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“The Believer’s Walk”

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The Believer’s Walk

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
December 15, 1957

In the first of the two Thessalonian epistles, chapter four, Paul says, furthermore, we beseech you brethren and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us, how ye ought to walk and to please God so ye would abound more and more. For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, even your sanctification. that ye should abstain from fornication. That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God. Let no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter, because that the Lord is the avenger of all such. As we also have forewarned you and testified. For God has not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. And he therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, God who hath also given unto us His Holy Spirit.

This is only a little section of a letter written by a man named Paul, an apostle to a church in the city of Thessalonica, a Greek city, to a new church, relatively new. And these persons to whom he wrote, were good Christians. That is, the church was good. There are seven things said about the church, said about the Thessalonian Christians by the man Paul. For Paul was always very careful never to deliver a 100% condemnation. He always wove into his condemnation some complimentary remarks about their spiritual lives. He knew that if you are too hard on people, you discourage them. If you’re not hard enough, you let them go to sleep. So he tried to keep them awake and still not be too hard on them. He said this about them, that they had abandoned idolatry. They were by nature, rather by culture, they were idolaters by religion. But they had now abandoned this. They had turned to God from idols, and they had turned to the true God.

I have said many times, I suppose I will not say anything this morning I haven’t said many times. I’ve said many times that God never recommends vacuum. If He takes you out of a place, it’s in order that He might take you into a place. He never takes you out and leaves you. If He says, turn away from that, He says that in order that He might say, turn unto this. So they had turned away from idols and turned to the true God. They were not left in the middle in a state of of unanimous indecision, I think I heard it call last week on the board. They were unanimous only in their indecision. But that would be a frightful place to leave a man. But they turned to the true God after turning from idols. And in their faith, they worked and hoped and loved and labored. And they received the gospel in power, Paul said, with much assurance, which he took as a proof of their election of God. And they were actively missionary-minded, for they send out missionaries and supported them. They had continued true under persecution, which is a good test of a Christian, and they were living in expectation of Christ’s return.

Now those seven characteristics of the Thessalonian Christians, were enough for them to get into any church in Christendom and to be taken further as an example of other churches. And still Paul was not content. He commended them for what they were, but he also urged the sacred duty of their being holy people, holy beyond the call of duty, holy beyond the current mores, holy beyond the standards of their time. And he warned them as I warn you, that nothing else is enough. If we do not seek and pursue purity of heart, which results in personal purity of life, nothing else is enough. Now, Paul said that he had taught this to them. And he had taught them what he called righteousness and true holiness. There is such a thing as righteousness that is not true holiness. But there is righteousness and true holiness.

Now, Christ personalized righteousness when He came. And He took it out of the realm of what we now call ethics, or have always called ethics, and taught that righteousness was simply to please God. We need not know what righteousness is, but we do need to know that if we please God, we’re doing righteousness. John said, that if we kept the commandments of the Lord, He would hear our prayers, and then added, and also if we do the things that are pleasing in His sight. Not that the keeping the commandments of the Lord was not pleasing in God’s sight, but it was not enough. There has to be an affection shown toward God.

It’s the same as rules in a household. The average household has rules and you keep those rules, and you see that the children do, and everybody takes it for granted. But that’s not enough. You could come, your children could come into your household and watch not to break the rules, and yet never do or say anything affectionate to show that they really loved you. It isn’t enough that I keep the laws of the New Testament, the commandments of Christ, that I am to do this and do that and refrain from this. That’s not enough. That must be, but Christ personalized all this and made it to be the result of a spontaneous, loving, relationship toward God.

And the church of Christ is righteous when she does those things which she knows to be pleasing in the eyes of her righteous Savior, and goes beyond mere keeping of rules, however important they may be. And Paul lays many of them down. We can talk about grace all we want to and freedom all we please. We’ve got to throw a lot of the New Testament out if we reject commandments and rules, for there are a lot of them here. But keeping to those rules is not enough. There must be added to this, or perhaps I should say, that we keep them because they are to us the mind of our Lord, that we do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

Philosophers analyze righteousness, but Christians obey and are righteous because they do the things that are righteous without knowing why they’re doing them. We’re now in time of analysis. Somebody referred once in my hearing to the paralysis of analysis. And now in seminaries and Bible schools, they analyze till they’re paralyzed. They stand halfway between two extreme views of things and can’t make up their mind which and split hairs and divide them until there’s no spontaneity left. We scarcely know which side we’re on at all. Well, that’s not a Christian’s approach. If a Christian knows that the Lord wants it that way, he wants it that way whether he knows why or not.

We might and I think it wouldn’t hurt us if we studied into the why of things. Why is it wrong to steal and why is it wrong to lie? There are good, sound philosophic reasons underneath it all. But that isn’t the reason that Christian stops lying. He stops lying because he knows lying displeases his Lord. He allows these scholastic hair splitters and casuists to write their long commentaries on why it’s wrong to steal. And if you steal with a certain high principle in mind you’re doing right, and why it’s wrong to lie. And in some quarters, they even have taught their their devotees that you can lie provided you say instantly afterward, Lord, I didn’t mean that. They even say that you can go to court and lie in court, if after you have told the lie in court you say to God, now God excused it, that doesn’t count. Now, that’s actually in print. I can show you where it is. That’s real. That’s real. That’s Jesuit casuistry. The hairsplitting of morals.

Is it ever wrong to tell a lie, or is it ever right to tell a lie? Is it always wrong to lie? Well, the hairsplitters give good reasons why sometimes a lie is a good thing. For instance, they’ve argued if you know that somebody is very sick and that a shocked would kill them, you can lie to them. I wouldn’t do it to save anybody’s life. But I wouldn’t shock them either. I believe God would help a man or woman out so that he would neither need to lie nor kill anybody by shocking them with the news of their friend’s death or accident. I believe it entirely possible to preserve the righteousness of truth and at the same time not give anybody a heart attack.

Well anyway, the Christians who teach morals from that cold standpoint, sit around and talk by the hour about, can you do this, or is it wrong to do that, and just how far can you go in this direction? That is a proof of the lack of spirituality. Paul said that we were to do these things in Jesus, because we do the things that are pleasing in His sight. And Jesus said, thou hearest Me always because I’m always doing what’s pleasing to Thee, pleasing in Thy sight.

Of course, we have rules at our house. We always had. When we were bringing up the boys, I used to say to them, now boys, if you were on a basketball team, there’d be certain things that you wouldn’t be permitted to do. There would be certain rules. And if you played on the Sox or Cubs, there’d be certain things that they’d say, now, you can’t do this. And I said, at home, it’s the same. There are certain rules that you keep, and that’s it. When we have our grandchildren out to the house now, there are certain rules or things they can’t do. We rarely ever have any trouble with them. But there are things they can’t do. But the beautiful part about it is, when they go beyond the call of duty and respond to your affection in a way. My little boy Paul, excuse the expression, for he laughs at me, whenever I mention the word Paul, he leans against the wall and says, now, I’m in for it because he knows what I think of this little blonde boy. But he’s a good little fellow and keeps rules more or less, but four years old. One day, I patted his little head and whispered in his ear, you’re a good little boy. And he patted my arm and said, you’re a good grandpa too.

Well, you know, I haven’t got over that yet. That’s been months ago. And that wasn’t keeping rules. That was a response. That was a response that was something out of the heart, spontaneous. Nobody had taught him to say that. And he didn’t have to say it. And it’s exactly so here. Righteousness and true holiness is the spontaneous response of the heart to the love of God. Of course, it takes certain directions, and so, Paul wanted to lay those directions down for us. And he pointed out the importance of a holy walk. He said, this is the will of God, even your sanctification, to be devoted to God’s uses. Of course, that’s one and the primary meaning of the word “sanctified.” But it also means to be cleansed for that purpose.

Those who don’t believe too much in cleansing, argue that sanctify means to set apart for sacred uses. But I have one question which I want to ask you. Can you conceive of God setting anything aside for His sacred use that wasn’t first cleansed? Can you conceive of a priest in the Levitical temple standing and singing or offering incense from a vessel that was dirty that needed to be washed? No. They believed in washings and washings says the writer of the gospels for the Jews will not eat until they have washed their hands. They’re always keeping clean. Their idea of a sanctified vessel was a vessel that was as clean as it could be made, and then dedicated to God. It had those two connotations. Not one, but two. I can’t think of a holy God using an unholy vessel. I can’t think of a holy God eating out or wanting his people to eat out of a vessel that’s dirty.

Now, this is neglected in our day, and we want to talk about it a little. It’s not denied I think, that Christians should be holy, but not too much has been said about it. And most I think, that most of our preaching after we’ve got the sinner in, we can’t be rough on him. But after we’ve got him in and he’s joined and got baptized, and has gotten into our fellowship, then after that, most preaching consists of telling them how nice they are. At least, that’s what I hear when I listen on the radio. Most all that is telling people how nice they are.

Well now, we want to do that, as I pointed out that Paul does and Jesus does in these seven letters. But they also, we must shout aloud, that He that saith, He abideth in Him ought also to walk even as He walked. That it is the will of God that we should be a holy people. And in this particular chapter, Paul talks about one kind of evil which our missionaries tell us sometimes creeps right into their churches and I’m afraid in our own churches, too. He talks about, he said that everybody should be freed and delivered from fornication.

Now, the damning effect of impurity will never quite be known in this world. We’ll never know until the judgment, until we know as we’re known, the ravages of impurity are greater than that of any disease, greater than the ravages of any of the great killers. And the victims of this, of these sins, are found by millions in hospitals and insane institutions and institutions for the blind. But the most deadly effect of sin is always in the heart of its victim. Never forget that.

A man may, as has happened some times, a man may get drunk and fall into fire. I knew a man that His neck was all burned. He said, years ago, he’d become a Christian. And he turned around and showed me the scars on his neck. He said, I worked in a factory where there were blazing fires. And he said, I’d get drunk and stagger around and even at my work and fall in and have to be dragged out. He said, that’s the result. Well now, that was bad because it had burnt him. It might have killed him, but it burnt his neck and left great, ugly scars there. But those scars didn’t represent the real deadly result of his sin which happened to be drinking. But something inside the man was suffering. Something inside the man was getting sore, shriveling, cracking, splitting, dividing, withering, dying. Thank God, our Lord Jesus Christ got a hold of that man and saved him, saved him, wonderfully saved him.

Incidentally, I might as well carry on that little story. This man was named Jim Terwilliger. And he was about that high and about that thick through. And I knew him when he was in his 70s. He had been saved when he was 56. And that dear man of God, here’s how he was saved. He was dead drunk lying on a couch. His wife was kneeling at his head, and his Christian doctor kneeling at his feet praying for him. He said, he heard a voice say, wake thou that sleepest and rise from the dead, then Christ will give thee light. And he stood and wept as he told his story. He said, I woke up completely cold sober and thoroughly converted and born again.

Now don’t ask me about how it happened. That’s not the way the little book tells you. That little book you get three for a quarter on how to win souls, and what to say to them and what to say next. That isn’t the way they do it in the little books, but that’s the way the Holy Ghost did it, brother. This man lived with a Christian wife, and he was drinking and disgracing himself, like an old pig. But she had gotten ahold of God and that physician had gotten ahold of God. And here was a man that came bouncing out of a dead drunk, cold sober and converted. From that time on to the end of his life, he did nothing but weep and sing and shout and praise God and testify to what the Lord has done for him. Don’t ask me to explain that. I can’t. That isn’t found in any of the books. That was just done.

Now, dear people, the worst part of any sin is what it does inside of you. A real estate man cheats a widow. The widow suffers. Her children suffers. But that’s not the worst. The worst thing is what happened to the man. Emerson said, the thief always steals from himself. And when I cheat anybody of anything, I’ve cheated my own soul and done my self harm. Always remember that the great evil of sin is internal, that it’s what happens inside.

Sometimes in an accident, there will come bearing on a stretcher, somebody in shock. And they will feel the arms, the legs and say, well, there are no broken bones, no broken ribs, but there’s internal injuries. And you die from those internal injuries, not from broken legs. And it’s the internal injury of sin, iniquity. What’s happening to these people? I don’t even get indignant anymore when I hear about them, these people that that live like animals. And their concept of home is like animals. I don’t even get angry anymore or indignant. The world is that way, and that’s the way it is until the Lord either comes and burns it with fire, or until He takes His people away or sends a revival or somehow changes things. But the terrible part is the cancer eating inside the heart.

Now, we live in in a Sodom today. Our American civilization is a Sodom. That is why when I hear speeches from in Washington talking about our American way of life and the free peoples of the world and all that. I know what they mean, and I know what they think they mean and don’t. There are no free peoples. And there are no righteous nations. And the best nations have, oh, so much for which to repent. If America hopes to be preserved on the strength of her righteousness, she might just well prepare herself for annihilation. No nation is righteous. We’re living in a Sodom.

I know it’s easy to make charges from the safety of the pulpit. I know that, and I know how hard it is to prove them because sin is a slippery as an oil eel. And I know that the attorneys for the defense are very, very many, and very learned. You can get books now showing that sodomy is perfectly normal, and that it is simply one person’s way of responding. That while naturally, and the majority don’t respond that way. Man falls in love with a woman. That’s that seems to be the majority, but occasionally, the Sodomite man falls in love with a man. Paul describes it in Romans 1. Back in Genesis, the city of Sodom was destroyed because of it.

Now, we have attorneys for the defense, teaching in our institutions of higher learning in the land supposed to be Christian, writing very carefully thought out and learned books to show that sodomy is not a sin, and that it ought not to be called a sin. We ought to stop that old 17th century view of it. It is simply another person’s way of responding to a situation. And though, God Almighty sent fire on Sodom, and though Paul warned in Romans 1 of the ghastly result of this kind of thing, our students in their universities now are hearing that it’s all right. Maybe not the most to be desired, but nothing wrong if that’s the way you feel about it.

Well, this Sodom can defend its ways all right. And those who would escape the fire though, they can’t stand on the street corner and argue. They can’t sit in a class or somewhere and read a book showing that Sodomy is all right. Escape to the hills said the angel. Escape to the mountain said the angel. Escape for thy life said the Holy Ghost. And Lot got up and escaped and went leading his wife. I’m thinking of the artist’s pictures of it. I suppose he led her. She looked back and he tried to drag her with him. But she said, I want to catch that late TV show. I can’t leave yet. So she turned to a pillar of salt, still back there.

Old brother Cout. Do you remember him?. Brother Cout, still the same old Bernard Cout. He’s got adenoids you know, and that old ex-missionary. God bless him. He’s one of the sweetest old saints I know. He said the other day in a sermon, two shall be grinding at the mill. One’s taken and the other left. Two shall be sleeping in a bed, one taken and the other left. Two shall be watching television, both left. Well, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t press it like that. There was one in my hotel room in New York. And when I wasn’t busy, I watched it to see what was on. I wouldn’t go that far, but I think you ought to give that a bit of thought anyhow. That was the theology of good Brother Cout from up in the hills.

Well, Saddam can defend itself all right. And the thing to do is not argue or split hairs, but get out. Separate yourself severely and radically from sin of every kind, and regard it with horror and detestation, says the Holy Ghost. He that despises, despises not man but God that called us unto holiness. Any young man or woman that travels the sleazy way of borderline impurity does so at his own terrible risk. And whoever defends evil, defends what God has severely condemned. And whoever despises holiness, despises that upon which God places such high value.

And after all friends, spirituality isn’t what you eat or don’t eat, where you go or don’t go. Spirituality is thinking about things the way God thinks about them, seeing them through God’s eyes, appraising them with God’s standards, that spiritual spirituality. And holiness isn’t don’t wear gold, don’t wear a tie. I think you can doll up and look like a Christmas tree and hurt your Christian testimony. I don’t doubt that at all. That can be done. I think a lot of Christian women do it. And I think that preachers sometime get so much automobile out ahead of them. That it’s a testimony. It’s not for God, but for somebody else, and I think I know who.

But holiness doesn’t consist in having or not having doing or not doing. It consists of thinking about it the way God thinks about it. Judging it the way God judges it. Responding toward it the way God responds. Reacting from it, as God reacts from it. Loving it, as God loves. Hating it as God hates it. And doing the things that are pleasing in His sight. And surely that will include holiness of life and righteousness of walk, which Paul calls here, righteousness and true holiness. May God grant that we have more than the new birth. May God grant that we have more than the knowledge that we’ve been born again. Let us go on unto perfection.

And let us seek as the days go by, in our living, the way we handle our money, the way we treat our friends, the way we live in our homes, the way we conduct our business, the way we think when we’re free to think the way we want to think. That in all that we will be exemplars of righteousness and true holiness. For he that despises, despises not man but God. May God grant that the words of Peter be fulfilled in us, be ye holy, for I am holy, words spoken first by God and quoted by Peter, be holy, for I am holy.

A yearning to be holy is about all I’d want to know that anybody had, and I’d call him my Brother. Are you longing to be holy? I wouldn’t ask that you would know all the different views and the different theological hairsplittings. All I’d want to know is, within his heart is a great longing to be holy. That, it seems to me is more valuable than all the fine churches and all the well-bound Bibles. God grant that we have it. All right.

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Tozer Talks

“Jesus Stood in the Midst of Them”

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Jesus Stood in the Midst of Them

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

January 30, 1955

In the book of Luke, the 24th chapter, and verse 36, Luke 24:36. And as they thus spake, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, peace be unto you. As they thus spake, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, peace be unto you.

Now into the world of complex religious observations, a sort of religious jungle where though the sun shone brightly, it was prevented from being affected by the very multiplicity of duties and rituals and observations laid upon the people. And into the midst of all this came the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, and He shone brightly there. He was to be God’s salvation. He was to be God’s cure, the cure for all that was wrong with the human race. And He came to deliver us from our moral and spiritual disorders. For the moment we’ll not mention that He came also to deliver us from our physical world in that day when our Lord comes and our bodies are glorified. And mainly He came to deliver us from our moral and spiritual disorders.

And then He came to deliver us also from our remedies. One of the heaviest burdens that has ever been laid upon the human race is religious burden. And it is a self-medicating burden. It is an effort on the part of men who are conscious of their moral and spiritual disorders, to medicate themselves and get better by their own treatment.

One of the outstanding, as preachers say, outstanding examples of course, is that in India where pilgrims go like an inchworm, falling flat face down on the ground, marking where their forehead is, and then putting their foot where their forehead was, and inching again, and thus traveling clear to the river Ganga, the Ganges River, Mother Ganga, they call her, and washing themselves there. And there have been those who have fasted until they were thin and with spikes in their shoes and have hidden themselves in caves. Everything has been tried down to the present hour, to try to medicate, try to treat ourselves. You know how it is out in the world, down past the last thousands of years, they have tried a little of everything to cure themselves, men have of various diseases.

I remember when I was a lad that there was a story that if you were to take a, you had a wart, unseemly wart on your hand and you wanted to get rid of it and who wouldn’t? You were to take hair from a horse’s tail, wrap it around the thing, and then at a certain time, I think the dark of the moon or something, you were to take it out and bury it where the water dripped off of the house. Then when it had rotted, your wart left. And the funny part about it was, they did. And I don’t understand of course. The only thing I can see is that a wart must be psychologically-caused and that was a psychological cure. But that’s only one of the many things. And I remember taking things when I was a boy that never should have been fed to anybody. But my old German grandmother and my country people, they fed you anything, you know, down through the years if you were to study it up a little, you would find there’s scarcely anything that flies, swims, crawls, or grows, or just is, that hasn’t been powdered and fed to somebody to try to cure them of their diseases.

The great old English bard kidded the public about it in that passage where he talks about the charm, you remember the medicine that would heal anything he says, eye of newt and the toe of a frog and wool of a bat and a tongue of a dog, adders fork and blind worm sting and lizard leg and a owlet’s wing. Add there too a tiger’s chandran for the ingredient of the cauldron. Cool it with a baboon’s blood and then your medicine is firm and good. Well, that’s supposed to be very funny, but it’s not funny really because it’s a fair description of what’s been fed to people during the years to try to cure them of their diseases.

And the same thing is true in religion. We have invented almost everything under the sun to try to cure us. But the cure had already come. Jesus Christ had come. And He had not come to launch a new religion. Kindly remember, Christianity is not a new religion. They didn’t come to launch a new or better or finer religion. He came Himself to be their religion. He came himself to be God’s salvation unto the ends of the earth. He did not come to delegate power to others, so that others could heal or cure or bless. He came to be the blessing. He was Himself that. It was not through a system of which He was the head. Christianity is not a system with Jesus Christ, the head of the system. Jesus Christ is everything. And He by direct and personal and intimate touch with the human soul and mind, He was to deliver them.

Now that’s shown throughout the entire Bible. That’s not my interpretation. It says, look unto Me and be ye saved. And God said of His Son Jesus, Thou shalt be My salvation. Thou shalt be my salvation unto the ends of the earth. And it says, thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sin. And it says, the old man of God who had waited around the temple, when he saw the baby Jesus, took Him up in his arms, held Him, and looked down at Him and said as he raised now his eyes to heaven, let Thy servant depart in peace. For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.

So, I say to you that are in doubt or you that are not instructed or you that are not sure that it is Jesus Christ Himself that Christianity offers to you. Now I know the churches are all confused because of the introduction of human ideas, as if this self-medication idea has raised up a great, vast toadstool. This, this huge mustard tree has grown up. But really, all Christianity offers is Jesus Christ the Lord. It offers that and that is all that needs to be offered, for He is enough. And your relation to Jesus Christ is really all that matters in this life.

Now, that is both good news and bad news. It is good news for those who have met our Savior and who know Him intimately and personally. It is bad news for those who hope to get into heaven some other way. Some of this self-medication business, this wool of a bat and tongues of a dog kind of religion that we create. And we write books about it, and get it into our church minutes and it gets on our books. And the first thing you know, we’re trusting to those things. And people have this or that done to them. They’re always inventing something, where down over the centuries, something to do to somebody. They wanted to do something to them, run and do something to their bodies, forgetting that Jesus, our Lord, said, don’t worry about your body, but about him that can kill the body. Think about your soul and the one who can destroy your soul in hell.

The human body is the tabernacle in which a man lives. You might as well rub liniment on the outside of your brick house to try to cure the bursitis in your elbow and on the inside as to put anything on a man’s body and try to cure his soul. You can’t do that. You can’t help a man’s soul by manipulating his body. But we’ve got all sorts of manipulations and manipulators. But Jesus stood in the midst and He was their everything and their all, and He still is. So that’s good news for this sin-tired, good news for the defeated, good news for the fatigued and morally distressed, good news for the those who are afraid, good news for those who know their own pollution. Good news, for He shall be called Jesus, for He shall deliver people from their sins.

Now it says here that this Jesus stood in the midst of them and said, peace be unto you. Now this explains the angels’ words, peace on earth, goodwill to men. The angel could only say that because Jesus was coming, who was to be the peace of mankind. He is our peace. I used to have that on a motto on the wall, He is our peace. So, the angel could say peace on earth, because the Peace had come to earth.

Now, this text shows, or at least it illustrates, Jesus’ method of imparting help directly and personally, that was Christ in the midst at the center. And He could be in the midst, because He is God. He is Spirit. He is timeless. He is spaceless. He is supreme. He is all in all. Therefore, He can be at the center.

Now, I point out and borrow an illustration that Christ is the center of all things. He is the hub around which everything revolves, and the illustration is that of a wheel. Somebody said centuries ago, that a wheel was an example that Jesus Christ was the hub of the wheel, and everything created was on the rim of the wheel, so said the old man. Everything that is, is equally distant from Jesus and equally near to Him. You know how there’s a hub in the middle and spokes going out to the rim and the rim goes around the equidistant at all points from the hub. And Jesus Christ is that hub, and everything is on the rim, so that it’s just as near to Him from down here as from over there, up there. Everybody’s equally close and equally far, for Jesus Christ is the hub.

Now, I want to point out here how our Lord Jesus Christ is at the center. Jesus in the midst. And thus, if He’s in the midst, He’s accessible from anywhere in life. And this is good news, very wonderful, good news. For instance, let me point out seven things here, and say that Jesus Christ is at the center of those things, and thus is accessible equally, everywhere.

He is in the center of geography, let us say, because there is no favored spot. It so happens that I am at the present, reading Newman’s history of Latin Christianity, and reading again the story of the Crusaders. Before the Crusader, the time of the Crusaders, there was a belief that there was some virtue attached, or merit at any rate attached in going on pilgrimage to the very place where Jesus was born, and particularly to the sepulcher of our Lord. And when Peter the Hermit, barefooted old orator that he was, whipped all of the East, all of Europe, really, into a white heat to get the Crusades launched, it was that we might deliver a grave which Jesus Christ had been out of for more than 1000 years, might deliver it from the Mohammedins. If they could just get there to that grave, everything would be all right. There was some virtue in being where Jesus had been.

I don’t know why we insist upon being spiritually obtuse. Haven’t we heard Jesus say that? And I tell you that neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem do men worship the Father. For the Father seeketh such to worship Him who worship Him in spirit and in truth. It is not on a mountain or a city. Why didn’t they read that? Why instead of all the bloodshed and death and starvation and freezing to death and all the rest of the long trips to get to the place where Jesus had been born or where he had died or where he had been buried? Why didn’t they read that passage that says, I say unto you, that henceforth men shall not worship the Father in this city. But men shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.

There is no geographical advantage anywhere in the world. You would not be one bit better a Christian if you lived in Jerusalem. And you could go to the globe, the geographic globe and you could find the spot exactly across from, farthest from Jerusalem and live there, and you wouldn’t be at any disadvantage. For Jesus Christ is in the middle of geography. And He is just as near to him from anywhere as it is from anywhere. And it’s just as far from Him also. So that the geography doesn’t mean anything. Oh, if I could but go to Jerusalem. And how much money has been spent by preachers who felt that they could preach better if they’d only look on Jerusalem. They go over and look all on Jerusalem and come back and all the good it does them is it gives them stories to tell. But they’re no better, and the people are no better, no. Jesus is at the hub, and geography is all around Him. And as just as near to Him from anywhere as it is from anywhere.

Then I’ll say that we’re just as near to him in time because He’s at the center of time. Let’s not, let’s not mournfully talk about the time of Christ. Of course, you have to use that expression. And I use it myself. It’s necessary in our human thinking that we do use such phrases, although we ought to know what we mean by them. There is a song that says, I think when I read this sweet story of old, how Jesus was here among men. When he drew little children as lambs to His fold, I should like to have been with Him then. And I suppose there’s been many a tear wiped out of many a pious eye when we’ve been singing that song.

But did you know that the people who were with Jesus when He walked among men, were not as well off as they were ten days after He had left them, ten days after He’d been gone. He sent the Holy Ghost down. And the blinded disciples who only knew partly, now suddenly knew with a blaze of light, the times of Christ, we say, I’d liked to have lived in the time of Christ. Why there were hypocrites and Pharisees and opposers and murderers and unbelievers in the time of Christ. You won’t get any better by going back. Some of you look back nostalgically upon what you consider the good old days.

Now, you ought to be delivered from that, sir, I never fall into the trap of talking about the good old days of the Christian Missionary Alliance. I read and wrote the history, the life of Dr. A.B. Simpson, and so I keep my mouth wisely shut about those good old days. Things weren’t any better then than now, because Jesus Christ was at the center of time and it’s just as near to the heart of Jesus from where you are now in Chicago, as it was in New York when Simpson founded the Alliance. And it was just as close now to Jesus, from where you are in 1955, as it was in 1884 or 1901.

Now, again, Jesus Christ is the center of the race. And there are no favored races, and no favorite races. I think we ought to stop and let that soak in a little bit and point out that Jesus Christ is the Son of man. And He is not the Son of the first century, nor of the 20th century. He is a Son of Man. He is not a Son of the Jewish race only. He is the son of the Anglo Saxon and all the races there are and all the colors there are. When Jesus Christ was incarnated in mortal flesh, He was not incarnated only in the body of a Jew, He was incarnated in the body of the race. So, you can go to Tibet, or Afghanistan, or the Indians of South America, or the Mohammedans of Arabia, or the Englishman of London, or the Scotch of Glasgow, and you can preach Jesus, and if there’s faith and willingness to follow Him, it’s just as near to Him from any one of those given points, for they’re all on the wheel rim anyhow. And they are all as near, and all as far.

That’s why we in the Christian and Missionary Alliance do not think that we ought to first go into a country and educate it, and then, when we’ve educated the people, then preach Christ to them. We know better than that. We know that Jesus Christ is just as near to an uncultured heathen as He is to a cultured man from New York or London. And that’s why He’s in the middle of all culture and all culture levels. And a person who does not know how to read and write, who has never worn anything but the briefest of clothing, and who has never had a decent cooked meal in his life, has never traveled in any modern conveyances, if you will preach Christ to him and be patient and make him understand, and his heart awakes, and the Spirit illuminates his mind, he’ll believe on Jesus and reach out and touch the hem of His garment and be transformed, just as certainly from the lowest.

I don’t know whether Miss Benke, who probably knows more about that than I do, though, I agree and know that Indonesia is a vast place and that New Guinea is far to the east and probably as far removed as South America from here geographically, but I think probably she would know more and I think would agree with me, that those inhabitants of New Guinea, which our missionaries have told us, are the lowest down the scale.

Now, there may be others. I haven’t heard of any others. They say that there’s something about them, completely repulsive, completely bestial, completely belonging to the jungle and the barnyard. And yet, they will believe in Jesus Christ and be born again just as quickly as a man with a monocle and an Oxford accent. Because it’s just as near to Jesus from the jungle as it is from the college. Just as near to Jesus from the lowest stratum of society as it is from the highest. He’s in the midst of all cultures, and He’s in the midst of all ages. By that I mean, human ages, our birthdays. It is just as near to Jesus from eighty as it is from eight. Just as near from seventy as it is from seven. Just as near to Jesus and just as far from one age as another age.

Well, I agree and they realize that as we get older, we get harder and more careless. And the likelihood of our coming to Jesus diminishes as we get older. But our ability to come to Jesus, the distance we are from Jesus, is no greater when we’re ninety than when we’re ten or eleven, or any other age you might think of. So, Jesus Christ stands in the middle of the human race, stands in the middle of geography, stands in the middle of time, stands in the middle of all cultures, stands in the middle of all races, and stands in the middle of all ages. He is in the midst and he is speaking peace be unto you.

And again, our Lord is in the middle of all life’s experiences. You know, experience is an awareness of something that is or is going on. I’d say that’s experience. If something is or is going on, that’s an experience. The newborn baby hasn’t had much experience, bless his little heart. He hasn’t been around very long and the experience he has had, hasn’t pleased him. So, he sets up a wild howl always. If they don’t howl, they make them.

Well, here he is, bless his little newborn heart. He is just in the world, a little stranger. And he hasn’t had much experience. He has practically none, practically no experience. And then, every once in a while, we hear of a man who is 100 years old. He’s had some experience. He’s been aware of a lot of things happening. The little chap isn’t. Every day brings a new experience, every day. Every hour brings a new experience to the newborn. He enlarges if he’s normal and grows, gets in contact with more things. Tennyson in his In Memoriam has, I can’t quote it verbatim, but it’s a very lovely little thing. You can’t read it without smiling in appreciation about the little baby that holds his hand up in front of his face and says, that isn’t me. And there is where his intelligence awakes. He’s in here somewhere. He something else. That isn’t me. And he says he makes the difference between me and not me. Tennyson makes it very beautiful. It sounds rather useless the way I put it I’m afraid. But the way he put it, it really has meaning, that when he awakes to the fact that there’s me and then there’s not me. And when he gets aware of, that he’s having experiences, as soon as he knows this is me and this is that woman that feeds me, that’s not me.

Well, there you have it, his `experiences have started. Well, if he lives somewhere in the hills and never comes out, he probably won’t have a very wide field of experience. If he’s a world traveler and a busy man and gets a lot of education and does many things and sees many things and hears many things and people, his experiences will be vast, so vast that it’s a mystery and a wonder how his little brain can ever file them for future reference and keep them in his memory, but it does.

Well now, which is it nearer? Is it nearer to Jesus from that child of no experience or from that old man of much integrity and experience? No difference. Jesus Christ stands in the middle of life’s experience. And you can reach Him always on the rim and everything comes into Him from the rim. And we can move into Him from our early childhood, the little one that’s just old enough to lisp and say, Jesus, I believe and can be saved. The old tottering man, he’s not likely to, but if he will, he can come and believe in Christ, for Christ stands in the middle of human experience.

Jonathan Edwards, that mighty preacher of early days in our country, was converted when he was five years-old, and he said I never backslid, and went right on. Five years old, he was converted. What experience does a five-year-old boy have?

I just got finished in my private devotional reading in my study. I have just finished reading those early chapters of 1 Samuel. And here was a boy the commentators think might have been twelve years old. He was in the temple. Here he was a little lad. Even the commentators get sentimental and talk about his little jacket. They made him a little robe and put it on, and he was just a little fellow. And then, here was an old man ninety-eight-years old, out in the next room, Samuel and Eli, the boy and the aged man. What experience has that boy had? Practically none. What experience had the old man had? Practically all. He had run the scale. He had run the gamut of human possibilities. And yet, it was just as near to God from little Samuel who had no experiences as from Eli who had many, and vice versa.

So, they sort of divided the world up into three parts, and that’s about all we’ve got left today, isn’t it? We’ve got religion, culture, politics, and the military. That’s about all there is to it. Everything else falls somewhere inside those brackets. And Jesus Christ was crucified in the middle of that. So, it’s just as easy to reach Him from the philosopher’s ivory tower as it is from the priest’s sanctuary. Just as easy for the soldier within his uniform to reach him as it is the thinker with his big books, for He’s in the middle of it.

You remember, when our Lord hung on the cross, they wrote his superscription above his head in Hebrew and Greek and Latin. And I wouldn’t have thought of this, but somebody pointed out that in doing this, God had taken in the whole world. Hebrew was religion, Greek was philosophy, Latin was military conquests. If you wanted religion, go to the Hebrew. If you wanted philosophy, go to the Greek. If you wanted politics and military conquest, go to the Romans. So, his name was written there, this is Jesus Christ, king of the Jews in Hebrew and Greek and Latin, so that all the possibilities of human experience, the highest flights of religion, the farthest out and farthest in-reaches of philosophical thought, and the most practical and terrible conquests made by politicians, all of this, Jesus was in the middle of it and stood there. And it was as close to Him from the Roman soldier that said, this is the Son of God, as from the Hebrew teacher that said, Master, Thou art sent from God, Nicodemus.

Christ Jesus our Lord stands in the midst, so nobody has any advantage over anybody else. Thank God. Aren’t you glad for that? Nobody can frighten me, intimidate me and send me away like a whipped curd. Nobody can say, ah, but you don’t know? They try it. They try it. They smile and say it’s because you don’t know. And I smile back and think Brother, you just don’t know, yourself. It’s because I do know. It’s because I can reach Him as quickly from where I am as from where any other man is. Einstein, the greatest mind probably alive today, and he could reach out and touch his Messiah, for he’s a Jew, if he would. Probably won’t, but if he would. There’s a lot of people in America that can’t read and write yet. They can only sign their X on their official papers. And Einstein and the man who makes an X on his paper, are all in the same bracket, same category.

So, nobody has any advantage over anybody else. So don’t let’s mourn the fact we didn’t live when Jesus lived. We live in the time of Christ, now. Let’s not mourn the fact we didn’t live in Jerusalem. It’s just as near to Jesus from Chicago. If you’re old and bent and tired and sick, don’t worry, it’s just as near to Jesus from where you are as to where that little boy tossing the baseball in such abandon of delight. So it’s just as easy for one or the other.

You say, then why doesn’t everybody come? Because of our inexcusable stubbornness, because of our unbelief, because of our preoccupation with other things. Because we do not believe we need Him at all. These things keep us away. We turn our backs on Him because we do not think we need Him.  But if we’ll admit that we need Him, thank God you can come to Him and get His help, touch Him and feel the power and virtue flow out, wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever race you belong to, whatever culture level you find yourself on, whatever educational level. Jesus didn’t come to save learned men only. He came to save the sick. Not white men only, but all colors that are under the sun. Not young people only, but all people of any age, down to the moment when they drop asleep and go back to the dust. So, let’s believe that. And let’s think of Jesus in the midst. That’s the most important thing about this church service. The most important thing about Chicago, Jesus is here in the midst. You can reach him from where you are. Amen.

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“I Will Bless the Lord at all Times”

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I Will Bless the Lord at All Times

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

March 25, 1956

Yesterday, it was announced as you may have heard, that due to circumstances beyond the control of WMBI, their program “Talks From the Pastor’s Study” would not be heard. And that those circumstances were also beyond my control. In Pittsburgh, we stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel, Harry Post the missionary, Walter Arnold, Mrs. Tennies from South America, Paris Reidhead, myself and I think one or two others. The last three days were taken up by a Serbian basketball tournament. And they never went to bed, those people. They never went to bed, literally never went to bed. No one took their clothes off at all. They stole a pass key. They took over the elevator and set off the fire alarm. They ran up and down the aisles and banged on doors, they whistled, they sang, they shouted. They played instruments, and generally raised the devil from all the time. Poor brother Paris Reidhead was staggering around bleary-eyed as if he’d been one of them, and I didn’t get to sleep till five in the morning. Brother Cop didn’t get to sleep till six o’clock Sunday morning, so he couldn’t go with us to the prison. And we were generally down. I came back with a bad throat. That was the circumstance over which we had no control. And they seemed to have no sense at all, enjoyed being beasts. I said on the elevator to a new man who had just checked in and wanted to know what it was all about. I said it’s a convention of baboons. And a couple of the fellows that were part of the convention laughed and say, that’s right. That’s right. You got it, a convention of baboons. They were satisfied to be baboons, acted like them, except baboons don’t drink. And I’m a little hindered this morning as a result of the convention of the simians, but I’ll preach anyhow, I trust to preach tonight.

This is Palm Sunday among the churches, and everybody’s thinking about praise. So, I want to talk on praise. Reading the first three verses of Psalms 34, Psalm 34. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear thereof and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt His name together.

Now, we’re talking about praise this morning. I will praise, I will bless the Lord at all times said the man of God, David.  I’ve said here before, and it is no new truth. No one could preach a new truth about it, because it’s known to all theologians, that true religion lies in the will. The Bible declares it and all that we can learn about ourselves confirms it, that religion lies in the will. What the heart wills to be, the character will become. And what the heart determines, God accepts as real. The soul swings into line with whatever the heart determines. I will, said the man of God. We have the impression that David ran about with a harp in his hand continually and that he never ceased to praise God. And he was shouting like Mary continually, like camp meeting Mary from morning to night.

But I noticed that David uses the word “will” a great deal. He determined some things and made his vows and stuck to them. He knew that what he was determined to be, God would see that he became. For if the heart determines, then the emotions follow in the set of the will and move into line. So, the man of God said what he willed to do, what he was determined to do, was to bless the Lord.

Now, I suppose there is no word that has been more misused than the word “bless.” And when we don’t know what else to say, why, we ask the Lord to bless us. I do it myself, for it’s one of those big stretchy tarpaulin words that cover everything, covers everything. And the word here could mean almost anything, but actually it means to salute, to congratulate and to praise. So, he said, I will salute God at all times. And I will congratulate God. I like to break it down like that and to think of what it means for a man to get up in the morning and congratulate God Almighty on who He is and what He’s been doing and what He is doing and what He plans to do. To offer God the earnest and sincere congratulations, and to praise and please God. All these are found in the word “bless” that’s used in the Hebrew by the man David.

So, he said that I will salute God and I will congratulate Him. And I’ll make this my business in life to offer congratulations to the Lord God Almighty, to congratulate God because of His greatness. It’s amusing to me to see how greatness is a relative thing. The little man by an adroit shift of his psychology can think of himself as great. I don’t want to reflect on anybody that I have no reason to doubt is an honest and sincere man, but there is a political card up on the telephone poles that has given me chuckle this week. It is a councilman. He’s running for Ward Councilman or Alderman. The ad says “for peace and prosperity, elect” so and so–alderman.

Well, it’s nice to think highly of yourself, and I suppose that if we elect this brother to the job of Aldermen in his ward, that peace and prosperity will flow out as a result, all over the world, I wouldn’t disillusion the man for anything. No doubt he’s a good man and loves each wife. But I’m inclined to think brethren, that whoever becomes aldermen in that ward will not be in a position to make a very noticeable effect on international relations. But greatness is big or little. It’s whatever men want it to be.

But when we come to God Almighty, all the bars are down and all the limits are off. The greatness of God exceeds all wards and all cities and all states and all countries and all empires and all worlds and all the universe. God is greater than all greatness and mightier than all Might. God is great. And so we salute and congratulate God. We congratulate Him because of His greatness and because of His holiness. And against the dark background of our sinfulness and the sinfulness of the world, it was very difficult in Pittsburgh to keep from seeing in those young people that had taken over that hotel and pushing us old fellows around, it was difficult to keep our faith in humanity. That the cities of the country could spill and spew out that many abandoned people and get them all together for such a harmless business as a basketball game, made it pretty hard for me to be cheerful. I wonder what Norman Vincent Peale would have done if he had been there. I just wonder?

Against the background of such unholy carryings on as human beings are capable of, to think of the holiness of God is a most healing and consoling thing. I determine that I will congratulate God because He’s holy. He is holy beyond all holiness, holier than the angels, holier than the seraphim that burn at the throne, holier than the holiest man or woman that ever lived. He is a holy God intimately and perfectly holy. And so, every day I’m going to salute God, because of His holiness, and then of course because of His kindness and His providence and atonement and mercy and care. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

Now, I want to point out to you friends, that you do have continually, some kind of words in your mouth. You’ve got something in your mouth all the time. You have either such words as David talked about, or you have profane words, or unclean words or complaining words or gossiping words or boasting words or empty words or mundane words, or some other kinds of words, but always our mouths are full of words, profane words, for instance. When I think of the beauty, the versatility of the English language, and yet how some people use the language, I think that it is like somebody pointed out recently that to hear a certain man do a certain thing, was like hearing an orchestra play Pop Goes the Weasel, a symphony orchestra. And to use the English tongue, which is an orchestra, an organ capable of almost infinite variations, subtleties, overtones and undertones in all direction and yet to hear some people use the English language, it reminds me of using a $50,000 Stradivarius to pound nails into a chicken coop. It is a grotesque and profane misuse of language the way some people use it. And if you don’t have the praise of God in your mouth, you’re likely to have some other kind and they might be profane.

And there are unclean words. In my work. I don’t often meet men like that. But I have met men whose only vocabulary was soiled, so badly soiled, that if they were forced to use only clean words, they would be for a while silent, unable to speak, because their vocabulary was dirty. And then there are complaining words. Now, let’s check up over last week for a little. If the praises of God we’re not in your mouth, then the chances are that there were complaining words in your mouth. You say, how did you do in Pittsburgh Mr. Tozer? Well, I didn’t bat 1000, but I did try to praise God when you wake up or come out of a troubled sleep with these fellows yelling around and say, when morning gilds the skies, my heart awaking cries, May Jesus Christ be praised. And instead of complaining, we ought to have His praise continually in our mouths.

Now let you think it over with me for a little while. This isn’t for me to stand up here and get after you. It is only to say, how did we do last week about this complaining business? You say, but there was lots to complain about. And I don’t doubt that at all. I think there’s lots to complain about in the world. But if you and I complain about everything there is to complain about, we’re not likely to get very much else done.

And then there are gossiping words. If all the words used on the North American continent this coming week that were gossiping words were suddenly outlawed by some strange law and not permitted, there would be a silence such as had not been heard for a long time between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Gossip is still done and it’s still done even by Christians.

Then there are the boasting words. Somebody said, and it’s been quoted in the magazines and gets into the little quips here and there in the printed magazines and newspapers. Somebody said recently that an actor is a fellow which, if you aren’t talking about him, he isn’t listening. And I would say that it’s not only true of actors, but It’s really true on a less aggravated degree, but most people, we want to talk about ourselves. We boast very tenderly and gingerly. I don’t want to be too cynical, but I hear preachers boasting and then saying, I say this to the glory of God, and actually they said it to their own honor. And God put up with it.

Well, there’s boasting and then there are empty words, words that just have no content at all. I wonder if they are what you call idle words, words that have no content. Then there are mundane words. I told you many years ago, of an experience I had had in the state of West Virginia when I was a young pastor there. I got acquainted with a bird called the Wood Thrush. And the wood thrush, as you know is, is very close relative to the Brown Thrasher and is one of the two or three greatest singers in North America. There’s nothing to be compared with it, perhaps the Mockingbird, the Brown Thrasher and that bird are the three greatest singers on our continent. And the lovely thing about the Wood Thrush is that it’s such a beautiful bird with a brown coat, and long brown tail, and round beady eyes, in a very charming lovely shape. And then its voice is a flute voice. It plays a flute up and down the scale, up and down the scale. And usually, it’s in the deep woods and can’t be seen, though I made it my business to see them a few times and have seen them since. I fell in love with this beautiful bird, unseen that sang among the branches, sang in the twilight, sang on until it was pitch dark.

And then one evening I was walking in the backlot, and I saw my Wood Thresh. I had come to think of him as a sort of an ethereal thing, rather not a bird, but a wandering voice. And here, I found him scratching contentedly away in a refuse dump. And up until this hour, I’ve never quite gotten over the shock of seeing this lovely bird with its mysterious presence, its mystic overtones of sound, as though some hidden player was playing the flute in the shadows, up in the trees, now scratching your way digging and pecking like an ordinary hen. And I’ve never quite gotten over it.

And I thought immediately of how God must feel about us, his children, capable of such language, as say, the Psalms and Paradise Lost and the hymns and the book of Matthew and the book of Luke and the book of Isaiah, capable of putting words together like that, capable of all of this, mysterious and transcendental and elevated. And yet, the average one of us, the language we use, is the language of the rubbish heap, just the earthly and mundane language, the language of the earth down below, nothing elevated, nothing wonderful, nothing glorious, but just the common language of the world.

I had a week with Paris Reidhead. And my friend, that’s an experience for anybody, to spend the week with Paris Reidhead. We met and talked and outside of an occasional reference to his wife and children for whom he’s desperately homesick, we talked about very little else. But the things of God, very little else. The language, the words were not mundane words. They were not geared to the earth, but were heavenly words. And I greatly enjoyed the contacts I had with him there in Pittsburgh the week before last. But mostly our words are earthly words, mundane words, words that belong to the ground and to the dust. You know that if we follow David and fill our mouths with the blessings of God, we could keep saluting and congratulating God continually, it will expel these other words and purify our unnecessary talk.

Now, he says, I will do this at all times. And David was a writer, and a singer and a musician. And I suppose it’s easy to say, well, it’s a writer or a singer or musician. He can praise the Lord at all times. That’s his business. He doesn’t have to do anything else. But notice that David was in addition to being a writer and a singer and a musician, David was also a family man, a king, a soldier, the head of a nation, the head of a home. And in every particular, a man like our President, who had constantly to meet the public and constantly to be giving himself over to listening to complaints of the people, uprisings and wars. He was constantly involved. And yet he said, at all times I will praise God. I will salute God. I will congratulate God, and fill my mouth full of His praises, not only when I’m singing and playing the harp, but I’ll do it also in my capacity as a family man, as a king, as a soldier, and as the head of the state.

Now, he said, my soul will make her boast in the Lord. God seeks his own glory. I’ve said many times here, it’s one of the foundations upon which truth is built, that God seeks His own glory because the health of the universe requires that God should be glorified. And so, God actively cooperates in any effort to glorify Him. And He gives instant assistance to anybody who dedicates himself by a vow to glorify God and to salute and congratulate God at all times and continually. So that anyone who makes a vow and says, if God will help me, I’ll put unclean words and complaining, gossiping words, empty, boasting words out of my mouth, and I will fill my mouth continually with divine congratulations. God will give immediate assistance to such a person, and enable that person by the in-living Spirit to fulfill that vow. Otherwise of course, we find it impossible. But with the aid of the Holy Spirit, we find it possible.

Now, does this mean that I must be a camp meeting Mary? And does it mean that I must be always going about praising God with a loud voice? No, it doesn’t mean that. But it does mean that my determination to praise God is a determination to form a habit, a habit of praising God under all circumstances, audibly under the right conditions, and silently when speech would be unseemly. You know, there are times when speech is unseemly. God’s people can’t find that out, and I suppose that’s one reason we stand so poorly with the public, because the zealots in the kingdom of God and we ought all be zealots, the zealots in the kingdom of God can’t seem to know when to keep still and when to speak. So, we, you sometimes speak, when we should have been keeping our mouths quiet.

But the Spirit-led Christian will make blessing God to be a constant habit of his life. And then when the conditions are right, he will audibly praise the Lord. And when conditions are not right, and speech would be unseemly, then he can silently praise the Lord. I’m having to break myself of the habit of silent prayer almost exclusively. Because I have learned to pray silently so much, that I feel that I have got to correct that by praying aloud more than I do. You can learn silent prayer my listeners. You can learn to have a harp sounding in your heart continually of your own free will, determinedly blessing God, offering salutations and congratulations to the great God for what He is, and filling your mouth with His praises, when it’s proper that you should, and your heart with His praises at all times.

Now, this is one of the mighty trifles that will transform our living, if will only let it. You know that there are trifles inside your mortal body that are so trifling that they wouldn’t get the attention of anybody. Scarcely, nobody would take a picture of it. Nobody would buy one. I suppose nobody would pay any attention to it, yet they’re there. And if they disappear from your body for a day, you will begin to get sick and for a week you’ll die. They’re called the vitamins, little granules of something or other and not any good in themselves, except that they act as catalysts to set off certain other reactions inside of your body which are necessary. People die. You get Beriberi, if they’re caught out on the ocean without the certain vitamins.

Well, this little thing that I’m giving you is a trifle, probably, nobody will write a book about it. Nobody would preach a series of sermons on it, and it’ll never get into the newspaper. Nobody will quote, pastor says, praise will drive out gloom. You have never saw a headline like that, because that’s not interesting. Nobody’s interested in anything like that, but it’s there nevertheless. It’s a little trifle, a mighty trifle, so small that we’re likely to overlook it, but so big that it’ll change the whole direction of our lives. If we let our minds and hearts and mouths be filled with words that are unclean or complaining or gossiping or boasting or empty or earthly, we go that direction. But, if we insist upon filling our mouths with congratulations to the Lord God Almighty at all times, under all circumstances, and learn the joy of inward prayer, and of sending up incense from our hearts continually to God, it will change the whole direction of our lives, the whole complexion and color of our lives and make us altogether different.

Now I went to the trouble of copying on to a loose-leaf notebook and I carry around with me. I’m never without it. Any place I go, I’ve got it with me all the time. A great number of things, but among them a kind of a devotional scrapbook that I carry around with me. But one item is the famous, When Morning Gilds the Skies. And you know, I’ve tried to live in this and I’ve tried in the morning when I get up before I’ve said hello to anybody, to say, when morning gilds the skies, my heart awaking cries, may Jesus Christ be praised. In all our work and prayer, we ask his loving care: May Jesus Christ be praised. I’ve quoted these and we’ve sung them. But you know, there are some verses that are not found, some stanzas that are not found in our hymn book at all. And they couldn’t be because there are 2,4,6,8 or about 12 of them. Nobody can sing a verse of twelve stanzas. But one says, does sadness fill my mind? A solace here I find, May Jesus Christ be praised. Or fades my earthly bliss, my comfort still is this, May Jesus Christ be praised. To Thee O God above, I cry with glowing love, May Jesus Christ be praised. This song of sacred joy, it never seems to cloy, may Jesus Christ be praised. To God the Word on high the hosts of angels cry, may Jesus Christ be praised. Let mortals to upraise, their voice in hymns of praise, let Jesus Christ be praised. Thee this while life is mine, my canticle divine, may Jesus Christ be praised. Be this the eternal song to all the ages long, May Jesus Christ be praised. And then, this last one.  In Heaven’s eternal bliss. the loveliest strain is this, may Jesus Christ be praised. Let earth and sea and sky from depths to height reply, may Jesus Christ be praised.

My friends, I believe that if we were to take this, and memorize this, and hum it over to ourselves when we’re in the worst possible mental states, when our moods are down, and when we don’t feel like praising God, I believe that God will honor our determination and would give us the ability and create in us the habit of always praising God. And always saluting and congratulating the great God Almighty, for that’s what we’re going to be doing when we get over there. Don’t forget it. And never is anybody going to complain in heaven.

So, if you’re doing a lot of complaining, remember it’s going to be cut off very suddenly in that day when you go to heaven, if you do. I wonder if a complaining Christian will go to heaven? Some of you theologians and you that read the Sunday School quarterly, let me know about that. Can a complaining Christian go to heaven? I don’t know. I don’t believe in purgatory. And I don’t believe that there’s any place that they can take complaining Christian and purify him. So I don’t know about that. But it’s better to get used to praising God now, so that when you step over into the world above, you won’t have to change. You won’t have to tune your harp.

Have you ever seen these musicians that when they’re asked to play or something, they get up and put their instrument to their ear and go twing, twing, twing, twing, twing a while until I get ready to go home wondering what’s going to be. Finally, after they’ve tuned it very carefully, then they play something. Well, I think a lot of us when we get to heaven are going to have to spend the first few thousand years tuning our harp and getting it ready. I always wondered why these brethren that are going to play, don’t tune the thing before they come to church. Why they subject us to the necessity of adding to, or listening to a tuning up exercise for five minutes?

Well, I wonder the same about the people of God. If they cut you off at 10 o’clock Wednesday morning, or seven o’clock Thursday morning or eight o’clock Friday night, or Saturday morning at 9:15. If you’d suddenly have been taken off to heaven like that, would your harp be in tune? Or would you have to ask God to please let you have some something corresponding to purgatory, long enough to get your harp tuned? I think we ought to keep our harp in tune all the time. And whether we feel like it or not keep saying it. Because it’s our will to praise God and not our ability to feel like it, that God accepts. So, if you will to salute Him, congratulate Him and praise Him continually, you’re praising Him continually, whether you feel like it or not. Keep that in mind. Amen. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. Oh, magnify the Lord with me. And let us exalt His name together.

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Tozer Talks

“The Things That Matter”

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The Things That Matter

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

May 12, 1957

I hope I may be forgiven for not preaching on mother today. I have no commission from God to preach on mother. I preach on a high commission from the Most High God. And I find nowhere in the Scriptures that the Bible ever said, go into all the world and talk about Mother. I salute every good mother, and I pity every bad one. A mother is a mother by virtue of the fact that she has born offspring. She is good by the power and grace of God. And when she’s a good mother, she has my respect and love and I say I salute every good mother. But there are so many of the other kind roaming the streets these days, that I find it impossible to work up a welter of sentimentality on a day like this. So, I’m going to stay by my commission, and I want to preach today about the things that matter.

Let me read in the seventh chapter of Matthew these words. Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name, have cast out devils? And in Thy name done many wonderful works? Then will I profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of Mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house. And it fell and great was the fall of it. It came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at His doctrine, for He taught them as One having authority and not as a scribe.

Now, what seems like a generation ago, I gave a talk on the things that matter. But the turnover in this congregation has been so tremendous over the last years because of movings away into other cities and other parts of the country. And because of a new generation that has sprung up, that I want not to repeat, though there will be some repetition as there always is, what are the basic truths?

If you had to quickly tell somebody what we stand for? What’s it all about? I want to talk about them. And in this chapter in which I read this story in the book of Matthew, you’ll find the story of a great human tragedy. A man here puts all into a building. He puts his labor and his time and his wealth and all his hopes and dreams into that house. And then came the testing day. And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew. And great was the fall of that house. And we see this man, this well-intentioned man. And there’s no reason to believe that he was a bad man in any criminal sense of the word. There is no reason to believe he was not a good neighbor and a good citizen and a kind hearted man who could give to the Red Cross and generally be a good decent fellow and a nice fellow to know and play golf with. But here he stands now, this man, in the cold gathering dark, homeless and poor, because he built upon the sand.

Now my friends, were religious people, but there are religious people all over the world, more so now than ever since the beginning of time. And we dare not assume anything that isn’t so. Wisdom and good sense and reason dictate that we should test our foundation and know whether our assumptions are right or not; the things we’re assuming, whether they’re right or not. I say wisdom demands this. So I want to look over some of these basic truths this morning and show you by, as it were, reaching into the Bible and extracting the essence of truth out of it like this, taking it out and saying, now here, this is it. And everything else is simply trimmings. Everything else is simply decorations.

Now, I want to tell you what you can presuppose and assume as being absolutely true. And the rains can come and the winds and the storms, the lightning can flash and the thunder can roll, and if you have assumed this, you’re right. And the world can change its mind ten times as it has at least five times in the memory of my lifetime about God and religion, four times anyway. And they can assume they can make their changes, but you because you have the Word, because you have the Book before you, you can take these things as a matter for granted. And these things must be built underneath all that you are and do. They must lie like a great foundation. And if they do lie there like a great foundation, they’re going to support you in the trying day. And when the testing day comes and the rains descend and the winds blow and the floods come and that house is shaken and shivers from its foundation to its highest peak of its roof, you can still smile dry sitting inside knowing that it’s all right with you.

Now, let me name them for you. And I would suggest that you young people take them down. These basic tools which we can assume. One of them is that only God is great. Now, to assume anything else is to accept falsehood into our hearts. Only God is great. And let me explain what I mean by great. The word “great” is used in its absolute sense and in its relative or comparative sense. And in its comparative sense, anything can be said to be great.

A man may say I had a great crop last year, or he might say, I made a great profit on that deal. And he’s using the word rightly because, by the word great he simply means to compare that crop or that profit with another possible crop or profit, all of them small and inconsequential when set against the great backdrop of the world. And we talk about even in the Scriptures it says God sent out a great wind and he made a great fish. But he’s talking about a wind that was great because it was a little unusual compared with other winds, and a fish that was great because it was a little larger than other fish. But that’s not the sense in which we use the word great here. Only God is great, and we mean by great, eminent, elevated and important.

And the mightiest thought the human mind can entertain, is God. All things began there. William Jennings Bryan used to preach a great sermon on the text, in the beginning God, in the beginning God, Now, men have sought to place greatness, that is, eminence and elevation and importance. They’ve sought to place greatness in three, probably three things: in things, events, and men; men, in spite of the fact they were made in the image of God, and God has given them a brilliant imagination. We still allow the dust of this world so to cover us over that we can’t get off of the ground. And down here in the dust and lint and tatter of the world, we think things are great. We build tall buildings and say it was a great building. We look at the mountain and say it’s a great mountain, We look at a sea and say that’s a great sea. But we forget my friends, that greatness is relative, and only God is absolutely great. Only God is great.

Then there are events. We think of events. When the Queen of England was crowned, here some two or three or four years ago, the whole world saw her crowned on television. A little housewife, if you please. Not too pretty, but nice-looking and sweet, and has the wherewithal to keep looking nice; a part of a great machine the dates back hundreds of years. And we thought that was a great event. But even she knew better. And even the church people that were around her knew better.

When one of the Louises, I have forgotten which one it was, Louis the 14th or 13th, or something, was lying in state, they sent for one of the greatest preachers, probably the greatest preacher that France ever knew. And they said, we’d like to have you come and deliver an oration over the body of the king. And they were all there, the mighty and the great had sent their plenipotentiaries and their high officials from all over the world. And they sat in that great cathedral and waited for an oration which would be, a poured-out eulogy over this dead little man that lay there in his royal trappings. But the mighty French preacher rose and stepped to the front of the platform and uttered these three or four words, only God is great. And from there on, he preached not about the king, but about God. I’d like to shake his hand in that great day when the worlds have been untuned and fallen apart; and only that which is intrinsically and properly great, stands up under the fury of it. I want to shake his hand and say, you gave me courage to say, only God is great.

Then, men have said, we have said that men are great. And of course, if you want to make a distinction between, say a Churchill and the man who sweeps the street down here at 69th, perhaps Churchill is a great man. And I think he has a right to be called a great man. And we would not take away from him any greatness. But when we say he’s a great man or Eisenhower’s a great man, we mean they are great compared with a few million other plain men. But, when we think of eternity and the future and judgment and death and heaven and hell and the world to come, we can’t think of them as being great men at all. Only God is great. And we’ve got to think that only God is great. If we don’t, we are far from the Truth.

I copied this morning, out of all places, the Dutch hymnal, a metrical version of the ninetieth Psalm, starting with the second verse. At Thy command man fades and dies, and newborn generations rise. A thousand years are passed away and all to Thee are but a day. Yea, like the watches of the night, with Thee, the ages wing their flight. Man soon yields up his fleeting breath before the swelling tide of death. Like transient sleep, his seasons past; his life is like the tender grass; Luxuriant ’neath the morning sun and withered ere the day is done. Man, in thine anger is consumed and unto grief and sorrow doomed. Before Thy clear and searching sight, our secret sins are brought to light. Beneath Thy wrath, we pine and die, our life expiring like a sigh. Oh, teach though us to count our days, and set our hearts on wisdom’s ways. Turn Lord to us in our distress, in pity now, Thy servants bless. Let mercy’s dawn dispel our night, and all our day with joy be bright. This, the Dutchman believed. And this, this I believe, that only God is great, and that man can’t in any sense of the word be considered to be great.

And the second is, that only God is wise. You see, man’s conception of greatness changes. If you go low enough down in the cultural scale, you come to the witch doctor. I think every witch doctor either must be devil-possessed or have a terrific sense of humor which he keeps under control because he puts horns on his head and feathers on his neck and paints himself with every kind of color, and then leaps up and down and make strange unhuman or inhuman sounds. And he’s supposed to be somebody; that he’s considered a very wise man. When we come up the cultural level a little way, we call philosophers wise. They are very wise indeed, because they sit around and think. And when we get a little higher up the scale, we consider the inventor and the scientist wise. So that the men who have invented our gadgets, we consider them to be very wise. And right now the physicist is perhaps the wisest of all men. We reverently take off our hat, and meekly looking down at the floor, we walk into the presence of a man who has studied physics so that he can break down the atom and send that terrible can of death and destruction down upon cities.

 My brethren, only God is wise. And God waits. He waits while history writes her chronicles. And what is history after all, but tiresome records of battles fought long ago and far away. This king, led this host to battle, and he was met there by that king. And he leaped across this lake or river and he caught his enemy unprepared, and so it goes. And it all reads alike. Just exchanged names and you’ve got history.

Well, God’s waiting, sitting quietly waiting for this little top to run down. Long, long ago, God wound it up, and God is waiting for this little top to run down. And there are wise men and thinking men and praying men today, who believe they can notice it’s beginning to wobble. The top that was spinning so beautifully is beginning to wobble a bit. And only God knows when it will fall over on one side and stop running. But God is waiting for that spinning top to run down, and then we will know that righteousness and wisdom are twin brothers. That you cannot be wise and not be right. That it’s impossible for a man to be a wise man if he is not a good man. That goodness and wisdom go together, that they are I say, twin brothers. Skill and shrewdness and intelligence and talent, these are all vanity without righteousness. And the most skillful man, they said of Henry Ford, that he was the most skillful man with his fingers, that any writer had ever known.

We know a man here in this city, quite an old fellow. And he’s quite a widely-known surgeon. And to this day, at least the last I heard of him, he knits and tats and does these other things with his needle in order to keep his fingers skillful. He knows he has to go into a human brain or a human heart. He can’t be all thumbs. He has to have skillful fingers. And we can have all the skill in the world, but if it is not allied with righteousness, it’s vanity and vexation of spirit.

And so there is shrewdness and intelligence and high IQs and fine talents. And everywhere throughout the country. We hear about talents, talents, we hear it until we’re weary of hearing it. He’s a talented young man. She’s a talented woman, but talent without righteousness is vanity. And when the top is run down, and the great God who start it spinning looks with pity down upon it, He will reveal. and the world will know what He now knows and what believing men ought to know now, that only God is wise. And that the good man is the wise man after all, and that the highest wisdom in the world is to be childlike and to trust in God.

And then we extract this from the Scriptures and lay this deep into our foundation. And if it’s not there, and if we build without it, we’re going to stand in the gathering dusk, and watch our house go down. It is this, that without God, nothing merits our attention. That apart from God, nothing is worthwhile. Nothing. Nothing merits my devotion if God isn’t in it. Nothing merits my support if God isn’t in it. But it is sad to see men waste their lives on trifles to gain money, to gain power, to gain publicity, to gain fame, and to stand for a little while in the flickering light of publicity, and not have God in it. We’re wasting our time and we’re building on sand. And if what you’re doing doesn’t have God in it, then you’re wasting your time.

But you say, Mr. Tozer, how can it be? I have a job to do, a truck to drive, an office to run. I sell in the store. I teach in a school. I’m a doctor. I am an artist. I am an advertising man. How can God be in what I’m doing? I say to you, if what you’re doing is honest, you can bring God into what you’re doing by bringing God into your heart and life. And the farmer can raise corn for The Devil or he can raise corn for God. And whatever we do that has not God in it, I say will go down in a roar, when the storm breaks out of the cave of God. And anything, God can be in anything that’s good.

The mother who changes the baby and cooks for the family and looks after the house, God can be in that. And we’ll talk for a minute about the mother, the good mother, that we read of in the Scripture. Good, God bless, and we thank God for every good mother. And she can bring God into her lowliest, simplest tasks. And I don’t like to hear the word “merely” a housewife, merely a housewife. Eve was a housewife and the mother of Jesus was a housewife and Suzanne Wesley was a housewife. And who and by what authority then do we have a right to make a woman a second class citizen and say she’s nothing but a housewife? A housewife who can dedicate herself to God, can have a house that’s as much a part of the whole pattern and scheme of God as the church itself is, I mean, the building itself is and the fellowship.

So, if what you’re doing doesn’t have God in it, or if it morally can’t have God in it. Or if you by selfishness exclude God from it, or you by unbelief exclude God from it, then it’ll be a sandy foundation upon which you’re building a lifetime of toil. And in that testing day, when the rains descend and the flood comes and the thunder roars, you will see your house go down. And what could be sadder in the gathering gloom amid the darkness to see the little man flee in terror from the house that had no foundation, and slip away into the night, to be caught at last and judged.

Well, then I give you this also, that only what we do for God will remain to us and I have practically covered that already. So I’ll skip it and say again, only what we give to God is safe. Only what we give to God is safe. They say that inflation is cutting down the value of our dollars. And if a man has $1,000 in the bank, honest money, money that he’s laid up after having given not only his tithes, but more than his tithes. After having, after having given generously of his goods to help the poor and keep the work of God going along, then he lays up a little. They say that inflation is cutting the value of it down, so that month by month and year by year, you’ll have less than you had before. I don’t know about all that. If you listen to one politician, you take one side and you listen to another and you take another side. But I do know this, that only what God gets from you will be safe at last, only what God gets.

Some of you are too young to remember, but I remember. We had five sons. The year 1933 The election was in 32 and the collapse in 33. No relation, however, between the election and the collapse. But we had laid up a little bank account. Oh, it didn’t amount too much. Maybe the most it was about $17 at least about $1 and a half for the five boys. And one day wham! They closed the bank and it’s never been open since. Somebody has that money. I don’t know who got it, but I know it’s gone. Those boys are scattered all over the country and out of the country and their money is in somebody’s hands somewhere, and we lost it.

Now I don’t know what that illustrates, probably nothing. But anyway, my friend, wherever, wherever you will give a thing to God, you’ve got that. And whatever you give to God, you’ve got that still. Whatever you give to God, you’ve got. That’s yours and when you will lay it in the hand of God. But you say, I can’t lay in the hand of the Lord. If Jesus were here in person, I could walk up to Him and put it in His holy hand, but he’s gone. And the world has not seen him for 1900 years. Well, He’s got the poor and the needy. He’s got his church. He’s got His foreign missionary program. He has His widows, and He has His displaced persons and He has the naked savage and he has all over the world His people. I don’t say they’re His in the sense that they’re born into His kingdom, but He loves them and is responsible for them.

And he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord, and He will repay him again. Does the Lord owe you anything, sir? He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord. So, what you give to the poor, you lend to the Lord, and that’s all you’ve got in that last day. There isn’t anything quite so terribly, tragically, pathetic, as to see an old man lugged out and put down in a hole, who, three, four or five days before could have written checks that would have bought out all of us. Now, his one hand is folded over his other hand. And they’ve got all sorts of gimmicks and gadgets there to try to save the poor old derelict, poor old vagrant on the face of the earth. All he could do is write checks against huge accounts all over the world. But now his poor old white hand can’t hold a pen. Nothing so pitiful, sir, I think in this world as that. And they put a cross on his chest and they put a prayer book by his head and they burn the candle over him. And they frantically cram and cram for the great examination, hoping they can help the old fellow who wasted a lifetime and got nearsighted looking at ledgers and counting up his wealth. Now he’s gone. No man can bring him back and the place thereof shall know him no more.

But I have a kind of a smile in my heart when I think of what some men have done. I’ve heard of a few of them. They made a lot of money. They had the Midas touch, and wherever they put their fingers, it turned to money for them and they became millionaires overnight. And some of those men saw that. And toward the end, they started giving it away with a shovel. You remember, old Carnegie did that. And oh, there were several others that we read about in the newspapers. They knew the end wasn’t going to be long out there, and so they started giving it away. They wanted to die poor.

I claim, what you will to God you don’t give to God and at all.  The Undertaker gives it to God. What a man wills to God and says I hereby bequeath that after I’m dead, that such and such a church or missionary society can have my money. Why brother, what have you got to say about it? You will be dead? You will be dead. And what we will to God, we haven’t given to God at all. What we give to God when it matters means something. That’s giving to God. But again, we’ve got to build this into our structure and lay this underneath everything we do, that God’s work goes forward by sacrifice.

Now Christians have ignored this and then forgotten it. And we’re the easiest, smoothest, slickest bunch of religious tabby cats a sun ever shone down on. Everybody’s gotten up and most of us have too much. But ease is a deadly disease my brother. And the human spirit when it allows itself to go without discipline and hard work and sacrifice, gets fat and flabby just like a human body does, and there are so many of the Lord’s children. Why are the communists so powerful? They’re powerful because they’re trained down and trimmed down like athletes. And they’re ready to go out and die for their cause. And they believe in it so fiercely, even though it’s The Devil’s own doctrine. They believe in it so fiercely they’re willing to die for it, and willing to suffer for it. And they go out to lose by it. Lose in order that they might communize the world.

Now, I think it is a frightful doctrine. And as I’ve said before, I believe it is The Devil’s imitation of Christianity. Nevertheless, it’s going fast throughout the world, because those who hold it believe in it. And we Christians say that we’ve accepted Christ, and we’re just waiting for the Lord to come. And we’re going to rule over five cities. Some of you can’t rule your temper. How are you going to rule five cities? Some of you can’t control your appetite. How is God going to give you anything to do in the millennium? Some of you have never learned to live sacrificially. You’ve never born a cross. You’ve never felt the jag of a thorn as they pushed it down on your forehead. And only the work of God goes forth only by sacrifice.

And there’s a lot of religious work where nobody’s sacrificing, except the poor suckers that pay the bills, the lay people that don’t know any better. Poor old ladies that go down into their old-fashioned cotton sock and take out big bills that they’ve saved from the days of Coolidge, and tearfully give it to some scoundrel who’s pleading for it over the radio so he can take a trip to Bermuda, and thus, further the cause of foreign missions.

Well, God’s work goes forward by sacrifice my friends. Somebody’s bleeding somewhere and wherever there is human tears and blood, there is progress. But wherever there isn’t human tear or human blood, there is no progress.

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Tozer Talks

“The Cruel, But Effectual Plow in Fallow Ground“

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The Cruel, But Effectual Plow in Fallow Ground

Pastor and author, A.W. Tozer

December 30, 1956

Now, about 18 years ago, I preached a sermon, and then it got written up and got into a booklet. And I’ve steered away from ever preaching it since, because I didn’t want to repeat myself. I’ve been told wryly by certain people that they have heard men who’ve written books, preach their old chapters over again and they have sat in the back of the of the church and gone over word for word, the chapter. And the way they told me about it, I concluded it wasn’t a very acceptable thing to do. So, I’ve tried to steer away from it. But I feel I’ve just got to go back and preach again on the text. Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.

My old friend, Burt Miller back there, may have heard me preach on this once out in Ohio. If he did, he’s going to hear it again. Because I want to talk to you about certain truths that underlie this text. Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy and then particularly this, break up your fallow ground for it is time to seek the Lord. I told you this morning that I did not want at the end of the year to talk about what had been and scold you about it, but rather talk about what could be and what is to come. Now we’ll proceed.

Here are two kinds of ground mentioned, fallow ground and plowed ground. And I don’t know what you, in your part of the country mean when you say, fallow ground, because the scientific farmers use the word otherwise than what it was used in Bible days and out where I came from, before there were scientific days. But here are two kinds of ground, fallow ground and plowed. Now what is fallow ground? Well, fallow ground is ground that may be fertile alright, that doesn’t need to be necessarily, but it can be fertile ground. But it has been allowed to run waste.

And there it lies, this piece of ground as safe and smug, and I suppose, well satisfied with itself. No doubt it’s collecting the tradition and buttons for attendance at Sunday school. But it’s a safe, smug, self-satisfied, at ease in Zion affair. And the result of it is, nothing grows on it but green briars and burdock because nothing’s been planted on it and it hasn’t been plowed up. It’s just lying there. Its potentialities are tremendous, but it’s not getting anything done to it, so it lies there. It has no life in it. No miracle of life is present here, because it’s lying fallow, it has protected itself. No doubt it can turn to its constitution and justify its fallowness by Article 3 and by the marginal note showing that it was changed at a council in 1916. But there it lies nevertheless, fallow and there’s nothing growing on it. The blue jay won’t light on it except by mistake because there isn’t any reason why he should. There’s nothing there. It’s simply fallow ground. And then the farmer decides that he’d better put that back in production again. So, he gets out a plow.

Now, a plow was never a pleasant thing, never. Plows are not meant to be pleasant. They do not have pearl handles on them. And they have never been made soft. There never was soft plow yet. So, the farmer gets out his plow, and in olden times, his horses or oxen, back in the days when this was written. And that cruel plow goes to work on this smug, self-satisfied field that’s been lying there so long that it’s gotten gray with tradition. It’s got a beard on it because it’s been there, well-satisfied and content.

But now the plow starts. And so, there’s first the disturbance, and then it’s travailing and it’s pained and bruised and it’s unprotected. There’s one thing about a field, it can’t be protected and plowed at the same time. It just can’t be. A field has to have its fences, at least part of it, taken away so that the plow can get in. So begins the plowing. And if a field could bleed, it would bleed. And if it could mourn, it would mourn. If it could weep, it would weep. If it could suffer, it would suffer. For everything is going on there to make it suffer.

And so round and round go the oxen or the horses, and round and round until it has been thoroughly plowed. Not scratched on the surface, but plowed down deep. And somebody who doesn’t understand, watching the plow, would say, what a cruel man that farmer is. Why, I remember that field for nine years now, and it’s been one of the nicest little old green briar patches in the world, ground squirrels, and blue jays. But now look what he’s doing. He’s plowing it up. He’s cruel, that man. And they won’t come to hear him preach.

But nevertheless, I want to tell you what happens when you get your ground plowed up. After the plow has done its work and that field has had its smugness knocked out of it, and its safety removed and his protection taken away from it, and it knows what it is to be attacked and invaded and chopped up and chewed down and chewed out, and got mad by the plow. Then the wonder of life begins. That which had been lying and only now potential, now becomes a wonderful field full of life with bursting seed and life, and there’s birth and growth and there’s the hand of God manifested in corn or wheat or whatever it may be. And people who go by say, look what a comeback that field made. While I remember when it was an old, infertile thing lying there. But now look at it, why, the wheat’s as tall as a man bent over, with great, brown golden heads of wheat. Well, that’s what happens when the plow gets at the field.

Now, that’s the illustration only. But the application is, that there are two kinds of lives. There’s the fallow life and the plowed life. The fallow life is the contented life. That is, he’s the Christian who is quite satisfied with himself. He’s at ease and he has slowly grown a protective shell. He’s heard all the preachers on the radio and off. And he’s read everything so that he has grown a protective shell, and you can get at him. He’s protected. There he is. God can’t even get at him, because God didn’t say, I’m going to plow your ground. He didn’t say that. God didn’t say, I’m going to plow your ground. God can’t even plow him, because he’s too well-satisfied with himself.

And I don’t mind telling you I hate to wash our linen in public and talk before company, but I don’t mind saying to you that one of the heartaches of my life is that a number of our people and some of you may be here now. A number of our people have grown old and gray in this church, and you’re as fallow and as unproductive as you were when I came here, a black-haired stripling, 28 years ago. And I say that’s a tragedy too terrible. The only thing that’s changed about you is the color of your hair. You’re still the same fallow person you were before. Because you’ve thrown up a protective shield. You will not let anything get after. You’ve built a religious fence around yourself, and you’ve come to approve yourself. But do you know what’s wrong? There is no fruit and there is no growth. And there is no miracle of life, and there’s no wonder of bursting seed, and there’s no miracle of springing fruit. There isn’t anything there but a fallow life.

And the churches of this country brother are full of them. The churches are full of them, fallow lives. They’ve been on the board since the year 1, and they will be there yet, at the end of time. And there they are, religious fellows that there’s no more love, no more tenderness. They’ve never ripened any. There is no mellowness There is no evidence of penetration, no spiritual insight. No, no upward rush of spiritual life, but they’ve remained just what they were because they’ve protected themselves from the plow. They won’t let the Holy Ghost get to them. And there are some of us like that here tonight. We just won’t let the Holy Ghost get to us. We have become what they called blasé. And I think that’s French for dead. Anyhow, it’s French for burned out and dull and sophisticated and a state of just having heard everything, a perpetual yawn inside of their soul. And there isn’t anything that will stir them, no matter who comes to preach. They will come and listen, but they won’t let the plow ever get to them.

Then thank god, there’s the other kind, and we’ve had a lot of them around here and some of them are on the mission field Brother. Some of them are preaching the gospel in various parts of this country and some of them are still with us. And I’ve watched you grow and lived beside you, and in some instances, sat on the committees with you and watched you grow. Well, that’s the plowed life.

Now, what does that mean? It means that you begin to get discontented with your crop of green briars and burdock, and you’ve decided that you’d like to be a fruitful Christian. That you’re weary of producing nothing. That the Son of God’s love beats down, but only bakes you. And the rain of God comes down as sweet and merciful upon you, and yet doesn’t do you any good, and you’re getting weary.

Now, the first step toward any progress in the spiritual life is discontentment. And don’t you let anybody take a New Testament and try to take away your discontent. I am weary of these counselors whose whole job in life is to make everybody satisfied with his spiritual state. I say we need to be dug up sometimes. Not all the time, but plowed occasionally. Now, the plow only went in there once a year, but it did a fine job while it was there. And so discontent, dissatisfaction, and when would there be a time when normally and psychologically, we’d get discontented anymore than now.

We stand only a breath away from the New Year. And you’ve got behind you old ’56 with her troubles and her miseries and her scares and her frights and her weariness. Now look back over it. Are you satisfied with it? Have you been what you should have been? Have you followed God as you should have followed Him? Are you contented with 1956 and with yourself? If you are, then you might just as well go to sleep because I have nothing to say to you. You have got to be discontented before there can be anything else.

Then there must come contrition. There must come a sorrow of heart, and down go the fences. And there must come pain of heart, and we must put ourselves in peril. There must come a stirring up and a humbling and a seeking and a confessing and the going down before God either in church or in private. I don’t care which. I have gotten more from God alone in my own room by myself than I ever did any time anywhere with a company of people. And if you want to do it that way, it’s all right with you. All I’m afraid of is, that if you get out of here, you won’t. And so we insist sometimes that people come and do it publicly, because we know if we let them go, they won’t do it privately. That’s the only reason I ever give invitations, because I don’t care where your knees are resting. But I only know that if there’s a humbling and a seeking and a confessing, there will be preparation for progress at least.

And so that is the cruel plow. That’s the cruel plow. And the man who uses it, or who even exhorts toward it as a rule, isn’t a very popular man. I have noticed that the popular preachers of the day are very careful to be so general, that the plow point never gets in. That’s why we can have campaigns and not have any lasting results, or not raise the moral standards of the country. That’s why we can boast of 100 million church members in America, at the same time, sadly, admit the lowest moral standards in the nation’s history, all one at the same time. More church members and worst sinners, and very often, they’re the same people.

Now, that cruel plow, the odd thing about that is you’ve got to use it yourself. Nobody else can use it. You’ve got to take the protection away from yourself and take the shell off and let the Holy Ghost get to you. And if you do that, then comes the new life. Then comes the wonder then comes that miracle of new life. Then comes the manifestations of God. Then comes fruit and birth and life. And people go by and say, what happened to this fellow? He’s made a comeback. Why, I remember when you looked at him, it was as much as your life was worth. He gave you the half wham just looking at you. He was a cold fundamentalist, satisfied with himself. But now, bless me, he’s warm and fragrant and vibrant and full of something. What happened to him? Well, he got plowed up, and God Almighty poured seed in there, and the kind rains of Heaven came down and the sun warmed it by day. And now the miracle of life has taken place.

Now my friend, religious history shows these two phases, the dynamic or plowed life, when there’s advance and victory and growth and miracle and life, and the static or fallow phase, when there is safety and protection and weakness and silence and barrenness. That’s why I don’t stand always with my own Society, because I see that as we get more and more barren, and more and more fallow, we multiply protective regulations so nobody can get to us. And we’re dying by inches, because we will not expose ourselves. The old days our brother told about back there, 1897, when man had nothing but the will of God, their two knees and faith. Why, that was the day of breaking open things and doing things in the Alliance. But we’re so protected now that God Almighty couldn’t withdraw his forces from us for ten years and we wouldn’t find it out, because we’ve got it all regulated and looked at. And I want this church, we’ve got its constitution, but it’s so skeletal and necessary under law that we have it or I wouldn’t even have that. Because I find that when Christians are growing, they’ve got nothing but God. When they’re dying, they have regulations to protect them from finding it out.

Now, my brethren, these two phases are here, and they’re in church history. I don’t want to belabor it, but only point out that there was an old man one time. He had been young, but now he was a pretty old man. I can see him as a tall, upright old man with quite a beard, dignified and stately. For he never but once in his life did anything that wasn’t dignified that I can find in the Scriptures and his name was Abram. And he was in Ur of the Chaldees, thoroughly fallow, satisfied with Abram, quite, and making idols history tells us. And therefore, it was quite alright, thank you, a respectable religionist, and he was a statistic.

And then one day a strange moving came on his heart and he got discontented, and he walked around looking for somebody to talk to and nobody could understand him. And then when he did dare to bare his heart to somebody they said, now, keep calm brother, don’t get too stirred up. Religion will drive you insane if you to get too stirred up, you know. Psychiatry has proved that. So, Abraham had to get away and throw off each of the “go crazy” fellows and pulled up stakes and uprouted himself and started for a land he had never been in before, not knowing where he was going. Talk about plowing a man up. That was it, sir. He didn’t know his destination. He got his ticket and it was blank. And God said, now, you go but you don’t know where you’re going. But Abraham said, God, do you? And God said yes and Abraham said, that’s enough. And then started the fruit, fruit abundant began to flow out of the man’s life.

Well, then there was Israel in Egypt. You remember how Israel in Egypt, with no power, no victory, no advance, no life, multiplying physically, but having no spiritual life at all. For 100 years, Israel lay fallow, out of the will of God, or at least out of the directive will of God. And then one day God called a man named Moses. And Moses answered the call and went and said, let my people go. And out from Egypt there came a people, a disturbed people, an uprooted people, the people who were leaving or was for they were the people of Israel, leaving the old land and going out where they scarcely knew. And then came the miracle and the cloud of the fire and the crossing of the Red Sea and the manna and the wonder of God’s leadership, all because they got out of that old sandy deathbed where they’d been for 400 years. They had exchanged the static situation for the dynamic.

And then came the Judges. When you read the Judges you will find that there would be periods when Israel would go completely static and fallow. She would lie under the control of some foreign nation, then God would raise up some wild fellow who hadn’t much education or culture but who knew God. And Ehud or Samson or somebody would rise up and do strange disturbing things. And the plow would go into the soil, and Israel would have a renaissance and would come back to life again for a while and the blessing of God would begin to flow.

Well then, under the time the long cressence before Christ’s time, broken only on the surface by the Maccabees. But there was that long period between Malachi and the birth of Jesus, 400 years about, between the strange man named Malachi, that means a messenger of God. That’s all we know about him. History can’t locate the man. But he wrote that terrible, wonderful four chapters of Malachi.

But oh, after that, for 400 long years, there was the fallow ground. There was the static situation. Israel wasn’t growing. She was so dead, so infertile, that when the Prophet talked about the coming of Christ, he called Him a root out of a dry ground. He was born in a miracle out of the dry ground, for Israel was a dry ground. And then when Jesus came and the Gospels began to take place, the events of the Gospels and then the death and resurrection of our Savior and the book of Acts, the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.

And then came the miracles and the wonder. Then came the spread of the gospel. Then heaven opened and shown in its fullest glory. And what had been 400 years of drought, now became a long period of fruitfulness and power. And the rain descended and the floods came and the sun by day and the moon by night, and the plow and the uprooting and the disturbance and the persecution and the praying and the long vigils with God, and the disturbed upset patterning of our pattern of our living. Now, that came when their plow got in. Now that’s the way history shows it you see. I’m illustrating from history, and nobody can gain say it nor deny this is so.

And then there was that long period after the awakening of learning in the Middle Ages, or a little after. And then came Erasmus and the rest of them, the humanists, and they began to do translate and just rediscover the writings of the old Greeks and the rest. And men began to plow themselves up mentally. And they had what is called the Renaissance.

And then about that time also, there came that great big ploughman, we call Martin Luther. Now he was rough, and for an educated man, and for a man as brilliant as he was, for don’t forget, he was not only brilliant, but he was one of the great musicians of his time and composers. And yet he was as rough as a bull, literally. And there came that great big fellow. Now, if it had been some soft rubber-nose plow that was out to be kind to people, and remember they’re just dust, there never would have been any reformation, and you would have been kissing the cardinal’s ring come next Wednesday. And you would never have known the gospel that set you free. But this great big rough fellow had a plow. I think personally, he went down in too deep and hurt people just kind of because he wanted to. But he did it anyhow.

And Erasmus, the polished white-handed scholar who knew so much and did so little and who refused to go along although he believed in the evangelical movement. He wouldn’t go along with it because he said he wasn’t called to revolution. He was called to educate people. But Martin Luther was called to get people converted. And then we had the Reformation. And a nation was born and the Bible was released from its chains in the monasteries and got out among the plain people, so the German youth could read the Scripture and memorize it and quote it as he followed the oxen. And then followed after that period, periods of theory and indoctrination and marking of time, static periods, broken only occasionally by ploughman who came and put in the plow.

Revivals, we call them now in history and there they are. It’s not the wild imagining of an excited preacher. They’re there in history. They’re there, revivals in Ireland, revival in Wales, revival in England, revival in New England, revival in the middle western part of the United States under Finney, revival in Korea, revival in China under Sung. Those periods when a ploughman arrived, and men began to plow up their own hearts. And the periods of theory and a time marking were all broken up, and the plow was put in. Then men did daring things, and they’re walked out in the midst of danger. They did dangerous things.

But nowadays, I want to preach on it some time, but nowadays, our young people, they lack the spirit of daring in their Christian lives. They’ve got to be played into the Kingdom, entertained when they’re there and jockeyed along and fed out of a bottle, and nobody talk rough to them for fear they’ll backslide. And treated like a house plant raised inside, watched over lest they be told that there’s something dangerous in the gospel.

Brother, there is something dangerous in the gospel. There is a no and a yes in the gospel and the no means death and the yes means life. There is a cross and a resurrection in the Gospel. And the cross means death and the resurrection means life. There is a plow and there is fruit. And there is never any fruit before there’s a plow. And to tell our young people as is being done up and down the land, to tell our young people that it’s fun serving Jesus is to tell them a lie that may damn their souls. The cross of Christ is not fun. The cross of Christ is the instrument of your death. And up out of your stony grief and up out of your Joseph’s new tomb, God will bring you in life and wonder, and there’ll be blessing and fruitfulness and there may even be joy that you can’t contain. But it will not be the cheap joy that’s being offered by those who lead our young people astray.

And I’d rather preach to a few young people who have maturity enough to come out to hear me preach, than to preach to 10,000 of them who want only to be entertained, or who want to be told the grand lie that Christianity is another form of entertainment and that you can be, have a lot of fun following the Lord. Have you ever found much fun in it, brother, down there where your life was in danger? I have no trouble at home. I have no trouble with my family. I have no financial troubles. I’m not particularly sick though my family claims I’m neurotic on the subject. But there’s nothing wrong with me. We get along all right. There’s never an unpleasant word or thought between us. I’m not in trouble and yet I have a heart ache two thirds of the time.

But it’s a heartache for the church. Not only this one, but a heartache for the church of God. The heartache for bad evangelism and mislead young people. A heartache for the honky-tonks and juke-joints that pass for Christian churches these days. And I got a heartache for it. No trouble at home, nothing to worry about. I own this suit. It’s paid for. And I know I’m going to get my breakfast. And nobody’s after me. But there’s a heartache, a self-imposed plowing that keeps going on all the time in my heart, not always with the same intensity I suppose, but certainly keeps going all the time in my heart. Why are God’s people so insufferably stupid? Why are the dear sheep of God so easily led astray?

In an ad that I have seen in some of our current religious magazines, there is a fellow, a round-faced fellow that would look like a Christian whether he was or not. You know, he’s got a built-in smile there that he got from his mother in overeating, and he’s written a book. And the advertising for the book is this, “Now, Soul Winning is Easy.” Get his book and soul winning is easy. And to get a few dirty dollars, the magazines publish that stuff and except the money, or else they don’t know any better. But imagine saying, soul winning is easy, my brother. Soul winning is easy. Soul winning is no easier than giving birth to a child. Soul winning just can’t be done by rule of thumb. And it can’t be done. after any methods known by a man or that can be put into a book and sold with royalties attached. You can’t win souls easy. You can make these, what do you call them, these cheap converts that aren’t converts.

Well, anyhow, you can swing them from one religion to another. You can get them to bow their head and say I take Jesus, but you can’t get them converted. For conversion means wrestling a soul loose from hell’s grip, and you don’t do that easy. Getting a man converted means getting him born out of an old deadness into a new life, and that doesn’t come easy. Things are made easy enough and the result is we see all around about us. And so no daring, no danger, no growth, no upset, no plowing, we’re protected and cared for and watched over in order that we might not find out there’s a cross in Christianity. The only cross we know is the one on the church steeple, and the one on the Easter card. But the cross on which He died is carefully hidden behind the door.

My brethren, you can do two things with his talk tonight. You can shake your head and say that’s too rough for me. I preached this sermon 18 years ago on a missionary who is a missionary now, but he was there. Oh, brother, he said, that was brutal. It was brutal, but he went down to the altar. He met God. And he’s been a successful missionary on the field for some years. Brutal maybe. And you can say that man’s too brutal. I’m not coming back. Well, I’ll be sorry If you don’t and it will be another heartache. But I can bear to think. But you can’t dare, you can’t afford to take that attitude, because fruit follows the plow.

God’s power comes when it’s called out and never when the church is in hiding. What I’m worried about here is, we’re too cultured. We know too much. We’re too well educated. We’re too smooth. We’ve got it all worked out. And everybody is dressed so neatly. And nobody’s in trouble with himself. That’s what I’m worried about. God’s power comes when it’s called out, brethren, and never, never when we’re protecting ourselves. Never when we’re in the rut, never when we’re lying fallow. Never when we’ve got the fence up all the way around. And no matter who the preacher is, he can’t get past our guard. No, never does the power of God come then. Because then it’s satisfaction, and resting on our lees, and sterility and infertility, and borderline death. And then, maybe in a meeting like this, the blessing of the Holy Spirit penetrates the disguise and gets past the shield and gets through to the heart and power is released into the life. And the church dares to do something.

You know what can happen to us friends? We can get middle-aged in our church life the same as we can in our normal physical life. I used to remember when I never walked up a pair of stairs, never. I always ran up the stairs and invariably, two at a time. I used to remember when I never allowed a bus to get away from me. If it was in the same block, I caught it and got on. But you know, I’ve philosophically concluded that’s no way to live. In other words, middle-age caught up with me. And my physical daring is gone.

There was a day when long trips and all. I don’t want to go nowhere now, no sir. Lovely English, but I don’t want to go anyplace. I just want to, if I was a tree, I would just be happy and stay right there. I don’t want to go anywhere. And I never go out of the city but what I wish I was back and hate every inch of the journey. Middle-age brother, and you can get that way in the church. We can drag our feet and sit on our hands and be overcautious and not have any daring nor any aggressiveness.

All right, God says, go ahead. If you want to do it, I’ll just withdraw my power. You just go ahead now and become middle-age in your church life, and go through the routine. Have your elections and your board meetings and your gatherings and go your way and get hard and fallow and fruitless. I can’t do a thing unless you plow yourself up, plow up your fallow ground He said. He didn’t say, ask me to do it. We’ll have no all-night prayer meeting asking God to plow up this church. That would be as ridiculous as asking God to go out and drive you home in your automobile. God is not going to do what you’re supposed to do. God isn’t going to fry your ham and eggs in the breakfast nor perk your coffee. He’s given you sense enough to do it, and then you do it. And there are some things God won’t do. And so, God isn’t going to plow you up. God says, you plow up your fallow ground, for it’s time to seek the Lord.

And then will come miracles, and by miracles I don’t mean necessarily physical manifestations of power, even in healing as precious as that. I tell you; I’ve seen miracles that healing never could touch. I’ve seen an old bum get up and look all around wonder what had happened to him, and go on from there to live a wonderful, happy Christian life. I’ve seen a few homes that were broken, cemented back together again by a miracle of the grace of God. And I’ve seen young people full of nonsense. Not here tonight, I think, or if he is, he’ll forgive me. But I saw a young fella who was hot rod driver, if you please. He loved to zoom around corners, you know, on one wheel. And then one day, McAfee walked up and slapped his back and said, what’s the matter with you? Why don’t you get right with God? That same night I preached and I don’t remember what it was, but the plow went down his back. And He almost ran down that south aisle into this room. And I think his two knees hadn’t more than reached the floor until God met his soul.

Well, he’s in his last year at Nyack now and I got a letter from the Foreign Department and one from the Home Department, asking about him. Do you recommend him? And I wrote a letter of recommendation that would sell an electric fan to an Eskimo. And then they said, do you know anything against him? Well, I said, if there’s anything against him, it’s he’s too enthusiastic. But if that’s a fault, it’s one that’s not very common in our day. That’s a miracle brother. And that’s a bigger miracle than the healing of a cancer, though I’d like to see cancers healed too. If God Almighty in His kindness would deliver people, I’d like to see that. But I’d rather see this kind of thing happen to a young man in the dawn of his life, to change him from an opinionated, young, smart aleck to a happy, glorious, young Christian. That’s a miracle to me. And that’s the kind of miracles I want to see. And the other ones will come along if God wills it.

But my brethren, you have got to follow the plow. And you’ve got to use it and then miracles will follow you. For the safety and security of your life, dare to throw yourself out on God for something new. Do you suppose we dare to do that this year? Are we going to go around the squirrel cage this year, one more year around the squirrel cage? Well, I’m going to tell you something brethren, I’m not. I’m not. If God will help me, I’m not. I’m not boasting. I’m meekly, humbly making a statement. I am not. And if there’s going to be barrenness and continued fallowness and no effort to break it and no intention to do anything about it, then there must be some realignments and some partings of the way. Because I don’t intend to. I will be sixty years old next April 21. And a man my age can’t afford to fool around brother. I haven’t got an awful lot of years ahead of me, maybe. I’m not on my own strength. My family rides me for this. But it’s just realism and common sense. Suppose I put on a fiery red shirt and didn’t even tuck it in and ran around trying to be young? Wouldn’t I look silly? I am just admitting my position is off and I am not going to waste 1957 if God Almighty will help me.

And I have a little book here that I’ve got prayers in that go back to 1937. I keep it somewhere here in one of my, and one of those prayers is this one, O God, let me die right, rather than continue to live wrong. I would rather be right with God with His face in full view and drop over and be lugged out, than to continue to be a fallow, unproductive old man on his way to Carlisle old folks home, worse than he was when he was 30 years old. And I’m not going to have it. By the grace of God, I’m going to keep the plow in my life. And I’m the worst member of this whole outfit. And if God can bless me, he can bless you.

What about you, sir? Are you going to let God help you? Are you going to take the fence down, take the protection away and ask God to help you this new year to dash and dare to go out and believe for something new? If you are, God will work on your side. And only high heaven can visualize what may come to you in 1957, if you’ll put away your carelessness and your smugness and your contentment, and plow yourself up until you bleed.

Now, brethren, we’re going to close this meeting, I’ve had a friend who has been my friend. We call each other by our first names. And I think there are not three people in the world that call me by my first name, and he’s one of them. And I’m going to ask him to come down here after a while when I indicate it and take us before God and asked for help for us.

Now, first of all, who wants prayer, for you? You’ll dare to make this kind of prayer, O God, so arrange providential circumstances for me that I will keep plowing myself up and keep fertile and productive rather than become stale and fallow this year. And no matter what cost God, I want to make progress and go on with Thee so I’ll be a better Christian a year from now than I am now. How many will say, pray for me and stand? Brother, Burton Miller, will you come down here please? My friend, Reverend Burt Miller, evangelist and a man with great success in starting churches and resurrecting old churches. Come on up here Burton. Take us before God’s and ask God to do something for us, this church, and me, and these fellas back here who share my responsibilities and trouble.

O God in the name of thy holy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We would bow the knee and bow the heart tonight with all sincerity. We’ve listened tonight, Lord, with Eternity’s values in view. We refuse to go the way of the world and the flesh and The Devil. We chose tonight to go God’s way in God’s time. Lord, we thank Thee for the plow tonight. We thank Thee Lord it isn’t pearl-handled, but it’s genuine and real. The Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. We feel like we’ve been slain tonight. We thank You for it, Lord. And we will go down before Thee in sackcloth and ashes. We will do it now. And as thy people respond to the call of Thy Spirit through Thy Spirit-anointed servant, Lord, meet us tonight. Meet us in this church, with its long God-blessed history. But Lord, don’t let it get on the shelf. Let better days be ahead, days of revival power and fire. O Lord, were so sick of the sham and the program of today with its likeness and its cheapness so far from the Word of God, we can’t even recognize it. Lord. We go back to the book and back to the blood and back to the way of the Holy Ghost, and we do it now. We do it now Lord, not just by standing up here, raising our hands and going down before Thee on our knees. Give us a spirit of brokenness tonight. Lord, as we meet up with our fellow men these days, we’re so helpless to do too many good. We’re so helpless to help them to God. And that’s why they’re going here and they’re seeking things that seem to be genuine, but are so false. Forgive us for failing Thee. Forgive us, Lord, for being afraid to be genuine Christians and the followers of the Lord Jesus. We trust Thee to do it, Lord, even now, even now. I feel while we’re praying folks, God be pleased and begin to move right now, don’t you? I want to be among you to do that. God bless you richly. Amen.

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“How We Can Prevent the Devil from Taking Advantage of Us“

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“How We Can Prevent the Devil from Taking Advantage of Us“

Pastor and author, Aiden Wilson Tozer

January 6, 1957

I would like to share briefly as I can about how you can prevent The Devil from getting an advantage of you during this year. Paul says, in 2 Corinthians, the second chapter, I determined this with myself, that I would not come again to you in heaviness. For if I make you sorry, who is he then that maketh me glad. But the same which is made sorry by me. And I wrote this same unto you lest when I came, I should have sorrow from them of whom I ought to rejoice? Having confidence in you all, that my joy is the joy of you all. Now I understand.

There’s something afoot to try to prove that Paul was a Southerner, having confidence in you all that my joy is the joy of you all. For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears, not that you should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you. But if any have caused grief, he hath not grieved me, but in part that I may not overcharge you all. Sufficient to such a man is this punishment which was inflicted of many. So that contrary-wise, ye are rather to forgive him. And comfort him lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with over much sorrow. Wherefore, I beseech you that ye would confirm your love toward him. For to this end also did I write, that I might know the proof of you, whether ye be obedient in all things. To whom ye forgive anything I forgive also. For if I forgive anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes, forgave I in the person of Christ, less Satan should get an advantage of us. For we are not ignorant of his devices.

Now, that last verse will be the text for tonight. And I want to say that life is not a game, but a warfare. And everything depends, or almost everything depends upon what approach we make to the Christian life. If we imagine the Christian life to be a game, we’ll act as if it was. If we know it to be a war, we’ll act as if it was a war. Because life itself is at stake. When the Western plays the Eastern or when the Yankees play the Dodgers, it is a game. A little money is in it and a little glory, but it’s a game and nobody gets killed. But when it comes to warfare, war is fought for keeps. And when a man goes out on the field of battle, he doesn’t go out to win a game. He goes out to kill or be killed; to live or to die. And in a spiritual sense, but a real sense, this is true of the Christian life.

Now, we’re at war. And this is not a Cold War, but a hot war. And it is a war with the cruelest and most deadly enemy that has ever been known. Not the helmeted soldiers of the Kaiser or of Hitler, not the wild, screaming Chinese, no soldiers, no enemy anywhere, could be possibly as cruel and as utterly sadistic and completely cynically evil as the antagonist we fight. His name, of course is The Devil. He hates God and he hates all good. Anything that is good, He hates it. Anything that has God’s name in it, he hates it. He hates everything and all souls that are escaping from his clutches. And he fights to ruin every human being.

Now, keep that in mind, you’re going to face up if you’re a Christian, to an enemy that fights to ruin you completely. He means to tear you apart, to destroy your Christian testimony and destroy the church if he can and every church that he can, to tear down and to destroy. That’s his business.

Now in this war, there are no rules on The Devil’s part. He is completely evil, And he knows no rules of Geneva or any other rules. He takes advantage; he has an advantage by the reason of the fact that he has no rules and knows no rules. Just as the gangster or the burglar has an advantage over the decent citizen, because the decent citizen recognizes rules, ethical rules, moral rules, legal rules, but the outlaw recognizes none. So, the outlaw always has the advantage. So, Satan has the advantage because he will lie and the Christian won’t. He will deceive and betray and poison. And he wins by getting that advantage if he can, and keeping it.

Now, whatever weakens us strengthens him, and that’s why I want to talk to you now about how we can keep him from getting the advantage. He has it, but we can take it from him and we can prevent him from using it. And that will be the little talk tonight.

Now, here are some ways The Devil will try to get an advantage this year. He has an advantage when we tolerate any wrongdoing. That is in the text which I read to you from Paul. You know what wrongdoing it was back there. It’s a rather a weird kind of verse in 1 Corinthians 5 and I don’t know exactly what it means. And there isn’t any use to read the commentator, because they don’t know what it means either. But it looks like this. It looks as if a man had married his deceased father’s wife, who would not be his mother, but his father’s wife, his stepmother. And he married her and was living with her openly in the Corinthian church. Well, that was too much for Paul. So Paul wrote a severe letter and said he would turn that man over to The Devil for the destruction of the flesh, in order that Satan might not get an advantage, he explains here in his second letter. So, any tolerance of evil, any tolerance of wrongdoing gives The Devil an advantage.

Now, tolerance is a virtue sometimes. You know, that we are now being literally snowed under with pleas for tolerance, the Anti-Defamation League, the Roman Catholics and the Northerners and Southerners and the Asiatics and the Europeans. Everybody is to tolerate everybody. And tolerance is a virtue where it means, patience with views divergent from our own. Now, by disposition, I don’t want anybody to disagree with me. And it takes God longer to take that out of my system than it does to take it out of some people, because I’ve got more of it. But tolerance is a virtue when we tolerate divergent views, when people see differently, and we can still live beside them in what is now called peaceful coexistence.

And then tolerance is a virtue, when it means patience with tastes different from our own. We can’t all be alike. We can’t possibly all be alike.  And even Christians cannot all be alike. So, we’ve got to recognize that and allow people a certain latitude for their humanity’s` sake. So, tolerance is a virtue then. And it’s a virtue and it means living at peace at least with other races and colors and languages and religions.

I remember when I was a lad at home, or when I was in middle teens, that if I were to hear a Hungarian, we had an ugly name for them then. And if I heard him chatter or heard her chatter, I looked down on these Hungarian people who were laborers in that city where I then lived in the East. And I really looked down. I didn’t have a thing myself, but I looked down on anybody that didn’t speak English. I didn’t speak English that a learned man could have recognized, but at least it was English and I looked down on anybody that had any other kind of English, or had any other language at all. But I hope I got over that. So, I can listen with some, with even some interest to languages that I don’t understand. Now, that I say is a virtue and it’s on God’s side.

But there is a tolerance which is quite different, and it means to tolerate that which God abominates. And if you allow that in your home or in your business or in your life, anywhere this year, Satan will get an advantage. What God abominates, it’s not a virtue to tolerate. Keep that in mind. And no matter how much trouble it gets you in, or how much persecution you draw on your head, what God abominations don’t you tolerate.

Take that man, Eli. Do you remember Him? You know, you can’t help what your children do when they’re not at home, but you can help what they do when they’re at home. And here was a man, Eli, a big fat priest. And he had two sons, Eli, he had two sons Hophni and Phineas. And Eli was the name of course of the father. And he tolerated wickedness in those men, those growing young men. They got old enough themselves to be priests. And he was too weak to say no. So he permitted those boys to get away, with what we say, was murder. And you know what the result was, the result was the ark of God was taken, Hophni and Phineas were both slain, the wife of one of them died in childbirth, and Eli fell and broke his neck. And the priesthood passed from him to Samuel’s line.

So now, that is what happened to a man who tolerated what God abominated. And if you do that this year, or we do it in this church, I know that some people imagine that I’m a bit hard and they say that. They think I’m a bit hard and they want to know why I do some things. My brethren, I want to be as soft as possible with people, but not allow to get into the church that which is evil. Keep it out, keep it as far out as you can, enough of it will get in that I don’t know about without allowing any of it to enter that I do know about.

 Now, you remember how Israel tolerated sin? And the result was that she alienated God and turned Him from a friend into an enemy and brought desolation upon herself. You will hear the name Israel, and now Israeli; and you hear the name Jew, and sometimes you’ll hear it spat as though it were an evil word, and it’s been so now for 3000 years. Throughout the world, the name Jew has been a name that has brought a lot of unpleasantness.

Now I don’t feel that way about it. I love the Jews. I’m a friend of the Jews. And I pray for them and I am on two boards dedicated to their welfare, and there is nothing antisemitic here and this. I merely mean to say that God scattered them abroad and they have been scattered abroad. And before that, for many years, they were in trouble with the Midianites and the Canaanites and the Philistines and all the rest, because God withdrew His protection because they tolerated what God abominated.

And you know, that happened to Israel. And to tolerate anything in yourself, if I can only get the people of God. If I could get you people to take yourself seriously, take yourself for the scruff of the neck and pull yourself clear up and say, now I’m going to stop this ragged, sloppy living, and I’m going to stop tolerating bad habits in myself. Well, you’ll excuse it, but God won’t excuse it. And if you tolerate the things that are wrong, you’ll give The Devil an advantage. It’s like going into the ring with one hand tied behind your back. You’ve got enough of an enemy on your hands without deliberately putting yourself at a disadvantage, lest Satan should get an advantage, said Paul. Well now that’s one way we can give The Devil an advantage.

Now, there is another way we can do it, and Paul pointed that out. And that is by being too severe with wrongdoers. Paul had been stern with sin in the Corinthian church, as I pointed out to you, but he had withheld punishment, nevertheless, against this man who was sinning this terrible sin. And He grabbed the first evidence that he could grab, that this man was repenting. The very first bit of evidence he could grab, he took hold of it. He was eager not to turn that fellow over to The Devil. He had been a heathen. He had come in out of darkness. He had been a Greek with very low standards. For the Greeks, you know, were not all philosophers and stoics. They were pagans, and when he’d come into the church, he had done this thing. And Paul was praying and hoping that he’d repent before his body was destroyed. And as soon as he found out that he had repented, he said, why, forgive the man now. Don’t bear down too hard, because you will give The Devil an advantage if you refuse to forgive the persons that God has forgiven.

And so, every church ought to have that rule. Every mother and father out to have that rule. Don’t tolerate wickedness in your children, but don’t throw up their past to them if they repent and do better. But this man, Paul, felt that the transgressor had already been punished enough by the displeasure of the Corinthian crowd and by his own conscience.

Brother, when God starts to lash a man for sin, I don’t want to add anything to it, not a bit to it. For I remember that when God, in order to punish Israel allowed a certain king to come up upon Israel. Then he turned on that king and said, I was punishing my people and you are adding to the punishment. Now, you’ll get it. And so we punish the people that had punished Israel, through great harshness toward the weak and the poor, and the sinning is always bad.

There go I, but by the grace of God, said John Wesley when he saw a man stagger down the street. There go I but for the grace of God. And there isn’t one of you here that has any right in the world, to look down your religious nose at anybody, and I don’t care who he is.

Last Monday, at noon exactly, 11:30 to 12, I preached to 200 men. Brother Moore was with me. And he said, this building, this smells better than most missions, doesn’t it? We were in the office then, or in the little parlor where they kept people, and I sniffed and said, yes, it doesn’t. It really does. It’s fine. Then they led us in to where 200 men off the street were. Men with the blank look, the faraway look, men with beards that hadn’t felt a razor for God knows when. And then we changed our mind. It was the old strange combination of uncleanness and antiseptic.

Well, I preached to those men. And I think I had a tender heart toward those men, even though there wasn’t a man there but what was there by his own choice. He was there of his own accord. He chose to sin. Why wasn’t I sitting there, a humped-over old bum? Why wasn’t I sitting there with a 10-day beard and a shirt that hadn’t been changed since Thanksgiving or before? Why? The grace of God my brethren, what have I that I haven’t received? But if you look down on people that backslide or that fall or that are weak, you’re giving The Devil an advantage. They give Satan an advantage in the church. Harshness never was a right remedy, never since the world began.

My father was an old farmer and he was a harsh man, that is, not with his family. But he believed in doing everything that tough, rough way. And if he could find medicine somewhere, he didn’t even ask what it was, he took it if he didn’t feel well. He didn’t know what it was, he took it. We used to have a stuff called Haarlem oil, a small bottle about the size of my finger there. And when a horse got sick, no matter what he had, anywhere from spasm on up, we just pulled out his tongue, held it and poured this Haarlem oil on the horse, and there was some of it that wasn’t used. So, one day, my father got sick, and bless my soul and body if he didn’t take this Haarlem oil. I don’t know, I don’t know what good it did or didn’t do. It didn’t kill him. But it was a harsh way to go about it. He might have gotten off a lot easier. And there are those who know only one way and that is the harshest, roughest way possible.

My friends, to strike the balance between tolerating wrong or not tolerating wrong and yet being patient with the wrongdoer, takes more grace and more wisdom than you and I have. God has to help us. And if he doesn’t help us, we give The Devil an advantage. We’re too hard on people, The Devil grabs that and runs with it. Where we’re too easy on sin, The Devil grabs that and runs with it. So, let’s watch out we don’t play into his hand either way.

And then, another way that we can allow The Devil to get an advantage is when we’re cast down by defeat. Now you say, aren’t you a preacher, known to be a preacher of what they call the deeper life, the victorious life? Yes, but I’m a realist today. There isn’t any reason in the wide world to walk up and say I’m feeling fine when I’m sick or when I’m pale and can hardly stand. And there isn’t any reason to say the sun is shining today in Chicago when there’s a heavy drizzle and the birds have to walk. There’s no use to be unrealistic about this thing. We might as well face it out. And Wesley said, You’ll never hinder the cause of Christ by admitting your sin, but you will hinder it if you cover your sin.

So, remember this, that defeat does come to people. It shouldn’t, but it does come to people. People are defeated. Sometimes, defeated in their living and their hopes; defeated in their plans, defeated in their labors. I’ve never been very successful, but I’ve never made a complete flop. And I am wondering how I’d take a complete flop. That is, if the Board were to call me in and say, you’ve been around long enough. It has been nice knowing you. Now, that I’ve never had happen to me. Or if the New York office would call up and say you have been editor long enough. Would you kindly send in your typewriter? I don’t know how I’d take it. I’ve never been a big success, but I’ve never been a complete flop. And so I’m giving you something here that I don’t know too much about myself, that is, that kind of failure, the failure of plans and labors. But failure in personal living, that, I’m an expert on. And I can talk to you about it.

Bob Walker of Christian Life wanted to advertise. He said, Mr. Tozer who is–what did he call it– an authority on the deeper life. I called him up and said, “edit that out of there. Don’t put that in. I’m not an authority on anything, much less the deeper life or victorious life.” I am barely, barely, one old poet said he never was an authority on anything but wind. And I am not an authority on anything. So remember it please. But I am an authority I think in a measure on what it means to fall flat on your face and then have the grace of God lift you up out of it. But you will give The Devil an advantage if you get cast down by defeat. There’s nothing particularly terrible about falling down, but when somebody gives up and lies down, then you’ve got trouble on your hands. It’s final my friend, it’s falling, it’s final only when we accept is as final. A man that can still raise a hand and say God help me can get back on his feet again.

Now, you might as well, some of you might as well admit this. I don’t want have anybody in mind, but you might as well admit it, even a congregation, an average small congregation, this size, there’s somebody in it that’s been tumbling around last week. You made a New Year’s resolution Monday night and broke it Wednesday afternoon at three o’clock, and that’s about par for your course. And that’s about as far as you get. Brethren, don’t get cast down. Some of God’s dear people are always dragging their feet. They’re never quite able to rise and face life and face up to things.

Now, if you would ask God immediately to cleanse you, ask him immediately. Don’t wait and let a thing fester, don’t. If you get something, if you get a cut on your finger and you don’t do something with it, it could turn into blood poisoning. But if you will deal with it immediately, you can catch it in time. And so God has a first aid for his people. And you know what it is? It’s back there in 1 John 1:7-9, 2:1-2, where he says, If we say we have not sin, then we deceive ourselves, and we make God a liar. But, if we confess our sin, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And there isn’t any reason why anybody here tonight should go out from here with a stain on your soul, not one, because God has a remedy, the blood of Jesus Christ. And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.

So remember, that if your soul has been defeated, or you have been defeated in your plans, or defeated in your prayer life, defeated anywhere, and things haven’t gone so well, that in itself is not too bad. But if you allow it to discourage you and cast you down, you play straight into the hands of The Devil. And you will allow yourself to go out onto the field of battle without a gun. You will let yourself get into the prize ring with one hand behind your back.

Well then, another way we can play into the hands of The Devil is when we’re elated by victory. Not only cast down by defeat, but elated by victory. I used to hear a preacher who would always talk about the good atmosphere. He would say, “oh, we had a wonderful meeting with a fine atmosphere.” He was a religious meteorologist. And he always had to have the right atmosphere before he could feel right about it. Brethren, there is such a thing as being victorious and not having a very good atmosphere to be victorious in. God sends His own oxygen tent around with the children which he has begotten.

Now, the portion of the true Christian, of course, is peace and joy and a certain delight, and it’s the perfection of God. And here is the Christian’s philosophy. If I have God, I can’t have anything more than God. So if I am defeated, or if I have a victory or don’t have a victory, I can’t have anything less than God. I always have God. If the children of the Lord could only find that out, that when you’ve got God, you’ve got everything else in one package. But when God has you, and you have God, there is no such thing as permanent defeat. And if you’re defeated, you don’t lose anything. And if you’re victorious, you don’t gain anything, because you have God win or lose. And talking not so much about sins, to talk about plans and purposes and projects that you may have failed on. Nothing can be added to perfection.

And when you have God, you have that which is perfect. And it’ll take you a lifetime and perhaps several thousand years in the world to come to develop it all, and perhaps God being infinite, it’ll take eternity to develop it all. But still all that you have of God would lead you to say this is my philosophy, if I have God, no success can elate me and no defeat can beat me down. For I still have God.

Now, this isn’t in the sermon, but I’m going to introduce it here, because I’ve observed it. You see, the good preacher, if he’s any good at all, if he’s ever learned anything, he studies, three books. He studies first of all, this book. Then, he studies his own heart. And then he studies other people. And in those three books, he gets all he needs to get, other people, himself, and the Word of the living God. And the Word of the living God gives him 1000 keys, that can unlock 1000 secrets in his own heart and in the hearts of his fellow man.

And so, I sometimes preach to my people just because I see that they need it. And I’d like to say to some of you, you want to come around and check on it afterwards. I’ll tell you whether I mean you or not. But there are some people that just are never there when the blessing falls. That’s the oddest thing. If God blesses, they’re never there. They’re somewhere else at the time. Now, they have too many circles of friendship that are not spiritual. And they have too many little areas of social connection that is not built around the church of God. So, when the Holy Ghost falls on an occasion, they’re out with some of their borderline, marginal gatherings, and the result is they’re just not here. Or if they are they, they don’t understand it and leave. By the time they’ve had a soda and told two jokes and gone home, they’ve forgotten everything.

Well, my brother, the Holy Ghost said through the man who wrote Hebrews, let us press on to perfection, and this will we do if God permits. It looks as if there were some people that were born under a gloomy cloud or maybe shot an albatross, because everything they do turns into defeat for them. And if a sermon is preached or a song. Some people come to you afterward and you know as a minister of the gospel, you know you haven’t done very well. You’ve done the best you could, but that wasn’t very well. And somebody will come to you with a shining face, and say that blessed my heart. Well, that person is in a spiritual attitude that he can get help.

I preached a very ordinary sermon this morning. And a man came with a big smile and said, my heart hasn’t been warmed so much in years as hearing that sermon. Well, it wasn’t a good sermon at all as a sermon, but it was just some truth. But here was a man whose heart was in a spiritual condition to take truth, that’s all. But some dear children of the Lord are never satisfied unless there is letter perfection. If a soprano goes flat in singing “How Great Thou Art, I don’t know that they did brother. I’m using it as an illustration merely. They’ll carry that one little flat squeak out with them and talk about in for ten days. And some other people will go out and say, oh, how great Thou art, how great Thou art. My God, when I adoring wonder look to Thee, all I can say is, how great Thou art. But others hear a flat note. It’s not funny, it’s tragic, absolutely tragic, for it puts us straight into the hands of The Devil. And it gives The Devil an advantage.

Someone came to me this morning. A dear good soul that I have known and prayed for and prayed with for a long time. And He said–I’ll telescope two talks–I had said you know that I was getting defeated in my heart and things weren’t going so good, and you know, I discovered what it was. I’d been criticizing you–me. Well, God knows brother, if you want to criticize anybody, I’ve got ammunition for the next five years. You’ll never even need to look at anybody else. I can furnish you with ammunition to criticize me, because I throw myself open to those criticisms. This woman said sometime back now, a few months back, when I saw that and repented of it, she said, oh, the victory and the difference, that difference. And it always is so. I don’t care if It’s not.

I am talking about so much. It’s just anybody. Just anybody. Criticize the usher. Well, maybe he is. Sometimes, I feel like wringing their blessed necks because some things they let get by, but you know, they’re hard-working fellows that never get one decent word said to them for year in and year out. Yes, they are. And sometimes, I don’t like the way the trustees do things, but whoever walked over to a trustee and said, God bless you, Jim. You’ve done a wonderful job this year. Nobody ever did. Trustees worry about the church and work around it and spend hours looking after things and nobody knows they’re here but me and God and their wives usually.

Well, sir, we can be critics and fault finders and give The Devil an advantage. Every time The Devil hears a sour criticism, The Devil says, “goodie, he’s on my side.” But when we clean up our hearts by the grace of God and the blood of the Lamb, and that doesn’t make us so that we don’t see faults. It doesn’t make us so that we just have to walk around and purr. Some people expect the preacher to have all his claws, carefully peeled clear back to the quick and his teeth taken out. And so, he gums it and walks about a dear man with the sun shining on his noble, bald dome. That’s the poet’s concept of the preacher. You don’t have to be that. And the beloved John was the sharpest critic the church of Christ ever had. But it was kindly done. It was done in love.

So, you you don’t have to accept everything. You can be critical and you can point to faults and ask in God that they be remedied. All prophets and psalmists and apostles and reformers down the centuries have done that. That’s one thing. It’s quite another thing to be a fault finder. Well, if we’re fault finders, I hope the Calvinists are right and everybody that gets converted goes to heaven willy nilly, because that’s the only way they’ll ever get in.

Now, it says here, we’re not ignorant of his devices. I’ll try to be brief, but only to say this, that Satan is a criminal. And every criminal establishes what is called an unconscious pattern. Every expert on crime, that is, every criminologist knows, and every cop knows if he’s been on the beat any time. He knows that crime has a strange way of repeating itself. If a man is a burglar, he always burgles in the same way. It’s very rare that he changes his MO, modus operandi, or method of operation for you, Mr. McAfee. And The Devil is the criminal of the universe. But he isn’t quite wise enough to escape his own pattern. So, God says, if you will read this Bible and pray, I’ll teach you the pattern so you will never need to fall into it. You’ll know The Devil when you see him and smell him. We’re not ignorant of his devices. In all of his tricks there’s a certain sameness, and we defeat him when we know what they are. And then by the grace of God avoid them.

Well, how can we know them? I briefly say this. By the light of the word, by prayer for wisdom, and by the Spirit’s illumination. I don’t want to give aid and comfort to The Devil do you? Not for one split second. Peter once played right into his hands. He said not so Lord. And Jesus turned sadly and said, get behind me. The devil, he said, you speak not as from heaven but from earth. Peter didn’t mean to do it, but he did it. He played into the hands of The Devil.

Brethren, you and I want to be clean victorious this year, clean victorious. We want every week to be a victorious and fruitful week. And we want every day to be a good and clean and victorious day. So now, let us by the grace of God watch out and keep free from these things. But nothing I can tell you tonight will save you from stumbling, unless you search the Scriptures, pray and trust to the Holy Ghost to illuminate your heart, Be obedient and loving and trustful. You can have a victorious life all through 1957. And you know what? This could be the last year. It may not be, but it could be.

Now, I’m not going to give an invitation tonight. I’m going to let you go home after we’ve sung a number. But beginning next Sunday night, as I have said, we are going to deal with the victorious Christian life. We’re going to deal with the four stages in the road toward, path toward spiritual perfection. Don’t go out and say I’m not coming back towards a perfectionist. No. For I tell you that I believe in a perfection that is begun here, but ends in the glory. But we’ve got a long way to go, most of us, even to get started on the beginning of it. And I want to talk about that through the next weeks. All right

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Throughout the remainder of August and September we are going to bring back the noted series by A.W. Tozer on Worship.

Tozer Talks 027 – Worship Series #1 “He is thy Lord, Worship Thou Him”

Tozer Talks 028 – Worship Series #2 “God Great Purpose in Redemption-Worship”

Tozer Talks 029 – Worship Series #3 “Worship the Lord of Glory and Meekness”

Tozer Talks 030 – Worship Series #4 “A Definition of Worship”

Tozer Talks 031 – Worship Series #5 “A Look at Our Worship of God”

“Forward with Christ in Total Commitment“

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“Forward With Christ In Total Committment”

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals Annual Conference
April 25, 1963

It is a privilege for me and an honor to address you. It is an honor that I have not earned and that I don’t deserve. But who am I to argue with your Board. They invited me and Iaccepted and I’m here. Now, there’s one very happy circumstance surrounding my little talk here this morning and that is that I was assigned this talk, “Forward with Christ in Total Commitment.” And if I had chosen it, that’s the one I would have chosen. So, when you get a sympathetic audience before a man, who’s to have the pleasure of speaking on the topic chosen for him, but one that he would himself have chosen, a man should be able to deliver at least a passable sermon under those circumstances. If he couldn’t, I assume he wasn’t called to preach anyhow and ought to leave the ministry and go back to selling real estate or raising rutabagas. We’ll do our best and I will try to keep it in the time. I quit when it’s time, whether I’m finished or not.

Now, in the book of Colossians, the the first chapter it says, Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things and by Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell.

Then in Ephesians, first chapter and concluding verses of the second, Paul says that God’s power wrought in Christ, when God raised his son from the dead, set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And put all things under His feet and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church which is His body, the fulness of him that fills it all in all. And then, second chapter, we are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints in the household of God and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Jesus Christ Himself being the Chief Cornerstone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into one holy temple in the Lord. In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

Now before we talk about our union with Christ and our conscious and volitional attachment to Christ in total commitment, we must look at who Christ is and what His relation is to the redeemed company which we call the church. In one of the passages which I have read to you, you will find this truth set forth which I think I may imperfectly condense into three words. The words being “centrality” and “basicality” and “preeminence.” Now, it says that Jesus Christ the Lord is central. The old writers used to say that Christ is to the church what the soul is to the body. You know what the soul is to the body? It is that which gives it life when the soul flees the body, there’s nothing that can keep the body alive. When the soul is gone, the embalmer takes over, and in the church of Christ, any church, anywhere, of any denomination whatever it may call itself, as long as Christ is there imparting life, being the life of that redeemed company, then you have a church. For Christ is central in His church. He holds it together and in Him it adheres.

And then there is the next word, “basicality.” I never looked to find out whether there was such a word. I made it. But if there isn’t, there ought to be. And what I mean there is, that it’s basic. Jesus Christ is basic to the church. He’s underneath it. And the whole redeem company rests down upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I know this sounds like a string of religious cliches, but I’d like to say it in at least in such tone of voice that the cliche element will go out of it and you’ll hear it as though you were hearing it for the first time. That the whole Church of God rests down upon the shoulders of His Son. I think we might be able to go around the world and simply cry, “Christ is enough. Jesus Christ is enough.” What weakens us in evangelical circles, and that’s all I shall speak to. I never speak to the Liberals on the general ground that is not fair to kill, or shoot at a dead horse or kill a dead lion. So, I don’t bother the liberals, but when I’m among the evangelicals, I like to talk to them.

And I think that our trouble is, what weakens us is, that we put a plus sign after Christ–Christ plus something else. Remember, it’s always the pluses that ruin our spiritual lives personally. And it’s always the admissions or the additives, as they say now, that weaken the church. Let’s remember that God has declared that Christ his Son is sufficient. He has the way, the truth and the life. He is wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. He is the wisdom of God and the power of God. He gathers up in Himself all things and in Him all things consist, so that we do not want Jesus Christ plus something else or Jesus Christ and something else. And we never want to put a comma after Christ; not Christ with a comma waiting for something else, or Christ with a dash leading to somebody else, but we must preach Christ period. For Christ is enough. He’s basic to the church of Christ,

Hear, O Heaven and give ear for the Lord hath spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. And what He has said is, this is my beloved Son, hear ye Him. So the Lord Jesus Christ is enough. So I think that we of the evangelical faith, which is I have always believed to be the faith of our fathers, and a Biblical faith, that we should not preach Christ plus science, or Christ and philosophy, or Christ plus psychology, or Christ plus education, or Christ plus civilization, but Christ alone and Christ enough. These other things may have their place and fit in and be used just as you can throw sand into vat where they’re making glass and it will all melt up so we could lose all of these things, but we’re not leaning on any of them, but we’re resting down on Him who is basic to the faith of our fathers.

And then there’s that word preemminent, that He might be preeminent and have a place above all things. So let’s think of Jesus Christ, above all things, and underneath all things, and outside of all things, and inside of all things. He’s above all things, but not pushed up as the old bishop said. And He’s beneath all things, but not pressed down. And He’s outside of all things, but not excluded, and inside, but not confined. He’s above all presiding, and beneath all upholding, and outside of all embracing, and inside of all filling. So we are committed to Jesus Christ our Lord alone.

Now, our relation to him is all that matters, really. I want to talk a little about a true Christian faith as an attachment to the person of Christ. An attachment to the person of Christ and total commitment to Jesus Christ includes this or is this. There are four or five things I’ll talk about if I have time to get to them, that the attachment of the individual person to Jesus Christ is an intellectual attachment and I will tell you what I mean the that, and a volitional attachment an exclusive attachment and an inclusive attachment and an irrevocable attachment.

Let’s look at the first one. That to follow Christ forward in complete commitment, total commitment means there’s got to be an intellectual attachment to Christ. That is, we cannot run on our feelings or on wisps of poetic notion about Christ. There are a good many bogus Christs among us these days. And I believe that you and I as followers of the Lamb are not only ought to, but that it is obligatory upon us that we point out these bogus Christs and show them for what they are, and then point to the Lamb of God that taken away the sins of the world.

You know that it was old John Owen that said to mourn people in his day the old Puritan, he said, he have an imaginary Christ. And I warn you that if you’re satisfied with an imaginary Christ, you must be satisfied with imaginary salvation. There is many Christs and many lords and many gods but there is only one Christ. And the really saved man and the man who is following Christ has an attachment to Christ that’s an intellectual attachment, in that, he knows who Christ is, theologically. For you know, there’s the romantic Christ of the female novelist and there is the sentimental Christ of the half-converted cowboy and there’s the philosophical Christ of the academic egghead. Then, there’s the cozy Christ of the effeminate poet and the muscular Christ of the All-American halfback.

Well, we have this kind of Christ, but there’s only one kind of Christ, and God has said about Him that He is His Son. I like what they say about Him in the creeds, that He is God of the substance of His Father begotten before all ages, man of the substance of his mother, born in the world, perfect God and perfect man, a reasonable soul in human flesh subsisting, equal to His Father as touching His Godhead less than His Father’s touching His manhood. Who, although He be God and man, yet he is not two, but one Christ. For as the reasonable soul in flesh is one man, so God in man is one Christ. This is the Christ we adore, and we must have a knowledge of this, that is, we must have the Christ of Christian theology.

I have been blamed or praised for being a mystic. I don’t know what the word means. If to be a mystic, you have to have dreams and all sorts of things. I never had one in my life that I couldn’t trace to something I ate. So, I am not that kind of mystic, but I’ll tell you this, that I would never have anything to do with any book or any new movement or any religion or any new emphasis, that doesn’t begin with Christ, go out from Christ and return to Christ again. The Christ of God, the Christ of the Bible, the Christ in Christian theology, the historic Christ of the Scriptures, He is the one.

So we must have an intellectual attachment to Christ. You can’t simply let your heart run out to Christ as the Catholics let it run out to the Virgin Mary in a kind of warm feeling about Christ, not being sure of who Christ is. This is the essence of heresy. We must believe in the Christ of God. We must believe as what God says He is.

Well then, I must go on. There’s the volitional attachment to Christ. What do I mean by that? I mean that if I’m going to follow Christ forward in complete and total commitment, I must do it by my will. The fellow was in a bad shape, and he’s making a bad mistake who tries to live on impulse and inspiration, who hopes to sail across the undulating sea of titillating feeling. You can’t do it my Brother, because the devil gets you down. The man who lives on his feelings is not living very well and is not going to be able to last very long. The old writers used to tell us of the dark night of the soul, that there’s a place where the Christian goes through darkness, where there’s heaviness there. God isn’t going to take us off to heaven all wrapped up in cellophane looking like we ought to be hanging on the Christmas tree. God is going to take us there after He has purged us and disciplined us and dragged us through the fire and has made us strong and has taught us that faith and feeling are not the same, though thank God, faith brings feelings sometimes.

You know, they use to say High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow, That vow renewed shall daily hear, but people are afraid of that now. But I believe that just as Daniel determined that he would not eat of the king’s meat and just as Jesus set His face like a flint and just as Paul said, “this one thing I do,” I believe that the true follower of Christ must be a man who’s will has been sanctified, not a will-less man. I never believed when we teach the deeper life that we say that God destroys our will. A will-less man would be like a man without a backbone. He would be of no good in the world. You’d have to put him in to traction to the hold him up. And so, if if you have no will, you’re no good. But the beautiful thing is that God unites our will with His will, and our will become strong in His will. And sometimes, as you go on in God, you hardly know whether it’s your will or God’s will that is working at a given moment.

Well, now I go on to an exclusive attachment, and what do I mean by that? I mean that our attachment to the person of Christ must exclude all that is contrary to Christ. You see, there is a polarity in the Christian life. And this polarization begins at the very threshold. These are the days when we’re trying to be positive, 100%, positive. But the Scripture says that Jesus, that Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity. And that was said of holy Christ Himself, higher than the highest heavens and separate from sinners. And if He had to hate in order to love, so do you and I. But they tell us that we ought to be positive. People write to me and say, you’re negative. Why don’t you go positive? Well, to be positive 100% would be as futile and as useless and thank God, as fatal, as to inhale steadily along all your life without exhaling. You can’t do that. The human body requires that you inhale to get oxygen and exhale to get rid of the poison.

And so, the church in Christ has got to inhale and exhale. When she inhales, she must exhale. And when the Church of Christ inhales, the Holy Ghost, she must exhale everything that’s contrary to Him, or maybe I’ve got that backwards. I tell you some of the churches wonder why the Holy Ghost hasn’t been around since last Christmas. And the reason is, they haven’t exhaled. They’ve not gotten rid of the old business that’s in there.

Well, I don’t believe that any man can love until he’s able to hate. I don’t think that any man can love God unless he hates the devil. I don’t think that he can love righteousness unless he hates sin. For the Scriptures would leave us with the opinion, with a belief that in order to accept, there are some things you’ve got to reject. Inorder to own, there are other things you’ve got to repudiate. In order to affirm, there are things you’ve got to deny. In order to say yes, you’ve got to be able to say no. And the man who hasn’t the courage or the intestinal fortitude to rear back on his hind legs and roar a thundering no, that some things can never say yes and make it mean anything. I, for my part have long ago come to the conclusion, I can’t get along with everybody. This idea of soft-handed pastors with a saintly flush on their face trying to get along with everybody, quit it Reverend, quit it, it won’t do any good, because in an effort to please everybody he’ll succeed in pleasing nobody.

I’ve been asked to go on your television a few times and to talk with priests and rabbis and all the rest. Why do I want to do that for? I told the newsman who called me, I’m an evangelical preacher. I preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and I couldn’t think of a thing that I could say there. Can you imagine for me to get up with a bunch of fellows who hate my Lord and believe that He was not the Son of God at all, and that I sit there and do or sit there and do fancy footwork. Now, how can you do both? Sit there and try to do fancy footwork, trying to keep from offending somebody that hates my Lord? No, I don’t want to do that at all. If they don’t want Him, they don’t want me. And, if they don’t want to hear Him, they don’t want to hear me. I don’t want a watered-down Christianity, bless God. But I want to be able to say no. I say no to the devil and no to Khrushchev and no to the Pope and no to everybody that has anything to say that’s contrary to the Lord whom I adore and to whom I am attached with an intellectual attachment that theological and with a volitional attachment that is final, and with an exclusive attachment that would exclude everything that’s contrary to my Lord Jesus.

And then there’s the inclusive attachment. Now, what do I mean by that. Well, that’s the inhaling you see. That’s all that Christ is and does and says and promises and commands, and all the glory that circle around His head and all the offices He holds and all the shining beauty of the various facets of His infinite nature. All that is and all that is said and all that is promised, I take that all, I include that all.

And then in addition to that, I’m joined to Him and identified with Him, so I accept His friends as my friends, his friends. I love all people of God. I’ve never been a good denominationist. The president of the society to which I belong, and a lot of the other big wigs, but I like to say this to you Brethren that while I work faithfully along with all my brethren, I never was much of a denomination list. I believe that God has His children everywhere and all of God’s children got wings, and all of God’s children got a robe. And so, I love them all and preach to them all and some of them listen. I accept Jesus Christ’s friends. You know, the Lord has some odd friends really. That fellow that goes down the street with a “Jesus Only” button or a “Jesus Saves” button as big as a dinner plate here, you know, and his hair not combed too well, staring ahead. If he belongs to Jesus, I’m gonna own him.

You’ve got to be willing to own the friends of the Lord, whoever they are. His friends are my friends, and His enemies are my enemies, too. I’ve already talked a little about that. And I think we ought to have the courage to have enemies. This togetherness that everybody’s talking about now; everybody sits down you know and has a togetherness orgy. I can’t go for it at all. I don’t like it. I want to know, what do you stand for? Who do you love and what do you hate? And then after that, I may be able to get on with him.

I remember one time on a streetcar, there was a good brother, he was a Pentecostal brother. He was giving out tracks. He was making a bit of a nuisance of himself I admit there in the middle of the streetcar. People were getting on and off. But you know, my heart warmed to him. And on my way out, I stopped and shook his hand and took a tract and said, Brother, I’m on your side. I’m one of them too. And I shook his hand and we had nice little time there. And I hustled off the car before it got away from my block. So, I like to own all of them you know. The old bishop said that the Lord has His treasures in earthen vessels and some of the vessels are a bit cracked.

Well, I accept the enemies of the Lord as my enemies and the ways of the Lord as my ways and the cross of Christ as my cross. That’s crucifixion. And His life is my life and that resurrection? What is a good definition for a Christian? Well, a good definition for a Christian is somebody that is back from the dead. I think that Paul was one of the oddest and strangest and one of the most glorious of all Christians that have ever lived. And he gave us a little text there that no editor; any of you editors listening to me, you’d thrown that out and shot that back in the first mail going in the direction of the fellow that wrote it. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.

Now, how do you get that way? I am crucified with Christ, He’s dead. Nevertheless, I live He’s alive. Is He alive or is He dead? And the life that I now live, I live not within myself, but I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who will loved me and gave Himself. You see, Paul is contradicting himself there. And yet, within all that contradiction, there is a synthesis of marvelous and glorious truth, that a Christian is one who was crucified and is alive, being joined to Jesus Christ as He was joined and humanity was joined to the Deity in the hypostatic union forever, and the eternal God joined to the nature of man, never to be reversed. So all the members of the body of Christ join to His body, share in some major in that hypostatic union, so that were united with Him nd when He died on a cross, we died on a cross; and when He rose from the dead, we rose from the dead. And when He went to the right hand of God, we went to the right hand of God. If they need be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above. And it’s written that will sit in the heavenly places, which means that we are willing, where He is, members of his great mystic body? Wonderful.

I remember hearing a great Bible teacher years ago who’s long gone to heaven, Mr. Tucker, Dr. Tucker, he talked about being under the circumstances. He said some lady said, well, I’m feeling as good as I could be under the circumstances. And he said, no Christian average should be under circumstances. You should be on top of them. Rise with God through Jesus Christ to live again and let his life be your life and look down on circumstances. If you look out, you’ll be confused, and if you look down, you’ll be terrified and if you look up, you’ll understand. But if you look down from heaven, then you will indeed be victorious. You will be on top of it all.

Well, there’s the irrevocable attachment. What do I mean by that? It means that the Lord doesn’t want any experimenters. Some movie actor wrote a book one time called, “Try Jesus.” I never read the book. I wouldn’t be caught dead reading it. Try Jesus, all this experimentation. I don’t believe in it. I believe that we ought to be suicide bombers, that we ought to tie ourselves into the cockpit and dive on the deck. And if we go out, we go out. Sink or swim, live or die, irrevocably attached in love and faith in full devotion to Jesus Christ the Lord.

One of my boys, I had six boys, five of them had a uniform on during the Second World War. One of them was a dive bomb in the Navy and they gave him seven battle engagements on the Pacific as a dive bomber off the carrier under, Admiral Michener, we had heard there was such thing as suicide bomber, but I didn’t know whether it’s true. But when he camehome he told me about it. He said, yes, there were suicide bombers in the Jap navy. He said, One day, we saw one coming out of the sun down on our deck, and we desperately tried to get to stop him, but he got through our flak and hit the deck and bounced and came to a stop and the bomb was a dud. And so we got to see a live suicide bomber. We opened the cockpit and found a 15-year old Japanese boy chained in the cockpit. When he had gotten in that plane back at the airfield, they chained him and he’d said goodbye. And now with a bomb in the nose of his plane, he dived on the deck of the carrier. Fortunately for my boy and all the other boys, it didn’t go off. But they took a scared, shaking Japanese kid of fifteen out of there. That’s suicide bombing. And you know, that Christians ought to be those who are so totally committed that it’s final. This weak, looking back over your shoulder to see if there isn’t something better; I can’t stand it.

Now, a young man came to one old saint one time who taught the deeper life and the crucified life and said to him, Father, what is it mean to be crucified? And the old man thought for a moment and said, well, to be crucified means three things. The man who was crucified is only facing one direction. I like that. He said, they only face in one direction. If he hears anything behind him, he can’t turn around to see what’s going on. He’s stopped looking back. He’s looking straight ahead. So, the crucified man on a cross is looking only in one direction, that’s the direction of God and Christ and the Holy Ghost, the direction of Biblical revelation. And the direction of world evangelization and the direction of the the edifying of the church, the direction of sanctification and the direction of the spiritual life. He only looks in one direction. And the old man scratched his scraggly gray hair and said, one thing more Son about a man on the cross, he’s not going back. Now, I like that. The man on the cross is not going back. A fellow who’s going out to die on the cross, he doesn’t say to his wife, oh, goodbye Honey, I’ll be in shortly after five. He isn’t coming back.

When you go out to die on a cross, you bid goodbye to your friends. You kiss your friends, goodbye. You’ve had it and you’re not going back. And if we preach more of this and stop trying to make the Christian life so easy that it’s contemptible, we’d have more converts that would last. Get a man in who knows that he’s a suicide bomber and if he joins Jesus Christ, he’s finished, and that while he’s willing to come up and live in the new as far as this world’s concern is not going to go back. So, the fella who takes a cross on his shoulder is not coming back. Then the old man said another thing about a man on a cross, Son. He has no further plans of his own, and I like that. He has no further plan. Somebody else made his plans for him. And when they nailed him up there all his plans disappeared. On the way up to the hill, he didn’t see a friend and say to him, well Henry, next Saturday afternoon about three I’ll be by and we’ll go fishing out by the lake. He wasn’t going fishing out by the lake. He was finished. He was going out to die and he had no plans at all.

Oh, we busy-beaver Christians with all our plans, and some of them, even though they’re done in the name of the Lord and evangelical Christianity, there as carnal as goats, and they’re our plans, they’re our plans. I met some gentlemen out in the hall and one of them said about a certain book I had written, how what a blessing it had been. And I said yes, that’s the only book I didn’t try to write. I said I didn’t try to write that one and the Lord blessed it all over the world. But I’ve tried to write quite a number that fell flat on their faces. So when you see it depends on who’s making your plans for you. It’s beautiful to say I’m crucified with Christ and know that Christ is making your plans. I tell you gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, twenty minutes on your knees in silence before God will sometimes teach you more than you can learn out of books. They teach you more than you can even learn in churches. And the Lord will give you your plans and lay them before you. If the boards of the churches would only learn to spend more time with God and less time debating, they could save all those midnight board meetings where everybody leans back weary and on the shades of aging grease on the wall behind where the hair tonic got on the wall, and in the boardroom weary from discussing things. I tell you, you can cut down, you can cut down your time in debating and discussing if you spend more time waiting on God, He’ll give you the Holy Ghost and teach you and give you His plans.

All right now, I think that’s about all I want to say, that we are to be joined to Jesus Christ, intelligently joined by knowing who He is. We’re to be relationally joined and not try to live on our feelings though thank God there’ll be a lot of feelings that go along with it. And we’re to be exclusively attached and exclude everything that’s contrary to him, and inclusively attached, taking in everything that He’s surrounded Himself with. And irrevocably attached, so we’re expendable. And we’re not going back. Well, may God bless us all now. It’s time to stop. Fortunately, I ran out of material just as I ran out of time.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“The Greatness of God’s Deliverance“

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“The Greatness of God’s Deliverance”

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

May 13, 1956

I’d like to mention again about the evening service with a missionary, outgoing missionary from this church, and then a baptismal service in which there will be three men and three women, at least that many baptized. And then the evening, gospel service, sermon following. We also would like to mention, adding to what’s been said about the going to the Council. The board has asked Brother McAfee to go as a delegate, and brother Maxey and his wife are going because this may be their last counsel for a long time since they’re going to New Guinea before very many weeks and the Board felt that they would like to have them attend and get all of their batteries charged, all they can being present. As for myself, I will be going in my capacity as editor of the Alliance Weekly. I have not in 15 years cost the church anything. So, when I go to counsel, why, you can know that I am going without any cost to the church. I mentioned that for two reasons. One is that I want the facts to be out and the second is that you might be restful in your thought about it.

Now, in the eighteen Psalm, which we read previously; we will deal with a few thoughts. I will not be long. In the fourth verse and on, the man of God said that the sorrows of death encompassed him and the floods of ungodly men made him afraid, and the sorrows of hell encompassed him about and the snares of death prevented him, that is, bound him, held him back, went ahead of him.

Now, the floods of ungodly men you will read in your margin and everywhere else, that’s Belial and Belial is wickedness and destruction. It’s one of those words that translators don’t know what to do with. You can go to the commentators and they’ll disappoint you and go to the Bible dictionaries and they’ll tell you that they think it’s so and so, but they’re not sure. But it appears there to be agreement that Belial was the spirit of destruction and wickedness and lawlessness and vanity, all wrapped up in one. And this Belial was now overflowing on the man David like a flood. The destruction and havoc had come now, not a little bit at a time, but as a flood, and was upon the man of God. Sorrow, death, and hell; there are the three words: sorrow, death, and hell; being surrounded, being floated about in a flood. He now called upon the Lord in verse six. And there is a bold downrightness here about this whole thing. He said that he called upon the Lord.

Now, salvation isn’t the result of man’s effort, not even the result of a man’s strong prayers. But in the Bible, when a man got any help, it was usually when he called upon God. There was no action at all in this psalm from God’s part until David called upon the Lord, “and then my cry came before Him even into His ears,” and it was then that God rose in his wrath against the enemies. We’ll skip the passages that tell us about it. It is thrown into the figure of a tremendous storm, a mighty storm and hailstones and thick darkness and the roaring thunder that discomforted the foe. God sent this storm upon Belial and his wickedness in order that He might roll back the flood of sorrow, death and hell that was surrounding the people of God, and particularly this man, David.

Now, when David prayed, then God was angry against the oppression of Belial. It’s good to get the indignation of God on your side men and women. And if I say nothing else this morning, but that, it would be, I think, worth your hearing, that it is a good thing to get the indignation of God on your side. It is a tragic thing to have the indignation of God against you.

Now, Belial, the enemy, the spirit, as he embodied himself in wicked men, for that of course is here in plain sight, that the Belial will reach David through ungodly men, yielded men, yielded to the spirit of Belial. And when these surging waters of sorrow, death, and hell began to swirl around David, David cried and God became angry with the enemy, and the indignation of God was on David side. And even though David was himself not a perfect man, yet the pity and anger of God were on his side. And God turned against the enemy and opened the floodgates and began this dramatic and colorful and terrible attack upon the enemy. In verse 16, he says that as a result of his prayer, God sent from above.

Now, I want you to notice those words, that He sent from above. You see, the reason God sent from above was the David was surrounded. And when you’re delivering a man from a flood from above it’s the best way. They’re using the helicopter now. They flutter over and settle slowly down and from above, they take a man out of the swirling waters. Well, long before the helicopter was thought about, David knew that when you’re in a flood, the only way to get any help is to come down from above. So he sent from above and he took me. And after all, any final help is going to have to come from above. When we get in a bit of trouble, we run to everybody for help and we get a bit of help I suppose. The chip floating there, we grab that and it helps a little or an old board. We get ahold of that and hope for the best, but we’re dizzy with this swirling, and there’s no shoreline in sight. And the tide is always rising and the floods increasing. There’s only one direction that help can come from and that’s from God above.

And God saves us from above. He sent from above Jesus Christ our Lord to give us an effective ransom. That ransom did not come up from the earth. It did not come up from below. It did not come out of the sea. It did not come out of the ground, but it came down from above. And thus was born of the Virgin Mary, a man who became our Redeemer. Again, He sent from above the Holy Ghost to apply that ransom and to make it effective to men. And He sent from above the Word and information and instruction and conviction. It all comes from God above.

Now He sent from above and then He took me in verse 16. Now I like that expression, He took me. I once heard Paul Rader many years ago preach a great sermon on the text that Jesus took the bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it. I guess you gentlemen are too young to have heard Mr. Rader and heard that great sermon of his. And there without any doubt, this man that of whom I speak now, was probably the greatest preacher that ever-touched America’s shores in 100 years. I wouldn’t doubt that at all in saying this, though, he’s now long gone to be with his Savior. But his text was, He took the bread and He broke it and He blessed it and He gave it, and he preached a missionary sermon from that. And he said, God takes a man and then God breaks the man and then God blesses the man and then God gives the man to the world. There’s an outline for any of you preachers that want to preach.

And that’s the same expression here. He took the bread and here in verse 16, He took David. And sometimes when God takes a man, He grabs him to save him and He doesn’t always grab him gently. For remember that while God has all the grace in the universe and all the music and all the poetry and all the art and all the beauty and all the tenderness that there is, this is a time of crisis and emergency. And sometimes when a man is going down, God grabs the man and grabs him a bit roughly. Sometimes God takes us in a manner that isn’t exactly according to Emily Post. Lots of times that happens.

I remember that when they were praying Peter out in jail, God sent an angel, and it said the angel smote Peter. Now that isn’t the way they would do it in the First Church of the Liberals here where everybody has got to be a PhD or the usher won’t let you in. They would do it so gently and so smoothly and so kindly there, and every voice would be modulated properly. But, God sent an angel and He just hit Peter a good blow. He smote him. Peter was an old fisherman and he wouldn’t have understood any tender, kindly remark, Emily Post fashion. So, God said, when you go down, give him a good one, because he’s a fisherman and he’s used to the wind and the waves and falling out of boats and all that sort of thing, so he’ll sleep heavy. So, give him a good one.

So, when he came down, he gave him a rough blow, and Peter woke up and said, what’s going on? He said, come on, follow me and get out of here. And so he saved him. He took him and took him roughly. And I’m not going to tell you that the Lord will always treat you like a kind Sunday School teacher. The Lord will sometimes be very rough with you when you’re in trouble in order they might get you out of trouble.

Now, He drew me out of many waters. What else could he do? God Almighty appeared like a helicopter coming down from above and grabbing David and then, pulling him up out of many waters of course, up out of the water of sin and up out of the swirling, murky waves of consequences. And of all that you did and all of the trouble with you and all the rest, God takes you out of that. But somebody says, David had to be innocent. David had to be right. If David had contributed any to the swirling waters, he wouldn’t have got out. Now that’s the way it is theoretically, but that isn’t the way it is in fact. The way it is in fact, God has to get a lot of us out of our own trouble, like the little boy that climbs a tree and can’t get down. Have you read about that? He climbed the tree and got stuck in the crotch of the tree. And I forget, did they have to have the fire department was it, to come and get the boy down, and took him to a hospital to rest him up or somewhere to rest him up?

Well, it was the boy’s fault. But then his parents didn’t turn him against him because it was his fault. Our boys as they were growing up, fell off the fences, out of trees, off the street cars, and otherwise proved themselves to be unworthy of anybody’s attention. But they got the attention nevertheless, the best that we could afford, because they were our boys. And so, David was God’s boy. And although David may no doubt have brought some of this on him by his conduct. He still, when he cried unto the Lord that canceled out David’s part and that set God to work.

Always remember this, if God chastises A or B, his children, and C, another one of his children comes along and tries to help God lay the lash on, the anger of God won’t be against A and B, but against C. When God wanted to punish Israel, He allowed Nebuchadnezzar to punish Israel. But Nebuchadnezzar enjoyed laying the lash on, and so God said you thought that I had sent you because you were good. Now I’ll show you. Then he destroyed Babylon and turned His indignation against the very whip that He had sent to whip Israel.

So, if the Lord ever sends you to chasten one of God’s children, chasten awfully easy will you, because you’re very likely to bring the lash back around on you. Remember that everything you throw at a Christian is a boomerang. You just wait around and it’ll be back, and it’ll carry back in its rebound all the power that it had when it first went out. And He delivered me from my strong enemies, said David. Now it transpires here that the real cause of the trouble was this Belial, his strong enemy. You have a strong enemy hidden, a malevolent foe and you can escape him. Or if you don’t escape him, he’ll destroy you, and yet you can’t escape him alone. He said here, them that hated me were too strong for me.

A Christian isn’t a weakling and yet he is a weakling. He has this treasure in earthen vessels. And a Christian can’t fight back like other people, and he can’t do the things. If you live beside a neighbor and that neighbor decides to persecute you, he can do all sorts of unpleasant things to you and you don’t dare do one back. And if a man comes up and curses you out, he can look you in the face and with steely eyes, read your pedigree back three generations. And as a Christian, you don’t dare open your mouth except, “all right, all right, all right. God bless you; I’ll pray for you.” That’s about all you dare say. The ungodly man, he’s always too strong for him. I never saw an enemy yet I could lick, never one, never saw one. The enemies within us and around us and everywhere are just too big for us. Greed and lust and pride and jealousy and malice and evil temper and untruthfulness and the drink habit and the dope habit and all the rest, they’re just too big for us. Them that hated me were too strong for me, so He sent from above and He took me and He drew me out of many waters, and He brought me forth into a large place. That’s verse nineteen.

They say Christians are narrow, but outside of what Jesus said to walk the straight and narrow way, there isn’t much in the Bible about the narrowness of the Christian way. He brought me forth into a large place. And while seen from the standpoint of the flesh it’s narrow. From the stand point of the Spirit it is very, very broad indeed. The Christian way is a very broad way, large enough to accommodate the fullest activity and growth and development. I’ve never yet been able to understand it. I just can’t understand the man who says, in that church there’s nothing to do. Why, Brother, man, if God is in you, you ought to find something to do. If God is in you, you should need to be vote into office. You never need to vote a man into office. If he has anything to do, God will help the man to find something to do, a big full activity and growth and development and the exercise of all of our most brilliant intellect.

Now, there’s a feeling that Christians not only are narrow, that Christians are dull, good, honest, dull fellows they call us, and that we’re dull. But you know that in the kingdom of God and Christian theology and Christian hymnody–in all the fine high thinking of a Christian–there is room for the exercise of the greatest minds of the centuries, and those great minds have been exercised. They say that one of the greatest, if not the greatest mind ever to touch America was Jonathan Edwards. And yet Jonathan Edwards never wasted any time on mere philosophy or mere science. Philosophy and science to him were handmaidens to theology and religion. And he became the great revivalist of New England and one of the greatest theologians that ever lived and one of the mightiest of the Christians that have blessed our native shores.

Well, now, you don’t have to apologize for your mind or to your intellect, there God brings a Christian into a large place. It’s big enough. It’s an ocean. The man who says that the Christian way is narrow, too narrow for him, that it confines him, he’s like the little minnow in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean grumbling because there isn’t room to swim. Just let him wiggle his fins and get going and he’ll not find a shoreline anywhere. There’s ocean enough for the swallow in the air complaining for lack of oxygen. There’s plenty of it there. It runs up seven miles high and it goes around the earth. So, there’s plenty of room for the sparrow and plenty of room for the fish in the sea and plenty of room for the sheep in the pasture field and plenty of room for the Christian in the kingdom of God. He brought me forth into a large place, a place that is pleasant, and a place of toil. That is, eternal toil, where all pure, natural beings are, friendship and love and high service to mankind. All of this can be exercised within the church of God, in the kingdom. Isn’t it too bad that the unbelieving world has gotten the notion that evangelical Christianity consists of believing in God and then not going to theaters, not going to dances, not going to gambling dens, not smoking, not drinking, not using dope, not always, not, not?

You could say to the bird in the air, you’re not supposed to smoke and drink and he’d flap his wings and fly away five miles and circle and come back and he’d say, I don’t want to smoke and drink, I’ve got air enough up here. We’d say to the fish in the middle of the ocean, why, you’re not supposed to gamble, and he’d flap his fins and dive and come up again and say, I don’t want to gamble, I got an ocean to roam in. So, we can say to the sheep in the pasture field, we’re not supposed to go to the movies, and the sheep in the pasture field would smile and lie down in green pastures and gaze down on the silver surface of the water waiting for his nose when he gets thirsty enough to lazily get up and go get a drink. Great, vast pasture fields with a shepherd to lead them. So, we’re always looking at it the wrong way. We’re looking at the things we’re not supposed to do forgetting that there are the little, narrowing things.

Just take such a matter. I didn’t intend to mention it, but just take such a matter as cigarettes. Just take such a matter. You tell me that the man who doesn’t use them is the slave, that he’s the narrow fellow. How foolish can we get? It’s the man that does that that is the slave. Invite him to your house and he’ll come. Have lunch and he’ll be nice and kind out of deference to you, he won’t smoke. Sit down a half an hour and he’ll begin to look around and act uneasy and say, “well I really feel I should get going.” Why? Because he’s a slave, not because you are. Because his blood cells and body tissues are beginning to tell him, get a hold of one of those coffin nails now and light it. He’s the slave.

Who is the slave, the man that smiles and turns his back on liquor, or the man who has to drink? Like the man they laugh about but it’s not very funny. He shook his head and shuttered, he said, I got to go and get drunk. Oh, God, how I hate it, but I got it to do. And men are bound, they’re slaves. That little lady that walks down the street looking like somebody else, all polished up. Old Mother Nature doesn’t recognize her. You tell me she’s not a slave? You tell me that simple-hearted Christian woman who’s relaxed and trusting God and living a simple Christian life, you tell me she’s a slave? No, the other one is the slave, afraid that telephone won’t ring or afraid if it does, it will say the wrong thing. Afraid that little thing on her chin will develop into a blemish that will mar her beautiful face. They’re the slaves brethren, not Christians.

There are plenty of vast expanse in the kingdom of God, all the grand and glorious room for service, service to mankind, service to the human race, service to the world, service to the ends of the earth. And all the sweet Christian music and all the sweet Christian literature and all the sweet Christian poetry to add fragrance and loveliness to your service, and all the vast expanses that lead into communion with God.

I read the other day; I wonder if I can reconstruct it now. I didn’t memorize it, but I read it to Brother McAfee. He read it in German and he translated it out of German for me and we got a hold of it at last. And it said, the bird lives in the air. The fish lives in the sea and the salamander can live in the fire, but Meister Eckert had for his habitation the heart of God. And it rhymed in German. That’s what Johannes Staufer said about Meister Eckert. That as the bird has the air for its home and the fish has the sea for his home, so this man chose the heart of God for his home.

And if I have found my home in the heart of God, I ask you, “is that big enough, that which contains all things? God is that which everything must have to make it complete, but which needs nothing to make Him complete. He is that which contains all that is and surrounds it. What a vast world to roam in is the heart of God. The City that hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. Whose doors and gates are said to be fifty miles across are narrow birdcages compared with a great heart of God that knows no bound and no limit. He brought me also into a large place because He delighted in me.

Now, what did He delight in and what does He delight in? Does He delight in my wisdom? What a laugh that is. Does the omniscient God who knows everything that can be known, delight in my tiny wisdom? No. Does he delight in my purity, the impeccable God, holy beyond the power of an angel to gaze upon? Does He delight in my purity, or does He delight in my strength? Does the Omnipotent One who can do anything that He wills to do, delight in my strength? Does he delight in my deeds, the great God who made the heaven and earth, who calls the stars by name, delight in my tiny deeds? No. He delights in that something in me which He made in His own image, and in you. And let us make man after our image and after our likeness, and not even sin has been able to take it away. Though sin has been able to bring death and judgment upon us and prepare us for hell at last unless we be saved. Yet, there’s still that in us which God can move into.

And as Eckert said, to quote him again that there’s nothing in the universe that God ever made so much like God, is a human soul. And therefore, God finds Himself at home in the human soul and is unembarrassed and restful as He dwells in the human soul, for He made it in His own likeness. And only sin has marred it. But when the power of God comes and delivers us and draws us up out of these swirling waters of sin and makes us new creatures, then He can move into our souls and live there because He’s more at home there than He is anywhere else in the universe, because He delighted in me

God loves you, but I don’t know why. And God loves me and I don’t know why except, as I have said, He made us in His image. Not because of what we know or do or can be or ever were or ever promised to be, but because He saw in us that which He didn’t see in angels. He took not upon Him the nature of angels, but He took on Him the seed of Abraham and was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death and by the grace of God, He might taste death for every man, and is that in us, which God loves. He sent from above. He took me, He drew me out of many waters. He delivered me because He delighted in me. Amen.

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“The Book of Jude“

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“The Book of Jude”

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

July 3, 1955

I want to talk on that book of Jude this morning. Bringing again after the passing of some years a bit of attention to this little, but powerful book. Now the man Jude, a brother of Christ, had planned to write an encouraging letter just as you might sit down to write your friends a letter of encouragement. He had planned it dealing with what he called our common salvation. But he said it became necessary rather as he was moved, impressed by the Holy Ghost to write something else altogether. An unpleasant circumstance had risen which forced him to write quite another kind of letter from the good encouraging letter that he had planned. Certain men had crept in unnoticed. Now those men were personally men of evil lives. They were and had been foreseen and condemned by the Lord Himself when He was with them. And they taught doctrine that was contrary to the Christian faith. Now he writes to arouse the victims of these teachers to contend for the truth.

Now, I want to talk just a little because I want my emphasis to fall elsewhere, but a little about this false teaching. Not naming any false teaching specifically, and I do not use this because I think there’s any false teaching here. We have had amazing success under God in the last years in keeping from our fellowship, those who would subvert us. They just don’t feel healthy around here. The atmosphere is not wholesome and they don’t stay very long. So, this is general rather than specific, but because it is for the whole church of Christ, it certainly is also for us.

Now, what do we mean by false teaching? Well, it means teaching that things are otherwise than they are. Now, things are, both physical things and spiritual things are. They are and you can put a period after that. And when we have discovered or had revealed to us the facts about them, either things material or things spiritual, then we are morally required to acknowledge those facts, and to make our teaching conform to them. That’s also very simple that I almost apologize for saying it. But it is the broad framework upon which everything else must hang, that things are as they are whether we like them or not, that’s the way they are. God made things and things are. Physical material things are and Spiritual things are.

Now, it is our business to find out how they are. Accept them as they are and then make our teaching conform to them as they are. Now that’s rather simple, isn’t it? Now, correct doctrine then is of vital importance, because it is simply the teaching of things as they are. There are five there and I say that’s five, ten over there and I say that’s ten. It is July, what’s today? The third, and I say it’s July 3. That doesn’t take genius, that’s just stating things as they are. This is Chicago, Illinois, not Memphis, Tennessee. This is Chicago, Illinois. This is July, not August, this is the third not the ninth. This is 1955, not 1957. This, these are this country is the United States of America. Not some other country, not England not any of the Scandinavian countries.

And so, telling the truth about things is simply finding out what they are and then conforming my statement to their facts. Now it’s so as spiritual truths. When a truth has been revealed in the book of God, our business is to find out what that truth is. And then in all of our teaching, conform to that truth. Not edited, not change it, but let it stand just as it is. It is the truth of

God declared as it is and don’t try to change it. It would be ridiculous of me to try, by some twist of logic or sophistry to make this to be August when it’s July; to make it to be the ninth when it’s the third; to make this to be winter when it’s summer; to make this country to be Canada when it’s the United States. Truth is just as it is. God Almighty has made the world to be a mathematical universe. And He runs all things according to mathematical laws. And He has a moral world which runs according to moral laws as exact and as unchanging as mathematical laws. So non-conformity to the truth anywhere brings disaster. Let an engineer be wrong about a position, and let him build according to that wrong concept and his building will collapse around him. Let a navigator be wrong about something and he will run on a rock and his old ship will shudder as it runs onto a sandbar or a rock and will settle in the water and sink out of sight because a mistake has been made. The man has not gone according to truth. Non-conformity always brings disaster wherever it may be. And the vastness and hugeness of the disaster depends upon the high-level or low-level of the facts we have before us.

If I started with a compass that was backwards–we were driving the other day in Mr. McAfee’s car, and we went west all the time. No matter which way we turned the compass said west. There was something wrong with the compass. Now, that didn’t do us a great harm, because there were markers and we didn’t go according to that. But if there had been something serious and we’d had to know when our lives depended upon it, we might have left our bones someplace, because a compass went wrong. And so, non-conformity, failure to stay by facts as they are, will bring disaster if we depend upon it.

Now, false teaching is the falsifying of data. It’s falsifying of data about God, ourselves, sin, and Christ. First of all, any false teaching must begin with the wrong concept of God. You can put that down in the back of your Bible or the back of your memory, that any false teaching of any sort, must begin with a wrong concept of God. It can’t be otherwise. Nobody who holds a right concept of God can go very far wrong in anything else. And all the basic, great mistakes that have been made, the great fundamental errors have all rested down around the concept of God. Men are not willing to let God be what He says He is. They’re always trying to change God and trying to make him to be other than what He is. God is, and we better accept Him as He is. God is, and the angels want Him to be what He is. God is, and the elders and saints and heavenly creatures want Him to be what He is. We’d better want Him to be what He is too, and conform to what he is. Any structure that is crooked, or any foundation that is crooked, will bring the structure down in time. It will either sink or it will collapse or lean or fall over, but it will not stand long. Or if it does, it will lean as the leaning tower there in Italy.

Now God–of all the foundations–God is the most important, because God is God and made the heaven and earth and all the things that are therein. And it is a great error, it would be a great error for a man or a woman to go a lifetime thinking they were talking to the God of heaven and earth and find that they were talking to a god which they had confounded out of their own imagination. It would be a tragic calamity to the human spirit for me to pray a lifetime and preach a lifetime about a God that wasn’t the true God at all, but some other god which was a composite of ideas drawn from philosophy and psychology and other religions and superstitions. No, God is what He is. And we had better learn what God is and then conform our teachings to God. If we take away any of the attributes of God, we weaken our concept of God. We do not weaken God, but we weaken our concept of God.

Christian scientists have taken all the justice and judgment and hatred of sin out of the nature of God and they have nothing but a soft God left. There are those who have taken love and grace out and have nothing but a God of judgment left. There are those who have taken away the personality of God and have nothing but a mathematical God. That’s the God of the scientists. All these are false, inadequate conceptions of God.

While God is a God of justice, He’s a God of grace, and while He’s a God of righteousness, He’s a God of mercy. While he is a God of mathematical exactness, He is also a God that could take babies in His arms and pat their heads and smile. He is a God that could forgive and a God that does forgive. So we had better make the study of this Bible of ours, the business of our lives, to find out what God is.

And then conform our views to God, and then ourselves. That’s this second thing where we make a mistake in any kind of false teaching, because any wrong idea of God is bound to give us a wrong idea of ourselves. Some people approach God through science, through the study of anthropology. But anthropology without theology is bound to arrive at an error at last, bound to arrive at the dead end street. You and I can only explain ourselves in the light of the doctrine that God made us out of the dust of the ground and blew into our nostrils the breath of life. And so, man became a living soul.

Science has discovered many things about God, but they have not discovered it in context. They have not begun with God and reasoned down to His world; they have begun with the world and tried to reason up with God and stop short of finding God, and the result is only tragic to everybody. If a man is wrong about God, he’s bound to be wrong about himself. If He’s wrong about the artist, he’ll be wrong about the picture. If he’s wrong about the potter, he’ll be wrong about the vessel. If he’s wrong about God, he’ll be wrong about the creature. So, while multiplying scientific facts all around about us, men are wrong because they have left God out and say in their heart, there is no God. Or if there is a God, He’s a god of mathematics and laws, but not the God as the Bible makes Him out to be. That is all wrong.

If you believe you’re any better than God says you are, you’re in error. If you believe you’re any different from what God says you are, you’re in error. You have falsified the data or somebody has falsified the data and made you a victim. No, no, my brother, believe about yourself what God says about you. Believe you’re as bad as God says you are and believe you’re as far from him as God says you are. And then believe in Christ who can come as near to Him as he says you can. And accept what He says about you as being true.

My friend, you cannot know truth about yourself unless you first know truth about God. You came from the hand of God, and back to God you must go for better, for worse, for judgment, or for blessing. And until we take God in and understand God, and let God be what He claims to be, and believe about ourselves what God says about us, we’re believing false doctrine.

Then there’s sin. Now sin cannot be understood until we believe in God and believe what God has said about ourselves. Sin is that intrusive phenomenon, that ever present, ubiquitous phenomenon. There it is, hate and lying and dishonesty and murder and crime and injustice, necessitating law and police and jails and galluses and locks and graves. There are those who would deny it, and of course that’s falsifying the data. There are those who would rename it and they’re falsifying data. There are those who would treat it as a disease and they’re falsifying data.

God says that it’s a breaking of the law. God says it’s a rebellion against His will. God says that it’s a nature inherited from our fathers and mothers. God says that it’s an act against the faith and love and mercy of God. God says it’s rebellion against the constituted authority of the Majesty on high. God says it’s iniquity and personally chargeable to the one who commits it. God says the soul that sinneth it shall die. And we had better believe about sin what God says about sin or we will be falsifying the data. And falsified data in spiritual things is more terribly wrong and will bring more terrible consequences and falsifying data in material things.

The doctor who miscounts a number of, or the amount of that which he gives a patient may kill the patient. That would be only to destroy a body. The preacher who misjudges or miscounts the truth concerning sin and man and God will damn his hearers which is infinitely more terrible. Truth concerning God means that I must accept God’s sovereignty, God’s holiness, God’s justice, God’s grace, God’s love and all that the Bible says about God. Concerning myself, it requires that I must believe in myself as a fallen image of God, one who once bore His image, but fell.

Now, the fourth is Christ Himself. For if I do not have the right concept of God and of myself and of sin, then I will have a twisted and imperfect concept of Christ. And I have no hesitation in saying that it is my honest and charitable conviction, that the Christ of the average religionist today is not the Christ of the Bible at all, but a manufactured Christ, a Christ painted on canvas, a Christ drawn from cheap poetry, a Christ of the liberal and the soft and timid person, a Christ that has not in Him the iron and the fury and the anger, as well as the love of grace and mercy, He had who walked in Galilee. If I have a low conception of God, I have a low conception of myself and if I have a low conception of myself, I have a dangerous conception of sin. And if I have a dangerous conception of sin, I have a degraded conception of Christ.

So, here’s the way it works. God is reduced and man is degraded and sin is underestimated, and Christ is disparaged. No wonder Jude said the terrible things that he said. And I recommend, that some of you that are so nice you’re no good, I recommend you read the book of Jude once. I recommend you read that book of Jude. Get your teeth filed to a sharp, eating edge. Get your teeth into something. Dare to believe something, and dare to stand for God. This awful day of so called tolerance. This awful day when men are ready to believe anything.

No, my brethren, you and I are not called to smile and smile and smile. We are called sometimes to frown and rebuke with all longsuffering in doctrine. We must contend, but not be contentious. And we must preserve truth, but injure no man. We must destroy error, but not harm people. Where men were wrong in other days, they contended and in contending became contentious. They tried to preserve truth, and so to do it they destroyed those who held error. All this is wrong. Let us preserved truth, but injured no man. Faith of our fathers we will love, both friend and foe in all our strife and love Thee too; to preach Thee too as love knows how, to kindly deed and virtuous life.

Now in closing, here is what he says to us. He says in verse nineteen, these be they. Let’s pity them. Let’s be sorry. let’s pray for them. Let’s weep over them. Let’s turn away from them, these be they. Verse twenty, but ye beloved. Now he’s come to his own, the true believers in God and Christ, but ye beloved. Then He gives them four or five things to do. I will pass swiftly over them. Building up yourselves in your most holy faith. Are you these days building up yourselves? Have you read a book of the Bible through recently? Have you done any memorization of Scripture texts or Scripture these days? Have you sought to know God or are you looking to the radio for your religion? Or have you a Bible and do your study it? Build up yourselves in your most holy faith? That’s one.

Praying in the Holy Ghost. I do not hesitate to say that most praying is not in the Holy Ghost. The reason we do not pray in the Holy Ghost is because we do not have the Holy Ghost in us. No man can pray in the Spirit, except his heart is a habitation for the Spirit. It’s only as the Holy Ghost has unlimited sway within us that we’re able to pray in the Holy Ghost, and I do not hesitate to say that five minutes of prayer in the Holy Ghost will be worth more than one year of hit and miss praying that isn’t in the Holy Ghost. Pray in the Holy Ghost.

Third, Keep yourselves in the love of God. Be true to the faith, but be charitable to those who are in error. Never feel any contempt for anybody. No Christian has any right to feel contempt, for contempt is an emotion that can only come out of pride. So, let’s feel no contempt. Let’s be charitable and loving toward all while we keep ourselves in the love of God.

And then looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of course, that is the second coming of Jesus. Looking for Jesus Christ’s coming. The mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ that is coming. Wonderful isn’t it that His mercy will show itself at His coming? Even His mercy will show itself then as it did on the cross as it does in receiving sinners, as it does impatiently looking after us Christians and it will show itself at the coming of Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

And then, verse 22, some have compassion making a difference, and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garments spotted by the flesh. There’s a charge that we should win others, that we should do everything in our power to bring others to Christ, saving them with fear, pulling them out of the fire. Wesley all his life referred to himself as a brand plucked from the burning. He never called himself anything else than a brand plucked from the burning. He knew that he was on fire already with the hot flames of hell when Jesus Christ grabbed him out of the fiery pit and extinguished the fire by His own blood. And Wesley became Wesley. And he never dared to rise and think of himself as a great Oxford man or a great genius. Always He thought of himself as a brand plucked from the burner.

So now we look forward to Jesus Christ’s coming, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here was what the old silk weaver said about it. He says, a few short lines from Terstegen. There is a balm for every pain in medicine for all sorrow, the eye turned backward to the cross and forward to the morrow. That’s what Paul said, that ye do show forth the Lord’s death till what? Till He come. There’s a balm for every pain, medicine for all sorrow. Some of the old saints in days gone by called the communion service, the medicine of immortality. And we couldn’t follow them in every one of their beliefs, but that I think they were right. The medicine for all sorrow, and I turned backward to the cross and forward to the morrow, the morrow of the glory and the song, when he shall come. The morrow of the harping and the palm and the welcome home.

Meantime, in His beloved hands are our ways. Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to Thee? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to the liberal? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to the dead church? Meantime, what are we going to do? Give up to those who have chosen to walk in the low shadows of Christianity? Never! Dare to contend without being contentious. They are to preserve truth without hurting people. Dare to love and be charitable and there, meantime in His beloved hands are our ways and, on His heart, the wandering heart at rest, and comfort for the weary one who lays his head upon His breast.

Thank God for the old silk weaver who walked with his Savior and was not, for God took him. So let us think of the medicine of immortality today. Let us by the grace of God, with charity for all and hatred toward none, but determination to be loyal to truth if it kills us. Let us put our chin a little higher and our knees a little lower. Let’s look a little further in to the throne of God where Jesus Christ sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Let us be courageous, but tender; severe, but kind. Let us pray in the Holy Ghost and keep ourselves in the love of God and build ourselves up in the most holy faith and win all we can until the day of the glory and the song. Amen.

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“Some Christian Qualities to Seek“

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“Some Christian Qualities to Seek”

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

October 20, 1957

A brief message from the Book of Colossians. Colossians 3, in the fifteenth verse, often read and memorized by the people of God but still as fresh as a new morning. The Holy Spirit says to us, let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body. And be ye thankful. And let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.

Now, he says, “let” here, and as you know, the word let means, see to it. It doesn’t mean permit only. It’s stronger than that. It’s an affirmative, positive word—permit. Let as we say, let him do it. It’s to grant permission, but “let” here. And also let means hinder. But in this instance, it means see to it that. In other words, as George Duncan said last Thursday night at the Keswick, there is no place in grace where we are free from the necessity of discipline and choice. I agree with that fully. There is no place where you’re going to float to heaven on a pink cloud. You must take hold of yourself, because in us dwell two powers, the natural life, with bad inclinations. I know that some say that the bad, natural life is taken out, but I’ve never met anybody yet that I’d trust if the Lord left him. I’ve never met any Christian yet that I’d trust him very long if the Lord left him.

They say that one great old brother who believed in the elimination, that is eradication of the natural bad in man, the natural flesh. They said to him, brother, you say that the natural life received from Adam has been eliminated? He said, yes sir. That’s what I believe. And he said, let me ask you a question. Suppose that a young man who had had the natural Adam life completely eliminated, married a young woman who had had the natural life completely eliminated. And they had a baby, would the baby be redeemed automatically and not need the new birth? They had him. So, he gave an illustration. He said, well, it’s like this. He said, you have a sour apple tree and you graft a good apple branch in, he said, that good branch will bear good fruit. But if you plant the seeds, you would get a bad tree. That was supposed to answer that question, but all it did was confirm the other man’s opinion, because obviously, that seed was bad, and it’s bad still. So, we’ve got that to deal with. It’s possible to live above it and live in the Spirit and not fulfill it as I tried to preach last week at Keswick.

But there is within us the power of Christ, the presence of the new Man and the holy inclinations and the good inclinations we find in the seventh of Romans yearning to do good. And in the eighth chapter of Romans we’re taught how the yearning to do good can overcome the yearning, the gravitational tendencies of the natural man. But our lives will go in the direction that we determine they should go. He said, let’s see to it, see to it. The indwelling power of Christ then will furnish the power. This that I have said previously is not in any way to excuse poor living. I don’t believe in it. I believe that God’s children are to live day by day in the Spirit and not sin and fulfill the lusts of the flesh. He said, let’s permit, see to it that the peace of God rules in your heart. And whatever rules in your heart, that’s the way you’ll go, just as whoever is at the wheel of the car, that’s where their car will go. And whoever runs the country, that’s the way the country will go. And so, whoever rules your heart, if it’s the peace of God, why, you will have that in your heart and that will be the way your life will go. To which also he says ye are called.

Now, Adam, old Adam and his brood come from that bad seed the brother talked about in that apple. There’s inward discord there. That’s our trouble, inward discord. We’ve always had inward discord you know. It’s only recently that we invented psychiatrists who lay you down on the couch and have you tell your story. But everybody has had inward discord. I can imagine that Adam and Eve walked around grinding their teeth many of time. And Adam went away shaking his head saying, that woman. I am sure of it. I’m sure of it. That’s just because they were fallen human beings, discord was their inward discord. And always it’s the inward discord that causes the outward discord.

If suddenly, everybody in the world had peace of heart we could eliminate the Sputnik and all the armies and navies and policemen. If we had inner accord, I said discord, but accord, inner accord, if we had inner peace, everybody had inner peace, we can eliminate all armies. And we could call home John Foster Dulles and all the rest and say, now, go fishing. There’s nothing to worry about, nothing to worry about, because the inner discord is taken away and everybody’s at peace. And when people are at peace, they won’t hurt each other. It’s when they’re not at peace that the trouble comes, and most people aren’t.

So, he said, have peace. Let’s see to it that the peace of God rules in your heart to which you’re also called. And it’s the inward discord that causes the outward bickering and brawls and wars. And it’s the inward redemption, redemption and reestablishment of peace that results in inward harmony. And he said, ye are called, you’re called in one body, harmonious accord between ourselves as a source of measureless enjoyment. No question. It’s a source of measureless enjoyment. And discord is the source of the greatest suffering in the world.

I have said, I have never had anybody answer it. Maybe it wasn’t worth answering or maybe nobody could, that I have said that I believe the source of the most pain and suffering among mankind is bad dispositions, people with bad tempers. But you say, isn’t cancer worse? No, cancer kills its victim and gets it over with, but a fellow with a bad disposition lives with it, maybe seventy years. And his wife lives with it, poor woman, maybe fifty years. And she suffers, not as sharp and as acute maybe as tuberculosis or cancer or leukemia, but it doesn’t kill its victim. It just tortures them till they die. But inward peace, the harmony and love inside the heart is a source of great enjoyment to us all.

So, let the peace of God rule in your heart to which you’re called in one body. And let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Now, here’s what the Gideons are dedicated to, to giving out are the word of Christ. The word of Christ. The word of Christ, what does it mean? Does it mean that you will buy a red-letter testament? If you have a red-letter testament, don’t be offended by what I say, because it’s perfectly alright for you to have one I suppose. But I think the red-letter testament unintentionally gives a bad impression, because it gives the impression that the letters written in red, were the words of Christ and the other ones are the word of man which is not true.

The word of Christ is not only the words Christ spoke, but they’re all the words spoken about Christ by inspired man. So, letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly may mean letting the first Psalm dwell in you or the 23rd Psalm or the 22nd Psalm, or the 46th Psalm or the 103 Psalm, or any of the Psalms or the Prophets, or the Gospels, or the Acts or the Epistles or Revelation. So don’t imagine that if you see some words printed and read that that means that they’re Christ and they’re more important, they’re not more important. In addition to the fact they murder your eyes, I don’t know whoever invented that, but it’s invented and so we have.

But the word of Christ is whatever the holy prophet said about Christ, what the holy apostle said about Christ and what Christ said about things when He was on earth. That’s the word of Christ. And let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

Now, where does it dwell in you? Well, it dwells in your mind by memorizing, and we ought to memorize the Scriptures. We ought to memorize it by loving it rather than mechanical memorization, but we ought to memorize it. It’s in your mind by memorizing. It’s in your heart, by loving it. It’s in your will by choosing. And it’s in your life by enthroning. Those four things–that would make a sermon in itself and anybody can have it if he wants it for a sermon outline of four points here. The word of Christ dwells in your mind by memorizing it. There’s something about the word of God, when it gets into the human mind, it corrects faults and purifies the mind and does something good for it. And then it’s in your heart by loving it. We should love the word as David said he did and it’s in your will by choosing to obey it and it’s in your whole life by enthroning it. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.

Now, the Holy Ghost put that little phrase in, “all wisdom,” a little prepositional phrase thrown in here as a modifier. And I want you to notice that he said, let the word of Christ dwell in you and in all wisdom, because it’s perfectly possible to have a lot of the word of God in your mind and have no wisdom at all. And so, it will be worse off than if he didn’t. I mean for instance, Jehovah’s Witnesses quote the Bible continuously, but they have no wisdom. They quote it all out of its context and give their own meaning to it. And so there are other groups that quote the Bible, but it’s not in wisdom. There is a divine wisdom. The same Holy Spirit that inspired the Bible must teach the Bible. He must illuminate the Bible so that when you hear it and read it and memorize it, you’ll know what it means in spiritual meaning.

Then he says, teaching and admonishing one another. In this day and age, we hire our teachers. We hire teachers at school, and we sit and listen to them and go home. But the Scripture says teaching and admonishing one another. Every one of you should be a teacher of somebody else. Admonished means to reprove and to warn gently and kindly, but seriously and determinedly.

I’ve been doing a bit of research on the old Methodists for a series I’m writing on those amazing Methodists. And you know what I find? I find they divided their churches up into groups of twelve, called classes, and up into smaller groups called bands. And they had group leaders, class leaders, and then they had persons over those bands. And the business of those class leaders was not to lead the meeting, not to be as we say now, the emcee. The Methodists never heard of that horrible thing. But what they did was this, they picked out some wise old sharp-eyed, prayerful brother and they said, now we’ll make you a class leader and we’ll put eleven people under you, not actually under you, but we’ll put them into your prayerful care.

And they gave him the list and gave him their names and said, now you watch over them as over your own soul and pray for them. And if you see them going wrong, go to them. So that this class leader with these eleven persons to whom he was responsible, women for women I suppose and men for men. But when this class leader saw anybody beginning to slip, he didn’t go to the pastor and he didn’t go to the open prayer meeting. And he didn’t talk behind his back. He went right straight to his Christian brother. And he said, my brother, I am bothered about you. I’m worried about you because of the way you’re living. And most often he got him straightened out and nobody ever knew anything about it. It was the Holy Spirit using a man to admonish another man–teaching and admonishing one another. But we’re not honest enough nor courageous enough now to do that. Now if you admonished a man he gets blazing mad, but that’s because we’re so carnal and far from God.

In Colossae, they were assumed to be close enough to God to accept admonishments. And in the Methodists, they had to be close enough to God or they got shown the back door. They actually did show them the back door. And if Wesley found things weren’t going right, he said, straighten out you’ll see my face no more and he walked out on them and they straightened out.

Now, if we did this, this would head off many a bad fall on the part of some of our Christian people, particularly young Christians. It says we’re to teach and admonish each other, and one way of teaching and admonishing is to sing. Sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs. Now, this is Paul’s threefold classification: psalms of David set to music, hymns written by the Christians and you’ll find a number of them if I had time. I’d point them out to you in the New Testament. Some of Paul’s epistles contain little gems which Paul didn’t write, but which we borrowed and set in there, the same as if you hear a preacher preaching a sermon, and suddenly, he goes off into a four-line stanza of a hymn saying what he wants to say better than he can. So, Paul, in some of his epistles, quoted certain passages, which were actually hymns which the Christians were singing. And he said that they ought to sing these, and not only the songs but hymns of what the old Methodists and Presbyterians called a human composition. And then spiritual songs, I don’t know what that would be, perhaps it would be another way of saying the other two, songs and hymns.

And then, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord. You know, whenever I go, almost any place I go, what I miss is our singing here. I miss it. We don’t have the greatest singers in the world here. We have good singers. And we have some who have a reputation as good singers. But I mean that we’re not a St. Olaf’s outfit here. But there’s something here, the singing; singing with grace in your heart. And I hear grace in a song when I hear the song. There are some religious songs that you couldn’t get any grace and grace would enter that place. But there are other songs that you’ll sing with grace in your heart, you’ll make a rather ordinary song pretty good. Have you ever had the experience of having a fellow who wasn’t too well instructed, but who did love God and who sang with the Spirit. He would get up and choose a rather ragged number that wasn’t too good and put his head off on one side and close his eyes and sing it, and pretty soon you were getting blessed even if the song wasn’t the best. Now if he’d had a good one, he’d have multiplied his usefulness. But, I’ve seen that happen more than once. And if somebody sang with grace in their hearts, and if the song wasn’t so good, they made it good. And I’ve heard some of the most noble songs ever composed by the pen, inspired man, ruined by being sung without grace.

And then it says, sing to the Lord. Not sing to the congregation, but sing to the Lord. And if you sing a good song to the Lord, somebody’s going to get help as sure as you live. And it’s my positive conviction that next to the preaching of the word and expounding of the Scriptures, the next greatest power to do good in the public assembly is grace-filled singing of great songs to the Lord. Sing with grace in your heart. There oughtened to be anybody in the choir that couldn’t come stand right up before the board and take an examination on whether they had grace in their heart or not. The paid and the professional singer doesn’t do much good.

One of the sexiest singers singing today, I’m not even going to advertise him by speaking his name. One of the most, one of the most carnal, sexiest singers singing today has some sacred album. They said they did it to try to help to counteract bad publicity. Can you imagine a guy, a man, a young fellow so terrible? He’s got a reputation says, well, I want to get away from this reputation for being that kind of a fellow, so I’m going to sing some hymns and so he sings himself some hymns and poor, dumb Christians buy them and put them on and play them and wipe the tears out of their eyes. Well, singing with grace in your heart. And if we don’t sing with grace in our heart, we might just as well not sing.

Then in closing it says, whatsoever you do, whatever you do, and you know we’ve all got a lot to do. Do you ever get up in the morning and say to yourself, I haven’t much to do today, but before 10 o’clock, you were involved in so many things you wish you had twelve hands instead of two. It happens to me all the time. I get up early and come up to church here. I’m up an hour and a half in the church here before you’re present, looking around at things for the Sunday school and straightening out things and praying a little and going over my sermons, and I’m here. And I think I’ll have nothing to do when I get up there but sit and meditate and pray. When I get up here, I find that there’s so much to do that it takes up to church time and behind the scenes, but I’m doing it. Whatever you do, he said, the world’s full of things to do. Personally, I think if we were wiser than we are, we’d find some things that didn’t have to be done. We cut down on our activity a bit. We do them. But if we, do it to the Lord it says, whatever you do, do to the glory of God, in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father. So, this glorifies all activities, that is if they’re divine, if they’re in God.

Domestic toil, one of our poor pastors. Here he’s been up every night now for ten days. And his poor bleary-eyed wife. The little fellow is healthy, but he just mixed up. He thinks night is day and day is night. So poor Brother Moore has to lug him around at night you know, so if you hear a tramp, tramp, tramp, don’t think the enemies coming, it’s just Brother Moore. He’s carrying the new baby around. You can do it to the glory of God, son if you know how.

And you can do everything to the glory of God, domestic toil, labor, caring for babies, your business, your long-distance calls and closing of that deal if it’s honest. If it isn’t honest, you can’t. But if it’s honest, you can do it for the glory of God and your school. You can do that for the glory of God and your travel, whether it’s by bus which is the worst way to travel, or by plane which is the fastest. Why, you can still glorify God, giving thanks to God the Father. And I say, we must preserve a thankful heart.

I wonder what there is about frost and yellow leaves that makes people thankful? I don’t think we ought to wait until the birds go south to get thankful. Thankfulness should be an ingredient in our Christian hearts, and we shouldn’t be thankful all the time. For thankfulness is more precious than diamonds. And I for my part, I’m determined to be thankful. Every day I considered a bonus. I ought to be dead long ago if God had dealt with me. And if he’d have been as hard on me as I’ve been on His people, I would have been. But He still lets me live. And every day I think of it and say thank Thee Lord and another day a bonus. Every day is a bonus, every day. I think we ought to thank Him and keep thankful. And if we keep a thankful heart and a singing heart and a Bible-filled heart, a Scripture-filled heart and a good honest, courageous heart that isn’t afraid to admonish and reprove when we have to, why, we’ll certainly have peace of heart. And if we have peace of heart, why, we’ll have, and it’s all here in this text. We’ll have harmony and accord and that’s the sweetest thing in the world. It’s like the oil on the head of Aaron that went down to his beard and went down to the skirts of his garment for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore.