighty and we repeat the creed and believe it, but our fellowship is uncertain. And today we see Him and tomorrow He’s gone. And we are not sure what we’re to do.

And so, we’re looking around, waiting for some strong-voiced fisherman who doesn’t know either, but who has a strong personality to say, I think we ought to do this. So, we form an organization and get a letterhead and a magazine and an office and a secretary, and we do this. I go fishing, said Peter, I go fishing.

The Lord had delivered Peter from the fisherman’s boat three years before, but there wasn’t anything to do. So, Peter normally did what there was to do. He did what he knew how to do. He went back to fishing. When the Lord God Almighty had called him to catch men, but there was a pocket there. They had reached a vacuum, and nothing was happening, and that kills some people. If they’re not busy at something, they’re not spiritual.

Brother Maxey told me about a dear woman down here somewhere. He preached about their tarrying and waiting and being filled with the Spirit. And a woman said afterward, Mr. Maxey, I have never heard this before. She said, I thought that the more active you are, the more spiritual you are. She said, honestly, that was my belief, that the more active you are, the more spiritual you are. She was perfectly willing to accept a change of viewpoint, but she was honest enough to say, that’s what I believed up to now.

Well, that seems to be the general belief, that inactivity, it’s unspeakable, it’s awful, it’s like those ten seconds with nothing going on the radio that Peter Joshua told us about, that awful dead ten seconds with nobody yelling and nobody running and nobody selling. And Peter, being a fisherman, couldn’t stand that. Well, he said, I go fishing.

Now, there wasn’t any sin in that. It was simply uninspired, undirected, and it turned out to be fruitless activity. Now, does that describe us or not, brethren? Does that describe us or not? Do we know why we’re saved? Do we know why we’re here? Do we know what it’s all about? Why is it necessary to hold all these discussions? Why is it necessary to put five ignorant people around a table and each pump the other one?

Why is it necessary for ten people to gather around a board, none of which knows anything about the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and then pool their ignorance in order to find out what to do? And of course, naturally, when they pool their ignorance, not having any divine gleam, not any divine call or upward tug or direction of the Spirit, they will pattern what they do religiously after what they have done out in the secular world.

And so we have a multitude of wheels within wheels, all patterned after the secular world, because Christ has risen, but the Holy Ghost has not come, because they know He’s alive, but they’re not able to keep contact with Him, and they’re afraid not to be active.

So, we have the religious jitters, and this is where we seem to be today, I’m afraid. We certainly don’t fit into that first period, when they knew Christ after the flesh and knew Him no other way. Certainly, we know Him in some other way. Surely, we don’t make the mistake in this church of putting the emphasis upon the manger. Surely, we don’t make the mistake in this church of laying the emphasis upon the moral teachings of Jesus or the good deeds of Jesus or the example of Jesus. Certainly, our Jesus is more than a human being, more than a man in the flesh. We’re not there. And surely, we are over into the Book of Acts, where they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and got up and went out to speak the word of God with power.

But we’re in an interim, and there’s a pocket in there, and there’s where most of the people are today. And brethren, much of the evangelism today does not lead people out of that uncertainty in a period of activity without leadership. It only creates more activity but doesn’t lead people into the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

And that’s why I can’t get all steamed up about making more converts to an effete Christianity. That’s why I can’t get all steamed up about going all around the world making converts to something that is only halfway in, and not all the way in. Jaffray and Glover and others went to South China, established their work in Wuzhou. They had this strange experience. They made converts, but they couldn’t get anybody to go on beyond that first initial conversion. And they multiplied their converts. Many people believed in Christ and accepted the Lord, as we say. And they became converts. They were baptized, and they joined the little churches there in China.

But Dr. Jaffray was not satisfied. He said, this won’t do. This won’t do. There’s something wrong here. Our Christians are carnal. They’re fleshly. They live after the flesh. Their fellowship with Christ is intermittent and spotty. They live aimlessly. They need something more from God.

And so those men of God got on their knees and prayed. And in those little churches, one church after the other, there came a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost upon those Chinese Christians, and took them from this period, this interim period, this halfway-in period, took them on into the mighty fullness of the Spirit of God.

And I’m perfectly prepared to say, and base my conclusions upon the Scriptures, and believe that there is historic proof of it, that there would not be one shred nor trace of Christianity left in China today if they had not done that thing. There would not be one trace of Christianity left in China if Dr. Sung and the rest of them had not preached the word of God and had gone on to teach them that they ought to be filled with the mighty Spirit of God. But here we are.

What about you? What about your personal relation to the Lord? Now, I don’t think you’d be in this church if you only believed in Christ after the flesh. The newspapers only know Christ after the flesh. They publish the story of Jesus on the front page around Easter or Christmas, and they’re very sympathetic, and we’re glad they are, and it does help a little, but it’s Jesus after the flesh.

And Paul scornfully said, once I knew Christ after the flesh, but hence I know Him no more. Jesus that walked in Galilee is not the Christ that we have to do with now. That Jesus died on a cross. That Christ died and rose, and He’s the same Jesus, of course, but He’s a Jesus now in an altogether different position. That in Him which could die, died, And God raised Him from the dead, and He sits now at the right hand of the Father. And from there He sends down the blessed Holy Ghost.

I’m glad there are some people listening—not too many in this church, I suppose, but there are those listening—and we’re disturbed, greatly disturbed.

Somebody handed me this morning a magazine, a tear sheet from a magazine. I think the magazine’s a liberal magazine. But in it there was an article. What’s the matter with religion in our time? What’s the matter with this thing? And this young man, whose name happened to be Stanley Lowell—two of my boys’ names—Stanley Lowell, pastor of the Methodist Church. And this fellow with trenching analysis, says the trouble with religion now, the trouble with all this wave of religion that we’ve got is that there is no protest, that God sent the churches to stand as a fiery protest against wickedness and iniquity. But the churches have lost their power to protest. There’s no protest anymore.

But the great leaders are busy trying to be as smooth and suave as they can and stand against nobody and try to get along with everybody. And have friends among the big and the great and the very important persons.

This Methodist preacher, God bless the memory of John and Charles and Fletcher and Taylor and the rest of them. He’s got enough fire left in him, this young preacher, to cry and say, when is our prophet coming and from whence is he coming to teach the church not to get along with the world but to contest with the world and protest against the world; and to stand as followers of Jesus Christ the Lord and take the consequences.

The Methodist church would wake up and listen to this young man. They won’t. But if they’d listen to this young man, brothers and sisters, how wonderful it would be to go out not to try to find a common ground of agreement, not to prove that we’re just like the world, only a little bit better because we believe in Jesus, but to go boldly out declaring what we’ve seen and heard and take the consequences. And if they didn’t like it, let them persecute us.

The best thing that could happen to the church would be fiery persecution. If there had been a penalty attached to going to church, the churches in Chicago would not have been crowded to the doors this Easter morning with people with new hats. If there had been a penalty attached to going to church, they’d have stayed away in vast numbers.

I am not praying for persecution, but I’m not going for one second to pray that there shall not be persecution. For whenever the church dares to take the cross of Jesus, always remember this, brethren, that the cross is an instrument of death and negation. The cross is a denunciatory, accusative thing. And when we follow Christ and take up His cross, we can’t possibly go along with the rest. They can’t possibly ride along on the popularity of presidents and kings and the great of the world.

Not one of the world’s great would walk down the street with Jesus while he lived. And as soon as Paul was converted to Jesus, not one of the world’s great would dare to line up with him. And when Luther nailed his theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, scarcely one of the great would dare to line up with him at first. They did later, but scarcely at first.

But because we’re afraid to protest, we’re afraid to be different, we’re busy trying to—I go fishing, we say. We don’t know what to do because the Holy Ghost has not come to our hearts, and all we have is the text of the Scripture and tradition. And so, there’s fruitless activity, personal uncertainty, intermittent fellowship, a gathering together without knowing why. And the strong leader says, well, let’s do it this way. And then the weak ones all say, all right, let’s do it that way.

And so, they go fishing. Children, have you any meat? No, we have numbers and names and offices and literature and printing presses and mimeograph machines and talk, but we don’t have any meat. Well, he said, they haven’t had any leadership, that’s why. You’re gathering together aimlessly. And this is the condition that we’re in today. I tell you this now, this is the situation that we’re in, and we’re waiting.

What is the further step? Well, let me read it to you. He shall receive power after the Holy Ghost has come upon you. You shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the outermost part of the earth. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as a fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. And they were dwelling at Jerusalem, Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven.

And from there a fiery church went forth, filled with fire. She was like a flamethrower. She burst forth in a blaze of light. Nothing could stand before her. She stood in sharp contrast to the world in which she was. She was as separated from the world as Noah’s Ark was separated from the floodwaters upon which it rose.

She had two messages. She had a message of denunciation and protest, or protest, and she had a message of salvation and forgiveness through the blood of the Lamb. And for the first, they put her in jail. And for the second, after a while, with tears and sorrow, they turned in numbers and were converted to Jesus, Christ the Lord.

What is the greatest need in this church? That we should have a $45,000 missionary offering this year? No, I hope we get that. But that isn’t the greatest need. The greatest need in this church is that we as individuals and as members of a spiritual, social unit become so right individually and so right harmoniously toward each other that God can, without violating his nature, trust us with the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Brethren, that’s what we need.

I talked to Brother Parris Reidhead. I don’t know any man in the modern day that has a more penetrating, prophetic insight than Parris Reidhead. We sat and talked. I told him about the 102 missionaries the Alliance was going to send out this year. And this man himself, a missionary blazing with missionary fire, said, in a way, Brother Tozer, I’m sorry about that. And I said, why, Brother Paris, why are you sorry? We’re going to send out 102 new missionaries. He said, If we succeed in sending out 102 new missionaries and boost our personnel well over 800, it will set back for years any repentance, any rethinking, any reexamination of our position, and we will travel on our numerical success.

He said, that isn’t what we need the most right now. What we need the most right now is a heart-searching repentance and penitence, a revival within the individuals, a getting right and getting straightened out, and opening our hearts to the mighty down coming of the Holy Ghost. And he said, if we succeed in our present state of sending out 102 new missionaries without a corresponding spiritual rise of the tide, he said, I’m afraid that it’s going to do us harm and not good.

That was not said by a man who doesn’t believe in missions. That was said by a missionary who preaches missions in a way that I scarcely ever heard anybody preach missions. But he’s too wise to be taken in by numbers.

And brethren, what we need in this Church is not greater numbers. What we need in this Church is individual house cleanings, the gossiping, the criticizing, the carnality, the flesh, the selfishness, the extravagance, the cruel waste of life and money and time, the hardness toward each other, the flippancy, I’ll go fishing, I’ll go with you–the aimlessness. What we need is to get that all straightened out.

Don’t say, When the Holy Ghost comes, that’ll straighten out. No, no. The Holy Ghost will never come until it is straightened out. It’s a great mistake to believe that the Spirit of God came to make the people one. They had to be one before He came, being of one accord in one place. Brother McAfee, you know from the Greek that that oneness of accord is a musical term. It comes from music. It means a piano in tune.

Last week the piano was out of tune, and everybody said, What raucous sounds. And then a master came here last Thursday and crawled over the painting things and put it back in tune. Did you notice the difference Friday night? Harmony, harmony, the tune, the things in tune. And it says that they were all together in tune and then suddenly they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

Don’t pray, oh, send the Holy Ghost to take the gossip out of us. Send the Holy Ghost to take away the bitterness. Send the Holy Ghost to make us one. Never waste your prayers until we get straightened out, the Holy Ghost can never come in any measure upon us.

The greatest evangelist whose feet ever touched the shores of America was Charles Grandison Finney. And Charles G. Finney said bluntly, don’t try to love each other. Don’t try to love each other. The Bible says love everybody. He said, don’t try to love everybody. You can’t love that which is unlovable. He said, get people right with God so they can be loved, and then we’ll love each other normally and naturally. He said, how can you love carnal men, gossips? How can you love critics and bitter fault finders? How can we love without hypocrisy? This great evangelist said, Let’s get straightened out. Come on, confess your sins. Get so people can love you, and you’ll be loved.

Now, that’s exactly backwards from all of this soft, old-maidish palaver that we hear these days. But that man proved that he was right by the fact that he had hundreds of thousands of converts, and the largest percentage of them stood with any man that’s preached since that time—more than Moody, more than any other man.

So, brethren, what we need is revival. What we need is a personal housekeeping. What we need is to use Easter as a ramp to take off from, something to bump us a bit, maybe, and get us started, and then go to our rooms with our Bible and with God. I have this to say to you, that I have read for more than forty years with great avidity.

There is hardly any field except higher mathematics in which I have not read and into which I am a stranger. But everything that God has ever used in me to help others, he has given me on my knees with my open Bible. God has been pleased to use the book, The Pursuit of God, far beyond the borders of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, selling now at the same rate it sold eight years ago when it came out. It is now translated into Chinese. I’ve seen it, some of it.

In almost every chapter, I got on my knees with God alone, seeking cleansing and power and purity and righteousness in my own spirit. Then with a notebook, taking down notes from that writing. Brethren, that’s what we need, more than we need anything else in the wide world. I hope we get forty-five thousand for missions this year, but if we get it at the cost of repentance and housecleaning and righteousness and the fullness of the Holy Ghost. If we get it only by the techniques of men, pressure methods, we’re better off without it.

I want God to give us spiritual ability to sustain anything He does for us, any increase in Sunday school, any increase in giving, anything. I want Him to give us spiritual power and ability to sustain it, stand up under it. Gifts without grace can be deadly, but for every gift I want grace to sustain that gift. That’s what I want for this church. That’s why I often preach to empty seats, as you know, because I will not fool. One of these times, nobody knows when it’ll be, I may fool you.

I talked to some fellow over the radio, and he said, oh, Brother Tozer said, we don’t want you to overdo, we want to keep you. Some preachers from the northwest side, oh, I said, I’ll probably be pallbearer for some of you fellows that are praying for me so hard. I don’t expect to die right away, but I don’t know, but I may. And you don’t know, but you may. Virus can hit you like that, and you’re gone. Brethren, we can’t afford to fool around.

Where are we in our spiritual lives? We’re not back there with the liberal friends talking about a Jesus after the flesh, or back there with our Catholic friends, talking about a Jesus baby in a manger. But surely, we’re not out with our Moravian friends, filled with power and the Holy Ghost, going forth as the greatest missionary impetus since Paul. Remember it, that what gave the impulse to modern missions was not a lot of fellows getting together and saying, I think we ought to go to the heathen, not telling touching stories about the heathen. Not looking at maps or consulting statistics.

What gave the impetus to modern missions and caused such societies like ours to be born were seventy-five Moravians present in a church at once, when they had confessed to each other and gotten right and gotten straightened out, and everybody was expectant, and suddenly there fell upon them a loving nearness of the Savior, instantaneously bestowed.

And they went out of that church hardly knowing whether they were on earth or had already died and gone to heaven. And under the leadership of that great Zinzendorf, they did more in twenty years than the whole church had done in two hundred. And out of it was born the Methodism, Salvation Army, Christian Missionary Alliance, China Inland Mission, you can name all the missionary activities, date their spiritual lineage back to that mighty hour, when only seventy-five people met God.

And they went out from there a happy people. Zinzendorf said, the happiest people in the world are these Moravians. He said, I don’t know anybody, there so happy that it’s wonderful. And they blazed forth. They didn’t do it after the technique of Peter, let’s go fishing. They didn’t meet together a half a dozen of them, and some fellow looked at a map and said, I think we ought to go over here.

But the mighty Holy Ghost came on them, and they went because they couldn’t stay in any place. They went because they had to go. They went led by the fire and the cloud by day and by night. They went all around the world. And they made converts of John Wesley and Charles Wesley. And out of that was born the great movements that have made America Christian.

Brethren, where are we? Where are you? Think about it, will you? Don’t get mad at me. Don’t say he’s getting gloomier as he gets older. I’m not. But I’m just wanting to be honest and wanting God to do something for us. Would you bow your heads in prayer?

O Lord, our Lord, thou knowest we are thy sheep in the mountain. We are thy little band of soldiers surrounded by the enemy. And we don’t want to waste our lives. We don’t want to waste our money. We don’t want to waste our time.

We don’t want to waste our gifts. Oh, we don’t want to be as Peter and Didymus and the rest of them were there, sympathetic, friendly, believing in Thee, believing that Thou art risen, but not knowing what to do, because the Holy Ghost had not yet come. We don’t want to simply follow some tall fellow who doesn’t know what to do either, but because he’s got a strong personality and good leadership, he said, let’s go do this.

We don’t want to waste our time and money and give up our precious, precious days following a man who’s doing something he hasn’t been sent to do. Lord, we’d rather join some little band of unheard-of strange people somewhere and live right and follow thee and be filled and be right, to ride in on the crest of popular religion. Bless these friends, Lord, who listen tonight. They’re here. They must want something. They wouldn’t have come. God bless them. Jesus, take each one by the hand and lead us knee deep, we pray, knee deep into succulent, juicy pastures. Lead us, we pray thee, to the still waters. Lead us, we pray thee, on to the fulfillment of thy promise, the promise of the Father.

Now, Lord, search us, search us. What we were, what we were yesterday or last year, that isn’t anything, Lord. We’ll start now. We’ll start clean now. We’ll confess to thee now. We’ll ask thee to pardon us now. Lord, thou hast heard today, criticism. Thou hast heard today, whispered things. Thou hast seen today, tight mouths and set jaws as people pass each other. Thou hast heard today and seen and beheld the pride and the carnality. O Lord Jesus, we don’t hide behind anything, and we don’t deny anything. We confess it. As a people, as a church, we would confess. We would ask thee to forgive.

We would ask thee to wash us whiter than the snow. And oh, that cleansing stream our sister sang about. That, that cleansing, that fountain, that overwhelming flood of cleansing power. Let it come to one after another of us.

Save us, we pray, from the suave, smooth get-along-with-everybody spirit. And help us to stand, we pray, with shiny eyes and with full understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Bless thy people, O Lord, in this great city. Bless every good man of God who stands to declare the truth. Bless him up to the light he has. Bless all the churches up to the light they have. And for everyone, we thank Thee. For every poor sheep, we thank Thee. For every struggling, lame little lamb, we thank Thee. For everybody, Lord, that has looked longingly in Thy direction, we thank Thee, O Lord Jesus. But O Christ, thou knowest the endless rat race, the constant wheel in the middle of a wheel, the buzzing, everlasting squirrel cage of empty activity.

Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly dove. Come with all Thy quickening power. Come, shed abroad a Savior’s love, that it may quicken ours.

If we are not lovable, forgive us, help us to become lovable. Help us to become so people can love us without straining. Help us, Lord, so they won’t have to be hypocrites to say they love us. Bring us into a place where meekness and humility and tenderness and kindness and long-suffering shall prevail. Bring us into the thirteenth of First Corinthians, Lord. It may cost us a lot. It’s hard on the flesh. It’s humbling. But there we know the mighty Holy Ghost will come. There we know he’ll fall and keep falling and keep flowing down and in and out.

Gracious Lord, send us out of here tonight. Don’t let anybody crack a joke at the door. Don’t let anybody be so full of levity that they’ll forget anything’s been said. Send us out, we pray thee, to wonder about our responsibility to this very critical week that lies ahead of us. Mighty Lord, Mighty Lord, the end of the ages are upon us.

The world has grown old, and the judgment draws near, and kingdoms rising against kingdom and nation against nation, and evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, and the love of many waxes cold. And thousands say, Lord, Lord, but do not the things that thou sayest. Save this people, we pray thee, from that quagmire.

Save us, we pray thee, from that hole in the swamp. And float us above it like Noah in the ark, riding above the storm. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“The Foundation of the Church“

PDF DownloadDownload

The Foundation of the Church

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 27, 1959

Summary

A.W. Tozer reflects on the significance of Christ’s resurrection and ascension as the foundational truths of the Christian Church. He emphasizes that the Church began with simple yet powerful declarations: “He is risen” and “He was taken up.” Mr. Tozer warns against reducing the resurrection to merely a spiritual or symbolic event, affirming the total resurrection of Jesus—body, soul, and spirit, encouraging believers to rejoice in the fact that they have a representative in glory who intercedes for them.

Message

Our Father, we are refreshed in mind and heart as we read again this true record and hear the words of the Spirit telling us that He ascended up on high. We thank thee for Christ Jesus, the Lord, our Savior, and we pray that thou wilt help us now that we may put away Adam’s way of looking at things. We have been with Adam this week.

We have been in the world. We have been in offices and shops and stores and everywhere where Adam is. Now, Lord Jesus, thou second Adam, we pray thou wilt help us that we may purge out of our thinking Adam’s ways of thinking and Adam’s psychology and that we may think as Christians, think as if this morning Christ had risen. Today, this was the morning that He rose from the dead and that He is now among us, alive, eternally alive. Death hath no more dominion over him. We pray that Thou wilt grant that around this living, risen, glorified Man who is also God, we may gather today.

We may gather in our thoughts. We may gather in our hearts and in all that we may feel and know that the Lord is with us and that we are not alone. That we are not trying to promote a service or manufacture one, but that we as the disciples of old simply gather around our Risen Lord.

Thou remember the poor and the helpless today and the sick and the distressed and help among the nations of the world, O God. Thou knowest we see fulfilled before us the strange dramatic pictures which Daniel wrote and painted for us, and we see and hear the words of our Lord being fulfilled when He told us of wars and commotions and rumors of wars and the hearts of men failing them for fear of things that are taking place on the earth.

Oh, we pray that instead of our being depressed by all this, we may rejoice because our redemption draweth nigh. Wilt Thou help us all over the earth? Wilt Thou remember Thy work, so badly hindered by the devil in so many places. We pray Thee, O God, Thou wilt help in Laos today. Help, we pray Thee, in Vietnam. Help, we pray, in Indonesia and in other parts where the political conditions make it dangerous and sometimes impossible for Thy people to work. They have almost to mark time waiting for Thee to open the door.

We ask That Thou will bless those out from this church on the many fields of the world and in many pulpits throughout the world and sitting at many organ consoles and standing to lead choirs and teaching in schools.

O God, bless Thou we pray, that stream of blessed humanity that’s gone out from this small church to all parts of the world over the last years. Help us to pray for them and keep praying for them. Now, Lord, bless us as we wait further upon thee. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I want to talk to you from the Scripture which was read earlier. And in the second verse of Acts 2: …until the day in which He was taken up, after that He, through the Holy Ghost, had given commandment unto the apostles whom He had chosen.”

Now, I wonder if you have ever stopped to think that the Church of Christ began as no other institution ever did. It began without any political philosophy at all. It had none. If there had been anyone present insisting that before this church could get going, they would have to take a stand on politics. There were many of them that would not have known what they were talking about. It had no economic theory about wealth or anything to do with money. Most of them hadn’t any.

And if they had had any ideas, they would have been academic because they had nothing to do with money. They were poor people. They had no thought about international relations, juvenile delinquency, any of the problems that are facing us now. Nobody said, we have the answer. We will fix it up. Come to us. Listen to us. We have the answer to the world’s problems. They didn’t say that at all.

The Church of God exploded into being. It began like a delightful, glorious, life-giving explosion. And the testimony of the Church can be put into two sentences, one of three words and the other of four. Before Hitler could get going, he had to write Mein Kampf, a great big thick book. And before the Communists could get going, they had to write yet another, thicker book. But the Church of God managed to get started on seven words. At least there are seven words in English. The first three were uttered beside the tomb. He is risen. And the other four are written here into the book of Acts, He was taken up.

Now I am not exaggerating or trying to oversimplify. I tell you frankly that these two great battle cries, these two shouts of triumph and victory gave the church their power. It was around this that they rallied. The triumphant joy cry of the church, He was taken up; and the cry beside the tomb, He is risen. It was this that made the church the church. Now our Lord is risen.

This is not Easter. I think it is a trick of the devil to confine the preaching of the resurrection and triumphal ascension of our Savior to Easter time, so we’ll only hear it once a year and hear it under circumstances that sometimes make it impossible to have it mean anything to us. But there never should be a sermon preached from any Christian pulpit in the world that should not begin and end with, He is risen, He was taken up. For this is it. This is it. There’s a little explanation in between which the Holy Ghost through the mouth of the Apostles wrote. But these are the springs that drive the great church of Christ. He was taken up. He made His triumphal entry.

Talk about the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and it indeed was a triumphal entry when the children cried Hosanna to Him that cometh in the name of the Lord. But He made another triumphal entry a little while later after His death and resurrection. He made that the time that He was taken up his triumphal entry into His ancient position vacated when He came down.

In John 17:5, a prayer that our Lord had prayed a little while before He was crucified, He said, Father, glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. He voided His glory when He came to be born of the Virgin Mary. He reassumed that glory when he was taken up. And all the glory, whatever that means.

Now I know that that word glory as Christians use it, it is an explosive, emotional word and sometimes means very little. I don’t know that I know what it all means, but whatever it means, the glory and all the glory that He ever had in the ancient beginning before the world was, He was reinvested with that glory when He went back to the Father again and He made His triumphal entry into full and eternal favor with God, the Father Almighty.

Now remember one thing, that the Eternal Son was never out of favor with the Father. It would be impossible for reasons which any theologian knows, for the Eternal Father and the Eternal Son to be anything but in perfect and holy, unspeakably holy harmony with each other. But Jesus was more, that is, He was something in addition as far as we’re concerned, to being the Eternal Son. He was the Eternal Son made flesh to dwell among us. And that flesh that dwelt among us because it identified Himself with mankind, identified Himself with all that we are and all the demerits we have and all that is against us, all that you see over the world today, every evil thing you read about or hear about, because He identified Himself in His manhood with our manhood.

I say then that when He rose from the dead, He was reinvested with all of the favor with God the Father. The Eternal Son had never been out of favor, but the Son made flesh. God had turned His back on Him on the cross and He cried, my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? But now the Father receives Him again into full favor and He sits down at His throne. And He made His triumphal entry into the lordship over creation and the headship over the church and the kingship over the earth. These are things we ought to keep saying. We ought to keep saying them all the time.

When one goes about preaching and he just says something like this, he just talks about God and Christ. And people come up to you and surround you as if you were a visitor at an orphan asylum, and the poor little love-starved, emotionally starved children couldn’t get enough of a pat on the head, so people would come and gather around you. Not because you preach well. I know better than that. I hear myself on tape and as I told Brother Platt, I wouldn’t go across the street to hear myself preach. But it’s what you’re preaching about, what are you talking about; you’re talking about three things. He is risen and He was received up. He ascended; He was taken up.

Now this is what the people want to hear and it’s a strange thing that we’re letting the church starve to death. For this is the food of the church. This is the pillar that upholds the church and yet we don’t tell them these things. But He was seen of them forty days and forty nights before He ascended up, a period of testing and verification.

And they saw and they heard, and they touched Him, and they ate with Him and they questioned Him and their eyes looked on Him and their ears heard Him and they knew that this was the very same Jesus. So, the Lord Jesus that walked among them was present in His total resurrection.

Now I believe in the total resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I believe in the total resurrection of man. Unbelief has come in and nicely smoothed this over and said yes, I believe that Christ’s Spirit marches on. I believe the same thing about Socrates and Lincoln. I believe that Lincoln walks at midnight. I believe that Lincoln’s spirit of liberty and freedom for all men will never die.

I think that Lincoln lives on in the hearts of his admirers. Well now there’s a poetic sense in which that’s true. In everybody that loves Abraham Lincoln there’s a sense in which Abraham’s memory lives on. Lincoln’s memory lives on in the hearts of the people. But let us not yield to the blandishments of the devil and acknowledge that nothing but the memory of Jesus lives on. Jesus lives on, my brethren. He is risen. He was taken up. Not his memory, not gratitude in the hearts of His people. That’s there too. But Jesus Christ rose from the dead by a total resurrection.

The Bible, the early part of the early church fathers and the Bible writers would not have known what you meant if you had talked to them about the spiritual resurrection of Jesus. They knew that this same Jesus which went into the grave came out of the grave. This same Jesus that they saw standing among them, now is leaving them to be taken up.

And that same Jesus that is taken up will surely come again. Whatever they put into the tomb, God brought out of the tomb. He is not here. He is risen. It does not say His body is here, but His spirit is risen. It says, He is not here and the pronoun He, takes in body, soul, and spirit and all that had been Jesus and all that was Jesus and all that is the Lord Jesus. Crucified, buried the third day, He rose again says the creed.

Now it tells us here that this One who had risen from the dead. And before He was taken up, spoke to them of things pertaining to the Kingdom. That was about the greatest Bible conference of all.

Next Sunday I will be beginning at New York City at Brother Reidhead’s church on Times Square with Brother Reidhead and Brother McAfee in an eight-day conference. And I will be in a conference with Baptists before I leave there, and believe it or not, I’ll be preaching to a conference of Pentecostal preachers. I’m not particular, I just preach wherever they want to hear me. If the Pope would send for me, I’d go preach to him. So, I’m preaching to conferences.

But the greatest Bible conference in all the greatest of them, all must have been this one; when a few breathless disciples standing around Him in wonder listened to Him talk of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. What did He say to them? Well, I suppose that what He said to them was an extension of what He had been saying to them like His previous teaching, very likely. We dare not introduce anything here.

A man said to me once, he set forth a certain doctrine and when I asked him where he got Scripture for it, he said, well it was one of those things which Jesus had talked to the disciples about after His resurrection. If you permit that method of approach, pretty soon that’ll be a basket into which the enemy can dump any kind of weird fanatical teaching in the world. You may be perfectly sure that whatever Jesus said after His resurrection accorded with the Old Testament and the New that was later written. For He was the Lord of the Old and He is the Lord of the New.

You may be sure that whatever He said you may find somewhere in the Psalms or the prophets or Moses or the Apostles or the Acts or the Revelation, I suppose that being the Eternal Son, He would talk about the Eternal Father. Being the Savior of men, He would talk about the atoning death which He had made. Being the Head of the church He’d talk about His church. Being the light of the world, He would talk about world evangelization. Being the anointed One, He’d talk about the gift of the Spirit. Being the One, He’d talk about His return. What he had to say was not different from what He had been saying, but perhaps an extension of it, which we got later in the New Testament when it finally got down to print.

Well, He is the Eternal Son, that is what I want particularly to mention here now. He is the Eternal Son and He is risen, and He was taken up. He is the Word of the Father. Hebrews 1:1-3 says that God has spoken unto us by his Son whom He hath appointed heir of all things by Whom also He made the worlds, Who being the brightness of God’s glory and express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of His power when He had by Himself, purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.       

Now, He had equality with the Father, and when He was taken back on high, He was reinvested with all the equality which He temporarily veiled or laid aside. And that place He freely surrendered for us. For He did surrender for us that place in the heavens above. For it says in Philippians 2, being in the form of God, Jesus thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but He emptied Himself and took upon Him the form of a servant, and went on down to the cross. And at His ascension, the Eternal Son was placed no higher than before His resurrection.        

Let’s remember that the Eternal Son was not elevated when He was taken on high. He could not be elevated. You cannot elevate that which is Itself elevation. You cannot raise higher that which is higher than the highest. And Jesus, the Eternal Son, the Word of the Father, the Ancient Logos, the Word of the Father, was before the world was, and you could not elevate that which was the pinnacle of all being, God.

But remember, He took on Himself the form of a man, not the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham. And now, what is God going to do with man. What’s God going to do with this Man? Jesus became man and identified Himself with man so that He can’t escape it, not that He wants to. For He took upon Himself man’s flesh voluntarily. He assumed it because He willed to do it, and therefore He doesn’t change His mind and He still wants to be man. But He is there now as a man, forever a Man.      

If you were to see Jesus now, you would recognize the form of a man. You ought to keep that in mind. Not a spook not a ghost, not a strange weird, white shape floating about. You would recognize a man, a man who could sit down, stand up, crouch down, stretch His hand out, raise His hand up, and kneel to pray. You would recognize a man, Adam’s man, Adam’s flesh born, except sin accepted and mortality accepted.

He became man to dwell among us. He became flesh so that at His ascension, the Eternal Son was not elevated but the Man was elevated. This is what the church told the world. This is it. The church said we have Somebody. We have Somebody in the greatest place in the universe. We have a representative there.

Don’t you think those Russians feel good. They look upon with all their boasting and bragging and condemning the United States. They look upon the United States as being the heaven, heaven itself and they’re troubled with a deep in sense of inferiority because they know that this is the greatest nation in the world, and don’t you suppose they’re wild with glee over there because they have a representative over here. I hate to mention him. I don’t want advertise him, but I’ll just illustrate him.       

They’ve got a representative over here, somebody that stands for them and he did stand for them. You’d have to say that. Some of our Americans go over there and talk us down, but he came over here and wouldn’t say a good thing about us and said everything good about his own country, bad as they are. So at least you’ve got that in his favor. Even the devil, you know, works overtime. You can say that in his favor.       

But we have Somebody. That’s the message of the cross. That’s the message of the Christ. That’s the message of the church. We have a Representative in the glory. We’ve got Somebody over there representing us. And that’s the message that the church took to the world. He is risen. He was taken up. He’s out of the grave. He’s into the heavens, and this is where the power of the church lies. And as soon as we lie down around the cross and begin to sob and moan and talk about His dying and try to go through all of His dying, we’ve forgotten that He died, but He’s not dead now. He is risen.      

And when we go to the tomb and stand, as some of the songs say, that we learn how to die and we look in the tomb, that’s past. That’s history. That’s no more. He was taken up. And it’s the signal to all Adam’s race that everything’s all right now, if you’ll only believe. Everything’s all right.

A Rescuer came. A David came to slay your Goliath. A Moses came to deliver you out of Egypt. And if you’ll only believe it now and believe on Him, everything will be all right because there’s a man in the glory, a real Man, Christ, the God-man, has been exalted. God had always been exalted, but Christ the God-man is now exalted and humanity is invested with deity.     

When He came down here, He took upon Himself humanity and invested His deity with humanity. But when God took Him to the right hand of the Father, He invested His humanity with all the prerogatives of deity so that there isn’t anything in the sovereignty of God that isn’t in the hand of Jesus Christ our Lord. God hath put all things in His hands. God hath put all judgment in his hands. God hath put resurrection in His hand. The Father hath life in Himself and He hath also given to the Son to have life in Himself. That was the cry of the church. Jesus is risen. Jesus is exalted.

Jesus is at the right hand of God. He was taken up after He had been seen and identified. And we know it’s Jesus He’s taken up. That was the cry of the church. We’ve bogged down. We’ve bogged down in modes of baptism and church polity, whether you should have deacons or elders or whether you should call them deacons or elders, whether you should call pastor a pastor or an elder. We’ve bogged down. We get all confused. But the church wasn’t confused, that early church. They looked up and they saw one great thing, I repeat, that He had risen and that He was taken up. The Man is exalted.

In second chapter of Acts, remember that Peter argued that way. He said, you men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by Him in the midst of you; Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken. And by wicked hands you have crucified Him and slain Him. But God has raised Him up, having loosed the pains of death because it was not possible that He should be beholden of death.

Now, that’s what the Holy Spirit says here by the mouth of the man Peter, you men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? He is risen. He was taken up. This Jesus Christ made this man whole. He said this Jesus whom ye denied and crucified, God has raised Him from the dead.

Now I think we ought to emphasize this. I think we ought to bear down on it. I think we ought to sing more about it. I think we ought to testify more about it. I think we ought to get our minds slanted in that direction. I think we ought to let the winds of heaven blow across our heart and get this dust away and begin to think about the One who was risen again from the dead. And so, He stands. He stands.

One man said about this Christ rising from the dead and ascending to God’s right hand, he said this was mystery to the Jew, and it was produced by the Greeks. But it’s wonderful glory to the Christian, the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. He stands in the full possession of His manhood and in the full exercise of His Godhead and there isn’t anybody else like that in all the universe, nobody. There’s nobody that has the prerogative of God and prerogatives of man. Nobody in this world, this race that we’re part of, this sick race, sin-pocked race that we’re part of; had a head and it was Adam.

But the new race was born of Jesus Christ, born of the water and the blood; has a Head and it’s Jesus Christ who was God and man. You know that’s the great fact. Is it dramatic? I wonder why somebody hasn’t made a movie out of that. I guess they have. I remember seeing it years ago before I was converted. What did they call it? King of Kings, yes, King of Kings. I was a sinner sitting there, a little sharp-eyed sinner and I sat watching the thing.

And when it was over and they played Near my God to Thee and everybody was supposed to blow their nose around me and walk out, I walked out disgusted. I wasn’t even a Christian. I knew that couldn’t be God. I knew that this wonderful mystery couldn’t be acted by a man with breath in his nostrils. Even a sinner that I was, unconverted, I had spiritual sense enough to know that you couldn’t reduce this to tape, reduce it to celluloid.

This wonderful mystery, that Man stands there in possession of all that manhood is, and all that Godhood is. This is Jesus, this is our Lord, that’s the great fact. Our human Brother, exalted to equality with God, given all the authority of the Most High God, our human brother.

Somebody wrote me a letter and scolded me or scolded somebody who had written in the magazine for calling Jesus, brother. I don’t want to be more spiritual than the apostles. I’m satisfied if I can stand up to the knees of the apostles, black their shoes without swooping down. But I think He’s my brother. He is the human Brother, and He knows our frailties. Given all the authority of God, He can command obedience everywhere, anywhere, and at all times. He can command obedience. This is neglected truth, you know. Other aspects, as I said, take over. We are robbed of our rights, but we have a right to expect the Lord Jesus Christ to work from heaven as He once worked on earth.

Now the fact that some have carried that too far and have put on great dramatic meetings that have ultimately ended in glorifying men and not God, don’t let that scare you. We have a perfect right to expect that He shall work from heaven as He once worked on earth. Because He is exalted, we have a perfect right to believe that He will work in us as He once worked for us. We have a perfect right to believe that He will work for us above as He once worked for us below. And He will work through us to others as He once worked through others to us.

I don’t know why Christians are ever anything but delightfully happy. Really, I don’t. When you just think it over, just think it over like this, and it does something for me, I don’t know what it does for you, but it does something for me, just to think it over. Wonderful Man in the glory, my Man in the glory, our Man in the glory, God’s Man in the glory, risen up there and not standing in a state of uncertainty, but sitting. Men stand, but kings sit on thrones. And He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. We ought to be the happiest people in all the wide world. I think we’ve been cheated of our birthright, my brethren. We’ve been sidetracked. We’ve been told other things. This is the gospel.

Why did A. B. Simpson hit the evangelical church like an explosion? Because he was a great preacher? He was a good preacher, sure. Because he was a great scholar? No. Why? Because he came telling them, believing what he told them. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever he said. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. And they said, do you hear that man Simpson and said, that fanatic. And others said, let’s go hear him. Moody said, I want to go down to hear Simpson. He preaches to my heart as no other man can.

What could that all mean? Only one thing, that the church had lost for a little time the wonderful sense of His having risen. And they were busy preaching other things, how to reach the masses, and how to get on with your mother-in-law, all the trivialities. But he came saying, He’s risen, and reached the masses. He reached them, because he kept saying, He’s risen. And if the church of Christ would just believe this once more and expect Him to work from heaven as He once worked on earth.

We have the message. You don’t have to send to Ireland to get the messenger. You don’t have to go somewhere around to seek. The word is nigh, even in thy mouth. And we don’t have to circle the world to find a man to preach to us. If a man will come and say, He’s risen, He was taken up, you got Him. And if you keep saying that and keep saying that and keep saying that, the Holy Ghost will bless that and give power to it and fire to it and life to it, and dying sons of men will gather around that.

And some say it must be awfully hard on the church; you been there thirty years and now leaving. And I tell them, no, no it’s not. Because I never preached myself but Him. You’ve got Him and you’ll have Him if you have nobody else. And you’ll always have Him. I know there are lots of pleasant fellows that make everybody love them and when they go, people weep and all that. But what are we doing there? We’re simply loving a man. We’re gathering around a man. That’s patting a man. But I’m here to tell you He’s risen, and He was taken up and that’s it. And He sent the Holy Ghost to confirm the fact that He was risen and taken up.

And so, we’re not tied to any man. When Simpson died, the church went right on. When Wesley died, the church went right on. And so, it will be here, and so it will be wherever Jesus Christ is the center, the Source, the core of love and life and thought and prayer and hope and belief, Jesus, the sinner’s friend, Jesus, the Lord of Glory. So, let’s keep believing that. Let’s sing a lot of songs about the King Eternal, about the Lord of Glory, about the Savior marching on to victory.

Keep that thought before your mind, otherwise you will get awfully blue. If you get awfully blue listening to commentators and read newspaper accounts of juvenile delinquents murdering their streetcar conductors, you get awfully blue. But if you keep your eyes on the Man in the glory and recognize that He’s up there representing us. He’s up there representing us, mind you. Our names are on His hand, on His forehead, on His chest and shoulders. He represents us there.

There’s a great lawyer, if I was in trouble, and a great lawyer with worldwide fame said, I’ll take your case on. I’ll represent you; I’d go fishing. I wouldn’t worry about it, because if the man you’ve got representing you is great enough, you’ll get by, you’ll get through. Unfortunately, sometimes even when you’re guilty, if you get big enough of a man representing you, you’ll get through.

But in the glory, here Jesus Christ represents nothing but guilty men. He represents no clients but guilty men. And those who say, I’m not guilty, He dismisses them and says, all right, get somebody else to represent you. He’s up there representing guilty men. He represents you and me because we’re guilty, brother. We’ve been guilty before God, of sin, guilty before the world, and he takes on such cases. We say, I’m guilty. He says, that’s all I want to know. If you say you’re guilty, I’ll represent you. I am the Man in the glory, you know. He’s called an Advocate, an Advocate above.

Well, that’s all I want to say this morning. But I’ve just been thinking about this, thinking it over, thinking how wonderful it is that we have a Representative in the glory, and I thought I’d like to tell you that this morning. I hope it’ll do you some good. I hope you’ll go away believing it. If you do, everything will be all right. Amen.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“Causes of Backsliding“

PDF DownloadDownload

Causes of Backsliding

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 28, 1954

Summary

A.W. Tozer’s sermon, “Causes of Backsliding,” delivered on November 28, 1954, addresses the serious and universal problem of spiritual backsliding. Tozer begins by defining backsliding and dispelling the trivialization of the term, emphasizing that God never jokes about it and always takes it seriously. He likens backsliding to an animal struggling to climb a slippery slope, illustrating the difficulty and frequent failure of maintaining spiritual progress.

Tozer identifies two main causes of backsliding: the fickleness of the human heart and the inherent evil within it. He explains that humans have a natural tendency to switch interests and avoid anything that requires sustained effort, which leads to moral and spiritual decline. He also highlights that, while the human heart’s ability to change is a source of hope for repentance, it also facilitates backsliding.

He emphasizes that backsliding begins in the heart, often unnoticed by others until it manifests outwardly. Tozer outlines various symptoms of backsliding, such as losing interest in prayer and spiritual activities, developing a critical spirit toward others, and giving to the church out of habit rather than joy. He warns against the dangers of maintaining religious appearances while the heart grows cold.

Tozer urges self-examination, encouraging believers to recognize signs of backsliding in their own hearts and seek restoration through sincere repentance and renewed devotion to God. He concludes with a prayer for Jesus to look upon those who have backslidden with love and to help them return to a vibrant, heartfelt relationship with God.

In essence, Tozer’s sermon is a call to vigilance and sincerity in one’s spiritual life, urging believers to remain steadfast in their commitment to God and to guard against the subtle onset of backsliding.

Message

The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways, and a good man shall be satisfied from himself. The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways, and a good man shall be satisfied from himself. I’d very much rather talk on any number of subjects I could think about this morning, rather than to talk about the problem of backsliding.

It is age-old and it’s universal, and the Bible has much to say about it. Therefore, I think it right and proper that I should lay before you something of what the Bible tells us, both of warning and encouragement, about backsliding. The causes of backsliding, or maybe first I should define the word before I go any further, for some strange reason which I cannot at the moment identify, backsliding has become a funny word in the day in which we live.

Even ministers like to say that being Baptist they couldn’t backslide and have a laugh out of it. Or they like to say, being Methodist I believed in backsliding and practiced it to prove it was so, and all that kind of corny, lame humor has grown up around the word backslide, backslider, backsliding, those terrible words. Whatever silly and thoughtless men may do with this word, remember one thing, God never jokes about it, and he never takes it lightly.

Backsliding, I think, came from back where it said that Israel slided back like a backsliding heifer. The thought was, and I’ve seen it as a lad on the farm myself, an animal started up a slippery bank and got partway up and then lost the gear, lost track, control, and traction, they call it, and slipped back. Only after many plunges and efforts did they get up, sometimes slide back and can’t get up at all.

Well, the man of God with no intention at all of being facetious said that Israel was like the animals that he had seen trying to climb up a slippery hill after a heavy rain. They went and worked hard at it and pushed and then slid back as many steps as they had gone up, and he likened backsliding Israel to this backsliding heifer. Now, the causes of backsliding are mainly two, the first one being the fickleness of the human heart.

It would be a wonderful thing if you and I could remain what we were, but it would also be a most damning thing. How sad our state by nature is. The man who wrote that rather lugubrious and tear-stained hymn nevertheless said truth that was as true as the throne of God. Our state by nature is sad, and if we could not change, we would be automatically doomed to remain in that sad state while the ages spend themselves. But our ability to change our mind and to go from worse to better is our hope.

The call of God in repentance is a call from worse to better, and if we could not go from one state to another, we would be frozen, we would be morally static, and would be damned from our birth. But because we can move, and it is possible to go from one moral state to another, we can go then from bad to good and can get right with God even though we were wrong before, can get good though we were bad before, can become holy though we were unholy before.

But that same ability to go from one moral state to another and to change our mind about things is also not the cause of backsliding but the technique by which it operates. Now we switch from one interest to another. You watch that. Watch it in children. When they’re tiny, they have one ideal. When they’re nine or ten, they have another. When they’re in their mid-teens, they have another. When they’re twenty-one, they still have another. We switch from one interest to another, and people can do that in the moral world as well. And this changing from fad, from one fad to another, one kind of dress to another, shifting from one thing that interests us to another thing that interests us. Now all this is at least a reason back of the probability or ability of moral backsliding. The only thing we really stick to as a rule is something that nature or circumstance fastened upon us.

We have to eat and drink and sleep and do all that nature forces us to do or that some strong instinct within us forces us to do. As long as the human race goes on, there’ll always be love and marriage and all that because it’s a deeply rooted instinct in the human bloodstream. And there’ll always be a desire for food and always be a desire to protect ourselves. These are instincts. They lie deep in the human nature. And the result is we stick to something that’s built in us, and we’re able to follow it because we don’t have to do anything to follow it.

But anything that requires attention and careful painstaking labors, we tend to turn away from it and usually do turn away from it if we can. The young pianist. I just wonder if we had a count on the North American continent of all the people who took or started to take piano lessons and didn’t go through with it.

I’d hate to embarrass you fellows by asking the men in this congregation to stand. All of you who started out. I took six lessons myself, six piano lessons. Yesterday I spoke to a group of convention of church musicians with my six piano lessons. But anyway, I didn’t continue. I didn’t continue with my piano. And how many more of you are like that? Now, why? Because it’s not instinct with us. I found no instinct waking me at night, pushing me toward the piano. I found no such instinct at all.

And that isn’t in us. Certain people have something that’s so strong in them that it almost amounts to an instinct. We call them natural born musicians and they’ll have some kind of musical expression no matter what. And they don’t have any trouble with practicing because it’s in them, but it’s not in the most of us. That’s just as sure as you live. And the result is we don’t do what becomes irksome and odious, what’s painstaking and what isn’t pleasant.

We tend to follow what is easy and go the natural easy way. And outside of taxes and certain other duties that are forced upon us from the outside either by nature or by law, we tend mostly to do what we like to do and what is natural to us. And of course that is the fertile soil in which backsliding grows.

People under some great pressure of bereavement or fear turn to God and make promises and for a while go ahead, but the instinct is not in them. The instinct is all the other way. And it’s irksome, this being good, it’s irksome, this reading your Bible and praying. It becomes a painstaking thing and something that isn’t natural. And so fickly we turn away a little at a time until shortly we’re gone back.

And if we had every man in Chicago stand and every woman that somewhere under the evangelistic pressure had made some step toward God, and now today have forgotten all about him and are drinking and smoking and living as if there was no God in heaven above, I tell you it would be a shock we wouldn’t get over if we could see them all in some park maybe standing like soldiers lined up, tier on tier, or rank on rank I think is a better military word.

But if we were to see them there, we’d be shocked and horrified at how many sometime have made a step toward God or maybe even met God. But because serving Jesus Christ is contrary to nature, our state by nature is sad and it does not make for righteousness. So the fickleness of the heart turns us away and people do backslide like the heifer.

And then there’s the inherent evil of the human heart, second reason for causing backsliding. The whole constitution of a human being is against serving God. Now there are two things you must remember here, that if man were what he originally was, if man were now, if you were now and I what we originally were, made in the image of God without sin, then it would be perfectly natural to serve God.

The angels in heaven above and the seraphim beside the throne have no trouble serving God. They’ve nothing in them to pull them away from it. They were made to serve God and when they’re made to serve God, they’re doing His thing as natural to them as a duck when it goes to the water does a thing natural to her. Or a bear in the wintertime curls up in his den, he’s following his nature. And the holy angels above follow their nature to serve God. And if you and I were what we should be, unfallen and without this taint and stain of sin, we would be able to serve God without any effort, it would come natural, it would flow out like a fountain from the pressure beneath. But we’re fallen.

I wrote and said that whoever got down on his knees and said our father who art in heaven was doing the most natural thing in the world, and somebody wrote a long letter proving that I was a modernist for saying that. I am not responsible for people when they don’t read what you write, and don’t read all of it, or read something into it, or if they’re too dumb to understand it, I’m not responsible for that. So, I don’t worry too much about it. But they wrote to headquarters, said get rid of me, I was a modernist. Because I said when a man prayed, if the truth were known, he is doing the most natural thing in the world, but not by his fallen nature, but because he was made in the image of God.

When a man turns his face toward God, he’s doing that which anciently he did in Adam, and which he should be doing now, but which sin has robbed him of the power to do naturally. So both my critic and I are right. Sin made our nature so when we pray it’s not natural. We have to override all the accumulated ages of sin if we say our father who art in heaven. But if that sin hadn’t come, we wouldn’t have anything to override. We’d simply raise our voices and like the bird we’d sing God’s praises without effort.

But people turn away from God and cool off and go back, change their minds or at least change their hearts. And it always begins with the heart, the backslider in heart. Now that’s not there by accident. The backslider in heart, it says. Remember that backsliding always begins with the heart. People blame other circumstances and say it’s my home life, it’s the place where I work, it’s the school I attend, or it’s because I was ill, or it’s because I had to work too much, it’s because I didn’t have time.

Those are external things. Backsliding begins in the heart. The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways, and always it begins first in the heart. And the order of discovery is this, first God knows it. God knows when my heart’s cooling off better than before I do, and then the individual finds it out, and then the Church finds it out, and at last, if he continues, the world finds it out. But that’s always the order. The world finds out a man has backslidden and gone back on his faith. The Church knew it before the world found it out, and the individual knew it before the Church found it out, and God knew it before the man found it out. But it all begins in the heart.

Now, what is a backslider in heart? Well, he’s one who’s losing interest in the things of God, and gradually going back to the old ways, or finding some new and more refined sins than the ones he used to do. But the point is, he’s losing interest, he’s cooling off. The fires of his heart are not as hot as they were a few weeks or months or years before, and his love toward God is slowly cooling off.

This, I say, is backsliding in heart. And he’s losing interest in communion with God. If you don’t like to pray as well as you used to, then the only kind and honest thing I can say is that you’re a backslider in heart. Because if you love as much as you loved before, you will love to pray as much as you loved to pray before. But if you do not love to pray as much as you used to, then what conclusion can I arrive at? I don’t like to say these things. I wish I didn’t have to.

But what conclusion can a man arrive at? If a doctor takes a blood count and finds the blood count way down, what can he conclude? Why, he says, this man is not in a good state of health. Or if he runs other tests and finds that the man’s health is bad, what honest thing can a doctor do? Pat him on the shoulder and say, I’ll meet you on the golf course Saturday. Everything will be all right, Bill. Keep your chin up.

What a fool that doctor would be, and what a traitor to his own profession. There’s only one thing for him to do, and that is to tell the man the findings. And if the findings say that he’s not well, that his state of physical health is poor, the doctor ought to tell him so. I don’t know that he’d have to go into all the details and tell it in Latin, but he ought to tell him, well, but you’re not in as good a shape as you ought to be. I want you to listen to me now. You take this prescription, or do this, or go to Florida, usually they say, or do something for yourself.

But the point is, the honest man will tell a patient if he runs tests and finds that they point to a bad state of health. Now, if you do not love prayer as much as you once did, now what can I do about it? I didn’t do that. I hope I didn’t. And if I’m an honest physician, I can only say to you, you better go to the specialist. There is a specialist who deals with such things. Your temperature’s way down. And if it is, there is one that can heal you. I can’t, but I can tell you where there is one, and the losing of our individual communion with God.

Read your hymns in the old hymn book and see how sometimes the hymnists mourn, how once they loved the fellowship with God. Communion was sweet to them. But we’ve got so many things now that tend to crowd out communion.

We have radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and the automobile that takes us all around over the country, and long trips and all that. And the tendency is to lose that.

Now, I insist that it starts in the heart. And these other things are only external aids to the devil. They are not the causes. The cause lies deeper than that. It lies in the heart. And when a man is backslidden in heart, he tends to get a little bit bored with earnest Christians. If a glowing, earnest Christian bores you a little, if when you’re in a little group drinking the coffee together or sitting around having a soda and somebody brings up the thought of God, if it bores you a little or embarrasses you, you’d better look to your own heart, my friend. Better look seriously to your own heart, because whenever religion bores us, we may be sure that there’s something wrong inside.

Now, I’d like to qualify that. I want to be as honest and realistic as possible, so I will say that some people are just plain religious bores. And they have a way of introducing religion into the most impossible situations and do it out of habit, without an ounce of sincerity, without any spontaneity whatsoever, but only because they’ve been trained to do it, like trained seals. They bore anybody. They’d bore an archangel.

But if an honest, happy-hearted Christian turns and talks about God and it bores you or embarrasses you, you’re in the wrong company. And if you’re bored with spiritual talk, not religious chit-chat, that’ll bore anybody. But if you’re bored with spiritual conversation, something has gone wrong inside of your heart, and the best thing to do is to remember it and admit it, acknowledge it before God.

And then I notice another symptom of this backsliding in heart is the developing of a critical spirit toward others, toward preachers. If he isn’t a Paul Reese, why, some people won’t come. They want to hear; I don’t know what they want to hear. God knows I never could quite figure it out. I guess it was an archangel with David Harp. But if just a plain, good, honest man gets up in the poor delivery in a few blunders, tells us his simple heart out about God and the things of God, people shrug and say, he’s all right, he’s all right. They’ll come in small numbers, but no zeal or enthusiasm unless it’s an extraordinary person.

I tell you, we could well afford to humble ourselves and listen to anybody that had anything to say about God, anybody at all. I think we ought to pray, God, give me a heart so sensitive that I’ll get help from anybody, except, of course, from the hypocrite and the pretender. Nobody can get help from them. Nobody can get help from the self-exploiter and the man who’s promoting himself. I don’t want to get help from them.

I don’t look to the devil for my help, but any honest man of God. Look, when Spurgeon went into a Methodist church and sat in the balcony on a stormy night and only went in because he wanted to get out of the storm, and a Methodist class leader who was no preacher at all rose and exhorted the congregation to look straight to Jesus and be converted. Spurgeon says, I went in there a sinner, and when I went out, I could have sung there’s a fountain filled with blood with the best saint in the church. Converted. He was converted by hearing a man who had no reputation, a class leader, if you please, a layman who was leading a prayer meeting. You might illustrate that truth by a dozen anecdotes, if I cared to do it, true ones of people who’ve been helped by the simplest-hearted people.

I still often remember and sometimes repeat, maybe a bit monotonously, of the time I heard a solo that I’ll never forget. The song wasn’t a high-class song, and the singer was not a high-class singer. The singer was a long, thin, dried-out Texan who looked as if he’d stood in the sun a long time and weathered. His skin was weathered, every part about him was long and thin and weathered.

He would have made a good cowboy if he just had the equipment on. His voice was what they call a gravelly voice. He could stay on pitch, he could carry the tune, but it was gravelly. It was like an awful lot of very low growling static coming in along your radio. He had that kind of voice, but he was a dear Christian brother. The only person who remembers him would be my wife, I think. He was from down Texas somewhere and became an Alliance preacher, a sweet Christian brother. It was all that. He stood up to sing, and I knew what was coming because I knew what kind of voice he had. But that morning he put his head off on one side and sang, I’ve found a friend, oh, such a friend. He loved me or I knew him.

Brother, that’s been twenty-eight years ago, and to this day when I think of my good old lanky brother singing, I’ve found a friend, oh, such a friend, my head instinctively bows. I heard something, I heard a voice from a man who couldn’t have sung anyplace. We wouldn’t let him sing here. He couldn’t sing anywhere where Christians have any standards or taste. But the Holy Ghost was singing that morning through the voice, a gravelly voice of a long, lean Texan, no cowboy, just a long, lean Texan who loved God and wanted to tell people that he’d found such a friend.

Brethren, we ought to be careful lest we become too critical, because the tendency to criticize unkindly. Now, if it’s a question of trying to improve, that’s another matter. If it’s a question of trying to push the standards up and write and preach and pray and talk and exhort to try to get people to do things better, if it’s a question of helping a choir to raise its standards, that’s another matter, and that’s perfectly all right. But if it’s just carping criticism and a sour feeling, ah, what’s the use of it? I don’t care to hear him. I’m a backslider in my heart to that extent, because if a man rises to speak or sing and he’s a sincere man, then he ought to warm my heart with his sincerity, if nothing else, if I’m not backslidden. And still, we can be in this state and still keep up appearances.

Oh, if all the church people who are entering churches this morning who are only going there to keep up appearances, I don’t mean be hypocritical, I don’t mean that. It’s not a deliberate effort to deceive, no, no, not that. But shame or duty or fear or habit or custom or social pressure or something else brings them, they’re not there because their hearts are warm, they’re there only because it’s their habit so to be. They are where they want to be on the Sabbath day.

And if all who are thus present in churches today who are nevertheless cooling off in their hearts or have cooled off and do not have in their heart what their presence in church seems to show that they have, many a pastor would spend the afternoon on his face weeping between the porch and the altar, crying, O God, what have I done or haven’t done that my people are in such a condition?

Solomon here has a tragicomic word. He says he shall be satisfied from himself. And I’ve looked that up, and I find it means he’ll get enough of himself. That sounds funny, but, brother, it isn’t funny. The backslider in heart will soon get enough of himself. Now, how does he get enough of himself? Well, he gets enough of himself with his attempts to pray, and he finds how heavy and embarrassing they are when he tries to be devout. He’s asked to pray, and he tries to be devout, but his heart has long ago broken its fellowship.

And he’s like an instrument that’s ready to be plugged in where there’s no power. And he plugs in dutifully, but nothing comes out. And I tell you, he can get enough of that before very long.

If I was broken with God in my heart this morning, I’d not come around, or anybody’d ask me to pray, I think, because it’s embarrassing. A man gets enough of that after a while. We get enough of our own hollow testimonies, because our smiles are false and the words dry, and yet we daren’t stop talking because we’ve got a reputation for being good Christians. A lot of people earn a reputation for being good Christians in churches, and then they secretly break with God.

And there is a lack of communion there, the fires of their soul burn low, and they’re hardly able anymore to feel any sense of God at all. And yet they’ve got a reputation, and they have to keep it up so they may even allow themselves to get elected to boards, and to young people’s groups, and prayer band groups, and choirs, and all the rest. And I still am afraid that the whole thing’s hollow because their heart has slipped away.

Friends, let me ask you this question. You’ve been married ten years, all right, seven years, six years, five years, whatever it is. Let me ask you, if you positively knew, lady, if you positively knew that deep in his heart your husband had no care for you at all, that deep in his heart were secret wishes that he’s fighting down, that he might be rid of you and free from the necessity of being where you are. How would you feel about it? That’s backsliding in heart, he’s not going to tell you. And I suppose in almost every instance it’s just not true. I’m merely making up an illustration here. But the point I want to raise is that we want the love of people’s hearts. We don’t care so much about the external things. If we want love, it’s the love of the heart.

And so when God finds our hearts are slipping, and we won’t admit it to ourselves, even in our secret moments we won’t admit it, but we’ve gotten to a place where if we told the truth we’re bored with God and tired of religion, and we wouldn’t say it, we wouldn’t admit it, we’d be ashamed of it, but it’s there. What do you think God thinks about that?

Jesus in the book of Revelation said, you’ve left your first love, that is your first degree of love. And he chided that church because he found happening way back there in the second century. He chided that church because it was losing its affection. But it didn’t say so. Not an elder in the Ephesian church, not a preacher that ever stood to preach, not a deacon that ever passed the plates, not a member of the Ephesian church would ever dare to get up and say, I’m tired of God. I’m weary of this whole business. Not a one, habit, custom, their past testimony, logic, all the rest made them keep quiet.

But the heart of Jesus longing for affection that wasn’t there chided them. He said, I don’t feel the warmth I used to feel. Your smile is not so spontaneous. Your breath not so warm. The tone of your voice not so affectionate. I miss it, he said. You’ve left your first love. And I don’t get enough of that after a while, trying to keep up religious appearances with a hollow testimony and trying to talk with enthusiastic Christians about God and seeming to enjoy it.

I heard Paul Rader years ago talk about something like this, and he said that it was like a man trying to laugh at a joke when he hadn’t seen the point. Had you ever seen anybody do that? That waxy look, that waxy smile that we get. That somebody we appreciate or honor or turn and make a pleasantry, and we say to ourselves now, that’s a wonderful man and he’s internationally known, and we ought to smile. Or even chuckle.

How many hypocritical chuckles I’ve made for a joke that I didn’t think was funny. And Rader was bold enough to use that in spiritual things, and maybe it won’t hurt this morning. He said that it was like trying to laugh at a joke when you hadn’t seen the point, or when there wasn’t any point, I might add.

But trying to talk about God and the things of God and prayer and all the spiritual things when your heart isn’t in it. A fellow can get enough of that after a while, brother. Sure as you live, the backslider in heart will get enough of himself. I pray that He may soon. I pray that we may soon. For unless we do get enough of ourselves, I’m afraid there’s not much help.

But I pray we’ll get enough of ourselves. Then that constant church attendance, when his own soul is bored with it, and how many there are, I repeat, that are in church this morning that are here, maybe not here, but some churches at any rate bored with the whole business. But they’ve heard somebody say, don’t send your children, take them. And they steadfastly determine they’re going to follow that, and they do take them. That’s good, and I’m glad they do. But oh, it would be so much better if they enjoyed it.

So much better that if going to church wasn’t a duty. I have been forced to go to religious meetings that I didn’t want to attend. I knew that there was nothing there for me, that I couldn’t contribute anything or get anything. And I have gone nevertheless because circumstances compelled me to. But I’d get enough of that pretty soon. Really, I would.

If I had always to be doing something I don’t like to do, brother, I’d get bored with that right early. He’d get enough of himself. And this constant attending church when you don’t want to go, really, if you had your way, you’d turn over and go back to sleep. That’s evidence of something I don’t like to think about.

And then this matter of giving. God’s warm-hearted people give spontaneously. They love it. They love it. They don’t put their hand on their pocketbook and sing, when we asunder part it gives us inward pain. But they give joyously because they want to give. It’s a pleasure to give.

We’ve got a big check for mission, that is, for relief over on the other side of the water. I think we received it the day before Thanksgiving. And the brother who sent it wrote this half-humorous note. He said, I want this to go for such and such. And he said, I’ll enjoy my turkey dinner better Thanksgiving Day. Well, now there was no hardship there. That was spontaneous. That came out of a heart that wanted to serve God.

But this everlasting sitting down and taking out that dollar out of the ten, that ten out of the hundred, that hundred out of the thousand, and always doing it, and yet not enjoy doing it, I’d get enough of that after a while, wouldn’t you? If I wasn’t a Christian, I wouldn’t tithe. Not all of these mathematicians and button-pushers that come along and try to show that if you tithe, you’ll have more money than you did if you don’t tithe.

All of that low-grade, carnal effort to get people to give, it isn’t Christian, it isn’t spiritual, it isn’t decent. What kind of people would you be if you brought your offerings to God’s house, knowing that if you did, you’d be more prosperous than if you didn’t? Knowing that if you tithe, you’ll have more than if you didn’t tithe, and you tithe to get more. What kind of people would you be? No, you people have proved over the years you know better than that.

You know when you separate a ten-dollar bill from your wallet and put it in the plate or give it in at the window. You know you’re out ten dollars, but you know that God takes that ten dollars and transmutes it into everlasting blessing for mankind and the world to come and your heart’s joy as to do it. But giving out of habit when you’ve lost the joy of it is pretty tough, brother. A man will get enough of that after a while, and I pray the sooner the better.

And when you’re trying to keep spiritually cheerful and relaxed, when your bone’s out of joint. Galatians 6, it says, brethren, if any man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one. One commentator points out that the words used there are medical terms. They mean when an arm gets out of joint, a shoulder gets out of joint. Did you ever have a shoulder that snapped out for you? One of my boys was hurting football, and he slept in a brace for a long, oh, years to get strength enough for that arm so it wouldn’t snap out.

I knew a dear old brother who used to be in the Church here who had a knee that would go like that on him, out of joint. It was terrible, painful. The Holy Ghost likened backsliding to a knee out of joint. And to keep cheerful and smiling as though nothing was going on with a knee out of joint, that takes more heroic ability than I have.

If I’m not cheerful inside, don’t expect me to be cheerful on the outside. Don’t you bring any Norman Vincent Peale around to me, or Dale Carnegie books, and tell me to relax and be cheerful. I can’t be. If my heart isn’t singing, I can’t sing. And if my heart isn’t cheerful, I can’t look cheerful. Maybe you can, but I pray that you can’t, because the man, uncheerful soul trying to be cheerful, he’ll get enough of it after a while, the Holy Ghost says. He’ll be filled with his own ways.

Oh, I pray that God will do us the inestimable favor of going from heart to heart and from mind to mind and soul to soul, finding us this morning, locating us this morning with a Geiger counter, finding us this morning. And if there’s a cooling off in there, find it and cure it.

You remember when Jesus looked upon Peter, it says, And Jesus turned and looked upon Peter, and Peter went outside and wept bitterly. I don’t know what Jesus said. I guess He didn’t say anything, for it doesn’t say He did, and I can’t read anything into it, daren’t do it. He simply turned and looked at Peter. The little woman said, Are you one of His followers? And Peter said, No. She said, I think you are. I know your accent. He said, I’m not. She said again, you are. Your speech betrays you.

Then he said, in order to prove I’m not a Christian, I’m going to do something no Christian would do. So, he cursed. He said, If I don’t curse and prove I’m not a Christian, I may get arrested along with Jesus. So, in order to prove that I’m not a Christian, I’m going to curse. So, he cursed. She said, Oh, well, he’s right, he’s not. No, he’s not.

Do you know what Jesus did, and it was just before he died. Jesus turned and looked at that cursing apostle. Peter was a sharp man with a keen eye. He wasn’t well educated, but he was a genius in his own right. He looked up into that face for one brief glance. What he saw in that face of hurt and pain and sorrow and longing and hope and love was too much for Peter. He dashed out of the house, hurried out of the house and stood outside somewhere and with his face in his hands, wept bitterly. And the Greek language indicates an uncontrolled torrent of weeping. And Jesus didn’t say a word. He never said a mumbled word. He just looked at Peter. I wonder if the tender Jesus this morning won’t look at you. Just look, that’s all. Let’s pray.

O Lord Jesus, look on us with thy love, thy undying affection. A love that a few hours later would die for a cursing apostle, that love hasn’t lost any of its content. It’s no weaker, no smaller, but it’s as big as God is big and as eternal as God is eternal. O Lord Jesus, we’re thy sheep, professed sheep.

And the world is big and the devil is going about like a roaring lion. The temptations are strong, and the flesh is weak. And maybe some of us are cooling off our hearts.

Please, Lord Jesus, look at us before it’s too late. Help us to get enough of it quick before it’s too late. Please, Lord, don’t let us harden into permanent backsliders. People that have lost their conscience and can no longer grieve because they can’t grieve. No longer sorrow but they don’t feel sorrow. Oh, we plead, Lord, look at us again today in our hearts.

We’re no better than Peter. But maybe, Lord, there may be some who, like Peter, have sneaked out of discipleship, or at least inwardly they have. Oh, look on us, Lord, and break our hearts. Look on us and make us weep. Give the grace of tears this morning, Lord. Oh, Jesus, a few tears.

If we knew that we could have this morning $10,000 laid in our offering plates for the Church and permissions, we’d be glad. But if we knew instead, we were to have 10,000 tears of grief and repentance and penitence and faith and hope and joy, we’d lay the $10,000 away and take the tears, that we might weep because we can’t weep. Oh, help us this morning.

In Jesus’ name, amen.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“Jesus and the Pharisees“

PDF DownloadDownload

Jesus and the Pharisees

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

August 5, 1956

Summary

A.W. Tozer critiques religious leaders who prioritize rules over compassion, highlighting the conflict between Jesus and orthodox religion. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing the true conflict is with religious leaders themselves, rather than with sinners. Tozer also explores the Pharisees’ understanding of sin and purity, contrasting it with his emphasis on God’s unlimited nature and desire to be with sinners. He challenges the idea of religion as a change of prison and encourages listeners to examine their own hearts and minds for true freedom in Jesus Christ.

Message

In the Book of Luke, 14th chapter, Luke 14, the first six verses. And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him. And behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees saying, is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? And they held their peace. And He took him and healed him and let him go; and answered them, saying, which of you shall have an ass or an ox fall into a pit and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day? And they could not answer him again to these things.

Now, we have here in this brief passage, a scene from the great real-life drama of redemption. The persons are about the same as in the other scenes, the self-righteous religionist, the poor needy man, and the Lord of Glory. And the circumstances are about the same, with a man who is marked with death. Luke, who wrote this story, was a physician who trained in the finest schools of his day. And the commentators pointed out that Luke says that a man had a disease and was healed of it. And he names the disease. And this man had a disease with a specific name which in our English they’ve called dropsy. But this man was marked with death. And here alongside of him, callous to his need, were the self-righteous text quoters who cared not for him, and who could not help him.

And here is the hardest and the heaviest thought to bear. But these were the orthodox people of their day; they were right. They could quote you Scripture to prove that they were right. They were not cultists. They were not fanatics. They were not wild, unorganized, unauthorized religionists. They sat in Mose’s seat. They taught the Scriptures. They were orthodox. They could show you books, proving they were right, and yet they were cruel hearted and arrogant and unbelievably wicked. Can it be so that a man can be orthodox, sound in his creed, faithful to his denomination, loyal to the church of his father’s and still be blind and cruel and bigoted and wicked? It would seem so from the story of Christ in the home of the chief Pharisee.

And then we have in addition, the strong Son of God present. And He was tolerant toward their blindness and their cruelty, not that He in anywise condoned it. For He would die for them, but not compromise with them. But He was tolerant, nevertheless. And He was eager to help the man marked with death. The man who had the swelling disease, the disease that refuses to allow the body to discharge its excess liquid contents and piles it into the cells until the body swells and swells. And finally, the poor heart can’t take it and dies.

And here is the man marked with death and the strong Son of God is present to help. Now, even here in this story, we get an accurate picture of the conflict, the conflict of Jesus and the religionists of His day. And could it be, brothers and sisters, could it be that we have failed? As we’ve looked out upon the world and have tried to appraise and identify ourselves and our times, could it be that we have placed the battle where the battle is not? Could it be that we’ve located the conflict where the conflict is not?

Could it be that we have looked to communism and said there is the enemy? And it is an enemy undoubtedly, the devil’s religion. Could it be that we’ve looked to the gamblers and horse racers and said there’s the enemy? And certainly, they are no friends of God. Could it be that we have looked at the narcotic peddlers and the marijuana pushers and said there is the enemy? Could it be that we have looked at the much-abused American businessman with his careless attitude toward heaven and His absorption with earth and said, secularism, there is the enemy? And could it be that we have placed the battle where the battle is not and found the conflict where God doesn’t find? Could it be that the conflict of Jesus is not today with the harlot and the gambler and the worldly businessman, but with the religious? And could it be that the trouble with the world is the type and kind of religion that we have? I believe that it is.

And I believe that the conflict of Jesus today is not with the sinner. For He came to die for sinners, but with the correct and proper religionist who can look at me but not care, who can behold dying men and not feel a tremor of sympathy. Who can wrap the cloak of their respectability around them and congratulate themselves once a day on their soundness and their creedal correctness and yet have no heart for the poor and no love for the harlot and no sympathy for the ignorant. But here they were, confusion, opposition to goodness. And in this scene, the only strong hand was the One that was soon to be pierced by a nail. And the only truer heart, was One that was soon to beat itself out and stop on a hill cold and gray. And the only clear head was the One that was soon bow in death and the only significant voice was the one that was soon to be silenced in the thickness of death.

It came to pass that Jesus, as they went, says the text, went into the Pharisee’s house. And I’ve let my imagination roam sometimes and I’ve thought of the wanderings of God, the odyssey of the Redeemer, the wide travels of Almighty God over the regions of the earth. And if the Gospels had been written by man’s mind, if it’s Shakespeare or Agetti or Eugene O’Neill, had written the story of the gospels, how different they would have been. Where they would have placed the prints in the halls and palaces, and they would have had Him walking among the great. And they would have had Him surrounded by the mighty and the important and the significant. Potentates and kings would have been His companions.

But how sweetly common was the real God Man. Though He had inhabited eternity, now He had come down and was obeying the rising and the setting of the sun. And with the sunup and the sound of the cocks crow, He rose and stretched and yawned and smiled and said it’s time for breakfast. And with the setting of the sun and the sound of the bird song heard no more, He looked around for a place to lie down and said once, the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head. And though He had inhabited eternity and walked with angels and dwelt in the palaces beyond the power of the human mind to describe, to understand or the tongue to describe, yet now, He is in the house of a Pharisee. And though He was the author of all life, here He is eating bread like any other man. And though He was so holy that angels veiled their faces before Him, now he mingles with sinners.

I’m glad He mingles with sinners. Because to Him, sin was not contagious. Sin was a disease of the soul and could not be passed on by contact, and that’s what contagious means. It was not contagious. And Jesus knew that a pure heart needed no protection. The Pharisees thought that sin was contagious. And so, they ruled out from their houses, these common people that knew not the law. These harlots from the red-light areas, these publicans and tax gatherers, these common masses that crossed and crisscrossed the streets of the cities. They ruled them all out. They were the elite, the elect, the religious, the friends of God, the chosen ones. God’s pals. They were indeed, so they thought. But they kept their religion pure by keeping it insular and away from the crowds.

The poor church of our day, the poor church of the centuries, has had to seal up its pitiful, little purity and take its tiny mite of godliness to a monastery and cut it off from the flow and flux of the marketplace to keep it pure. The poor, pitiful, handmade godliness, we’ve had to clothe it in black robes and hide it in a cave to keep it pure.

And even in Protestant circles, we’ve had to clothe the clergyman in the robe so that he wouldn’t lose his godliness on the way to the pulpit. And some of the stricter sects have shut themselves off completely from the world. And some of our friends out in Indiana and Ohio and Pennsylvania won’t yet ride in an automobile. They drive buggies. There’s less likelihood of springing up a moral leak and losing your spirituality if you ride slow behind a horse than if you ride fast behind a wheel.

Now Brethren, the fountain of spirituality flows out. And you can’t contaminate a fountain, because the fountain flows out. Out from within Him shall flow says the Lord Christ. Out from within Him shall flow. In any contagion or infection that comes from the outside is automatically rendered nil by the outflow. If it was the inflow from the world, it could bring its pollution with it, but because it’s the outflow, it carries the pollution away. Out from within Him shall flow. So, there is no real godliness that can be preserved by hiding.

Here where they were, these self-righteous religionists, this dying man, and the Lord of Glory. And they watched Him. They watched and suspected this radical Jesus. And all their trained, hairsplitting minds, they watched Him. But remember one thing, He is not now on trial. He was then, but He is not now. Then, He stood before men for their approval. Now, God hath raised Him to His own right hand and the message now is twofold. It is an offer of life and a sentence of doom.

And the Son of God is no longer standing before the watchful judges of earth. Since the Holy Spirit has come and has confirmed His deity and declared Him to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. There is no trial and no criminal and no judge who stood and would watch; by the religionists of His day, has risen beyond their power to help or hinder and has been declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. And God made the evil Pharisees approve it.

I preached a sermon one time and I’m going to resurrect it and preach it again because only about a third of you or a quarter of you were here then; On Jesus Christ Approved by His Enemies. And I will mention it only here that God made the evil Pharisees approve Him, because they were in command, and don’t forget it. And they had the power instantly to arrest, and if He had stepped aside one inch, they would have been on him like a pack of hungry wolves. And they would have had Him in prison in one hour’s time. But He outmatched them all. He stood in their midst and forced them by their silence to admit that in this man they found no guilt.

Then He turned on them and asked them, I want to ask you theologians, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day? And that question had in it a whole world of irony and accusation. He was saying by that question, I know you Pharisees. I know you’re strict religionists. I know you’ll bring your children to the temple when they’re eight days old and circumcise them. I know you’ll return when they’re 12 and confirm them. I know what you do to them, and I know what you’ll make out of them. And I know what you are, He was saying by that question. I know your religious theories and I know you’re cold, hard hearts. You care nothing for the blind and for the poor that hobbled by.

And then, to rub in the salt into the trembling, jerking wounds, He said, if you had an ox and it fell into a ditch, would you get him out on the Sabbath day? And they knew they would. For they had so manipulated the law as to permit them to save money on the Sabbath day, but their hearts couldn’t rise to believe that you could save a human life on the Sabbath day. And He knew that, and so He pressed at home on them. And they looked at each other until they couldn’t bear the sight of each other’s eyes and looked down and we’re still. And He said, if you had a common donkey, an ass, a burro that’s worth $3, and it fell into a pit on the Sabbath day, to save him, would you not get him out of there? And He knew they would, and they knew they would. They’d break the Sabbath for $3, but they wouldn’t break the Sabbath to save a dying man.

One of the southern states, I’ve forgotten which one, has come forth with some statistics. To my mind one of the most terrible indictments of human nature possible to imagine is this. Perhaps it was a New England state, I’m not sure, but I believe it might have been Vermont instead of a southern state. And here is what the findings of the law are. They had very high penalties for traffic violators and speeders, but they didn’t cut down the deaths and the crippling accidents. They didn’t cut down the number of pedestrians that were killed. They fined them, but it didn’t help. Then they said, now, we’ll change the law; and they changed it and it read that any man guilty of driving a car in a manner to endanger human life should have his license taken from him for six months. And instantly the death toll dropped magically.

Do you see the horrible significance of it? To say, don’t kill a man, that went on and killed a man. But to say if you do, we’ll take your driver’s license away and they stopped it instantly. If you believe in the total depravity; if that isn’t a proof of it, what is?

T. De Witt Talmage told this story. I thought it was kind of funny in a sour way. He said, a Universalist went into a certain neighborhood and thought he’d start a Universalist Church. So, he looked around, inquired of the neighborhoods if any Universalist lived in that neighborhood. They said, yes, there was one man who said he was a Universalist. So, the minister went to visit this man and said, I understand you’re a Universalist and I am trying to establish a church of that denomination in this area, and I think I’ll start with you. Would you support it? Well, Reverend, he said, I’m a Universalist all right, but I’m a little bit of a different kind of Universalist from what you are. You believe in the universal salvation of everybody, but he said, I’ve been out in the world awhile. I’ve traveled around a little. I’ve lived a lot. And he said, I have been betrayed and exploited and lied to and cheated and abused and injured until I’ve come to believe in the universal damnation of all men. His universalism was rather backfired a little.

Brethren, he’s nearer to it than the other. For a people supposed to be a soft-hearted people such as Americans are, if you take their toy away from them, take their pretty toy away from them, they’ll say, all right, all right. I’ll be careful. I won’t kill anybody. I won’t run over a baby buggy and kill the baby. I will be careful. Don’t take my toy away. But just say, don’t know it, and they’ll do it anyhow. But take their toy away and they’ll whimper all right. I won’t. If that doesn’t argue universal damnation, it’s only by a sovereign act of God.

My brethren, they watched Him there. And He knew, and He knew how bad they were. He knew they loved the ox and the ass more than they loved the human nature. Now, do you know my fear for this church? Do I have any fear that this church will go liberal? It would take one generation at least. I will have been dead 35 to 40 years before this church could go liberal. Do I fear that this church will have a sudden invasion of movies. I’d roll over in my grave then. Do I fear that this church will cease to be missionary? No, you’re so ingrained with missions that you will have missions and be sending out missionaries long after you’re not spiritual anymore at all.

What do I fear? I fear that we will become a respectable, godly, self-contained people who have money, dress well, have good educations, speak good English, read good books, but have no heart for the flow of damned humanity, or half-damned humanity that flows everywhere. Care not for the white trash. Care not to the colored. Care not for the poor and the distressed. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. Aloof godliness. You lovely women. You’re aloof from the very woman that needs you. You respectable men with your money. You hold yourself aloof from the very man that needs you the worst. I’m afraid you will, that’s all. I don’t say you do yet.

But now comes the Lord of life to the man marked with death. And it says He took him and had healed him and they let him go. He took him. I don’t know what He did to him. What do you think He did to him? He walked over there and took him. How did He take him. There he was, swollen, his eyes bulging, his cells distended with water, legs heavy and swollen. If he could stand at all, it was only with great effort, perhaps, couldn’t stand now. A great, round, stuffed form lying there. They knew no way to help them then.

But He took him. How did He take him? That’s what we call a conviction for sin, conviction. He took him. He took David from the sheep fold. He took Elijah from a plow. He took Peter from the fisher. He took Saul from the Supreme Court. He took Augustine from the evil religion Manichaeism. He took Bunyan and Newton and Finney and Trotter and Billy Sunday. He took them and He has a way of doing that in a way that you and I can’t explain.

People write in to me and say, Mr. Tozer, you speak in generalizations. Tell us exactly how God does it. How can I tell you exactly how God does anything? All you can do is say to a man, here, look, look behold the Lamb of God. And after that you’re on your own. I can’t help you. When I go places and preach, people come up to me and say, now, Mr. Tozer, I’ve heard you talk, and I’ve read your books. Now, tell me, just exactly how is this done? That very fact rules them out. That very fact rules them out.

Just as soon as you start to make a little trick out of it, you rule Him out. He rules you out. I don’t know how He does it. I only know that a worldly, proud, sexy, young woman will come to church somewhere, trying hard to be cross between Lana Turner and the devil’s grandmother. And she’ll go in and sit down and look the place over. And then during the sermon or during a song, suddenly, she’s taken, and the mighty Holy Ghost lays hold of her. And He goes clear back to Eve and grabs her deep down further down than anybody will ever know her. Clear deep down He lays hold of her. Don’t ask me to tell you how. He took him. I don’t know how He took him. There is a place where faith must leap into the dark.

Brethren. There is a point where no preacher can help you, and a personal worker is a pest and a nuisance. There is a place where the soul sees a black abyss and God beyond and leaps into the black abyss and God grabs him. There is a place, a leap into the dark and yet it’s into the light because it’s toward God who is light, makes the darkness. He took him and He requires that that man under that conviction be taken.

God takes men. I’ve met them. And I’ve seen them taken. And He healed him and that’s conversion. He beat back death and grave deliverance. And whoever will confine this to mere physical healing is a million miles below the meaning of it. It was and He does heal physically, sometimes, and he will. But He beat back death and gave deliverance. And He gave him the help he needed. That’s conversion. And I don’t know how He does it. I only know He does do it. And I can only point and say, that’s the One to go to. After that you’re on your own, and He’ll take you. If it’s drink, He’ll deliver you. And if it’s pride, he’ll deliver you. If it’s greed, he’ll deliver. And of it’s self-righteousness, He’ll deliver you. He healed him. That’s conversion. And they let him go. Notice that they let him go.

Now there are those that say, and I’ve read it, that religion is a change of prison. That is all. You’re in prison and then you become a religious man, and you change a worldly prison for a religious prison. It is just a change of prisons. Well, I won’t even answer that. I’ll just ask you, what did you find? Anybody here get up and say, I was in the world’s prison and now I’m in Christ’s prison. Do see any bars around you, brother? Shake your hand and see if there’s any manacle on it? Kick your foot a bit and see if there’s any ball and chain there? Look up and see if you see a concrete roof? Look down and see if you see flagstone? Walk out and see if anybody will challenge you and say, who goes there? You’re free as a bird that swings and sings in yonder blue heaven.

Now my brother, the best answer to the charge religion is a change of prisons, is to ask the people who know God whether they had found it that way or not. The only freedom I’ve ever known in all my years of life is the freedom Jesus Christ gives me this night. And if I would give Him up and turn away from it all, I’d be the victim of my lust and my pride and my evil temper and my sulky disposition and my bestiality and my hatefulness and my fear. And I would be surrounded by bars that I could not in 1000 years saw my way through. But when He took me and healed me, He also said, now go,

I found a bird one time, not so long ago inside a house, and we ran him down, took him and put him on my hand and took him outside and away he went. I was afraid he was hurt, but boy, he wasn’t. And as soon as I opened my palm, he soared off. I picked up a butterfly up at Highland Lake, a great big moth rather than a butterfly, a lovely thing. And people gathered around to look at it, and I said, I wonder if it’s injured. And then we took it out, and I let my hand go. And it beat it’s great awkward wings a couple of times, and then cut the air and sailed away as graceful as an airplane among the leaves.

And God took him and healed him and then said, all right, and set him straight. The Christian is the freest man in all the wide world; free to be good, free to be generous, free to be free, free from fear and free from grudge and free from revenge. He’s free.

Now, everybody that ever had a Scofield Bible knows the meaning of the word redemption is threefold; to buy in the market, and to buy out of the market, and to set free. You can get a lot of good thoughts from Scofield’s definitions, and that’s one of them, buy in the market. He came in where he was and bought him; bought him with His own blood. He can only heal him because later He was to die for you; took him. He took him out of the market. He’s not for sale anymore, you’re not Christian. You’re not for sale anymore. There’s no tag on you saying, marked-down sale. No tag on you saying, best buy of the day; no tag on you, no price tag.

God doesn’t allow any price tag. You had a price tag on you once that nobody could meet. Nobody could meet. Gabriel didn’t have a wingspread broad enough. The seraphim didn’t have fire enough and the cherubim didn’t have purity enough and the angels and principalities and watchers and holy ones didn’t have gold nor silver enough. He had a price tag on you, for as much as you were not redeemed with corruptible things, but by the blood of the Lamb of God who without spot or wrinkle, went out to die. That was the price, and nobody could pay it and He paid it. He could take this man and convert him and let him go because He had paid the price for him. Potentially, and in a few days, actually.

The love of Christ constraineth me tonight. And how about you? Are you truly converted? Have you ever had the wonder of suddenly being taken? Have you been captured by the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you been converted and set free? If you have not been then you may be the victim of religion. Just church members, a form of church members, surrounded by proud bigots who make you feel all right when you’re not alright.

Friends, how about you? What about your soul tonight? What about it? Have you ever had the experience of being taken and delivered and set free? You can, but don’t ask me to give you the trick. There is no trick in it. If you will go to Jesus Christ as you are, weary and worn and sad, you’ll find in Him a resting place and He will make you glad. If you come to Jesus with your blindness, and He makes you see. You come with your deafness, and He makes you hear. If you come in your bondage, and He sets you free. Thank God for the strong, strong man who walked among you. It was a strong Man who walked among them.

Those textualists, those Pharisees, in six weeks’ time would have lugged that great swollen body out and lowered it down in a hole and said some Hebrew words over it, wiped their hands clean and walked away, shrugged and said, that’s done. That’s all they had to offer–a grave. And they were the religious leaders of their day. And all they had to offer was a grave. But Jesus Christ pushed the grave years into the future and gave him a long happy life to live. And best of all, to live in the sweet knowledge that the Messiah had come. And He delivered him.

Brothers and sisters, shall it be religion, or shall it be Christ? Shall it be churchianity or shall it be Jesus Christ? Shall it be human pride, or shall it be humility in Jesus Christ? Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God and He will exalt you. Jesus will not walk with the proud nor the scornful. So humble yourself to walk with God. Shall we pray.

Is there one person here tonight that would say to me Mr. Tozer, please pray for me. I want your prayers. Please pray for me. I won’t come down to you and I won’t embarrass you by pushing in. I just want to know, is there somebody here who fears a fear or has a manacle or wears a chain.

Lord of Life, Thou walkest among men, healing and delivering. Thank Thee, O Lord Jesus. Thank Thee for the 1000s of twisted heaps of prison bars that lie useless. The victims have flown and fled like a bird from its nest and are in bondage no more. And they sing and they write, and they work and they testify and they teach. All up and down the world the prisoners have gone free.

We thank Thee tonight Lord and pray now for these friends. God bless them. Turn their eyes upon Jesus. May they look full in His wonderful face and may His light shine upon them. Now, bless these friends. We thank thee for every one of them and pray that we may go out in safety to have a good week and back here again at the appointed times in the Spirit and in the fullness of the gospel of Christ. Amen.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“The Christian’s Inheritance“

PDF DownloadDownload

The Christian’s Inheritance

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

August 2, 1953

Summary

Inheritance in Christianity is limitless and cannot be fully comprehended by human imagination, according to A.W. Tozer. God’s benefits are given as a gift, making believers beneficiaries of His grace. Believers receive blessings and inheritance from God through faithful service, inheritance, and upon death. Tozer encourages believers to look forward with expectation and hope, as their inheritance is guaranteed by their relationship with God. He also warns against dwelling too much on the past, emphasizing the importance of a forward-looking outlook.

Message

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Now, Peter here says that these strangers, believers who were scattered about, were elect and begotten. And the electing and the begetting means up unto, a hope and an inheritance. They lead into a hope and an inheritance. We would be better Christians and wiser students, if we would remember this, that God rarely uses periods. We might speak in the language of a stenographer or an editor. I might say that God rarely uses periods. Almost always there are colons or at most, semi-colons. There rarely is a full stop. Occasionally, God will put down a full stop. Pray no more for him for I have deserted Him. Stop. Rarely though, mostly everything God does becomes a means toward something else that He’s planning to do.

So, when God elects a man, that doesn’t mean that that man is to sit down calmly and say I have arrived. For the election is unto a begetting. And when a man is begotten of the Spirit and becomes a Christian, it is not to be said, now I have arrived. Put a period there. Write finest across the bottom of the page. Well, that also is not true. God gets us unto and up into, and that which is before us is always greater than that which is behind us.

Now, he says that we are begotten unto a hope and an inheritance. Last week I talked about the hope. This week briefly I want to talk about the inheritance. Now the begotten one is a beneficiary of God. And I want to stop and say, at the expense of good preaching, but to the point and and that we might get the facts straight, that this is not a figure of speech.

When I say, that begotten one, the true Christian is a beneficiary of God, I am not using poetry. This is not a figure nor is this verse an isolated reference. This truth is openly taught from Matthew to Revelation. More than that, it’s openly taught from Genesis to Revelation that the true believer is a beneficiary of God. That is, he stands to benefit, God being who He is. God beneficences, his benefits, are infinite and limitless.

Now when we benefit from another, we benefit from our parents. Our parents can give us certain physical and mental inheritances. We get what we get. They can’t give us what they don’t have. When we get what we get, we’ve gotten that. Then, in a sordid and earthly way, sometimes our parents also are able to leave us an inheritance. I mean, it’s sordid and earthly when we introduce it into this holy place, able to leave us an inheritance, a legacy. And that is perfectly proper and right and even Scriptural if they should, if they can. And that also has a limit. Even a Rockefeller can inherit from his father only what his father had, not anymore. Even a J.P. Morgan, if he had any children, would leave them only what he had. Your parents can leave you only what they have.

My father used to drive along the way and point to great areas of land and say, I had hoped before I died that I could have that and could leave it to you. He never left us anything. We signed a quitclaim deed for one little piece of property. I did, gladly, joyously, quickly and sent it airmail special back so they would get it. I didn’t want anything they could leave me. But our parents can leave us something, but it’s always limited.

But God being who he is, the inheritance we receive from God is always limitless. The word infinite means limitless. We could help ourselves a lot if we could remember that. That when a preacher or a hymn or something he talks about, infinitude, or infinite. They always mean that which is unlimited. And when we say that the inheritance we receive must be equal to the God who gives it, because God does not deal in things that are merely finite. God always touches with infinitude everything that He touches, so that the inheritance which the child of God receives is limitless and infinite.

For that reason, it is very hard to write a hymn that can state the facts, all the facts. They can only sketch it. They can only gather seashells on the shore of the vast ocean that stretches away there with island upon island, all belonging to God in redemption, or to His people in redemption, coming from Him.

So, it is always well to remember that when your highest flights of imagination have winged their way upward, you can be sure you have never quite reached as high as it goes. Because always your imagination falters, runs out of energy and falls weakly to the ground. But the limitless, infinite benefactions of God Almighty through His redeemed ones have no limits to them.

Now, the Christian receives, or stands to receive, riches for all parts of his being. We are mental and physical and moral and spiritual, and I suppose we’d say, social. We are all these. Some Christians don’t like the word social because they think it means going to church and eating out of a box, a church social. But we are social. We do have relationships. We have relationships with the neighbor next door. We have relationship to our precinct. We have relationship to our state, to our country, and in a larger way to the whole world. So the Christian does have a social relationship.

And I have always insisted, though the editors have tried to plow around this one, I’ve always insisted that Barnard knew what he was writing about when he said, I know not, oh, I know not what social joys are there. What radiancy of glory, what joy beyond compare, writing about heaven. He says there are social joys in heaven, and that is perfectly true. So, man does have a social relationship.

But he has a spiritual life and a moral life and a mental life and a physical life. He may also have hidden parts or facets to his life that are not thus classified. But we are more than a mental being. We are more than a physical being, thank God. We are more than a moral being, though morality touches all the rest of our being or should. And we are more than a spiritual being, though if we were not spiritual beings. We would not be better much than the beast, though we have the spiritual and the moral and the mental and the physical plus the social, seeing that there are others beside ourselves.

Now we receive or stand to receive infinite amounts of riches given to all of these parts of our nature. A Christian, I said last week, can die. A Christian can die. Also, a Christian can get old. A sinner shouldn’t. A sinner has no right to. There’s no ground for it, no moral right. No, sinner has any right to get old, because the older he gets, the nearer he gets to the grave and judgment and hell.

But the Christian can afford to get old. He can afford to get sick and afford to die, because all that’s happening is his physical body is receiving a certain breakdown, but God has made provision for that physical body. And He’s made provision for the mental life and the moral life and the spiritual life. And I say that the amount of this is unsearchable. That’s a good word.

You know, it was Clarence Darrow that said, when the Christian didn’t know what to call it, he said was a mystery. And I think he had something there all right. He meant it in a nasty way. But I take it in a nice friendly way, because the Christian runs into mystery almost everywhere he looks. The difference between him and the world is, that the world is always running into mystery, but they call it science or something, where we have frankly admitted we don’t know what it is.

So, there’s mystery everywhere. But that word unsearchable is a good word. I don’t know what it means all together. But we talk about the unsearchable riches of Christ. Riches, I suppose that cannot be counted, that cannot be searched into that have so many glorious ramifications and endless qualities about them, that they cannot be searched into nor searched out. They are the unsearchable riches of Christ. And because God is who He is, and the Christian stands in the relationship that he does, therefore, the Christian receives or stands to receive these unsearchable riches.

Now, God’s benefactions are dispensed in three ways. You might take this down; I don’t know whether anybody ever does or not. But you might take this thought down because I think it would do you some good when you think and pray and when you read your Bible. God dispenses to His believing children His benefactions, His unsearchable riches, in three different ways, three that I know of. Maybe there are ways I don’t know about.

The three plain ones are, even I can find. They are, by direct, present bestowment. There are some things that God gives directly. Now, in this present age while we’re still on our feet, still alive, through conscious, still here in this veil of tears and life. By direct present bestowment God gives, for instance, forgiveness. He bestows forgiveness upon a believing child. He gives life to His believing children. Life is a present bestowment. It is not an inheritance to be received sometime in the future. It is a now, a present gift which we have. Have eternal life is in the past tense. He has it. He has it at the moment of belief.

We ask God to help us, to give us this, or do something for us or send us that. And the Lord mercifully does it and we make a great deal of it. But mostly those are trifling things and passing. But the great lasting gift of forgiveness, eternal life and sonship and reinstatement in favor with God; these are everlasting gifts.

Then God gives us sonship also. And we become sons; we are sons of God. And there are many other gifts which God now bestows upon His children. Either we have these, or we are not God’s children. And if we are God’s children then we do have these. Then also, there are countless little gifts made too much out of I think by God’s people, maybe, countless little gifts. What about the other times where God sends bread when you’re hungry and gives you jobs when you’re out of a job. Those are valuable and they’re not to be made light of. For anything that cometh down from God is good, but they’re certainly not as important as the others that we have mentioned. So, there are some gifts that you can now receive.

Then God has a second way of dispensing His blessing, and that is by giving it as a reward for approved service. This is too well known and too often taught for me to go into it much this morning. But the Bible is full of that. That the riches of God come in the nature of a reward. All belongs to God and there is no sense in which we can earn it. We talk about earning a reward, and I guess the word does occur there. But really, earning is not the word to use. It’s meeting a condition whereby and under which God can bestow blessing as a reward for meeting that condition. That’s about all there is to it. He said that blessed are you because you have been faithful in a few things. I will therefore make thee rule over others. And other places in the Bible, He talks about the rewards that He will give. Be thou faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life. These are the things that God bestows as a result of faithful loyal service, and they come in the future. They are not yet to be received.

Then there is that which specially we would note this morning, the benefactions that comes to us by inheritance. That is, they are also not to be received yet. But also, they are not the result of anything we do, any faithfulness that we may have or show. They are the result of a relationship coming from one who possesses to another, whom the one who possesses delights to honor, and who can establish his rightful claims.

That’s why we have courts and that’s why we have rules and that’s why they’re probate wills, because we must establish our right to an inheritance. An inheritance, I say, comes from one to another who has maintained a certain relationship, proper relationship toward the one who has. The one who has, gives to the one who has not. And the one who has not, receives from the one who has by virtue of a relationship which can be established, and or rightful claim which can be proved. Now, I repeat, that is not earned at present.

A boy may be very much of an ingrate and yet may easily prove his right to an inheritance, because the father delighted to honor him and made him his sole heir. He has written a will and it’s on record. And when he dies, it’s only a matter of going before the proper authorities and proving the right to that inheritance. It’s the right resulting from a relationship, not the result of goodness necessarily. So, there is an inheritance which belongs to the children of God by virtue of the fact that they are children of God. But I want you to know how upside down and backwards earthly things are.

Among men, a legacy comes upon the death of the testator, the death of the one who gives the legacy. But among the things of God and with God, the legacy comes upon the death of the legatee. That is, the person who inherits. That’s all confused enough without my confusing it anymore but let me stop and back off here and put it like this. That a man has a son, an only son. He makes that son of his, the wife we’ll say being dead, he makes that son of his sole heir. He makes a will giving everything he has to that son. But as long as the father lives, the will is not operative to the son. And one day the father dies. After the proper mourning time and the funeral, the son goes before the authorities and proves that he is the one who receives, and he gets because the father has died, and the will is become operative by a death.

Now, it’s exactly the other way around in the kingdom of God. The Father gives an inheritance to his children, but that inheritance does not come upon the death of God, but upon the death of the children of God or the coming of Christ. It adds up to the same thing. Paul knew about it and expected it. He expected his reward and wrote about it. He also wrote about the inheritance. He talked about being co-heirs with Christ.  So, God did not die though we sing when God, the Mighty Maker died, for man, the creature’s sin, in the book of Hebrews, does turn this around and make an illustration out of it there.

But as we’re looking at it this morning, the inheritance the Christian receives, he receives only by dying. So, I said, not only can a Christian die, but if we were as spiritual as we ought to be, we might look forward with a lot of pleasure today. And yet, if we are believers in the second advent of the Savior, we’ll be looking for that second advent. Common sense and the perspective of history and the testimony of the saints and reason and the Bible all agree with one voice to say, He may come before you die. But it’s nevertheless appointed unto man once to die. So, it’s entirely possible that the Christian may die before the Lord comes. If he does, he cannot only afford to, he would be better off for being so. Paul said, it’s far better that I go to be with the Lord. That’s far better. There’s a difference between being down here and being up there; is the difference between being good and far better.

The Christian’s future is before him. I’ll give you time to smile about that one. You say, there’s a bromide, a self-evident cliche if ever one was uttered. The Christian’s future is before him, and I assure you that is not a self-evident venality. It is rather a truth that we had better ponder, because for many Christians, their future is behind them. Their glory is behind them.

The only future they have is their past. They’re always lingering besides yesterday’s burned-out campfire. Their testimonies indicate it. Their outlook indicates it; uplook indicates it and their downcast look indicate it. Above all, their backward look indicates it. They always get an uneasy feeling when I get around a group of people who are discussing the glories of a day that is passed. They always sense a burnt-out campfire, the ashes of the day that once was and is no more.

The Christian’s future is before him, and we ought to keep that in mind. Not behind him, but before him. The whole direction of the Christian look is forward. Paul looked back a few times briefly. It’s perfectly proper that we should occasionally steal a quick happy look back to see where we’ve been and to remind ourselves of the goodness of God to us and to our problems. The soul of Paul was never set looking back. The soul of Paul was always facing forward.

Now there’s a little word, s-p-e-c-t and it has different forms, but there’s your word. And it comes from the Latin meaning to see or to look. And that little word s-p-e-c-t in common English has two prefixes in front of it. And your Christian life, the richness of it, the usefulness of it, the fruitfulness of it, will depend upon which prefix you attach to that word. Spect, meaning, see, we get it when we say our spectacles. Nobody does any more, but they used to, and other such words.

But the word, sees, see, see, all we see. Circumspect, look around, all around you. But there are two prefixes that I want to mention. You have one or you have the other clinging or hanging to your soul there. One word, retro, meaning, back, and, pro, meaning forward. Every town has its prospects. I have a new one. What does prospect mean? It means a forward outlook. What does retrospect? It means turning clear around and gazing the other way. It means standing at salute and looking at the setting sun. That’s retrospect. But spect you must do, brother. You’re looking somewhere. Even if you’re blind, you’re looking somewhere. Your soul has got to look somewhere. You can’t escape that any more than you can escape breathing. Any more than you can escape thinking.

Have you heard of the man who said that he knew that he could stop thinking. They argued with him and joshed and told him he couldn’t. He said, I can. So, he said, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going up here and sit down on this rock, and I’m determined, I’m not going to think of an elephant. There he sat on the rock. You know what he was thinking about all the time, he couldn’t help it.   Pachyderms, and many of them.

You can’t stop thinking and you can’t stop looking. Your soul is facing some direction as a Christian. The Bible says, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Lot’s wife looked back. I believe it’s historically true, but I believe that it is more than history. I believe that it is a brilliant object lesson. She looked the wrong way. And because she looked back, she turned to salt.

So, you are either retrospective or prospective in your outlook. You’re either looking back or you’re looking forward, and your future will depend a great deal of upon which way you look. I mean your future down here and perhaps even your future in the world to come. Let us put the word retro aside. Let us think of the past only when we have to. Paul said, forgetting the things that are where–behind? I press forward. There was his attitude. Occasionally, two or three times when he had it to do, he stood and pointed back and told of his conversion. That’s legitimate. But never get fixed in that direction. Never. Never get a sore neck from looking over your own shoulder. Never. Always look forward.

Satchel Page, the great Negro pitcher, said he never believed in looking back. Because he said there was always going to be something behind you. And so, he always looked forward. Maybe that’s why he’s still pitching big league baseball when he is nearly 50 because he has had the simple little philosophy of never looking back to wonder what that is breathing on his neck. Go ahead, God will take care of the fellow behind you.

Prospect is the word for you and me. Forward is the word. Look ahead. Expect something. For the Christians future is more glorious than his past. One moment of the Christian’s tomorrow will be more wonderful than all of the glories of his yesterdays. Methusaleh lived 969 years on earth. And yet, if he did die and I think he did die and go to be with God. One hour with God was more wonderful to him than 969 years living on the Earth. I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, for one day in thy courts is better than 1000 outside thy courts.

So, let us Christians look forward. Look forward with expectation and hope because we are begotten again unto an inheritance, and that inheritance comes from God our Father. It is ours by virtue of our relationship. There are other things that are to be rewarded. Some things that are present gifts, but the inheritance is ours because we are the children of God.

Therefore, cheer up and believe and hope and look forward with a most eloquent tongue. For the most exquisite poetry could never adequately paint for us the glories that are ours by the inheritance, by virtue of our sonship to God and our relation to Jesus Christ our Savior.

Father, we pray Thy blessing upon the Truth. We pray Thy blessing upon the service that follows. Let us, we pray Thee, think on heavenly riches and the blood that was shed. But the blood that is still shed, the blood that is now on the altar, the sacrifice, the priest, the lamb, and all that is now ours, until He comes. And open before us all the riches of His will and show us our inheritance which is ours in Christ Jesus. Graciously bless us as we wait upon Thee. We ask it in Christ’s name. Amen

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“The Kind of Christians we are or Should Be“

PDF DownloadDownload

The Kind of Christians we are or Should Be

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

February 14, 1954

Summary

A.W. Tozer emphasizes the importance of recognizing one’s identity as a Christian, as revealed in 1 Peter 2:9. Tozer warns against letting the world define who Christians are and encourages them to embrace their true identity as God’s chosen people. Tozer also discusses the identity and purpose of the royal priesthood as revealed in the Bible, highlighting that Christians are not just individuals but a new order of humans with a dual nature as both priests and a holy nation. Understanding one’s identity and purpose as a believer is crucial for resisting the devil and the world’s interest in self-discovery.

Message

In 1 Peter, second chapter, verses eight, nine and ten, Peter had been talking about certain ones to whom Jesus Christ was a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, who stumbled at the Word in their disobedience. Then he used that small but highly meaningful word, but, ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

One of the ancient moral teachers of the past, one who was very dear to the Christians of the first centuries owing to the fact that truth is all one piece, and if a thing is true, it is true anyway, so that, as the brother once told me, a bee can gather honey, not only from a flower but from a weed. So, the early Christian church by a kind of affinity, accepted one of those moral teachers not on the level of inspired truth, but sort of as a helpful side message. I refer to Epictetus.

And one of his doctrines was this. I give it to you as an illustration of what I’m to say to follow. And I give you only a running translation of it rather than an exact verbatim declaration. He said that the first thing about a man was that he was a human being, that that was first, that he was a man. And he said that you could discover what a man ought to be by discovering what the nature of the man is.

Just as you can pick up a hammer and, if you’re reasonably intelligent, and all my audience is, you could deduct what the hammer was for by holding it in your hand. You would know that that thing wasn’t shaped to saw a board off with or open a can of salmon. You would deduce from that that it was to be used to pound in nails. Or if you pick up a saw, and you would deduce from the shape of the saw that the nature of the saw, that it was not made to pound in nails, but to saw lumber.

So said the old man, we deduce from the nature of man, what kind of person or what kind of being he ought to be. And to be a man is the first responsibility of a human being. Then he said, having settled that, then we can know our duties. Now, that’s as far as he went. The Bible has little to say about duties, privileges in the Bible, but he said duty. And he said, we can know our duties by figuring what we are and what facets of our humanhood, our manhood, which way they turn. For instance, he said now, settling that you’re a human being, a man, and that your highest privilege and responsibility is to develop yourself as a human being.

Now again, following that, you can know what that development is by figuring your relationships. He said, first, you’re a son or a daughter. And the fact of sonship implies certain obligations and duties and responsibilities toward your parents. Then he said again, you’re a husband or a wife. And the fact of wifehood or husbandhood implies certain responsibility toward them. And the fact then that you’re a citizen implies certain responsibility toward the state; that you’re a father, certain responsibility toward your children and so on.

Now, that is not highly inspired. You can find that out if you just churn up a little of the gray matter that’s in your head. And somehow or other the church liked that and use to read that. Now, not I say on the level with inspired truth, but as a helpful thing as we read Benjamin Franklin or something. They liked it. Now with that as a little backdrop of illustration, let me point out to you here what Peter said. He said, you’re a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people.

Now, just as Epictetus says that the first thing is, you’re a man, and after that you figure out your responsibilities as a man. Peter says the first thing about you is you’re a Christian. He takes the manhood for granted, he begins where Epictetus ended and says, being born again, that we are born again or begotten again, he calls it, unto a living hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That’s in the opening part of the chapter. And in the latter part of the first chapter, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever.

He begins not with our basic humanhood. He begins with our basic Christianity, that we are born another time; that we’re now Christians. And he says now, we’ll take that for granted. Then he goes on to show that as Christians there are at least four, he certainly doesn’t give us all here, but he says, there are at least four facets to your nature and four relationships. There are four things that you are, just as Epictetus is man, is a husband, or a citizen, or both, or a father. Just as he has these various relationships, so as a Christian, you have various relationships; you are as a Christian, a number of things. And you can figure out your duty and your privileges by seeing what you are.

Let’s notice here, he said, now, as a Christian, you belong to a company which God calls a chosen generation. He applied all the terms of the Old Testament Israel to the New Testament Church, only he raised them up onto another level, and made them spiritual. Israel was called a chosen seed, and we even sing now, you chosen seed of Israel’s race, ye ransom from the fall. And Peter says, now you Christians have various facets to your nature. There are various things you are and one of them is you’re a chosen generation.

Now, that word generation there doesn’t mean descent in the sense that we mean it nor does it mean a time such as we say, this generation. But it means a breed, if you’ll allow that rather ugly word for such a wonderful thing as being born of God. It means a breed, a species. He says that you Christians are a chosen species. You are a new breed of human. We start with your humanity, but we go on to your new birth. And that constitutes you a new breed of humans, as completely different from the fallen race of Adam, as though you belonged on another world.

You are a chosen breed, a chosen generation of people. Now that’s what we are. And just as Epictetus’ man could figure out his responsibilities to the state by remembering that he’s a citizen, so we Christians can figure out our responsibilities somewhat, and privileges by remembering that we are a new breed of human. I know the world will laugh at that and they have good reason to laugh the way some of us act. We act very much like the old barnyard scrubs that we used to be. But God says that we are nevertheless a new, a chosen generation, a select generation.

Just as men select breeds and produce the finest, God has, not by building on Adam, but by rebirth from above, created a new generation of humans. And He said, now there’s your responsibility and there’s your privilege. That’s how you can figure out how you are to be; and what kind of person you are to be by remembering who you are. If God’s people only could remember who they were. We let the world tell us what we are. We let our government tell us what we are. To the world, we’re simply religious people. To our government, we’re taxpayers and voters. But God says that we’re more than that. We’re that, certainly, certainly we are.

We’re citizens. And as citizens, we vote. We pay taxes. We pay taxes anyway, whether we vote or not. But we are more than that we are a chosen generation; the real born-again Christian is. He belongs to a new school of humanity, a new level of humanity, a new breed of humanity, having been born from above and still being human. A twice-born human generation is what the Christians are. That ought to give us pause and ought to give us, as they say, food for thought, what kind of people we ought to be.

The priests of the Old Testament were not royal priests. The royal line was the Judah line, and the priestly line was the Levitical line. But the New Testament Christian is neither of Judah or Levi or Dan or any of the rest. He is of a new order of human, twice-born human, and one of his functions is to act as a priest. And because he’s born of royal seed, he’s a royal priest.

So now, if you will think of yourself like that and not let the world tell you what you are; not let the books on psychology tell you what you are but go to God’s word and find out what you are as a believing man and a Christian, a follower of Christ. You belong to a royal priesthood. And the priesthood now lies in the hands of the individual Christians. It is not an order of people apart. The church is the priesthood, and every Christian is his own priest. That’s very hard for some people to understand, that every Christian is a priest and not only a priest, but a royal priest. But he says more. He says, you’re also a royal priesthood.

Now, that was familiar to the Old Testament. They had a priesthood. Those who could, approached God, officially approached God for the people. They were the priests, and they came out of only one line. Not all could be priests, so even Jesus could not have been an Old Testament priest because He belonged to the line of Judah. And not only that, but they knew what a priesthood was. It consisted of certain orders of men, or an order of men, who offered sacrifices and made prayers and stood between God and the people as a priesthood.

But now he says, you are a priesthood; you Christians now are a priesthood. That’s the other facet of your nature. The other direction your life moves, you are priests, and not only priests, but you are royal priests. For that reason, we do not need the priests of the Old Testament temple. We do not need the priests of Buddhism nor the priests of the Catholic Church. We need no priests because we are ourselves priests. Priests don’t go to priests for help. We are our own priests. And we are constituted so by virtue of the fact that we belong to a new order of humans, a new breed of the human race. The old humans we are, but new humans we are also.

And the day will be when the old humanity shall pass away as the cocoon from the butterfly. And all that you are and that you spend so much money and time on and boast so about, all your old Adamic generation will pass off from you as a cocoon, and you will spring up into a new life with only the new part of you alive forevermore. And the old shall die and pass away. So, we are a new generation and a chosen one, but we are also a royal priesthood.

And then says the Scripture you’re a holy nation. The church is here thought of as a nation. That Jesus Christ as our Lord and King, and as Israel was a holy nation in the midst of the nations but not part of the nation. So, the church, the true Church of Christ is a holy nation, dwelling in the midst of the nations, but not part of the nation.

Now, if we think of ourselves like that, I recommend that you sit down sometime and think about what you are, just think about it. You say you don’t want to get interested in yourself. You’d better, because the devil is and the world is, so you’d better. And if you’re a believer in Christ, you’d better sit down and in the presence of God quietly think with the Scriptures open before you what you are. As a born-again man, what the different relationships are that you hold and what facets of your nature there are.

One of them is that you belong to a separated nation. Holy here has to do with ceremonially separated as well as morally pure. Just as Israel dwelt in the middle of the nations, part of the world, but not a part of the nations, so we now as a new priesthood, a royal priesthood, compose a nation, a new nation, a spiritual nation within the world.

They say that if you take a globe of the world and turn it so the most land area is visible, and the least water area so as the most land visible to you from where you sit. Right in the geographic center of that vast land area will be Palestine. God said in the midst of the earth, and He meant what He said.

And Israel was a nation apart, cut off to the south and to the north and to the east and to the west by carefully defined boundaries. And she lived a people apart in the midst of the nation; and her curse came when she forgot her holy, national status and began to intermarry and intermingle with the world around about her. Then God turned that same world loose on her, and her armies came in and destroyed her, so that Jerusalem alone, they say, was destroyed 70 times in history.

Now my friend, if you will think of, as a Christian, what you are, you belong to a holy nation. And you can’t afford to fuss with any of the nationals in this new race, this new priesthood, this new nation, you can’t afford to have anything at odds if you can get out of it with anybody. But love everybody and live in harmony so far as you’re able to do it with everybody, because we’re part of the nation and a holy nation, separated from the world. Christianity in our day doesn’t see this. We try to dovetail in and gear in and blend in; the sharp outlines are gone and there’s a cowardly blending.

God has stood the light on one side and said, let be light and on the other He said, let there be darkness. And he called the one day and the other night, and God has meant that division to be down the years. But we’re living now in an unholy twilight where there can be discovered very little from that wholly light and not too much that’s wholly dark. For even sin has taken some of the shining robes of Christianity and disguised its filthiness. But God’s people ought to see to it that they are what God says they are. We are what He says we are, a holy nation, a separated nation, living in the midst of the world, but absolutely apart from it.

And the fourth thing, Peter said was, a peculiar people. And of course, a peculiar people was the–peculiar was the old word 350 some years ago that was translated; peculiar meant queer. It means queer now, but then it meant a people for a position; they bought people, a purchased people. And that’s what it meant then. It doesn’t mean that now. Peculiar now, if a fellow does strange things they say he is peculiar. If he has, idiosyncrasies, I think is the word they use now, personality problems.

A queer man is a man with a personality problem. But that’s not what the Bible means. The Bible means by peculiar, a purchased people, and it was the term God used of Israel back in Deuteronomy 7. They were purchased by the blood of the sacrificial lamb and brought out a peculiar people taken unto God Himself. And that’s what Christians are.

The world says you bigoted people full of pride. Who do you think you are that you should claim to be the people of God in any particular sense? Isn’t God the Father of all men? The answer is no. Don’t try to apologize. Just say no. Don’t quote four or five authorities and soften it down. Just say no, because you know that God is not the Father of all people. He’s the Father of such as believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And He takes this new breed of people, this born from above breed that constitutes a royal priesthood and a chosen generation and a peculiar people; He takes them unto Himself in a way that the peoples of the world are never taken.

You have a perfect right to stand on God’s truth on that. And if they say, who do you think you are? Why you say, I know who I am by the mercy of God, because He says, that which in time past were not a people, but now are the people of God, which had not obtained mercy but now have attained mercy. Verse ten, you can write in the back of your wallet or engrave it on the tablets of your heart, because this is yours if you’re a true Christian. In time past you were not a royal, a chosen, a holy people, but now are the people of God, which had not attained mercy, but now have attained mercy.

So, we Christians, this Communion Sunday morning, ought to think of ourselves as being what God says we are. We ought not to let false modesty or doubts, or unbelief prevent us from accepting God’s appraisal of us and putting ourselves in faith and humility where God puts us. And if we’re not there we can get there. For the door of mercy stands wide open for all that will come.

A people for His own possession, a peculiar, a marked-off people, constituting a nation apart of priests, royal priests, rising out of this new thing which is born in the midst of the earth, the church. Father, we pray Thy blessing upon this Word.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“Let There Be No Apology for Choosing Christ“

PDF DownloadDownload

Let There Be No Apology for Choosing Christ

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 16, 1956

Summary

A.W. Tozer emphasizes the transformative power of God’s love, citing Paul’s intense affection for God as an example. He argues that Christianity is not just about personal salvation or ethical teachings, but about bringing God into human life. Mr. Tozer says we need to prioritize eternal life over temporal pleasures, emphasizing the importance of making the right choice in life and standing firm in one’s beliefs without apology. He encourages listeners to embrace their faith and spread the gospel, rather than feeling sorry for those who are not saved.

Message

In the Book of Romans, the first chapter, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God; the Gospel which He had promised before by His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations, for His name. Fourteen, I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. So as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.

Then, linking that with a very famous testimony, or statement, the man made in the sixth chapter of Galatians where he says, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. And verse 17: From henceforth, let no man trouble me. For I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.

Now hear these latter words particularly, and in all that I have read is the testimony of a transformed man. Here is not the weak alibi of a failure, but the bold assertion of a triumphant spirit. He felt and he knew the power of the Christian message. And so, he taught and testified out of his own victorious heart. It was this probably more than any other thing except the power of the Spirit within him which made his words so heavy, so freighted as they have come down to us through the years. He felt and he knew the power of the Christian message and he taught out of his own victorious heart.

Now, he said in that first chapter, that he was separated unto the gospel of God. And here, he didn’t bother to mention what he was separated from. And in this, he stood on firmer ground than many do today who talk about nothing but what they’re separated from. Now to him, what he was separated from was incidental. And what he was separated unto is fundamental. Though he did when occasion called and two or three times tell the other side of the story when it became necessary, that he was separated from Pharisaism and sin. But he said in his famous treatise that he was separated unto the gospel of God.

Now what was it that captivated this man, almost transported him? For he was a transformed man. Well, at bottom, it wasn’t a thing at all. It wasn’t even an idea. I run into people that are very much lifted up by ideas; a great idea strikes them, and they’ll come all brimming over with an idea. They will write me. They have gotten a new idea. They say, I saw in verse so and so in the Greek, such and such, and it’s just transformed me. It’s a wonderful idea. Well, Paul was there ahead of them. For every idea that any man has today, Paul had twelve. But nevertheless, it was not an idea that transported and captivated the man Paul, it was a Person, concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

And here we find in the man Paul, a man permanently in love. This man was a big man with titanic powers of soul, all set and fixed upon God and His Son; inveterately fixed so that there was no changing it, no backing out from him. He was an inveterate lover of God. He was fixed in his great mighty affection for God, for the Son of God, for the gospel of God. And he knew what he liked bordering on entrancement. He said, the love of Christ constraineth me. And every translator has trouble with the word, constraineth me. It seems he had in mind that he had within him a volcanic heat and that he was swept away like a forest fire or forest before a tempest. He was unable to control himself because of the entrancement of his soul. There’s no question about it, my friends, this man was an intense man. He was not only transformed morally, but he was transported. He was captivated. He was swept along emotionally.

And to break it down now a little, he stood, this man, at the focal point of all prophetic light, and this prophetic light converged upon Jesus Christ our Lord. And all the prophets in the Holy Scriptures looked down. And it was the Eternal Son here, the seed of David by natural descent certainly, but the Son of God proved triumphant by the Holy Spirit who raised Him from the dead. And so here we have revealed in this first of Romans, in glowing incandescence, all the wrath of God. For the gospel reveals the wrath of God and all the righteousness of God. For the gospel reveals the method by which man is made righteous again in the sight of God and the grace of God and the salvation of God and the forgiveness of God.

So Christianity has to do with God. That’s what we learn from the man, Paul. We learn it from Abraham and David and then the rest, but we learn it more particularly from the man, Paul, that Christianity has to do with God. Christianity engages to bring God into human life. That’s what the church is about. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what all those steeples are about and all those cathedrals and all those temples and all those chapels and all those tabernacles. That’s what it’s all about. That’s why there are translations of Scripture. That’s why we have hymn books. And that’s why we have Christian literature. That’s why we have Bible schools.

Christianity has to do with God. It engages to bring God, I repeat, into human life. To make men right with God and to give them a knowledge of God and to bring them to love and obey God, and to perfect in them finally, the image of God. That’s what Christianity is about and that’s what it’s for. And so, after having said all this, in that first chapter of Romans. I think actually, that chronologically, Romans comes after Galatians. But as the Holy Ghost put it down here, we have it in Romans 1.

And then in Galatians, Paul said, from henceforth, let no man bother me. I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Here was a man, either a man who had seen God and was speaking out of what he had seen, or here was one of the most arrogant and bigoted men that ever lived. You can always tell the nature of a fountain by the character of the stream that flows out of it. And if you’re not able to go to the fountain, you only have to look at the stream. We cannot go back to Paul’s time and decide whether this expression, this bold expression, from henceforth, let no man bother me. I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Either I say, written by an arrogant bigot, or an insighted mystic. Either a man who saw the vision glorious, or a man who simply was churlish and said, let me all alone.

Well, that was the founder now to which this expression flowed. And I say we can’t go back to Paul now. But all we have to do is to look at the nature of the stream that flowed out of that fountain down the years. It has been the 13 epistles of Paul and the influence of the man on the world. It has been like the river that flowed out from under the throne in the book of Ezekiel, every word went, things lived. And wherever that water of the influence of the man Paul went, heathen threw their idols away and dying men smiled and whispered a prayer, and poor widows managed to sing over their toils. And those who once lived in the depths of vicious and vileness now become saintly men and women who live pure lives and walk with God.

Therefore, I conclude as any sane man must conclude, that when Paul said, from henceforth, let no man bother me. I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus, here was not the churlish word of a man who was tired of life, but here was the bold word of a transformed man, a man who had seen the Vision Glorious. He said in Galatians, elsewhere, I am crucified with Christ, and here in this chapter he said, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ, by which I’m crucified unto the world and the world unto me.

And this man then, with the crucified marks of the cross upon him said, don’t bother me anymore. It’s all settled with me. This man had no fears and no inhibitions and no regrets and no apology, nothing to offer. No, crawling under a seat and wrote no letters of apology for his Christian faith. He said, I have no fears and I have no inhibitions. I’m a free man. I’m a called apostle, called unto the gospel which has to do with His Son, who was made of the seed of David and declared to be the Son of God. And who sends out a message which is the power of God unto salvation, and I want to come to Rome to preach to you.

And he said to the Galatians now, let me alone, let me alone. Judaizers have tried to get me down and the Manakeons have tried to get me down, and the rest of them have tried it, but let me alone. I’ve made up my mind. The business of the church is God and I’m in that business. That’s why I’m here on the earth said the man of God in effect. The business of the church is God, and the business of this church is God. This church and any church is purest when it’s most engaged with God, and it’s astray just as it’s engaged with lesser things.

Remember, there are less lesser things which are perhaps legitimate things, in that they are not sins. But just as the emphasis falls upon them, the power of the church diminishes and just as the emphasis falls upon God and His Son and the gospel of His Son and upon the Holy Ghost and grace and forgiveness and apostleship, the power of God rises in that church. Upon social activities divorced from God, I say, she’s astray when she engages in these things. She’s astray when she engages in philosophical pursuits. She’s astray when she’s engaged in any good for its own sake, however good it may be for its own sake. You know the difference that has been pointed out.

I don’t know really whether I pointed it out for myself or whether I read it, but I’ve noticed it, that there were two great men who wrote great poetry. One of them was called William Woodsworth. One of them was called King David. And the difference was marked, but the similarities were many. Both of them loved the snow on top of the mountain. Both of them loved the green of the evergreen trees there on the mountain and on the hill. Both of them loved the song of the bird in the bushes. Both of them looked at the clouds and the blue sky and watched the stars at night. Both of them listened to the waterfall blowing their trumpet in the tempest. Both of them watched nature and wrote about it. But Woodsworth went to nature and then tried to go to God through nature. But David went straight to God and then looked down. There was a difference. And that’s why we never sing Woodsworth on a Sunday morning.

And Woodsworth was an enraptured mystic, a lover of the world, that is, of the good world; a lover of mountains and hills and buttercups and butterflies and daffodils and all that’s lovely and beautiful. And I don’t mind telling you that I read Woodsworth probably as much as any other writer except the sacred Scriptures. So, I know what I’m talking about, and I love to hear him. My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky, so was it when my life began. So is it now that I’m a man. So may it ever be or let me die. Well, all that you can quote. Up with me, up with me into the clouds for thy song Lark is strong. It’s all beautiful. But he began on the earth and looked up, David went up and looked down. And there’s the difference, my brethren.

And so the business of the church is God. The business of the church; we begin with God through His Son, Jesus Christ, of whom all the prophets did write. And then, when we’re in God and for the sake of God, then we can look out and see all the lovely things, and we can enjoy them. But art for its own sake, divorced from God, is as dangerous as dynamite. And music for its own sake, divorced from God, can make the most selfish breed of people in all the wide world. And culture for its own sake, divorced from God can make a breed of snobs whose nose are permanently elevated.

And so with every other good things: ports and travels and all the rest that humanity engages in which are certainly far from being sinful, they can nevertheless become harmful if God is not first. The business of the church is God. And whatever art and whatever music and whatever culture and whatever beauty there may be, is only offered on the altar as a sacrifice to God. That’s why we sing David instead of Woodsworth. That’s why when men die, they whisper, The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. They do not whisper, it is a beauteous evening, calm and free, the holy time is quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration, the broad sun is sinking in its tranquility. That’s lovely, too, but we don’t sing that while we’re dying. We don’t whisper that when death comes to our throats. We whisper rather: Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name. David began with God and looked down. Woodsworth began with man and looked up, and there is the difference.

And so, there’s the difference out there in the world, that cultured world, that that good world, that world that’s good and strong and fine. And don’t imagine, please, that the whole world is rotten cores. I suppose in the eyes of God, it may be, but there’s a lot that’s fine in the world, a lot that’s good in the world. There are groups of honest people trying to be good. Busy women who never have met God, but who spend their afternoons rolling bandages and PTA meetings and its civic meetings, trying to better the neighborhood, and it’s all good. But my brethren, the business of the church is way above all that. The business of the church is God. And if we have first met God and have settled everything with God and we live for God, then of course we can do these other things. Paul said, from henceforth, let no man trouble me. And I wonder if we Christians have got to apologize.

This is the most apologetic time in the history of the world I suppose the time when Christians are trying to please everybody. Do you know what my business is? My business is to walk with those who walk with God. And that’s your business to walk with those who walk with God. And that is the business of Christianity and the business of the church and the business of all churches, to walk with those who walk with God. Do we Christians have to apologize that we’ve chosen our field of interest? I’ve chosen mine. David chose his. Paul chose his. And lesser likes, like you and me down the years, have chosen our field of interest.

And must we now apologize to the world for having chosen it? The world has chosen theirs, each one in his own way. And these interests all perish and crumble like snow before a blazing sun. But we have chosen that which cannot perish. Must we, I say, apologize that we’ve chosen eternity instead of time? For I deliberately and purposefully have. The clock on the wall is no master of mine. And the sun as it rises in the east and hurryeth away as David said it did to set in the West, is no Lord of my life nor boss of me. And the calendars as we pull the sheets off month after month and watch it get smaller, and though a year, yes, less to live. And yet, we’ve chosen eternity.

And I wonder whether we’ve got to apologize. The man Paul didn’t. He had no fears, no inhibitions, no apologies and no regrets. And he stood out boldly, this enraptured man, this entranced man, who was swept before the love of God in Christ, until it was like a cyclone roaring through a forest, bending him as the wind; the strong wind bends a great tree. Not breaking him but bending him in the direction of heaven.

I have seen on the shores of the ocean, the great trees that have grown there. I’ve seen them even inland. I’ve seen trees that have stood maybe for half a century or longer. And you know the prevailing wind, whether it’s north, south, east or west. And you know how you know it? Look at the trees. The trees have, if it’s in a wind-swept area where the wind can get to it, you’ve seen it down here in the dunes, off the lake, you’ve seen the trees all bent in one direction. They’re deformed we say, but they have bent to the wind.

And the man of God bent to the tempestuous love of God; and it bends him in that direction. And instead of being symmetrical and well-balanced as men say and taking a little of this world and a little of that world and a little of God and a little of the earth, instead of trying to balance himself up after the Greek stoic order, the man Paul said, I bend only before one breeze and that is the tempestuous love of God that sweeps me. And when Paul lived, he lived bent in the direction of heaven. And when he died, he didn’t have far to fall. For he was on his way by the love of God that constrained him.

And I want to know if we have to apologize because we’ve chosen heaven instead of earth. There are many men who have chosen earth, many men. I have known men who when they’re very old, still we’re eager for more property, eager to get their hands on another dollar, eager that they might get by inheritance or by hook or crook, this piece of property.

Ah, my friends, as Emerson said, men can steer their plow down the farrow, but they can’t steer their feet wide of the grave. The same man who in his 60s or 70s, or his 80s, will still with knarled, but eager hands grasp property that he should throw to the wind and get free. That man may still love the earth, and he’s chosen it; he’s chosen the red clays, he’s chosen it. And he lets it filter through his fingers like gold. It his. His sit-fast acres as the poet called them. They’re there when he returns from his trips abroad. Ah, you and I have chosen heaven instead of earth and they don’t like it. They say we’re not properly educated, or we’d be more balanced, and I wonder.

If we’re going to have to apologize that we’ve chosen to follow Christ. We’ve chosen to follow Jesus. Like the man of God we say, let me alone. I’ve chosen to follow Jesus, neighbor. You won’t come my way and you won’t believe in my Savior, and you won’t give an hour of your time Sunday morning to my church, and you won’t give a dime of your money to my Missionary Society, and you won’t attend my prayer meeting and you won’t walk with me to the house of God, neighbor.

Well, what right have you to complain? Have I injured you? Have I taken a thing that belongs to you because I’m a Christian. Have I taken anything that yours? Have I pushed you out and taking your property? I have chosen to follow Jesus, but whom have I injured? Who, I want to ask you is it that can rise and say, you’re a Christian and he has injured me? No man who follows Jesus injures another. Who was it that could rise and say, Peter injured me. John harmed me. Luke did me wrong and Paul wronged me, because his Christianity, his religion, his so called cross and his Jesus caused him to harm me. No, my brother, let no man bother me.

I have chosen to follow Jesus and my choice to follow Jesus never robbed my brothers. I had two, and I took nothing from my brothers. I had three sisters, and I followed Jesus, and I took not a dime from my sisters. I followed Jesus as a lad, and I took not a cent from my mother and father. But later in life, I did help to support them a little. And I followed Jesus and I’ve not robbed my family. And we’ve had seven children, and not one of them can get up and say, Dad’s Christianity has made him hard to live with and has made him tight and it’s been all bad in our home because of His Christ. If there’s been anything hard in the home it’s been because of an unsanctified nature, maybe. It’s because of the grave clothes yet that weren’t stripped away from this man who’s alive in God who heard the voice say, Lazarus come forth and I came. But it’s not my Savior that made me hard to live with. The only reason as I’ve said before anybody can live with me is my Savior.

Are we to apologize and I say that we’ve chosen to see good and not evil all the days of our lives. We have chosen to hate the evil and love the good. All the days of our lives? Must we stand before the world to learn it well, the philosophic world, the aesthetic world, the art world? Must we stand and apologize that we’ve chosen to live so that we dare die? And men are living so they don’t dare die.

I take advantage of every opportunity I can take. I have a little radio I bought for my wife and wore it out and she bought me another one. But I listen to the to the FM from the colleges; listen to the debates and the interviews and the talks. I listen to learned men, an invitation to learning and all that stuff. And I listen to these great men talk. Men who know more than I’ll ever know; were more learned than I’ll ever be. But when they’re through, I flip the switch and turn over in bed and say thank God, I have made my choice. I’ve made my choice to seek good and not evil, to do good and not bad all the days of my life. I’ve made my choice to live so I dare die. And these men can talk about Russian writers and French writers and Spanish writers. They can talk about Dali’s art and somebody else’s philosophy, but they don’t dare die.

Voltaire, the great French rationalist, that great mind, for he had a great mind. When he was born, he was a seven-month skinny baby with a great skull and a frail body. And when he was delivered, they tossed him out on the table and said he’ll die and took care of the mother. But he fooled them. Voltaire, with his long French name, but he’s known as Voltaire. Voltaire was a mighty mind, one of the dozen mightiest minds that ever lived in all the wide world. How I managed to read him as I did as a lad and still not turn atheist, I don’t know but I came through, that I got the benefit of what he had to teach. And God Almighty saved me from the evil that’s contained in his books.

But anyway, when he was dying, he asked to be baptized into this church that he had poked fun at for a lifetime. So, they sprinkled some water on him. This man who wrote his philosophical dictionary, and beginning with A went to Z and laughed uproariously. And the whole civilized world laughed with him at religion and philosophy. But when he came to die, he said, I want to be baptized in the Catholic Church. So, they baptized him in the Catholic Church. Then, lest they think that he did really become a Christian, he winked and said, if I were a Hindu, I’d want to die ahold of a cow’s tail. So, he said, I might as well to get baptized into the Catholic Church and so they’ll bury me on holy grounds than throw me out in the bushes. But he didn’t dare die. All of his wisdom and brains couldn’t fit him for that last and dreadful hour. And for that great and terrible day when God shall shake all things, the Christian has chosen to live so he can die; and die so we can live again.

Go on world, don’t bother us. Go on, sin lovers, don’t bother us. We know where we came from. We know where we’re going. We know Who’s with us. We know Who redeemed us. Millions have chosen the opposite. They’ve chosen earth instead of heaven. They’ve chosen bad instead of good. They’ve chosen to live like fools. You’re sick sometimes, sick.

Did you read, and if anyone is connected with that or related to it even remotely should be here, you’ll pardon this for I don’t know anybody connected with it. Down Union Avenue only a few blocks the other night in a thickly populated area, a 21-year-old young fellow driving an automobile with eight others with him. There had been nine, but they had let one girl off. He was taking them home. Seventy miles an hour on Union Avenue. Can you imagine? Chicken, they say, chicken? Are you afraid of it–chicken HA HA HA, and then, bang, and death. And they carried the young lad away, a young lad with an Irish name. Perhaps his old Irish parents may have told beads for him from the time he was born. No doubt now are saying mass. But he died as a fool. Man, you can’t afford to die as a fool dies. You only die one time, unless you miss the glory and then you die again out yonder in the tomorrow. For this said the Holy Ghost is the second death.

Now, we of this Christian company say to the world, don’t bother us. We don’t have the crowds. We don’t have the prestige of some places. We say to the devil, let us alone. We don’t have what they have in some places, but we know what we believe, and we know Whom we have trusted and we’re going our way. And we’ve seen heaven open, and our eyes have had visions of God. And though like Ezekiel, we’ve got to sit and watch our people melt away from us. And though like Elijah, we’ve got to stand by the book and watch it dry up. And though like Jeremiah, we’ve got to be put down in the muddy pit for our testimony’s sake. Don’t pity us.

Pity the blind who’ve never seen heaven open. Pity the deaf who’ve never heard the sweet voice of Jesus call them home. Pity the imprisoned who were born in jail and live in jail and die in jail and go to a worse one and an eternally permanent. Pity them if you will. As Jesus walked toward the cross, the bloody, fly-infested cross, a woman shouted out something of pity, pity. And He said in effect, don’t pity me. But pity these around about me. Pity yourself, pity. He said, if you want to pity people, pity those who aren’t going out to die. Don’t pity the ones who are going out to die.

And so, pity the blind if you will; pity the deaf. Pity those whose souls are weighed down with the cares of this world, but don’t pity the Christian. We walk with those who walk with God. We’ve read the book. We know what we’ve done. Separated under the gospel of God, the gospel which concerns His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David by the flesh, but declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, and we’re not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

You young people, you have reason to be ashamed of nothing but your shame. You have no apologies to make. You ought to be free, free as a bird to sing and soar. Free inside your hearts. For if you could say, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Christ, then you can say, let nobody bother me. Don’t try to influence me. Don’t try to get in my way. Get out of my way as the old hymn says, ye fearful saints for I am going home. Get out of the way.

I’ve seen a few times in my life conviction for sin and a desire for God to be on people so strong, they never waited to push through into the aisles at all they came right over the seats. I’ve seen that happen. And the child of God, he has to walk over the shoulders of mankind if he has to. If he has to break his way through and like Bartimaeus, cry all the louder, God have mercy on me. Let him do it. It’s well worth his trouble, well worth his time. But we have chosen the way. We’ve got the marks of Jesus upon us. God bless you.

I’m going to let you go a little early tonight and have deliberately shortened my sermon, but I think I’ve said as much as if I had leaned back and talked 20 minutes longer. God bless you. Go out into the hard, busy world tomorrow. Go back to school, back to the shop, back to the factory and back to the office. And around you, it’ll be real reek with tobacco smoke, and they will be whispering dirty stories two desks down. But you know where you’re going and you know Who you’re following and you know Whose name you’ve written across your heart in blood.

And when they try to win you to their way, to their Christmas parties or to some other fool thing, you say, let from henceforth, let nobody bother me. I know where I’m going. I bear in my heart the brand marks of the man Christ Jesus and I don’t want your pity. I know where I will be Christmas Eve, and I’ll know where I’ll be the Sunday before Christmas Eve. Thank you, but I know where I’ll be. And if in pursuance of your honest toil or your occupation or profession, you must sometimes sit where liquor is served, drink your water and let them smile. They’ll turn to you in that day when the dark shadows fall and the gurgle comes into their throats and they’ll whisper hoarsely, send for so and so to pray for me. But the name they name will not be the man who drank liquor by their side, but the man who refused.

So take your stand; and we’re Christians here and this church is and we know where we’re going and we know Whom we believe and we know where we stand. And though the whole thing crumbles around us and the world goes to pieces, we still have our eyes on Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God who beareth our sins and frees us from the accursed load. Amen and amen.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“Seven Miracles of Israel“

PDF DownloadDownload

Seven Miracles of Israel

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 27, 1958

Summary

A.W. Tozer explores the seven miracles of Israel and their significance for the church and nations. He emphasizes God’s power and sovereignty, and highlights the supernatural nature of these events and their far-reaching consequences. Mr. Tozer also discusses the miraculous preservation of Israel as a nation, despite being scattered among the nations for nearly 2000 years, and the future of Israel in God’s plan. He emphasizes God’s unwavering promises to restore Israel to world primacy, and highlights the gathering of the Jewish people, their repentance, and the eternal plans of God to save and restore both Israel and the church.

Message

The incurable propensity to change which is found in society everywhere, is also found, I regret to say in the churches, and even among gospel churches. Twenty-five years ago, you couldn’t have attended a gospel church one month without hearing at least three or four sermons on prophecy, but you can attend a gospel church now for a year, or two years, and not hear a sermon on prophecy. I felt that I wanted to talk to you tonight on a prophetic theme. I gave this talk one time to the congregation, what did they call it, the World Conference of Jewish Christians, and I never preached it here, never gave it. I might have referred to it but I never gave it. So, I thought that I would give this word to you tonight, the Seven Miracles of Israel and fulfill my duty and take the privilege of preaching prophecy tonight.

In the first of Luke, 30th, and following, the angel said unto Mary, fear not Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom, there shall be no end. I want to explain what I mean by the seven miracles of Israel.

First, what I mean by a miracle. I mean, an effect without an adequate natural cause. Whatever is an effect, is caused by something. And if the cause is not natural, then it’s supernatural. And if it’s supernatural, we usually say it is a miracle. A miracle is something which would not occur in the course of natural events. And though this miracle is projected into nature, it is not a product of nature. It is not part of it.

A flower growing on a bush, a fruit on a tree. Those are not miracles unless you want to be very poetic about it. They come in the course of nature. It is God working through His natural laws and you can trace those natural laws and predict what will happen by those laws. But a miracle is an act of God wrought in creation, independent of nature, not always apart from it, but certainly independent of it. Not contrary to the laws of nature, but certainly superior to them.

Now that’s what I mean by a miracle. And what I mean by seven miracles of Israel is, not miracles wrought by Israel. For Israel never wrought any miracles and neither did anybody else, but miracles wrought by God for Israel. And certainly, the miracles which God wrought for Israel could not be limited to seven at all, because the Old Testament tells us of many, many more. But I select seven major ones which were critically significant for the human race. And now I want to give them to you and in the doing of it, we will raise our telescope down the centuries somewhat and remind you that know, and teach you that do not know, what the plan of God is for the future for Israel, but certainly also for the church and for the nations.

Now, the first great and notable miracle that God wrought was the birth of Isaac. Now God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees and said, get thee out unto a land which I will show thee. But he didn’t say, I’m going to do anything miraculous. I’m simply going to lead you and you won’t know the way and I’ll do the leading. There’s no miracle there. And God gave him the promise that he should have a son, and that through that son, there should come the Messiah who should redeem the world. In thee, all nations shall be blessed. And there was not necessarily a miracle there.

But in the fulfillment of that promise to Abraham, God lifted it out of the natural and made a miracle out of it. Because you see, Sarah was 90 years old, and Abraham was 100, about 100. And it says, Sarah received strength to conceive when she was past age. And out of Abraham’s sprang of one, and him as good as dead, as many as the stars of the the heavens or the sands by the seashore in multitude. This was a miracle.

Isaac was an effect without a natural cause. That is, it couldn’t have happened, but it did. And there wasn’t any way to explain it in nature. It had to be the intervention, an act of God. And though that intervention did not make it unnatural, it made it supernatural, which is quite another thing. And thus, all that followed, sprang out of this one notable miracle: Isaac born of this old couple. Now there’s the basic miracle, which was wrought by God for the nation we call Israel.

The second great miracle of Israel was the deliverance from Egypt. Now, you know the story, but we’ll sketch it; that Israel had been in Egypt for 400 long years and all the high purposes of God for her apparently were shipwrecked. It looked as if there was nothing that could be done. For 400 years, she had been down there in Egypt; slavery, she was in deep slavery and not in chains, but worse than in chains, there was no place to escape to. And slave drivers drove her men day and night, the old and the young, to make bricks without straw.

Then God sent a man, Moses, and the saving of Moses from the destructive tyranny of Pharaoh. While it was a most wonderful and notable thing, it was not a miracle. You see, it wasn’t a miracle, it was a providential arrangement of God, that the mother took her little boy, Moses, when she couldn’t keep him any longer. And she put him in a basket and calked up the basket with some kind of gum so it wouldn’t sink and put him in the river.

And the daughter of Pharaoh came along, going down to swim in the river. And just as she arrived, the little baby cried. He hadn’t evidently been crying before, it might not have been, but he cried just on time. And she took him and took him to her mother, back to the home. And she said, I found this little fellow in the river, and I would like to keep him and you can’t deny anything to a princess. So, they said, all right, you keep him. But how will we feed him? And about that time the mother of the baby appears and modestly suggests that she would like to nurse him, and she could. She was the mother, and she only had the baby away from her a day or two or less than that.

So, that wonderful set of circumstances, little Moses got his mother back, and mother got Moses back. And that was worked out beautifully, but there was no miracle there, because it was not above nature. It was not a supernatural. It was a natural set of circumstances, providentially worked out by the omniscient and omnipotent God.

Now, God sent his man when this little boy, but had such an inauspicious beginning. This little boy, when he grew to be a man, he was brought up in Pharaoh’s house and was educated as a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, which made him of course, I suppose, grandson of the Pharaoh. And then this man, Moses turned on that idolatrous nation, even turned on the nation that had been good to him. But he wasn’t willing to be selfish about it.

And though the nation had been good to him, he was a Jew, and he knew it all. I think his mother whispered it in his little pink ear long, long before he’d ever come up to the age of the teens; while he was still a lad, she whispered, Moses, I have something to tell you, something that will be so wonderful, you won’t believe it. But you are a descendant of the fathers: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And in you and in all of us, in the Jew, God is going to bless the whole world. Well, Moses remembered that, and then he noticed that Pharaoh and his people, Egyptians, or his people as it looked, he noticed that they were terribly oppressing the Jews. And he turned on that idolatrous nation.

And God revealed His choice of and His love for Israel, and He revealed His name Jehovah. He said, I have appeared unto Abraham, not by my name, Jehovah, but I now appear unto you by My name, Jehovah. And so, God met and defeated the gods of Egypt. And this deliverance was a wonder and a sign. It was done in such a manner that it could not have been done by merely a slick arrangement. It was beyond the possibility of mere providential arrangement of circumstance, it took a miracle indeed.

And this deliverance was so wonderful, that afterward, through all the rest of the Bible, God kept saying, I’m Jehovah which gathered Israel out of Egypt and took them into the Promised Land. And through this, God got fame in all the world to this day. And to this day, Jehovah, who brought the children of Israel by a kind of miracle, out of Egypt, bear them on eagle’s wings and brought them unto Himself. To this day, God gets glory from that great event. And it was so and such that it could not have been done. An unarmed nation of about a million people, could not by any stretch of the imagination have arisen against a solid nation such as Egypt, a kind of Russia of its day, and have thrown off the yoke and walked out free, and yet they did it. That was the second great miracle of Israel.

The third one was the giving of the law. I sometimes go back to the 19th and 20th chapter of Exodus just for what it will do for me, for my own soul. Now, there were law givers, you know, and many of them, but this giving of the law to Moses, it was not properly the law of Moses. It was the law given to Moses. But with our usual way of associating names, we call it the law of Moses. It was the law of God given to Moses. There on the mountain, that awesome, terrible, glorious scene that is pictured there, the tall mountain, the cloud and the fire and the smoke and the blackness and the darkness and the tempest and the sound of trumpets and the voice of words and the mediation of angels, and Moses cowering among the rock saying, I exceeding fear and tremble. And there came the law.

Now, I have read the law of Lycurgus. And we know in some degree, the laws of Solon. We know something of our laws of our own land, British laws and Roman laws. And this is not to talk down any of the great works of the legal works, the great works of law that had been given to nations. But I think it could be said, and no one would argue otherwise, that there on that mountain, that trembling mountain with that trembling man on it, there in the fiery, lurid darkness, there was given the loftiest instrument that ever has been read by mankind, the most perfect moral code ever known in all the world.

And God said, hear O Israel, the Lord God is One Lord. And thus, a law was given a law and a law of love, and this was a miracle. Now, there was something supernatural about all this. For God to come down and take His finger and write it on the rocks. That was a miracle. And so the giving of the Law was the third of the great miracles which God wrought for Israel.

Well, you know the long, sad, checkered winding history of the nation we call Israel. You know how tragically they broke their own law which God had given to them in such dramatic and marvelous manner. But in all during the writings of the Prophets and Moses himself indeed, and the other prophets, there was the story told that there would be a Coming One who would redeem Israel from the broken law and then restore her again. And Isaiah, the man of God, called Him when He was to come, a root out of the dry ground.

Now, everybody knows that you can’t make a root or a seed grow in a dry ground. They will grow a little bit in a ground that is not very moist. But if it’s entirely dry, they won’t grow at all. It takes moisture to create and start the process of germination that makes a root grow. Now, in Israel for more than 400 years, there had been no prophet. There had been no oracle. There had been no king. And the 10 tribes were lost to history and Israel was under occupation.

And here was Israel in Palestine under occupation of the Romans, and her religion had degenerated and sunk to such a terrible low that it could only be said to be morally and spiritually, dry ground. If you had been looking for the Messiah to appear, if somebody in the Far East had known that there was a king to be born, they would not have hunted up Israel. Indeed, they did not come to Israel, because these wise men had picked Israel out as the place where our Messiah should be born. They came to Israel because they had seen a star in the east and had followed that star, something of a miracle itself.

Israel was the last nation. If you had said, is it possible that Greece might produce a savior? Why, the worldly-wise man would have said, well, they certainly have the civilization to do it, and they have the size. If you had asked, will Rome produce a savior? You might have said, well, I could see where Rome with all her learning and her arch might have done it. If you had said, could Assyria, could China, or named any of the great nations of the world, you might have looked there for the Messiah.

But you wouldn’t have looked at a little nation. With only a few million people in it, and they under occupation with no king and with no prophet and with no real leaders of any kind; their religion hardened up and dried so, that it was like powdered ground, powdered earth. You would have said, no, it’s impossible; 200 300 500 years ago, we might have said the Messiah will be born to Israel, but no more. Israel is like Sarah. She is long, long past the time when she might bring forth a Messiah.

And then suddenly, like spring coming in mid-January, there was the miracle which Paul called the mystery of godliness. That star which Balaam had seen shine on Israel, and that savior which David had seen, and that Isaiah had prophesied about, suddenly He appeared. He shouldn’t have, but he did. He couldn’t have. but he did. Born of a virgin, without human father, this was the fourth of the great miracles which God did for the nation of Israel.

And then the fifth one that I want to mention, is the preservation of Israel among the nations. Now, in Deuteronomy, it tells us how God is going to scatter them. He says, And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from one end of the earth even unto the other. And there thou shalt serve other gods which neither thou nor thy fathers knew. And this 28th of Deuteronomy, tells the long, detailed, gloomy, bitter story of the dispersion, the scattering among all the nations of the world. And God did exactly what He said He would do, and history records its sad fulfillment. And you would expect that Israel would have been swallowed up in the years; it would be natural.

You let an Italian family come to the United States and wait 50 years, and they will have been dissolved into the great stream of life. Let an Irishman, come here, and in four or five or two generations even, or three, his grandchildren will remind their friends about their grandfather who was an Irishman who came from County Cork, but they’ll be so mixed up that they will no longer be Irish, and so with all the rest.

I have written to our good friend, Aaron Judah Cougerman and asked him whether he won’t write for us an article showing the relation between the present nation of Israel with God’s nation of Israel, which He is to restore again to the Promised Land. How much that’s a fulfillment and how much that is not a fulfillment, but simply an incident in history, I don’t yet know.

And yet here is a nation which has existed for nearly 2000 years since 70. AD. And long before that, most of them. But the nation of Israel we know today as the nation of Israel has existed among the nations and yet has not been swallowed up by the nations. Now there was a miracle my brother. The Scripture says the iron did swim. And just as Jonah was swallowed by the great fish, but was not digested, so Israel has been swallowed by the nations, but not digested. But I know there must be a relation because about the time the prophetic teachers were saying that Israel was going to go back to the land, a great World War blew the nations apart. And when the dust finally settled, there was a little nation called Israel. It is now 10 years old.

Well, now, for all these 2000s of years, Jonah has been in the belly of the whale, but he’s not been digested. The nations of the world have found that you can persecute the Jew. You can burn him. You can throw him to lions. You can put him in gas chambers. You can make him wear a badge with an evil word on it. You can turn on him and persecute him, and when it’s all over, he’ll come crawling up out of the ashes and live on.

God has said to Israel, I will keep you; He kept him. And just as He kept Daniel in the lion’s den in Israel, three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, and Jonah in the belly of the whale, so He has kept the nation of Israel down the years. Right now, fundamentalism has swung away almost completely from the pre millenarian position that we believe and that our fathers knew and taught. And we don’t hear much about it anymore. But my brother, I believe that God is preserving Israel still. You know, she’s surrounded by the Arabs. And Nasser would love to go up and pulverize that nation. So, God’s preserving Israel.

And now the next great miracle, preservation. I’ve said is the fifth and the next great miracle is the regathering of Israel. Let me read to you from the book of Jeremiah: I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them. And I will bring them again to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and increase. Behold, the days comes saith the Lord that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and the king shall reign and prosper; and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. And this is his name whereby he shall be called, the Lord, our righteousness. And the Lord liveth, it shall be said which brought up the children of Israel and lead them out of the north country and from all countries whither I have driven them, and they shall dwell in their own land. Somebody says that was fulfilled when His children of Israel went back from Babylon. But they were in Babylon. long country. But this passage in the 23rd of Isaiah says, from the north country and from all countries whither I have driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land,

Ezekiel 39 says, therefore, thus saith the Lord God, now, will I bring again the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel. And I have brought them again from the people and gathered them out of their enemy’s lands, and then sanctified in them in the sight of many nations. When I have gathered them unto their own land and have left none of them anymore there. Where? In the nations where they have been scattered. I have left none and none is singular, not one is what none means.

I have occasion to notice that in editing that everybody wants to put a plural verb after none. But none is singular, no one, not one, is what none means. I have left not one single Jew any place, anymore where they have been driven. Now that’s what God says. In Romans 11, he says, I say then, hath God cast away His people? God forbid. God hath not cast away His people whom He foreknew. And so the gathering of Israel is the sixth great miracle of Israel.

Now, whether Israel has been gathered, and that nation over there called Israel or the Israelis; whether that’s the true nation or not, we’re going to have to wait and see. Personally, I don’t think so. But listen to this, therefore, thus prophesy Jeremiah, and say, thus says the Lord God, because they have made you desolate and swallowed you up on every side that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen, and you’re taken up in the lips of talkers and are an infamy of the people. Therefore ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God. Thus, saith the Lord God to the mountains and to the hills and to the rivers and to the valleys, to the desolate waste and to the cities that are forsaken. which have become a prey and derision to the residue of the nations that around about. Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen, and against all Idumea, which have appointed my land into their possession with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds, to cast it out for a prey. Prophesy therefore concerning the land of Israel, and say unto the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys, thus saith the Lord, I’ve spoken in my jealousy and in my fury, because ye have born the shame of the heathen.

Don’t forget that even today, as I talk tonight, there stands on the site where Jesus used to worship in Jerusalem, the great temple of the false prophet Mohammed. Ye have born the shame of the heathen, therefore thus saith the Lord God, I’ve lifted up mine hand, surely the heathen that are around about you shall bear their shame, but you, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to my people of Israel, for they are at hand to come, Behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown: And I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it: and the cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be builded: And I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and bring fruit: and I will settle you after your old estates, and will do better unto you than at your beginnings: and ye shall know that I am Jehovah.  Now, that’s the regathering of Israel. And that’s what it says.

Now, the seventh and last that I want to mention tonight is the restoration of Israel to world primacy. I was asked, you know, one time to speak on this subject, “is there a future for Israel in the plan of God,” and I refused to do it. I won’t discuss the obvious. Is there a future for Israel in the plan of God? Why should anybody waste a half an hour talking about something that everybody knows. I might as well, I might as well preach a sermon called, will the sun rise tomorrow morning. Of course, it will rise. One of the prophets suggested a way to destroy Israel and cut off their future. God Almighty Himself through the prophet said it. Do you and you destroy Israel, he said, when you pull the stars down from the sky and put out the light of the sun? Then may you prevent my people from going back to their land, and then may you turn me against Israel for good. That’s paraphrasing a passage, but it’s close to it. So, the restoration of Israel to world primacy is another miracle which God has wrought or will work for Israel.

Now, Jehovah is sovereign. Don’t forget it. And let me urge you, don’t let Edward R. Murrow bother you. And don’t let the rest of these excited news commentators bother you. Don’t listen. I always listen to them, Face the Nation and Meet the Press and all the rest and get all the education I can about world events. But I’m not bothered about them at all. It wouldn’t bother me one bit. That is, I wouldn’t want to see it. And I would sympathize and feel deeply sympathetic and sorrowful if it should happen. But if the Arabic nations should turn on Israel and dissolve her and tear her apart and to make her to be no nation, it wouldn’t bother me, because I very well know that the God of Israel is a sovereign God. And if this present nation called Israel over there should be scattered to the ends of the earth, God still will fulfill His Scripture which says, I will bring you back from all the nations. I don’t like the palsy-walsying around with communism, that I’m afraid may be present a little over there. But I know that God by one dramatic wave of His hand can change that whole thing. I know it. I don’t know how He’ll do it, but I know He can do it. And He will do it.

And not only that, He will bring Israel to her knees and Israel will repent in the last chapter of the prophetic book of Zechariah. And in the 13th, and along there, we learn in the 13th and 14th, we learn how Israel will repent, and all her families will go apart and weep deeply in grave sorrow over her sins. And she will look on Him whom she has pierced, and she will recognize Him as her Messiah. Jesus Christ our Lord who was born of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh, and who came in the line of Isaac and Jacob and David and on down to the little Virgin Mary, and became flesh to dwelt among us, He will be true to His people, and will restore them again as He promised to do.

Now I look at my text a minute, and I’m done. Notice what it says here. He said to Mary, thou hast found favor with God, and behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb. Count these prophecies. That’s number what? Thou shalt conceive in your womb, one, and bring forth a son, two and thou shalt call his name Jesus, three. He shall be great, four. And he shall be called the Son of the Highest, five. Has this been fulfilled, yes or no? Yes. This has been fulfilled to the letter. Mary, who had no husband, brought forth a son. And He was called great. And He was called the Son of the Highest, even by the devils who fled before His face.

And He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, six. Has that been fulfilled? And of His kingdom there shall be no end. The Lord shall give unto him the throne of his father David. Has that been fulfilled? That’s the seventh one. He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. Neither of these had been fulfilled. He has never sat on the throne of his father David. There was no throne of David when Jesus walked the earth. And Jesus has never for one remote hour ever reigned over the house of Jacob. For the house of Jacob refuses to believe that Jesus is their Messiah. And they said, we will not have this man to reign over us. Therefore, the God who gave seven prophecies, and fulfilled five of them, has got to fulfill the other two. Do you think He will? I believe He will. But we swing back and forth and back and forth.

The day was when men ran everywhere with charts painted in red and blue and green and purple; arrows running this way and mountains erupting this way and big queer beasts over here, and goggle-eyed congregations heard them teach prophecy. And then, wars and tribulations and depressions and Sputnik’s and all the rest upset their little detailed plan. And they got red faced and quit it. So now you’re hardly hear anything about prophecy. But I want you to know, I still believe that Jesus Christ is coming back to the world. And I believe that though Israel deeply deserves punishment and is going to get it, she is yet going to be restored according to the ancient prophecies that went forth on her even before Christ was born of a virgin in Bethlehem’s manger.

So, cheer up, cheer up. Don’t let Sputniks get you down. That old bald-headed guy. He can’t even raise hair, and still, he sits over there and rumbles and rumbles. I’ve been around awhile, and I remember when another old bald-headed fellow with a jaw on him like Dick Tracy. Bigger still, how we used to get up in the little bird’s nest, you know, above the street. And up there, he’d raised his hand dramatically and in beautiful sonores Italian, he promised them the world wrapped in cellophane. The last picture I saw of him. He was hanging upside down on a beam and his girlfriend hanging alongside of him.

Then this other fellow, this other angry little man used to say to the nations of the world he would want to come in and take them over. Most of them just folded up and said, come and get us. But a few would stand up and say no. And he’d make another speech, louder and more guttural than the one before. And in it, he would say, I’m about to lose my patience. He not only lost his patience, he lost everything. Where is the guy anyway? I don’t know where he is. Somebody said one time, I’m going to vote for Hitler, just being funny. Somebody else said Hitler isn’t running. Somebody else said if he’s alive he is. And I still believe it. If he’s alive, he’s still running. And now he disappeared, and I don’t scare easy.

And so, when this fellow says, we’ll bury you. I remember the man with no hair and the man with a little mustache. They’re both gone. They were going to bury us, but they didn’t. So that’s why I’m not too much worried. God Almighty has His eternal plans laid just like an architect and he will fulfill them all. And they include the saving of a church, the restoration of His people and their restoration to primacy among the nations of the earth.

Then God will raise Abraham from the dead. His old dusty bones will come out of the Cave of Machpelah where he has slept now these 1000s of years alongside of Sarah his old wife. God will say, Abraham, you remember way back down the years when I told you, in you and your seed should the world be blessed. And Abraham will say in great reverence, yes, My God, I remember.

And God will say, Abraham, I’ve made good. I’ve made good. You see the spiritual seed? That’s the church. You see the physical seed? That’s Israel. And they’re both redeemed. And instead of fighting, they love each other. And the church is my bride and Israel my people, and I am King of the earth. Even so, come Lord Jesus is my prayer and my cry. So don’t you get discouraged and don’t let anybody frighten you, and don’t let anybody threaten you.

A little boy one time was down on his back, fighting, but licked. He wouldn’t give up. And the boy that was bending over him was just a couple of years older. And he was saying, are you going to say, uncle? Are you going to say uncle? And the little guy kept saying, no, no. And here, the big boy couldn’t understand it. Then he looked over his shoulder and saw another boy a couple years older than he was, who was a brother to the little boy. And he understood why. The little boy wasn’t going to give up because he had taken a little peek there as they struggled and fought, and he’d seen his big brother with the bulging muscles on his way.

Well, that’s the way I want you to feel about it my dear people. Don’t get discouraged about anything. Don’t let the devil get you down, because we’re not going to say uncle, no sir. The word doesn’t appear in our language, and we’re not going to say “enough” to the devil, because we look upward and we see our brother whose name is Jesus, and the Scripture says it.

One man wrote me and told me we never ought to call Jesus our brother. But He said He was going to be the firstborn among many brethren. And if He calls me, my brother, I can call Him my brother, can’t I? So, our brother is coming, and when He comes, He’ll straighten all this mess out. Nobody can do it in Washington or anywhere else, but He’ll straighten it out. Amen.

Those are the seven miracles of Israel. Some of them have been done. Some of them wait to be done. And the fact that most of them have been fulfilled encourages me to believe that the rest will be fulfilled. For God who cannot lie, promised before the world began. Let us pray.

O Father, we thank thee. We’re living in an awful world as Thou dost know, a Vanity Fair, a Sodom and Gomorrah. Evil and wickedness flow around us like sloshing waves of a vile sea. Threats and dangers are on every hand. Planes plunging out of the sky and ships going down and accidents and death and disease around about us. But Thou hast told us we were not to be afraid. Thou hast overcome the world. So, help us, we pray thee, to relax and trust Thee and not to be afraid of anything or anybody, but to know that Thou, which has begun a good work, will fulfill it unto the day of Jesus Christ. This we asked in Thy name. Amen.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“Following Jesus“

PDF DownloadDownload

Following Jesus

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

May 13, 1956

Summary

A.W. Tozer emphasizes the transformative power of answering God’s call, highlighting the redemption from sin and the importance of personal response. He encourages listeners to leave their old selves behind and attach themselves to Jesus, emphasizing the significance of identifying with Jesus for true fulfillment and satisfaction. Mr. Tozer also contrasts the fleeting nature of life with the eternal nature of God, encouraging prioritization of time and resources on things that will last, such as sharing in God’s eternity and immortality through faith in Jesus Christ.

Message

I want to talk a minute or two. We’ve had a good full day with outgoing missionaries and singing and baptismal service and some preaching from the Psalms. And tonight, I want to talk a little about following Jesus, which seemed to be the normal thing in a service like this. And in the fourth chapter of Matthew, Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee saw two brethren, Simon called Peter and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishers. And He said unto them, follow Me and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets and followed Him. And going on from thence He saw other two brethren, James, the son of Zebedee and John, his brother, in a ship, with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets, and He called them. And they immediately left the ship and their father and followed Him.

Our Lord Jesus here, called them and they followed Him. And here He began to do what He had never ceased to do, He began to call men to come after Him; to save them by changing their direction. And I want to explain here, I regret that sometimes it’s necessary to put in a footnote because somebody has spoiled a lovely truth for you. And when I say that Jesus saves men by changing their direction, if it were not for liberals and modernists, and cults generally, I could go on to something else. But I have to stop here and put in a footnote and explain what I mean, because we hear these days a great many people talking about redirecting their lives. They take a man no matter how bad the man may be, or how perfectly putrid in his heart, and they do what they call redirecting. He goes to a psychiatrist or to a counselor, and they redirect him.

Well, I don’t mean that because a redirected sinner is just a sinner traveling in another direction. He’s still a sinner. An unredeemed son of Adam that hasn’t been renewed by the Holy Ghost, though you redirect him, he’s still traveling in another way. The boy in the death cell waiting to die, may pace from east to west in his cell, and then somebody come in, redirect him and having him pace from north to south. But he’s still in the cell, and he’s still going to die for his crimes. So, behind all this that I’m giving you tonight, is blood atonement, the necessity that a life be redeemed before it can be redirected. That is what is overlooked by a great many people in our day.

Now, the truth is, that if first there’s an objective fact, and then there’s a subjective response. The objective fact is that we have redemption in His blood. That’s the objective fact. And we have that redemption in His blood, whether we do anything about it or not. We still have that redemption in His blood. Christ Jesus died, the just for the unjust, and He who was rich became poor for our sakes. And the Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost. And He said, it is finished, on the cross of Calvary. All that’s true whether we make any response or not; it is an objective fact.

We might walk into a dining hall and there, all placed and ready to go, would be a feast fit for a king. And yet we could stand and look at it and go away starving, making no response. For the second thing is the subjective response. The objective, that outside of you, and the subjective is that inside of you. And the objective fact is, we have redemption in His blood, prepared for us. The subjective response must be, that I, in faith, go and avail myself of that which He provided for me. I hear a Voice and turn and trust and follow, and thus, that which is objective becomes subjective. That which is external becomes internal. That which is true on the outside, now becomes true on the inside.

But Christianity is not a subjective religion of imagination. Neither is it an objective religion of things done on the outside. It is both. It is change within as a result of something God has done outside. God, on the cross of Calvary gave His Son to die, and He died that we might be redeemed sinners, or sinners redeemed. And then we follow and respond subjectively and personally to the call of Christ and the work is done inside. Then we say, tis done the great transactions done. I am my Lord’s, and He is mine.

I want you to notice what kind of people there were. I remember once hearing Dr. Mason, who will preach here next Sunday, give a great message. You know, Dr. Mason doesn’t always preach equally. That is, sometimes he can be as ordinary as I am. Again, he’ll rise to magnificent heights. And I heard him rise once to one of those magnificent sermons, an epochal sermon, when he talked about the kind of people that followed Christ. This is not his sermon, incidentally. But at least he did; he went over, and I have only about eight or nine kind of people that followed Jesus.

But he took a whole sermon to show from the Gospels and The Acts that a cross section of all humanity followed Jesus. Well, they do and did and are still following Him. There were Peter and Andrew who were fishermen. There was Levi who was a publican and Luke who was a physician and Paul, who was a scholar and the woman at the well, who was a fallen woman and Lydia, who was a businesswoman before her time, and Sergius Paulus, who was a statesman, and the servants of Caesar’s household, who were servants in the royal palace. Then there were the old and the young and the rich and the poor.

And then there was that group, which the Bible calls the common people, the people that Lincoln said, God must love, because He made so many of them, common people. I don’t have any aspiration to be anything else but a common person. I don’t want to be known as anything but a common person. Well, the common people follow Jesus gladly. Now, He calls us. He calls you and me. And He called them and immediately they followed Him.

Now, what does He call us to? I’ll only mention two things, because I have a full-length sermon on what the Lord calls us to, but I’ll talk to you tonight about two things which I don’t particularly develop in the sermon on the call of Christ and what He calls us to. But I’m thinking of two things here tonight. He calls us to the good and away from the bad. I wish that we’d get a hold of that. I really do. He calls us to the good, away from the bad, two simple words, I think they’re both Anglo Saxon words, I haven’t bothered to look it up, but I think both those words would be Anglo Saxon, good and bad. We’ve invented such long sesquipedalian terms now. And people don’t believe much anymore in goodness and badness.

My mother, God bless her memory, was a dear little pagan lady who had high morals. She wasn’t converted until she was an older lady, and then was converted, thank God, and went to heaven. But as a young woman who wasn’t converted, she had high moral ideals. Not only sex morals, but all morals having to do with lying and stealing and all the rest. Her morals were very high. And she used the words good and bad. And there were only two kinds of people to my mother, good and bad. There were good people and bad people. And I think, after all, she was more Scriptural than she knew, and more Scriptural than some of us evangelicals will admit that she was. The Lord talks about the good and He talks about the evil.

Now, God calls us to the good, away from the bad. You know, we like to think that there’s a kind of trick by which we can get converted and be what we still are or still be what we were. But the Bible calls us away from the bad to the good. And I’ll say this for you, we Christians get a lot of lambasting and a lot of criticism; and we have some of it coming without any doubt. There are a lot of weaknesses and inconsistencies among us.

But no man was ever the worst for following Jesus. I want you to write that down in your memory forever. That nobody was ever the worse for following Jesus. No honest man in his right mind ever rose in a public assembly and said I want to testify that once I was an honest man, but I heard the call of Jesus Christ and I left all to follow Him and now I’m the thief. I was once a man who held truth in high honor, but I followed Jesus Christ. And now I’m a confirmed liar.

I once was a man who held myself in good control and now, I’m a drunkard and a libertine. There never was a man who would rise and say, once, I was a good, honest husband and a good father, but I followed Jesus Christ and now I beat my wife and kick my children around and drink up my pay. Nobody ever talked like that in his right mind. Nobody ever came and stood up in a meeting and said once I was a humble, meek man, and I follow Jesus, and now I’m an arrogant, proud fellow, proud as the devil. Nobody ever said that.

He calls us from the bad to the good. And when He said follow me, He called them away from the bad to the good, away from the old life to a new life. No matter where you are, how much you know, or where you’ve been, or how cultured you are, you always improve when you meet Jesus Christ. Keep that in mind. He always improves you. Jesus Christ improves a man always. It depends upon how bad the man is, how far God has to break him down and tear him down. If the building is too old to use, he has to be torn clear down, shoveled off and hauled away.

But if a man is living a reasonably moral life and he becomes converted, then God shifts the grounds of his morality from himself to the blood of Christ and from his own ego to the cross on which Jesus died. And his righteousness then ceases to be his own and becomes the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. But the external life of the man won’t have to be so changed.

I am sure that some of these who were baptized tonight, and who thus in public declares that they’re going to from now on follow Christ before the world. I am sure that the same thing wouldn’t happen and didn’t happen to them, the same that what happened to Mel Trotter or John Newton or Billy Sunday. Or some of those who were worldlings, and some of them not Billy Sunday, but some of them were immoral and low and evil to the point of being unspeakably so. And the Lord had to change them around completely and upset their whole life. But a person who was honest and who loves truth and who is obedient, if he’s a child at home and is moral and decent, there won’t be such a radical external change, but there’ll be just as real an internal change, just as real an internal change.

The man is traveling 20 miles an hour in the wrong direction, and he suddenly stops and turns around. It’ll be a change. But if he’s traveling 125 miles an hour in the wrong direction, and makes a sudden, screaming, skimming, spark flying stop and turns around, everybody will write a tract about that. They would say boy wasn’t that something. He was going 125 miles an hour in the wrong direction, and he suddenly turned around and started the other way around. It was something to see. So, we write books about that. But the man who was only doing 20 miles an hour and turned around was just as certainly converted as the other man.

So, Jesus called men from the bad life to the good life. And while nobody can say, I came to Jesus as I was, pure and clean and true and honest, and I trusted in Him and now I’m impure and unclean, and dishonest. Nobody can say that, but there are hundreds of thousands who could rise today and say, once I was a liar, but God made my mouth clean by a touch of fire. Once I was a wife beater, but today I live in peace with my family. Once my children hated to see me come home, but now they run down the walk to meet me. Once they wouldn’t trust me at my work, but now everybody knows I’m an honest man. Once I had debts all over that I didn’t try to pay, but now, I’ve either paid them or I’m paying on them. Once I was an unclean man, now by the grace of God, I live the kind of life a man should live.

Thousands and hundreds of thousands can say that, but not one lone man can say Jesus Christ called me from good to bad. He called me for my high to low. He called me down from high moral heights into the gutter, never. Never, never, never, Jesus does not act like that. He calls us from the bad and calls us over to the good.

Then I point out also that He calls us to the permanent away from the transient. I don’t know whether it’s temperament with me, but this bothers me more than almost anything else in religion, the impermanence of everything. Every earthly thing is changing. And Henry Francis Lyte said, change and decay and all around I see, the changes in people. You see a fellow and see him 20 years later, and he comes up to you and looks you straight in the eyes and says you haven’t changed a bit. God bless his honest heart. He meant to tell the truth, but he lied. We have changed, and you know we’ve changed. And he was trying to ease the shock. But then on the other hand, you looked at him and what did you see? You saw change there too. That boy’s countenance was gone. That round red face that used to grin at you, has begun to be lean and scaly now or at least dry. the old time is working on him. Change and decay in all around I see.

Some of you people that have been born in other countries. You’d like to go back home. My advice is, don’t do it. You will be disappointed too much to death. I left my home in Pennsylvania when I was 15 years old, and it was 20 years before I went back. I never saw it for 20 years. But oh, man, was I disappointed when I went back. The children that I grew up with were all gone, married and gone, and the old folks were all dead and the middle aged were all old. And the trees that stood around in front of the house were all down, and even the hill that I thought was a big hill, it looked as if it is shrunk. It probably hadn’t, but it looked to me as if it had shrunk. And the distances that I thought were interminable had just become little jumps for an automobile. So, my advice is, don’t go back home because you’ll just come away miserable. Change and decay in all around I see. And there’ll be change everywhere. And that’s one of the hardest things I know is change, always change.

One of my boys came home yesterday and brought home a Saturday Evening Post, 47 years old, I think. 1909, what would that be? My mathematics is just awful. 1909, how long ago is 1909. All right. I’m never sure. I know how old I am. But that’s about all I do know. But there was magazine over 45 years old, and brethren, it’s not only comical, but it’s sad. It’s just sad. Fairy soap and keen cutter razors, Colt revolvers and great big blouses for ladies with huge billowing sleeves. And the hair, great billows of hair up here. And the senator, Senator this and Senator that, and Roosevelt President, I think if I remember. That is, the first Roosevelt, president. And now they’re all gone.

And I flipped over the magazine, and I read about Senator so and so said and I said, dear God, where’s this Senator? He’s dead and gone. And the senators now that we’re hearing on the air and seeing them in articles in the magazines, give them 47 years and where will they be? They will be gone too. Everything has change and decay at the heart of it. And a man can be in the headlines today and forgotten tomorrow. And that’s one of the saddest things that I know in life.

You can’t get anything permanent. Nothing is permanent. Diamonds they say are permanent. But the wearers aren’t. That diamond you’re wearing now that you proudly say to yourself, that thing that shines bright 1000 years from now. Yeah, but who will have it on? And who had it on before you got it? You say, my husband, my boyfriend bought that for me? Yes. But then, he didn’t make it. God made that millions of years ago. And they dug that out and it’s been floating around now a long, long time; cut and re-cut and chipped and chopped and chiseled and polished. And it abides, but the people that wear it don’t abide.

He calls us to the permanent. If there’s anything, if God were to say to me, son, I like to have you tell me, what are the two things you’re most pleased with that I’ve done for you? I’d say Father, two things I’m most pleased with is, that you took sin away and enabled me to have fellowship with Thee. And the second one is that you let me do something that will last. Let me have a part in something that won’t perish, that time can’t gnaw it away and the rust of the centuries can’t rust it away. There it is, permanent.

Moody had as his life text, he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. There you have it. In the will of God, we abide forever. Jesus Christ says, come on, follow me. And we come and follow Him and He lets us share in His eternity and have a part of His immortality. Pray a prayer that changes something while the ages roll. Give $100 to the Lord’s work and somebody gets it and uses it in God’s work, and he changes the face of the world, somewhere in some mission field or in some Bible school or evangelistic meeting or prayer group. Just a little money, but God has allowed us to take that dirty thing the smells of tobacco and sanctify it and give it permanence. Lay up your treasures above where thieves don’t break through and steal, the way Jesus said.

Well, the moment a man touches Christ, that sense of impermanence, that sense of floating goes out of it. And you know that you’ve got hold of eternity and immortality and the absolute. You’re no longer dealing with fragments. The world is dealing with fragments. Everybody’s found a little piece like a monkey in a China store after a windstorm. And there, every monkey finds himself a little piece, and he chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, he says and runs with his pretty little shiny piece. Every little monkey has a piece.

And out there in the world they have it. This is the businessman, and this is the actor and this is the writer and this is the poet and this is the artist and this is the laboring man and this is the truck driver and this is the airplane pilot and this is the housewife, and each of us has a little piece. And we run, chat, chat, chat, and it shines and we say we’ve got it. No, we’ve got a broken fragment of it out of a China shop after the windstorm we call the fall of man. And each of us has his little piece. And we are little philosophies.

Everybody has his own little philosophy. Plato has his, Aristotle his, and the cynic his and the stoic his and John Dewey his and Bertrand Russell his. We each have our little hunk of the China that’s been a smashed vase that we’ve picked off the floor and dug out of the debris. And we write books about it and give it a name and make disciples to our little chunk of pottery. And we think we got the whole world in our grasp and all we’ve got is one little piece that fits into the world.

But Jesus Christ is the all-encompassing One. He was before the world was. He will be when the worlds have burnt themselves out. He’s underneath all and above all and around all in all. He’s above, but not pushed up and beneath, but not pressed down and outside, but not excluded and inside, but not confined. He’s above, presiding and beneath, upholding and outside, embracing and inside filling. I’ve quoted that before from some French archbishop. He certainly said it and Jesus Christ is all that. And He’s all that to you and me. And when I come and touch Jesus and I’m touched with the finger of Jesus, something flows into me that’s immortal and eternal and absolute. And I’m done dealing with fragments; not little pieces anymore.

I heard a rabbi on the air the other night give a marvelous talk, a Jewish rabbi, a marvelous talk. He quoted the New Testament like a New Testament preacher. Later on, he was interviewed, and they said to him, Rabbi, what’s the difference between religion and philosophy? Well, he said, philosophy is a bigger term. They always disappoint you somewhere down the line unless they know God. This philosophy, a bigger term than religion. Why, by religion, you mean faith in Jesus Christ? Faith in Jesus Christ embraces all the philosophies that there are in the world, all science, all learning, all art, all beauty, all everything, are gathered up in the spacious bosom of Jesus Christ. Nothing is bigger than Jesus Christ, nothing is bigger than religion, if by religion, you mean faith in Christ.

So, to follow Jesus, those first disciples left the old life. Now notice it, they left the old life. They attached themselves to Jesus Christ. They joined His band of followers. They began to listen to His words and then they started obeying His teachings and they call themselves by His name.

Now, it’s no different today. We hear the same call today. For He began to do then what He has never ceased to do, and say, follow Me. And today we hear the same Voice. And when we hear the Voice and whoever hears it, follow me, we leave the old life, and we begin the new life. And we attach ourselves to Jesus Christ, and then we identify ourselves with Him. I am proud to be identified with Jesus. Ralph Rader used to sing, I’m satisfied with Jesus Christ, but often I wonder, is Jesus satisfied with me? I am proud to be identified with Him. I hope he’s not ashamed to be identified with me, seeing that His blood and His grace and His Spirit and His forgiving mercy has worked on my heart.

I have heard of foreign people coming to the United States and working like absolute dogs, both men and women, both the husband and wife, and rearing a family. And that family grew up in the luxuries of America, luxuries provided by the hard, rough, permanently dirty hands that never do quite come clean, of the working man, the working woman.

And they went to school and went through college, learned perfect, flawless, idiomatic American English. And when they got old enough to notice that Dad said “vy” when he meant why, “wineger” when he meant vinegar, and “dat” when he meant that, and that they weren’t cultured. I have heard how these children got ashamed of them and wouldn’t invite their young folks home. They wouldn’t invite their friends home because smiling old mama would come out looking like a bit of middle Europe. Speaking poor wretched English, a hairdo that just isn’t hip.

And these rascally, ungrateful, young scoundrels, steered their boy and girlfriends away and wouldn’t bring them home. Shame, shame, shame, Judas Iscariot. But another time I heard this that happened, and father died but the mother still lived. She was apologetic and smiling and always using terrible English. If you understood it, all right, but never matched and never tracked. Never a verb ever followed a noun or whichever way it’s supposed to. And she reared a boy. And that boy finally was graduated from, I think, from medical school to summa cum laude, which is a Latin way of saying he was really on top. And he won some sort of a citation.

And they asked him to stand and receive it and he stood to receive it, and his little all half scared to death, timid mother, a little blob of motherhood, done in a dress that just wasn’t in style, was sitting there two or three rows back, and he stood, and the mother came waddling out. And he turned before all the hundreds, and pinned the citation on her old blouse, and said, if I amount to anything, here’s the reason. And if I have any brains, here’s where I got them. And if I got through school, these hands put me through. See them. She deserves it, not I, and they applauded to the echo and wept with a sheer delight of seeing something good in a bad world. He wasn’t ashamed of an old lady who talked poor English and had rough hands.

O Sacred Head, now wounded by sin and grief bowed down. So scornfully surrounded with thorns thine only crown; O Sacred Head, what glory, what bliss till now is dying. Though despised and gory I joy to call thee mine. He doesn’t stand very well, the real Jesus, the Jesus of the cross. He doesn’t stand very well. The Jesus of the Christmas cards and the Easter cards, he stands all right. Everybody’s ready to say a nice thing about that Jesus. But the true Christ of the cross doesn’t stand very high with people. They don’t want to be bothered with it. They don’t want Him to dictate their lives. They don’t like to think that you got to die before you can live. And He’s going to change your whole life. But He condemns you before He can convert you. That He slays you before He can raise you from the dead. They don’t want to know that. So, our Lord Jesus doesn’t stand very high in public esteem. But I feel it so keenly, I wish I could do it over again.

I was brought up in a family where nobody was converted at that time. I became converted; joined myself to Jesus Christ. Joined the church and was baptized, began to go to church and I was the only Christian in that whole large family that was. And I stood there and was happy to do it. It was not always easy. I admit it was not always easy. And sometimes I slurred things over a little bit, maybe as a young fellow and wasn’t quite as bold as I might have been, but they knew where I stood.

And Father was converted, mother was converted, two sisters converted, brother-in-law converted. And a new dynasty began, a new reign began in the kingdom of God among the Tozers. And there are now Christians scattered all around. Not all of them as good as I want them to be, either uncles, aunts, and cousins and nephews and nieces and all the rest. We’ve got them from Japan to San Diego. But every trace of Christianity that I can find my, two brothers and three sisters, my own, and relatives, every one of them dates back to my conversion, all over the country.

I had a fellow write to me the other day and signed himself Gilbert Tozer. He said, I’m about a third or fourth cousin, five or six times removed. I want you to know that I am converted. And he said, now, I want to throw my house open to you whenever you come into my neighborhood. You come and see me. Well, I haven’t seen him.

You know what you can do, man. You can change not only your own life by the grace of God, but you can change a whole section and block of your  family. You can turn not only one, but you can turn companies and regiments of men and women in the right direction. If you follow Christ and leave the old life and begin the new and identify yourself in Jesus, you can join His people. Don’t be ashamed of His people.

Sometimes, I get cross, I hope it’s in a nice, sanctified way, but I wouldn’t always guarantee it. But I get a bit disturbed because God’s people do such dumb things and seem to be so lacking in a lot of things that I’d like to see them have and have myself. But I’d rather belong to the church of God than any group of people in all the wide world. If I were to be made a 33rd or 39th degree Mason the day after tomorrow, I would turn my back and scorn it and walk to the cross and say, lead on O King Eternal, the day of march is coming. Pick the way of the cross and the thorns and the misunderstandings and the raised eyebrows and the lonesomeness and loneliness. Take it. Take it. Identify yourself with these people. Go along with His people.

Sure, we’ve got hypocrites. Sure, we’ve got people that we think are all right, but don’t live it. Sure, we’ve got young people that attend our young people’s society and sneak off to a dirty movie Friday night or Saturday night. Sure, we have. I don’t know who they are, now, I’m guessing. But I think we have. Sure, always it’s that way. Sure, we have people that we think are great praying saints and if you knew them at home, you’d be shocked. Sure, we have. I suppose. I don’t know which ones, thank God. If I knew which ones, I’d go straight to them. But I never don’t know. God didn’t tell me because He knew what I would do.

So, He keeps it from me. I don’t know who they are, but I’m sure no fellowship ever existed; Jesus had his Judas and Paul had his Dimas and Peter had his Ananias and Sapphira. How can you and I have anything less than a few people that aren’t what they should be?

Nevertheless, I’m not leaving the children of God. If they’ll have me, I’ll have them. Lincoln said he was never going to get married because anybody who would have had him, he wouldn’t have. And that’s one way of looking at it. But any group that would put up with me, I would feel as if I didn’t want to put up with them. But we can’t let logic dictate. We’re going to have to say Lord Jesus, I joined Thy people. I identify myself, and then let the world know. Let the world know you’re a Christian. Don’t make a goose of yourself and go around with big buttons, big enough to stop a handcar, saying Jesus only. Don’t do that. Don’t carry a Bible so big it takes you and your wife to lug it down the sidewalk. Do you think that’s witnessing? No, don’t do that.

Don’t think you’ve got to sing, nearer my God to thee and give you a witness, as we say. Don’t make a fool of yourself under any circumstance. Live your life and where ever opportunity offers, slip a word in for your Savior, in a nice way when you can do it. And above all things, live the Christian life. Live it, live it, live it, brethren, live it. And when you live it, they’ll see it. A candle doesn’t have to shout, everybody, eyes front and center, look this way. Everybody sees a candle once you light it. If you’re a lighted candle, the world will know, and they will look in your direction.

Some of them will be pensive and homesick and go home and cry and wish they could be like you. And some of them will hate you and some of them will scorn you and cut you to pieces. But some of them after thinking it over for a few weeks or a few months or a few years, will surrender and say, I’ve fought this long enough. This man’s life proves to me Jesus Christ is real. So, I’m going to come and follow Him and identify myself with these people and join myself to Him; call myself by His name. Believe on Him and trust Him to save me from the bad and make me good and save me from the transient and give me that which is permanent. Save me from this world and give me a home above.