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“Commentary on the Nature of the Triune Godhead”

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Commentary on the Nature of the Triune Godhead

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 6, 1954

Tonight, I picked for myself a very difficult section of Scripture. It was Gypsy Smith, I think, or Sam Jones maybe, Sam Jones, the eccentric American evangelist of a couple of generations ago that said that when the average preacher took a text, it reminded him of an insect trying to carry a bale of cotton. And if ever I felt like an insect it’s tonight and if ever I felt I was trying to lift a bale of cotton, it’s tonight. But let me read the passage here in John 5. Jesus answered them, My Father worketh, hitherto, and I work. Therefore, the Jews up the more to kill Him, because He not only had broken the Sabbath, but had said also that God was His Father making Himself equal with God. Then answered Jesus, and said unto them, Verily, verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of Himself. But what he seeth the Father do, for what things soever He do it, that is the Father, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth and will show Him greater works than these that ye may marvel. For as the Father raises up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will, for the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father which has sent Him. Verily, verily I say unto you, he that heareth My word and believeth on Him that sent Me hath everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God. And they that hear, shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.

Now, the first part of this section of Scripture I preached on two weeks ago, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. And now in the passage before us, the opening part of it, our Lord explains how He works with the Father. The Son can do nothing of Himself but what He seeth the Father do. For what things soever He the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. Now, I spoke of the unceasing activity of God the Father, the unwearied, restless and yet ever restful, omnipotent, creative work of the Father, working toward a predetermined end, a purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began.

Now here, our Lord tells us that His working is in line with the Father’s working and all together dependent upon it. The Son can do nothing of Himself. I want you to notice, and I think this is a bit of theology that we can well take with us into every corridor and passage of the whole Word of God, that the Son can do nothing of Himself. But the Son can do everything in Himself. I quoted the old middle age, Middle Ages, medieval theological concept, that the Son is not God of Himself, but He is God in Himself. Or correctly wording it, the Son is not God of Himself, but of the Father. But He is God in Himself. And here we have it that Son works Himself, but He does not work of Himself, for He can do nothing of Himself.

Now there are four wonderful doctrines that are taught here. One of them is the harmony in the blessed Godhead. There is a harmony in the blessed Godhead. I think it would be impossible to overemphasize this doctrine, that there is a perfect harmony between the persons of the Godhead and that we must never allow ourselves, ever once, to think there is any conflict or to think any conflict into the persons of the Godhead. The Father planned it, but He planned it in His Son. And He wrought it out through His Son by the power of the Holy Spirit so that there has never been anything but harmony in the blessed Godhead. And whatever the Father does, the Son sees Him do and works in harmony with what the Father is doing. And the Holy Ghost is the perfect bond between the Father and the Son, energizing the Eternal Son with the energies of the Father, and so working harmoniously to a preordained end. This is taught in this passage and is also taught throughout the entire Bible.

But also, there is taught this, the subordinate position of the Son of Man. This has bothered some people very much, that the Son is equal to the Father, and yet is subordinate to the Father. For our Lord Jesus Christ teaches both. He says that the Son can do nothing of Himself. And He says, the Father is greater than I. And so He takes a subordinate position and prays to His Father. And naturally, an equal does not pray to an equal. An equal prays to one who is above him and to whom he can address his prayers. And when the Son prays to the Father, it is a tacit confession of subordination. He is not equal to the Father. So He prays to One who is above Him. And yet He can say, my Father and I are one. And He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.

Now, what do we mean, and how do we get this way? And is there contradiction there? No. There’s no contradiction there, my brethren, because the old Athanasian Creed has it, that, as pertaining to His Godhead, He is equal to the Father. As pertaining to His manhood, He is less than the Father. And in this ancient and Holy Trinity, there was nothing before and nothing after, nothing higher and nothing lower, but all three persons together, co-eternal and equal, so that Jesus Christ has the two natures, the nature of man and the nature of God, harmonized into one perfect personality. Let us not imagine Jesus as a schizophrenic, one with a split personality, having two personalities, lets us know that He has one personality, but He has two natures harmonized into one personality. And when He speaks about Himself as the son of Mary, He says that I can do nothing of myself. I see the Father do it and I do it and says that the Father is greater than I. When He speaks about Himself as God, He says, I and My Father are one. So, there is no contradiction here. There is only an understanding.

When I was a very young preacher I got among the Jesus-only people. Now, in case you don’t know what the Jesus-only people are. Now, sometimes you will see a button on their lapel, big around as a school boys cap, and it’ll say Jesus only on it. Now that isn’t what I’m mean, they may be just Moody students, you know, or Nyack students or somebody out trying to tell the world they belong to the Lord. I don’t mean that. But there is a group that called themselves the “Jesus Only” group. I don’t know that they ever were lapel buttons. But they say that the name of the Godhead is Jesus. That the Scripture says, ye shall baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. But it doesn’t give us the name, but that Jesus is the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. And they get all mixed up in their mathematics. They say how can three be one, and how can one be three. And they get all mixed up in their mathematics. Their arithmetic gets them into confusion. So, they say there is but one person of the Godhead and that He is named Jesus and that Jesus is the Father and He is the Son and He is the Holy Ghost.

How one can be the father of another has never been explained to me by these friends. And I might add also that these persons believe that everyone who is truly saved and ready for the coming of the Lord has spoken in tongues, and they put you in a tub of water till you do. They say there’s a blessing in the tub, Brother, and they will baptize you till you do come through to their satisfaction, I do not mean to reflect upon them. I think that they are well-intentioned and many times, good people. But of course, you can be good in your heart and be badly mixed up in your head. And they certainly are badly mixed up in their theology. For they teach that there is only one person of the Godhead and He is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. I can’t see how it could possibly be. And that the name of these three, or the name of this One is Jesus.

But anyway, it’s true of a school of modern theologians that there is one person of the Godhead, but he has three masks. That is, He has three faces. The old god of ancient Roman days named Janus, or Janus, had two faces. He looked in two directions. But they’ve gone one further, and they’ve given the Godhead three faces. And when this one Person of the Godhead wants to be the Father, He puts on the Father’s face and turns that to you. When He wants to be the Son, He turns the Son’s face. When He wants to be the Spirit, He turns the Spirit’s face to you.

I find it much easier to believe in an ancient, incorruptible, uncreated Godhead, a fountain of ancient Godhead, and then, the three Persons leaping up out of that Godhead. I have thought of God the Godhead as a great sea, because you know that the mystic theologians taught that the Godhead goes back above and beneath any of the three Persons of the Trinity. That there is the underlying Godhead, and then that the God had expressed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in three personalities. That is what I believe. I believe that the Father is the Ancient Godhead expressing Himself as the Father. And the Son is the Ancient Godhead in expression as the Son. And the Holy Ghost is the Ancient Godhead, all of one substance of one eternity. One, without beginning and without creation. And so, we have the Triune God.

And when Jesus says, I am less than the Father, He’s speaking of His manhood. When He says, I am equal to the Father, He is speaking of His Godhood. And when He speaks of his Godhead, He does not take any low place beneath the Father, neither does the Holy Spirit, but these three are One. It’s a wonderful mystery and I don’t claim to be able to understand it. But I confess I delight to tremble before the throne and say, Holy three times repeated, holy, holy, holy. So, there is a harmony in the blessed Godhead, but there is a subordination of the Son to the Father for the purposes of creation and redemption.

The third thing this text teaches is, the unaffected relation between the Father and the Son in the incarnation. I’m saying so many things these days that I don’t hear anybody else say, that I wonder if it is that I just don’t get around or, is nobody saying it. I preached over in Keswick last week, over the weekend, Saturday, Sunday and Monday in New Jersey. And a lot of Alliance people were there and people who had been in this church, people had come here in days gone by as students and so on. But I had four sermons to preached so I preached on four of the attributes of God. And you know, that the people gave me to understand that they had never heard any sermons on the attributes of God in their life.

I preached on the selfhood of God, and well, three other attributes of God. And they said, they’d never heard any sermons on the attributes of God. And it isn’t that I don’t get around, because when I preach, I have to listen to other preachers. That is, I preach in the morning, say, and he preached in the afternoon. I preach at night and then reverse it. And so as to get a right share, each one taking his turn at bat. And of course, I have to be courteous enough to sit back there and write editorials while the other fellow is preaching. But I never hear this business. I don’t hear anybody preach about the everlasting Godhead and the Eternal Three. I just hear other things and that’s not to reflect on any man who’s preaching the Truth, but it is only to say that there certainly is truth that is being tragically neglected in the day in which we live.

And there’s a whole world of golden truth that we can mine out with a pickaxe of prayer from the Bible that will be meat and drink and food and wonderful help to our Christian people. I’m mixing my metaphors there too brother, mining out gold to eat it for food. You preachers just overlook that because I feel the way that the brother, what was his name? In, that great Brooklyn preacher? Beecher, he said, that when a metaphor gets in my way, God help it. He wasn’t concerned very much with it. Anyway, there was an unaffected relationship between the Father and the Son in the incarnation.

Now, we generally say that Jesus Christ left His home far above yonder and that He came down, and cut Himself off from the Father and left the delights of the Father’s bosom and the Father’s heart and walked in exile among men. But that’s only partly true. It is true as we seeing He left His Father’s home above and emptied Himself of all but love. He did do that, but he never emptied Himself of His deity. Never. When it says that He considered not an equality with God something to be held on to but emptied Himself, remember one thing. He never emptied Himself of His deity. He couldn’t do it. It would be metaphysically impossible even to think such a thought as that the Eternal Son should be anything less than God. But he never emptied Himself of one of the attributes of Deity. But He emptied Himself of the accoutrements of deity. He emptied Himself of the evidences of deity and covered the Deity in a cloak of opaque flesh and walked among us as though He were a man. He was God in overalls. God living on the earth and wearing the common denim of mankind and covering over His deity.

But as somebody has pointed out when occasion required, He could let His deity shine through, as once when He prayed to the Heavenly Father and His face became shining white and His garments whiter than any before on Earth. And they shone like the sun as He knelt there. It was only His deity showing itself through the previously opaque veil of His manhood. But even while He walked on the earth, He was within an unbroken fellowship with His Father. For it’s impossible that the Father and the Son should ever cease in the ancient sea of the Godhead to be joined together as One. But the man Christ Jesus cried, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me? And as pertaining to His manhood, He was forsaken of the Father. As pertaining to His deity, forsaking would be impossible. For we cannot divide the Deity or separate the Persons of the Holy Trinity.

So, Jesus when He walked on earth, saw the Father and that gives us our fourth thought, the perfect clairvoyance of the Son. Now, I use that word clairvoyance without apology, though it needs an explanation. What a beautiful word it is, the word clairvoyance. I like it. It means clear seeing, clear sight, perfect visibility, perfect, unending ceiling, no clouds between. But the spooks have taken it and the wizards and witches and spiritualists and what have you. They’ve taken it and now we have clairvoyance used by the spiritists. They have no more right to it than I have the right to the title of being called the King of England. They have no right to it. For the spiritist doesn’t see clearly.

And no one sees clearly but the Son. And what He seeth the Father do, that He doeth. For the Father shows the Son what He sees Him do so that the Father and the Son are working harmoniously within sight of each other. Not all the clouds that ever came over Palestine prevented the clairvoyance of the Son, the clear sight of Jesus Christ. And not all of the shadows that gathered around Calvary prevented the Eternal Son from gazing full into the face of the Eternal Father. As pertaining to His man, He cried in agony of sacrifice and offering, my God, my God, and bled and died as God turned away from the sacrifice.

But the Eternal Godhood was unaffected and undivided. And the Son looked into the clear face of the Father without a shadow between. It had to be like that, my Brethren, it had to be like that. What a terrible mixed up and imperfect redemption it would have been if Jesus Christ had had to fight His way through. If He, the Eternal Son, had been rejected from the presence of the Father, we would not have had Christianity then. We would have had Roman mythology. We were down calling, Mr. McAfee and I, in the neighborhood of the University of Chicago this last week. And we dropped into a little bookstore there with a red door, bookstore, mostly foreign books, that is foreign language, and classics. And I picked up The Aeneid of Virgil, translated into English, and while my friend was driving along, watching the stoplights, I was reading Him about the gods and goddesses of Egypt, or of Rome. And we saw there, I’d read it of course, as he had and you have before, but it was a new translation I enjoyed reading as we went along.

And here were the gods and the goddesses marrying and giving in marriage, and fighting and being jealous and having rivals and laying for each other and pushing each other around and trying to murder each other. Those were the gods of Rome. One God would sneak in behind another god’s back and grab a hammer, or sneak something out and disappear into the bushes while another god would chase him. And that was as high as the Romans ever got in their concept of God. And if we listen to poor, uneducated, I mean spiritually uneducated, preaching, we will imagine that there exists in the Godhead some kind of such conflict. And that the Son of God, like some demigod of Rome, slipped in and rescued mankind, like Prometheus brought down fire from heaven, and was punished for her robbery.

But nothing like that exists. The perfect clairvoyance, the perfect sight of the Son, the clear seeing of Jesus as He walked among men and gazed into the face of the Father, for the Father was there and is here. For He says, The Father loves the Son. And this love of course, is not simply the love of God for a good man. It is the Ancient Unity of love among the Holy Three, the Ancient Unity of love. So, that’s what it means in the Bible when it says God is love, and he that loveth, knoweth God. And he that loveth not, knoweth not God.

The next time we build a church, will you remind me to get out of the air lanes, a little off to one side, south, north, east or west, so these blessed, DC-6s don’t go overhead? Do they bother you? Just when I’m saying something I consider important, why there’s eight engines roaring up there. But we’ll try to keep sweet. Someday, we’ll fly without wings, free.

Now it says here, the Father raises the dead and quickens them. And even so, the Son quickens whom He will. Now, if this means anything at all my listening friends, it means that the working of the Son in regeneration is as radical and miraculous as the working of the Father in raising the dead. If it means anything, it means that. That the Father raises the dead and quickens them, and even so the Son quickens whom He will. And that’s in the present tense, and He’s not talking about the resurrection. He’s talking about the present time. The time now is He says, the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and those who harken will live. So, he’s not talking about future resurrection. He’s talking about the present time.

And He says here, that as the Father has ability to raise the dead and give them life, so He has given to the Son also power to raise the dead and give them life. Only the Father raises the dead in the future resurrection, the Son raises the dead right now. They hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hearken will, shall live.

Now, the work of the Holy Ghost and the work of Christ in making a Christian, is as radical a thing as raising Lazarus from the dead. When Lazarus came out of the tomb a live man where a dead man had been, he stood everlastingly as a figure of a Christian who stands up a live man where a dead man has been. Who stands up a clean man where a filthy man has been.

Over in Keswick, they have what they call the colony of mercy. It’s a whole colony, as the name implies, a lot of buildings given over entirely to men who have gone down through drink or dope or both, or other vices that have dragged them down. And out of my two trips there, and I’ve talked to these men last year when I was there. There was a very brilliant man running around there who had been a professor in the university using, I knew he was because he was using long words. And he could talk books by the hour. And he was nice enough to run around carrying the little Pursuit of God. He told me how much he thought of it.

And I went back and I said, what’s happened to so and so? They said, you mean the fellow that was always talking books and running around here? I said, that’s the man. I mean. Well, you know, he had been a university professor and had gotten in either dope or drink or both, and had gone clear down to the gutter, and had gone over to Keswick to be rehabilitated. And over there, they believe in rehabilitation plus regeneration. So, they not only rehabilitated him by getting him off of this stuff. But they told him the Word of God, day and night and wherever they can get to him. Finally, he got converted, you know where he is now? He’s in a Bible school and he’s going to preach the rest of his days. He’s a middle-aged man already, on the happy underside of middle age, but approaching it, and won’t have a long ministry. But he has quit the university now and he’s in a Bible school in the east and is going to preach.

Now, that is a deliberate quickening by the Holy Ghost that is as radical and as miraculous as the raising of Lazarus from the dead. For here was a learned man whose learning broke down in the crisis. And he went down to the gutter and bounced back again by the grace of God and is now a thoroughly converted and blessed man.

Now, he says here, that all men should honor the Son as they honor the Father. Because there is a harmony in the blessed Godhead. Because there is an unaffected relation between the Father and the Son because of the perfect clairvoyance of the Son, wherein He sees as He has from eternity, the Father at work. And because the Father loves the Son and because the Father has given into the hands of the Son power to raise the dead even as He raises the dead, all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. And He says that if we withhold honor from the Son, we would hold honor from the Father also. That’s here. That’s the plain teaching of the Scriptures.

Now, there are those who do not honor the Son. They honor Him only as a good teacher, perhaps the best, but only a good preacher or teacher, and preacher of the Word. And the Scripture says that all men should honor the Son as they honor the Father. So, you need to have no hesitation in attributing all of the worship and glory to the Son that you would attribute to the Father. You need to have no fear, because the Father lives for the glory of the Son and the Son lives for the glory of the Father. And the Spirit of God lives for the glory of the Father and the Son.

So, we honor the Son of God. We have no hesitation whatsoever in praying to the Son, as we pray also to the Father. And while it is not usually done, we also have no hesitation in addressing the Holy Ghost. Somebody was asking me today what I thought about praying to the Spirit. Is it ever the right thing to do? Should we ever pray to the Spirit? And my answer is that normally we pray to the Father in the name of the Son and in the Spirit. But also, Jesus Christ had no hesitation in receiving prayers and granting them when He walked among men.

So obviously, there is no formula. If there had been an unbroken and unbreakable formula, that the only way to pray would be to pray to the Father in the name of the Son, then why should Jesus have broken that order and allowed prayer to be made to Himself?

Plainly, then, the Persons of the Godhead are equally God. And the Persons of the Godhead are equally present before our minds when we pray. And when we sing, Holy Spirit, faithful guide ever near the Christian side, we’re praying to the Spirit. And when we pray, Holy Ghost with light divine, fall upon this heart of mine, were praying to the Spirit. And I think if you will read your Bible, you will find instances where a man apostrophies the Holy Ghost. Come thou north wind and blow thou south wind and blow upon this garden that the sweet spices may flow out, apostrophe to the Holy Ghost. And prayers are to be made to the persons of the Trinity. Normally to the Father in the name of the Son, but also without harm and without any transgression of the Scriptures, to the Son when you want to pray to the Son. And if in prayer or song to the Holy Ghost, then also to the Holy Ghost.

Always remember friends, that God is never jealous for a formula. Religious people are. They’re jealous for a formula. They put it 1-2-3-4. And if you say 1-2-4-3, they leap all over you. And white-faced with anger, they prove they love the truth because they’re so mad. And they love the order, the beautiful order of the truth. And if you say four before you’ve said three, they hate you for your heresy. They love the truth so much.

Always remember friends, one time more let me say it. God is easy to get along with. And if your heart is right, He is not so concerned about the formula. No, no. God is kind and good and gracious. God has to be. He has to be because there are some of us that are just too hard to get along with. And if God was as hard to get along with as we are, there would be one perpetual quarrel between our souls and God. So, God has to be easy to live with, and He is. And if He knows you mean right, He’ll let you make all sorts of mistakes and He won’t care. But just as soon as self gets in, and you mean wrong, the holiest thing you do is unholy. As soon as you curse your conduct with self or sin, everything you do becomes wrong. But as long as you love God and people, He’ll let you tumble around a lot and won’t mind it a bit, and sit and watch you as a mother fox will lie in the sunshine with her chin on her paws with a smile on her face and watch her little, little foxes. I don’t know what a little fox is called. Let’s call them puppies.

But anyway, everybody that has ever hunted foxes knows how sometimes they’ll come upon that beautiful, idyllic picture. Picture the old mother watching her little foxes. And I have seen mother cats and watching their kittens. And I have seen mothers watching their babies the same way. And God knows that the most mature of us, we still toddle sometimes. And so, He’s quick to overlook our ignorance, but He’s never quick to overlook our sin. If sin is in it, that’s injury, that’s disease, that’s threatening death. And so, God’s quick to leap on the sin and deal with it. But He never rides us because of formulas that we’ve broken.

So, I don’t care what anybody says. If I want to pray to the Spirit, I’m going to pray to the Spirit. Normally we don’t, but if we want to, let’s do it, and smile and say, if I’m making a mistake, God understands. He knows I mean the whole Godhead. When I say Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, I mean all the persons of the Trinity.

Now, verse 24, we close with that. And how important it is, how important in the pale light of sin and of death and judgment. How important it is that we hear these simple words. Have you noticed friends, that when our Lord Jesus is talking to the believer and attempting to teach and instruct the believer’s heart, He gets so profound sometimes that you have to keep your chin up to keep from drowning under the glory of it. But when He tells us how to get saved, He makes it so simple, so very simple. And here it is, He that heareth my words and believeth on Him that sent me hath everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death unto life. Now that is so simple, so simple. He that heareth my Word.

Now, does that describe you? Have you heard the words of Jesus? I believe you have. I believe every one of you has heard the word of Jesus. There isn’t one that hasn’t heard the words of Jesus. If you haven’t heard them all, you’ve heard some of them. And the words of Jesus usually, any words of Jesus are like samples of seawater. They all say about the same thing. And if you’ve heard the words of Jesus, then the next thing is, believeth on Him that sent Me.

Now, does that describe you? He hath everlasting life. If you can say it does describe you then, he has everlasting life and he shall not come in to condemnation, but has already passed from death to life. That’s so simple that nobody will believe it. It’s as though somebody would find an elixir of life or a universal panacea for the cure of all diseases. You know, nobody would believe it, first. Everybody would say it can’t be so. Jesus Christ our Lord has laid down here a universal panacea. He has given us the true elixir. He has told us where the fountain of youth is. And He has said simply, it consists of hearing the words of Jesus and through those words, believing on the Father who sent Jesus. And if we do that, then we have everlasting life and we shall not come into condemnation. But has passed from death, have passed from death unto life.

And somebody says in that case then, what happens to the Christian who breaks down, who has lapsed, who sins? The answer is, there is a difference between coming into discipline and coming into condemnation. The believer who fails his God and sins, comes into discipline, but not into condemnation. But the sinner, is already under condemnation. The Christian, who was believed on the Son.

Could I give you an example? There were two men, Peter and Judas Iscariot. Peter had believed, had heard Jesus Christ and believed on the Father, and had passed out of death into life and was out of condemnation. And he got in a tight spot and failed God. Another one of the apostles also got in a tight spot and failed God. One was Peter, the other was Judas. Christ looked on Peter and brought him under discipline. And Peter repented and wept copiously. As it says in the original, tears and floods of tears, he wept copiously. And in his repentance was restored to favor and blessing. He did not come into condemnation, but he did come under discipline.

But Judas Iscariot went out and it was night. And he went to his own place and he was the son of perdition. Judas Iscariot, who never believed on the Father nor on the Son, and who never was regenerated, went out to night and condemnation. Peter who believed, but failed, went out to discipline and forgiveness. There’s the difference, my brethren. You come to Jesus Christ as you are, weary and worn and sad. Come to Jesus Christ as you are, sinful and tired and without self-confidence, knowing you can’t live it and knowing it, come anyway. Hear the words of Jesus and believe on the Father and the Son. Trust the words of Jesus; that’s believing on him. And God will give you eternal life. God will promise you that you will never come into judgment, for that is condemnation.

God has given me a passage of Scripture to which I am clinging and holding tight. And I don’t understand it, why it’s like this. I don’t understand why it’s like this. But I am telling God about this every once in a while. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me. For as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountain shall depart and the hills be removed, that My kindness shall not depart from thee. Neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on me. And I tell God about this every once in a while, and I put my name in here so He’ll be sure that I know what he’s talking about. And says, I’ll never be angry again. And I’ll never rebuke you again.

Discipline? Yes. I expect discipline. But I don’t expect ever to see an angry face in God Almighty’s heaven again. That’s not because I’m good, but that’s because He has sent a Redeemer. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. And because the Lord is our Redeemer, we never need to worry after we have trust, if we do trust and walk on with Him. Now, that’s in the Book.

Well, there’s a little running commentary on what our Lord said. It certainly isn’t all, but it’s something. And I pray that God may give every one of you courage to go on believing. And then I trust that you who may not believe, might this very night pass over the narrow little line that separates between believing and not believing, having life and not having life. You have heard His words? Do you believe on Him? Do you believe on the Father who sent Him? Do you believe? Then, will you believe? Will you believe now? Right now, will you believe in the name of the Son of God? As the Father quickens the dead from the graves, so the Son quickeneth whom He will. And whoever hears His voice and harkens, he shall be quickened into eternal life by the Son who takes His honor from the Father and receives this authority from the Father. Will you now, believe?

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“An Easter Message”

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Three Great Days: An Easter Message

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 6, 1958

I announced last Sunday that I would break into my series of expositions of the book of Titus and would bring something more nearly related to the Easter day. And today I want to read a bit of Scripture and let it be part of the sermon, by far and away the best part, where a man with anointed vision looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven. And the first voice he heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me which said, come up hither and I will show thee things which it must be hereafter. And then immediately I was in the Spirit, the whole the throne was set in heaven. And One sat on the throne. And He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone. And there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like unto an emerald. Round about the throne were four and twenty seats. And upon the seats, I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment. And they had on their head, crowns of gold. And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal. In the midst of the throne, round about the throne, there were four beasts full of eyes, before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, second beast like a calf, the third beast had the face as a man and the fourth was like a flag eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.  When God speaks of himself, he says, I am. When his creatures speak of him, they say he was and is, and is to come. And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

Now there’s a picture of heaven, and God the Father and the throne and the strange beasts, living creatures, redeemed elders. Then I saw in the right hand of Him that sat on the throne, a book. Written within and on the back side, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals there of? They must have searched and searched a long time because no man in heaven or in earth, neither under the earth was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. One of the elders saith unto me, weep not. Behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book and to loose the seven seals there of.

And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne. And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.  The Lamb Exalted and I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever.

And no man could preach a sermon on that text without suffering a brain hemorrhage. It is too vast, too emotional, too noble, too elevated, too full, too musical, too poetic, too wonderful to do anything, but read, so that’s all I’m going to do with it. Just read it before you. For it is the story of the Lamb who died a Lamb and rose a Lion. But I have three little words to speak to you today about three great days: the day He came which we call Christmas; the day He died which we call Good Friday; and the day He rose which we call Easter. If we had never invented the names, Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, which are words borrowed and put together. If we had never invented names, still, those three great days stand; the greatest days in the history of the world.

And God said, let there be light and there was light. And God separated the light from the darkness. And the darkness He called night and the light He called day and the evening and the morning, the first day. So reads the story of God’s creation. So, it was a great day.

It was a great day when the ark of God floated the high above the waters, cleared the hill where it had been built and floated high and all-around devastation and watery death. And Noah and the eighth person floated free and safe in the ark of God. It was a great day when Abraham heard the voice of Jehovah saying get thee up out of thy country to a land that I will show thee. And God began the redemption and restoration of the race. It’s a great day when Moses put blood on all the door posts but really it was night, and put blood on all the doorposts and lentils. And the million slaves who were the seed of that same Abraham rose and walked out on their feet, out over the sandy wastes and across where the river, or the Red Sea used to be, but was no more for the river part of the sea part didn’t let them through.

Those were days, great days, but nothing to be compared with the three that I’ve named. The day He came and the day He died and the day He arose. The day He came, there was joy. It was the joy of hope. It was the joy of sentiment. For God was now a Babe in a manger. And a bright-eyed mother looked upon Him, a little red-faced Fellow making funny little animal noises, feeling around for His mother’s breasts. And all the ages have surrounded this day with sentiment and beauty and flowers and music, and well they may have. How could we escape it? What else could you do? We, being human and being sons and daughters of the sun and the moon and the rolling heavens, time and anniversaries and years and day. You can’t escape them no matter how hard we try if we wanted to.

So, we have made Christmas a great day. It is a day of joy because it’s a day of hope. But that’s all it was. You can’t carry it too far. That’s all it was. It was a day of joy. But it was the day of the joy of anticipation, not the day of the joy of realization. For very few knew the Babe had been born. And those that didn’t know, didn’t know who He was for certain, maybe half a dozen, maybe two or three–no more. It was the joy of anticipation.

But I can think of how that joy might have been dashed like a beautiful vase and destroyed. I can think of a hundred ways. I can think when Herod said go out and kill all the babies under two years. Go out and kill them. I can understand how they might have caught that Babe, caught that mother and father unaware and plunged the sword through the innocent bosom of that little Baby along with all the others in that neighborhood of Bethlehem. That would have been the end of all that joy. That would have mocked the angels as they sang over the Judean hills. And that would have mocked the shining eyes of Mary, and would have made the very Word of God of none effect.

I can think how when Satan came to Him when He had grown to be a tall man, thirty years of age now, strong and vigorous and at the peak of His physical powers, when the devil came to Him and said, turn this stone into bread. Fall down and worship me. Leap off this pinnacle. For it is written, it is written He might have there, at least we can think it. We can imagine it. He might have there given Himself over, surrendered under pressure, and put a vial of poison where the oil of joy had been.

But He said, it’s written and Satan turned his back away and you remained holy as He’d been born. God had called Him, that holy thing, that holy thing. And He stayed that same Holy Thing through His development and boyhood and youth and now a strong grown man. He was still that Holy Thing and was as pure as the waters that flow from under the throne of God. It was the joy of anticipation and a hundred possibilities I say, except He were God, might have intervened there.

You’ve had many a joyful anticipation that blew up in your face and left you more grief stricken than if you had never expected the joy. The day He died was not a day of joy. It was a great day, but it was not a great day of joy. It was a day of dejection and despondency. It was the grief of uncertainty, just as they didn’t know who He was. And the simple little negro spiritual says so plaintively, and it must have been beautiful when it was first written before it was commercialized. But back there, the first simple-hearted black man who sang it maybe to his own homemade banjo somewhere. We didn’t know who He was, said the song. With Jesus, we didn’t know who you was. What beauty is there, we didn’t know who He was.

And when He died, we didn’t know what He’d done. They stood around Him and tradition has it, Mary fainted and was carried away, leaning heavily on the arm of John, into whose care Jesus had given her for the rest of her life. But they didn’t know what He’d done. He had told them, but their eyes were holden and their ears stopped. They didn’t know what He’d done. And it was a time of dejection and of the grief of uncertainty. He went out there and died, and they didn’t know what He was doing when He was dying.

Every one of them had seen people die. They knew everybody died. But when this man was dying, they didn’t know why. And all the joy of hope and anticipation that any of them had had back there 33 years before and were still alive, Mary was among them and there were some others. All that joy suddenly turned to bitterness. For He was dying now. He was dying now. And His disciples thought maybe there would be a dramatic rescue. They thought it out, a dramatic rescue. But there was no dramatic rescue. They said, the God who delivered the three Hebrew children from the fiery furnace, the God who delivered Daniel; that God will deliver Him as He delivered them. But there was no deliverance. And after six hours, He groaned and gave up the ghost, and died in the darkness and they all turned away.

But that day was just as important as that first day of joy. That day that they took down a dead Man, partly stiff already from rigor mortis and stained with blood, flies buzzing around Him. That day was as important in the mind of God as that day Mary held the baby in her heart, the tender, pink-skin, baby, sweet to touch. Now, the cold, gray body, unpleasant to touch. But one was as important as the other. For if there had not been the day that He died, the day that He came would have been a mockery to the human race. But if that had been the last day, those other two days would have been dreams and no more.

But the day that He arose set a crown upon the others. And just as the day He came was a day of the joy of hope and the day He died the day of the grief of uncertainty, the day He rose was the day of the joy of triumph. For now, it was finished. It’s finished. Nothing could be interposed now. When the boy Jesus played with His father’s tools and got in the way and helped a little as He was able, and sometimes didn’t help, but tried to help as a little growing boy. There were a lot of things that could have intervened, I say, possibly at least they were technically possible that could have intervened. But they didn’t, but at least we can think them. But now we can’t even think anything there.

When He rose from the dead, He rose absolutely triumphant. And when the old Latin writer, we sang it this morning, an English translation. When the old Latin writer said, He opened heaven and He closed hell. That’s correct for all that believe. For all that believe. There isn’t a crevice or crack anywhere in the walls of the hell where a saint can get in. And there isn’t a door in the walls of heaven that a saint can’t get in. By saint I don’t mean a saint on a pedestal. I mean any redeemed man. For the day He arose was the day of the joy of triumph. Somebody read here or a choir sang or something, I don’t know, but I caught this phrase this morning. He is not here. He is risen. And I jotted the word “not” down there so I’d remember to tell you “not.” If it had said, if the angel had left that one little word of three letters out, we would have been and be now of all men most miserable–following a dead man.

But that little word “not” there, only three letters. A tiny, monosyllabic word, not. You can say it, you can time it it is so brief and yet upon it hung the whole hope of all the world for all the time to come. He is not here. The angel had folded his wings and bowed his head and said, we’re all mistaken. He is here. Come in, look, He is here. If he’d been there, the bottom would have fallen out of redemption for all time to come. He is not here. And in one simple word, God Almighty set all the bells in the universe to ring. He is not here. He was there. He died. But He’s not dead. He’s alive again.

So, these are the three great days. The day He came was called Christmas, the joy of hope. And there we had the weak babe in the manger. And the day He died, there was the cross and we had death. And I regret that some cannot see beyond that.

We had a long-distance Easter call last night from our girl out in New York. She said that she and her boyfriend from the church here had been in a great cathedral in New York. And she said what do you suppose? They’ve covered all the statues of Jesus. They have draped them all. He’s dead. All draped. They had draped all the statues and pictures of Jesus. Death was in that cathedral.

And that’s all there is at the cross–death. That’s all there was in the manger, weakness and hope. And all there was at the cross was death and despair. But when He walked out of the grave, then there was triumph forever and ever and ever. I have no statues of Jesus, and I don’t even like pictures of Jesus, though I don’t condemn those who do. But I don’t even like pictures. But pictures of Jesus all ought to have gold frames and never be shrouded and never draped. For Jesus doesn’t die once a year, just as He doesn’t get born once a year. And He doesn’t rise once a year. There was one great day, the day He was born. A great day, the day that He died. And a great day, the day that He arose.

Now, there are just some other days I’ll mention and say no more. The day He finds you. That would be a great day, for you. But it never could have been it, except for these other great days. And the day you find Him. For remember, He finds you before you find Him. It’s got to be so. And the day He comes again and the day He’s crowned. And all His sheep and all His lambs and all His children and all those who make up the royal train, joggle with him to His coronation. Beautiful. We’re not a ritualistic church here. And the result is at Easter time we have very few more people to church than we do all the other, year around because we’re always talking about the Lord rising here and singing about it.

But I want to say to you this one word. I want to tell you what I told my friends up in Milwaukee last week, Friday night, no Friday afternoon. We had a good Friday meeting, six churches met and I preached to them. And there popped into my head an illustration as I was closing. I think God gave it to me. I had never thought of it before that I remember in my life. But it fit the situation, I’m afraid, for some people’s lives and possibly in yours.

I said, and I say now, look, there’s excitement down the street, cars pulling up quick, putting on the brakes. People getting out and dashing up steps. People hurrying away. Others hurrying up, what’s going on? What’s going on? There too, we learn a baby was born down there a day before yesterday. A new baby, Jr. A new baby, their first. Junior’s been born. There he is. They’ve named him after his Dad. I know now why all that excitement. Then the excitement levels off and tapers down and disappears, and the cooing and gurgling is over and they settle down to living with the baby. But they’ve got the baby every day, every night, every hour, all the time. Sleeping and waking, he’s still there. If it’s asleep, they can peek out of it. If it’s awake, they can pick it out. They still have it. A year goes around and they have a celebration. The table is set up now. So, they bake a little cake and put one candle. That’s his little first birthday, another celebration. Cards come and gifts, and neighbors drop in, another celebration. Second year, two candles appear, another celebration. And they celebrate every year that exciting time when the little new fellow arrived out of the anywhere and came into the here and became their boy.

But I said, have you ever thought of this? The age of six months or eight months or nine months, a sudden stroke of disease falls upon little Junior and he dies. And with broken hearts they lay the little quiet white alabaster statue in silk, white silk and put it away and buried with his ancestors down in the earth. And when the first birthday rolls around, the father sits sober and dejected and trying to be strong and the mother openly weeps. But they bake a little cake. And they turn out the electric light and they light the candles. And they have a little candle there and they light it and they try to think they’ve got him with them. But he’s not there. Finally, in despair, the mother turns her back, throws herself across the bed and sobs. And father comes and stands around awkwardly and doesn’t know what to say. He feels it too. All they’ve got now is a celebration. The babe has died.

And I told those Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians, watch that you don’t lose out of your heart the life of Christ, the life of God, and have nothing left but of celebration. Nothing left but Good Friday and Maundy Thursday and Easter and all the rest. Look out that you don’t lose it all and have nothing but empty arms and empty hearts and a celebration that has no meaning. And I wouldn’t have said it to them if I couldn’t have said it to you.

So, I say to you today, let’s watch it. They were great days, those days, the day He was born, and the day He died and the day He rose and triumphed the Lamb, risen to be a Lion. Those are great days. And we have the marked on the calendar and we celebrate them. But let’s look out. They are not just candles on the cake of a religion that’s dead, for it can happen. The world can be too much with you. And you can sell out your spirituality and be nothing but a hollow shell. And yet you can celebrate and buy flowers and go through the motions and have a celebration and light the candle, but there’s nothing living in it.

But we can have all of these. We can have them both. Mama and Papa can have both. They can have the celebration and the boy, by the grace of God, if he lives–they can have both. So, you and I can have both. We can meet and sing such brilliant and beautiful songs as we’ve been singing this morning about His rising again and opening heaven and closing hell and triumphing over the grave. We can sing them and celebrate, but we can celebrate a living Christ in our midst. We don’t have to have one or the other. We can have both.

So, we today celebrate. We celebrate the Easter of His rising and triumph. But it’s not a hollow empty thing for those who believe and follow Him into reality. He’s still here. He’s with us. He’s with us this morning. And at the Lord’s Supper, we will have what our Episcopal friends call the Real Presence. He’s here, living, a real presence. We do show forth His death. Yes. Till He comes. Yes. In the meantime, His real presence is with us.

We will now go on into the celebration of the Lord’s Supper this Easter morning. And it is for all of God’s children. It’s not for the members of this church only. You may feel free if your heart sings this morning with us that Jesus is risen and He’s yours. May you feel free to share with us and thus make our community complete.

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“The Great Double-Cross”

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The Great Double Cross

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 25, 1956

And when they had bound him and led Him away and delivered into Pontius Pilate the governor. Then Judas, which had betrayed Him, when he saw that He was condemned, that is the Jesus was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood. And they said, what is that to us? See thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, It is not lawful to put them into the treasury because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field to bury strangers in. For that field was called the Field of Blood unto this day.

Now, in this text, we have described one of the most deeply emotional and significant moments in the history of the world. The most important nation in the world, for many reasons, was Israel. And if you would challenge that, then I would read to you these words of Paul, what advantage then hath the Jew or what profit is there in circumcision much every way? Chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. And then he also says over here, that who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law and the service of God and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

Paul believed as all the Old Testament indicates and his Bible teachers admit that the most important nation in the world was Israel. And now at this moment of her greatest trial, when the one for whom she had been called into existence, was standing on trial. And now this great and important nation, blind to the presence of the Messiah, alienated from her God by sin and unbelief, and allied with the greatest pagan empire in the world, allied for a purpose. She hated that empire. But she was allied with that empire for a purpose to destroy a man. A man who had done no evil, no harm, and had done only good all the days of his life.

Now this quiet, meek, harmless Man, this pure, clean, harmless Man stands before them, and they join dirty hands with the pagan empire to destroy this Man. And back of it all now, inciting and arousing and inflaming and provoking and instigating and urging on, there was the cunning, sinister and incredibly wicked being we call the devil. Unbelievably cruel, I say he is, and with restrained cold ferocity. He played nation against nation and man against man as a master on the chessboard, that old serpent, the devil, with his unbelievable cruelty, that one we call a serpent and the dragon. He was out to destroy this Man, but he was unseen and unsuspected and he was working to destroy the Man, but along with the Man, the very nation who was also trying to destroy the Man and unknown to them, the very empire itself. That was the work of the devil. And in order to do it, he had to have a man that he could use. His cruel work of destruction required that he had a man.

And so, he searched for a tool, a vehicle, a victim that he could use and he usually manages to find one. There is the frightening thing about human history, when this wicked one, this shrewd, cunning and all but infinitely wise and infinitely wicked being, sets out to destroy something or someone good. He can’t come directly to it. So, he has to work through a tool and he usually finds a tool.

If Judas had only known that his treachery against Jesus was the suggestion of the devil, he would have recoil in horror. He had been brought up in the church. He had been brought up among the Jews, He had heard the Torah read from his youth. And they had sung, he had heard the songs of David sung as they mounted and sung the songs of ascent on Passover days. Judas was a religious man. But he had no idea that his treachery was not his own suggestion, but was by the instigation of the devil, and that he was being used as a utensil by that devil to do something else, and then that he would be thrown cynically aside, when his usefulness was ended. I say if he had known that, the history of Judas and part of the New Testament might have been different, but he didn’t know that. That was part of the deception and the treachery that he never found it out. It is part of the shrewd wisdom of that sinister, dark spirit, that while we’re being betrayed, we don’t know we’re being betrayed. So, Judas betrays Christ with a kiss.

Now here, it seems to me adds something to all this, that Judas didn’t hate Jesus. Nobody could have lived with Jesus three years and hated Jesus. And something of the way they lived in those days was indicated by the fact that when he told this empire with whom he was allied in black conspiracy to destroy Jesus, when he told them about the sign, he said, the one whom I shall kiss.

Now kissing Jesus certainly was not an unpleasant thing. Nor do I think it was an unusual thing. Jesus was 33 years old. He was the most perfect example of manhood since Adam. His lips were clean. There was no smell of a foul habit upon him. And he never had uttered an unclean word in his life. And his beautiful lips had spoken only kind words of forgiveness and healing and pardon and deliverance. And there he stood in his beautiful manhood. I do not think that kissing Jesus would have been unpleasant. Rather, I think that it would have been a most pleasant thing. And surely it was not unusual because John, many times rested his head affectionately on Jesus’ bosom. And there was nothing especially unusual about this kiss of Judas. He simply said, the one I shall go up and kiss. Obviously, it was not an unusual thing, I repeat.

So, Judas was not mad at our Lord and he didn’t hate him. He betrayed him for two ulterior reasons. He did not betray Him because he said to himself, I want this Jesus to get what’s coming to Him. No, he betrayed him because he wanted to get financial gain and he wanted to secure public favor. And my friends, those who betray Jesus today, I don’t think there are many of them in civilized society that betray Jesus because they hate him. I do not think that. I think they betray Him because there is an ulterior motive. They want something that the treacherous betrayal will bring them. That’s all Judas wants. If Judas could have gotten the public favor of the Empire and the money, he never would have betrayed Jesus. He probably would have run. He was a coward. He would have slunk away like the rest of them did. But he had nothing against Jesus, that proved by his subsequent conduct.

When after he had seen them lead Jesus away, the wave of self-condemnation and warm affection for Jesus came over him and he rushed boldly into the presence of the Pharisees and scribes and priests and said, here take this money back. I’ve been a fool. I’ve been a wicked man. I’ve betrayed this innocent blood. That’s the way it says, this innocent blood. I’ve betrayed this innocent man. Why, there came over him in a wave of memory, all the healings that he’d seen and the deliverances and all the kind, pure words and the deep friendly smiles and the pleasantnesses that they’d had together and the moments that they had stopped to eat some simple meal beneath a tree, or laying down on the moss to sleep, and wait the morning when they could go on their journey. So that Judas had nothing against Jesus. He wasn’t betraying Him for that reason. He had two ulterior reasons, I repeat, he wanted money and he wanted to be popular, and it is so today.

People are betraying Jesus who have nothing against Jesus, who even will speak kindly about Jesus. There are people singing about Jesus on the radio now who have sold out and walked out at church choirs. Walked out of church choirs, who have been leading sopranos or tenor solos or basses. And they’ve walked out of church choirs and sold themselves to the beer interests and are singing beer anthems now to sell beer to the public. They have nothing against Jesus. And in tender moments, they speak and think kindly of Jesus. And their reason for betraying Him is not that they hated him. They wanted money. And there are people who have betrayed Jesus because they wanted to be popular with their high school crowd. And they have nothing against him. And if anybody said anything against Jesus, they’d fight for him, they’d stand up and say, well, now, I’m not a Christian. I’m not very good. But I know better than that. They defend Jesus, if it ever came to that. They have a kindly feeling toward Him. But they want to be popular with their crowd. They want to stand well with the kids, or they want to stand well with the business people with whom they work or in the office force where they work or the little group in their social circle.

So they betray Jesus for popularity and to keep friends and keep from making enemies. It looks like a pretty good motive. It looked like a pretty good motive to please the priests and the elders and the rest of them. It looked like a pretty good thing for Judas to be tolerant and want to get on the side of the religious people. But it led Judas to betray Jesus with a treacherous kiss, an evil kiss, the evilest kiss that ever was given or received from the day that Cain kissed his brother and murdered him, it was the kiss Judas gave to Jesus. And yet it was not because he hated Jesus. It was because there was something he wanted that was ulterior and not directly related, something outside of Jesus that betraying Jesus would get him.

And there is our problem in the world today, and that’s what’s wrong today. People who become Christians and then slip away and go back to the world don’t do it because they hate Jesus or found in Him He wasn’t what they thought He was. They apologize to their own hearts and pray and say these who go on to the air and sing for the devil. They want the money and they want the popularity. But they’re very happy if somebody, knowing the weakness of Christians and the weakness of the religious public generally, will sing a song about Jesus. They’re glad to do it. And they solve their own conscience a little bit and say, well, I’m getting a little chance to witness. Witnessing nothing. They’re getting a chance to throw a little kiss to Jesus, while they sell Him out and treacherously betray Him. If they had followed Him and wanted to continue to follow Him, they’d be back singing in that church choir and teaching a Sunday school class and attending missionary conventions, or they would be out on the field or they’d be in school or they’d be supporting somebody that is. But they couldn’t stand it. And so they’re out there and they’ve betrayed Jesus with a kiss

My brother and sister, this is the cruel double-cross. For when the man Judas had been overcome with self-accusation and felt so deeply condemned, he raced back with that money and said, here, take it. I’ve betrayed innocent blood. And they said to him, what is that to us? See thou to that. And they tempted Judas to betray Christ and then they turned around and betrayed Judas. I say there was the cruelest double-cross in history.

Out in the state of Ohio many years ago, I guess twenty-five. I haven’t seen anything like it traveling through there since. But a few years back when automobiles were not as plentiful and the problems not as great as they are now, they had a practice there. Obviously, the Ohio Highway Commission had arranged it, that when anyone was killed on the highway at a crossing or on a curve or at a crossroads, they would put up a white cross to mark, no markings, just a white cross. And everybody knew I have to slow down here. There’s a cross. A man was killed here.

I once saw a place where five crosses stood beside the highway. Five people had died there. I guess they gave it up later as a bad job and quit. But the theory was that if a man driving along a little too fast, or a little carelessly, saw a white cross, or two white crosses, or three white crosses on the highway, he would say to himself suddenly, oh, this is terrible. This is placed where men die and he would take his foot off the accelerator and would slow down and thus save lives. I suppose it did work for I know it always sobered me when I saw white crosses on the way

Well, I tell you that on the high road of history, my brethren, there stand two black crosses where an apostle fell to mark the place where an apostle in a weak hour sold and betrayed his own highest interests and betrayed His Savior with a kiss. It is the double cross, the two black crosses. And you can come down history from the day Cain murdered Abel, I say, to this present our and you will not find anything as cynically, cruelly frighteningly terrible as the double-cross that the Jews pulled on poor, dumb Judas, who had listened to his heart which had listened to the devil. And he had made himself a utensil, a vehicle; a cheap, weak agent for stronger ones. And he had pulled their chestnuts out of the fire, and then when they no longer could use him, they said, what is that to us? See thou to that, and turn their backs upon him.

And I tell you, I have read considerable in my time, considerable amounts of literature. I think I’m fairly familiar with the writings of Geake and Schiller in German. And I have read Escola and Sophocles in Greek, and I have read all of it. And I have read Plutarch and I have read Dickens and I have read Dostoevsky the Russian and Zola and Victor Hugo the Frenchman, and I have read Shakespeare and the rest of the English, those dramatists and novelists who know how to make things wonderful and terrible and present dramatically and colorfully the deeds of man on earth. But I think I can say without any fear that I shall be successfully contradicted, that nowhere in all the literature of all the geniuses of the world, is there anything so drably unqualifiedly, frighteningly terrible as these words, what is that to us? See thou to that.

And we have the picture here of a little frightened man who for love of money and popularity, had betrayed his Savior and treacherously sold his Redeemer to the murderers. Now this little frightened man, fated to exist forever, and can never cease to be, will always have a memory and always will be able to recall his deed of shame. And always, always he’ll remember the double-cross, always and yet this little man can’t escape. Earth and heaven are against him, and even his friends with whom he had whispered and laughed before time. For don’t think they managed to get Judas just by walking up in the business like proposition and asking him. They cultivated him. They cultivated him behind Jesus’ back.

And these Jews, they stroked their silky beard and flung their phylacteries out to show how religious they were. And they cultivated Judas behind the back of the Savior. And they laughed with him and no doubt invited him to lunch and we’re kind to him and patted his back and whispered to him and they were friends, this little frightened man. And now they turned against him and say, what is that to us? Who are you anyhow? See thou to that. And the stars in their courses, he cursed upon his frightened head. And he rushes out, puts a rope around his neck and hangs himself.

And the Scripture tells us, that poor, foolish, fool that he was, he couldn’t even commit suicide with dignity. His rope broke and he fell on the rocks on the precipice below and tore open abdomen and disemboweled himself. As though the grade wide to heaven above were to say, the blackest double-cross in history has got to have the messiest, most undignified, cheapest death in history. So, there was a man who couldn’t even commit suicide and make it stick. And there was a vehicle, a utensil, a tool, an agent and didn’t know it till the last minute. He didn’t know it, my brother.

And so, he went out, this man Judas, used by that, that incredibly wicked devil, that unbelievably, cynical, cruel dragon. In order to destroy a man would ruin another man. And that picture of a little dark man; why doesn’t some artists paint it? I don’t believe in painting pictures of Jesus. For nobody knows what Jesus looked like. But I could see how a man could paint a picture, and if I had the skill in my right hand to do it, I’d paint the picture of a little, frightened man with the stars above looking down darkly upon him and with the earth frightened as he ran. And with the very rope, refusing to cooperate and the sharp, jagged rock below, telling the story on the highway of the black double-cross, where he betrayed his Savior and was betrayed in turn, a fool of his own lusts and a victim of his own desires. That was Judas and I think I could make a picture out of it.

Now, my friend, Judas has long gone to his own place which is perdition, but the world and sin and the devil are still today betraying men. That was not once for all, that was but a sample dramatized for us, so to speak. But it’s going on all the time. And the world will take a Christian, remember, egged on, instigated by that, that cunning devil, incited and inflamed by the devil, the world will treat a Christian. They will use him. They will stand in his way. They will tear him down. They’ll lead him astray with the professions of friendship and laughter and bravado and hospitality and back-slapping in jokes and flattery. They’ll tear the young Christian down. They’ll steer him away. They’ll shut up his testimony. They will make him ashamed to pray when they eat in the restaurant. They will make him ashamed to carry his New Testament.

And he sneaks to church Sundays and hopes nobody will know that all week he was a coward who was betraying Jesus because he wanted to stand well with the people in the school. The businessman will come to church and try to look pious on Sunday morning. He’ll try to forget that all week long he kept as quiet as a mouse lest his testimony offend somebody. Or that he went along with a shady deal, because he was a member of a partnership that was busy doing shady deals within the law. And so, he kept his mouth shut and said it wasn’t his fault and tried to soothe his conscience. But he’s a vehicle. He’s being used as a utensil. And when he’s old and arrested and battered, and the devil can’t use him anymore, he’ll throw him cynically aside and say, what’s that to me? You see to that. And in that black and awful hour when there appears the black double-cross over the man’s life who said he was a Christian, who gave to missions and gave to the church and brought his family to Sunday school. But he’s a coward and fearful in his daily living.

A young fellow who on the high school football team is ashamed not to do what the rest of them do. And ashamed to let them know that he’s a clean man. The girl with her crowd, shamed to testify and witness, betraying Jesus to stay popular with the crowd.

Oh, W.H. Meyer, that great English poet, in his great piece called St. Paul, he prays, God forbid that I should fall into the treason, the seeking and honor which they gave not Thee. And yet there are those who today, even in Alliance churches, seek honor from the world that they never gave Jesus. And so they betray him and the devil has the black double-cross over their heads waiting for the end. And after they fall into a pit, the world turns its back and says what do we got to do with that? See thou to that.

I say that not in all the literature. Shakespeare never thought of anything as tragic, as terrible, as cynically, bestially cruel as this, that after they’d pulled a man into a pit they could walk away rubbing their hands and say we’ll take this money and buy a potter’s field. We’ll give it to the poor. We’ll cut the corners on this deal and cheat a little, but we’ll give two tenths of it to the Lord. The Lord doesn’t want your dirty two tenths. The Lord will take a whole lot less and bless you for it. But He doesn’t want a dirty two tenths. And he doesn’t want anything that comes anyway but a clean and a holy way. And yet businessmen and professional men and even preachers are willing to be used by Satan. What is that to us? See thou to that.

Let may say to you and particularly you young people. No one is ever your friend who speaks lightly of your Savior. Nobody is ever your friend, no matter how warm and flattering and affectionately that he or she may seem to be. They’re not your friend if they speak lightly of your Savior. They got their attitude and philosophy somewhere else. They got it from this cynically cruel old dragon who with his restrained, cold hatred, he’s out to destroy you and everyone that follows Jesus. No one is ever your friend who criticizes your church. No one is ever your friend who invites you to sin. No one is ever your friend who laughs when you pray. Nobody is your friend who tells you off-colored jokes. No buddy is your friend. No one is your friend, they’re utensils, they’re tools, they’re vehicles, they’re instruments of Satan for your destruction.

And the same Satan that used a weak Judas and then betrayed him and left him to suicide and hell, that same Satan is out to get you. He knows your name and your number. He knows more about you than you know about yourself. He knows where we live. He knows you and he’s going to destroy you as he tried to destroy that good Man, Whose kind, kind words had raised the dead and healed the sick and forgiven harlots. He was out to destroy Him and he did, and he did.

But I see another cross. And over the highway where Judas traveled and where Judas died, I see standing the great double-cross. But I see another cross, not black, not white, but red. And on that cross, I see your Friend, your real Friend. Judas was nobody’s friend. And the world was not Judas’ friend. And Rome was not Israel’s friend. And Israel was not Judas’ friend. But the Friend was the One who was betrayed, the Man, the kind Man that would be so easy to kiss. That kind Man, 33 years old in perfect health. No anemia, no hardening of the arteries, no prostate difficulties, no fallen arches, no baldness, nothing that men get, even good men get. For He was in perfect health. He was God’s Lamb. And according to the Old Testament, the lamb had to be examined four days for defects, and if there were any defects found in it, it wasn’t used. A perfectly healthy lamb, so He was a perfectly healthy Lamb. And they took that healthy, robust Lamb to the cross and nail Him up there. Not an anemic, bloodless creature to die easily, but a full-blooded Man in the fullness of His young manhood whose veins ran hot and full with purest blood.

There is a fountain wrote Cooper, filled with blood drawn from Emanuel’s veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. I say, beside the black crosses that marked the infamy of history I see the red cross and the Lamb dying. A Lamb who isn’t there on that cross now, but who did His work and said, it’s finished and went to the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. And Who when He had by Himself purged our sin, sat down at the right hand of God, from hence waiting till His enemies be made His footstool, there is your Friend.

And there’s the only real friend. The person who tempts you to sin is your enemy, a tool of the devil and not your friend. Your friend is yonder in the glory. Will you turn to your Friend this morning? The only real friend. I’ll be your friend, but I can’t help you see. McAfee would be your friend. We have board members. We have godly people, women and men, they’d help you, but they can’t help, you see. What you need is a Friend that goes beyond, and we can’t go beyond with you. We can only sing when you die and follow you out/ And the undertaker can take three flowers and I can stand with my little book and say, to earth we drop. That’s all we can do with you friend. We’ll be your friend, but we can’t really be your friend because we haven’t the power. But there is a friend. And there He was on that red cross. The black crosses stood alongside of the red cross. One marked the tragic eternal downfall of an apostle, and the other marked the glorious propitiation for the world. Turn to Jesus while you may.

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“All Things are Possible With God”

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All Things Are Possible With God
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
September 2, 1956

There are two verses, two parts of verses, just words, the words of Jesus. One is found in Mark 10:27, these words, six of them. With God, all things are possible. With God, all things are possible. And then in the ninth chapter, the 23rd verse, all things are possible to him that believeth.

Now, there is the same thing said about God and about the believing man: all things are possible. I see no poetry here, no figure here. This is not figurative language. It is blunt statement of truth. The whole passage is without figure or metaphor. We need not discount this in any wise. It stands just as it is bluntly, all things are possible to him that believeth, and all things are possible with God.

Now, the text, all things are possible with God, is one that we can take standing up and without a problem, as I have pointed out on a previous occasion some, I think, years back now, that nobody ever feels when he hears the text, with God all things are possible, that he’s been jarred in it. He does not stagger at that statement through unbelief. With God all things are possible. The eternal God, the omnipotent God, the God who is plenipotent, who has all the potency that there is, all the power that exists is in God. And nobody feels jarred or disturbed. Nobody runs to a pastor and says, what does this mean? Nobody writes to an editor and says, will you please give your opinion of verse so and so, all things are possible with God? Everybody knows that’s true, and nobody questions it. That is, anybody who’s ever read the Bible at all or been brought up in the Christian tradition.

But the other verse, all things are possible to him that hath faith. Now, we might just as well say that we’re in trouble here. There isn’t any use to look pious and impassive and pretend that this also is easy for us and it’s old stuff. It’s nothing of the sort. It is very difficult for the human mind to grasp, even the Christian, human mind, because it says the same thing about a believing man that it says about God. It states that the God of heaven can do everything. And then it states that the man who believes can do everything.

Now, God declares His total ability to do, His total ability to do. I’ve been praying over and wondering what I should be talking to the people in Canada about as they’re gathered, will be gathered there from all over. And there will be men there, very greatly my superior in every possible way that I know. Such men as Dr. Jones and this Hashi, a very famous theologian from Switzerland. And I can’t go there and hope to be able to stand up along with those very great and learned and gifted men. And I have wondered whether maybe I shouldn’t just go there and talk about God. I wonder if that might not be, just go there and talk about God. Because they usually don’t do that. They find God in everything, but they don’t talk about God too much. Maybe that will be my contribution, just go there and talk about the Triune God. And among the things that I want to say, will be that God declares His total ability to do. God can do every thing. That is, He can do everything that He desires to do.

Believing in the omnipotence of Deity does not require us to believe that God can do what He does not will to do. God cannot, for instance, tell a lie. God cannot, for instance, break a promise. But anything God wills to do, God has total ability to do. And no thing and no matter and no body and no circumstance or no law and no enemy and no opposition from anywhere can stop God from doing exactly what He wills to do. Now, we want to get that settled. The great God whose we are and whom we call Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, can do whatever He wills to do and all that He wills to do.

But now the same thing is true of him that believeth. God shares His omnipotence with that person He calls, him that believeth. With whom does God share His omnipotence with? About whom does God say, he’s equal to me, in a relative way and by My grace and permission and promise, he can do what I can do. Or because I do what I do through him, about whom does He thus speak? Is it a genius? Is it some religious genius more brilliant? No, he could be a genius, but it’s not with geniuses that God shares his total ability to do. Not with some powerful personality.

I’ve said I suppose too often already here, that the cult of personality has become a deadly and dangerous thing in our time. That this cult of personality that magnifies Apollos and puts a leay around his neck, of the fragrant flowers and offers sacrifice to him, this has become a dangerous thing. And God did not say that man of powerful personality can do whatsoever he wills. He said, that the man who believeth has the power to do whatsoever he will.

Now, this person may not be a superior one. And he may be no wiser and no more influential and no more powerful than the rank and file, because the power is not his. The power belongs to God. You see, if I know that the power belongs to God, this takes all the strain off so there isn’t any effort A man walks in with a subconscious feeling, partly conscious that he’s got to do it, he attempts to do it either by forcing his voice or by gesticulations or by some other method. He tries to do, by his own power, that which only God can do.

Now, gestures and gesticulations are normal. You and I have that much Jew in us that when we make a point we like to do it with our hands. And we talk with our hands and that’s perfectly normal and all right. But there is such a thing as going into a pulpit or before a class or wherever, and trying by putting what they call, body english into it. Do you know what body english is? It’s to hit it and then turn and hope and help the thing to go where it ought to go by sheer physical, by overpowering the thing. But after it’s left the club, you can’t do a thing with it then. But people try that, as I try on an airplane to keep the thing balanced. I always lean the other way from the way it turns. If they bank to the left, I lean hard to the right so it won’t turn over. But that’s strictly and purely a fallacy of the mind.

And we can try in our prayers to strain and wrestle with God and get things done by our power. My brethren, the Bible didn’t say, all things are possible with God, and all things are possible with the man or woman who can wrestle enough. He said, All things are possible to him that believeth. We ought again to release wonderful, marvelous faith into the church of Christ and see what faith can do. That is, not the faith you hear about over the radio: somebody upstairs likes me. Not that kind of pagan faith, but the faith in God. Now, this takes, I say, all the strain off so that you’re not trying to do it. And it takes all the glory away from you. I wonder how many people there are who serve God sheerly for God Almighty’s own glory without wanting a little cut on their own. Now, I seriously do.

I wonder how many men write a Christian book and commit it to God so completely that they’re willing for it to fail? I wonder how many people teach and commit it to God so completing that they’re willing to fail if God orders it. Mostly we want to serve God by winning and keeping up a good front ourselves. But it should not be because the power belongs to God and to Him alone, and all the glory must be taken away from you or me. Remember this, I am Jehovah and there is no other and My glory will I not share with another. And the work that is being done in the world, the truly eternal work that is being done, is being done only by those who don’t want any share in God’s glory, but give all the glory to the Godhead, to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Now, our Lord Jesus Christ is absolute Master. I wish you’d read your Bible with that in mind. I wish you’d read your New Testament more. Read Acts and read Colossians and learn how God has elevated His Son to the right hand of power. And even while He walked on the earth, He manifested His absolute mastery over everything. Over the realm of nature, the wind and the sea obeyed Him. And over human flesh, He healed the sick. And over the soul, He forgave sins. And over the spirit, He cast out devils. And in the realm of the dead, for He spoke and the dead walked out of their graves alive. So, our Lord had all power. He manifested it while he walked on Earth. And when He went to the right hand of God, if there was such a thing as any realm where God had for the moment in His plan, restrained Him, He took those restraints off. Then Jesus said, all authority is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. And then He said, as my Father sent me, so send I you. And in Mark 16:20, these disciples believed this and they went forth, says the Scripture, and preached everywhere. And the Lord went with them, confirming the word with signs following.

Now, it says that in the Book of Mark, but somebody would want to tell us that that was for the Apostles and belonged to another day. Isn’t it strange? I pointed out one time, just at the conclusion of a sermon, how unbelief works. Unbelief says somewhere else, but not here. Some other time, but not now. Some other people but not us. And I had the pleasure of hearing that sermon preached back to me by a young preacher who’d heard that and develop them into a beautiful sermon. I heard it. He had to point. And it was a good sermon, all right, because that’s the way unbelief does. Unbelief is willing to believe anything provided it isn’t now. Anything, provided it isn’t here. Anything, provided it isn’t us.

And there are those of you listening to me right now that pray for the Danis and the unpronounceables up there in the Philippines. And you wouldn’t be even a little surprised if the message came that God had done wonders there. But you can’t bring yourself to believe God will do wonders here. Do you know that? If it’s far enough away, you’ll believe it. But if it comes close enough, you begin to stagger. No doubt if Abraham had heard a story back in antediluvian days, an old man, 100, with a wife, 90, had had a child. He’d have taken it in stride. But it was something else when God said to the old man, your wife, Sarah shall have a son.

Now brethren, let’s get away from this thing. And let’s remember that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God of the Reformers and the God of the Revivalists and the God of the great pioneer missionaries. That is our God. He is our God. But you say, yes, but they deserve it. You see, brethren, we still have the Roman Catholic idea that the saints are much more beloved than we are. That if you were virtuous enough to be a saint, God loved you more and would do more for you. But that is a subtle suggestion that God gives us things because we’re saintly.

But the Bible doesn’t teach that. The Bible teaches that God gives us things because God is good and we’re in need and grace operates. And Saint Augustine, could not get a thing that you can get from God. St. Augustine never had one-inch closer entrée to God Almighty than you have right now. The well need not a physician. The healthy man doesn’t need a doctor. It’s the sick man. And I believe we have a right, and I have written it into my little prayer book, and I take it before God. I believe we have a right to believe that God will bless us in inverse proportion to how bad we’ve been. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

What do I mean by that strange expression, in inverse proportion? I mean that I have a right to go to God and say, O God, You boasted about your grace and your mercy and your willingness out of your own good heart to bless people that didn’t deserve it. Well, I’m a candidate. I’m the worst and therefore God give me the most. I believe we have a right to go, and I think God would smile and listen if we went to Him and say I’m bringing Thee no soft odors. I’m bringing Thee no garments redolent of sainthood. I am bringing Thee no past that can be written in a book. I am bringing Thee a past that I don’t want written in a book. And I am bringing Thee not the smell of heaven but the savor of earth. I’m bringing Thee raggedness and scattered, staggered and unworthiness. And now God, make good on your promise and bless me most because I’m worse. And give me greater help because I need it the most.

I believe that God smiles at that kind of praying to go slithering into the presence of God with a waxy smile and say, God, I’m not as other men. This harlot over here, this publican over there, that politician over yonder, I’ve always been a good boy and stayed in church. And I have five Bibles at home that I earned in Sunday school. And you know, Father, that I never did anything worse than drink a bottle of Coke. And I’m a pretty good boy, Lord, I think God will turn His back on that kind of self-righteousness, but knowing what I am and knowing what we are. But because Jesus Christ’s blood is of infinite capacity to purchase merits for us, we go straight into the presence of God paying no attention to the merits of the saints.

Don’t allow yourself to be hooked by that old error that the saints piled up merits. If the saints got their merits, they would all be in hell now, every last one of them. If they got only what they deserved from Augustine and St. Teresa, and all down to this present hour, they’d all be in hell and they all knew it and all said so. And they were the first ones to say so. I’ve got their lives and devotional works and I read them. I know what they believed. And this idea that there is a what they call it, a superarrogationist idea that you pile up merits.

But I and Brother Thomas and Brother Chase and Brother McAfee were four good boys and when we die, we’ll leave behind us a little merit. Which if you can get it, it will help you. Paganism, my brethren. There’s not a line in the Scripture about it. Its paganism. I will not leave any merits behind me. I’ll leave demerits, 100% solid. But I have all the merits of a risen Jesus, all the merits of a risen Jesus. Not superarrogation, but vicarious death and resurrection. It gives me everything that I need, everything, everything.

Jesus Christ is made to me all I need. All I need, He alone is all my plea. Here’s all I need, wisdom, righteousness and power, holiness forevermore. My redemption, full and sure, He is all I need. And the only plea we have and the only one we need before our Father’s face, because I was a guilty sinner, but Jesus died for me. And the Father hears my prayer and answers it as if I had been an unfallen angel in heaven above and had never known the pollution of iniquity. He restores moral innocency through His forgiving love and establishes us so that we can talk to Him. And we can get things from Him if you want to put it on that low level.

Well, he says, they went everywhere and the Lord went with them. And the Lord confirmed everything and proved to them that He meant what He said when He said that everything they needed they could have just as He could do anything He wanted to do. Now where may we expect that power in the next seven minutes? Where may we expect it in personal salvation and life? No sin, no habit, no weakness, nothing, can stop the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing can stop the Lord Jesus Christ.

Can you imagine a gnat flying around trying to escape a nighthawk? A nighthawk sails and bank and turn and curve and make their beeping sound all over Chicago. You’re not naturalist enough to know when a nighthawk is flying. He’s hunting gnats. He eats them, lives off of them. That’s where he gets his food. He doesn’t sit down on the dirty earth and pecks. He goes up there and flies around takes it on the wing.

Well suppose that this gnat has escaped a night hawk and he sees a DC-7 roaring in and says I’m going to bring that one down and he flies into the propeller. You know what happens to him. He’s history from that moment on. And when anything says, well God Almighty, He can’t do it. You say, God can’t do it brother. God in His pity may close His eyes and wait so as not to crush you, but God can do anything He wants to do. Don’t think he can’t. And there isn’t an enemy anywhere that can stop Him.

Have you notice the communists have begun to talk like the Nazis now, boastfully, boasting. Hitler used to say I’m about run out of patience now. You, your country over there, I’m about run out of patience. He ran out of patience and then he ran out of time. And the day that he said, we know how to deal with you Bible-carrying Christians. I said, God thank you. He said it. He said it God. I knew he was finished. I knew he was done the day that he said, we know how to deal with you Bible-carrying Christians. And they’re still carrying Bibles in Germany. Hitler has been in hell, oh, these twelve years, eleven.

Brethren, there isn’t anything that can stop God. And don’t you ever for a moment think a thing is too big for God to do–nothing. All things are possible to him that believeth. And in our common needs, do you believe God is willing to help you in your common needs? I don’t want to stir you up to start praying about your little household affairs all the time. Put those in the hands of God and trust His providence. That’s the best way to handle that. But when the crisis comes, God is just as willing to help you with your household work as He is to help a missionary on the field or an angel at His right hand. I believe that God is perfectly willing to help.

We had a red-headed treasurer in this church in Indianapolis many years ago. I don’t know whether brother Thomas would know him. What was his name? I could think of it, Mr. Keller. And he was a Christian, a happy Christian brother. And you know how he got converted? He went to an Alliance meeting. And there was testimony meeting, and a dear old housewife, dear old lady got up and gave a testimony. And she said, I’d like to say to the glory of God, that I put my wash on my front porch for the laundry man and somebody stole it. And she said, I got on my knees and I said, God, I can’t afford to lose that. Please return it to me. And she said it was returned and placed back on my porch. Thank God, and she sat down. And this redhead sat there saying to himself, what infinite crust this is that God Almighty, the great God Almighty should be interested in a bag of wet wash. What does God care about that? But it got ahold of his hide nevertheless and it wasn’t very long until he gave himself to the Lord and was converted. I believe in these things, brethren, with all of my heart.

Why, don’t you remember that passage in the 12th of Acts when the Lord said to the angel, my boy Peter is in prison. Go down. And the angel started off, and just a minute He said, take a cloak with you. He said, take a cloak. So he took a cloak down. And he waked Peter and said, here, put this cloak on you. And then let him out through the gates. Who thought about the cloak? The angel? No. God thought about it.

And then think of that poor old prophet out there. Forty days journey from nowhere, in the woods. He had said he had run out of food and ran so far there wasn’t no food, and he’d been driven to dig for roots. But God said to an angel, here, go down and bake some pancakes for my boy Elijah. And down came the angel on broad white wings. And what did it do? Play a pipe organ or paint a picture or write a poem? No, it baked cakes for a prophet. There isn’t anything too small for God to be concerned with.

Dear old little old Julian; Ray calls her, my girlfriend. She’s been dead 600 years and I carry her little book around with me and read what she said about the Lord. She said, O Lord, Thou wilt never refuse to humble Thyself and serve in the least particular of our humble nature. And there isn’t anything in our poor nature, that the Lord won’t serve us in. She said, though He be so high, yet does He meek Himself to be so homely with poor sinners like us. Homely of course means familiar at home life. Well, she’s right. And there isn’t a thing, there isn’t a thing that God isn’t interested in, your common needs.

Now, I don’t mean that I want you to get your eyes on this world’s goods and begin to belabor God with requests for all things. The time was when a man came to Jesus and said, will you tell my brother that he divide? And the Lord knew He had a bad man on His hands. So, He said, who made me a divider over you and he turned His back and walked away, perfectly willing to help a woman find her wet wash. Perfectly willing to humble Himself to the lowest needs of our human nature, but unwilling to divide with a covetous man, and unwilling to become a lawyer to try to get a man, a wicked man who wanted money. No, God isn’t interested in that.

So don’t take advantage of what I’ve said and start any of this asking God to get your hair back. I know there’s one cult that promises that if you write them, I mean it. They say, write in and send us something and we’ll send you something and then you can get your hair back. And thank God, he counts every hair when it falls. He knows where they are, doesn’t he? I’m not worried about that. And I don’t want my hair back. I’ll go redhead one of these days.

And then in our services, our services. I think I ought to repent of something. Brother McAfee ribs me about it, and kids me. When I have a very important, what I consider to be a very important engagement coming up like the one in Canada soon, I sweat under it. And I say, oh, why did I promised to go. Brother McAfee said, now it’s starting. He knows that I have a little worrying to do. But I think that’s sinful. I think I ought to ask God to forgive me and I have for that matter. And I think I ought to quit it, because why should I worry when the Lord is going with me? And if I’ve got to do it, I’ll buy a ticket to San Francisco. But if I don’t have to do it, why should I worry? It just goes to prove Adam isn’t as dead as I wish he was. But I pray that God will give me faith to know that in my God-appointed work, I don’t have to do it. God does it. And when God does it why should I worry?

I preached before a bishop one time. That is, I thought I was going to preach before him, but he couldn’t make it. And I tell you, I sweat under that. And I have preached a few times in my life before some people so important that I felt that I couldn’t make it. But all that’s flesh. Who are they anyhow? No matter how many miters they have on their heads, they have still got breath in their nostrils. And no matter how many grandiose titles they’ve earned for themselves, they still have breath in their nostrils. And why should one man with breath in his nostrils be afraid of another man with breath in his nostril?

So, when your God-appointed task, remember with me, nothing is impossible to him that believeth. Nothing is impossible. But why do so few take advantage of it? In our church, God, let me live as I trust you will. I have no plans otherwise for the next while. When I come back, I want to preach some sermons. And I believe we’ve got a future. And I believe we’re going to see a great Fall and Winter. But if we do, it won’t be because anybody winds himself up tight. It’ll be because we learned that with God all things are possible and all things are possible to them that believe. Whether we’re known abroad or whether we’re not known round the corner of our own street, God isn’t worrying about popularity or fame. Any of His children can go to Him for anything and He will answer in his will.

So, we serve God, and while God owes us nothing yet God in His kind grace puts Himself under obligation to us where he has to listen. He in His infinite grace puts Himself under obligation so that He must hear us. Shall we not then pray these days just ahead of us? And let’s believe God all up and down these streets. They’ve come in over the last year, hundreds and hundreds of them. Children half-grown, little ones, hundreds, and they swarmed the streets. And there’s nobody reaching them and nobody helping them.

Why can this church take it on ourselves instead of our looking like a bird about to fly and say, we’ve got to go south. Why can’t we rather say, God sent them for us to evangelize? I believe, if we’ll believe, we’d see God do wonders yet in this church. I have that confidence that God will do wonders. I do not expect God, I do not expect God, ever expect that this shall be a popular church where the multitudes will flock. I’m no Johnny Ray nor Elvis Presley. Neither is McAfee. And so they’re not going to come in and faint and scream. We don’t carry on like that. I’m not thinking about size. I’m thinking about depth and intensity and permanence of service at home and unto the ends of the world. And all things are possible to God. And everything is possible to what? Him that believeth. Let’s do some believing and release the infinite powers of God into our life and into our church.

Now, Father, we pray thy blessing upon us. Oh, we scatter from this little building to so many places, so many responsibilities, obligations, and callings. Back to school for many. Oh, we pray that we’ll go with confidence that we’re not orphans of the storm. That we’re not bits of matter animated for a period, floating in space. That we’re sons and daughters of a God who has got His eye on every one of us and knows our name and number and face. And our High Priest carries our name on His shoulder and on His breast and on His forehead before the presence of God. Before the face of the Father stands our great High Priest, and we need no merit of saints. We need nothing but the merit of the great High Priest.

We thank Thee we can enter boldly into the throne of grace and receive mercy and grace to help in time of need. For He knoweth our infirmities, feels all the pinch and pressure of our weaknesses, for He is Himself, man and walked among us. Send us out with great hope and encouragement. Send these young people back to school, chins up and knees bent and eyes bright, knowing that the Lord is on their side and grace, infinite matchless grace, is greater than all their sins. And send us back to service and out to our labors confidently expecting we shall see the gifts of the Spirit restored to this church and that we shall see the mighty power of a risen Christ operating in this church. We ask these things in His name. Let us stand please.

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Tozer Talks

“The Sense of the Presence of God”

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The Sense of the Presence of God

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 4, 1956

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Messages

Tozer Talks

“The Knowledge of God 2”

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The Knowledge of God 2

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 1, 1956

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

Now, briefly I’ll sketch that there are three degrees of knowledge possible to a Christian, that gain by reason. And I will use as a general text, Romans 1:19, 20, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.

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

And then, the third is, that which is revealed to our spirits by the Holy Spirit in spiritual experience. 1 Corinthians 2:9-14, but as it is written, eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“The Separated Life”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“If Any Man Sin”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“The Christian’s Strange and Fiery Trails”

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The Christian’s Strange and Fiery Trials

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 27, 1954

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“The Act of Worship”

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The Act of Worship

Pastor and author, A. W. Tozer

January 16, 1955

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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