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“Dangers of Bondage and Liberty”

“Message #4 in Dangers in the Way and How to Avoid Them “

May 8, 1955

In the book of Ephesians, the fifth chapter, fifteenth verse, see then that you walk circumspectly. Not as fools, but as wise, if you walk looking around.

Now over the past few weeks, I have been preaching on the dangers in the way. And I have previously shown that there are dangers to the Christian life. But that there is escape from those dangers, and protection in the midst of them. Then, I went on to warn, and point out by name, some of these dangers. I spoke of the danger of prosperity and the danger of adversity. And last week of the danger that lies in idleness and the danger that lies in busyness. Today, I want to talk about the danger that lies in bondage and the danger that lies in liberty. We’ll consider them in that order.

The danger of bondage. Now, Galatians 5:1, the man of God says that we are to be careful and not return again to the yoke of bondage from which we were once delivered. And I want to talk about the bondage to superstition, and bondage to legalistic forms, and bondage to externals such as food and dress, and bondage to holidays and seasons.

Now, first of all, the bondage to superstition. You might wonder why I should speak thus at a time or to a congregation like this because superstition is something that American people laugh about in public. Superstition as they say, an abject attitude of mind toward nature founded upon ignorance. It is a belief in magic and chance. Now, there are those that tell us that the hope of the world is returning to primitive conditions. And they say why do you go into the Baliem Valley, the Shangri-La of World War, and there, 150,000 Monies and Donies who are stone age people. Why don’t you let them alone? You will take to them the common cold, tooth decay, bad digestion, tuberculosis, and all others; the white man’s curses. Why don’t you leave them in their simple childlike beauty?

Well, whoever talks like that is talking from the airless ivory tower, completely out of touch with reality. Ask any missionary whether there is such a tribe on the face of the earth. There is none. Not one. Superstition rides the primitive peoples of the world; rides them like iron yokes. It keeps them in constant bondage. And they carry a ball and chain heavier than that, that used to be welded upon the legs of convicts in the olden days. They are afraid of everything. They’re afraid of the sun. They’re afraid of the stars at night. They’re terrified at an eclipse. They’re afraid of the wind. They’re afraid of the cry of the night bird. They’re afraid of everything and live in a state of trembling terror. When twins are born in some parts of the heathen world, they save the first twin because they say that God sent that one, but they take the second one out and pound this helpless little mouth full of hot sand and kill it. They say it’s a child of the devil.

And so, superstition rides the primitive peoples of the world constantly. There is the fear of the spell and the charm and the evil eye, magic and enchantment and witchery and sorcery, and bondage to the amulet and the incantation and the taboo. All of these things are found in the heathen lands. And now if that were all, then I suppose that I would save myself the trouble of preaching except I would use it as a reason we should become missionary-minded and send missionaries to these benighted people. But superstition is found wherever men are found. It is refined, and some of the grosser manifestations are probably not present, but most people are superstitious. I know in the part of the country where I came from, superstition had become a chain, had become a yoke, perhaps, if not an iron yoke, at least a wooden yoke. And it rested upon the shoulders of the simple country people and rode them all their lives long.

Now, superstition is not something to joke about as we do now. It is a specific defamation of the character of God. For superstition assumes, without knowing it, that God is weak and so can’t control things. They’re afraid of devils and combinations of numbers and certain days, and stars and they come to the nations in certain combinations of star patterns. They’re afraid of them, assuming all the time that God created a juggernaut which he can’t control, and that the universe is too big for Him and that God moves about and hurries here and there excitedly through His universe as an old maid who took a tiger cub home with her. And now it’s grown to full adulthood and turned vicious and roams the house while she cowers in terror in some closet waiting for the police to come.

So, God is pictured by the superstitious man as being a little limited God who created a universe over which He can’t have full control. And so, witches and spells and incantations and devils and demons and omens, and the rest, roam up and down the earth. And God hides in some cosmic closet afraid of what He’s created. That’s defamation of the Divine character. My brother, God Almighty rides upon the wings of the wind and sitteth on the circle of the earth, and measures the waters in the hollow of his hand and comprehends the dust of the earth in the balance. And weighs the mountains in scales and the hills in a measure. And all that thou can know cannot be compared under Him. He speaks and it is done. He commands and it stands forth. He calls the end from the beginning and declares the things that are not as though they were.

God is a sovereign God moving sovereignly through His world. And they that know God and know His character will never be afraid of, nor will they take comfort in rabbit’s foot, feet rather than the rabbit’s foot, or rabbit feet, nor will they have a rabbit foot hung around their neck or a horse chestnut in their pocket to keep away rheumatism.

It sounds funny, doesn’t it, but men can get in bondage to that and be paganized Christians with only the name of Christian and not be Christians at all. I say that superstition is a defamation of the Divine character because it casts aspersions upon the wisdom of God and assumes that God is limited and can be fooled and cheated like any common Roman god. Whereas, God knows all things and our thoughts are loud, and our heartbeats are like hammer blows. And God can hear the tiniest thought that lies in the back of your mind infinitely amplified. And He knew it before you entertained it, or you knew that you entertained it, so that God can’t be fooled. He knows what’s in men. He looks on the inside and he predicts and predestinates and God is not limited in any sense.

So, there’s no such thing as cheating God. There is no such thing as telling or making God a promise and then having God ring His hands and say why that man broke his promise to me, whatever shall I do? That kind of God would never get my loyalty. Never would I bow my knee to a God that I could cheat. Never would I worship and cry, holy, holy, holy in the presence of a God that I could lie to successfully. No, no, superstition makes God limited in power and limited in wisdom, or it shows him to be spiteful, so that He takes childish revenge. Superstition is in some measure a projection of our own nasty little personalities into heaven and making God in our own image. Spitefulness in us becomes a vast and limitless spitefulness in God. So, people are afraid of God,

I remember as a boy that mothers would never say a word against a baby that was born anywhere lest she should have one. If she said, he’s an ugly little mutt isn’t he. Never would she dare say that. Because somewhere there was a spiteful God with a sour grin on His face, that would watch and remember that, and when she had a baby, it would be an ugly little mutt too. Now that kind of belief in God is a disgrace, and it doesn’t belong to Christians, and it isn’t a part of the divine revelation. God is above spite. And that is why He pays no attention to those who get up and say, if there’s a God let him strike me dead in 10 seconds. And then in ten awful seconds when scarcely a heart beats and nobody breathes, this two-legged ass stands and waits for the spiteful God in the heaven to strike him down, a God he knows isn’t spiteful. And so, he’s all right, but the superstitious don’t breathe waiting for God to rise up and act like a man. No, God isn’t spiteful. God is infinitely patient with us poor little chest-beating boasters. He is infinitely kind and merciful, lest, if He were not, we should all be in hell today.

So, superstition makes God to be spiteful, or it makes God to be childish and touchy, so that we always have to be afraid of Him. I hear this sometimes among us good fundamentalists. God bless our memories. We’re afraid ever to say anything that isn’t exactly the right formula lest the God who goes in big for words and symbols should be angry with us. I know there are some who never pronounce the name of Jesus apart from all of His titles; Lord Jesus Christ, or Jesus Christ the Lord or Christ Jesus the Lord. Always they’ve got to have the three. As a poor, cheap preacher who’s been given an honorary degree and is jealous to be called doctor, so they feel that Jesus is jealous of all of His titles and that He gets miffed unless we give Him all His titles every time we speak about him. What kind of a Christ would that be? A little, spiteful, childish Christ, that you never knew exactly how to predict.

Ah, you can predict Him my brethren. His character is holy and infinitely above and beyond all of the cheap, little, moral weaknesses of men. And you can always know how God is going to act. No, no, Jesus isn’t jealous of all of His titles. Of course, God has made this same Jesus whom He crucified, both Lord and Christ. But when Mary stood at the open grave and grabbed her heart and said, Rabboni. He said, Mary, he didn’t say, don’t you respect me? Why didn’t you call me by my three titles? He smiled and said Mary and stretched out His hands. Mary knew Him better than we do. In this terrible day, superstition makes Him to be little and childish. It makes Him to be limited or weak, whereas He is none of these things. I think that we could throw chains; I think there would be carload after carload of shackles that could be carried out and melted up into metal into soft metal and made into useful things, if we could only believe in the greatness of God and see how big and glorious and sovereign and mighty and patient and loving and holy God is. For almost all weaknesses in the Church of Christ spring out of an inadequate view of God. They spring out with a low view of God. If God is seen big enouigh, there will be a wonderful liberty. Now, bondage to superstition, let’s get free from it. All the black cats on the south side can’t hurt a child of God, not all of them.

Now, bondage to legalistic forms. That is, there are those who can’t worship unless they worship after a certain form. If they have been brought up to kneel, they can’t pray standing up. If they’ve been brought up to pray standing up, they can’t pray kneeling down. And they’ve just got to get into that certain formula, and certain form, and get into that certain posture, and say certain words. No, my brethren, they that worship God must worship Him how, in spirit and in truth, and that gives us complete liberty. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. And the child of God has infinite liberty in worshiping God.

My old friend, good and honored friend, Dave Fant the engineer, used to pray to God and praise God all day long in his great train roaring along, the engineer he was. Roaring along from Atlanta to the coast, and praising God all the time; was saved in that old cab, if you don’t mind, and filled with the Holy Ghost in that old cab. And when he got to a certain town, he used to salute them by pulling the whistle. It wasn’t necessary, but he preached there, and so he pulled the whistle, and one day he forgot to pull the whistle. And the news went like wildfire every place. Dave Fant didn’t salute us this morning. Do you suppose the Lord took him away and didn’t tell us. It sounded like the Old Testament in the days of Elijah. No, he just forgot.

You can pray on a train. You can pray in an airplane, most people do. You can pray standing up or sitting down or in any position. Because we worship God in spirit. We don’t practice our religion as a witch her formula. We worship God spontaneously out of our hearts. We love Him and He loves us. And there is no form there. Although, there must be some form in public worship, otherwise, of course, it would be bedlam. There has to be somebody to know which, we’re going to sing next, and so on. So, I believe in a certain limited, modified form in church service, but oh brother, it’s possible to get so legalistic and into such bondage and formality, that you’ll blow up and have a temper fit if things aren’t done the way they should be done in church.

Sure, our brother there had an experience like that one time. He was supposed to be leading the service and he took an offering and, or did something out of turn, and one old deacon got up white-faced and roundly scolded him in un-Christian harsh terms and said, we must have this done in order. He committed more sin by that act ungodly volcanic eruption than if there had never been any order in the church.

Then, there are other traditions which may not go back to Christ and the apostles at all. Let me give you a rather silly illustration of what I mean. It’s possible to follow old certain mannerisms or forms, traditions, and not know where they originated, or know how they got there, and yet they’re religiously followed and imitated by all aspiring Christians. I told you this before several years ago, but it’s time for a repeat. Several years ago, Walter Post, a missionary from our church over in the Netherlands East Indies, saw a young converted Diack preacher, and he was quite a preacher, this Diack. He could declare the Word of God in the language of his people wonderfully. And Walter had won this boy to God and taught him what he knew. And Michaelson, another missionary there told me smilingly afterward this. He said, this young Diack preacher was a great preacher, but he had the peculiar mannerisms. He would pluck at his collar while he preached and reach for his collar and pluck out and then reach with the other hand and pluck at his collar. And he said, I didn’t understand why he did it until I heard Walter preach. And he plucked at his collar. And then he said, I didn’t know why Walter did it until I came home and heard you. And you pluck at your collar. And listen now, the reason I plucked at my collar was that the collar didn’t fit the shirt band, and I used to have to get them straight while I preached. Now, that kind of thing sounds silly, but you can get into bondage to that thing and carry it down the years and found churches upon it and get your soul into a straitjacket. Throw your shoulders back and breathe deep and say in Jesus Christ, I’m a free man. And I will not be subject to bondage of any kind.

And then there is another type of bondage we’ve got to watch out for, and that’s the bondage to foods and to dress. Now, Jesus said, it didn’t matter what entered into a man’s mouth. That didn’t defile him, but it was what came out of a man’s mouth. And Paul said in 1 Timothy, that in the latter days, certain men should come. And they should give heed to doctrines of devils. And that the doctrines of devils were that they should not marry and that they should abstain from meat, meat which God had created to be received with thanksgiving in them that know and believe the truth. For all the gifts of God are good. All creatures are good and are to be received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer.

Now, there is certainly an emancipation proclamation that delivers you from foods. And yet, in spite of that, we find lots of God’s dear children running right back in and taking the oath. They don’t feel comfortable without it. Like the man who had the crutch so long that now he feels naked when he doesn’t wear his crutch. And there are people like that. They just must have something to make them miserable. They just won’t be free in God. So, they won’t eat this or they will eat that, and they buy a book somewhere for 25 cents to show us why they’re right, scientifically. Oh, no, no, no brother, the rule is if it doesn’t hurt you, eat it, as you can afford it. And if you don’t have an allergy to it, go ahead and eat it because all creatures of God are good and are to be received with thanksgiving. to them that believe and know the truth.

Now, here’s a place to tell you about a wonderful letter that I received last week, about a thirty-page letter, twenty of them numbered, and a lot of them on both sides only numbered on one, from a Presbyterian woman down in St. Louis, who had been converted to God; marvelously converted to God. And she said, oh, she grew up in an atmosphere and still is in it apparently in that church where they drink a little and do all sorts of other things that Christians don’t do. And she said, she had never heard of A.B. Simpson and she never heard of the Alliance Weekly, obviously, though she had read a couple of other books that I had written. But she said that she had a little baby, about eighteen months old and has got eczema. She said this little baby with the eczema was so sick that it couldn’t sleep and she couldn’t sleep and her husband couldn’t sleep and it had sores and it bled and the little bed in the morning was bloody from the scratching and the sores off this sweet little baby girl’s body. She said she went to God about it. And she said, God, I’d like to know what’s the matter with my baby. She went to the doctor. The doctor said it’s an allergy, but I don’t know what allergy. So, he began to make tests. He ran one test after the other and still she suffered and still she couldn’t sleep and still the home was in an uproar. No sleep at night and crying all day. She said she went to God and said, now God, I am Thy servant and I ought to know what’s the matter with my baby. Nobody knows. Now God, you tell me. I’ll be listening. She said, the next morning she went to salt the baby’s food and she felt checked in her heart. And she dashed to the telephone and said doctor, doctor, is it possible to be allergic to salt? He said yes, iodized salt. So she didn’t salt the food that day and for the first time in weeks the baby slept all night. She said she kept iodized salt out of the baby’s diet, and in seven days it was perfectly well, not a sore and sleeping all night.

Now, there’s your point, brother. If you break out in a rash, don’t eat it. But, if you don’t, don’t think there’s any such thing as religious food. I’m here to tell you there isn’t any such thing as religious food. No food is any more religious than any other food. Neither are we any better if we eat. Neither are we any of the worse if we do not eat, said the man of God. And that ought to take care of that. I won’t talk about dress this morning.

In Toledo I had occasion to talk about the kingdom of God being liberty, that in not meat nor drink, and I added dress and whiskers to it. And I said that the kingdom of God didn’t lie in a man’s beard, and if it were, to take it off, and it didn’t make him any nearer to God. And a dear old missionary that had studied under Simpson years ago, came smilingly down and shook my hand and talked to me and he had a long beard. And I felt mean for having said that, but it was true nevertheless. Beard or no beard, spirituality does not lie in the length of your hair. It does not lie in the length of your beard. It does not lie in the length of your garment. And it does not lie in the quality of your garment. The rule I would lay down is the easiest rule in the world; if it’s modest, and you can afford it and it’s appropriate, that’s all God cares about dress.

Well, in bondage to days and seasons, I don’t think I have to go into that. Certainly, we don’t need that fear, bondage the days and seasons. How they fill the churches on Easter and how they empty them the next Sunday. Which all goes to show that such Christians are bound, if they are Christians at all.

Now, that’s the dangers of bondage. Don’t let’s get into bondage. Jesus Christ set us free. Was it Luther who said, love God with all your heart and due as you please, knowing that if you love God enough, you’re only pleased to do the will of God.

Now with that saying, which is a dangerous same, I go to the second, the danger of liberty. That is the danger of antinomianism. There’s a long jaw-breaking word. It means that certain people tend to run by unchecked logic to extremes. And that if I get up and say you are free, they immediately leap into the air and say thank God, I’m free, I’ll do as I please, and they go out and commit sin to show how free they are. You wouldn’t believe it, but that is the case. That has been done. I just finished reading a book called, “Small Sects in America.” It is quite an exhaustive treatise on the small denominations and sects in America over the past history and extant now. And it’s quite amazing how many of those sects ran to free love and sexual extremes because they were free in the Holy Ghost therefore they were free in the flesh. Now, there is your danger brother. Paul said I am free, but I will not use my freedom as a cloak for the flesh. God set us free but he didn’t set us free to do evil. He set us free to do good. Freedom to do good is the Christian’s liberty, not freedom to commit sin. God never said you’re free now, go on out and sin.

Some Christians have carried freedom to such a ridiculous and unholy extreme that they have said, I’ve got to sin a little, right along to keep grace operating. I think that’s tragic heresy. And the children of God should know it for such and flee it as they would polio; for it is a disease.

Christian liberty is freedom to live in the Spirit unhindered by externals. Christian liberty is freedom from the fear of the government, freedom from fear of my sins, freedom from fear of God, servile fear of God that is. Freedom from fear of the devil, freedom from black cats and birds and amulets and spells and charms and wizardry. Freedom from religious bondage of every kind. Freedom from traditions, the iron yoke. Freedom to live in the Spirit and worship God in spirit and in truth. That’s Christian freedom.

But, when it becomes freedom to commit sin, that grace may abound, Paul cries out against it from his high hill with a shout, God forbide! How should we, that had been dead to sin live any longer, there in. Freedom to love, so that our conduct springs out of love, and freedom not to hate. Ah, it’s wonderful to be free from hate so that you don’t have to hate. Hate is a moral cancer. And it eats on the soul till it kills the victim. And to get free from hatred is like getting healed of cancer; delivered from that cursed wild bunch of cells that eat on our liver. Freedom from hatred and freedom from envy and freedom from unholy ambition and freedom from wanting your own way and freedom to do the will of God, that’s Christian freedom. That’s Christian liberty, but never free to commit any sort of sin. For the child of God who lives from within and whose heart is a fountain of affection and love for God, will not sin, but if he does, he will confess it with sorrow and be forgiven and cleansed from it and determined not to go back to that wallow anymore.

Now I want to point out another thing that a Christian will not use his freedom to put other Christians into a bad conscience. Paul told about meat that was offered to idols, and some Christians had a conscience about it. Now, Paul said, I have no conscience at all about meat that has been offered to an idol, if it’s good, clean meat, because I don’t believe an idol is a real thing. There’s one God, one Lord, one Spirit, and all these other so-called gods are all imitations. They don’t exist for me, said Paul. Yet said Paul, when I’m in the home of a young Christian that doesn’t know this, I will respectfully pass by meat offered to idols lest I hurt his conscience.

So, a Christian is in danger of allowing his very liberty to be a stumbling block to somebody else. So that he does freely, things that other people will think he’s sinning when he does. And thus, he’s a hindrance to other people. Well, there was a little rule I think that we can put down here, it is, take your freedom in Christ Jesus. Be as free in Christ as He made you. And remember, you’re not a bond slave, but a son. You’re not a servant in the house. You’re a child in the household. You’re your father’s child, not the king’s servant. Be free. Yet, not use your freedom for a license to the flesh. But mortify the flesh and keep your flesh under. And lay your loving burdens on yourself for Christ’s sake. A burden that I voluntarily lay upon my shoulder is no burden at all.

I don’t tell many stories, but the missionary told us one of a little girl about ten I suppose, carrying her little brother piggyback on her a little back in one of our foreign fields. And she carried him around all day while the mother worked in the field. And the missionary sympathized with the little girl and referred to the little boy on her back as a burden. And the girl looked up and said, “That’s not a burden, that’s my brother.”

What you do voluntarily is not a burden. It is only a yoke when somebody else leaves it on your neck, and says, take it or go to hell, where they shall but perish. Somebody with a beard, or clothing of certain kind, or tradition behind him, or stained glass to give him authority that the poor little shivering fellow doesn’t have in his own heart. Or some other religious accoutrement to add to his personality, that authority, which he doesn’t have inside. He tells me you do it this way, or you perish. I smile, I hope not too perilously, and tell him, oh, friend, you don’t know my Father. My father doesn’t look at it that way. My Father says, child, you were free, absolutely free. Free to take voluntary burdens for the sake of others; carry those burdens on your shoulder. And the burden you carry voluntarily will never make your shoulders sore. But the burden that religion lays upon you or philosophy or tradition or superstition, will gall you and scar you and kill you at last.

But, the easy yoke of Jesus, His yoke is easy and His burden is light, I found it so, I found it so. The yoke of Jesus is easy. I stand to declare to you, that the Lord Jesus has never asked a hard thing of me. My miseries have always come out of my own flesh. They have never come from any burden Jesus ever laid on me. And what few burdens I have laid on myself, I’ve never felt the weight of them at all. They are as easy and light as can be. For as little song says, as He always takes the heavy end and gives the light end to me.

So, let’s watch it. Let’s not get bound to anything, for we’re free men and women in Christ Jesus. But, let’s be sensible and not use our freedom as a cloak for the flesh. And let’s not hide behind liberty in order to practice license. Let’s remember that the man in whom Jesus Christ dwells will be wrought to be a good man. And don’t be afraid of the word “good.” Let us not fling back in the face of Jesus the charter of freedom which cost Him His blood. Stand fast therefore in the Liberty where with Christ has made you free and be not entangled with the yoke of bondage. But use not your freedom as a cloak for the flesh, but knowing your free, discipline yourself for Jesus’ sake. We trust the indwelling Spirit to fulfill in you the law of God, for what the law could not do and it was weak through the flesh, God sending His Son, has done by the indwelling Spirit within us.

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Messages

Tozer Talks

“Dangers of Idleness and Busyness”

“Message #3 in Dangers in the Way and How to Avoid Them “

May 1, 1955

It is difficult to follow consecutively a series of talks because of the interruptions that come from other speakers and from conventions and an occasional absence. But I feel that I would like to continue to talk a little for a Sunday or two yet about the dangers to the Christian. Dangers that lie in the Christian’s path. And as a kind of text I have here in the fifth chapter of Ephesians these words. See that ye walk circumspectly. Not as fools but as wise. Don’t be foolish, but be wise and walk circumspectly.

Circumspectly is one of those easy to figure out words. Circle meaning around, where we get our word circle, and circumference and all such words. And spectly of course means, look. We talk about spectacles. We used to call them that. And so, we are exhorted here to walk looking around. Not plunging foolishly head-long, but walk looking around.

Now, I repeat that I do not wish to make my hearers danger-conscious, because if you become danger-conscious excessively, that will slow you down. Scripture says, he that observes the wind shall not sow, and he that regarded the cloud shall not reap. The farmer who never looks at the wind, or observeth the wind, or looks at the clouds, will be a very foolish farmer, and he will not have a very good crop at the end of the year. But the man who becomes so cloud-conscious and wind-conscious that he gets up and moistens his finger and holds it up to see which way the wind is blowing every morning, and then sneaks back away if there’s a cloud overhead, he’ll get nothing done. He that observeth the wind shall not sow. There are times when you must pay no attention to the wind. And he that regardeth the clouds, he shall not reap. There will always be a cloud warning you to stay indoors, but the wise man will know which cloud to regard and which to disregard.

So, we Christians are not to become so conscious of the wind and the cloud that we don’t do anything. But on the other hand, if we are unaware of danger, we increase that danger a hundredfold and almost guarantee disaster. By reason, I’ve been giving this series on the dangers in the way.

Now today, I want to talk about the danger of idleness and the danger of busyness. First, there’s the danger of idleness. You see, God made us for creative activity. There is a notion abroad in the day in which we live that labor is a sin, or at best, it’s a curse resting upon us. I think some Christians even have that notion that labor is a curse, that it is a disciplinary punishment which the Lord laid upon the world at the Fall. Now nothing could be further from the fact than this. For if you will read the Bible before the third chapter of Genesis and the Fall, you’ll remember that God told the newly created couple that they were to replenish the earth and subdue it. Now replenishing the earth meant there were to be children born into the world. And anybody who imagines that there can be children brought up in the world without work, has never had any children or even been where they are. And the command to subdue the earth certainly embraces the idea of work.

And then it says, that they were placed in a garden, to dress it and to keep it. They were not there to be idle. God the Creator, made man in His image and made him to be something of a creator too, so that man was to labor. He was to subdue the earth. He was to bring, they were to bring children into the world and work to the bring up those children, and they were to dress the garden and keep it in shape. So that meant work. So that work is not a result of the Fall. But sin brought sorrow and thorns and thistles and sweat. There are four words that didn’t occur. In the first and second chapters of Genesis, sorrow and thorns and thistle and some sweat, they did not occur. But the word “work” occurred, or its equivalent, dress and keep and subdue and care. Those words occur in the first chapters, but the word sorrow, thorns, thistles and sweat, they were added when man sinned.

So, remember that work is not a result of man’s sin. But to work in sorrow, that’s a result of man’s sin, to work with thorns and thistles around you. That’s the result of man’s sin. And to work until we sweat for our daily labor, that is a result of man’s sin. So that, remember that God made us to be workers.

Our Savior was a worker, and idleness is very un-Christlike and contrary to the high will of God. For it is the avoiding of our commission. And it is an invitation to temptation. You know, our fathers had a little saying. I think Isaac Watts wrote it in his little book for children. The devil always finds some tasks for idle hands to do. And the word idle was, in other days, a very evil word, a very evil word. Our fathers scorned the word. They hated it. And they wrote poems about it, as Isaac Watts did. The devil always finds some tasks for idle hands to do. No, I have no statistics on this, but I think I’d be safe in saying that ninety-five percent of the deviltry of the world is thought up by people who have nothing to do at the time. People who are engaged in some kind of productive activity may sin, but they’re not as likely to as those who have nothing to do. It was when David had ended his labors and was on the housetop taking a little idle walk that he looked down and saw the scene that led him to the great temptation into adultery and murder. So that ninety-five percent of the deviltry of the world results, in my estimation, from the people who have nothing else to do.

Now, the idle Christian is in great danger. He’s in danger because, as I say, he’s unlike his Savior. Our Lord went about doing good, and there is no excuse for idleness. We’re not thinking at the moment of recreation. Personally, I think that recreation racket is greatly overdone. But I do grant that there should be some recreation, some exercise. But while we’re not speaking of recreation, we are speaking about idleness and our Lord was not idle. He chose industrious men for His disciples. He did not go to the Riviera and pick playboys, whether they be Bo Dyes or Jimmy Walkers or who, he picked simple men who were hard workers, who had something to do, who took an interest in life and had something to do. He did it deliberately and purposefully.

Now therefore, I recommend to you Christians that you make yourself available. That you be ready to do anything. Don’t hold yourself off until you’re ready to do something. Start doing something now. Learn to ride your bicycle by trial and error. Don’t wait until you learn to ride it before you buy one. But get one now and practice on it. Get something done. You may make a lot of mistakes at first of course. But do something if you can’t do anything around the church. Some people say there is nothing for us to do. I have had it said, your church has a wealth of talent and there’s nothing for me to do. Well, I suppose that person would mean that you have your soloist and there’s no solo for me to sing, or no committee for me to be the chairman of. Well, if it’s to be chairman of a committee or singing a solo, of course. Maybe, the average church wouldn’t have room for everybody. But any Christian who’s worth his salt will find something to do in the kingdom of God.

We learned and I suppose everybody knows it, but it came very dramatically home to us on the farm. That farm machinery seldom wears out. If you keep your machinery up, you can use it summer in summer out and along, seasons over and over and over until it becomes obsolete. And some new thing you buy to replace that which is an obsolete piece of machinery, not worn out, just old fashioned. But one season sitting out in the weather will wreck any piece of machinery. The idle machines sitting in the darkness will go to pieces in one season. But that same machine used for 10 years will only brighten it up, make it shine. Maybe a bolt wear out can be replaced like nothing and the machine will go on.

Now Christians are exactly like farm implements. One year of sitting around and sulking will do more to rust your soul, than one hundred years of hard work if God granted you that many years. Don’t be afraid of wearing yourself out. The devil is a master of strategy. When a child of God gets busy, he whispers in their ear, now watch it because you’re going to have a nervous breakdown. I’m positively sure that nervous breakdowns do not come from working in the easy yoke of Jesus Christ. They come from frustrations and hidden sins and stubbornness and refusing to hear God, then wanting our own way. But they don’t come from working. His yoke is easy, His burden is light. I’ve found it so, I found it so.

And I’m sure that there isn’t a gray hair in this head of mine was ever placed there by honest labor in the kingdom of my Savior. Not any one. But I wonder how many are there because I wanted my own way. I wonder how many are there because I wanted the world to obey me and they wouldn’t listen. Stubbornness, contrariness, resentfulness, those will bring frustration and illness, but not the late work of the Lord. Jesus Christ would never have gotten sick. He could have lived infinite years working as He worked. He did not kill himself by hard work. They had to kill him on a cross. And Paul became very old in the work of God and was still going when they cut his head off. And Peter, when they crucified him.

So, it’s our human weaknesses and faults that causes us to break down, not working in the service of the Lord. So don’t be afraid to work. You’ll rust out and some of you may have rusted out. Maybe it’s too late to do very much now of your time. The rust is so complete that like the one horse, Shea. One good lunge and you’re finished. But I don’t think it’s true of very many, maybe of nobody. I’m optimistic enough to think that that’s an extreme statement and there’s nobody here that’s completely rusted out. There may be a little rust around here and there. And you can get rid of that by going to work. You can wear your rust off awfully easy. And you will not wear yourself out in doing it.

So, there’s the danger of idleness, so many idle Christians who say I have nothing to do, nothing to do. There’s intercession to be made. There are calls to be made. There are letters to be written. There are booklets and tracts to be distributed. There’s singing to be done. There are many things to be done.

I remember I’ll tell this again, because the sermon won’t be long anyway. But a man who asked me whether he could do something around the church when I was in Indianapolis. And I said Elmer, I don’t know anything you could do. Well, I thought he wanted, of course, to be chairman of something. But he didn’t. He said, well, can I take care of the lawn? I said, yes, you can take care of the lawn. So, Elmer took care of the lawn. And that lawn never prospered as it did. He varnished the sign out in front. He kept up the little high fence up nicely. And the thing positively began to look like a golf course. Elmer had just been converted a short time and something in him wanted to work. And he was humble enough that he was willing to take care of the lawn; anything to look after the work of God and do something.

Well, the story is that it wasn’t very long until Elmer was preaching on the street. And after that, he began to preach in institutions here and there. And a little later, he began to go to another town out from Indianapolis and hold meetings. And that formed into a little group. And then came a church. And now there’s an Alliance church there, preaching the gospel and giving to missions and praying for missions and sending out missionaries, all because a man newly converted, was willing to do anything. If he had sulked and told his wife, there’s too much talent around here. I can’t be chairman of anything, I have nothing for me to do. He would have rusted out, and that church never would have been established there. But Elmer Durant was too much of a Christian to want to head something. He did have something later on, as I’ve explained, but he began by coming along.

So, let’s not be idle. The devil always finds some thing for idle men and women to do. So, there’s a danger in idleness. Let’s walk circumspectly and watch that. That’s a ditch on one side of the road. But over on the other side of the road, there’s another ditch and it’s called busyness.

There’s a great danger in busyness. Now, there’s a time for everything, says the Holy Ghost. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens. A time to be born and a time to die and a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to weep and a time to laugh and a time to mourn and a time to dance and a time to cast away stones and a time to gather them. A time to embrace and the time to refrain from embracing. A time to get and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away. A time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silent and the time to speak. There’s the middle of the road Christian, realizing that he’s not to be extreme on anything, but that he is to be wise. And the wise man will know the time and the season.

Now, there is no time for idleness. And the scripture doesn’t say there’s a time for idleness here. But there is a time for relaxation, there is a time to realize that’s the time and to camp. That you pitch your tent there and you don’t go on for that day. You’ve gone far enough that day. There’s no time for idleness, because idleness assumes lack of purpose. If I have no purpose, I will be idle. It assumes this inclination to be inconvenienced, and it assumes addiction to pleasures. We have so many gadgets invented in our day, to minister to idleness, just idleness. Well, there’s no place for that in the kingdom of God. But there’s a time to cease activities. Even the creatures beside the fire up yonder in the heaven as revealed in the first chapter of Ezekiel. Those creatures let down their wings and waited on God. Now, Daniel prayed three times a day.

And it’s possible to be so busy in our secular work or even busy in the Lord’s work, that we have no time to pray. No time to wait on God or get still, and sew up the raveled sleeve of care and adjust ourselves, and orientate our soul toward God in heaven. And when that happens, there’s danger. Daniel prayed three times a day, the prophet sought the silences. You will find that God looked for his men in the silence. Men who can’t be silent, might as well be silent, because they won’t say anything when they talk. It is only out of the silence that the Word speaks. In the beginning was silence. Before the beginning was the silence, said the old writers. And then in the beginning was the Word. The idea was that God’s spake out of the everlasting silence of His own holy self-contained being. And we’re so likely to be so busy that we don’t get anything done, and so talkative that we never say anything. The prophets sought the silence. And in the silence, they learned what to say. And then they broke the silence by saying it and relapse back into the silence again.

We could well cut down the decibels in our homes and in our churches. I’m always cautious and be afraid of noisy people. It takes a very wise man to talk all the time and say anything. So let us learn the scriptural silence. And Christ Himself went into the desert, and there in the silence. Forty days and nights He waited on his God under the temptation of the devil. And when he came out from there, he came out in the fullness of the Spirit and went out to preach the Word of God everywhere. And our Lord Himself told us to shut the door. He said, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray unto thy Father, which is in secret. And My Father, who hears in secret, shall reward thee openly.

Secular business can ruin men. A man called me up the other day, not a member of this church, a member of some church down south further. And he said, I have been a Christian a few years, and I want to do God’s will. He said, I have a business, a real estate business and I have partners. And he said, we have made it a rule to be only open on weekdays and close on Sunday. He said, Now, my partners want to open on Sunday. What would you say? What would you have told him? What would you have told me? I said, by all means, follow the light. By all means, lose the sale, and keep your good conscience. And if your partners won’t listen, sell out and start something of your own. God will bless you for it.

Not that I’m a sabbatarian, No. Not that I believe that one day is above another day, no, but I believe we ought to have some time for God. And the man who works seven days a week has no time for God. The office that keeps open to get a few more extra nickels on that seventh day, has no time for God. Whether he takes Wednesday, Sunday or Friday off, he ought to take a day off. But Sunday would be the day to take off. It’s a testimony and enables the man to get into the house of God and mingle and raise his voice in songs of Zion with the people of God. Now, I haven’t heard from this business man. I don’t know whether he took my advice or not. But I think he did, because he felt very keenly that he should not open on Sunday. We’re not sabbatarians but we do believe that there’s a time for everything. And secular business can ruin men unless they take time to cultivate God.

But as I have said, excessive religious work can do the same. Unless we take time to cultivate God. Dr. Reuben A. Torrey used to take two weeks out of every year and put on old clothes and go into the hills. Nobody knew his whereabouts but his wife. Nothing short of death was to get a message through to him. No telephone, no telegram, no cables, no anything. Two weeks. He waited, relax, rest, engaged at the sky and listen. And then he came back to the busy world with a heart and the mind filled with truth. Too much busyness in the work of the Lord can destroy the effectiveness of that work.

Now, I want to give you a little motto here. If you’re too busy in the Lord’s work to spend time in the Lord’s presence, then you’re too busy in the Lord’s work. So, let’s be careful to walk circumspectly, looking around. Here’s the broad highway of God. Over on the left, there is idleness and over on the right, is excessive busyness. And then there’s the great broad highway in the middle. We can follow that highway, and go along, and have plenty of room and get a world of work done, and still not rust out from idleness, nor kill ourselves with excessive busyness. There’s a time for everything.

So, we wait on God to renew our batteries. And then, when they’re up to full power, we turn them loose into the work of God. And thus, we go wisely, not as fools, but as wisemen. So let us remember these two dangers. Whoa be to the idle Christian. He will not grow in grace. Even a baby exercises. Six months old Ruthie, down at our house, my wife’s babysitting. Stanley’s little girl six months old and beautiful, but exercise, she can’t walk yet. She can’t even sit up, but exercise. Exercise, she exercises until she grunts just exercising. Exercise, you grow and you exercise, and you will stop growing when you stop. But if we get all worked up and allow the world and the tense jitteriness of the world to excite us; we’re dashing continually in the work of God, it is just as great a danger.

So, let’s ask God for wisdom not to be idle ever, but to be inactive sometimes for the sake of renewing our batteries and relaxing our nerves and quieting our minds and above all things, seeing visions of God. And then we’ll not fall into either ditch. And down the great broad highway of Zion, we will move toward a predetermined end. God grant this is my prayer this morning.

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Tozer Talks

” Dangers of Prosperity and Adversity “

“Message #2 in Dangers in the Way and How to Avoid Them “

March 27, 1955

David says, The Lord is his Rock, and his Fortress, and his Deliver, and his Strength, and his Buckler, and his High Tower. Verse two. The inference we draw from this is, that the man David must have needed a rock, a place to hide, a fortress, a deliver, and a horn of salvation and a high tower. There must have been dangers from which David had to hide, and weaknesses which, for which he needed strength, and arrows aimed at him for which he needed the shield of a buckler.

So, I am dealing these few Sunday mornings up to missionary convention time, and maybe I’ll resume it after that for a couple of Sundays; on the dangers that are in the Christian way. And this Psalm, I have said is a mirror of life. And it indicates that there are dangers in the way. That the way to heaven is hedged-in by perils to our souls. Now, to ignore these perils, is to reject the Bible. The Bible is not only rejected when a man stands and boldly declares, I do not believe the Bible. I believe that the Bible is a saga full of myths. I do not believe the Bible. That’s a rejection of the Bible, but at least it’s an honest rejection of the Bible.

The Bible is more insidiously rejected when a man rises and says, I believe the Bible and then ignores the teachings of the Bible on his own pet subjects. We’re all likely to do that. I’m likely to do it. I want you to pray that I may never do it, that I might be wise not to do it. But well-intentioned men, without meaning to ignore the Scriptures or to deny them, have ignored the dangers in the Christian way and so they have taken away the markers on the highways.

Can you imagine if it were possible, to sabotage this country all over on one night, say, and take down all highway markers from Maine to California, from the Gulf to the Canadian border, not one left? Can you imagine how many thousands of people would be killed the next evening? Thousands would die the next evening, because our Department of Highways have carefully marked dangerous places, warned to slow down, warned even in some places to put in second gear, and so on. The idea is, there are dangers, you don’t have to stop and go back, and you don’t have to drive all jittery and afraid, because the dangerous places are marked. And if we pay attention to the markers and drive with some degree of relaxed care, the possibility of an accident will be cut down to an infinitesimal minimum. But if we pay no attention to the markers, or if the markers are removed, then comes the danger and then multiplies the dead. So, to ignore or remove their markers on the highway is of course to do a great disservice, a dangerous disservice to the people of God. I mean to show these dangers in pairs.

Today, I want to talk about the danger of prosperity and the danger of adversity. We’ll talk about the danger of prosperity first, and we might as well call it financial prosperity to begin with. Now, it is a solemn thought to me that the history of mankind and of nations and of churches shows that we trust in God as a rule when there is nothing else in which there is nothing else to trust. Do I wish it were possible to be realistic and honest and still tell a different story? I’d love to do it. But a Christian, I have insisted, ought to be a realist. That is, he ought to stay by the facts as they are, not invent them and not twist them, but stay by them as they are. The simple fact is, that the history of men, Israel and the church and of nations and individual churches as well as individual men; the history shows that we trust in God last, and we tend to trust in God when we have nothing else in which they trust. And as other trusts appear, we turn from God to them, and excuse ourselves eloquently by saying that we are not trusting them. We are really trusting God. But we do trust them nevertheless.

Now, I thought that to support this, I had better give you some Bible. So, I have selected an Old Testament passage and the New Testament passage. The Old Testament passage is found in Deuteronomy 32:9 and following. Here’s the story of Jacob, that is, Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people. Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him, that is, he found Jacob and from Jacob came Israel, the nation of Israel. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. And Jacob himself testified that all he had then was a staff with a little bandana hankerchief on the end of it over his shoulder. That’s all he had. With my staff I came over this brook and lo, I am become two bands. That was Jacob’s testimony. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: So, the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.

Then verse 15, but Jeshurun, that’s still Jacob. It’s God’s pet name for Israel, but Jeshurun waxed fat. It was God that made him fat. God gave him butter and milk and honey. You can’t eat butter and milk and honey and not get fat. He says here, I gave him butter and milk and honey and lots of it, and gave him the increase of the fields and gave him the fat of wheat and the pure blood of the grape. But the result was Jeshurun waxed fat. And when he waxed fat, he got independent and sassy, and he kicked. Thou art waxen fat. Thou art grown thick. Thou art covered with fatness. Then he forsook God which made him and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation.

Now when he was wandering in the desert place in the waist howling wilderness because all he remembered wasn’t the wind was howling, it was like tigers, wolves and bears, not tigers in that land, but wolves and bears. And these wolves and bears were dangerous and so Jacob had to hide in God or else get eaten up. And as long as he was hiding in God, he was all right. But as soon as he got fat, and grew thick and forsook God which made him and lightly esteemed the Rock in his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy was strange Gods. With abominations provoked him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils and not unto God. The gods whom they knew not. The new gods that came newly up whom their fathers feared not. And the remark, remember this, that there would have been eloquent defense of these gods made by men; magazine, articles written and books, and when committees meet strong defense in favor of wisdom and the fact that we mustn’t miss the boat, and that after all, we got to give them something to do.

And so, they will sacrifice unto devils and not under gods, the gods whom they knew not, the new gods that came newly up whom your fathers feared not. But of the Rock that begat them they were unmindful. And thou has forgotten God that formed thee. And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them because of the provoking that his sons did. And his daughters and He said I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end shall be. For they are a very froward generation. Froward you know, means bold with a hard forehead, brassy, children in whom is no faith. Now, they used the very prosperity that God gave them as a stumbling block.

Now we come to the New Testament. You think humanity would have changed over the hundreds of years. See, when was that back there about 1450 B.C. and this is about 50 or so, A.D.? So, there we have about 1500 years and in that 1500 years now Christ has come and died and ascended to the Father and sent the Holy Ghost and the church has been formed, and now an apostle writes to a church in Laodicea. Third chapter of Revelation. and unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, these things, saith the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou art cold or hot, so because thou art neither lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I’ll spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou saith, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing. And knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. In case you think he’s severe, notice he says, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous therefore and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. This pitiful condition of the church in the latter days. Rich increased with goods and endowed, beautiful buildings, and the Savior standing outside trying to get in.

Now, there’s the New Testament example. And then we find in Luke 20:12, and 13, and on, the rich fool, who said, I will tear down these barns. They are not adequate. And I will build larger barns in order that I might house my increase crops. And God said bluntly, you fool, you’ve got to die. And you can’t take these barns to the other world with you. Then, whose will these things be?

Now, there we have plenty of Bible and I only quote these verses, because I can’t read the Bible all morning here. The whole Bible teaches this, that plenty, however justly it may be acquired, constitute a great danger, constitutes a great danger. John Wesley admitted this frankly, I’ve told you this before but it fits into perfectly here and illustrates from a classic source. So, I’ll repeat that John Wesley, after his Methodist society got going, and they had circled the world, and they were growing in number, Wesley admitted one time in print, this. He said, we are in a peculiar paradox in our Methodist societies. He said, I have noticed something. I have noticed that as soon as a group of people meet together and form a society, and subscribe to the New Testament doctrines, and bring their lives into line with the truth, they immediately get honest, frugal, saving, hardworking, and upright and industrious. And the result is, they lay up money. Then he said, as soon as they get some money, they begin to trust it. And as soon as they begin to trust their money, they cease to be holy and spiritual and frugal and hardworking and honest and good. And so, they backslide.

And so, he says, here is the vicious circle. Get right with God and you’ll become frugal, saving, honest, hardworking, serious. That makes you tend to get rich. When you tend to get rich, you tend to backslide. So, he said, here’s the vicious circle. What are we going to do? Well, leave it to John Wesley. He wasn’t going to be licked by a vicious circle. He said I have the answer. He said, be honest, holy, hardworking, frugal, saving. Get all you can and then give it all away. And he said, you’ll never backslide because you’ll never have anything there to backslide with. He said, get all you can in order that you may give all you can and continue to trust God and work hard and get more and give that away. He said, and that way, you’ll never backslide.

Now, I thought that was a classic, brethren. And that’s exactly what John Wesley did. They would have laid the wealth of England at his feet. At least the common people would have. But when he died, he died with twenty-eight pounds. Five times twenty-eight, what’s that, over 100 to 125 or so dollars he took with him. I don’t mean he took with him, but he could have taken it with him and taken with him was in order. But he left it, about $130. Now that after a lifetime. He lived eighty-three years and died with $130 to leave behind. He didn’t have to make out a will. It took more than that to bury him.

Now, that was John Wesley. Brethren, unaccustomed with plenty is pretty deadly if you don’t know what to do with it. No boy gets so arrogant and so reckless as a boy who is newly rich. And no girl gets so extravagant and so wild as the girl into the big city making good money. I don’t say that always happens, but I say the temptation is there. Anybody brought up, they say, that men brought up in money, they can wear the old clothes. I said about one old fellow who was going around in an old suit that even I wouldn’t have worn. He said, he can afford to do it. Everybody knows he’s rich. But the fellow that has just come into the money, he wants to prove it by the way he dresses and what he drives and what kind of a house he lives in. But the man who’s has money and inherited money, he doesn’t tend that way because it’s nothing to him. He’s bored with it.

So, unaccustomed plenty is especially deadly to a Christian. Oh, what mine eyes have seen over the years. I have seen young men who while they were in high school and college, struggled and fought and prayed and loved God and got along on little. And then they met a girl and she had had the same experience fighting her way through and working after hours to get, not to continue and help with a home and she had little and he had little and then they met each other and they got married and then they got out of school and settled down and got good jobs, and used his sanctified Christian intelligence to get a good position. And pretty soon the money was coming his way hand over fist and they moved into a finer home, got a bigger car and a bigger television set, and finer of everything. And they began to come to choir less often and prayer meeting rarely and the church less frequently and they take long holiday excursions and then longer ones. And pretty soon, they backslid. I’ve seen it happen over the years. I’ve seen it happen. Brethren, it’s always dangerous. Prosperity is dangerous for a Christian.

Now, what can you do? Is this, is this, am I saying I wish all my people were poor people? If all the people were poor, poverty-stricken people, how would we ever manage to keep missionaries on the field? How would we ever promote publishing societies? How would we ever get books out to the public? How would we ever keep schools going? How would we finance God’s work so as to keep our missionaries going, our radio programs alive, our books flowing out? How do we do it? No, it is not God’s will that His people should all be poor. It’s God’s will that his people should prosper, but know what to do with prosperity.

Now, I’ll give you three rules and if you care enough about it to take this down, I think it may help you. I give you three rules what to do with prosperity. First of all, thank God reverently. You never ought to receive anything, never ought to receive a raise, never ought to receive anything, but that we do not go to God and reverently thank Him and acknowledge the source of it. And know that it cometh from the Father of Lights, from whence every good gift comes. Thank God reverently. Second, share it generously. If you do not share it generously, it will begin to canker and rust on your spirit and soul. And the bigger the bank account, the smaller the heart, unless you share it so generously that your conscience feels good about it and God is satisfied. And then, walk circumspectly, those three things. If you have plenty, thank God reverently. Share it generously and walk circumspectly.

Now, if you want some Bible on this walking circumspectly, I don’t feel it necessary to quote scripture on the other two, because it’s just an essence of Scripture. But I do want to give you a passage or two here, a verse or two here from Luke 21. And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. Now, here of course it means prosperity. Your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting. And of course, that is overeating and drunkenness. And of course, that’s drinking. The cares of this life. The poorer a man is, the fewer cares he has; and the more he gets, the more cares he has. And if he allows his heart to be overcharged, numb, overwhelmed with these earthly things, the day of Christ shall come upon him unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, watch ye therefore and pray always, that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.

Now, there’s an urgent exhortation that we might watch carefully, lest prosperity with its surfeiting, it’s over eating, it’s careless drinking and the cares of this life, unfit us for that day, and we should be caught like a little animal in a snare, when our Lord comes. Rather we ought to pray that we might be worthy to escape these things, and stand before the Son of Man.

Now, it’s an odd thing, but not only is prosperity dangerous, but adversity is dangerous. Brother Van Kepple who incidentally is in the hospital, and need your prayers, getting on all right after surgery. He often quotes when he arrives to testify, give me neither poverty nor riches, lest if I’d be rich I forget God, and lest if I be poor, I’d be tempted to steal. That was a wise practical little verse of the man of God in the Old Testament,

Now, adversity, that is financial reverses or physical afflictions. We’ll deal with them in turn. Financial reverses, that is, that’s the exact opposite of prosperity. And yet it is dangerous too, especially if it follows prosperity. Some people are so habitually in a state of financial reverses. I think they call that monetary impecuniosity. That is the name for it. But a lot of people are in that state so much that that there is nothing to react from. But if you’ve been reasonably prosperous and then you have reverses, it’s especially dangerous because prosperity tends to make us soft. We’re soft compared with our fathers. Now, don’t imagine we’re not.

I rather am glad we are. I’m glad we are. Our sons are getting taller, and our women stay younger looking longer. Down in the hills where a child goes to work in the cornfield at five, and plows at eight, and women milk half a dozen cows and churn the butter and hoe in the garden and help their husband in the field, they are old ladies at thirty. I know, I’ve been around a little. And at thirty, they’re old ladies, wrinkled and weary-looking with a thick, fuzzy voice and a drooping, disgusted attitude toward the world. Too much work and poverty can beat you. And it’s never good. The poets and the philosophers have all sung the praise of poverty. And about the only literary man I ever knew that had honesty enough to come right out and say he didn’t believe in poverty was Dr. Sam Johnson. He said, you can talk about it all you want to, it’s a, it’s a horribly, debilitating and discouraging thing and I don’t believe in it.

Well, too much poverty will beat you down and sicken you and weaken you and make you old before your time. But, if you’ve had prosperity, and then you’re plunged into reverses, you are likely to blow up because you’ve been made soft. Too much prosperity will make you soft. Too much poverty will do what I’ve described a moment ago. So, what do we do about it all? Well, to have prosperity suddenly removed from us means that it’s likely to take away the rock of our trust and plunged us into panic.

Now about physical afflictions. It’s an odd thing, how people react to physical illness, two opposite ways. Some react by using it as a means of grace. David said, before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I’ve kept Thy word. David got ill and while he was was ill, he had time to think it over and pray and wait on God. And he used his affliction as a means of grace. But there are others, who as soon as they’re touched with physical affliction, they throw in the towel. And I suppose, I ought to be ashamed to admit it, but I am in second category. People say, oh, I have been ill two weeks and what a time I’ve had waiting on God and getting caught up on my prayer and all the rest. And if I get a cold in my head, I’m finished until the cold gets out of my head again. If others don’t pray for me, I admit I don’t get very far. I can’t get a hold of myself.

My father was a strong man, a wirery, strong, tough man, and so far as I knew, I don’t think he was ever afraid of anything on four legs or two. I never knew anything my father was afraid of. He was completely fearless almost to the point of psychopathically fearless. But when he got a cold in his head, he became a whimpering baby. And everybody had to run after him and look after him. And he would moan, sigh and look around for sympathy. And it didn’t do him any good to get sick. That’s just as sure as you live. And his son follows in his footsteps.

But some people know how to use physical affliction. David did I say. Before I was inflicted, I went astray. He said, I got careless. But when I got sick, I had time to think it over, and I got right with God. Now, in any case, these are dangers, financial reverses or physical afflictions. But this little verse has comforted me, if thou faintest in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. I don’t know why that verse comforts me, but it does. It doesn’t promise anything. It just makes a rather uncomplimentary statement about a man. And yet, I get help out of that verse. If thou faintest in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. It’s in one of the Proverbs.

Now, I have a conclusion here, and of course, the conclusion ought to be the best part of what I’m telling you. So, listen to it, and if you want to, take down a few notes. How to avoid these dangers, the dangers of having too much and the danger of suddenly having not enough. The danger of a big bank roll, and the danger of debt. Opposite ends, related to each other. One is the seamy side of the other. But they’re here and they are dangers. And we need a Rock and a Shelter and a Hiding Place and a Fortress and a Buckler and a Shield and strength. We need help, because these are two dangers, a fat lion and a skinny, scrawny lion. The fat lion is prosperity, and the scrawny, hungry lion is adversity. But they’re both lions and they’re both sources of danger.

Now, how do we have we avoid it? I will give you about four rules. First of all, get thoroughly detached from earthly possessions. If you are not detached from earthly possessions, your every dollar you accumulate will be a blight on your spirit. But if you have an understanding with God that goes clear down in deep into tears and emotions and moves you, your increasing riches will not hurt you at all, because they’re not yours. You will hold them for the Giver as we sing. You will hold them for the Giver. God gave them and you’ll hold them for Him.

A man is a treasurer of General Motors. I don’t know who he is, but the man who is treasurer of General Motors. Well, for General Motors to prosper, it doesn’t hurt him any, because it isn’t his money. He just works for General Motors. And while he can sign checks, I suppose running into the hundreds of thousands and maybe a million dollars, he never signs them except he signs them for the company. He doesn’t say, look how much money I’ve got. He says the company has so much money and I’m the treasurer.

Now, as treasurer, it was called a steward back in the days of Jesus’ time. And Jesus talked about stewards looking after other people’s money. And if you consider your possessions, everything from the garment on your back, to your factory, or office or store or whatever you have, everything, if you consider it as being God’s and you being God’s steward, it won’t hurt you at all. And no matter how much it multiplies, it still won’t hurt you because it’s outside of you. Money never hurt any man as long as it stayed outside of him. It’s when it gets inside of him that the curse begins.

The monks of old times thought that the way to wit at prosperity was to choose poverty, and they took a vow of chastity in poverty. But a man can take a vow of poverty and go into a monastery and be just as proud and can own the very book and the very table in the very cell and can say, this is my cell. You stay out of it. This is my book, let it alone. This is my bunk, don’t you sleep on it, and he can still possess things even if he’s barefooted. He can be a possessor of something.

On the other hand, a man like, well, a man can own lots and still not possess a thing, and be completely cut away from it. For you see, getting rid of the curse of prosperity is not a physical thing. It’s a spiritual thing. A man is not free from prosperity, if you were to give everything away, and live on bread and water. He’d still have self and pride in his heart. But get rid of your possessions. Blessed is the man who possesses nothing, that’s a sermon I preached once, and wrote it later into a chapter in a book, The blessedness of the man who possesses nothing. And if we possess nothing, God will allow us to have lots. But, if we possess anything, we’re cursed by it.

So, get it outside of you. Get thoroughly detached from earthly possessions. Look out for a thrill, if you get a raise. Look out for a thrill if you get more money. Look out for a thrill that comes from possessions. A man had them one time. He built a great, big beautiful city. And he walked around it. And he said, behold this great Babylon which I have built, and God loved him too much to let him be an idolator. So, he struck me. And when he came back into the throne room, he was shaking his head and muttering, and somebody said, what’s the matter with His Majesty? Well, His Majesty went plain off his head, and had to go out into the field and eat with the beef. Seven years until his fingernails were as long as eagle claws, and his hair like eagle feathers. At the end of seven years, he said, my reason came back to me and I knew that the Lord God on high reined over the affairs of men. He had to take seven years in the pasture field to find out what you can know now, if you will. We’re no better than Nebuchadnezzar was by nature. So, let’s get thoroughly detached from earthly possessions.

Two, let’s break the grip of the world’s philosophies, the magazine ads, the radio, television, newspapers, conversation, social groups. That subtle philosophy underlies it all. I’ve got to keep up with the ads. I’ve got to keep up with the ads. I just must keep up with Life magazine. I must. All right, you’re not a very good Christian if that’s got you. A Christian is one who has said good bye to the philosophies of the world. Keeping up with the Joneses, good bye. They make us ashamed to wear a suit if it isn’t the latest cut. Ashamed to drive a car that isn’t the latest. Ashamed to live in a house that isn’t the latest grotesque monstrosity, like a lot of this stuff they’re building now. They make us ashamed to be a little behind the time. But a man who is big enough to know that he’s above all times, is big enough to dare to live boldly where he pleases, in style or out of style. It’s no act of righteousness to be out of style Mama. Maybe you just are slow. And it’s no sin to be in style. The glory lies in giving not one care to either, saying I will live decently and respectively and strike a happy medium and go my way and I don’t care what the world says.

But they feed it into us from the time we’re in kindergarten. They feed it into us and make us ashamed to wear clothing a little too long. Ashamed to not have, if we have a bicycle, it’s got to be the best one. If we have a car, it’s got to be the best one. Whatever we have has got to be the best. If you don’t get free from that, prosperity and adversity will grind you to pieces. Prosperity, if you have it, will kill you and adversity, if you have it will grind you. But, if you will get free from the world’s philosophies and dare to be a Christian standing on your own feet, thanking God for what you’re have and being an independent Christian, neither one of them will grind you. God will take you out from between the nether and the upper millstone.

These are the days when we’re even ashamed not to have traveled. Have you been to Europe? No, poor fellow. Emerson said best thing about travel is to show you didn’t have to travel. He said to travel around the world and come back and find what you’re looking for in your backyard. No, I think traveling is a good thing. But I’m not running around here with a permanent inferiority complex because I’ve not been to London. I’ve been invited often enough, but I’ve been too lazy to go or else fell I had too much to do and didn’t go. But watch it brethren. This using other people as examples and then trying to keep up psychologically so you don’t feel inferior. What a shame, God’s people.

Jesus was never out of Palestine. Jesus never wore a garment somebody didn’t make for Him. Jesus never owned anything that would have sold at auction probably for more than a dollar and a half. Yet, Jesus was the Lord of Glory and the riches of the world were His. He could have spoken to those stones and they’d been gold. He could have spoken to the trees and they’d have turned to rich wheat bread. He could have spoken to the very air and it would have blown riches to Him. And he walked calmly, quietly through the world and left one garment behind me. Not that he despised possessions, No. And if God gave you possessions, thank God for them.

While I was having breakfast this morning, I got up a little ahead of the rest. And when I was having breakfast, I was reading in dear old Thomas Traherne. Thomas Traherne said this, my sermon notes are already made, so I didn’t get anything from him for you particularly and didn’t get my message certainly from him. But he said this, he said God made a wonderful, beautiful world. And he said, some people think you oughten to enjoy it. He said, I don’t agree with them. I think we ought to enjoy all things that God has made, because God made them to be enjoyed. For instance, if somebody gives me a tie and I don’t wear it, it tells the fellow that I didn’t appreciate the tie. And if God gives you a blue sky or a flowing river or a singing bird or a lovely mountain and you say I don’t believe in enjoying earthly things, you’re saying to God, take it back, I don’t like it. So said Thomas Traherne in my language. I believe with him.

Jessie Penn-Lewis, who worked with Evan Roberts in the revival, and some people said, did him no good, teaches that we’ve got to condemn our enjoyment. All of our enjoyments our soul, she said. Soul and spirit are divided. The spirit is the redeemed part and the soul only can be redeemed if we if we deny it. So she says, we are not to enjoy anything in this world, music, art, literature, poetry, beauty, anything. She says sacrifice all of that enjoyment. Keep it unto life eternal.

I heard the mockingbird sing down in Virginia. Funny, those people down there, I said, oh, a mockingbird! Some of them said, yeah, I had’t noticed them. They said, I never hear them. You never hear a mockingbird? And here they were, up on TV antennas and on telephone poles and on trees, and on church steeples, singing like an angel. Now, somebody tells me, Tozer, if you like to hear that, you’re unspiritual. Who made that mockingbird? Did the devil put that harp together and throw a bunch of feathers around it, give it a tail and a pair of wings? Did the devil make the mockingbird? No, God made the mockingbird and he said, here’s a little present to you. He let it go out of his hand and it went fluttering around began to sing. Now, I’m not to enjoy it? I am to enjoy it. Sure, enjoy all God’s lovely world, but keep it all out of you. Keep everything out of you. Keep your heart clean, and keep God in your heart and keep everything outside.

The missionary in the South, that is the missionary who’s lived in the South and loved the mockingbird, if he’s called to go to Tibet, or Timbuktu where there’s not a bird, it’s his business to get up say, goodbye to the mockingbird. Thank God for the little delight he’s taken in it and go where never a mockingbird is heard. But the idea that when God gives it to you and it’s where you are, you can’t enjoy it, seems to me to be the height of fanaticism. And I still love to see the moon at night. And when I’m outside Chicago, I love to see the stars at night. So, break the grip of the world’s philosophies and make God everything. God is everything. You can have anything and still it won’t hurt you. If God is very little or nothing, anything will hurt you.

And then lastly, accept your status as a pilgrim. You’re a pilgrim dear friend. You’re not a resident here. You’re passing through, if you’re a Christian. We build no nest here for our hearts. We’re migrating to a permanent home. We’re migratory birds. Some of you that live out a little where such things take place. In another three weeks or four, three, maybe, you will see a brown bird with spotted breast and a white ring around its perfectly round eyes. And it will be down on the ground among the bushes scratching about all by itself. And it’ll be singing the gentlest, softest little song you’ve ever heard in all your life. Now, that’s an oven bird, a migratory bird.

The flight song of the ovenbird is one of the great things to hear on the North American continent, but there are no oven birds in Chicago. The ones that come here are migratory. They’re passing through from where they were, to where they’re going to go. And they just stop around your house long enough to give you a little taste of what their beautiful song is. They’re shy and you can’t get near them. But if you just be patient, you’ll hear them sing. Oven birds on their way from the South to the North to hatch and raise their little brood. Then, next fall, they will be back to scratch under your window again, they’re migrating. God’s children are not resident birds. They’re migratory birds. They’re passing through from where they were to where they’re going. And where they’re going of course is God Almighty’s heaven.

William Cullen Bryant when he was a young fellow just out of law school had passed his bar examination and hadn’t established himself yet as a lawyer. He left home to go to, I believe to Boston if I remember. One of the New England cities to hang out his shingle and being a home-loving boy, he was rather lonely and homesick. And sick at heart as he walked one night. One evening, and as he walked as the sun was going down, he looked up and saw a wild duck migrating. Mostly they travel in flocks, but this old duck must have gotten lost. And he was all by himself. And from seeing this wild duck flying all along, beating its way steadily toward the south, he wrote the famous poem To a Water Fowl. There are several verses, two of them being, Whither, ‘midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? He concludes by saying this, He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone, Will lead my steps aright alright.

I heard William Jennings Bryan quote that in that organ voice of his one time. And Bryan, the young Bryan picked himself up and accumulated himself, as they say, and went away with a big smile on his face and wrote this point. He said, I’m a lonely boy here, on the New England shores, but I know God and Christ and that bird tells me that the God who holds him up there safe as he migrates, will help me a migratory man. It will guide me all the way. And the old man of God said, brief life is here our portion, brief sorrow, short life care, but the life that knows no ending, the tearless life is there. We’re migratory birds. We’re pilgrims passing through. This is not our home.

So, let’s get saved from things and people’s opinions and ourselves and our money and our clothing and our possessions. And you’ll have these things, but use them reverently, thankfully wisely, and give them generously. And remember, we’re pilgrims, and that he who guides through the boundless air, the certain flight of the bird, will also guide us until we arrive at last on those shores that are washed by the water that flows from the throne of God. It’s worth waiting for brethren, it’s worth one little sacrifice it costs. Amen.

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” Dangers in the Way and How to Avoid Them Introduction “

“Sources of Danger”

March 20, 1955

Now, over the next few Sundays, I want to talk to you about dangers in the way and how we can avoid them. I read the other day these words, I will love Thee O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my Rock and my Fortress, my Deliverer, my God, my Strength, my Buckler, the Horn of my Salvation and my High Tower. And I said, How is this? What does a man want and what does he need of a rock or a fortress or deliverer? A rock is a place for a man of course to hide from his enemies. A fortress is a place for a soldier to go in. And a deliverer is somebody that delivers another from his troubles and dangers. A buckler is something you wear on as armor. The horn of salvation was, It was a figure drawn from the animals who won with their horns and he said God was his Horn, and my High Tower, a place where a man got up and looked out over the terrain, watched for approaching enemies and warned the fortress below.

Now, I said why are these words necessary here in a psalm and the answer came, because the Psalms are a reflected image of the Christian life. All life’s experiences are found in the Psalms. You will find here, life’s dangers, life’s joy, life’s sadness, life’s victories, life’s work and labor and defeat; you will find life’s night and life’s day, or shadows under sunshine, and life and even death itself, you will find here in the Psalms.

The Psalms are a mirror of this spiritual life. And in this Psalm we find words which indicate, that obviously, there are dangers in the Christian way, dangers from which we must escape, or know how to meet and conquer. And this is not my personal conclusion, but the whole Bible says the same thing. I conclude therefore, that since real dangers to the spiritual life do exist, it is proper that God’s people should be alerted to them, and that any Shepherd desiring to be a faithful Shepherd should point them out to the people. And then, not only point them out, but point a way of escape from them. It’s no good examining the patient if you don’t have a cure. It’s no good warning of the danger of attack if you don’t have a bomb shelter. It’s no good knowing that your enemy is coming if you don’t know how to meet your enemy.

So, over the next weeks, I’m going to speak in the mornings on “Dangers in the Way” and how we can avoid them. Now this morning, I’m not going to talk about any dangers, that is, I am not going to mention them specifically, but I want to mention the directions from which they come. There are only three directions from which danger comes to the Christian life. These are not in themselves dangers, but they are the cardinal directions from whence the dangers come. They are, the world through which we journey, and the god of this world, and our own unmortified flesh. Now, those are the three directions from whence dangers come that make it necessary that we have a rock, a fortress, deliverer, a buckler and a high tower and so on.

Now, I want to mention these briefly and explain them so that as we go on we will have  them as a background against which we can do our religious and spiritual thinking. There’s first of all the world. Now when I say that the world is a source of danger to the Christian. I don’t mean the wind and the storm and the lightning and the sea and the desert, all of which are very beautiful and very wonderful. I do not mean these dangers. Now, I know that there is danger. How long ago was it that the storm came through Southern Illinois and I think there were 800 killed and a couple of thousand injured and a hundred million dollars worth of damage done, if my figures are correct.

Now, I know that the wind is a source of danger, but it’s not a source of danger to the soul. It’s only a source of danger to the body and I have not that before me. And then the lightning, I know. I saw a man helped carry a man in who was struck down by lightning. He was standing in a new building that was being put up. And the porch was put up and the bricklayers had laid the chimney. And he was standing by that chimney when a storm came up. And the lightning struck the old gentlemen and killed him instantly. Now, there is danger from the lightning, but it’s not a real danger. David was thinking, as David was a spiritual man. And David might have been thinking as the external shell of proof of his physical enemies. But always David saw the spiritual side of things. And the Holy Ghost didn’t put this Psalm here to remind us that there was danger from lightning and storm and soldiers. Neither is the sea a source of danger, neither is the desert. There are certainly many bones lying in the desert, and how many bodies are floating around in the deep tomb that we call the oceans of the world. All that I well know, but you can destroy a human body and not injure a man at all.

We Christians ought to get hold of that as a basic philosophy of the Christian life, that you can destroy a man’s body and not injure the man at all. You can tear down the temple and not hurt the Spirit that dwells within. You can cause a man’s bones to lie in the desert and the man’s spirit can be unharmed in the presence of its Father and its God, so that the dangers that I say that are in the world are not the ordinary dangers, not even the A-bomb. I think it’s time that we Christians call a moratorium on A-bomb and H-bomb scares. I think that we ought to remember that that’s not our source of danger. You can polarize a man with an H bomb, but not all the H-bombs in no world can touch his immortal spirit. Real dangers are dangers that get through to the soul and get through to the spirit of a man.

Now, these threats I say are only to the body. There was John the Baptist; soldiers cut his head off, but they didn’t hurt John at all. When our Savior died on the cross, His body was destroyed, that is, it was broken for me as He put it, broken for you. But the man Christ Jesus was preserved in the bosom of God. And so with Paul, when they cut off his head. Why, he said, I know that there is prepared for me, and that there’s laid up for me a crown of glory. So, he went to that crown, rather than to defeat when they cut his head off. No real harm can come through the physical body to a man, but only through the soul. 

What then do we mean by the world when we say that real dangers come to the Christian through the world? Well, it is through human society. A gentleman out in front of this church the other day, gave me a little booklet about the size of the average Gospel of John. He said he was an Episcopalian. He comes here sometimes Sunday night. He lives down the block. A very wonderful, friendly Christian brother. And they they put out, the Episcopal Church puts out a little booklet for Lent, and my wife and I have been looking that over and reading it Sunday mornings, I mean on mornings for prayer. And yesterday, quite to my delight and surprise there was a message on the world, and a warning, a sharp warning that we should avoid the world and escape it and get away from it; that it was dangerous to us. And it said, what do we mean by the world?  It said, society organized outside the will of God.

Now, you couldn’t find a better definition for the world than that, society outside the will of God. And that’s human society. As long as sin remains, human society will be a threat to the Christian soul. Its sin, its unbelief, its diversions, its ambitions, and its spirit. However, skillfully disguised, the world is still the world. And that is why the Bible is so very stern and so very insistent. You will find lots of Christian leaders who will apologize and compromise and smooth things over, but you’ll find nothing but stern insistence in the Bible that we are to forsake the world. And that we ought not to in anywise be influenced by its sin, nor its unbelief, nor its diversions, nor its ambitions, nor its spirit. In any sense of the word, the dangers that come to the Christian, come through the world party. That’s one of the directions from whence they come.

Now, blessed are you if you know what I’m speaking about. And blessed are you if you know how to put it in practice. Blessed are you if God has opened your eyes to know what I mean. If He has not, I don’t know very much that I can do. I sometimes feel as Jesus must have felt when He said, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killeth the prophets and stoneth them that are sent unto thee. How often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. And verily I say unto you, ye shall not see me until the time come when you shall say, blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.

I would like to prophesied a little. I would like to stand here to tell you something. I foresee it, that the man that God’s eyes, whose eyes God has opened, I see the time coming, I see the time coming when worldly evangelicalism will be deserted one by one, by all the holy men whose eyes are open, and their house will be left desolate, and they’ll not have a man of God, nor a man in whom the Holy Ghost dwells, left among them. We have become so worldly. And I say, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I, but she you would not listen. 

Then so, the man who sees it is put on the shelf and written off as being somewhat of a decent chap, but somewhat fanatical. And watch it my brethren, when the day is going to come, I’d like to live a hundred years yet. I don’t want to die, but I’m willing to die tonight. But I would like to live a hundred years yet to watch its developments and see how things are going. And I’d like to see that which I foresee come to pass. And I would like to live to see the time when the holy and the separated and the envisioned walk out of worldly fundamentalism and form a group of their own. And get off the sinking ship and let her go down in the brackish cruel waters of worldliness while we form a new ark and ride out the storm. Because the world is upon us and the Bible has no compromise to make with it. The Bible has a message for it. And the Bible calls it back home and the Bible sends us to it, but never to compromise with it. And never to walk its way, and only and rather to save it if possible, or save as many as we can. That’s one direction.

So my Christian friend, you’re settling back snugly into your foam rubber chair, and resting in your faith and John 3:16 and the fact that you accepted Christ. You had better watch yourself. Take heed to thyself, lest thou also be found wanting. Take heed and search your own heart lest, and all has been said and done, it is found that you have been tied up with the world. A stock illustration which you can’t refrain from giving. I don’t use many, except the ones I make up myself. But, I heard this and I think it’s true. They said when it was still snowing and cold up at Niagara Falls, when there were great blocks and chunks of ice going over the falls and sheep had died; I’ve seen the same thing happen. I could see how it would be. When sheep had died and had been thrown, or had fallen into the waters. They said that they were floating down, these great bloated sheep, floating down and over the falls, and some great American eagles were swooping down on the sheep and riding along and tearing at their flesh, and eating and gorging until they started over the falls. And then they screamed and waved their wings and circled and soared into the sun and back up the river again to find another carcass. And then getting down onto it, and tearing it, and eating until it started over the falls, and then pulling loose and circling away.

But it was very cold weather and it was those times when you freeze and don’t know you’re freezing. And they said, one great Eagle was tearing away with its great talon buried in the wool of the sheep, and unknown to it, its talons had frozen into the wool. And when it felt the sheep give away under it and ready for the plunge, it screamed once more and waved its wings, but it was frozen into the wool. And with one last screem, it went over the falls to its death on the rocks below.

Now, we have been living off the world and floating around on the world and then gracefully pulling away when it went into the gutter. But still, we’ve been riding the carcass of the world, and then just guess, getting away in time. How far can I go and not go over? How far can I go and still not go over? Would you please answer in your magazine and tell me what I can do and still not be lost? Just how far can I go? Well, we’ve been doing that and doing that, and one of these days, we’re going to freeze our claws into the world’s wool and go over with the world. There’s only one thing today to do, spread your broad wings and soar into the sun and let the floating carcasses of the world alone to the god of this world, Satan. That’s another source. That’s a direction from whence all these dangers come; any danger may come.

Now, the devil is called by four names in the Bible. He’s called the Dragon, the Serpent, the devil and Satan. He’s called the Dragon in such places as Revelation 12. That is, it’s the devil when he’s in government. When the devil in the Roman Empire was busy destroying the church, they named him the Dragon. And they said, he is like the dragon. And I can see how the Romans; they say that thirteen million Christians alone perished around the city of Rome in the first two centuries. And I can see as they saw their loved ones led away and beheaded one after the other. I can see how they said this is the Dragon. This is the devil in government. And I think of the six million Jews that died in gas chambers and other means and methods of execution under Hitler. I can see how they might say, Satan is in this man Hitler, and he’s threshing his dirty destructive tail around and killing people. Whenever the devil gets into government and starts persecuting, he’s called the dragon in the Bible.

Communism today is killing them over there. We have hope and optimism, but we don’t know how many are dying, but we do know it must be many. That’s the devil in government. Now, I don’t say the devil is in every government. It would be pretty hard for me to believe that the devil could ever get into as kindly a man as our President, or as fine a young man as our Vice President, or as fine a man as our Governor, or as fine an old gentleman as our mayor. I’m not saying the devil is in these men. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that politicians are devil-possessed men. I’m only saying that there are times when this dragon can so wind himself into government that he takes it over and starts his destructiveness, then it’s the dragon. He’s the Dragon when he’s destroying it.

And then, there he’s called the Serpent also. The same one only he’s got a different mask on this time. In here, he wouldn’t hurt you for the world. He wouldn’t kill you. He wouldn’t put you in jail. He wouldn’t cut your head off. He’s a wily, smiling, slick tempter working by cunning and deception, and winning by compromise and tolerance and patience, and getting your confidence and then selling you the Brooklyn Bridge. The confidence man of Hell with his tricks and his cunning and his deceitfulness. That’s the serpent; the smooth slick serpent. He didn’t go to the desert to destroy Jesus with a blow on the head. He went and said, speak to these stones that they be made bread. He knew that if Jesus the Son of God had listened to the devil and turned and spoke to a stone and and done a miracle out of the will of God, that he would have destroyed Him more easily than if he had put a spear through His heart. But he didn’t tell Him that. He was a compromiser. He said, poor you, you’re hungry aren’t you. Patted his shoulder and said, poor you. Why don’t you get some bread here? You’ve got the power, you know you have. And Jesus said, a man shall not live by bread alone. He said, I’ll give you all the kingdoms of the world, and Jesus said something to the effect that He was not to fall down and worship anybody, but worship God alone. But he was also smooth and slick. Ah my brother, the devil is an orator, and he’s a smooth as a salesman, the wrong kind. He’ll sell you anything. So that’s a direction.

Now I don’t want you to become devil-conscious. Even though I’m talking about the god of this world at the same time, I don’t want you to be devil-conscious, because I have met Christians who are jumpy because of the devil. The best thing to do is keep your eyes on Jesus and let him take care of the devil. But always remember, he is a source of danger. And then, he, this god of the world is called the devil. I’ve called him the Dragon,  the Serpent, and now he is called the devil. That he is diabolus. He is the opposer. He is what you call a counter puncher.

I’ve always been interested in boxing. Just the wind off a good blow would knock me out. But I’ve always been interested in it anyhow. And I listen to them sometimes on the radio, the counter puncher and not much anymore. But I used to be much interested. I used to box when I was a kid, a very, very lot. And I could at least lift the gloves. But there’s such a thing as a punch and there’s a counter puncher. and the counter puncher is this, he never leads, but he waits for the other fellow to lead, and then he ducks and counter punches. Always, for every blow that is aimed at him, he has a defense and then and a quick counter punch. And there have been great fighters who are not punchers, but counter punchers. And the devil is a perfect counter puncher. No matter what a Christian tries to do, the devil blocks him and hits him a blow. Not a bad one, just enough to stun him a bit. And wherever you find the work of God going on, you’ll find the devil there counterpunching, hitting back, hitting back, always hitting back, always hitting back. He’s not omnipresent, but he’s ubiquitous. There’s a difference. God is omnipresent, present everywhere at once, but the devil gets you around so fast that it adds up to almost the same thing.

So, no matter where the work of God is going forward, you will find the devil there blocking and countering and hindering. I told you when I preached some years ago about how the devil got his name, the devil. There used to be in the Greek Olympic races, they had some fellow who they didn’t want to win, and some scoundrel would hide with a long javelin, a long, lance affair, like a clothesline pole. You wouldn’t know what I mean by that. And as a racer would go racing down on his way to win, this fellow would hide behind a hedge somewhere, and as the racer raced by, he would just throw that lance between the fellow’s legs. But you know what would happen? He’d be rolling yet, because he was doing time pretty fast, and when that lance went in between, it didn’t hurt him much, but it just tumbled him over, and by the time he got untangled, the other fellow is five miles down the road. And that’s the way the devil works. That follow was called Diabolus. And they just put that name right on to the devil. They said, that’s the way he works. And a child of God is running the holy race. Satan is either blocking him, always blocking him and and tripping him so that he falls. Now that’s a danger.

Then another. Another name for the devil is Satan. And as Satan, he is the accuser of the brethren. He tries to destroy a reputation before God and before men. Whenever a man’s reputation is torn down, you may be sure who did it. Whatever agent he may have used, or whatever old gossip he may have gotten into, he’s the author of it. So, we have this god of the world; the Serpent, the Dragon, the devil and Satan.

Then, the third source of danger is the unmodified self. That’s the direction from which great dangers come to the Christian. Now, I’m going to bring this to a close, but this is only really an introduction. But, I point out the dangers I’m to preach about, and these sources of danger are very, very real. They’re not imaginary. They are real and only the very reckless will ignore them. Only a reckless driver will ignore a red light. Only a very reckless driver will ignore a sign says, “S Curve” or “Slippery when Wet.” It takes a fool of some kind to ignore danger signals. And no Christian who is serious, I’m preaching, I want to at least preach to serious-minded Christians. And if you’re a serious-minded Christian, then you will not take this as just one more sermon to fill up time. But you will take this series in a very serious way. The serious and the wise want to know where the dangers are. And they want to know what they are. And they want to know how they can recognize them, and how they can overcome.

Now, I’m going to name some for instance, I won’t name all now, but I’m going to preach on the dangers of prosperity. I believe there’s real danger to the souls of men in prosperity. I’m going to mention the dangers of adversity. I think there’s a real danger to the sons of God in adversity. I’m going to talk about the dangers of idleness, with nothing to do, and I’m going to talk about the dangers of busyness, with too much to do, and dangers of victory and dangers of defeat. There are dangers that come from one of these three directions, but they come.

Now, what are you going to do? Just name dangers over the next weeks, Ah, my brethren, we’re going to name them and show you how to escape them. And then we’re going to show you what God said here to this man David. Notice, he said the Lord is my Rock and Fortress and Deliverer.  He had to have help. So he said, I will call upon the Lord who was worthy to be praised. So shall I be saved from mine enemies. And he said, God sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy and from them which hated me, for they were too strong for me. He brought me forth also into a large place. He delivered me because He delighted in me. I believe that deliverance is is not only possible, but normal for the child of God, if we have our eyes open.

God doesn’t want us to walk around with our eyes closed nor careless. But if our eyes are open, we don’t need to be struck down. If our eyes are open, we don’t need to fall, for our eyes are open. No matter what direction, no matter what the enemies are, we have David’s God for our help. And if we will call upon the Lord and cry unto Him, He will hear from His holy temple and He will send from above and take us and deliver us out of many waters. And He will deliver us because He delights in us.

And never was a time when I felt that God’s people should be more optimistic than now. Never a time when I felt that they should be more encouraged in God than right now. We’re living in wild, turbulent, dangerous, dramatic days. The four winds are striving on the great sea. And the moon is mourning the time when it shall be turned to blood. You and I need not fear. God is on our side. And God’s on His holy throne and in His holy temple. And all is right with the man or woman who dares to believe. Do you believe it? Amen.

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Tozer Talks

” Take Heed How Ye Hear “

June 16, 1957

Now, in the book of Luke, the book of Luke, verses 16-18 of the eighth chapter. Luke 8:16-18. No man, when he hath lighted a candle, covered it with a vessel or putteth it under a bed, but setted it upon a candlestick that they which enter in may see the light. For nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest. Neither anything hid that shall not be known and come abroad. Take heed therefore how you hear. For whosoever hath to him shall be given, and whosoever hath not from him shall be taken even that which he seems to have. Now, verse 18, the first sentence, Take heed, Take heed how you hear. I want to talk a little word about that. Now, the text says, take heed how ye hear.

Now, when the great God would bring salvation to us, He let it ride on a voice. He let it ride on a sound. And salvation was to begin now, where we are, and continue through successive stages of progression until we are glorified. For always remember, that you don’t have full salvation till you’re glorified.

I’m a little shy. I just learned the other day that a president of a well-known Bible Institute or seminary said I was a legalistic, that is Tozer was a legalistic sanctificationist.  I thought that was nice. And I appreciate that. If I were keeping a diary, I’d write that in for my grandchildren. But, I may in some people’s eyes be a legalistic sanctificationist, but I shy away from a lot of the terms that are used even in our own society. I shy away from the term “fourfold gospel.” The God I know isn’t satisfied with four-foldness or five-foldness nor ten-foldness nor twelve-foldness or one hundred-foldness, but He multiplies Himself and magnifies His glory, and surprises us with new and wondrous revelations of Himself that far exceed our little fourfold.

And then I don’t like the word Full Gospel. I suppose I should, but I don’t. I like it when you mean it in it’s great, emotional flow, full salvation, full salvation. Yes, I like that. But to put a word before the gospel, a word of man’s choosing, I don’t quite like it–Full Gospel. You see my brethren, you don’t have full salvation really, until you’re glorified.

Now, it is the will of God that we should be saved by hearing it. And that we should begin to hear now and that we should obey and follow and go on, until we pass through, stage after stage and finally, be glorified at last. And God, in doing all this, proceeds after a known law of life. It is, that man can change. Change and decay in all around I see. And that’s one of the saddest things in the world, that we change so. We change, change and decay, but it’s also one of the most comforting things that I know.

I want to ask a question, now just ask a question and trust to your humility and realism to answer it. Would you like to have a visitation from an angel? Or would you like to have a messenger from heaven, or the messenger of the Annunciation, an angel of the Annunciation, to come to you and say, Mr. McAfee and others, and I could name all of you. I have a message from the Most High God. It is that you remain, and it is so decreed by the Everlasting Father, that as you are at this moment, you shall be eternally, period. You have been, this is the judgment of God, and the decision of the Most High. There’ll be no change from here on. It seems to me, that that alone would be cause enough for one hundred days mourning and thirty days fasting to be told you’ll never change. You’ll remain as you are.

I say, this would be an annunciation so terrible, a declaration so frightening, that I think that instead of it’s bringing happiness to us, it would drive us into despair. For it is the hope of every man who has named the holy name of Jesus, that he’s going to be better tomorrow than he was today. That if he lives through fifty-seven, it will add up to something better than fifty-six. And if he lives through fifty-eight, it will be better than fifty-seven. Not more money, not more prosperity, not better weather, not more health, not that, but that it’ll be a better man in God.

That I say is our hope brethren, that we can change; that we are not fixed, that God Almighty hasn’t cast us in and fixed us by an eternal changeless fire. It’s predicated, this message that we hear from God, this message through the Word, it’s predicated upon our ability to change. If you’ve got a temper tonight like the very devil, it’s possible for you to be so delivered, that the change will be noticed by everybody that knows you near and afar. And no matter what habits you have, or what mental habits or what vices you may have, there is power in the gospel of Jesus Christ to change you so completely, that it’s like changing a beast into an angel.

There is power, there is potential in man to change. You don’t have to continue to be what you are. And it seems to me that’s the first message the world ought to know. You can be different. That’s the first message the world ought to know. And the Gospel should follow that message, for preaching any gospel without that basic knowledge, that I can change, that God can change me. That I am not fixed like concrete, but pliable like clay. And this is a known law of life, and God takes advantage of it. I don’t know, but what the angels that sinned and kept not their first estate may have been fixed eternally, unable to change. At least there’s no hope for them, but for you and me there’s hope. Man can change.

And not only change, but learn. And so there’s the sounding of a voice through the Word, the Living Voice when you open this book. When you open this book, don’t read it as you would read a newspaper or a classic. Expect to hear something in it. Expect it to speak to you, and expect the Voice to vibrate. Expect it to be alive. For the words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit, and they are life. And this book is a live book. It’s only dead to the dead and to the hopelessly, dead. To all others, it’s a live book.

You see my brethren there’s a difference between redemption and salvation. Jesus Christ died on the cross and provided redemption there. And there isn’t anything that can be added to redemption. Redemption is the finished work of Christ on the tree. The finished work that is, He finished that part, of the dying on the cross. That part was done. When Christ said it is finished, He didn’t mean redemption was finished. He meant that part of redemption was finished. The rest of redemption was, that He had to rise again and go to the right hand of the Father. For He saved us by his death, but justifies us by His resurrection. Let’s not bear down too hard on that single phrase, “it is finished.” For when He said, it is finished, He meant the giving out of His life, the pouring out of His life, the atonement, the the sacrifice was made, the Lamb was dying. But if God had not received the Lamb, salvation would never have been, redemption would never have been accomplished.

But God accepted the Lamb, raised Him from the dead, sealed Him and put it on high, and made him Lord and Christ, and thus affected redemption; so, the redemption is all Jesus Christ did for us. From the time He picked up His cross until the time He sat down at the Father’s right hand, that’s redemption. And that’s done and there’s nothing we can add to it. Not the keeping of the Sabbath, not the eating of certain meats, not the long periods of fasting, not even prayer can add anything to that. Long before you existed, when you were only a forethought in the mind of God, it was all done, it was all done and there’s nothing to be added; nothing, nothing to be added.

There are cults, adventism, and others. They are cults that say that there’s something we must add, that it was not finished, not done. There’s something we must add. I believe that to be blasphemy, that there’s anything we must add. Nothing more is to be added. This Man, when he had made one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down on the right hand of God. From henceforth expecting until His enemies be made His footstool. Nothing can be added and any attempt to add is to insult the Savior, who gave His all. That’s redemption. Salvation is something else.

Salvation is redemption applied to the individual life. Redemption is objective. It’s that which is done. It is that which was done before you were born, before America was a nation, before the Crusades, before the fall of Rome. It was that which was done, in that relatively short period of time, redemption, the Lamb was led out to die. He died, rose and sat down, in what the old theologians call, His session, His seating for God. Now that’s redemption.

But, the application of that objective truth to me subjectively, that’s salvation. And so, salvation is both a human and the divine thing. Salvation is divine, in that God did that which man could not do, and redemption is 100% divine. And there’s nothing that any man can do, or angel can do. That’s divine. But salvation has a human element and a human side to it. It means that I’ve got to make a response to that redemptive message. That I have to make a response to it, otherwise it does not become saving to me.

Christ died for Englewood, and redemption was provided for Englewood. But Englewood is not saved. Why? Because Englewood made no response. And the sinners that we know that die every day, are sinners and die in sin, not because they were not redeemed by the blood of Christ, but because they do not respond, they do not hear. Now, it is our part to understand and to hear, to hear and to understand and to respond. Remember that we can sit and hear truth and be none the better for it. Remember that it is the response to truth.

Suppose that you’re ill with a certain kind of disease for which there has been a specific cure discovered. And say, the yaws, is that the name of that disease in the Valley, the yaws. It’s a disease that eats the fingers off and eats the nose off and eats the ears. It’s a terrible thing. And what I can learn, one or two injections of penicillin will cure it. And they are having difficulty over there making the heathen understand they’re not gods. And that this is not a Jesus needle, and it’s not a miraculous thing.

But suppose we had a terrible disease here and suppose you had it. And there was a specific that was discovered that would cure it in twenty-four hours. And suppose that a man got up before you and for forty-five minutes, lectured on that medicine, and told what it would do, the cure it would affect, and then suppose that he threw the meeting open and twenty-five people got up and said, I want to testify that what that man said is true. I had that disease, I took that medicine, and look at me now. I can do a day’s work and feel good and sleep, as my father used to say, like a top. Well, has anything been done for you yet? No, you’re sitting down there. You’re hearing a man tell of the merits of a certain medicine. You’re hearing people testify that that medicine cured them, but nothing’s happened to you. You still have your disease.

What are you supposed to do? You’re supposed to hear it, believe in it, and do something about it. That’s exactly what it is in salvation. The blood of Jesus Christ is the medicine of immortality. And the dying and rising and living and pleading of the Savior is redemption without anything man can add. It is God Almighty’s universal panacea. But you’ve heard that talked about until it’s old stuff to you. And until you have heard with faith, and then risen to do something about it, and apply it to your own self by obedient faith, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s all objective, all outside of you. It must become subjective and get inside of you. No confirmatory work has to be done. We need to look for nobody, to nobody for confirmation. It’s all been done.

In the beginning was the Word, and there’s a speaking word. And because in the beginning was the Word and you were created in the image of the Word, you can understand the Word. And even though fallen like the man, the young man far from home in that fire country among the swine, it’s still because you were made in the image of God, and in the beginning was the Word and all things were made by the Word and without Him was not anything made that was made. You have in you the ability to hear the Word. Take heed, how ye hear, for redemption is yonder. Salvation is when redemption that is yonder becomes present and within us by obedience and faith. So, there is a Voice, and it sounds living and vibrant all through the Word. But you know, there are different kinds of hearers. I’ve looked through the Scriptures to notice the different kinds of hearers. Don’t get braced for long sermon, I’m going to be brief.

There are a number of a number of hearers, perhaps there are six or seven of them here and enough for each one for a sermon. But I’m going to condense them and point out what what kind of hearers we may be. For instance, here’s a faithless hearer, a hearer without faith. Israel had the gospel preached unto them, said Paul, but it did not help them because it was not mixed with faith. There was no faith in the hearts of the people that heard it. So, it’s possible to be a hearer without any faith at all.

And then, here’s a dull hearer. A dull hearer is a bored hearer. Do you know that if you could take all the dullness that there is in Protestant religion and bottle it, and if you could burn it, you could heat the whole United States all the winter of 1957, and if it was like gasoline, you could run all the trucks on the highways for the next five years with it. Because boredom is one thing that is pretty present in the church of Christ.

And somebody will say immediately, well, you preachers make it so and there’s a lot of truth in that, a lot of truth in that. We do. We do. We talk about things the most important in a tone of voice that has no interest whatever, no vibrancy. We give the impression of, so what. I know that boredom is partly the result of the pulpit. But also, boredom is partly the result of people trying to feed people who aren’t hungry, and trying to get people to seek God, who don’t want God. And trying to get people to get their life insured, who don’t think they’re going to die. And trying to get people to get ready for our second world when they don’t believe there’s any more than one, or they live as if they believed in only one world. A lot of that boredom, that dullness, is a result of hearing and hearing and not doing anything about it.

Then, there’s the critical hearer. I find him in the Bible, too. He’s the fellow that wants to know about the grammar and if it isn’t quite what it should be. He won’t listen, and he wants to know about the delivery, and is it, is it forceful? When I go anywhere and I’m advertised as a forceful preacher. I always remember what they said about the egg that’s fairly fresh. Is there anybody that wants to eat a fairly fresh egg? It’s what you call damning with faint praise. But there’s the critical hearer. Is the preacher forceful? And how are his illustrations? Do you know what? If you knew that at 12 o’clock tonight, the sound of the trumpet should echo through the land. And all the old forgotten graveyards of our Puritan fathers should be visited by the Holy Ghost, and the dead should rise and the living changed, the poorest preacher in Chicago would be an orator in your ears, and you’d be glad to hear any little thing, critical hearers.

Then, there’s the forgetful hearer; and Satan steals the seed. And there’s the neglectful hearer, who has good intentions and his good intentions are always put for his deeds. He never, he’s always intending to do it. Did you ever stop to think how much you’d have done if you had done what you had intended to do? Did you ever think how far you’d be out along on the highway toward heaven if you had done all that you intended to do? If you had sought God as you intended to seek Him? No. Hell is paved with good intentions, our Fathers said.

Then, I read in my Bible of the trembling hearers, when that jailer trembled and fell down and said, what shall we do? Oh, what shall we do? He said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. And there’s a submissive hearer as we read about matters in Cornelius’s household. There’s a congregation that anybody could have preached to.  It wouldn’t have cost you one dollar; do you know it? It would have cost you a dollar,

Now, the price of souls is going up these days. Peter preached and 3,000 were converted, and the overhead was exactly nothing. It didn’t cost anybody a dime, not a dime. But it’s been going up now in recent times. And so, it takes thousands and thousands of dollars to rescue one sinner, because we’re not submissive. Cornelius’s household didn’t cost anything to get them converted, because they said, here we are Lord, ready to hear whatever Thou has to say to us. So, Peter preached the gospel and while he was speaking to them, the Holy Ghost fell on them. That’s because they were ready for it. They were a people submissive and prepared and ready to hear what God the Lord will speak.

Ah, how precious is the little time that we’ve got left, how precious is the little time.  And how vital is this little time, to the long, long future that lies before us. Take heed how you hear. Some of you have had the good fortune, and the misfortune, to be brought up in Christian homes where you heard the Word from the time you were born. They say that preacher’s children are sometimes the very hardest to reach and the ones that go the farthest astray.

That isn’t always true and history will show that it isn’t true. I once saw a chart of how many of the presidents of the United States and vice presidents and the leaders everywhere who were preacher’s children; and great leaders, college presidents, great missionary statesman, preacher’s children. So, they’re not as bad as they’re said to be, but I think I know why they sometimes hear in a bored way because they’ve just have it from the time they can remember, just from the time they can remember and sometimes not much life in them, they’re dull, routine, routine religion is like a routine kiss–who wants that? I ask you now, who wants that? And who wants routine religion? If it isn’t involuntary and impulsive, it isn’t religion at all.

And we grind it out sometimes, and make the poor little fellows sit. Mrs. Dietz used to say, God says to the little children squirm and we say to the little children, now sit still. That’s in Sunday school class, God says squirm, and we say, now sit still. And we make them sit still and listen to that which they don’t understand and wonder why they’re bored. And yet my friend, if we only knew it, we only knew it, that boy, that Word, that dual message, for it is a dual message. It’s a message of reproof and a declaration of intention. The reproof is, repent ye, and the intention is to save you through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, if you will hear that message, now dig at your heart and dig up your fallow ground, and get free from the dull boredom of it all. And shake yourself and say, am I a faithful is hearer, or do I believe what I’m hearing? Am I hearing interestedly, or am I a dull, bored hearer? Am I a critical hearer? Am I a humble, submissive hearer, ready to hear what God the Lord will speak. It’s going to mean a tremendous lot to you in that great Day, which can’t be very far away.

It’s going to mean everything in that great Day. You can change. You’re not frozen, fixed by fiat of God, to be what you are now, but you can be changed. The power of the gospel is a transforming, recreating in power. And it can change characters. It can change dispositions. Somebody says, Mr. Tozer, my disposition is so bad that I would poison heaven if I went there; and wouldn’t we all. But there’s deliverance, there’s change, there’s possibility lying here. The Book tells us, hear the voice, come unto me. Hear the voice. It says lo, I stand at the door and knock. Any man who hears and opens, I will come in. And all such passages, both in Old and New Testaments, they ring with invitation and warn and console and plead, hear the Voice. Take heed to how you hear!

Some of you young people have been reared on the Sunday school. You’ve been brought-up, you were brought here when you’re still in your first year and dedicated. You can likely to become dull; I want to warn you. You had better ask God Almighty to put life and the nerve inside your soul and don’t let it die, by the grace of God. What about it tonight? What about you young fellow? What about it?

Somebody wrote me about a young child, Tommy their son, I guess maybe five years old, a son of one of the teachers at Nyack. And they said, let’s go down to the Alliance church in Nyack and hear Mr. Tozer. And Tommy said, oh, I heard that man once. And I wonder how many little Tommy’s there are who feel the same way about it? I heard him.

Well, I admit that sometimes it’s pretty the same and some time it’s pretty dull. But, it’s a thrilling, thrilling wondrous life-giving fact that however poor the preacher, God is calling men to Himself. And if we will but listen. What about you?

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Messages

Tozer Talks

” The Kingdom Lies Not in Words “

June 16, 1957

I want to read a section from the book of 1 Corinthians, fourth chapter. Let a man says Paul, let a man, so count of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. But with me it is very small thing that I should be judged of you. Yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord. He said, these charges you bring against me, I don’t know any of them that are true, but he said, I’m not hiding behind that. He that judges me is the Lord. Therefore, judge nothing before the time until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and we’ll make manifest the counsels of the heart. And then shall every man have praise of God. In verse 15, he says, for though he has 10,000 instructors in Christ, yet have you not many fathers, for in Christ Jesus, I have begotten you. Since you believe, said Paul, through my preaching, 10,000 people have instructed you, but don’t forget, I preached the gospel that won you, Wherever I beseech you be ye followers of me. For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church. Now some are puffed up, as though I would have not come to you. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will. And then I will know not the speech of them, which are puffed up with the power. For the kingdom of God is not in Word, but in power. What will ye? Shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness? Or are you going to accept the truth and begin to obey it so that I can come in love and in the spirit of meekness? Now, that’s what Paul said in partly in that fourth chapter of First Corinthians epistle.

Now Paul, had authority, there’s no getting around that. He had the authority of the chief apostle. He was appointed by the Lord for several things, one of them being to receive and shape church truth. The man Paul received the revelation from God which was behind. Jesus said, I have many things to say to you, but you can’t receive them yet. But when the Spirit of God comes, He will reveal these things, and He will take of Mine and will show them unto you. And that Spirit that came entered to Paul when Ananias prayed for him. He was filled with that same Holy Spirit. And he received that which was behind. And he was the mold in which God poured it. And then he was also appointed by the Lord to set up a system and polity for the church, for there was system and there was polity. And he was appointed by the Lord to embody all authority that there was in the meantime. And then, perhaps most important of all, to show by example, the Christian way. He said, I sent to you Timothy, my beloved son and faithful in the Lord, and He will bring to your remembrance my ways, which be in Christ.

See the man of God here was having his authority under cut by schismatic men who came in and taught that Paul was not a real apostle. They said the reason Paul isn’t a real apostle, he never saw the Lord. The other apostles walked with Jesus while he walked among men, but this man Paul was not, is not an apostle. And we can prove it by the fact that he never walked, he came after Jesus died and had risen. That was their argument. They overlooked the vision Paul had of Jesus of one born out of due time.

And these schismatic and dividers of the church had to repudiate Paul’s authority in order to establish their own. And they attacked Paul and as far as Paul was personally concerned, he said, it didn’t matter. He said, it’s a very small thing with me that I should be judged by you. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t care. He said, I don’t even judge my own self, I’m in the hand of God. But he knew that if he was going to have any authority, he was going to have to establish that authority. And so, we sent Timothy, to tell them about Paul and straighten them out. And then finally, he warns them this, he said, now I’m coming in the will of God one of these times to you. And it’s alright for you while I’m not there, to listen to these schismatics and these puffed-up fellows. Isn’t it strange that there isn’t anything new under the sun?

I remember years ago, there used to be a writer for The Daily News. What was his name? He died finally, but a very wonderful writer up on the literary level. And he once went to see the old Greek play Lysistrata. And he came back after seeing it and he reported it in his column. He said, I went to see the old Greek play by Aristophanes. And he said, I came away deeply discouraged. And he said, here’s what discouraged me. Not that it wasn’t well written, not that it wasn’t well done. But he said, I came away convinced that nobody had been able to think of a new joke in 2400 years, that everything old Aristophanes wrote into his funny play, he said, is floating all around here.

Now, that was a worldly man talking about a worldly thing. But the same thing is true in the spiritual life. So many of us imagine that we’re original. There’s nobody original except Adam. And if you find puffer-uppers and men who are puffed up now, Paul wrote in the eighteenth verse, now some are puffed up, and some are puffed up thinking that I won’t come. But when I come, he said, and I’ll do it shortly, I’ll make a test. And I’ll not test the words of these men, but I’ll test their power. For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

Now, here’s what I want particularly to emphasize. The kingdom of God doesn’t lie in words. I am among a few who are trying to tell the church that in this day. I was encouraged Thursday, as you know, I spoke and Brother McAfee sang and we kind of took Wheaton over Thursday. And after the last talk, Dr. Redmond came over and said, well, God bless A.W., keep telling them. There are a few that see it, but not very many yet. But re-see, or see over again, see again what they saw back there, that the kingdom of God is not in words but in power.

You see, the words are the form of truth. They’re the outward image of truth only. And they can never be the inward essence. And words are incidental. They’re incidental. If I were to say, now everybody here that can speak Swedish, bring your New Testament next Sunday. And everybody that speaks German bring yours, Norwegian yours. And so, we have a half a dozen different languages. And I would say now read that fourth of Revelation. It would be quite a revelation or First Corinthians. It would be quite a revelation to us to hear that the words were only incidental. It was the meaning that matters.

Somewhere in the middle of this all there is a meaning, a spiritual meaning. And the six different people embody that meaning in six different set of words. And those words were not alike, or only occasionally alike. We ought to remember that. We ought to know it. The kingdom of God is not in words. They’re only incidental and they never can be fundamental. When fundamentalism ceased to emphasize fundamental meanings and began to emphasize fundamental words, and we shifted from meanings to words and from power to words, we began to go downhill.

Now, there’s an essence of truth. And it may follow the form of words, as the kernel in an English walnut follows the configuration of the shell. But the shell is not the kernel and the kernel is not the shell. And so, while the truth follows the form of words, it sometimes deserts it. A great error is in holding the form to be essence, and putting the kingdom of God in words, so that if you’ve got the words right, you’ve got the whole thing. And if you can get a better set of words, you have more truth. Not necessarily at all.

Now, words deceive even good, honest Christian people. They deceive because we feel that if we mumble words, there’s certain safety in mumbling words, and that there’s a power to frighten off Satan if you mumble certain words. Now, my brethren, if a man is as just as plainly ordinary as I am, and not afraid of words, would you ask me please why the devil should be afraid of words? The devil, who is the very essence, was of ancient created wisdom back there, and had the perfection of beauty and the fullness of wisdom, and whose power lies in his shrewdness and in his intellectual brilliance, can you tell me how that devil should suddenly become so foolish as to be afraid of a word, or afraid of a motion, or afraid of a symbol? To keep the devil away, I put a chain around my neck, or to keep the devil away, I make a motion with my fingers in front of my face. I wonder what a man without any arms would do, an amputee, if the devil came after him, and he couldn’t make the sign of the cross. I hadn’t thought of that till now, but it’s worth considering anyhow.

But the devil isn’t afraid of words and he isn’t afraid of symbols. You can surround yourself with symbols, religious symbols, Protestant or Catholic or Jewish, and you haven’t helped yourself in the slightest, because the devil isn’t afraid of a symbol. He knows better. Do you ever see the little child it’s afraid of a false face? Put a false face on and the little runs and yells. But if the child did that when he’s sixteen, you’d be ashamed of him. We assume as we grow up, we know that false faces don’t mean anything. And words don’t mean anything as words. But if we imagine if we say certain words, we will have power, they have power to bring good. If we say certain other words, they have power to fend off the devil.

And there is safety in mumbling words. And if we fail to mumble the words, we’re in for it. And if we remembered to mumble the words, we’re all right. That’s just paganism under another form. And Paul told them plainly, for these were pagans, recently but only lately converted. And he said, you’ve got a lot of you Greeks, you’re Greek and the Greeks love oratory, and they love fine language and they produce a lot of fine literature. And he said, you Greeks, you love fine words, but he said, I don’t come to you with fine words. I come to you, in this second chapter, I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but instead a demonstration of Spirit and of power, that your faith should stand in the wisdom, not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. So, we ought to throw this off. You may feel a little bit mentally naked when you throw all this off. You know, it’s one thing that we do when you strip superstition away from a man, he feels terribly naked for a moment. But until we strip off our superstition, the Lord can’t put on us a cloak of truth.

Now, the Kingdom lies in power. Its essence is in power. The gospel is not the statement that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. The gospel is the statement that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures plus the Holy Ghost in that statement to give it meaning and power. And just the statement itself, never will do it. Have you wondered at times as I have, why those churches, some of them, who drill their young people from their childhood in the Catechism, and teach them the doctrines so that they’re positively instructed in the word of the Truth, yet somehow strangely failed to get them through to the new birth. Have you noticed that? And we’re not referring by name to any denomination. And I have nothing against the Catechism. I think it’s a fine thing for young people.

But have you noticed that there are whole generations of so called Christians who are drilled in the Catechism, and who know the doctrine, and can recite the gospel as well as the law, and still never manage to break through to the new birth. They never come through to that shining wonder of inward renewal. The reason is, they are taught that the power lies in the words. And if you get the words, you’re all right. Whereas Paul says, the kingdom of God doesn’t lie in words at all. The kingdom of God lies in the power that indwells those words. And you can’t have the power without the words, but you can have the words without the power, and a lot of people do. So that the power of the Spirit operating through the Word, that’s the gospel. It’s the statement of the fact that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. That He rose again, and that He was seen of many and that He’s at the right hand of God and will forgive those who believe on Him. That’s the gospel in its shell, that’s the shell of the gospel, but the power must lie in there, or there’ll be no life in it.

So Paul appealed away from man given authority. And he appealed away from talk, however eloquent. And he appealed away from even his own position, and appealed direct to the power of the risen Lord who manifest true the Spirit. And he said, I want you to know, and I sent Timothy to try and straighten you out and remind you, that it’s the power of God that talks, not a man’s mouth.

Now, the appeal, I say was to the power of the risen Christ. And my brethren, if this church and the people who compose it, are not living in a constant miracle, they’re not Christians at all, because the Christian life is a miracle. It is what the ark of Noah was in the day of the flood. It is completely separated from that flood and yet floating upon it, completely separated from it. It was what Jesus was when he walked among men, right in the middle of them and yet separate from sinners and higher than the highest heavens. There operates within the true Body of Christ a continual energizing by the Spirit that makes a continual miracle. A Christian is not somebody who’s believed only. A Christian is somebody who has believed in power. And the working of the power is a moral power. It has power to expose sin to the sinner’s heart.

Nobody will ever be truly saved until he knows he’s a sinner. And nobody will ever know he’s a sinner, truly know he’s a sinner by simply threatening him or warning him or telling him. You can go to a man and say you’re a sinner. You swear and lie and you’re wrong. You’re evil. He’ll grin and shake his head and say, I know, I know I shouldn’t do those things. But I guess we’re all human. You haven’t convinced him. You can read Plutarch and Aristotle, and Herbert Spencer and all the rest of the books of ethics, and showing him he’s dead wrong, and he still will never know what it is to be a lost sinner. You can threaten him that if he doesn’t look out and doesn’t straighten out his ways, the atom bomb will get him or Khrushchev will be over. And you’re still haven’t convinced them. You haven’t told him anything he didn’t know.

But when the Holy Ghost is come said Jesus, He will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. When Peter preached at Pentecost, the Scripture says, being pricked in their hearts, they cried out and said, what shall we do to be saved? And that word pricked they say, Wayman says, is a word stronger and deeper than the word pierced, where they pierced the heart of Jesus with a spear. The words of Peter in the Holy Ghost, the new, baptized prophet and apostle, the words of Peter penetrated like, like a Donee spear, so deep, deeper than the spear had gone into the heart of Jesus on the cross, when forthwith came water and blood.

So my brethren, the Holy Spirit isn’t something that we can argue about. Or somebody that we can say, well, you believe your way and I believe my way. The Holy Spirit is an absolute necessity in the church, an ungrieved Holy Spirit. Because there’s a power in the Spirit to expose sin and revolutionize and convert and create holy men and women, and nothing else can do it. Words won’t do it. Instructions won’t do it. Line upon line, precept upon precept won’t do it. It takes the power to do it.

And then it’s a persuasive power, convince and persuade and break down resistance. And it’s a worship power, to create reverence and excite ecstasy. If we were to put statues all around this place, and have candles burning here, and have beautiful Italian made glass, colored windows, pictures of shepherds and altars and all that, and I were to come in here in a long black robe, you’d have a sense of, well, I think you, probably you being you, you’d probably have difficulty restraining your mirth. But if you’ve been brought up to it, you wouldn’t. You’d think that reverence.

No Brethren, reverence is not created by beautiful windows, although I like to see them, nor by symbols. Reverence is the astonished awe that comes to the human heart when God is seen. And that, the Holy Ghost can do through the Word, and that nobody else can do. I can imitate holy tones, all I will, and we can try to be just as religious and ecclesiastical as we can and still want when it’s all over, the feeling we get is psychological or aesthetic at best. But when the Holy Ghost came upon the early church, they darest not join themselves to them. And in 1 Corinthians, the sinners fell on their faces and said, God’s in this place of a truth.

So, there’s a power to bring reverence to excite ecstasy, to bring worship. It lies in the Word when it’s given in power. And the power of the Holy Spirit brings a magnetic, is a magnetic power to draw us to Christ. And will exalt Him above all else and above all others. And in this church, we must demand more than correct doctrine, though we dare not have less than correct doctrine. More than right living though, we do not have less than right living. More than a friendly atmosphere, though we dare not have less than a friendly atmosphere. We must demand that the Word of God be preached in power, and that we hear it in power. For in First Thessalonians, you remember, Paul wrote and said to them there that the gospel came not unto you, I know a little better, he said, that you’re the elect of God, and here’s how I know it. Our gospel came not under you in Word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost and in much assurance. That is, not only Paul had the power, but the gospel could run in power, because it was heard by them in power.

And so, when the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God through the Word, preaches in power and it’s heard in power, then the objectives of God are wrought out, and men are made holy, and sins forgiven, and the work of redemption is done.

And briefly now, the way to attain it, is through prayer and faith and surrender, the old-fashioned ways, and I know of none other. Prayer and faith and surrender, pray and as you pray, surrender, and as you surrender, believe, and that’s for all of us. It’s for all of us. You as God’s people have every right in the Scriptures, every scriptural right to demand to hear the Word in power, and if you do not hear the Word and power, you have a right to rise up and ask why. If you’re hearing nothing but teaching, nothing but instruction, if there is no evidence of God in it, then the preacher can’t say I appeal to God, to say whether this is true or not. If this can’t be, then you have a right to demand somebody come that can.

On the other hand, any man who stands here to preach has a right to expect that you believe in power. And that we’re so close to God and so surrendered and so full of faith, and so prayerful that the word of God can work in power. Shall we not believe God for that kind of church here? For the kingdom of God is not in words. The kingdom of God is in power. And you can take the little Alliance manual and read it and sign your name under the bottom of every page. It won’t mean one lonely thing to you. But, if the word of God is in power, it means everything to you.

So, let us trust God for correct doctrine. We dare not have less, but we must have more. Right living, we dare not have less, but we must have more. Let’s be a friendly church, but beware lest it be simply a friendly church. It’s amazing how socio-religious or religio-social atmospheres can permeate a church so that it’s hard to tell which is of the Holy Ghost and which is simply nice social contacts. I believe that both ought to be there, and I believe they can both be there. And I believe that when the early church met and broke bread, they fulfilled both their spiritual communion and their social fellowship. So, there’s no reason why they can’t be fused. There isn’t any reason why the warm, cordiality of social fellowship can’t be made and can exist with the indwelling Holy Ghost, so that when we meet and shake hands and sing and pray and talk together, we’re doing both these things. We’re having social fellowship, plus, the mighty union and communion of the Holy Ghost. Let’s be very careful that it’s both. Not one only, to try to destroy or prevent social contact and social fellowship is to grieve the Spirit for the Spirit made us for each other. And He meant that there should be social fellowship and friendliness together. He meant that we should break bread, not only formally in a church, but be times when we meet. And He meant that we should know each other by our first names and have our social fellowships. He meant it, and the churches that try to destroy that, succeed only in getting a lopsided and fanatical type of church. But be very careful my friends, lest that we don’t mistake the one for the other.

So, let’s have a friendly church, and let’s have a morally right church, and let’s have a church where correct doctrine is taught. But let’s also have a church of which any man can come here, and say when he goes away, I know the entrance I had unto you, that I could preach unto you not in Word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance, because you are the kind of people that could take it. I say this is most important. For the kingdom of God lies not in words, but in power.

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Tozer Talks

“Consider Your Ways”

June 9, 1957

I have two texts. They are found in Isaiah 1:18. First, the words of the Lord, come now and let us reason together saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land, but if you refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with a sword. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. I’m only concerned tonight with that opening word from God, come now and let us reason together. Then in Haggai, the first chapter. Haggai 1:5, and also the same is repeated in the seventh verse. Now therefore, thus saith the Lord of Hosts, consider your ways. Consider your ways. Come, and let us reason together.

I want to reason with you a little bit tonight. And I’ll start by saying that what you already know, that the difference, the chief difference anyway, between a man and an animal, is that man reflects, and the beast does not. A man and an animal, the man and the animal, they start out with about the same amount of data. And the same kind. When a new puppy is born into the world, or a new calf, they have about the same data furnished to the senses. The sun is there, or it isn’t there. It’s a warm day or it’s a cold day. Things are comfortable or they’re not comfortable. The mother is near or she isn’t. The data is about the same. The senses tell the newborn calf, is about what they tell the newborn baby. So that, we begin just about where the beasts begin.

And the Bible doesn’t hesitate to say that man and beast are very much alike. It also says that there’s a gulf fixed between them, the difference it’s so vast that it can never be explained. But it also says that there is a certain likeness there. But the chief difference will begin to manifest itself very early. For the man reflects and the beast does not. The calf born on the range or in the barn, lives by its instincts. And it can grow to be old and die of old age if they’re permitted to do it, and still, it will be living by its instincts. It will have learned very little, and what it learns, will be very low grade and require practically no cogitation.

But a child of three years old is already a walking question mark. You know that. The child reflects and the beast does not. The man can reflect and the beast apparently cannot. Both are hurried into the world, as the Poet has said, hurried hither without asking. Nobody asks to be born. No animal asks to be born. But after they are born, the man begins to ask questions and the animal never does. This is the difference. The farmer and the horse; there aren’t many left but will for the sake of the argument invent a hypothetical horse, put him out at the head of a plow and start him through the field. And as you go by, you will find that they are a good deal alike, the tired, dusty man and the tired, dusty horse.

But, there is a difference that is as vast as the difference that separates heaven from hell and the earth from the stars above. It is the difference in ability to consider our ways. No horse ever stops to consider his ways. The man often does. But even though we almost always at some time in our lives do consider, it is a tragic fact that after a while we stop it, and most people do not reflect on their own ways. They may reflect, but they do not reflect on their own ways. Do you know what I wish, and wishing is a word I don’t use–much. It’s only a carelessly used word. And to me, it simply means that it’s a wild imagination that I can give nobody to. But do you know what I wish? I wish that I could get the men of the city of Chicago and environs, or of St. Louis, or of Milwaukee, or of New York or Brooklyn, or Pittsburgh or Cleveland or Detroit or Cincinnati. I wish that I could get the males above the age of eight, and under the age of 100, just one week to give as much consideration to their own souls as they give to the standings of their particular teams, and I have named the cities that have the teams, to their own ball clubs.

Now, I just wish it. I wish that as many people today, as many men today in the city of Chicago had spent, say, there was a doubleheader today, that would take about how many hours, about four hours? I wish and I could pray, that we could get as many, I don’t know how many were there. I know they were there. But I suppose maybe, there were 35,000; I would guess that. And if we could get 35,000 people to spend four hours considering their souls, and their lives and their futures with the concentrated attention that they considered the strike outs and the stolen bases and the rest. Now I don’t mean there’s anything wrong with strikeouts and stolen bases. This isn’t an attack on Billy Pierce, or whoever pitched today. This is merely saying that as soon as a three year old asked basic questions, but a thirty year old is long past that. The three year old says, Mother, where did I come from? You came from God. How did I get here? Well Jesus sent you. Is there a God Momma, and can God see me? And if I’m in a room with no doors or windows, one little chap actually asked, could God see through and see me?

Well, those are basic questions, but who was going to win the pennant? That’s not a basic question. And yet people for at least four hours today, listened, or watched and listened to men playing a game of arbitrary, that is, the thing was arbitrary. Did you ever stop to think of the foolish, arbitrary quality of the game. Now, this doesn’t mean I’m attacking it. It’s relaxing I suppose. But, did you ever stop to think that a fellow throws a ball that has been made for him to throw, at with great pains it’s made for him to throw, and he has neglected his soul, and neglected God, and neglected heaven in order that he might get skill enough to throw that thing, in a strike zone, at least three times before he threw it out of the strike zone four times. Now, who said three and four?

Somebody, Abner Doubleday they say invented that gadget. But brother, did you ever stop to think it’s, it’s arbitrary and whimsical. You can say a man’s out on four strikes, and just as easy, and where is there any law in the universe that says three strikes and you’re out? That’s invented. And furthermore, what happens to that ball? There’s a little, artificial spheroid that is flying through space. And oh, we’ll get 60 miles an hour. That’s a guess, a rough guess. And somebody will hit it. And 35,000 people are screaming themselves hoarse about that. Now, what’s the difference where it goes? It could fall down a gopher hole. It could get lost under a board or plank someplace. It could go over onto the street and fall into the sewer, or Mickey Mantle could catch it. What’s the difference my brethren. You see, don’t you? Now this isn’t, I repeat for the third time to say that there’s anything wrong with it. But the point is, it’s arbitrary and nothing  is settled when they’ve settled it. Nothing is settled. You say, well, he got him out, but got him out. What does that settle? That’s an arbitrary expression that doesn’t have any root in nature anywhere. And so of all games, and so with most of man’s activities.

I saw today in the restaurant a rather intelligent looking woman. Brother McAfee and I ate after the broadcast and I saw a rather intelligent looking woman sitting there, and she was the very essence of concentration, serious face and sober with a pencil in her hand neglecting her friends around her conversation that died. What do you suppose she was doing? I’ll give you three guesses. Yes, sir. You’ve got it. She was working a crossword puzzle. Now, what is she accomplishing I’d ask you?  Nothing, nothing at all. It’s the same with card games and the same with almost everything we do.

I heard old Gus Johnson, a great Swedish preacher from the Twin Cities, Gus Johnson. I heard him years ago with sort of a dry, wry sense of humor, saying that he was out on the golf course with his son. He never played but he was out there that day and his son was above on it. Then he said he started to talk and his Son said, shoosh, shoosh, Dad, don’t speak. He said, what did he care about putting. He said he wanted to talk. He didn’t care about putting. Well brother, now all this is arbitrary and I suppose it’s relaxing, and if you don’t die of a nervous breakdown and sue, then your outlook may not be quite as large and all embracing as it would have been if you hadn’t putted. I don’t know though whether they increase them or make them smaller, but we’ll ignore that.

But man spends this magnificent intellect that God’s given him. This, this brilliant thing that can flash out like silver streams of light. And you can reach back and take hold of the history and pull it up too, and you can reach out into the future and pull it back, and can examine stars and moons and satellites and the depths of the earth and the deeps of the sea and hold them before him. He’s got all that. You’ve got all of that. How long since you’ve  used it?

And think now of this imagination, this ability to consider that we have. God says, consider your ways. Come now, let us reason together. God is calling us to this my brethren. And He’s saying this to men who won’t have long to live. They won’t be here very long. They won’t be around very long. I won’t. You won’t. You say, it’s all right to say you won’t, but I’ll be. You may be a little longer, maybe not as long. But what is a few years against the solemn space we call eternity. What is it amount to anyway? What’s the difference? Look, back in the days of Caesar or on the days of Hotep, the educator of Egypt before Caesar’s day. One man died at twenty.  One died at thirty. Once died at seventy and one died at ninety. There they were, separated by a spread of seventy years, and yet I ask you if it really matters now, who died at twenty and who died at fifty and who died at seventy and who died at ninety? No. What’s the matter of fifty years set against 5,000 years, and set against eternity.

And so, with that backdrop against that backdrop of eternal years, God says to us, consider. Here, I’ve given you, I’ve given you something to consider, consider it makes no difference who won today. It makes no difference whether he sunk that putt or not. It  makes no difference. Think on something eternal. Think about something that matters. Give a little time to something that matters. And I believe that the great God of justice and wisdom and logic and common sense in the heavens, giving to man as He does give to man such an amazing power to reflect.

I believe that that God expects that man to reflect, and if he will not do it, and if he will spend hours and hours day after day and week after week, thinking about things that don’t matter and neglect the one thing that does, I see no place where God is any under any obligation to take that man to heaven. God puts a door there and doesn’t hide it. God puts a door there and the very stars in their courses tell where it is. God puts a door there leading into the Kingdom and God calls and He waits early and He stretches His hands out and He says, come, come, come. And He calls and He invites and exhorts and He urges in a thousands ways and keeps it up for a lifetime. And yet if a man chooses to ignore that call and refuses to see that door, I want to ask you by what moral logic is God required to pick the man up by the scruff of his neck and take him to heaven, when he spent a lifetime fooling with things that don’t matter; and refuse to consider the one thing that does.

God says, consider your ways, and come now and let us reason together. And it’s a deep wrong a man commits, a deep wrong you’ll commit tonight against your own soul if you sit there and taste a sermon and judge about whether it was as good as the one you heard this morning or the one I preached sometime before or somebody else preached. What a terrible thought, with the judgment coming in your life heading away that we should taste and compare instead of do something about it.  The deep wrong we do our own souls to vegetate like irrational creatures. Or to spend our God-given faculties that were made to engage not stars and planets, but angels and seraphim and God Himself. I say we do a terrible wrong against our own souls when we use such faculties as we have to fool and play and neglect our souls. For what is your life James asked, what is your life? You possess the most precious thing in the world?

I was out in the country the other day with Brother Ty, Brother Olson and McAfee. And who else? Rex? We ought not to forget him. We were out there and we saw 100 Hereford steers being fattened for the market. Great, fine looking fellows they were, I guess they weighed 650 pounds. A man said he thought they would average 800. Well, they had everything apparently. But they lacked one thing. They lacked that which the poorest man in Chicago has. The skid row bum that lies tonight in a stupor on Madison Street has what the finest blooded steer doesn’t have. He has a soul. He has a life given from God. He has that which will have no termination, but will be on and on and on. What is your life? You possess it. And it’s the most precious thing in all the world, for it gives meaning to everything else. It’s the loan of God to you. I don’t know how God makes souls, but I know God lends them to us. It’s a loan of God.

And when the little new baby squalls his protest to the round world, his mother cuddles him warm against her breast. God has lent him a soul. And God says to that little one later when he can understand it, consider thy ways. Come now, let us reason together. Though your sins be scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. And God does not expect that one to whom He has lent a soul to act like one to whom He has not lent a soul for you cannot use the personal human pronoun “one” about an animal. God doesn’t expect us or expect that animal, however blooded and however fine to respond, because there’s nothing there to respond, but God has given us a soul.

And though I were to suffer and have to suffer the pains of the damned for 1000 years, I wouldn’t give up that which I know to be my soul. My soul, that in me that is likest to God of anything in the universe. I wouldn’t give it up. I wouldn’t give it up. And no purgatory where a soul in a man must roast or boil or broil in some purgatory for 1000 years. I say he’s fortunate and lucky and ought to thank God in the fire, that he still has his soul. I don’t believe in purgatory but I say if it even if it were, I would still say a man is lucky to have a soul.

What potentialities, what bounded possibilities, God has given to the man with a soul. You know, young people, you have a soul. Some dear young people, God bless them these days, don’t know they have anything but glands. They live on their glands, they run on their glands. Yes, you have a set of glands alright, and God gave them to you and you oughten to be ashamed of them. But in addition to having glands you have a soul. To think how many millions tonight in this great favored land of ours who don’t know they have anything but glands. They live, they live by their glands and their nerves. And whoever can stir the glands of the greatest number of people can make a million dollars a year. Elvis is doing it. And Elvis has never stirred anything but the glands of the people, the feeble minded, the oversexed, the old and disappointed, and those who have forgotten that they have a brain in their head.

Now, this life that God’s given us, this soul is what you make it. Come and consider, think a little about it. Consider your ways. Think of that soul of yours. God won’t accept the responsibility for making it, any more than what it is now, because God gave it to you with potentialities. It’s as though I were to take twenty pounds of the finest clay to a potter and commission him to make me a vase. I wouldn’t be responsible for anything but the plan. I would say, I want the vase to be so high, so large. I want it to be decorated this way and I want it to be painted and varnished and burnt and painted and varnished and burnt again. I could give him the instructions of what I wanted. But if I came back and found a cheap pot all askew, lumpy and hopeless, I wouldn’t be responsible because I had furnished the finest clay and I had laid the plan and I had given the commission. And the potter who couldn’t come through deserves no pay.

God has put in your hands that which is finer than the finest clay. God has given you a soul. Think what men have done with their souls .We were just looking, Brother Chase and I tonight tonight and Mc Afee, looking at a book up in the study by Bernard of Clairvaux. Why, there’s music even in the words, actually you can sing it Bernard of Clairvaux, beautiful, beautiful. He’s the man who wrote, Jesus The very thought of the with sweetness fills my breast but sweeter far thy face to see and in thy presence rest. Bernard of Clairvaux, his soul wasn’t of any finer clay than yours or mine using an illustration for certainly the soul is not made of clay. And the body is made of the clay.

But the soul that God put in Bernard of Clairvaux is no finer than the soul he put in you or me or Al Capone. And God isn’t responsible, if with the life and intelligence in the Word of God before us and the pleading of the Holy Ghost, we do nothing about it. You can’t blame heredity. Blaming heredity when Esau and Jacob were brothers. You can’t blame environment. When one shall be taken and the other left. Two shall be sleeping in one bed. Two shall be plowing in the field, that’s environment. If environment made the soul then there would be no distinction. The two shall be sleeping in one bed one shall be taken on the other left. Maybe they’re brothers or sisters who slept together from the time they were born. Maybe there are two brothers or a father and son plowing there in the field, one shall be taken and the other left.

So, what happens to your soul You can’t blame on heredity and you can’t blame it on environment. And if you’re so infinitely, shoddily cheap as to blame it on your parents, and the way you were treated at home. I haven’t any any sympathy nor any message, I’m afraid. He says I had to go to school, and I didn’t have very good clothes. And so I felt ashamed, and I got an inferiority complex. And my parents were very religious, and they took me to church and made me go to Sunday school and I had holes in my shoes. And that turned me against religion. And that’s why I’m not a Christian. Oh, my brother. What a mousy attitude that is to take. What a cheap attitude. What an excuse. And the thinest thing in the world is an excuse. And the only thing smaller than an excuse is a man who try to hide behind it.

And so we blame our parents, or our heredity, or our environment. When Esau and Jacob had the same parents and one was loved of God, and the other driven from God’s presence, when one shall be taken and the other left at the coming of Christ. So what is your response? Think about it a little won’t you? Think about it, young people. You can’t live forever on thrills. You can’t live on the uprushing of your glands. You can’t live on parties. You can live on long protracted telephone conversations and witticisms and funny remarks. Think on your ways. Consider your ways. Come let us reason together. God sent His Son with power to save from death and darkness in the grave. And He calls you tonight and says consider and think on your ways.

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Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“Prepare By Prayer”

June 9, 1957

In the 26th chapter of the gospel as recorded by Matthew, verses 31 to 46, verses 31 to 46. I wonder if we couldn’t read that responsively too. So, we’d all have a part in it beginning with verse 31, of Matthew 26. And going down to an including verse 46, Matthew 26:31-46. Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee. Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended. Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples. Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.  And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.  He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.   And now the 41st verse, watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Now in the passage which we read and that which immediately precedes it and follows it, we have the record of the most critical event in the history of the world. I think there can be no doubt of that at all, that it had about it and upon it, more mighty historic significance. Greater human weight of wheel and woe than any other event, or series of events in the history of mankind. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of men, was about to be betrayed into the hands of sinners. He was about to offer His holy soul, to have poured out upon that soul, the accumulated putrefaction and moral filth of the whole race of men and then carry it to the tree and die there in agony and blood.

Now there was One present, the One most vitally concerned, who anticipated this crisis and prepared for it. That one of course was Jesus. And He prepared for it by the most effective preparation known in heaven or in earth, namely prayer. Our Lord prayed in the garden. Let us not pity our Lord, as some are inclined to do. Let us thank Him that He foresaw the crisis, and that He went to the place of power and the source of energy, and got himself ready for that event. And because He did this, He passed the cosmic crisis triumphantly.

And I say, cosmic crisis, because it had to do with more than this world. It had to do with more, even than the human race. It had to do with the entire cosmos, the whole wide universe. For the Lord was dying that all things might be united in Him, and that the heavens as well as the earth might be purged; and that new heavens and new earth might be established that could never pass away. And all of this rested upon the shoulders of the Son of God, here this night in the garden. And he got ready for this. I repeat in the most effective way known under the sun, and that is by going to God in prayer.

But over against that, were his disciples. They approached the crisis without anticipation. Partly they didn’t know, partly they didn’t care. Partly, they were too unspiritual to be concerned, and partly they were sleepy. So carelessly and prayerlessly and sleepily they allowed themselves to be carried by the rolling of the Wheel of Time into a crisis so vital, so significant, so portentous, that nothing like it has ever happened, I repeat, in the world, and never will happen again. And the result of their failure to anticipate was that one betrayed our Lord, one denied our Lord, all forsook our Lord, and all fled away.

And then Christ gave them here in the text read, Christ gave them these words as a sort of a little diamond set in this great ring. He said, watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation. For the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And this is what I want especially to talk about now. And I want you to know that this prayer that Jesus made that night in the garden, was an anticipatory prayer. That is, He prayed in anticipation of something that He knew it was coming in the will of God; and He got ready for it.

Now, this is what I want to emphasize and lay upon your conscience this morning, that you practice an anticipatory prayer, because battles are lost before they’re fought. You can write that line across your heart or across your memory, and the history of the world and biography will support it, that battles are always lost before they are fought.

It was true and is true of nations. It was true of France in the Second World War. There are those of us who date back, who were grown up at the time of the First World War, and we remember how the cry electrified the world, “they shall not pass” and pass they did not when France in her strength rose and opposed herself to the hordes of the Kaiser. But only twenty-five years and a little more, twenty-six at the most later, the hoards of Hitler came down, and France surrendered almost without firing a gun. And to this day, men don’t know why. Only last week I saw that some angry Frenchman has written a book, flailing his own country and lashing his people that they surrendered with scarcely a fight.

But why did they lose the battle? Why did France surrender? She surrendered because between the hour, her finest hour when she cried, they shall not pass, and her disgraceful surrender, she had gotten rotten and decayed; politically decayed and morally decayed, and spiritually decayed, and like an old tree filled with dry rot. When the tanks of Hitler came sweeping down like a stormy wind, France went down, and she’s never risen since. And she still manifested the same spirit in her politics and in her social life that caused her to lose the Second World War.

Now my friends, if that can be true of nations, and history will support it, it’s also true of pugilists. They say of fighting men, that they leave their victory in the nightclub. And while I’ve never seen a fight and I don’t attend them, they still do illustrate and Paul used these games to illustrate and so can I. They do illustrate the fact that a man to be at fighting peak must take care of himself. And when a man, has some have gained world acclaim and become very popular, they find themselves going to the nightclubs and drinking and staying up all night and sleepilly loafing in the day. And then there comes the time when they’re to fight again. And though they try desperately to get ready by what they call training, the night clubs have taken too much out of them.

So, they go into the ring and collapse in the fifth round, and people say how could it be that this might be, world beater should go down so disgracefully before a man who was not rated who wasn’t supposed to be good? The answer was not is, that he lost the fight before he went into the ring, not when they counted him out there on the floor face down and unconscious, but as he drank wine and stayed up and danced half the night or all of the night. He left his victory in the nightclub they say.

It was also true of Israel, up on a higher level. Back yonder in the Old Testament times, you will find that when Israel went in righteous and prayed up, she never lost a battle. But when she went in filled with iniquity and prayerlessly, she never won a battle. Israel never lost the battle the day she fought it and she never won a battle the day she fought. She always lost her battle when she worshipped the golden calf or sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play or when she intermarried with a nation or when she neglected the altar of Jehovah and raised up a heathen altar under some tree. It was then that Israel lost her battle.

And so, it was by anticipation you see. It was before it happened that she lost, and it was true the disciples here as I’ve already mentioned. They didn’t lose the day that in the morning when one of them cursed and said he was not a disciple and another one kissed Jesus and said, here’s the man go take Him. And when even John who loved Him forsook Him and fled, and they all sneaked away and melted into the night. That was not when the collapse came. The collapse had started the night before, when tired and weary, they lay down and slept instead of listening to the voice of their Savior and staying awake to pray. If they had stayed awake and prayed alongside of Him and heard His groans and seen His bloody sweat, it might have changed the history of the world, and certainly it would have changed their history.

But not only are battles lost before they’re fought, battles are also won before they’re fought. Look at David and Goliath. Everybody knows the story. We tell it to the children and the artists painted, and it’s got a place in the thought and literature of all the world. How little David, with his ruddy cheeks, went out and slew the mighty, roaring, breast-beating giant eleven feet tall and with a sword like a Weaver’s beam. And get, tiny, little, stripling David went out and with one stone lay him low and with his own great sword which David could hardly lift, cut off his head and carry that huge head by the hair, and display and lay it before shouting, triumphant Israel.

When did David win that battle? When did he win that fight? When he walked quietly out to meet that great, boasting giant? No! Let somebody else try it and the words of Goliath would have been proved true. Why, I’ll tear you to pieces and feed you to the birds, he said. And under other circumstances, he would have done just that. But David was a young man who knew God. And he had slain the lion and the bear. And he had taken his sheep as the very charge of the Almighty. And he had prayed and meditated and lay under the stars at night and talked to God. And had learned that when God sends a man, that man can conquer any enemy no matter how strong. And so, it was not that morning on the plain there, between the two hills that David won. It was all down the years to his boyhood when his mother taught him to pray, and he learned to know God for himself.

Then there was Jacob. Do you remember that after twenty years, he was to meet his angry brother who had threatened to kill him. He had never seen him. He had gotten away so that Esau couldn’t kill him. And now he was coming back. And the Lord revealed that the next day they would meet there on the plain beyond the river Jabbok. And the next day they met down on the plain, and they threw themselves into each other’s arms, and Esau forgave Jacob. And Jacob conquered his brother’s ire and his brother’s murderous intent. When did he do it? Did he do it that morning, when he walked out to meet his brother and crossed over the river? No. He did it the night before when he wrestled alone with his God. It was then he prepared himself to conquer Esau. Esau being the sulky, hairy man of the forest who had solemnly threatened by oath that he would slay Jacob when he found him. How could he cancel that oath? How could he violate the salty oath taken after the manner of the East? God Almighty took it out of his heart when Jacob wrestled alone by the river. Always it’s so. And Jacob conquered Esau the night before, not when they met, but the night before they met. And so it was with Elijah. Elijah defeated Ahab and Jezebel and all the prophets of Baal and brought victory and revival to Israel. And when did he do it? Did he do it that day on Carmal?

I counted as I sat here. Not that I wasn’t enjoying the service, for I certainly do enjoy every second of it, all the singing and all the rest. But I counted the words. Do you know how many words there were in Elijah’s prayer? After Baal all day long had prayed and leapt on the altar and cut themselves till they were bloody, then Elijah walked up at six o’clock in the evening, at the time of the going of the evening sacrifice. Elijah walked up and prayed a little prayer. Was it a prayer that took him twenty minutes as we sometimes do in prayer meeting and shut others out? Was it a long eloquent prayer though it was a blunt-read little prayer of exactly sixty-six words in English, and I would assume fewer in Hebrew.

So, there was your prayer. Did that prayer bring down the fire? Yes and no. Yes, because if it hadn’t been offered, there would have been no fire. No, because if Elijah hadn’t known God all back down the years and hadn’t stood before God during the long days and the months and years that preceded Carmel, that prayer would have collapsed by its own weight, and they’d have torn Elijah to pieces. So, it was not on Mount Carmel that Baal was defeated, it was in Mount Gilead. For remember that it was in Gilead, from Gilead that Elijah came. And I feel I am always a better man after reading this story. How that great, shaggy, hairy man dressed in this simple rustic garb of the peasant came down boldly, staring straight ahead, and without any court manners or any knowledge of how to talk or what to do, walked straight in smelling of the mountain and the field, and stood before the shrinking, timid, cowardly, henpecked Ahab, and said, I’m Elijah. I stand before Jehovah. And I’m just here to tell you there’ll be no rain until I say so. Goodbye. That was a dramatic moment, a terrible moment, a wonderful moment, but back of that were long years of standing before Jehovah. He didn’t know he was to be sent to the court of Ahab, but he had anticipated it by long prayers and weightings and meditations in the presence of his God.

Now, my brother, there are crises that wait for us out there, as there was a crisis that faced Jesus and His disciples, and David, and Israel and Daniel and Elijah and all the rest. There are crises that wait for us. I want to name a few of them briefly. One of them is acute trouble. Now, I hope it doesn’t come to you, but the history of the race shows that it comes to us all at some time. And when sharp trouble, with its shocking, weakening sting, comes to us, some Christians meet it unprepared. And of course, they collapse. But is it the trouble that brings the collapse? Yes. And no. It is the trouble that brings the collapse, in that, they wouldn’t have collapsed without the trouble. But it is not the trouble that causes them to collapse, because if they had anticipated it and prepared for it, they would not have collapsed. The man who goes down unto trouble, says the proverb, his strength is small. And his strength is small, because his prayers are few and lean. But the man whose prayers are many and strong, will not collapse when the trouble comes.

Then there’s temptation, temptation that comes unexpected and subtle, and it’s too unexpected and too subtle for the flesh. But anticipatory prayer gets the soul ready for whatever temptation there may be. Was it the day that David walked on the roof top that he fell into his disgraceful and tragic temptation? No, it was his long gap that the historians say was in between, and they don’t know what David was doing. I know one thing David wasn’t doing, he wasn’t waiting on his God. He wasn’t out lying, looking at the stars and saying, the heavens declare the glory of God. He did that. But that’s the time he wasn’t doing it. And so, David went down because the whole weight of his wasted weeks before, bore down upon him. So, temptation can’t hurt you if you have anticipated it by prayer. And temptation will certainly fail you if you have not.

And then there’s Satan’s attacks. Now Satan’s attacks are rarely anticipated because Satan’s too shrewd to be uniform. You see, if Satan established a pattern of attack, we’d soon catch on to his pattern. If I could go to the games to illustrate. I’ve never seen but one ball game in twenty years and no prize fight. But, if you allow me again, as Paul, to illustrate. If the devil were to be uniform and regular in his attacks, the human race would have found him out a long time ago, and poorest old church member would have known how to avoid him. But, because he is not uniform, but highly irregular and mixes things up, He’s deadly if we haven’t the shield of faith to protect ourselves.

Take the pitcher for instance, he doesn’t start throwing when the first inning begins and throw this same ball in the same place for nine innings. If he did, then the score would be 128 to nothing. But what does he do, he mixes them up, and the batter never knows where they’re going to appear. First up, then down and in and out and lo, then fast, then down the middle. He mixes them up. It is the absence of uniformity that makes the pitcher effective. And you think the devil isn’t as smart as dizzy Dean or Billy Pierce.

Do you think the devil doesn’t know that the way to win over the Christian is to fool him by irregularity. Never attack him twice the same way in the same day. Keep coming in from one side one time, another side, another side like the boxer. You think that boxer goes in there and gets himself rigidly stereotyped; he leads with his left, he strikes with his right, he moves back two steps, he moves forward two steps Why are the commonist stumble bum would win over a fighter like that. A fighter has to use his head too. And first, he attacks from one side, then from the other, then dashes in and backs away, then pedaled backward, and then then charges, and then it’s left and right then, feignt then, sidestep, and then weaves and bobbs, then; you know how to do it.

You won’t believe this, but I used to fight when I was a kid, a young fellow. You wouldn’t believe that would you? You’d think that anybody big enough to lift a boxing glove would be able to knock me down, but I was never knocked off my feet. I was too fast. And my brother, that’s the way to do it. The devil doesn’t come in always the same way. Every one of us, any of us could figure him out. But he will come at you today like a wild bull of Bashan, and tomorrow he’ll be as soft as Ferdinand. And the next day he won’t bother you at all. Then he’ll fight you three days in a row and let you alone for three weeks. Remember, it was said of Jesus after the three temptations, he left Him for a season. Why? To get the Lord to drop his guard, of course.

And so, the devil fights like a boxer. He pitches them in like a skilled pitcher. He uses strategy. Now, I say that’s why it’s pretty hard to anticipate; you don’t know what he’s going to do next. But you can always put a blanket anticipation down. You can always figure that the devil is after you. And so, by prayer and watching and waiting on God, you can be ready for his coming, when he does come, and you can win. Not the day he arrives but the day before he arrives. Not the noon he gets to you, but the morning before the noon. And the only way to win then consistently my brethren is to keep the blood on the doorpost. Keep the cloud and fire over you. And keep your fighting clothes on. And never allow a day to creep up on you. Never get up early in the morning and look at your clock and say I’ll miss my train and dash away. If you must dash away, take a New Testament along. Instead of reading the Tribune, read your New Testament on your way to work. Then, bow your head and talk to God. Get ready. I don’t recommend that. It’s too fast and too uncertain. But I say, rather than not pray at all, grab prayer somewhere in the morning. I met God in the morning when the day was at its best, said Cushman.

So, I recommend never let a day creep up on you. Never let Thursday floor you because you didn’t pray on Wednesday and never let Tuesday get you down because you were prayerless on Monday. And never let three o’clock in the afternoon floor you because you didn’t pray at seven in the morning. See to it that you get prayed up somewhere.

Now, I have 1-2-3-4 that are recommendations. And I’ve got eight minutes. That means two minutes apiece and I will turn you loose to go out into the sunshine and think over these things. But you want to take down these four little thoughts that I’m going to leave with you to close, the little conclusion. All sermons should have conclusions. Never act as if things were all right. Now, if the devil lets you alone a while and you’re not in much trouble and you’re reasonably happy and reasonably spiritual, you’re likely to develop a complex that says, well, things are all right, and you’ll neglect your prayer life and you don’t watch and pray.

Remember, as long as sin and the devil and disease and death are abroad in the land, like a virus, like a contagious disease, things are not all right. And you’re not living in a healthier, wholesome world, healthful world; a world that is geared to keep you spiritually healthy. This vile world is not a friend of grace to lead us on the God. It’s the opposite. So instead of assuming that things are all right, assume that they’re always wrong. And then prepare for them and anticipate them from whatever direction they come. That’s number one.

Number two is never trust the devil and say things are all right. The devil business is overdone and I won’t pray today. I’ll wait till Wednesday. Never trust the devil. Just as you can’t trust a communist, you can trust the devil, because it’s from the devil, the communists learn their techniques and get their psychology and justice. No statesman worthy of your vote or trust ever ought to trust a communist as long as he’s a communist. So, we never must trust the devil, never. Never imagine that he’s smiling. Never look at a picture of him by Dorre or somebody and say, oh, he’s not a bad looking devil. Perhaps all this is more or less, it’s like Santa Claus and Jack Frost. It’s only imaginary. Never trust the devil.

Always anticipate any possible attack by watching and praying, for the spirit though it’s willing, the flesh is terribly weak. Again, never become overconfident for the very reason I’ve stated that our Lord stated the flesh is weak.  Never become over confident. Many a man has lost a fight from overconfidence. And many a businessman has lost a business because he was overconfident.

And fourth, never underestimate the power of prayer. Watch and pray said Jesus and He wasn’t talking poetry. Watch and pray said Jesus; and he practiced it. And won because he did practice it, and caught the spinning world that sin had thrown out of gear. Caught them in the web of His own love and redeemed them by the shedding of His own blood. He did it, I say, because He readied Himself for that awful event, and that glorious event, by prayer the night before. And by prayer in the mountains and other times, and by prayer down the years to his boyhood.

Never underestimate the power of prayer, and remember that without it, you cannot win, and with it, you cannot lose. Granted, of course that it’s true prayer and not saying of words. Granted your life is in harmony with your prayer. If you pray you cannot lose. And if you fail to pray, you cannot win. For the Lord gave us the example of anticipatory prayer, getting ready for any event by seeking the face of God in watchful prayer at regular times. Then no matter what happens, like Jesus Christ our Lord, like Daniel and Elijah and the rest, you can go triumphantly through, for prayer all the way wins.

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Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“God Manifesting Himself in Adversity-Message 2”

March 15, 1959

This is the second and last in a little series, sermons, series of tools that could be called a series on God appearing in adversity. Numbers, the twentieth chapter. Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation. I think I’d better break in right here and say, don’t be worried about anything, because that’s just a stiff north wind and it’s rattling things. Everything is well built; it won’t fall down. But it just noisy. Nobody’s bothering anything. It’s just the wind. They tell me on the Northside, they’ve got snow. God spared us out here up to now.

Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there. And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron. And the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the LORD! And they didn’t wish anything of the sort, but that was the way of getting at Moses. Why have ye brought up the congregation of the LORD into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there? Wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place? It is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink. They could have been over in the land if they had gone. Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they fell upon their faces, at least Moses and Aaron did. And the glory of the Lord appeared unto them.

God appearing in adversity is the name of this two, this little series of two sermons. I pointed out that if we were the kind of people we ought to be, and that we’re going to be sometime when we’re perfected, we wouldn’t need adversity to drive us to God. God could appear to us in prosperity. But being the kind of people we are, there seems to be a little spiritual law that God appears to His people in adversity more clearly than He does in prosperity. It was so with Moses. As long as everything went alright, they just went on. And when Moses got in a jam, then he ran for the door or the Tent of Meeting. And then the glory of God came down; and Moses had a visitation. God revealed Himself to Moses. And I pointed out last week that this is true all through the Scriptures; that it is not just an isolated instance, but that it’s true all through the Bible.

Now, Moses endured adversity. And Moses was a liberator. For 400 years, the people had been in Egypt, and for maybe 350 years they had been slaves. When they first went down there, they were not slaves. They were given rather a fine reception as long as the pharaoh that knew Joseph was alive. But when the one died that knew Joseph and the new one arose, and a new generation arose, then they put the Jews under bondage. And they had been under that bondage now for seven generations we would say now, seven generations, 350 years, or perhaps more than seven generations.

And now comes the man of God, Moses, sent by the Lord God to deliver them completely, and he did. He had been successful in everything he had tried up to now. He had done the impossible. He had pulled out a small nation of slaves out from the midst of a great nation and the job was just about parallel to one man going over and liberating Czechoslovakia from the Russians. For Egypt was, if not the greatest, one of the very greatest nations in all the world at that time, and was very populous, very rich, very powerful. And Israel was very poor, very plain, and very weak, scattered about everywhere, a nation of slaves.

And Moses came and did the impossible. He went in in the name of the great I Am that I Am, and delivered the Jews from their Egyptian bondage, led them across the sea into the wilderness on their way to the Holy Land. And yet, do you know that Moses had to endure from the very people that he was liberating who still had lash marks on their backs, who still had teeth knocked out, that were knocked out by the handle of the slave driver’s whip. Who still had eyes couldn’t see because of the brutality they got, and who were limp because of the beatings they had taken; they still bore upon them the marks of their slavery and bondage and oppression. And the very man that was sent of God to lead them out, had to take from them, impudence and abuse, and disobedience and threats against his very life.

Now there we see something that’s been true also in all history. All you have to do is read the Bible and you’ll find the whole human race. Don’t you Dutch people lean back and say, well, that wouldn’t be us. You’re just like everybody else. And you Swedes too, and you Scotsman and Englishman, and we mixtures who hardly know what we are. We’re all like. Humanity is all alike. Ukrainians are like that too, Brother Fetlock. We’re all like, we’re all alike. And it’s in us. It’s the devil in us, in the human race. And the result is that we don’t know our friend.

And when a Man stands up to keep us free, we scorn Him and condemn Him and spit upon Him. And when a man stands up and smiles and bows and kisses babies, with the firm intention of putting us under everlasting bondage, we make a great hero out of him. But if he’s dead long enough, then we glorify Him as we do Lincoln, and Washington. But what Washington had to go through, read history and see. The abuse Lincoln had to take, go down and ask for the old files of the newspapers, back to the days of Lincoln and see the cartoons, lampooning this fellow, calling him an ignorant ape. He had to endure it, then. But after it’s over, and where he’s dead long enough, then we make heroes out of him. That’s all you have to do is be dead long enough, and they discover you are all right. But if you happen to be alive, and you’re on the side of freedom and liberty, they’re against you. And they were against Moses. So he had to take their incidence. There wasn’t one of them there worthy to shake hands with him, and yet they scolded him, abused him as if he was a common dog, and even threatened his life.

We have right in our own United States of America now, men who are dangerous man, because their tendencies and direction is toward centralized government and ultimate dictatorship. And yet, they’re the big heroes. We have serious minded, noble men who stand against all that, and they have to take a barrage of continual abuse from everybody, including the newspapers and radio commentators.

Now, it was a painful thing. It must have been a painful thing for Moses here; it must have been painful and discouraging, and at times, as I’ve said, dangerous. But in it all, there was a personal manifestation of God. And I don’t want to introduce my own personal feelings into this, but I’d like to tell you this much. I’d like to tell you that I have a covenant with God. That if He can manifest himself more fully to me by bringing discouragements and adversity, then I want it. I want it.

Now, I don’t know how much I’d be able to take. I might be like a little farm boy asking his Daddy whether he can push this wheelbarrow, and he couldn’t even lift a wheelbarrow. He’s asking for more than he’s able to bear and I don’t want to ask for more than I’m able to bear. But I think all of us together ought to unite in this, O God, let us have enough adversity to drive us to Thee. And don’t spare us Lord, except remember, were made of dust and don’t put more of a load on the dust than the dust can take, but put all we can bear. Because it’s in adversity that God appears.

A personal manifestation of God came to Moses when the people were against Moses in the time of adversity. And Moses got the confirmation of his divine call. You know, that’s a good thing. There are those who say, well, it’s all faith and by faith and there we stand we let it faith. Naked faith as Wesley scornfully called it. But the men nowadays without scorn call it naked faith. But I noticed that in the Scriptures, men were human enough, even though they were prophets and seers and kings and priests and liberators, they had to have an occasional renewal of their commission. They had to have God sometimes pat their head and say, remember, I’m on your side, and remember, I called you. And Moses had to have that. And Moses did have that. Don’t ever try to get more spiritual than the apostles and the prophets my brethren, never try it.

I read books occasionally or hear sermons droning over the radio. A fellow was trying to make us more spiritual than the prophets. They are always saying, now, the key word is. There are no keywords in the Scriptures. There aren’t any. Nobody needs to come to me and say, the key word here. There are no key words anywhere. A man gets a letter from his girlfriend, he’s way over there in Germany or Japan, serving his country in uniform, and he gets a letter from the girl he’s going to marry. So, he goes over and sits down on his bunk and looks for the keyword. He doesn’t do anything of the sort. He reads it to see what she has to say.

A man’s uncle dies and the lawyer calls him in and starts to read the will. He has reason to believe he’s inherited a lot of money. And he stops him and says, now let’s go about this in a proper manner. Let’s rightly divide this, find the key word. A lawyer would laugh at him. Find the key word? He said, aren’t you interested in knowing you have $100,000 coming. How do you care how it’s worded? These brethren who go in for the keywords and who insist upon you just believing the keyword, and then gritting your teeth and bearing it until the Lord comes.

I don’t go along with them at all brethren. I believe the Lord is coming and I believe there are times when you have to live by faith that’s as cold and hard as a rock. But that’s only occasionally. Most of the time, faith blooms and blossoms and brings forth fruit. And it shows evidence and has confirmation from God if it’s real faith. And Moses did, Moses had his call. He had his call. He could have said, I have my call; I know where I’m going, but God came and confirmed his call and assured him and gave him courage and help. Don’t try to be more spiritual than Moses. A lot of men try to get us to be more spiritual than Moses was, or Paul. I’ll be satisfied if I can, if when I walk up and stand alongside of Moses, I’d be satisfied if I can see over his shoe sole. At least I’ll be happy and surprised.

Well, I’d like to say to you that the cup of adversity is for everybody. You’re going to have to drink it friends, you’re going to have to drink it. Don’t try to get out of it and don’t think, well, if I can just hold on until the bell rings, I’ll make it. The man who fights by hanging on, waltzing with his partner, till the bell saves him. No, it won’t work that way dear friend. It won’t work that way. Break loose and put up your fists because you’re in a fight and you’re in trouble. And you’re here and the devil is here and the flesh is here and sin’s here and the world’s here and you’re here, and you’re not in heaven yet. And there’s a battle on and so don’t try to get out of it. Don’t try to get out of it because you’ll only find that you’ve gotten in worse at last.

The cup of adversity is for everybody, and we being who we are and what we are, that’s most necessary that we notice that; that we being who we are and what we are and the world being what it is. Too much and too long continued prosperity is not good for us for numbers of reasons. One is, that it obscures the vision of God. For some strange reason, the happy, prosperous Christian who’s having no trouble at all, slowly, the vision of God is obscured. And God has to send a thunderstorm and wind to rattle the windows of the house and strike the tree over yonder, and rain till the gutters run. And then when that’s all over the air is clear again, and the vision of God comes back. That has to be. I wish it didn’t you know. I wish that the Lord could walk with us as He did with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day, but usually it isn’t the cool of the day when the birds are singing and everything’s quiet that God appears usually when you’re being abused and threatened and in trouble or there’s adversity of some sort. But that cup of adversity is for everybody.

Did you know that brutal and heart wounding adversity does two or three things? It disengages us from the snares of mortality. It disengages us from the world. Everything down here is mortal. Keep it in mind friend, keep it in mind. Keep it in mind. Everything down here is mortal. One of the seven sages of antiquity gained his earthly immortality by this saying, this too must pass away. And everything must pass away and you mustn’t forget it. Don’t get carried away by the new chrome trimming. Don’t get carried away by the new picture window. Don’t get carried away by the new style. Don’t get carried away by the six lane highways and a wonderful view. I don’t say you can have those things. It’s perfectly alright with me. If you can afford them, have them and you won’t bother me. Only one thing, don’t let him get you. You drive your car, but see to it that no car drives you! Own your home, but see to it no home owns you.

And adversity disengages us from all of this and shakes it off. And the man whose fine clothes has begun to own him. When you get to cancer, he finds that clothes aren’t that much after all. When he loses his business or his wife dies, or his child becomes a delinquent, or his business goes to pieces, or his property value goes down until he loses money and he’s in trouble, or his neighbor next door threatens to break his neck and he can’t make up with him and he’s can’t get things straightened out. The fellow is in trouble. He wants to live for Christ and he’s determined to live for Christ, but from one direction or another, troubles coming. That disengages him. He doesn’t like it, but it disengages him. It cuts him all the way around.

Somebody said a consecrated man was a man that God could pass his hand the whole way around and not find any strings any place. The man is completely separated from everything all the way around, and adversity does that. I wish I could tell you prosperity did, but it doesn’t. Prosperity tends to make the skies cloud over and the vision of God dim. Adversity does the opposite. There will be a day when there’ll be no adversity anywhere and you and I perfected. We will be able to live as the angels live and shall be like the angels in heaven, said Jesus, but not now.

So, I say this brutal adversity not only disengages you, but it prevents the fatal mistake of receiving this world as your final home. And there was never truer hymn written, it’s Doggerel alright, I’ll admit it. But there never was a truer song written than the one that says this world is not my home. This world is not my dwelling place. What is the rest? I don’t know, but it’s good song, second rate song, but it’s a good one. This isn’t your home friend. It was your home one time.

What is your home? See all these people moving up and down the street here going out to get cigarettes and then a Sunday paper and go back in sit down. And when they’re weary of the Sunday paper, they turn on the TV. That’s how they spend their Sundays. And then the afternoon they’ll begin to drink. This is their home. Or, see these fine people out in Beverly Hills or up on the north coast. A $1000 or $1500 a month for an apartment, maid service, and three or four cars out there in front waiting for them. But this is their home. And that’s the most terrible thing you can say about a man. This is his home, fallen earth, full of bones. This is his home. And if you could send a chemist out and let him analyze the surface of the earth, all around the Earth, he’d find blood and hair and gristle and bones. Human blood and hair and gristle and bones, the evidence that this fallen world is man’s poor home.

But when you became a Christian, you changed at homes. When you became a Christian, you were born from above. That’s why the Bible says except a man be born again, from above, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. We were born the second time; we’re born from above. Our homes all together changed. This is no longer our own. God and the kingdom and the presence of God, that’s our home. And there we go. Now, you’re living here for a while. You’re living here, just as a man might go up into the north woods to fish and live up there two weeks. That isn’t his home. He’s just living there while. Just as a soldier in the barracks somewhere in Japan or Germany, he’s living there a while, but that isn’t his home. He longs for the hotdog stand and the country crossroad and the winding highway and the long corn stalks of Iowa. He wants to see his country again. It’s not beyond many a boy to weep after he has gone to bed at night. He’s got a bass voice and big strong fellow and he wouldn’t let anybody know how homesick he is. But he’s homesick and he wants to go home.

For the world has its home and this is it. Reality may be revealed by the degree of comfort he takes in the world. If he feels this is his place. If this is his home, why he’s not much of a Christian. I listen to interviews sometimes, and they are people who have come from other countries here. When they get interviewed by the newsman and when somebody asks somebody from another country, do you think you’d like to stay in America? And they say, oh no, no, I like to visit here, but I have my friends back at my home. I’m proud of them. I’m glad for them. Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, Scott said, this is my own, my native land. And our native land is above. Our citizenship is in heaven from whence also we look for a Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord. Your spirituality and your preparedness to meet the Lord may be determined by how much you feel at home here. If this is your home, you can have it. But Abraham refused. He saw Jesus’ day and was glad and looked forward and looked in faith way beyond our time yet. He wouldn’t build a city; he built a tent.

Now, another thing that adversity does and hardships and when things begin to break against you, as a church, or as an individual, or as a family. It opens a door in through which God can walk, shining and healing and fragrant. God walks into the door of adversity, smiling and shining and healing and sweet and fragrant and reassuring. So, I don’t think we ought to back out on it. I think we ought to pray, lead us not into temptation O Lord, but send us whatever is good for us. My times are in my hands. My God, I wish them there. And I don’t want to take my future out of the hands of God. I don’t want to take the future of this church out of the hands of God.

So I say you must expect a little trouble down the way. But if you look for God in it, you’ll find Him. Go to the tent of meeting. Don’t try to fight it with your bare knuckles. Run to the tent of meeting. Go where God meets with men. Get down on your knees and you’ll see a cloud and a fire, and you’ll hear God’s speak. Take the long view of everything. You know, faith always takes the long view. Men go up and down the country preaching a short view of faith, a myopic faith. A man has a wart on his hand and he prays for it and it’s instantly healed. He’s got a he’s got a short new faith. And they make a career out of that, make money out of it and buy farms from the sickness of the people, because they’ve got a short view of everything. Their faith is a short, myopic view; get up close.

No, Faith is long-range my brethren. Faith takes the long view of things and says, wait a minute here now. We’ve got to think about tomorrow, next week, next year, next decade, maybe next century if the Lord tarries. Whether He tarries or not, take the long view. When trouble comes, don’t look at the trouble, look above it or over past it. Take the long view of things; for faith takes the long view and God will appear to you and to your heart. And you will live and understand it. You will live and understand it. Did you know there’s another little old song that isn’t much of a song but there’s truth in it, “We’ll understand it better by and by. There are things you don’t understand now that you will understand them by and by. You will know why it all was. And at that time, you will thank God with all your heart. You’ll thank God that it was so.

I knew of an instance of a woman. She was a little bit severe. And she said to one her family, now, you’re working, you pay in. They made her pay and she did pay. And she had to pay and her mother said now, it’s alright, you’re living here, you’ve got to pay. She did pay, paid in every week. And when she got married, her mother gave it all back to her and said, I wasn’t keeping that. I had that in the bank for you. You know, you know that this is the way God does things. God frowns a bit and says, now, come on, obey. We say God, I don’t see how I should, you expect that of me. I’ve got woes enough. And God says you’re here and you’re accepting my blessing and my grace. Do as I say, and we do as He says, then crisis comes and God says, here it is. I didn’t want it. I just wanted to know I could have it and hand it back to you, with interest.

Well, you will be the richer if you listen to what I tell you. You’ll be the poorer if you don’t. And I repeat what I said as I closed last Sunday, that over the next months, we may see more of God than we have over the last years. But I’ll tell you something else, we’ll see more trouble too.  We’ll see more adversity over the next weeks, months than we’ve seen for a while, but we’ll see more of God.

I was reading an old hymn book this morning, 159 years-old, and I ran unto a hymn I never heard sung. Maybe some of you have sung it, but I never did and never heard it. It was written by John Newton. One of the few Calvinistic mystics that ever lived in the world. And here is what he said and I will read it and close my sermon. He said though troubles assail and dangers affright, though friends should all fail and foes all unite, yet one thing secures us whatever betide, the promise assures us the Lord will provide. The birds without barn or storehouse are fed, from them let us learn to trust for our bread. His saints what is fitting shall ne’er be denied, so long as it’s written the Lord will provide. When Satan appears to stop up our path and fills us with fears we triumph by faith. He cannot take from us though oft he has tried, the heart cheering promise the LORD Will Provide. He tells us we are weak, our hope is in vain. The good that we seek we ne’er shall obtain. But when such suggestions our graces have tried, this answers all questions the Lord will provide. No strength of our own nor goodness we claim, our trust is all thrown on Jesus’s name. That’s the way he pronounced it then. In this our strong tower for safety we hide, the Lord is our power the LORD Will Provide. When life sinks apace, and death is in view, The word of His grace Shall comfort us through; Not fearing or doubting, With Christ on our side, We hope to die shouting, “The Lord will provide.”

Ah Brother, they were Christians in those days. They faced up to death and trouble and then looked up and said, well thank God it’s still written, the Lord will provide. God appears in adversity brethren. So, if you see adversity on the horizon, look a little further and you’ll see God. Amen.

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“God Manifesting Himself in Adversity”

March 8, 1959

About 14 years ago, I preached on a text, and I want to preach on that text again because it seems very appropriate to this hour. And I am going to divide it up into two sermons and to have sermons from the sixth verse of the twentieth chapter of Numbers this morning and next Sunday morning. There will be two distinct and separate sermons, but will be united and related to each other as twin sisters might be related, separate, individual, and complete in itself, but related closely to another.

Now, the twentieth chapter of Numbers. Suppose we just read that together. Why don’t you join me in reading that and then you’ll feel you at least have the Word if the sermon that follows isn’t much good. Chapter twenty of Numbers, verses one to six, everybody. Then came the children of Israel, even the whole congregation, into the desert of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there. And there was no water for the congregation: and they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron. And the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! And why have ye brought up the congregation of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our cattle should die there? And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place? it is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink. And Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they fell upon their faces: and the glory of the Lord appeared unto them. Now we’ll stop there. And verse six is the one that will get most of our attention.

Moses went from the presence of the assembly unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. Now, if you have any other version beside the King James, that is, almost any other, all others which I’m acquainted. That says the tent of meeting. It was a tent in the middle of the camp where God met with Moses, or with Israel; where God revealed Himself. It was the tent of meeting, called your tabernacle and the meeting of the congregation. So, we have a tent of meeting, a place where God met people.

Now, what I want to say to you, and I want to take two sermons to say it. It is that God manifests Himself to people in varying degrees of intensity and clarity, but that usually, He manifests Himself in adversity. I wish we were better Christians than we are. I wish we were such good Christians that God would manifest himself in prosperity, but He usually doesn’t. He usually manifests Himself when you’re in trouble. That’s because you are like you are. And that’s because I’m the kind of man I am. And Moses and Israel were the people they were. And so, God manifested Himself in the time of Moses’ difficulty. They were on Moses. They were grumbling and criticizing. And it was all but a riot.  If they just had a leader or two, there could have been a riot.

Now, this is repeated with slight variation throughout the Old Testament, the history of the Old Testament. If you go back, say to Abraham and learn how Abraham and the hour of great trouble, in the hour when he lay at night for the sacrifice, the deep sleep. The birds came down just before he went into that deep sleep. The birds came down and he had to keep them away from the sacrifice. There, with deep sleep and darkness upon him, God revealed Himself and said, Abraham, don’t be afraid. Your seed will be like the sand by the seashore.

Later on, Jacob when he was in trouble on his way traveling across the dreary wilderness, waist and howling, God appeared to him by a ladder set up from earth to heaven. Later on, when Jacob was about to meet his brother Esau and was afraid, God met him again by the river. He changed him from Jacob to Israel. You can trace the whole history of Israel down through and practically every time when a man was in trouble, under pressure, if he was the right kind of man, then God made Himself known.

There are two or three reasons why He doesn’t make Himself known at other times. One is, a man doesn’t need it so much when he’s not in trouble. The second is, we are not focused toward, our souls aren’t focused toward when we’re not in trouble. And then, maybe a third reason would be that God wants us to walk by faith most of the time and trust Him there even when He’s not manifesting Himself. I think probably that’s the most important of the three reasons.

Now, the glory of the Lord appeared to the man Moses. He went over by the tent of meeting. He separated himself a little from Israel and went over by the tent of meeting and waited to see what God would do. And the glory of the Lord appeared there unto Moses. Now don’t ask me to explain what the glory of the Lord is because I cannot do it. No man can do it. God is what the theologians call, inscrutable. God is what the theologians call incomprehensible. And God cannot tell us what He is. He can only tell us what He is like. And thus He is translating downward into understandable human terms, or the best God could do. Not because God was unable, but because we were unable to take it. The finest French chef that ever cooked up a meal, and what a terribly prosaic way to talk about the doings of a French chef in cooking up a meal. But the finest French chef that ever prepared a gourmet’s delight; if he were feeding a three-month-old baby, he’d have to translate himself downward into the terms the baby could take. He would have to give him the formula and follow it closely. And all of those spices and those fine sauces that he took such delight in and made many French sounds of joy over, he couldn’t use them on the baby. He would have to translate himself downward into infant terms. And it wouldn’t be his fault. He might easily be in great demand in hotels and restaurants around the world, but the baby wouldn’t care. He could only take milk. Perhaps just a bit of juice at it.

And so God, who brings angels to their knees and causes the seraphim and cherubim to cover their faces and cry holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Yet, we being such infants, God has to translate Himself downward to us and put Himself in terms we can understand. So, he says, the glory of the Lord appeared unto Moses. I suppose that glory was a light. I suppose that glory was a sound. I suppose that that glory was a hidden and yet revealed something too terrible and wonderful for Moses to understand, but terrible enough to keep Israel at a distance and wonderful enough to bring Moses to his knees. This was God seeking to show Himself to human eyes and being unable to do it because of human sin. For Always remember that human sin is a cataract on the human eye. And even when it’s removed, even when we’ve been delivered by the blood of the Lamb, we still have somewhat of the veil over our faces until the time that we shall see Him as He is, and shall be transformed and glorified, and be given a body like under His glorious body.

Now, here is the second thing I want to tell you. The first being that God manifests Himself in adversity, but the second thing is, He doesn’t manifest Himself to everybody in adversity. There are those to whom He cannot manifest Himself in adversity. But Moses happened to be, by the grace of God, one to whom He could. He could appear to Moses because Moses was the kind of man that could receive the impression.

You let two people go out on a day, two men go out. Let an artist and hunter go out on the same Fall Day. And the artist, even though he’s carrying a gun, he’d probably never get a shell in the chamber. He’ll be so busy admiring the landscape, the color of those leaves over there, and that yellow oak, and those fiery red maple leaves, and that green, silver stream that flows between those brightly colored hills, and that little farm cottage down there. He will never see a rabbit because he, nature can manifest itself to him. He can see and feel; the very clouds talk to him and the wind across his cheeks says something. But the hunter, who has paid tremendous, lots of money for clothing that he doesn’t need, just a pair of overalls and a new shirt would do, but he’s all fixed up. And he has himself a big gun with the stock all engraved. He’s proud of that and hangs it over the mantel. And he goes out there and sees nothing but rabbits. And if he doesn’t see a rabbit, he comes home absolutely dejected and miserable. He’s ashamed to go home. I didn’t get a thing. I wasted a day. And the man who is susceptible, who is impressionable comes home and talks for a week about the glories of that wondrous landscape. It just depends on what kind of impressionability there is there if nature can talk to you or can’t talk to you. And when a man wants to shoot a poor, little harmless bunny rabbit and the rabbit doesn’t cooperate, he can be miserable. But that’s all he sees.

I went hunting one time with a one-eyed man for rabbit.  By the end of the day, the one-eyed man had all the rabbits and I had the exercise. But he was kind enough to give me the rabbits. I thought I’d let you know I wasn’t against hunting; I was just illustrating.

Now, Moses happened to be one to whom He could appear. But you know, most people, God can’t show Himself, even in adversity He can’t. The three things about Moses I want to talk about and make it brief. One is, that Moses was God-hungry and the second that Moses was a man of faith, and the third that Moses was an obedient man. Now these three, Moses was God hungry. Never forget that Moses said, O God, show me thy glory. And it was the seeking after the glory of God, the manifestation of the glory of God. That was why God could reveal Himself. The rain falls on the sidewalk and runs off again. Rain falls on the poor and thirsty earth and sinks away, and you can almost hear the earth enjoying it. God pours Himself out upon a congregation and the poorest, thirsty hungry hearts receive Him with delight. But there are always those who sit around the edges, hardened, critical and steely of countenance, and the waters of Shiloh run off from them and never a drop of it sinks in.

Moses was a God-thirsty man. Most of us have learned to live with mortality. We’ve learned to live with time We’ve learned to live with temporal things. Moses hadn’t. Moses had to have God or Moses would have died. And then Moses was a man of faith, and the curse of unbelief lies upon us too much. Moses was a man of faith. He believed God. He dared to believe God. He made some mistakes. Sure, he did and you’ll be able to criticize Moses if you’re looking for faults. It certainly didn’t come through one hundred percent. Right in this very chapter here, Moses made mistakes. But Moses nevertheless was a believing man and a man of faith. And God can reveal Himself to a man of faith just as the waves of radio can reveal it themselves to the tube that sensitive.

Even while I’m talking to you now, everything is going through this building. George Washington wouldn’t have believed this, but you know it’s true. Abraham Lincoln would have smiled and told a joke about it, but it’s true. Our speeches, sermons, newsmen are telling about the latest time that Khrushchev cleared his throat and how everybody in the West leap to attention. And there’s everything going on. And of course, there’s a lot of jazz and other stuff. We’re glad we don’t have to hear it, going right through this building now. But you’re not sensitive enough to hear it. If you had a tube, a few tubes properly arranged, and a few other little gadgets, you’d hear it.

Do you remember that lady that claimed that her hair pins were sensitized so she can hear radio. It was in the newspapers about two years ago and there was big talk about it. I think she was kidding with her fingers crossed and her tongue in her cheek and was having some fun with the newspaper man. She said, my bobby pins are sensitive. And she said I can hear a radio program. I’m tuned in. Well, I don’t know where she is now. Maybe she is tuned in. But there’s such a thing as having God manifesting Himself and we don’t know it, God’s speaking and we don’t hear it, God shining and we don’t see it, God revealing himself and we don’t know it, because we meet God’s overtures in cold unbelief.

If you ever have the experience riding around on buses. I have had this experience quite a number of times. You feel good you know. Maybe something’s nice has happened, or it’s stopped snowing and you feel good and you would like to say hello to the driver. You’d like to comment. But he turns a fishy pale, cold, foreboding eye on you and you go on and get off at your stop and don’t say a word. Something dies inside of you. Something nice that you would have liked to passed on, but you can’t.

Sometimes there will be a driver that will be so friendly and he’ll talk and speak to you when you get on. Out here on 95th Street and there road over to Vincents, one driver fought all the way over with a passenger about a dime. All the way over he fought. If he hadn’t been a big fellow and I hadn’t been afraid what he would do, I’d offered him a dime and told him keep still. But he fought all the way over about a dime. And I transferred to Vincents and other man driving; and when I got on the man said, good morning. I paid my fare and I stooped over him and said, what a difference between you and that last driver. And I told him what I told you about that last driver. He said, that don’t pay, that don’t pay. I said, you know it’s fun riding a bus with a fellow like you driving. And I said to this man, thank you. He said, well I try to be friendly.  Well, he was. But you never know whether to let yourself go in a friendly overture for fear you will get spiked.

So God, always the friendly God wanting to manifest Himself and to show Himself to people. But some, God gets cut off that harsh and hard. We meet him with a stony stare and unbelief. Others, simple-hearted people believe, and God can manifest Himself. Moses was a man, simple in his faith, though profoundly educated, and a great man, yet he had the simple faith of a child.

And Moses was an obedient man and I want you to know that this man intended to go on with God if it cost him everything. He gave up a place close to the throne, you know. He gave up being a prince in Egypt to go along with the covenant of the seed of Abraham and went out and spent forty years keeping sheep when he could have had those forty years shaking hands with the plenipotentiaries and ambassadors from all over the world. He allowed his religion to cost him something, Moses did. The trouble is now, our religion doesn’t cost us anything. It’s cheap. Cheap grace, cheap faith, cheap heaven, cheap eternal life, cheap Savior. And Moses, it cost him something. In our day, religious people go floating around, making decisions, passing judgment, writing stuff, making speeches, but it never cost them a dime. It cost Moses everything.

I tell you; it is futile to try to have religious comforts and appropriate religious consolation without obeying spiritual laws. No use to try. And that is the great woe of our time. This happens to be the most religious period that I can remember. One dear friend of mine, who is now in heaven, he was a preacher and he wasn’t too much of a preacher, but he rose one day in oratory and said, this is the worst world I’ve ever lived in. And I often say, I hope it’s the worst one he’ll ever see. And I think it is, because he was a good man; and he’s no doubt with his Lord. But all I can say is this is the worst period that I’ve ever lived in when it comes to religion. We’ve got more religion now. It’s running out people’s ears. But it’s an ominous and deadly thing, because it is an effort to appropriate spiritual comforts without obeying spiritual laws. It’s trying to get God to help you without obeying God, and it’ll never work. It will never work.

Moses didn’t try it. He wanted help from God and he went God’s way. He withdrew himself and went over and stood by the tent of meeting and said, I don’t know what you mean to do God, but if you don’t do something, they will. And God came down and stood in a cloud and manifested Himself to Moses and the people. And the people shrank back in fear and Moses knelt in holy awe. Moses would have to pay the price for this. The unregenerate heart, the traditional Christian, the social Christian, the poetic Christian, the psychological Christian, the nominal Christian, they want comfort, they want God’s comfort, but they don’t want God. They want God’s peace, but they don’t want God’s cross. Moses wanted both and he got both. And a man will not obey our own God and Christ, let him prepare to live and die by himself. Let him prepare to live and die alone. And let him prepare for judgment alone.

How could the prodigal son hope for a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet and a robe on him.  How could he hope for it, if he stayed in the foreign country? He had to come home to get it. His father had rings and he had robes and he had shoes and he had orchestras and music and ready to have a feast and a party. But the boy had to come home. He said, I will arise and go to my father. But in America, we’re staying in the far country and still wanting God’s ring and God’s robe and God shoes. And the same fellow that will be sponsored by cigarettes and booze, will sing all God’s children got shoes. All God’s children got wings. He wants God’s wings and God’s shoes, but he won’t pay the price of obedience to God’s Word. Moses would.

The prodigal had to come home and we have to too. We have to be obedient. But you know, for everybody that believes, and I know that the majority, if not all of you here today are believing men and women. And I believe that you are wanting to be obedient men and women. And in a greater measure than most places, I would say I think your God-hungry men and women. I pray it may be so.

So, what I have to say and what I’ve said applies to you. Because, while we’re not like Moses in degree, we are like Moses in kind, you see. There’s a difference between degree and kind. Two men stand over there, one of them, four foot, five inches tall. The other one, six foot four. They’re the same in kind, but they’re not quite the same inside. So, a man can be a believer, an obedient believer, and a God-hungry believer, and still not be the stature of Moses. Nobody claims to be. We only claim we want to be, and we are growing. So, I’m not looking for perfection. I’m only saying I hope that you’re God-hungry and that you’re obedient and that you’re believing. And if you are, you have a right to claim this, God appearing in adversity.

I’m going to close with this thought. I want to leave it with you. I dare to prophesize; I dare to do it. I dare to tell you this, that over the next few months, you’re going to see more of God than you’ve seen over the last few years. Do you know why? Too much prosperity, too much peace, too much getting along, too much enjoying ourselves, too much spiritual pleasure. It’s all good and all right. But the Lord said, well, that crowd over there on the corner, they’ve enjoyed themselves tremendously, and it’s wonderful, we’re glad, but they’re going to have to learn that I appear in adversity.

So, you will see more of God over the next few months than you’ve seen over the last few years, and if I’m mistaken about it, write me off as no true prophet. But I think I’m right. God appears to people that are hungry for Him to appear. He appears to people who will pay the price. He appears to the daring people. You’ve all heard the old story of the colored brother when they said, he believed God, you know. And they said, if God told you to jump through that wall, what would you do? He said, it would be my business to jump and God’s business to have a hole in that wall.

And that’s what I say. We must believe in God, and it’s God’s business, if we dare to trust Him. If you don’t put God to the test so to speak, and dare to go out and be adventurous, you will never be able to see the glory of the Lord in the land of the living. Even this morning, even this morning here, the Lord’s table, this sweet time of fellowship around the Lord’s table, when we touch and handle things unseen. And the invisible presence of the Most Holy One is with us. It takes a certain amount of adventure, a certain amount of believing, a certain daring approach to God and thirst after God. If you don’t have it, you sit and shrug your way through another communion service. But if you have it, you can drink of that same drink, and eat of that same bread.

I pray that we may this morning have faith and obedience, and a bit of daring and a yearning after God. For if we have, He will manifest Himself. And the tighter the squeeze, the more He will manifest Himself. The greater the trouble, the greater the manifestation. That’s always been like that and it’s that way today.

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