Category: Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date August 24, 2025

“A Lesson in Humility”

A Lesson in Humility

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

February 24, 1957

In the book of Luke, the 14th chapter, beginning with verse 7 and going to 14, Luke 14:7 and following. And he, Jesus, put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms, saying unto them, when thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room, lest a man more honorable than thou be bidden of him. And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, give this man place, and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room, that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher. Then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meet with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Then said he also to them that were bade, or to him that bade him. This was to the host, the other was to the guests. When thou makest a dinner or a supper, he said to his host, Call not thy friends nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the lame, the lame, the blind. And thou shalt be blessed, for they cannot recompense thee, for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.

Now, there are two parts to this text, and one I want to use this morning, and the latter part next Sunday morning.

Now here, let me say that there is a Christian. A Christian is one who is not only saved by the Lord but taught by the Lord as well. I wish that we might take this carefully and know that words are not being used lightly, that a real Christian is one who has not only been saved by the Lord, forgiven of his past sins, but who is taught by Him as well, and who is identified with our Lord Jesus, now and forever, in everything, at any temporal cost, unto death.

Now this sounds terrifying, but this is Christianity, brethren, and anything short of it is not Christianity. That a Christian is one who is identified with our Lord now, to remain identified forever, in everything, and at any temporal cost, whatever it might prove to be, now and unto death.

So that, this being true, Christ’s teaching is first in importance and absolutely vital to the Christian. That Christ’s teaching is not vital to most professing Christians, only proves them to be professing Christians. But Christ’s teaching is important and vital to all Christians because the Christian, I repeat now, is identified with Christ in everything, unto death, to be taught by Him and led by Him.

And so, the Christian hears what the Lord has to say without question, and he obeys without question. As soon as he knows what the Lord has said, he obeys. If it raises any question, it is only on what did the Lord say. But he never raises any question about whether he should obey or not. That’s settled. That was settled when he became a Christian, if he did become a Christian. So now this morning, we’ll listen to the Lord and let him speak to us and tell us about something very important to us.

Now, in this story which I read to you, with the teachings of our Lord embodied in it, we find that truth confronts a real situation. You see, my friends, when truth confronts a real social situation, then our consciences get in trouble and the power of God comes, and we soon find whether we are Christians or not, or whether we plan at all to be Christians or not. Truth disassociated from practical life never raises any problems, and it never makes anybody angry, except a few theologians who will fight over theories. But the practical people aren’t much interested.

But as soon as truth confronts a real situation, as it did here at this gathering of a number of people at the home of a man who had called them for a dinner, and Jesus our Lord was there as a guest, and this one who was Truth, present there, saw the iniquity both in the host and in the guests. Iniquity that they never dreamed was present. They completely overlooked the presence of gross sin here at their banquet, and it never occurred to them so much as to dream that there was anything wrong here.

And the reason was that it was customary. Whatever is customary is taken to be all right. And when truth confronts the customary, and truth insists the customary conform to truth, then you will find the cross the same as you found the cross back there. And all down the centuries, the cross asserts itself; when truth confronts the customary and insists that the customary is wrong. And so it was here. Our Lord was present as a guest, and yet it didn’t prevent Him from giving His testimony both to the host and to the guests gathered there.

Now, we are in grave danger, my friends. Don’t think that we are not. The danger that hangs over our country is a grave danger, but the danger that hangs over us Christians is still greater, because the danger that confronts our country as a nation has to do with time, but the danger that hangs over us as Christians has to do with eternity. And the danger is that we shall accept the customary as being right, and never think to check with the Word of God to see whether we’re doing the right thing or not. The customary is supposed to be right when in God’s sight it may be flagrant sin.

There may be present there unsuspected by the people because they’re used to it. And I say that this would be a calamity beyond all description, to spend a lifetime in a church, a lifetime in an Alliance church, a lifetime displeasing God by simply doing what everybody thought was all right, and what was not condemned by the sociologists or the doctors or the police or the psychologists, not condemned at all and taken as a matter of course, and yet at the root of that conduct may lie a serpent, a deadly serpent, because in God’s sight sin may be there.

And the Christian may get converted, give himself to the Lord as he says, and yet conform to this, which because it is socially acceptable is therefore received as all right. And in our pure blindness we never see that it’s displeasing to God. Better please God if you have to displease a thousand thousand people, friends. Better please God if pleasing God means going contrary to the customary and breaking with the social customs.

Now, what was it here that Jesus noticed? He sat there among them, quietly looking them over, and here’s what He saw. And now in the first place there was a little protocol, which is perfectly natural. You can’t have anything, you can’t ride a streetcar, nor drive on the street, nor meet a half a dozen people anywhere, but what that you have to observe protocol.

And the protocol was simply something like this, that when the guests were gathering at the feast, the bridegroom sat at a certain place, or perhaps the man who had called the banquet, the host, whether it was the bridegroom or not, he was the host. And there were certain people who for that occasion were to be honored, just as we have our speaker’s table, you know, at our little banquets. And the guest speaker is given the finest place, and maybe the man who’s in charge of the little program has him next to him.

And so, it’s a simple thing, and it’s small, but it’s protocol. And Jesus noticed this, that as they gathered before they were officially seated, he noticed that some of the self-important fellows quietly and slyly walked over, and while talking and being casual, managed to seat themselves near to, if not indeed next to the host. They hadn’t seated them officially yet, they were just gathering and greeting each other and hanging up their coats.

But some of these fellows managed to slip in and sit down where it would be hard to move them, because they felt, no doubt they’d been told they were great, and no doubt that they felt that they were only doing the right thing.

And so, they sat down next to the host, and Jesus noticed that. Well, then this often happened, or it happened often enough that our Lord called attention to it, that when the official seating took place, when the host got up and said, well, now we’re about to begin, and I will ask so-and-so to sit here, and he noticed it was already occupied. He said, excuse me, but this was reserved for the guest of honor, would you mind moving down?

So, this fellow gets up, red face, and moves down. Now Jesus saw that, and it had just a sly, it seems to me, bit of humor in it, although certainly I think that our Lord had no such thought. It was very, very real to Him, and must have been very real to those to whom He addressed these words.

But always everywhere there are the vain and ambitious climbers, those who have been told by so many people that they are good, that they have accepted it as a matter of course, and they have built up in their own minds a little saga about themselves, a little idea of greatness which they have, and they have accepted it so completely that if they’re praised, they don’t even think there’s anything wrong with it. They think, well, that’s not so. That’s true. He said the truth about that.

And so they’re seeking. These are the ambitious climbers. And you say those are out in the world. They weren’t in the world when our Lord talked to them here. They were Jews. They were religious people, the most religious people then in the world.

Now this applies to us, my friends. This applies to you this morning and to me this morning. This itch to be honored, this itch to be known as somebody. Jesus gave us what I call a golden dictum here in the 11th verse, simply these words, whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased. And he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. These are the words of our Lord.

Now, the question is, is this important? It wouldn’t have been put here if it had not been important. And if this had not been contrary to the will of God and the ways of heaven, contrary to the ethics and the moral spirit of good men, our Lord would never have mentioned it.

But we take it so lightly that one almost has to beat the desk with his fists and shout to get attention these days to anything like this. This comes in our Sunday school class and we pass it over and go right back and sit down beside the host as we had been doing since we can remember.

Now I’d like to just drop this little word in your ear. There is no trick of justification that will guarantee a man’s being right in heaven who will not be right on earth. Now we have suffered from this over the past decades, that there is a justification that makes me right in heaven, even if I will not be right on earth. And if I refuse to be right on earth, this is not the teaching of the fathers. This is not the teaching of the apostles. This is not the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. A legal justification that makes me right in before heaven cannot be mine unless there is also a willingness on my part to be right on earth.

Now, I do not say that I am accepted in the presence of God and saved by my rightness on earth because we all have a long way to go and I maybe have the farthest. But I do say where there is a carelessness about the teachings of Jesus or where there is a stubborn unwillingness to obey him, there cannot be a justification before God. That is antinomianism which the fathers fought with such desperation down the years, this kind of thing that says Jesus Christ died not only for my past sins but for all my future sins.

I heard an Alliance preacher say that. He died for my past sins and he died for my future sins and therefore said this man is no longer with us. I don’t even have to confess nor repent if I do anything. It’s already done for. Christ kept the law for me to the end of my life and therefore I stand with the law perfectly kept and I stand before God as one who never broke the law because He kept the law for me and died for me and therefore, I don’t even need to repent or confess because it’s all been done for me.

Now, there is a heresy, my brethren. It is as much of a heresy as Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Voice of Prophecy from the West Coast which is Seventh-day Adventism or Christian Science or any of the other heresies who are basically wrong in their beliefs about vital matters.

I read a track lately on immersion in which a very good man pleaded that we immerse the candidates three times, put them in three times for the Trinity and I said to myself, well there’s no harm in that and the dear Lord certainly wouldn’t mind and if he thought that a man actually believed that, he could dip him in three times into the water instead of once, no harm would be done. I don’t think even a Baptist would care because if he’s baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost it doesn’t make much difference.

I’ve had to on a few occasions put them down the second time because they got panicking, didn’t get all wet the first time. So, I wouldn’t quarrel over that, and I wouldn’t divide over that and let people have what views they want about such matters that don’t matter but I will say to you that when it comes to the vital, critical matters, you cannot afford to have fellowship with those who deny our Lord Jesus Christ.

John said if we receive them and bid them God’s speed, we’re partakers of their evil deeds. We are a collaborator after the fact. So with this heresy, that because Christ kept the law for me and died to give me a perfect covering, therefore nothing matters now on earth for me except that I believe that. I say that that is a heresy that’s as deadly as Jehovah’s Witnesses heresy. It’s a heresy that is as deadly as any false doctrine that you could imagine.

Now, there’s a necessity that we obey, my brethren, our Lord said this, not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?

I suppose there are two prayers that I have made more than any other during the last year, maybe 20 years. One is that I might have the spirit of the prophet and the other that I might be holy and Christ-like and support my prophesying, my teaching with a holy life. But here is a man who evidently had some kind of a prophetic power. Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils and, in thy name, done many wonderful works.

We’d have given a man an LLD on this in any Christian college. He had prophesied in the name of the Lord, cast out devils in the name of the Lord, and done many wonderful works in the name of the Lord. I can just hear the citation. In fact, I could write one which would be read at the time of his coronation.

But Jesus never denied it at all. He didn’t say, Oh, you’re lying. You haven’t prophesied in my name or cast out devils. You’re talking like that to get in. He says, then will I profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me ye that work iniquity. Do you notice that it was not the good works that he tried to do, but it was the iniquity which he did?

Those works of prophesying in the name of the Lord and casting out devils and doing wonderful works in the name of the Lord might well have been accepted if he had obeyed the Lord, but he did not. He knew Him not because he was not an obedient follower of His. Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house. And it fell not for it was founded upon a rock.

Now, what is the rock? The deity of Christ? No. What is the rock? The New Testament? No. What is the rock that he built his house upon? The commandments of Christ? No. What is the rock? It is obedience to the words of the Lord. The words of the Lord can lie there dormant and dead. And they’re not the rock, but obedience. He said, whoso hears these sayings and doeth them, I will liken unto a man which built his house upon a rock. The doing of them is the building.

Perhaps the rock would be the commandments if I might edit that last sentence a little. The commandments might be the rock, but the building was the doing of those commandments upon that rock. Then he said, and everyone that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell. And great was the fall of it. It came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at His doctrine.

Now, somebody says, Mr. Tozer, these words are not for us. These have been interpreted away and it’s not required that we keep these. Now, I want to ask you, I know this is said by some. I want to ask you; can you afford to trust an explanation based upon a theory and an explanation which was not held and a theory which was not accepted by the fathers down to Paul?

Can you afford to accept and let your eternal future rest upon an explanation and a theory and a so-called rightly dividing which takes this away from us? Can we afford to do it? And if we obey His words, what have we lost? Is it heresy to do what Jesus tells us to do almost in some quarters? Heresy to do what we’re told to do by our own Lord. He becomes our Lord and tells us that when we’re invited to a feast, take the low place, and then uses that as an illustration and lays down the golden dictum, whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased and whosoever abaseth himself shall be exalted.

Now, there’s the dictum that our Lord laid down. The other is only illustration. There’s the essence of it. Now, that’s in the Sermon on the Mount. Is that for us? Some say not and they’ve explained it away. My brethren, if you think it is and you observe this teaching, is it heresy to observe the teaching of our Savior? Has it become heresy to do what the Lord told us? Shall we be condemned if we, in our ignorance, keep the commandments and He didn’t expect us to?

If the Lord says, be humble and we’re humble, and it happens to occur in the Sermon on the Mount, and we humble ourselves, shall we in the great day of the Lord be sent down to hell or out into outer darkness or have all our rewards taken away because we, in our ignorance, obeyed the Lord? And if we do obey His words, what have we lost, I say? What have we lost? And if we do not obey them, what have we gained? And if we do not believe this dictum nor follow it, then we may lose everything.

For our Lord Jesus told us of the man who heard it and didn’t do it, and I don’t know why he didn’t do it. Maybe he was too stubborn to do it, or too worldly to do it, or too covetous to do it. Maybe he was too pleasure-mad to do it. Maybe he was too proud to do it, or maybe he’d been taught he didn’t have to do it. Maybe he’d had it dispensationalized out of his system.

But at any rate, he heard it and didn’t do it. Jesus said he built his house on sand, and everybody knows what building on sand is. The first storm that comes, the sand begins to melt away and shift, and pretty soon down goes the house. Now, some say we cannot obey, and I think this is the cutest trick of the devil of all, that we cannot obey. He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Now, I want to ask you, brother, do you dare go to the judgment seat of Christ with the excuse, Lord, I heard it, but I couldn’t do it? Do you dare go to the judgment seat of Christ and say, Lord, I heard thee say, take the low place, and he that takes the low place shall be exalted. I heard it, but I just couldn’t take the low place. Why can’t you? Who’s hindering you? This is the devil’s word, and Jesus is supposed to have told us things which we’re unable to do.

I tell my three-year-old grandson, Paul, Paul, go get me that picture. And he says, I can’t. Or I say to him, Paul, go lift that piano. He’s big for his age, but he couldn’t do that. What kind of a man would I be to command with sanctions and threats and warnings for non-obedience, a three-year-old child to lift a piano? And yet they tell me that that’s what our Lord did all down the years, that He commanded us to do things we’re not able to do. He said, humble yourself, and we say, Lord, I just can’t do it.

Why can’t you do it? If you’ve got a spirit that can’t humble itself, that spirit belongs in hell and not in heaven, and it’ll go there. If you’ve got a spirit that’s so hard and harsh and proud and bitter that you cannot humble yourself, that spirit will never go to heaven. Now certain Protestants have invented a purgatory to take care of that.

They admit that the Lord couldn’t allow a man to go to heaven on those terms, but they say that there’s an outer darkness, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and that’s where the Lord purifies justified persons who are justified in heaven and sinful on earth. That’s purgatory, brother. Do you believe in it? I don’t.

As the tree falls, so it lies. After death, a judgment. And I do not believe in any purgatories, except as the Nazarene preacher once said in my hearing, he believed in a purgatory right now here on this earth by the blood of Jesus, and that’s the one I believe in. So don’t let’s say we can’t. Don’t let’s say it’s impossible, Lord. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.

Too proud to? Love sin too much. Then you’re so badly bound in sin, you’ll never get untangled. If you’re so loving pleasure that you can’t humble yourself and can’t obey the teachings of Jesus, then don’t call yourself a Christian. A thousand times better that you be honest in your sin than deceitful in your religion.

That’s why Christ said, you’re neither hot nor cold, and I’ll spew you out of my mouth. I would thou art cold or hot. No, no, my brethren, the teachings of Jesus are His easy yoke and His light burden. His yoke is easy, and His burden is light, and I’ve found it so, and I’ve found it so. And all Jesus taught in this lesson this morning is go down, go down, go down, and anybody can go down if you just let go. Let go and you’ll go down.

As the farmer shouted up on the haystack to his son who had piled hay on the stack all day, he said, Dad, how will I get down? He said, just shut your eyes and walk around. He’d get down all right. Gravity takes care of it, and so we’ll all come down. But if we’re unwilling to come down, that’s another matter. And a man who’s unwilling to come down is unwilling to follow Jesus. And if he’s unwilling to follow Jesus, there is no trick of justification that will make him all right in heaven.

Now I’m going to prophesy and tell you this, somebody is going to have to start saying this in Bible circles or another generation, if the Lord tarries, that which is now evangelicalism will be liberalism, for we’re moving that direction as a reaction from the kind of antinomianism that believes on Christ but accepts no moral responsibility nor obligation to obey.

I am trusting and believing that there may come back a reformation into circles or a reformation that’ll be like a lightning stroke that’ll divide sheep from goats right here in this world, and even in so-called gospel circles. And we’ll begin to obey our Savior again, for a Christian is one who’s not only saved by faith but who’s taught by our Lord Jesus, identified with Him in everything, forever, at any cost, clear down to the end.

And Christ is his teacher and his Lord and his instructor and his commanding officer and his princely leader. And if he in any weakness fails the Lord, he was only to tell the Lord in grief that he failed Him and the Lord will forgive like that, for He’s faithful and just to forgive us if we’ve sinned.

The idea that we’re supposed to accept sin as the customary and not expect to live a holy and separated life is the teaching of the devil. And in the name of Jesus Christ, I rebuke him who dares to teach it.

So, my brethren, the little dictum, remember it, whosoever exalted himself shall be abased, and he that humbled himself shall be exalted.

There’s a dear old brother, a Canadian man by the name of A.W. Rolfe. He and I were alike only in one thing, we had the same initials. He’s gone now, he gave to the world some excellent, Mrs. Bell, I think the missionary was his daughter, and Paul Rolfe was his son, and E.W. Rolfe was another son of missionaries, a dear old man of God. And he wrote a little booklet, I think it’s out of print, but the little booklet had this name, The Way Up Is Down. The Way Up Is Down. That was saying it differently.

Now may God help us today. Amen.

Tags Humility

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date August 17, 2025

“Sinful Man–The Object of God’s Love”

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Sinful Man–The Object of God’s Love

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

August 3, 1958

But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. That, being justified by grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Now, the Holy Ghost describes us in verse three, and then He goes on into verse four, and verse four is like stepping into nice warm water. Verse three is like plunging into ice cold water. But verse three comes before verse four, and if we will not have verse three, we cannot have verse four. Verse three says, describing us, describing the nicest person here, we are all humble, and nobody would say that’s me.

A man would say that’s my wife, or a wife would say that’s my husband, or the child would say that’s my mother, or we always have somebody else in mind. I tell you frankly, I don’t think it fits me by nature. But the nicest person here has to accept this as a reasonable facsimile of his photograph; foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to lust, pleasure-mad, living in malice, envious, hateful, and hating one another.

Now, that’s the description the Holy Ghost gives of us, and if we will not believe, or as bad as He says we are, we cannot believe that he’s as good as he says he is. So this is our photograph.

Then comes this little glorious word, so small with such a variety of meanings. This little simple word, B-U-T, but, and the whole thing is changed. But after that, the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared. I think this little word, but, as it’s used by Paul, is one of the most powerful words in the entire Bible. It is repentance, it is rescue, it is deliverance, it is salvation, it is a thousand things, and here we have it coming between verse 3 and verse 4, rescuing those who are in verse 3 by the kindness and love of God in verse 4.

But, he says, and you know, I think that there will be scenes in heaven. I am very cautious in painting heavenly scenes. I have listened to some real oratory by men who know more about heaven, apparently, than John the Beloved did, and I’m very cautious about it.

Also, I’m very cautious about quoting God, unless I quote from the Scriptures themselves, or making dialogue between God and the soul. I am not sure that I know too much about the future life, since I know so very little about this life. But I think I could be nearly correct in imagining scenes that might be there in the days to come, when we meet somebody, we didn’t expect to be there.

We’ve gotten over and entered the celestial city, and we see walking toward us a man whom we recognize, because personality persists in the world to come, individuality is unchanged, our total being remains. Don’t think of yourself as a ghost or a strange zombie. You are going to be you, only glorified. You are going to be recognizable. You’ll have a memory. You will be able to call to memory things that happened below, just as Jesus, after he came out of the grave, remembered what he had told them while he was still with them before his crucifixion.

So, you’re going to remember, and you’re going to recognize this person coming toward you. And the last time you saw him, he was cross-eyed drunk, and you understood that he had lived and died that way. And the last you heard of him, he was somewhere in a coma, and there’d been little gaps, hiatus they call that, if you want to be real learned, little gaps in his history you didn’t know about.

And you’re going to say, are you here? And he’ll smile and say, yes, I’m here, and shake hands with you. And you’ll say, but how did you get here? The last time I saw you, you couldn’t even stand up. You were a total hopeless alcoholic, and you had 14 jail sentences behind you, and you knew every warden in the state of Illinois, and every cop knew you, and your picture was in the post offices.

Now, here you are. How do you account for this? And he’ll smile and say, but. But, after the kindness and love of God our Savior toward me appeared, something happened. Don’t you suppose there are a lot of people, a lot of Jews who didn’t know that man on the cross there, that repentant thief? Or a lot of Romans who didn’t know anything about it, later on heard the gospel, and perhaps never heard of this man, this repentant thief, for the gospels were not immediately written.

And it’s easy to imagine hundreds of Romans who believed in the gospel of Christ when Peter preached, and a little later as others preached, but who never saw, who had never heard of the story of the penitent thief on the cross. And the last they remembered of the penitent thief was he was hanging up there along with another thief, and that he’d been sentenced to die.

Don’t you suppose there’ll be many a Roman that’ll walk up and say to this thief, you here? Why, I remember when the newspapers came out and said that you’d been crucified for insurrection and thieving and all sorts of sins, and the thief would smile and say, but I was all you said I was, and worse, and I had been guilty of things the law never knew of and that I had never admitted. I was much worse than anybody here knows I was.

Only God knew how bad I was, but the kindness and love of God my Savior appeared to me, and by a flash of spiritual intuition I recognized Him as He died in the middle there between us two dying thieves, and I said, Lord, remember me. And He said, this day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.

So, I want to sort of tip you off, you people who will be in heaven before another century passes. I want to tip you off. Get ready for some delightful surprises, because you’re going to find some people there you didn’t know would make it. You’re going to find people there, now this is not a plea to throw our arms around all religions and all cults and all Christ-denying branches of Christianity, no. We’re going to have to come the only way there is to come, but some people come that way and we don’t know it. We lose track of them and that’s it.

Well, the kindness and love of our Savior toward man appeared. Now notice it says the kindness and love of God our Savior, and there’s nothing startling about that. There’s nothing there to bother anybody. If I said the ocean is vast, nobody would ever blink an eye. If I would say the rain that falls from heaven is wet, nobody would ever move. They’d wonder why I’d said the obvious. And if I were to say the sun is bright, nobody would say anything else. They’d say, I wonder what he’s getting at, because we all know the ocean is deep and vast. We all know that the rain is wet and we all know that the sun shines brightly.

So, when I say the kindness and love of God, nobody’s going to even bat an eyelid on that. We’ve heard that all our lives. We know it’s true. That’s nothing to wonder at, because that’s the kind of God God is. And incidentally, that’s why unbelief is so wrong. It refuses to believe that God is the kind of God He is. But here we say the kindness and love of God our Savior, and there’s nothing there to excite attention, because God is kind. God is love.

God being that kind of God, that’s what you would expect. A loving, kindly, tender, well-reared, cultured mother, you expect her to get up and look after her baby. And if you say Mrs. Jones gets up at two o’clock in the morning and gives her baby a bottle, nobody’s going to run and give her a medal. Of course, that’s the way she is. We’ve known her since she was little, and that’s the kind of woman she is. You could expect that of Mrs. Jones. That’s all right, we say. We know that.

But listen, it says here the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man. What kind of man? Why, a foolish man and disobedient man, deceived man, enslaved man, pleasure-mad man, malicious man, envious man, hateful man. That’s the one.

Now the love of God suddenly turns aside and flows in its fullness toward that kind of man. Put the two words toward man on there and you have a wonder of wonders. And you have the reason for and the source of many a great hymn such as Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. Why did it amaze the man? Because God was gracious. No, God is gracious and nobody should stand amazed at God being love or God being kind or God being gracious.

But that the kind, gracious love of God should have as its object such a slavish, foolish, disobedient, deceived, lustful, malicious, envious, hateful person as I am, that’s where the wonder lies, my brethren. And that is why the hymn writers have never yet gotten over trying to get us to sing the wonderful love of God and the kindnesses and the love of God toward man. Toward man, I say. Hateful and hating one another hasn’t discouraged God, not changed his mind in the slightest about us.

What is man that thou art mindful of him, said David. And some of the scholars tell us that that word mindful means a fixture in the mind, that man is a fixture in God’s mind. Why, the only eccentricity of the great perfect God is that He loves mankind with a fixture that He can’t escape. He can’t shake it off. He loves mankind. Because God is the kind of God He is, we may expect Him to love us and we may expect Him to be kind to us.

And so, the “why” of His loving us, you see, is not in us at all. The why of His loving us is in Him. And the why of His being kind to us is in Him. And yet I would suggest three thoughts here that might help you intellectually, if it doesn’t spiritually, why God loves us.

Well, the one is that God is love and only does the thing that is natural to Him. It is natural for the sun to shine, we say. It is natural for birds to fly and fishes to swim. It is natural for that which loves to be love. And so we say God loves us because it’s the natural thing for Him to do. The second reason he loves us is that we’re His creatures and He’s pleased with everything he made.

When I was up at Glen Rocks, I took my bird book along, now don’t smile, and my field glasses and I discovered two new birds. I guess I know around eighty now, species. That’s not many, but that’s a few. And I said to somebody, I just was asking God whether after all the tents are torn down and the big woe is over and the battle’s done and we don’t learn war no more and men, his brothers all over the world, I wonder if God won’t let me spend a couple of centuries investigating his wonderful world. I love it. God made it. I can’t help but love it.

I love to tramp through the woods and see chipmunks dash out and Vesper sparrows mount a high tree and sit and try to sing. That’s the best you can say for a Vesper sparrow. He’s just doing his best, but he’s not much of a singer, but he’s lovely to hear him in the evening.

Well, God’s pleased with everything He made. And when sin came in and ruined it, then God started over to remake it. But He still loves it apart from sin and we’re a part of His creation.

But there’s a third reason. We’re made in His image. And I don’t make this as a statement, but I ask it as a question. Is the reason for God’s undiscouraged and undiscourageable love for us, His persistent love for fallen man, could it be that He loves Himself in us? Could it be that the great God who sinlessly and perfectly loves Himself sees the tattered fragments of His own image in the fallen man and loves Himself in the man and seeks to redeem the man because that man has a family resemblance? Don’t think I mean that he’s saved. No. We must be born again to be saved. We must be renewed, as it says here, to be saved.

But still fallen man has in him, even the rich man in hell, even that rich man in hell had something divine in him because he said, O Father Abraham, will you please let somebody go and tell my brothers that they don’t come to this terrible place? Why then I ask, why did he say that? He said it because there was yet compassion in his heart in hell, and compassion doesn’t come from the devil.

I wonder if He loves Himself in us. Don’t go away and say I said He did, but just say I asked the question, does He? Then he says, still quoting Paul, He saved us not by works of righteousness which we have done.

Why did He not save us by works of righteousness? Because there were none, and because there are none. But you say, was not that a work of righteousness when the poor man in hell wanted to deliver his brethren? No. That was a work of human sympathy which was given to the man by God in creation, but that same man willfully had rebelled against the Majesty in the heavens.

And remember that no king reigning by rights ever accepts the gifts of a rebel. And nothing that a rebel can do ever is accepted by the king against whom he rebels. And therefore there were no works of righteousness. The man who is in rebellion against God can never bring a gift to God. Cain tried it. Cain brought a gift to the God against whom he’d rebelled. And God turned his back on it, thought it was a beautiful gift, a gift of fruit and flowers, a beautiful gift. Any woman would accept it and smile and thank the man who gave it to her.

But God wouldn’t take it, for it was given to him by a rebel. If that rebel had repented and gotten right and been forgiven, God would have accepted his fruit and his flowers gladly. But he wanted nothing from a rebel. He saved us not by works of righteousness. Why? Because there were none and are none, but according to His mercy. There’s room for a whole sermon in itself. The salvation you have accords with the infinite mercy of God and not with any merit of yours.

I know that’s old stuff and it sounds very fundamentalist, and I’m a fundamentalist. But it’s true nevertheless. The infinite, limitless mercies of God. By how does He do it now? Does God suddenly become emotionally overcome? Does He get emotionally overcome and rush out and take us in? No, He doesn’t. He does it by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. You see, even infinite kindness and love can’t receive an unregenerate sinner into heaven.

Even the infinite mercy of God, as limitless as human thought and beyond, could ever receive a sinner into the presence of the angels. Wisdom had to find a way to save that lustful, slavish, pleasure-mad, malicious, envious, hateful, lying man. It had to find a way to save the man, to justify him because God is just, and to cleanse him because God is holy.

No unjust person can enter the kingdom of God, so God has to justify the man. Love wants to do it, but justice forbids it, and wisdom knows how to do it, so wisdom sent Jesus Christ our Savior. This was through Jesus Christ our Savior, Jesus Christ our Savior. Notice it calls God our Savior in verse 4, and Jesus Christ our Savior in verse 6. And there is no incompatibility there. God the Father is our Savior, and God the Son is our Savior.

Old John Bunyan said that in his early Christian life he was very much worried about how Jesus Christ could be both God and man. He said, I wasn’t willing to accept it on anybody’s authority. God had to show me. I had to find it in the book, he said. He said, I got to reading in the book of Revelation, and it said, And behold, in the midst of the throne and in the midst of the elders there stood a Lamb. He said, The Holy Ghost showed me, in the midst of the throne there was His Godhead. In the midst of the elders there was His humanity. He said, Oh, I did exceedingly rejoice. Exceedingly rejoiced to see that He stood with God at the throne as God and with man among the elders as man.

So, He’s both God and man and was through Jesus Christ our Lord. He justifies and He cleanses and He washes and He regenerates and He renews and He does all these things through the mercy, through His mercy by the atonement in Christ’s blood.

We’re almost finished. Now notice it says “heirs” here. We are made heirs in verse 7, being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Heirs, that means we inherit everything God has. Heirs of God. You say, I can’t believe it. Do you know why? Because you won’t believe verse 3. If you don’t believe you’re as bad as God says you are, you’ll never believe you’re as well off as God says you are. Always remember, if you won’t believe you’re as bad off as he says you are, you’ll never believe that you’re as well off through grace. Because psychologically it can’t be done.

If you hold out on God as to how bad you are, your nature won’t permit you to take all the promises of God as to how good God is to you. You crimp yourself and crowd yourself. Be enlarged, O ye Corinthians, and see how bad you are in order you can see how good God is and how wonderful the grace of God is. Now we’re heirs, and I was trying to think about this. Heirs, an heir of God, that I am one of God’s heirs. You know we can’t take it in.

Let’s imagine a little boy who has lived in the slums of some great city, New York’s East Side, say, and he’s now eight or ten years old, and he’s had a very narrow life. He’s lived among ash cans and in alleys and stealing fruit from corner fruit stores and ducking policemen.

That’s the way he’s lived. He never had a new shirt on in his life, and his pants are hand down through four fellows up down to him, and his shoes, he never had a new pair on. And he’s never slept anywhere but in a corner, and suddenly somebody comes along and adopts him off the street corner. We’re one of the richest men in America, with yachts and outboard, or what do you call them, these big power motors, things that these rich men can run around.

I see them on the lakes, and estates of every kind, and utterly rich beyond the description. And we go to the boy and say, you know what, you’re an heir. This man has adopted you, and you’ve suddenly inherited vast ranches in Arizona, and great estates in Canada, and huge estates down on the coast in Florida. It’s all yours, to say nothing of money in the bank. The little fella doesn’t understand. He’d exchange the whole business for a popsicle.

Sure, because you see, he can’t think like that, and God doesn’t blame you for not being able to think like that. You’re used to poverty, spiritual poverty, anyhow. You’re used to locking everything, shutting your door and locking, and saying, did you lock that? You’re always used to living that way, living in the slums of the universe.

But there’s only one place worse than earth, and you know what it is? Hell. Hell, the earth is suspended halfway between heaven and hell, not yet forsaken by heaven and not yet committed to hell. Here we are, and that’s what we’re used to. And then suddenly we have somebody throw cold water on us and say, you’re an heir of God.

We shake our heads and say, well, I’m willing to believe it, but I happen to faint as a notion what you’re talking about. Read your Bible, study it, and pray, and keep on, grow and expand, and learn to think the way God thinks, and maybe sometime you’ll know a little bit. But if you don’t know here, you’ll know there. The heirs of God, heirs of God according to the promise of eternal life.

Well, we scarcely know what it is. I wonder if that’s why the Lord gave us the communion service, that we sort of might sort of get a hold of something we could see and taste. The ideal is that we be completely spiritual, but the Lord knows us too well to hope we can ever be completely spiritual as long as we’re walking around in this mortal tabernacle.

So, He made everything spiritual but the wine and the bread. He said, now you can have this and look at this and feel it, touch it, taste it. He said, I’ll let you have those two, no more. I’ll let you have those two emblems, those two elements, those two symbols and signs of my death and resurrection and glory is coming again. And you keep on, be different from the world. Every so often, he didn’t say how often, there’s difference of opinion among the brethren, but every so often eat the bread and drink the wine and say the words and sing the hymns and pray and remember me till I come, and you’ll become heirs of all that God has.

We Christians ought to be the happiest people in the world and the saddest, the saddest because we live in a heartbroken world and the happiest because we’re heirs of the most gracious God. And that was Paul. Paul said sorrowful yet always rejoicing. How do you figure it? Some of you people with adding machine minds that insist on getting everything down and added up at the bottom and then prove it four ways to show it’s correct. You won’t do, you won’t do.

God wants imaginative men and women that can intuit things, that the Holy Ghost can give flashes of understanding that you never can explain. And one of them is how a man can be rich and poor at the same time. Paul said poor yet making many rich, how did he do it? Can’t put that in an adding machine, feed that into Mr. X and it won’t come out.

Or how we can be sorrowful yet always rejoicing. How Jesus could sing a hymn and go to the Mount of Olives, there you have it, two peaks or a peak and a valley, the peak of song and the valley of suffering. We Christians are caught there, we never know from day to day whether we’ll be on the mountain peak singing or in the valley suffering, but it doesn’t make too much difference anyway because we’re heirs of God.

And when we receive the bread and the wine, we tell the whole world that is interested to know this is just a little reminder, like the ring on my wife’s finger, reminding, just, it isn’t the marriage, but it’s just a little symbol we recognize since we’re here on earth. And this is a symbol we recognize, perhaps it’s deeper than that, but it is that. It’s beyond that, but it is that. And it tells us that He died, that He rose, that He lives, that He pleads, and He’s coming back again. Amen? Amen.

Now we’ll have the communion service, and any persons that we say visitors, but really, you’re not visiting here, nobody’s visiting here. We use that, we call them guests, we have a guest card, and I guess it’s just the paucity of the English language, but really, I’m as much a guest here as you are. Nobody runs this church, this is the house of God, this is the body of Christ, or part of the body of Christ, and you have as much right at the table as I do. So nobody can shut you out.

Let me give you this little thought, and then we’ll have our communion service. In a Baptist church in Louisville, Kentucky, a closed communion Baptist church, the pastor was a very warm friend of, well, it was his brother-in-law, they pointed the church out and told me the story, his brother-in-law, who was a pastor in the Presbyterian church. And the brother-in-law, Presbyterian brother-in-law, was visiting the Baptist pastor.

He came Sunday, the first Sunday, and they had communion. What could this pastor do? His brother-in-law was out of the fold, and so he did his best. He said, my friends, if this were my table, I’d invite you to it, and I’d invite everybody to it. And there wouldn’t be anybody that I’d exclude, I’d invite everybody to it. He said, my brother-in-law is here and he’s Presbyterian, and I’d invite him to it if it was my table. But he says, since it’s my father’s table, I have no right to invite anybody. So, he said, but the children will know, and they’ll come.

That was an easy way out, or he thought it was. So, the Presbyterian pastor got up down front and said, could I say a word? And of course he had to grant him the right. He said, I agree with my brother-in-law. This is not his table. This is his father’s table. And since his father and my father is the same father, then this is my father’s table. And he said, if the pastor can’t invite me to my father’s table, he can’t exclude me from my father’s table. And he went up and got up and went and took communion along with the rest.

I think that’s just delightful, myself. I think it’s just delightful. I can’t invite you and I can’t exclude you. Let every man examine himself. Amen.

Tags God's Love

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Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date August 10, 2025

“A Portrait of Jesus Christ”

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A Portrait of Jesus Christ

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

February 1, 1959

Please turn to Revelation 1 and we’ll begin at the 9th verse and read responsibly to the end of the chapter. You will help me in this. Reading, after I read verse 9, you read verse 10, and so on to the end of the chapter.

I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter; the mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.

Verse 9, I, John. I, John, says John. I wonder who wrote the book of Revelation, says the critic, I, John, says John. The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him, shall unto his servants the things which must surely come to pass. And he says, and signified by his angel unto his servant John. I wonder, says the learned man, who that could have been that wrote the book of Revelation. I, John, says John.

The conclusion I have come to, brothers and sisters, is this, that there are two ways to be ignorant. One is not to go to school at all, and the other is to go too long. If you don’t go to school at all, you are likely to be ignorant, because there hasn’t been any breakfast food invented yet that would instruct a man without some little intellectual quiver of his mental muscles. So, if you do not go to school at all, you are likely to be ignorant. But if you go to school too long, you are likely to get educated beyond your intelligence.

I am saying this because I have been reading about these men who say, I wonder who wrote the book of Revelation. I, John, says John. So, I’m going to accept that John wrote the book of Revelation. He says, the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, and the Word of God, and the testimony of Christ.

Now, what does this add up to? Here we have it, the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, and the Word of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Do you know what that adds up to now? They tell us that adds up to a lot of prosperity here below. Kingdom and patience of God.

I’m a Christian, I’m born again, and I carry my Bible, and I make God my partner, and I witness wherever I go. And therefore, I get big contracts, and I have been patient in the kingdom, and therefore I get promotions. I was only once a stock boy, and now I’m vice president.

The kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, and the Word of God, and the testimony of the gospel. What does it add up to? It means that once I was a bat boy, but now I’m in the big leagues. I’m prospering. Why, it pays to serve Jesus. It pays, doesn’t it, brother? Slap. So we go about that kind of Christianity has taken over the day in which we live. We slap each other’s back and say, you to be a Christian, boy it pays. I used to not give, and now I give.

Now I have more than I had before I didn’t give, or before I started giving. And that’s the modern Christianity, and of course that’s heresy. That’s just as much heresy as to teach that Mary was a virgin born, or that she had an assumption into heaven, or that there’s virtue in bones, or something. It’s just the same, only it’s Protestant. And it isn’t even old Protestant, it’s modern Protestant. It’s the gospel that’s in the hands of the vice presidents and the chairman of the board.

And so we have the adding up of all the witness and faithfulness and prayer and all the rest. We have a long car and a big home and prosperity, and we win at sports, and we get promoted, and we get along well in school, and we get all our blessing now. But what did this add up to back there? The kingdom and patience of God and the Word of the Lord and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Why, it says, I was in the Isle of Patmos on the Lord’s Day. What was he doing in the Isle of Patmos? He’d gone over there on vacation. Had he decided that he was working a little too hard as Bishop of Ephesus and needed to bathe himself a little in the waters of the sea over there in Patmos.

No, he was over there because he was too hot to handle. They didn’t know what to do with him back in Ephesus. He was a Christian, you know, and his testimony was too hot, and his patience was too long. They tried to wear him out and found he was made out of vulcanized rubber. They couldn’t wear him out. He lived to be over a hundred, we’re told.

And so, they said, well, we won’t have him around here. Some of these Christians don’t harm us any. They just walk around quiet and half-scared and look down their nose and say little. But this man’s vocal. He’s got the testimony, the testimony of Jesus Christ. He’s always going around saying, God is love, and He sent his Son. We can’t stand it. So they put him on the Isle of Patmos. That’s what it added up to there.

But if John had had our Christian philosophy, John would have had his reward back home. He would have had peace of mind, prosperity, and the friendship of the great. But there never would have been any book of Revelation. There never would have been any visions. John no doubt would have played golf with Caesar, but he never would have seen the door opened in heaven and the One that sat on the throne. He never would have seen the vision of One standing in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. He never would have seen the woman clothed with the sun and with the moon under her feet and her crown with stars around her head. He never would have seen the new Jerusalem, pure and white, coming down out of heaven from God. He never would have seen that.

And we’d have closed the book with Jude, and we’d never have had Revelation. He’d have had his reward all right, and he’d have written a tract, and we’d have left the tract behind, and he’d have written a testimony, and we’d have published it in the Alliance of Witnesses, saying this Christian businessman gave a faithful testimony, and he immediately started up the ladder.

Now look, he has two long cars, and he’s in who’s who. But we never would have had a vision, we never would have had a revelation, we never would have had this word portrait of Jesus Christ the Lord. I don’t know, I sort of want to string along with John.

I sort of want to go along with John. I don’t know whether I’d have his courage or not, you know, but I do know that I like his Christian philosophy better than I do this modern Christian philosophy. Well, going on, he says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and now I want to tell you right now that here are two nails I’m not going to get hung up on.

You know, when you’re walking down the corridor through the Kingdom of God, there are nails in the wall, and sometimes you can tear your clothing on the nails, and some fellows get hung up there, and that’s as far as they ever get. Now the two nails are, what does it mean in the Spirit, and what does it mean the Lord’s Day? They argue about what does it mean I was in the Spirit, and they argue about what does it mean the Lord’s Day. Some say the Lord’s Day means Sunday, and some say the Lord’s day means the day of the Lord, the prophetic future.

Well, now, you’re not going to get me in a corner on this, brother. All I know is that there was a man named John, or if it wasn’t John, it was somebody named John. You know, they have a literary argument on about who wrote Shakespeare’s plays, and some say that Lord Bacon wrote them, and some say Sheridan wrote them, and others say somebody else, and Mark Twain said that he had the answer. He said it wasn’t Shakespeare that wrote the plays at all. It was a fellow named Shakespeare.

And so I’m going to accept it that John, the critics and the scholars and the learned brethren whose heads are filled with learned lumber, they say he didn’t write it. But we’ll say John didn’t write it, but a man named John wrote it, and he said he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. Now, that’s all I want to know. And he heard behind him the great voices as of a trumpet.

And I’d like to inquire why it is that so many of the Lord’s people, when they hear the voice of the Lord, they hear it behind them. You know why? Because they’re going the wrong direction. John was facing the wrong way. Even John must have been facing the wrong way because he wasn’t facing toward the owner of that voice. Even John was turned a little round. And I believe that this is a very significant and important thing throughout the Scripture, if not here, certainly other places in the Bible, that we’re faced the wrong way and the Lord speaks. And when we hear the voice, we turn and then we see it.

I told Brother McAfee upstairs that I’m not going to preach on it tonight, but I’m willing to give any young preacher here a sermon outline. And I’m not going to deal with it, but I’d like to hear somebody preach on it, somebody who really knows how to preach the word. It says that I heard a voice behind me, and when I turned, I saw. Now, I believe that this is the whole history of mankind, brothers and sisters. I believe that you and I are going in the wrong direction and the arresting voice of God speaks. And if we’re wise enough to stop and turn around, we’ll see. I heard, and I turned around, and I saw. I heard a voice, and I turned around, and I saw a vision.

And that’s exactly what happened to John. John had been as stubborn as some of my friends. He’d have set his jaw and said, I don’t know who that man is behind me, but I am not turning around. Let him come around to me. But John turned around, and when he turned around, he saw. He saw a vision. I just recommend that, my friend.

Maybe the reason you’ve never seen anything is because you’ve never turned around. You will hear the voice and turn around, and I’m sure that there will be some kind of a spiritual vision there for you, some sort of deliverance or some sort of glory that God has for you.

Well, I heard behind me the voices of a trumpet, and when I turned around, I saw seven golden candlesticks. Now, of course, that means lampstands, but even I know that, and I don’t have to have new translation of the New Testament to find that out, because a lampstand was a receptacle in which a candle was placed, that’s all. It was made out of wood or metal or gold or silver or just whatever they happened to have around. The rich had some precious metals, and the poor had wood or clay, but its purpose was to hold up a candle, put a candle in, that’s all, and the churches here are called candlesticks or lampstands.

Now, you can remove a candlestick, and you haven’t hurt the light any, because the light and the candlestick are two different things. And so the church and the truth of the church gives forth two different things. The light is the truth, and the truth is the light, and the church in any given location, at 70th and Union in Chicago, say, is a candlestick. It’s a lampstand. It’s a receptacle, a human thing in which the light is.

Now, the candlestick can cease to bear the light and thus be useless, just a piece of material there, or it can continue to have the light. But always remember that the candlestick and the light are two different things. That’s why I don’t walk out and start another denomination. And that’s why I don’t believe that denominationalism is as evil as some people say it is, because you see a local church or group of Christians anywhere, they are the human candlestick. But the testimony they give is the light, and they are shining with their testimony, and the testimony is never theirs. It belongs to God. It is called the testimony of Jesus Christ. They give it, but it isn’t their testimony.

As soon as a church starts giving its testimony, that church is already halfway on the wrong track, and if they listened, they’ll hear a voice behind them because they’ve turned their face the wrong way. I know how we say, I gave my testimony, and what we mean by it, and I’m not criticizing that. I’m only pointing out that the only truth I have any right to preach is what’s given to me and shown unto the servant by His servant John or His servant Paul or His servant Isaiah or His servant Luke or some other servant.

I haven’t any right to manufacture a light, and I haven’t any right whatsoever to stand up here and to give out some kind of intellectual or moral or soulish light. I’m merely a candlestick, you’re merely a candlestick, a lampstand, a place where the divine light is put. There it is, that’s the church as we read later on.

And in the midst of the candlestick, seven of them, and I suppose the seven means perfection, I don’t know. That’s what they tell me must be true because it’s in the Schofield Bible, and I have no reason whatsoever to doubt it. So, we’ll accept it as being the number of perfection, and what the Lord meant simply was the churches, the churches you know.

And they were lampstands, and in the midst of these churches, and in the midst of all the churches, in the midst of His great church, there was seen someone standing. And that one that stood there looked like a son of man. Some say the Son of Man, and that’s exactly where He said He would be.

Do you remember that? Exactly where He said he would be. He said, if either two or three gathered together, I’m there in the midst. And He said, go into all the world and preach the gospel, and lo, I am in the midst of you, and I’m with you. And Paul said, while you’re taking communion at Corinth, and you’ve all forgotten that the Lord’s in the midst of you. Why, he said, no wonder you get sick and some of you die under the disciplinary judgment of God. Why, recognize the Lord. The Lord’s in the midst. Don’t you know that? Even the heathens said the Lord’s in the midst, and they got to fooling around and forgot about it. So, the Lord was right where He said he would be.

And do you know that He is here in this church tonight? He is where he said he would be. I almost stopped preaching when I think of this. That is, it almost shuts me up. How can a man stand in the presence of the Lord Jesus and talk? Well, he’s told to do it. And Augustine said, how can we speak? And then he said, well, if we don’t, there’ll be universal silence, and so somebody’s got to speak.

Well, it might as well be I tonight, I suppose. So, in the midst of the candlesticks, there stood one. Then we have a picture of Him here, and it says He was clothed with a garment down to the foot. And now here we have the brethren at it again. Some say that robe was a royal robe, and it’s His kingly robe. And others say it’s a priestly robe, and it’s the robe of His priesthood.

Well, since He’s a kingly Priest and a priestly King, why can’t we say it both? Why do we have to say either or? Why can’t we say both and, and get together and put our arms around each other? And instead of writing an angry book to show that this is not a priestly robe, this is a kingly robe, and another man writing a bitter attack to show that it’s not a kingly robe, it’s a priestly robe, why can’t we say He being priest and king wears the royal robe of both the king and the priest? Because He’s both priest and king, and there He is in the midst of His church. His job in the midst of His church, His function now is a priestly function. And He is the High Priest.

When He appears in the midst of His church, He’s the High Priest. And do you know when we see Him here, now this incidentally is the only real picture we have of the present Jesus. Artists have tried to paint Him and they’ve done their best. And they’ve tried to paint His humanity, but nobody knows what He looks like except as He has been given, we’ve been given this word picture. Here He stands in His majesty, clothed down to the foot. And as the king He rules and as a priest He’s there to represent God to us and represent us to God. That’s the business of the priest and the prophet, and He’s all three.

Now, He’s girded about with a golden girdle. Now this is the insignia of royalty without any doubt. This girdle around His belt here, which was always in the Bible, the sign that He was a traveler. They gathered their great robe up and bound themselves around and away they went. They girded themselves for the fight.

But what incidentally, this doesn’t belong to this sermon, but just struck me. What would a modern soldier do with a bunch of fellows in Mother Hubbards, back there in that day with ropes around their belts to keep them falling over the front end of their dress? They did it, they fought in those days like that, you know, done up in robes. And that’s outside, but I can imagine what a young soldier dressed, stripped, streamlined down and with his bayonet would do with a bunch of those soldiers then.

That’s the way they lived then, but not this Savior. We don’t see Him here with His loins girded. We see Him here staying. He’s not going anyplace. He’s in the midst of it. He’s here. It’s His place to be. He has a work to do. And He’s in the midst of His church, not girded with the intention of leaving, but round His breast with the intention of staying. The high priest had a royal girdle, you know, about him, but it was made of, I think, a number of things, and gold enwoven. But this was pure gold. This is royalty.

We have here Jesus Christ the King, girt about the breast with a gold girdle. And His head and His hair were white as wool, as white as snow. We were talking about snow blindness coming down, that up in the Northland or anywhere where there’s a great new fallen snow and men get on their snowshoes or even in cars, the whiteness of the snow with the sun shining down upon it slowly, slowly into the eye until men go blind. And some have been found wandering about in blindness because their eyes couldn’t take the whiteness of the snow with the sun shining on it. And here was one whose head and the hairs were white as snow, white as wool.

Now there are two views of this again. Some say that this pure whiteness is the whiteness and holiness of heaven, and others say that it is the stamp of age, that it means pure knowledge and solid judgment. And we have here a picture of the ancient of days. I do know that Christ never was gray and that He isn’t gray.

Christ died when He was 33 at the peak of His wonderful manhood, and I know that there is no death in Him there and no decay. But I also could see how that God could present Him as wiser than Solomon, wiser than the seven sages of antiquity, wiser than the wisest angel before the throne, standing in the purity of His white head and His white hair, there standing in the midst of the church.

Oh, my friends, listen. You need to go to Him. He’s called the Counselor. The Counselor. Oh, I don’t know. I get weary. I listen sometimes on the radio when I’m lying down and resting, and I listen to these programs where young people are asked questions and asked to discuss them.

Dear God, what do they know about them? There is a Man who is called a Wonderful Counselor, who has upon Him the Spirit of Jehovah and the Spirit of Wisdom and of might and the Spirit of Counsel and the fear of the Lord. He’s the One we go to. He’s in the midst of His church, and if you don’t know a thing, go to Him.

You know, we ask each other too many questions. We want to know. Somebody wrote me the other day and said, Dear Brother Tozer, we’d like to have you. My husband and I are Christians, and we live out here on a farm, and we’d like to know, could Jesus sin or couldn’t Jesus sin? I wrote them an answer back, and then I got an answer from them saying, Thank you. We thought we believed too. They wanted me to answer them, but why didn’t they go to the Counselor? He would have told them.

I went one time and got all tied up. When you give the commentators enough rope, they’ll not only hang themselves, but they’ll have you dangling there too in some lonesome valley.

So the commentator got me dangling on who the Prodigal Son was. He couldn’t have been a Christian because it says, this my son was lost, and the Christian couldn’t be lost, so he couldn’t be unsaved because he said, This my son. So, I got tired of the commentators and all other kinds, and I went to God about it. I spent a few hours in prayer about it, and I got my answer.

I have my answer, and that was many, many long years ago when this head was as black as a raven’s wing, and I have never needed to change my mind. I have never found any teachings any place. I know who the Prodigal Son was.

I’m not telling you tonight, though sometime I might preach on it. I went to the Lord about other matters like that. I remember down in Urbana some years ago, the InterVarsity Missions Fellowship and a lot of other people were met.

{See end of this document for the Mr. Tozer’s understanding of the Prodical Son he gave in his message “The Grace of God” from October 26, 1958}

There were a bunch of preachers around there, and Al Redpath of Moody Church and I were, well, you’d say the main speakers in that we’d jostle back and forth and preach. He and I had some others, and somebody among that learned crowd called attention to this. They said, did you stop to think that the two main speakers here never went to any theological school in their lives? Al Redpath never did, and I never did.

But that doesn’t mean that you have to be dumb or that you have to walk around meekly saying, well, I don’t know. There is Somebody here with hair as white as wool, and His name is Counselor, and He’s here in the midst of the golden candlesticks, and He has a mouth and a voice and words, and you have a perfect right to go to Him and find out things.

And my brethren, it’s not what I’ve read in books that gives any extra thrust, as they say, to my message, but it’s what God has given me. But I know it’s here in the book. I even go to the King James Version and get it, you know. I’ve read so many others that I know where the King James Version mistakes are, but I even go to the King James Version, you know.

Some people say, well, that King James Version is so old-fashioned nobody can understand it anymore. Listen, my brother, I was converted when I was 17 years old, and I merely had intelligence enough to find my way home if the moon was full. And I had no education whatsoever except a little in a white schoolhouse, and I began to read the King James Version and never had any trouble with it at all.

And I had never read anything up to that time except love stories that would lie around the house, you know, how John broke his wife’s heart and so on, and I read those gooey love stories. That’s all I’d read. And then Wild West stories, I’d read them.

So, my literary knowledge was very nil, and everything else was very nil. I was very modest, and as Churchill said about Attlee, I had an awful lot to be modest about. And I read it and I read it and I’ve understood it ever since, and I’ve never had any need to, if it says, cometh and goeth, why in God’s world don’t you know what cometh and goeth mean, brother? Do you have to have a new translation to know what cometh means? Cometh means come. He comes. And so is everything else.

Well, anyhow, the Lord’s the best teacher, He’s the best teacher, and I’d suggest to everybody in the theological school, going to school anywhere, listen to your teacher and then smile and ask God what it means. Because He’ll tell you what it means, and the teachers may not know unless they’ve gone to Him first.

Well, then He had eyes as a flame of fire. Ah, those eyes, those eyes as a flame of fire. How can we face those eyes? Looking through you, looking through you, and seeing everything. You know, Shakespeare said we can smile and smile and be a villain still, and I’ve met people who smile and smile, but they’re villains inside. But there are eyes in the midst of the church, and they see you. They see all through you. They see all directions. They know all about you. They see through your motives. They see through your purposes and tensions, those fiery flaming eyes of Jesus. And He has feet like fine brass, as though it burned in a furnace.

And all through the Old Testament that was judgment. So here we have somebody in the midst. Now he isn’t the tender, bearded weakling that the artists have painted, nor is He the mild, weak, and lowly lamb that some of the old made poets have painted, or have written about, painted with words.

But He’s got two things here, fiery eyes and feet like brass, and He’s here in the midst of the church. For you see, the church is a lot of things. The church is a group of candlesticks shining its light out to the world. The church is a fold where the sheep are gathered. The church is an armory where soldiers come in to get their weapons and out from which they go to fight the battles. The church is a hospital where weak and sick people are treated. The church is a farm where the great husbandman plows and harrows and sends the rain and the storms. The church is a little of everything, and here we have Him in the midst of us. Not to comfort and console us, there will be lots of time for consolation and comfort in the day to come, but He’s here with fiery eyes to judge us.

And you know you’ll be glad for that in that day, you’ll be glad for that. Because you want to know the worst about yourself now, don’t you? You want to know the worst about yourself now. What kind of fool would I be to seek consolation at any cost and then go to judgment with my life undisciplined, uncleansed, untreated, without penitence, without restitution, without everything done that I can do that I might obey my Lord and stand before him without shame? So I’m glad He’s here like that.

I’m glad that long robe tells me that He’s here as a priest, the Healing Surgeon, the priest, here to plead my cause before His God and to plead God’s cause before His people, but here also with fiery eyes to see all through me.

Ah, preachers get away with murder, don’t think they don’t, brother. They get away with murder. They can loaf all week, you know, and play around, and then get a verse and shout around and beat the pulpit and the poor dewy-eyed lambs will bleat on. And when he stands at the door, then they’ll say, wonderful, pastor, and the guy hasn’t put five cents worth of anything into it. But the Lord knows about that.

He knows whether they have or not. I have a conviction growing on me that nothing will ever come to birth without pain. I have a conviction growing on me that no seed will ever grow until the plow’s been there, and that there will be no victory until there has been battle, and that the man can get away with anything, fed chicken and given long cars and nice homes and sent to Florida and all the rest of it. It’s all right. You don’t want to suggest anything, but it’s all right. You can do those things.

But brethren, remember one thing. I don’t make my last reckoning to my official board. I make my last reckoning to the Man in the midst of us. Annual night, I read a report. The board meeting in New York, 27 saints gathered around there, I made a report. Buffalo next summer, May, I go if I still live, and I make a report.

I tell them what I’ve been doing to the magazine. But that’s not my last report. I’ve got another one. I’ve got one I’m not writing down and can’t write down, and it isn’t finished yet. And I have got to tell the Man in the midst about that. And He’s so kind that He died for me, but He is so severe that His eyes are like flames of fire and His feet like burnished brass. And I love Him for all of it. And I don’t want Him to be anything else but that. To have a weak effeminate Jesus with a big lap that every carnal skunk can climb up onto and get consolation, I don’t like that conception of Christ at all.

Christ has a broad lap, and He has a beautiful shoulder. Many is the saint that’s wept on that tender shoulder, for his own name is written. But He has eyes that see through and He has feet that judge. And a voice that is the sound of many waters. I don’t know what to say about this. I’ve been thinking about that voice, strong, majestic and deep.

And then I have been thinking about the piping voices of men and the raucous voices of politicians and the harsh, scolding voices of angry mothers and the bold, commanding voices of soldiers. And then I read of the voice like the sound of many waters, like when you come to the sounding of the ocean, down by the sound of the sea, wrote the poet. And in that little simple line, I think he has put as much of sheer musical poetry, down by the sound of the sea.

Isn’t that a beautiful phrase? Down by the sound of the sea. And here I hear it coming to me, the sound of many waters, so gentle, so healing, so restful, so completely poised, so sure of itself. It drowns out all the voices of men. And I’m glad, for I want to hear that, Voice. And in His hand are the seven stars, and they are the messengers of the seven churches.

I know some of you have been very distressed over the death of Melvin Lobston of this church. Our fine young friend, Melvin Lobston, one of our missionaries, got in an airplane, Air Jordan, they said it was, over in Jerusalem. He had just been there and was going away on a missionary trip, and the engine blew up a little way off the ground, and he was seven other Americans, eight others, two of them Americans, he was killed. And some have said, how could it be? Oh, I don’t know, but I do know one thing. Melvin Lobston was a messenger of the church. And I know that the crash of the plane didn’t take him out of the hand of his Lord. I know that.

And I know that a man who’s a true messenger, he’s in the hand of the Lord. Finney used to remind the churches they’d better be careful how they treat their preachers. He said, God let the preacher die, let him die, let you kill him, but He’ll judge you, and he’s right. For He holds them in His hands, seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword. And of course, that’s the Word we won’t talk about that, because everybody knows that, and His face as the sun shining in its full strength.

Somebody ought to preach on the face of Jesus. Somebody ought to. Oh, that face of Jesus. You know, when you look into that Face, you see anything you need to see? If you don’t predispose yourself to see something, if you don’t go with your mind badly made up about what you’ll see, you’ll see anything you need to see in that Face. If you’re frightened, you’ll see assurance. If you’re proud, you’ll see rebuke. And if you’re weak, you’ll see strength. And if you’re doubting, you’ll see courage. You’ll see it all in that face, that face of Jesus.

Does it mean anything to you that you’re going to look on that face actually sometimes? John turned and saw him. You and I don’t see him fully. That is, we don’t see him with our eyes, but we see him with our faith and our hearts. Does it mean anything to you? I don’t think it means much to anybody anymore that there’s a heaven. We have been so mixed up with eschatology the last 50 years that the old-fashioned idea of dying and going to heaven and seeing Jesus has sort of passed away.

You know, Longfellow’s village blacksmith, he wrote back there when people were just plain people. They hadn’t got so smart yet. He wrote one of the days when simple old, black-bonneted women, you know, would stand up in church and sing with tears in their eyes about looking over Jordan. Do you remember? We used to sing, they stand on Jordan’s stormy bank, I stand and cast a wishful eye where my possessions there, but no, not that anymore.

He wrote at that time, and he said about the blacksmith, he says he goes in Sunday to the church and he sits among his boys and he hears the parson pray and preach and he hears his daughter’s voice singing in the village choir and it makes him think of her mother’s voice singing in paradise and with his hard rough hand he wipes a tear out of his eye. All week long he’d swung the great ten-pound hammer, wham, wham, you could hear the music of the anvil ringing out for a mile in all directions. Rough it was and hard, but not so rough and hard that he couldn’t wipe tear out of his eye thinking of Mama yonder in paradise.

People don’t think with tears of paradise anymore much. They’re all mixed up and what’s going to happen in Jordan, what’s going to happen in Berlin, what’s Daniel’s bear mean, what’s Daniel’s leopard mean, and we’re so smart that we’re completely stupid. What we need to do is get childlike again and listen and look into the Face that shines like the sun.

You don’t have to know Greek to look into it, you don’t have to know Hebrew, they’ll both help you they tell me, and you don’t have to have gone anywhere to school, all that helps us all too. I talk like a fool because actually I’ve done an awful lot of reading and studying in my time and I recommend it, but I saw the Face before I saw the Book. I wonder if I’d seen a Book before I saw the Face, if I wouldn’t have been one of those smart alecks who knew more than was good for me. But I saw the Face first and then I got interested in the Book afterwards, and when the Lord regenerated my heart He woke up my head. But that Face with all that we need.

Well now, there he was standing and the effect of this, he said, I fell at His feet as dead. And I read almost the same thing in Daniel 10 through to 9. You see, Daniel and John and Isaiah and the rest of them, mystical bishops, they heard a Voice, and they turned and when they turned, they saw. We don’t hear the Voice, and if we do, we don’t turn and so we don’t see. We depend upon hearsay.

They heard a voice, they turned, they saw. And what they saw knocked them to their faces, knocked them to their faces. Oh how desperately, how desperately we need a crop of young men who’ve been knocked flat. How we need young people who’ve looked on a Face and a white hair and head and have seen a man with a sword coming out of His mouth and seen Him moving up and down in tenderness among the churches and have fallen flat and had to be helped to their feet again. You know, that’s what we need in our pulpits, brethren. That’s what we need.

Now we’re trying to get learned. And you get magazines so learned that if you can understand them, they consider they’ve failed you. That if you can understand what the article meant, why they say, well, we’ll have to do something about that, they understood it.

So they make it harder and harder and harder all the time. But we don’t need that kind of brain-weary, muscle-bound intellectual. What we need is a whole crop of intelligent young fellows who will study and work hard at it, but who’ve seen the Face. And because they’ve seen the Face, they’re never sure of themselves afterward, but oh brother, are they are sure of Jesus. They’re never sure of themselves. None of that brassy, I did this and I did that, it’s all gone. And in its place, there’s the tender certainty that God’s all right, but O Lord, I don’t know about myself. I need help.

There are two pictures of Jesus given in the Bible. This portrait here, this final portrait done in beautiful words by John, but there was another one once back there, maybe I can without too much trouble read it. Listen, behold my servant, said God, Jehovah, as many were astonished at thee, His visage was so marred more than any man and His form more than the sons of men, so shall He sprinkle many nations. His visage was so marred, so marred more than the sons of men.

There’s one picture of Him, that’s no more, that was the old photograph, the old picture. That wasn’t a pretty picture at all. Let nobody paint the cross beautiful, let nobody show a pretty Christ on a tree, let nobody by the use of form or color show a pretty sight there on a hillside. Gallows aren’t pretty, electric chairs aren’t pretty, crosses aren’t pretty.

So, God said people were astonished at him and turned their face away, for it was an ugly sight there, blue-lipped, fly-blown flies diving down to the blood, blood dripping off his toes, wasn’t a pretty sight. But don’t think of Him like that anymore, my brethren, no, no.

John said, I heard a voice, and it was a voice that sounded like a silver trumpet through the universe, and I turned, and when I turned, I saw. And he tried to describe what he saw, and I’ve gone over just weakly tonight, almost casually, what can a man say about perfection? How can you gild a lily or set a candle to the sun? How can you teach the nightingale to sing? And how can I add anything to what John has given us?

But there He stands, with a garment down to the foot, and a girth about the breast with a golden girdle, head and hair as white as wool, eyes of the flame of fire, feet like fine brass, voice as of the sound of the sea. In His hands, seven stars, and out of His mouth goeth the sharp sword and a Face of the sun shining in its strength.

There He is in the midst of us, Jesus Christ. They met the conditions, they saw the vision, they fell flat. We meet no conditions, see no visions, and imagine that we’re in lineal descent from the apostles.

How far can we go, Brethren? If the Romanists have gone off in that direction, we’ve gone off in the other. May God bring us all to the middle, so we can behold Jesus Christ as He is, Christ the Son of God.

Well, I recommend Him to you, my friends. I recommend Him to you. You need Him, and you don’t have to cross the street to find Him. You don’t have to come out to this church to find Him. You don’t have to make a long trip. We want you to come, but you don’t have to. You don’t have to do anything except, in your heart, when you hear the Voice of the gospel, turn. And when you turn, you’ll see. And when you see, you’ll fall. And when you fall, you’ll be lifted up again.

And I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead, and He laid His right hand upon me, saying, Fear not, I am the first and the last. I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of the hell and of the death, keys of hell and of death. Ah, all that walk the globe are but a handful to the myriad that slumber in its bosom. Death has ridden her pale horse around the world since the day that Adam ate the fruit and brought woe into the world.

But I look into the face of One tonight who holds the keys of death and of hell. I recommend Him to you, turn to Him, pick the Word of God, get the Gospel of John, get on your knees, read it. You need not that any man teach you. He’ll teach you, if you obey, if you repent, if you hate sin, if you love righteousness, if you have no confidence in yourself or in the flesh, he’ll take you over.

I’ve seen in this Church instances of young men who were converted and young women and blossomed out into the Christian life so fast that you’d think they’d been converted 25 years, and they’d only been converted a year. You follow Him, you look into His face, and all will be well with you.

O Jesus, Jesus, dearest Lord! Forgive me if I say, For very love, Thy sacred name. A thousand times a day Let us sing, Brother McAffee.

A.W. Tozer’s understanding of the Prodical Son from the sermon, “The Grace of God” October 26, 1958 https://tozertalks.com/tozer-talks-13/

Oh, a long time ago, I won’t say how many, but it’s a great many years ago; and I was in my earliest twenties. I had heard the prodigal son was a backslider. But I didn’t read it in the fifteenth of Luke. He couldn’t be a backslider and fit all the circumstances. I’d heard he was a sinner. But I couldn’t hear God say of a sinner, this my son was dead and is alive again. It didn’t fit the circumstances. So, I went to God and I said, God, will you show me. Then, I went to a place all by myself. I used to spend days and praying all alone. And I went there, and suddenly there flashed over me the understanding. And I have never had reason to doubt that this was God teaching me His Bible. I never heard anybody else say this, and I haven’t made a lot of it, but God said to my heart, the prodigal son is neither a backslider nor a sinner. The prodigal son is the human race. The human race that went out to the pigsty to the far country in Adam, and came back in Christ, my Son. For if you’ll notice, there were two other parables there, the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin. The sheep that wandered away was the part of the human race that will be saved. And when he comes back, he’s the part of the human race that will be one that’s redeemed, and that will accept redemption.

So, these, all these, all these of every race and color around the world that have come back, they’ve all come back in Christ. And they’ve all come back in the person of that prodical. All that’s the redeemed human race coming back. And do you know what they found the Father to be like? They found He hadn’t been changed at all. Insults, wronged, his neighbors pitted him and they said, oh, isn’t that terrible the way that boy treated his poor old Dad. And his father was humiliated and shamed and sorry and grieved and heartbroken. But when the boy came back, he hadn’t changed at all. And Jesus was saying to us, you went away in Adam, but you’re coming back in Christ. And when you come back, you’ll find the Father hasn’t changed. He’s the same Father that He was when you all went out every man to his own way. And when you come back in Jesus Christ, you’ll find Him exactly the same as you left Him, unchanged. That’s the story of the prodigal son. He ran and threw his arms around him and welcomed him, put a robe on him and a ring and said, this my son was dead, and he’s alive again.

Tags Jesus Christ, Revelation, Worship

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date August 3, 2025

“Holy Ground-The Life of Worship After the Jordan”

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Holy Ground: The Life of Worship After the Jordan

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

August 17, 1958

Going on over into the book of Joshua, where the Lord said to Moses and Israel, “…and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. My angel shall go before thee, and I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. And thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them. And ye shall serve the Lord your God, and he shall bless your bread and water. And I’ll take sickness away from the midst of thee, and there shall nothing cast their young. And the number of thy days I will fulfill. And I will send my fear before thee, and destroy all those to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs.”

We followed this, and we showed over in Joshua how this literally took place. And I said all the way through that while this was written to Israel as a nation on this earth, its spiritual principles apply to us now. And I believe this, and I have believed it for a long time. And I have seen God do some very wonderful things for people, for my own self. And now we followed Joshua across the river and into the land of promise. And two weeks ago, tonight I said that Israel had two things, there were two things, there were four that I wanted to mention, but I only got to mention two of them.

One was, Israel was circumcised after 40 years of wandering, and thus separation, which is always, always typical of separation in Scriptures. And then that there was the old corn of the land, and the manna ceased. The artificial manna, which came down from above, ceased, and they lived off the corn of the land. They became mature. I talked about maturity. And I said I would finish tonight and talk about this.

In the fifth chapter of Joshua, it came to pass, verse 13, when Joshua was by Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand. And Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou for us or for our adversaries? And he said, I’m not a man on either side, I am here as captain of the host of the Lord. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and did worship and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant? He knew he was talking to God. And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, loose thy shoe from off thy foot, for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so.

Now this will conclude my little series. And we begin something new and fresh for next week. A little later, perhaps not until school begins and our people get back and this summer business is over. But when that is over and we start all over again in September, early September, I want to preach a new series.

Now, there are two things here that I want you to note. The Holy Spirit, the man with the sword, and the worship. There was the man with the sword. I think that we will agree that this was the Holy Spirit. I believe that this accords with most Bible teaching, spiritual Bible teaching. And this angel here, this prince, I think the margin says, Joshua went, and the man said, as captain, that’s the word he used, prince, it says in margin, as prince of the host of the Lord am I come. And he had a sword in his hand. And it’s called the sword of the spirit in the book of Hebrews and of Ephesians. Now this angel, this comforter, was to go ahead and fight for them.

Now when we come to the New Testament, particularly in the gospel of John, we have the teaching of our Savior three chapters long about the Holy Spirit. My friends, this life in the land that I have preached about, you’ve listened to for these weeks, this life in the land, this crossed over life, this victorious life, is characterized by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

Now you have heard me say this many times, and I say it not only here, but wherever I have the pleasure of speaking. If occasion arises, I say that the church of today is gravely wanting in the power and Presence of the Holy Spirit. We have grieved the Lord by our sins, and there has been a withdrawing of the Presence, the lifting of the Presence.

We sang here, the Comforter is come. Not the Comforter came, but the Comforter is come. And this I believe with everything in my heart, that when He came, He came to stay, and He is come, and He is here. But it’s entirely possible to have the Comforter present in the church, present in a congregation, present on the earth, present in some measure in this church, and yet so grieve Him, so quench Him, so resist Him, and so ignore Him, that He cannot be to us the captain of the Lord’s host. He cannot be. He wants to be, but He cannot be.

We’re going to have to reverse ourselves in fundamental circles, and we’re going to have to do some prayerful, penitential rethinking of this matter of the relation of the Holy Spirit to his church. The Spirit of the living God was given to His church. We are baptized into one body by the Holy Spirit, that is true. And if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His, and that is true.

But it is one thing to be a member of the body of Christ, and to be baptized by that mystic union into the body of Christ, that regeneration. It is quite another thing to live in the fullness and in the friendly communion and friendship of the Holy Ghost. And my friends, I will simply have to say that this latter is something that we do not know very much about.

I am very deeply concerned, because we have brought up a generation of young people that know practically nothing about what I am saying now. We have brought up a generation, even some of them present here tonight, good, clean, young, converted people. There’s no question about that, no question about it. But they have never crossed over.

There is not the separation that is meant here by circumcision. There is not the maturity that comes from the old corn of the land and the secession of the manna. There is not the conscious presence and power of the Holy Ghost. It just isn’t, it’s not here, it’s not upon the people.

And I’d like to say, partly this is because it’s impossible to isolate this church and separate it completely from the flow of quasi-evangelicalism that is abroad on the earth. It is impossible to escape the chilling influences of a teaching that denies that there is any such a thing as a fullness of the Holy Spirit.

I teach it here, I have taught it, and some have entered. But what I say can be neutralized by what you hear on the radio or what you read in your Sunday school lessons or what somebody says or what some friend talks with you about, and we level back to this chilly condition where we find ourselves.

But Joshua found this man, this invisible man. Now Joshua went forward after that, and we read no more about the man. But as long as Joshua kept his heels clean and walked with his God, he had victory. And Joshua conquered the land and gave it to Israel. And yet it was obvious here that Joshua wasn’t doing it. It was done under the leadership of the man who appeared once to Joshua and then withdrew into invisibility but did not withdraw, who was no longer seen by Joshua but was present wherever there was obedience and faith and courage shown by Joshua and the children of Israel.

Now, my friends, we are reaping in this hour the result of a terrible misunderstanding. We are reaping in evangelical circles the result of a frightful and frightening misinterpretation of biblical truth regarding the Holy Ghost. We are forgetting that our denominational fathers, who once planted their great churches on this continent, believed as we do and as I’m trying to teach you here, and not as the modern spirit-denying evangelicals believe.

Although I’m an evangelical, a fundamentalist if you like, but our fathers believed that a man ought to be filled with the Holy Ghost and they didn’t hesitate to say so. But there came up a group of teachers a generation or less ago that nullified that whole thing, and that by careful argumentation made it very difficult for anybody to push his way through.

They said, well, but you’ll become a fanatic. Well, but look at so-and-so and he went off into wild fanaticism. And they put up a scarecrow in the middle of God Almighty’s cornfield to scare away all of the children of the Lord. They put up a scarecrow in the clover field, so the children of God are frightened away. And so, we were forced to the necessity of two or three things. We were forced to go forward either by learning or by gadgetry.

And so, by learning and gadgetry we have tried to labor through, but we haven’t gotten very far and we’re so desperately in need of refreshing in the day in which we live. What the church of God needs to do, the whole evangelical church, is to call ten days of prayer and apologize to the Holy Ghost. We’ve wronged Him, we’ve retrenched Him, we’ve denied Him, we’ve interpreted Him away, we have resisted Him, we’ve been ashamed of Him, we’ve been afraid of Him.

And the result is, He has pulled the blinds down over the light and we are without much light. But instead of our saying, O God, we have sinned, we have sinned, the light has gone out, we look around for a way to get on without the light. We look around for eyes that aren’t God’s eyes, methods that aren’t God’s methods, ways that aren’t God’s ways.

So, the church is going on, stumbling forward and going on, but we’re not going on with very much lift, nor very much buoyancy, nor very much blessing. I tell you that I would rather see a select number of the Lord’s people filled with the Holy Spirit and living in the sweet oil of the Holy Ghost than to see great religious movements. If you could see both, it would be very good. But you can have one without the other. You can have the second without the first.

We can promote great religious movements and not have the Holy Spirit at all. We can learn how to do it, my brethren. And if we do, we make a tragic mistake. What art thou? Who art thou? said Joshua to this man. Who art thou? And the man said, Nay, don’t question me. As captain of the host of the Lord, I am come.

And so, I want to urgently, urgently press upon you that you, particularly you young people, search your own hearts and search your Bible and prepare to spend some time alone. You know, Christianity is a social religion. We are called sheep. We are not called wolves. Wolves travel mostly alone until they run to kill, and they travel in packs, but mostly they’re alone or in twos. We are called sheep because sheep always travel together if they can.

So, Christianity is a social religion. That is, it’s a social religion in this that we worship together. There is the assembly, the coming together of the people of God, whether it be half a dozen or half a dozen hundred. They are the people of God nevertheless, and they are together. And this is good. But it’s also possible to get so that you’re not spiritual, you have made your religion to mean that you’ve got to get somebody to talk with, somebody to lean on, somebody to chat with, and we do not meet God alone.

Some of you are leaving shortly to go to various schools of learning. And I want to say to you, if you accept the dead level of mediocrity that you find in your student body as the highest will of God for you, you will waste your time where you’re going, and you will not go on with God. You’re going to have to, by the grace of God, deliberately and purposefully and determinedly rise above those that are around about you. And when you rise above them, of course, they’re not going to like it. They’re going to call you holier than thou. They’re going to have cute names for you. They’re going to snub you. They’re going to think you’re queer or they’re going to find some category to put you in and get rid of you. And they’re going to dismiss you one way or another.

But brethren, you can’t dismiss a man full of the Holy Ghost. Now, I want to warn you. You can’t dismiss a man full of the Holy Ghost. And you can’t frighten him, and you can’t quench him and you can’t squelch him and you can’t stop him and you can’t block him. For God says, I’ll go before you and the angel shall go ahead of you, and I will drive out the enemy. But he didn’t mention this captain. But when the time came, the captain was there. The prince was there with his sword in his hand, the Word of God.

And so I say to you that if you accept the common level, if you pray a little and read a little and sing a little and then chatter a little and yak a little and joke a little and then the next week pray a little more and talk a little more, pretty soon you have equated spiritual Christianity with fun and amusement and all that. And the result will be that you will grow up and go on and mature physically and mentally, but not mature spiritually.

We are not a mature people spiritually, not even in this church where I have struggled and prayed and preached so hard and brought men who could help and supplement and teach as well or better than myself to help us along. But we’ll lean on each other, and we’ll look at each other as samples and Charles looks at Bob and Bob looks at John and John looks at Harry and each one says, well, I’m about like the other. And we accept each other as a sample of what a Christian ought to be.

Read the lives of the holy men of God. Read the lives of those who even in their youth and some even in their teens refused absolutely to accept the chilly Christianity of their day as normal. And they pressed themselves through and they were accused of being fanatical and they were even some of them deserted and some of them shown the door, but they went on with God, nevertheless. And now we write their biographies and sing their hymns and tell their anecdotes and build their sepulchers, but we’re careful not to follow them and live as they lived.

There is a land, my brethren. The Holy Ghost said, I’ll take you across into that land and it’ll be your land, and I’ll lead you. And I’ll send an angel before you and he shall go before you and he’ll drive out the enemy from before you. And the very things that are there to hinder you will become steppingstones for you to rise on your dead selves to better things. And that’s what God said, and He said it to His church, and He said it to His people.

Five years ago, ten years ago, as long ago as fifteen years ago, I saw a little turn for the better in spiritual things here and there. I’m speaking not only about church, I’m speaking about God’s people wherever I find them. I saw a little turn for the better, but now I see a little swing in the other direction. I see those churches, who at one time had very high standards for membership are now throwing the doors open and saying, while we sing number 39, the door is open for members. And so they come and join. This is a spiritual tragedy.

The plane that went down with 99 aboard, we were all horror stricken. But to open the church of Jesus Christ without discrimination to anybody that wants to walk down the aisle, and join is a tragedy infinitely worse than if all the airplanes in the sky tonight were suddenly to crash together. Because the worst the airplane crash can do is to kill the body. But when a church gets corrupt, it ruins the souls of men.

Now the second thing is, Joshua fell on his face to the earth and did worship. And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoes from off thy foot. We would say now, take your hat off, bow your head. The place where thou standest is holy.

The land of crossing over is the land of worship. In Genesis 12:7 and 8, the Lord appeared unto Abram and said unto Abram, In the land, he said unto Abram, Now look around you. This land I will give to you and to your seed. And Abraham built an altar unto the Lord who had appeared unto him.

And then later, Jacob, a grandson of Abraham, after he had sinned and was driven from his home, that is driven by a bad conscience and fear of his brother, driven from his home, he went out from Padanaram, or toward Padanaram, and he traveled to the middle of the night. And in the middle of the night, he came to a place and lay down in that place and took of the stones of that place for his pillow.

And it came to pass that while he slept, behold, a vision appeared, and a ladder was set up on the earth and its top reached to heaven. And the angels ascended and descended upon it and God stood above it and Jacob said, this is holy ground. Why didn’t he know that that was holy ground? Had not God said it to Abraham, but Jacob found it out. And so he awoke and he anointed the pillar and said, This is the house of God. And we got the beautiful word Bethel, the house of God.

Later on, after various skirmishes and backslidings and restorations, Jacob appeared at Genesis 35. And in the 35th chapter, when he returned to the land, one of the first things he did was to build an altar unto the Lord. The land of promise is a land of worship.

And in Joshua 5, we have the same thing. They had been out of the land a long time. Now they come back into the land again, the land where Abraham had built the altar, the land where Jacob had built it and anointed or had raised and anointed the pillar, and the land where Jacob had built the altar again after returning to the land. And then now they’re back in it. And one of the first things they do is to bow and worship. And this strange prince from heaven says, Loose the shoe off thy foot, for the place whereon thou standest is holy. This is holy land.

My friends, there is a place, a land here on earth for God’s people, a land where the soul anoints its pillar. There is a land where God appears to the soul. There is a place right here in the twentieth century amid Sputniks and automobiles and burning fumes and noise and confusion. There is a place where we can enter, where the soul anoints its pillar and where the heart takes off its shoes and where we worship as Abraham worshiped.

Let me take you back to this wondrous, mysterious passage. After these things, the word of the Lord came unto Abraham in a vision, saying, fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward. And Abraham said, Lord God, what wilt thou give me, saying, I go childless? And Abraham said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed. And behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, this shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bough shall be thine heir, the promise of Isaac. And he brought him forth abroad and said, look now toward heaven and tell the stars, that is, count the stars, if thou be able to number them.

And he said, so shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness. And he said unto him, I am Jehovah that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees to give thee this land. And he said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? Here is one of the most wonderful mixtures of sharp reasoning and awestruck worship possible to imagine.

Here was a man who was using his head. He remembered the promise God had made. He remembered that things weren’t working out the way God seemed to say they would be. And he wasn’t going to give way to his feelings, and he was going to stick by the text. And he said, Lord God, but wait, you promised me, whereby shall I know? And God said, Take a heifer of three years old and a she-goat of three years old and a ram of three years old and a turtledove and a young pigeon. He took unto him all these and divided them in the midst and laid each piece one against another.

This was Abraham seeing Jesus’ day. This was Abraham by faith looking down the years and seeing a cross. Only he did only what he could do. He slew young animals and birds. And when the fowls came down upon the carcass, Abraham drove them away. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham. And lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him. And he said unto Abraham, that is, God said unto Abraham, know of a surety, Abraham, know of a surety.

Even here in the deep sleep of ecstasy, even here in the horror of great darkness, even here when your reasoning is staggering, reason is staggering because of the mystery and wonder of it, know of a surety, Abraham. I’ll make good in my promise, thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs and shall serve them and afflict them four hundred years, and also the nation whom they shall serve will I judge. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace, thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again. And it came to pass that when the sun went down and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. And in the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying unto thy seed will I give this land.

Now here was the wonder, the mystery, the mystery of it. I don’t claim to understand this, I do not know. But here was God appearing to the man, here it was all interlaced with good hard promises, no visionary dreaming of things. Here were good hard promises, the word of God was there, and the promises were there, and Abraham was insisting on them. And yet there was an overtone of the mysterious and the divine and the wonderful and the heavenly and the beautiful. And Abraham went into a deep sleep and Abraham woke from his sleep and here was the fire moving among the pieces.

Oh, this was God, my brethren, this was God. And I say that it’s this sense of the otherness of Christianity that is missing now. Everything can be explained, everything. We’ve got it all worked out on charts. Busy young fellows who’ve studied Christian education. They’re busy telling us how to do the work of the Holy Ghost.

Ah, my brethren, there is a land where in this life, down here now, right in the middle of this generation of worldliness, while we’re salty believers in the Word and where we will insist that God keep his Word and where we stand by the Book and refuse to have anything that doesn’t check with the Book.

And yet at the same time, there comes down upon the soul that enters that land, there comes down a sense of something wonderful and something mysterious. It’s only God, it is God, why should I say only God? But it is God, and the soul anoints her altar, the soul anoints her pillar.

Now, where are we? What kind of Christianity is yours? There are several kinds I want to mention briefly. There’s the social Christianity of which I’ve already spoken. There are tens of thousands of Christians who couldn’t stay Christian one month. If they were cast by themselves, they have to have the support of others, those round about them. They haven’t pressed through. Abraham, all alone. Jacob, all alone. And it was in those lonely times that the Spirit opened heavens and revealed wonders.

And I have no hesitation in saying that what Abraham and Jacob learned in those brief, beautiful, bright times of visionary, glorious insight, I have no hesitation in saying that what they learned there was more to them than six years in a seminary could ever be to a man today. Social Christianity.

Then we have formal Christianity. I won’t talk much about that because I don’t think you’re guilty of that and I don’t think that you’re going to hide behind formality unless it is the ugly formality of the gospel churches. The Episcopalians have their formality, the Lutherans have their formality, and the Presbyterians and Baptists in some areas have gone pretty formal, but they have a beautiful form. They’ve worked it out. They know what to do. It’s lovely. It’s at least lovely. But in our gospel churches, we’re likely to become formal, but have an ugly formality that doesn’t have the ripe beauty of age on it.

When a Lutheran or an Episcopalian turns around twice and bows, everybody knows what he’s doing. Symbolism. He taps a bell or lights a candle; everybody knows what it is. There’s beauty in it at any rate. But we have a formalism that isn’t beautiful. It’s an ugly formality. Ugly formalism. Always we go the same way. Always we do the same thing. And because it isn’t beautiful, we think it’s spiritual. That’s what I call the cult of ugliness.

Well, then there’s a Christianity which is pure entertainment and nothing else. Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s nothing else. But I would say that it is so mixed up. It has to have an entertaining value, or you can’t sell it. You just have to have an entertaining value. Most all, most all of the churches have gone that way. Most all the colleges, most all. Most all have gone that way.

I’m not saying a word about Wheaton or Nyack, or Moody’s, but I’m saying that practically all, some people want to murder me because I don’t come out and name names, but I’m not going to name names if you don’t, if I lay the principle down and if I rub the lens real good and say, now look, and you can’t see it.

As the fellow said, if you have to ask, you don’t know anyhow. And you never would know. So, if you can’t see what I’m talking about, if the Spirit of God has not honored you by letting you see, then there’s no use to ask me. But everything has to have its entertainment value these days.

Then, of course, there’s theological Christianity. It’s purely theological, nothing else. Then there’s escapist Christianity. That’s the Christianity of the red-hot evangelists and the missions. It’s just escapist. Jesus Christ provides an escape hatch, some way to get out and rescue ourselves. And we never quit talking about the fact we were rescued.

Brethren, Christianity does make a way of escape. It is theological, and it is social, but it is also worshipful. And this is what’s missing in this hour in which we live. There is such a thing as divine rapture. We sing about it. Fanny Crosby taught us to sing it, and we sing it, but we don’t have any idea what we mean when we’re singing it. We sing it in our hymns and don’t know what we’re saying.

But there is a place where we worship, and the Church must find that place again. The Church must find it again. We must find it. We here must find it. We here must put away every sin until we find that place, so that when you wake in the night, a sense of His presence is there, that when by chance you hear a bar of music, a bit of a hymn on the radio, or sometimes when you’re not expecting it, tears come to your eyes, and when you hear vast spaces and all they’re talking about now, a sense of blazing wonder comes to your heart. This is my Father’s world.

Worship, brethren, is what we need. Worship. We should meet to worship. We should meet to worship. We should meet always to worship. Worship should be part of everything that a Christian does. If it’s a street meeting, he ought to go there in the spirit of worship. If it’s a mission meeting, he should be there in the spirit of worship. If it’s a meeting to sew a sheet for a missionary, it should be done in the spirit of worship. And it can be done. But it can’t be done unless we’re in the land, unless we’ve pushed across and gotten in. There is a place where the child of God can get in.

You say, is that what the Alliance teaches? Yes, it’s what the Alliance teaches, but it’s what 97 percent of us don’t have. But it’s also that which some people who aren’t in the Alliance have. I meet them here and there. I told you about one this morning, a pastor I heard pray. That man is in. And I have met a few like that. They come from the North and the South and the East and the West and they’re Arminian or they’re Calvinist or they’re post-millennialist or they’re pre-tribulation or they’re post-tribulation or their eschatology is all mixed up. But they’ve gotten in. They’ve gotten in. And you’ll always tell them. You can always tell them. You can tell them by their faces. There’s a timber in their voice that tells they’re in.

We’ve put rapture over to the coming of Christ and we’ve made an eschatological historical event out of it. And we have explained it as downrightly as you would explain just exactly what the Lord is going to do. And we’ve got the Bible to prove it. But the saints talked about rapture, and they didn’t mean the second coming of Christ. We push rapture to the coming of the Lord Jesus.

But it said here, take your shoes off your feet. And by an instinct the man went down on his face. The fact that we can enter the church of God and joke with each other. The fact that we can enter the church of God and sit down and look around to see who has the sack dress on. The fact that we can enter the church of God and begin to criticize in our hearts. I don’t like that song. Why’d they sing that one? There’s that old man again with the same old stuff. All right, maybe there’s a fault to be found. But the very fact that you can find it indicates something’s wrong or indicates there’s something wrong with all of us.

My brethren, God is in this place. Lo, God is here. Let us adore and own how dreadful is this place. I tell you; I tell you that I would shake hands with every friend and say goodbye to them all. Rather than give up even a little bit of this that I personally experience. This, this land of worship. This land where the Father is all. Shall we not obey God and go on to perfection? I believe you’ll want to, or I wouldn’t be preaching to you.

May God grant that together we may press on out into the deep waters, waters to swim in. All right.

Tags Victory, Worship

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date July 27, 2025

“Canaan Christians-Called to be Different“

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Canaan Christians-Called to be Different

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

August 3, 1958

And now, at that time, the Lord said unto Joshua, make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel a second time. And Joshua did, and the cause why he did was this, that all the people that came out of Egypt that were males, even all the men of war, died in the wilderness by the way after they came out of Egypt. Now, all the people that came out were circumcised, but all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth out of Egypt, them they had not circumcised.

They did not practice that right in the wilderness. Though children are born to them, they are in the wilderness. For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war which came out of Egypt were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord, unto whom the Lord sware that he would not show them the land which the Lord sware unto their fathers, that he would give us a land that floweth with milk and honey.

And their children, whom he raised up in their stead, to them Joshua was circumcised. For they were uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised by the way. And the Lord said to Joshua, verse 9, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you, from off you.

Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal, unto this day. And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal and kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month at Eden in the plains of Jericho. And they did eat of the old corn of the land on the morrow after the Passover, unleavened cakes and parched corn in the self-same day.

And the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land. Neither had the children of Israel manna anymore, but they did eat of the fruit of the land of Canaan. And it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand. And Joshua went unto him.

There wasn’t much else to do. People were there, and Joshua was the leader. Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? Whose side are you on? And he said, as captain of the Lord, the host of the Lord am I now come. I am not a man taking sides in a battle, nay, but as the captain or prince of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant? And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoes from off thy foot, for the place whereon thou standest is holy. Joshua did so.

Now there are four things here, circumcision, the old corn, the ceasing of the manna, the man with the sword, and worship. I don’t know whether I’ll get to all of these or not, but I’ll talk until it’s time to quit.

First of all, there’s that in the opening part of that chapter, that fifth chapter, where they were over a cross into the land. They had a monument put there to indicate that they had gotten over. And I don’t have any confidence in any kind of spiritual experience that isn’t definite enough to put a monument up.

When you say, Are you a Christian? And a man says, I think so. You may be sure that he isn’t. Or at least you’re safe in assuming that he isn’t and going on from there. When you say to a man, Are you a consecrated, spirit-filled Christian? And he says, I hope so. You may be sure that he isn’t. And though he may be better than you think he is, he’s most assuredly not as far along as he thinks he is. So you’re always safe in saying, Where’s your monument? Show me.

Then, now that they’re over and in, God said, now there’s been an abnormal condition in the wilderness, a confused condition. And I now want you; you still have the smell and the psychology of Egypt upon you. You’ve been out of the land, but you’ve still not been mine in the sharp, clear sense in which I want you to be. And remember, said God, in effect, that I gave to Abraham, your father, a right, and that was the right of circumcision, a token, said God, of the covenant between me and you. It was renewed under Moses.

And now, after the wilderness wandering, a whole generation of young men had grown up, and the whole crowd that had come out had died, now a new generation. Yet there were two that hadn’t died. Do you remember who they are? Caleb and Joshua. They were still around. Caleb was a mighty old man, and so was Joshua. But they were still around. The others had died.

Now he said, I want you to reinstitute this right. And this right was to be a sign of the covenant, the sign of God, separated from the other inhabitants all around about them wherever they went. There was a secret sign that they belonged to God. The covenant was in their heart.

Now this is separation, my brethren, and this is what it stands for. It is separation. It’s the sign of God, separation. In the New Testament it is declared that this old right of circumcision had been transferred to the heart, and now the Holy Ghost brings this sign and seal of God to the heart itself. That’s the difference. And this is separation.

Now I don’t know whether there’s very much use or not, really, in this day, because if there was a strong east wind blowing, a strong east wind, and a five-year-old boy decided that he was going to set the wind in another direction, and he got up on top of the house and blew real hard, it really wouldn’t make much difference, would it?

And in this day in which we’re living there’s a strong wind, and it’s not blowing toward heaven, for the winds that blow are not a friend of grace to blow us toward heaven, but they are the breezes of hell to blow us the other way. And we have provided, or have produced, I mean, in the last few years, the slickest bunch of casuists that ever lived in all this wide world. Talk about the Roman Catholics and their casuistry and their splitting hairs. The Jesuits are not in our league at all. They’re strictly triple-A boys when it comes to slick dodging and getting around worldliness. Our leaders have worked it out for us. We’ve written it into magazine articles and published books to prove it, and it’s all to show that really there’s nothing too wrong with the world.

And the result is that our Christians of today do everything the world does except get drunk, commit adultery, and murder, and rob banks, the vulgar things that decent sinners don’t do. I can take you down here in Beverly Hills, on the edge of which I live, and I can show you and can lead you into the homes of people who haven’t been in a church since the last wedding, and yet they’re good, decent people. They have nice pictures on their walls, they listen to good music, hi-fi, and they don’t curse each other.

The man of the house isn’t a robber, and his wife doesn’t run around nights when he’s away. They’re decent sinners, decent sinners. There’s a lot of them. And don’t you think there aren’t a lot of decent sinners? They’re rebels, and God doesn’t accept their deeds, and their righteousness will never save them, because as Billy Sunday used to, or the man that was with him, used to sing, the man that had crucified Jesus had passed off for righteous men too.

So, the righteousness that they have won’t save them, but it’s a great mistake to read in the newspaper’s wall of vileness and then think everybody’s vile. Not everybody’s vile. There’s a lot of decent people that aren’t vile. And so we Christians, we accept Jesus, and we don’t do any of those vile things, neither do these people I’m talking about do those vile things. And some of them are vastly more cultured than we are. They go to better, they hear better music, and they read better books than a lot of us fundamentalist Christians. They’re more cultured than we are, and their language is better. And if you look to culture, they got it, they’re one up on us on that.

So, the righteousness of the average Christian today is actually no better, if any better, than the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, and it’s not even that, for the scribes and the Pharisees were a separated people, and the Christians of today are not separated people. There’s simply no circumcision in their hearts. They are going to make it through to heaven, all right.

I heard a man preach today, and he was telling the truth. His name was Jordan from the West Coast, and he was telling the truth. And he said that if you would wash the feet of Jesus every day for a million years, and comb and brush His hair, and did everything else you could do for the Lord Jesus for a million years, it wouldn’t save you. He’s perfectly right, perfectly right. Not by works of righteousness are we saved, but by the grace of God through faith, and faith is the gift from the Lord.

So, salvation is the gift of God, and we are saved, we’re going to be saved, all right, and we’re going to be sure we are. But we have learned to sanctify and place our approval upon one worldly thing after another, one more of Adam’s things after another, until there practically isn’t anything that the Christians can’t do, and still wear a pair of wings as broad as this building, gilded with gold, and play a harp twenty feet high in that day. We all imagine that.

They say about the Mohammedans in some of the Orient literature that there were seventy-one sects of the Mohammedans, and each one of them had a different part of the hog he couldn’t eat. You could eat certain parts, but there were certain things you couldn’t eat. So they said that each one separated a part that they couldn’t eat, and another one a different part they couldn’t eat, and another one a different part they couldn’t eat, so that actually the pig got all eaten up, but that each one had a different part that was allowable. He could have this, but he couldn’t have the rest, and he could have that, but couldn’t have the rest, so added up the whole hog down to the bristles was gone. Even the Oriental religionists joked about that.

Well, exactly the same among Christians today. We have approved so many things that God has disapproved. One won’t do it, but ten others will, and seven others won’t, but nine others will, to the point where there isn’t anything in the blessed wide world that Christians don’t do, and we’re all going to go to heaven and wear crowns as big around as hoops in that day.

Brethren, I tell you, we ought to wake up and ask ourselves whether we’re out of the wilderness or not, and if we are, whether God Almighty isn’t saying to some of us, I’m going to place a seal in your heart that’ll make you different. I’m going to give you something that’ll make you different.

He said, now you Jews, you’ve been running around here half in and half out. You’re out of Egypt, but you’re not into Canaan, and while you were there, I didn’t bother you much. I just kept you and watched over you and fed you until the old fellows died, but now we’re into a new land of victory, a land of fruit and riches and corn and wine and blessing, and now there’s got to be this secret sign that you belong to me. You’re different, cut out from all the rest of the world, different altogether. That’s separation.

Well, this is what I’m talking about. We Christians aren’t a separated people. The reproach of Egypt hasn’t been rolled away. We’re not willing to be what the little song says, the Lord’s despised few. You know an example of this despised few thing? When I heard that song, and I heard it many, many years ago, that’s an old holiness song, and it’s not a hillbilly song, it’s an old holiness camp meeting song, come out from the holiness people. And I used to hear it, and they used to sing it the way Margaret sang it tonight, I’ll take the way with the Lord’s despised few.

But do you know that there are most people that even will sing it anymore? Most of them won’t sing it, but the ones even that will sing it change the word despised to anointed, did you know that? I’ll take the way with the Lord’s anointed few. They don’t want to feel they’re despised.

But do you know that bunch of circumcised Jews were the joke of every Gentile and pagan and heathen everywhere around about? They’d wink and point to them. They had the secret mark of the covenant. They belonged to God. They were separated from all the rest of the nations of the world. They belonged to God. People our day won’t pay the price.

You know what, young people? If you want to be fire-baptized Christians, you can be in 24 hours time if you’ll pay the price. Now I’m not hard on people. When people write in to want to know what I think of women wearing cosmetics, one woman wrote in this last week and said that she wondered if the cosmetics women were now was not the same as that worn by Jezebel. I wrote back and said that I presumed that it was about the same kind of grease, but that I wasn’t able to tell exactly what kind she wore, but I suppose it was somewhat the same.

I am not hard on people, but I’ll tell you this, my friends, that you’re just too worldly to be powerful, and you might just as well hear it now. You’re just not separated enough. You’ve placed your seal of approval upon too many things that God despises, and you have not dared to become a despised person. You’re going to be like the world enough that the world doesn’t hate you. You won’t take the name, despised one. You won’t want that. You don’t want to be despised. You’re willing to be anointed. You’re willing to have the world say, oh, they’ve got something.

People have been sending me books recently, and those books are half occult and half psychic and half applied psychology and, well, there’s too many halves there. I mean, partly psychology and partly psychic and partly occultism and partly Peelism and partly positivism and part poetry and part psychiatry.

Brethren, there’s a way to get past all that. There’s a way to get through, and that is to meet God in mighty encounter. The Scripture says here, listen, it’s downright, but you can take it. You’ll read worse things than this in the newspapers.

It says it came to pass when they had done circumcising all the people, they abode in their places in the camp until they were healed. They said that the thing went so deep, and it was so downright and terrible that they couldn’t march. Everybody had to wait around till they got well. But there’s nobody getting wounded that I know of. No surgery is being performed on anybody. We slither into the kingdom of God and ooze in by osmosis.

God Almighty wants you to get in by a sharp knife, and he wants you to be separated by surgery. But most of us won’t. We just won’t, and I suppose I might just as well go on to Summit Grove, because nobody listens much until God brings you up to it, and I don’t certainly want to push you across until God brings you up to it.

But God says he wants His people to be a separated people. God says there’s an ancient rite. There’s an ancient rite, and it brings a sharp, painful, surgical separation of the Christian from the world. We’re too much mixed up in the world. We like the things they like. You say, we don’t do bad things.

No, neither do those nice people down Beverly Hills. They don’t do bad things. They’re nice, cultured people, but they haven’t got fire, and they haven’t got power, and they can’t pray things down, and learn to compromise. We’re the biggest bunch of compromisers. The evangelical church has compromised itself until it has no power at all. But what we lack in power, we’re making up in consultation. These are the days of the consulters. Anybody gets in trouble with his conscience, he goes to a consulter, a consultant, and he gets consulted. When they come to me, I insult them.

I remember once that Paul Rader, I often quote him because in the days of his power, there was no preacher on the North American continent that could even play in the same league with him. Later on, it was different, but in the days of his power, he said he preached one time on death to self. And as they were going out, he said a stiff Presbyterian preacher said to him, Sir, you have insulted me. He said, I said, you got off easy, but God had to skin me. You got off easy, God had to skin me.

There you have it. We won’t be skinned these days. We won’t take it. It’s too easy to go in and have a consultation. I’d like to have a discussion. People who have no more right to open their mouths, none whatsoever, are sitting around panels discussing how we should live. And all ends up by saying, if it doesn’t bother your conscience, you can do it.

Now, some people are sore at me because I don’t name names. See, they want me to name names and have a royal fight, but I won’t do that. I won’t name names unless I’m forced to. If the day ever comes when it’s up to me to do it, I’ll do it. And I’m not going to name things, but I can only say we’re too worldly-minded to have power.

When you die to this world, God Almighty seals you with the secret sign of separation. And it goes back to Abraham; circumcision, the sign you belong to God, not of the body, but of the heart. But you can get very few people. Occasionally one will come through, do you know it? Once in a while one will come through. And when he does, he’s usually looked upon as being a little queer.

I’m sure the father won’t, he’ll understand, and he’ll know that I am complimenting his son. But I think of our tall, serious Cliff Westergren. He was a little too serious for a lot of you young people. But he was just serious enough that God Almighty could anoint him. And he was just willing enough to be despised and be different that God could put him in one year in a job that it takes most people ten years to be worthy to hold, head of the printing outfit out there, one year or less.

I think of Harry Post. Over at Nyack some years ago, I can see I’m not going to finish my sermon, but I’m going to finish the time. Over at Nyack some years ago, quite a number now, fifteen maybe, Harry Post was a boy from our church. Then there were different ones from different churches. They got together and decided they wanted to pray.

The average student at Nyack, he doesn’t want to pray too much. He’s fast with a quip and quick at the knife and fork, but not so good at consecration. That’s true of every Bible school and Christian college everywhere. The few that stand out are the queer birds.

And these queer birds got to praying. And they got a place, I think it was in the furnace room, I believe, of the large building, Simpson Hall. And they got a place down there in the dust among the cobwebs, they called it the glory hole. And they’d meet down there and pray. Now, they were just young enough to think of a foolish name like that, but just experienced enough to go through with God.

Well, anybody who listens to Harry Post knows he’d been in there and seen something. He’s different. I went along with a friend of mine, and we went over this bunch of fellows that had been in that glory hole experience when the Holy Ghost came down on them. And every one of them stood out solidly, head and shoulders above the other.

The authorities closed it down because they said that they were getting out of hand. None of the present authorities there, incidentally, so don’t feel I’m insulting anybody. I’m not telling you who, but some of the authorities closed it down, said you could get out of hand. They were afraid they were going to pray too long. Around these schools, when a bunch of Christians wanted to pray, and one of the faculty helps them to pray and takes them aside and helps pray them through, they usually kick that faculty member upstairs and make him a vice president and put him out on the road.

So, we won’t be around to influence these people into fanaticism. You know what this church needs? We need about 14 volts of old-fashioned fanaticism. We need to be a peculiar people, but we’re not willing to pay the price.

And I’m preaching to you now, God bless you, and I’d give anything, anything for you, anything, do anything for you, but I can predict the direction a lot of you are taking. I’ve seen generations of young people come up here before, and I’ve seen how they come up and they get into their twenties, and they look around, they get married, and then they settle down, and then they begin to strike a compromise with themselves and have a baby or two, and that’s an excuse. And pretty soon they figure out a way that they can serve God and be respectable and balanced and poised, and nobody will think they’re queer. And the result is they settle down to a half-in and a half-out experience and grow old in it.

Dear God, I think I’d rather die and go to heaven red-hot than to stay down here and cool off so you didn’t know whether I was in or out. Because you’re neither in or out, you’re lukewarm, I’ll spew you out of my mouth, lukewarm church, a lukewarm people. God wants to roll your reproach of Egypt away and make us different from other men.

There are three classes of people in the universe, those who are in heaven, those who are in hell, and those who are on earth. And those who are on earth are subdivided into two classes, those who are psychologically and morally fitted for hell, and those who are spiritually and morally fitted for heaven.

Now, just a question of the division coming one of these times. It’s coming, and when it comes, we’ll go to our own place. Well, that’s first. Israel was a circumcised people now, a separated people. They could joke about that if they wanted to, and kid around about these funny fellows that had surgical operations that immobilized them for two weeks. But they had God’s sign on them, nevertheless. God’s sign.

Some of you people need deep surgery. Not of the body, but of the heart. Deep surgery. Surgery that’ll be so deep and painful and shocking that pizza won’t taste good that night. So deep and painful and shocking that you’ll forget all about that latest quip you heard on television. Our difficulty is we’ve never had surgery. A lot of us never had surgery, not knowing what it is to die, to feel the weapon or the tool of the Holy Physician going into our hearts.

Well, then the second thing, and that’ll be the end, the old corn of the land. You know they’d had manna all along, and say what you will, manna was a light bread. It was heavenly, it was divine, but it was for young Christians. So, when they got over there, the Scripture says, the manna ceased. And I suppose that there were some of them set up a howl. But God says, why howl about the loss of manna? I brought you over here where you can live off the land, and the first thing is good old corn of the land.

Now, in the New Testament, we find the same thing. This is maturity, you see here. The one above, circumcision, separation. This is maturity. Back in the New Testament, we find this in the book of 1 Corinthians. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal, for whereas there is among you, and so on, ye are carnal, and walk as men.

Then in Hebrews, the Holy Ghost says, Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that somebody teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. And ye are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness. He is a babe. But strong meat belongs to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised that discern good and evil. There were mature Christians.

God is wanting mature Christians in this day, mature Christians. The trouble with us, we want to integrate Christianity with fun. And we don’t know which is which. Christianity and entertainment, Christianity and amusement, Christianity and relaxation, Christianity and recreation, Christianity and a thousand and one other things. The result is we don’t have either.

When Pliable, in Pilgrim’s Progress, when Pliable started out with Christian to go toward the celestial city, they came to the Slough of Despond; and Pliable fell in, and Christian fell in. Christian walled around, but said he struggled toward the edge of the bank farthest from his house. He was going to get out near to heaven, and he got in anyhow. But Pliable turned around and plowed his way back to the near side and started home.

When he got home, four kinds of people met him. There were some who said, you’re very wise for coming back. Others who said, you’re a fool for starting. Others said, you’re a coward for not going through with it. And what did the others say? Well, they had some word for him. And so said Bunyan, Pliable sat sneaking among them. I think that’s one of the most powerful expressions for that many little words I ever heard. Pliable sat sneaking among them.

And so many of us Christians were Pliable, and the world doesn’t respect us, and so we sit sneaking in the world. We aren’t on our way to the city. We’ve tried it and got into the Slough and went back, and so we sit sneaking, and we never get anywhere. We believe we’re born again, can’t lose our eternal life, and so we’ll get there somehow or other. But we sit sneaking in the world instead of having power and fire and all the rest. You know what, my brethren? You’ve got to be willing.

My old mother-in-law used to say this, God bless her. She used to say, you’ve got to be willing to be a fool for Christ’s sake. Be a fool for Christ’s sake.

People don’t want to be thought fools. They want to be written up as the businessman who trusts Jesus and makes a million. They want to be written up as the entertainer who trusts Jesus and makes the big nightclubs. They want to be written up as the entertainer who, or the whatever you have, that trusts Jesus and still is quite the thing.

You know what? I listen to Tony Weitzel. I don’t know whether he ever listens. I listen to interviews, any kind of interviews, anybody. That’s where I get my education. And I was listening to Tony Weitzel and interviewing somebody, and you know who was at home? He was interviewing Hildegard. And you know what transpired before it was all over? Hildegard is not only a Christian, she’s a mystical Christian. She’s a mystical Christian.

Well, maybe she is. That ain’t the way I heard it. Maybe she is. We want to be Christian, but we want to be so worldly that nobody will say we’re fools. But I’ll take the way with the Lord’s despised few. Can you say that? His despised few. I hope you can say it.

Well, nowadays we are not ready, we’re not mature enough for God to do anything. People are praying for revival. God can never send revival until there are some mature Christians able to work with Him in it. We whimper at the foot of the cross and say, send waves of revival, Lord, He can’t send.

God never pours oil on carnal flesh, all of you remember that. God never anoints rebels, and he never pours oil on people unless they have been circumcised by deep surgery in their hearts. Then they’ll have oil poured on them. You think I’m a fool? I can find you lots of people who support what I’m preaching about now, know what I’m talking about, and say it happened to me. Not many, because we are getting away from that now, quite away from it. But I’m still for it.

You say that’s the result of your getting older? No, I preached like this 40 years ago. You know what? I preached like this 40 years ago, and I was more, I named things then. I named things. I went into a neighborhood where everybody chawed snuff, ate tobacco and smoked, and I told them they couldn’t go to heaven that way, and they shut and locked the church against me, and I had to walk oh so many miles without anything.

Another fellow, a fellow who was my song leader, Jeff, my song leader. Well, I haven’t had anybody kick me around like that for a long time, and I’m getting homesick. Really, you know? It’s blessed, it’s blessed to be kicked around. It’s blessed to have somebody come up and tell you that they think you’re slipping. Because somebody slips occasionally is no proof that every circumcised Christian has slipped.

A friend of mine sought God and had a great spiritual experience, but he was overworked and now is temporarily in an institution. The devil comes around and says to me, now watch it. If you press too hard, you’ll blow your top too. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I stand to defy him.

Because one man overworked breaks doesn’t mean that every good Christian has to break. And I’d much rather be filled with the Holy Ghost than get stuck in an institution than to walk around half-dead. A lot of Christians walk around half-dead. I know they’re half-dead by the stuff they read. We buy it. We buy some of it here for our Sunday school. It’s written by morons for morons, published for the money it brings for morons. And we gear our brilliant intellect down to moronic trash and think we’re doing God’s service. Maturity is what we lack, brethren, maturity.

How I’d like to see numbers of you, increasing numbers of you, get all alone and plow through to God all alone. Theoretically, it’d be a nice thing, I suppose, if we could all get a group of us together, a group of, say, young people, a group of people together, and the Lord would bless us. But it doesn’t work that way in these terrible days. You’ve got to die one at a time. And you’ve got to plow your way through to God one at a time.

Oh, how many I’ve seen go out of this church, leave us and go away, because they would not meet God alone. They would not plow through to God. They would not know the surgery of separation. They never went on to maturity, and they’re still trying to live on manna and milk, the porridge for children, instead of soup and black bread for grown men.

May God lead us on, my dear people, may God lead us on. If I loved you less, I’d be easier on you. And if I hated you, I’d preach on how to think positively and keep out of trouble with your conscience. But I love you too much to let you alone. And so that’s why I’ve told you these blunt things.

Some of you don’t even know what I mean. Others of you know but are mad. Others of you know, and don’t tend to do anything about it, but there’s always the blessed remnant who know and are going to do something about it. Well, I’m going to pray and close this meeting. I’m going to pray and close this meeting.

Now, who’s here tonight that’ll say, Mr. Tozer, I want God Almighty to perform deep surgery on me. I want to be willing to be a fool, to be despised, to be separated, to be thought queer, to be rejected and looked on as being a bit off, don’t care what it costs, any price.

I want to be a Canaan Christian, a Canaan Christian. I want to go through. You pray for me, Brother Tozer. I promise you, if you’ll pray for me, I’ll meet God’s condition. I won’t check with some other person. I’ll meet them alone. I’ll meet God’s condition with an open Bible. I promise you, Mr. Tozer, if you’ll pray for me.

Would you stand? Anybody here would stand? All right. I’ll meet the conditions alone for God, and I won’t let anything hold me back. Who else will stand? I don’t care what people think. It’s God and I. We’re just waiting a minute. There’ll be others. Yes? Yes? Good, Brother Chase, would you come up here, please. Just waiting a minute. I haven’t been fanatical tonight. I haven’t preached half as severely as the circumstances warrant.

Who else? Now, let’s remain standing, and everybody in an attitude of prayer. Brother Chase and I have talked it over a lot, and that time has gone by, and I know he knows what I preached about tonight. He went through it. And always, you can tell it, it doesn’t perfect a man. It isn’t that he doesn’t have faults, but all you can tell it, he’s looked on a Face, and he’s never the same. Amen.

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Post author By pshappard
Post date July 20, 2025

“Monuments of Mercy- Remembering What God Has Done“

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Monuments of Mercy-Remembering What God Has Done

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 27, 1958

We have been tracing over the past weeks the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel about guiding Israel, leading them, going before them, sending an angel before them to lead them in.

Tonight, I want to read from 3, 4, and 5 of Joshua, select passages, verse 17 of chapter 3. And the priests that bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan. And all the Israelites passed over on dry ground until all the people were passed clean over Jordan. I talked this morning about the old-fashioned idiom, and here we have another one. I’d hate to see anybody try to say this, and if he didn’t know the English idiom, they passed clean over Jordan.

And it came to pass when all the people were clean passed over on dry ground, that the Lord spake unto Joshua, saying, Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man, and command ye them, saying, Take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where the priest’s feet stood firm, twelve stones.

You shall carry them over with you and leave them in the lodging place where ye shall lodge this night. And Joshua called the twelve men whom he had prepared of the children of Israel out of every tribe a man. Joshua said unto them, pass over before the Ark of the Lord your God into the midst of Jordan, and take ye up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel.

One from each tribe had to go first. That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, what mean ye by these stones, ye shall answer them, that the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off. And these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel forever.

The children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded. They took up twelve stones out of the midst of Jordan, as the Lord spake unto Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel and carried them over with them into the place where they lodged, and laid them down there. And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests which bear the ark of the covenant stood, and they are there unto this day.

Then people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the first month and encamped in Gilgal in the border of Jericho. And these twelve stones which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in Gilgal. And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children, For the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over, as the Lord your God did through the Red Sea, which he dried up from before us, until we were gone over, that all the people of the earth might know, that the hand of the Lord, the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty, that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever.

Then he had said, I will send my fear before thee and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and so on, back in our original text in the twenty-third of Exodus. So came to pass, when all the kings of the Amorites, which were on the side of Jordan westward, and all the kings of the Canaanites, which were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the children of Israel until we were passed over, that their hearts melted. Neither was their spirit in them anymore, because of the children of Israel, just exactly as God said it should be.

Now, Joshua 3:17 shows how they got across into the land. They got clean over. I want you to get that. There was a sharp line that they had crossed. A crisis had been reached and passed. An event had occurred. That is the way God works.

There was a time when there was no creation, and then God created the heaven and the earth. An event had taken place. A crisis had passed. The heaven and the earth were created. They were there. Man was created, and man sinned and fell. There was a time when he was not fallen, then he fell in a sharp crisis of degeneration.

It is the same with birth, same with death, same with conversion, same with the Spirit’s anointing. And you can go through the Scriptures and find the sharp, clear lines of demarcation, where a thing was not, then there was an occurrence, and it was. It was this way, then there was an event, and it was different. Specific and clear, they passed clean over it. It was sharp and definitive. Now, this is the way God works.

Then, after the event, there can be growth and development and conquest after the event. But unless the event has taken place, there cannot be growth. If there has been no birth, there can be no growth. If there has been no crossing over the river, there can be no conquest of the land beyond. Always, it must be after the event. Now, let’s get that clear and go on from there.

Then comes that monument, that strange thing, that monument. God said to Joshua, Joshua said to the people, the people obeyed, that they should have a monument set up, and that they were to get the stones out of the bed of the river. They literally were to take it right up out of the experience itself.

They got the stones, they were evidently round ones, usually stones found in rivers do not have sharp edges on them, and they took those stones large enough that they carried them on their shoulders. They were not simply fist size, but evidently large enough that they needed to carry them on their shoulders, and they brought them up out of the bed of the river, and they took them over just beyond and put them down there, formed them into shape. It was obvious that they did not simply dump them there, but they formed them into some kind of a permanent monument.

And if anybody said, why do you have it here? Why, God said, you tell them that this is a memorial to an event. This symbolizes something that took place, a crisis that was passed, an event that occurred, and it will be for you to remember and look upon sometimes, and it will be for all the generations that follow.

Now, there is too much unclear Christianity. I believe the difference between revival and that half-dead state that most of us find ourselves in can be attributed to the clarity and the sharpness of experience, the definitive crisis experience that some people have and that numbers of people have as the revival mounts. There is a target to shoot at, something to expect. The fellow that you knew, that lived beside you or across the street, wasn’t a Christian.

Then there was an event and he was a Christian, or he was a dead kind of a Christian. Then something happened to him in the fullness of the Holy Ghost and he became a live, spiritual Christian, an event, a crisis. That is revival, and I believe that this is our difficulty now. There is an unclearness about it. We are so eager to get people in that we take them on their own terms. And the result is that they come in, but they’ve never been anywhere.

And the little colored girl said that you couldn’t lose anything that you didn’t have any more than you can come back from some place where you ain’t been. And there are lots of people who can’t come back because they’ve not been there. There’s nothing clear about it. But this is a definite experience. And I believe that the true Christian is born, he’s definitely born, and he knows it. He’s had an experience.

If the Christian faith has not produced an inward spiritual experience, then that man is not in the Christian faith. He is only a camp follower and not a true Christian. You know that I borrowed and used, and use quite frequently, not really frequently, but occasionally, a definition of experience which I got somewhere, and I think it is very, very clear, and I would like to use it just now, that an experience is a conscious awareness of something by somebody, a person, a somebody, that’s the subject, somebody, there’s your man, somebody.

Now the next is some thing. And the next is an awareness of that thing by that body. And then the conscious awareness of that thing by that body. We have those four thoughts. Let’s say somebody going home tonight gets drenched. I trust you won’t, won’t hurt you, but I trust you won’t.

But if you do, you will be consciously aware of something. You will have had an experience which is definitive and which you can identify. You can put it down and say it was on that particular night, about this time in the evening, that I got drenched. You are aware of being drenched, that’s the something. You are the somebody, and you’re consciously aware of it.

I don’t believe in unconscious Christianity. That’s why I don’t believe that it does any good to baptize a baby. I don’t argue with people. It certainly doesn’t hurt a baby to baptize it, unless it is true, as the French philosopher said, that infant baptism was vaccination against the new birth. If that should be true, then of course it does hurt them. But if they are taught that they have to be born again, then I suppose it doesn’t.

But I do not believe that anything that you get from God comes to you subconsciously in the realm of redemption. Nobody goes to bed and wakes in the morning and finds he’s a Christian. You must be consciously aware of somebody or something. And the Christian is consciously aware that God is there and has forgiven his sin, and God has spoken to his heart. That’s a conscious awareness.

Now, the reasonable conclusion that I gather here is that as the children of Israel passed clean over Jordan, they all knew that they’d passed clean over Jordan. They were aware of it. It was a dramatic and colorful experience that they went through. They passed clean over, sharply over Jordan, knew when they were in the river, knew when they got out, knew when they’d gotten over the other side, knew that it was now time and place to put up that monument. And they marked it as a sign of a clear spiritual event that had taken place in their lives. The reasonable conclusion is that if we do not know we’ve crossed, we haven’t crossed.

Now, is there anybody that would argue against that? I said that one time in a camp meeting, a missionary convention out in Pennsylvania, and a missionary woman followed me around for days trying to argue me out of this. She said it wasn’t true, it wasn’t so at all, but it is so, and I won’t be even argued out of it by a missionary, much as I regard missionaries as highly. It’s a simple fact that if passing clean over Jordan is a definitive experience, and an experience means a conscious awareness, and you are not consciously aware that the experience took place, then I may reasonably conclude that it didn’t take place. That sounds reasonable to me.

I can’t, if I’ve never been to, say, Miami, and then I go there, and I come back, I know when I arrived, I know when I left, I remember some of the events, and if I haven’t any conscious awareness of ever having been there, then I may reasonably conclude that I never have been, unless, of course, I have forgotten it. But these things I’m talking about, you don’t forget, my brother.

They passed over from the wilderness, across the river, into the land, and you can’t forget that because you’ve changed location. You’ve had an experience, and nobody lets you forget it, because they know about it. Now, if we don’t know when we have, then we haven’t. That’s another conclusion that I draw. This stirred some people.

One man, as I told you, wrote me a long letter, and then wrote me a second one, insisted that I reply, because I had said that if you weren’t, if you didn’t know you’d been filled with the Spirit, you hadn’t been filled with the Spirit. And if you didn’t know when you’d been filled with the Spirit, you hadn’t been filled with the Spirit.

And that is so reasonable. All the symbols, and the types, and illustrations, the history of Israel, and the analogies, and parallels, and figures of the Old Testament teach this so plainly that I can’t see how we can possibly escape it.

Now, with consecration, nobody is consecrated unless he knows that he is consecrated, and nobody’s consecrated unless there has been an experience of consecration. Here is a soldier, and he’s out fighting an enemy, and one day he finds himself surrounded. Machine guns are trained on him, and men stand there with the weapons turned in his direction, and they yell for him to surrender. He drops his gun, raises both hands. He has surrendered, and he knows that he has surrendered, and he knows when he surrendered. And as long as he retains his memory, he’ll know when he surrendered.

Now, when Lee turned over his sword to the northern general, Grant and General handed it back, they both knew that. Lee knew it. There are some people down south who won’t believe it yet, but it’s true nevertheless. It happened, and it’s true. It was a conscious awareness. They were gentlemen. Those men were gentlemen. Lee was a gentleman. Don’t forget that. He was a gentleman, and he clicked his heels and stood there at attention, and then pulled his sword and handed it, handle first, to his conqueror.

Well, of course, as you remember, Grant handed it back, which was a lovely gesture. But the surrender had been made. Lee was consciously aware of it. And if you have not surrendered to the Lord, then you have not surrendered to the Lord. And if you do not know you have surrendered, you have not surrendered. It’s the same as being filled with the Spirit and many other things.

Now, the fifth chapter, the first verse. The fright of the Amorites. Exactly what God had promised. When they’d gotten over and got their monument down and could say, now, this is my rock. This is my testimony. Here’s my rock. The leader representing Judah carried his rock, and he threw it down and said, this is mine. And Reuben brought his, and they all brought theirs and put them down there and said, now, here’s my rock, representing the tribes. And then the people heard about it, and they did just what God had told them some years before that they would do.

It says here, oh, you know, I’d hate to have a newspaper man write this, but it’s so beautiful here. When they were passed over, it came to pass that the enemies, their hearts melted, neither was their spirit in them anymore. Their hearts melted and there wasn’t any spirit in them anymore.

And that’s a good place for a theologian who’s only a theologian and who’s argumentative. It’s a good place for him to say, well, these people weren’t human because it’s the human spirit that makes us human. But you know what they meant. You’ve got an idiom here. They collapsed. We’d say their morale sank. But they said their heart melted, which I think is a much nicer way to say it, their hearts melted.

Now, this happened to them here and the obstacles began to melt and victories began to be won because they had crossed over consciously, put down the stone and said, I’m over. And right then God began to melt the hearts of the people and the spirit that was in them, the morale, the courage to fight started to go out of them when they had not spirit in them anymore.

Now, what I’d like to know tonight is, have I been wasting my time? Are there those who can say, I’ve got the stone, I can bring this stone, I’ve carried on my shoulders, I know what God has done for me. I know that there was an event, that there was a crisis reached, fought out and passed. I know it. I am positive of it. And I can bring my rock and put it down and we’ll have a pyramid, a monument here.

I just wonder, have I been writing poetry in prose or is there such a thing as this happening in human lives? Do people, do human beings walking down here with a social security number and a telephone number and a hat size and a house where he lives and the job he does and paying people, practical work-a-day tax-paying people, can they say, Mr. Tozer, I know, I’m clear and sharp about this.

To me, my conversion was clear. I know when I was converted. I didn’t ooze into it, I was converted. And when I heard that I should surrender my life, I knew that it was take up the cross and follow Christ, I surrendered, and I took up the cross. And that was an event. I know it. Are there such persons or have I been simply talking theory which has no practical support? Is this ivory tower preaching or are there people?

There was a man by the name of, oh, I don’t know, my memories have failed me today. I preached 12 times and flew home, and I can’t think of names, but a man wrote a book called Famous Deeper Experiences–J. Gilchrist Lawson. That’s the name. And I know the man. I have talked with him. He’s dead now, he’s in heaven.

But famous Christians, the deeper experiences of famous Christians, he pinned them down. He wrote short biographies, named them, told dates and said, here’s what happened to this man and here’s what happened to this man and here’s what happened to this man. But every one of them is dead. Are there living people that can say, I know?

Oh, spread the tidings round wherever man is found, wherever human hearts and human woes have bound. Number 74, could we sing a verse and chorus? Sing it reverently now, don’t break the direction we’re going. The Comforter has come, the Comforter has come.

Let every Christian tongue proclaim the joyful sound, the Comforter has come. The Comforter has come, the Comforter has come. The Holy Ghost from heaven, the Father from his bosom, the Comforter has come.

Eliminate all the details you can and boil it down but tell us. Two talks tonight, two testimonies have been to the effect that the result of this was a continual fountain of flowing of praise. All right.

Tags Fulfillment, Mercy

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date July 13, 2025

“From Wilderness to Victory“

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From Wilderness to Victory

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

July 13, 1958

Over the last weeks I’ve been talking about the angel of the Lord leading his people into and through and into the land which is the enemy’s land but becomes our land by the gift of God. I am now going to speak about crossing over the river. In the book of Joshua, I’m not read that long passage, you’re familiar with it, where God tells Joshua to arise and lead the children of Israel across, assures them that every place the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.

Then he said to Joshua, be strong and of a good courage, for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them. Some other verses here I want to read, the sixth and the ninth. Have not I commanded thee, be strong and of a good courage, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee, with this wherever thou goest.

Then in the third chapter, Joshua rose early in the morning, and they removed from Shittim and came to Jordan. And all the children of Israel lodged there before they passed over. Then verse 10, Joshua said, hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, the rest of them.

Behold the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth passeth over before you into Jordan. Then verse 13, it shall come to pass as soon as the souls of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the Lord, that is Jehovah, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above, and they shall stand up upon a heap. And it came to pass, when the people removed from their tents, to pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people; the feet of the priests that bear the ark were dipped in the brim of the water.

For Jordan overflowed these banks all the time of harvest. There isn’t an official board anywhere living that would have voted to cross the Jordan at that time of year. There isn’t an official board anywhere, there isn’t a missionary society anyplace that ever would have voted to cross over at the time when the Jordan was overflowing her bank. They’d have waited until she was at her lowest and then gone over.

It came to pass that the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon a heap very far from the city Adam. And the people passed right over against Jericho. And the priests that bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan. And all the Israelites passed over on dry ground until all the people were passed over Jordan.

Now Israel stands at the river’s edge, and behind her are 40 years of unnecessary wandering. Israel stands at the river’s edge. I say, and behind her are 40 years of unnecessary wandering. And do you know, people, I don’t suppose that there’s anybody here but what has wasted a lot of time which, if he had used, would have taken him much further in than he is now.

Now, I don’t hesitate at all to keep on pecking away on this, that the children of God ought to move on in. You don’t hear it much. Keswick comes along once a year and says it for five days, and then that’s about all you hear this part of the country, except little over here on this side.

But 40 years of unnecessary, irregular wandering about in a land that bear no fruit, that had no cattle, no sheep, no grapes, no grain, a wilderness, a desert. And ahead of her was the blessed land. Just ahead of her was the blessed land, the land all prepared and ready, made ready by the hand of God. Not heaven, understand.

We’ve made a great mistake in making the crossing over of the Jordan to be dying and going to heaven. The Lord never intended that to be so. He intended that we should now cross over. You see, it’s a picture, it’s a picture. God made a picture there, a historic picture. The old Egypt was the land of bondage and sin and oppression. Crossing over of the Red Sea was the new birth and the getting out into freedom. But it wasn’t yet, that new freedom wasn’t yet the blessed land. That was to be entered into just a little bit later as they went on in, as they were to go on in. But they goofed it and wandered for 40 long years, missed it, and all of the old fellows died. But now a new, fresh generation was ready to go in. And before them lay this land of blessedness.

And do you know, Christians, before you lies a spiritual experience which you yet haven’t entered into, some of you, in which you should. You should. We had a farewell for a lot of missionaries last night, going out from this church. I’m concerned that you go over there ablaze with the love of God, and that you don’t take a defeated spiritual experience over there. Because if you do, you’ll only lead others into that defeated experience. Converts made in the wilderness will remain in the wilderness. Don’t forget that.

And any kind or type or degree of Christianity that you now enjoy is the same kind that you will take over there. But you say, I’ll preach the Bible. You will preach the Bible as your heart understands it. You will preach the gospel as it’s sifted and strained through the meshes of your soul. And if you’re still wandering in the desert, you’ll never be able to get anybody else out of that desert.

Some years ago, in the little country of Korea, back about in the 10s, that is up to 10, about 1900 up to say 1914, somewhere in there, there was a little woman by the name of Jacobs, spelled with a J, Jacobs, Miss Jacobs. She went over to Korea. A lot of these boys, incidentally, that are going over to Korea now and having those tremendous revivals they tell about and take pictures of those Koreans getting up in the morning at five o’clock and going to prayer meeting, and leave the impression that they took that revival over there, or they’ve been used in that revival, don’t believe one word of the whole business. Because I happen to know all about that, or at least a good deal about that, long before these fellows were old enough to say mama without lisping.

Miss Jacobs went over to Korea, and she went around among the missions, various denominations, telling them that there was such a thing as crossing over the Jordan and getting into an experience in the holy blessed land and living in it. And they listened to her. The result was, of all things, the Presbyterian missionary got filled with the Holy Ghost, the missionaries.

And I knew a missionary, a Presbyterian missionary by the name of Adams, and I heard him tell this. If I recall, he came to our church and told it too, something about it, that he had to go around and hunt up the Christians that he’d made in the rice paddies, wherever he could, and tell them that he’d find him, you know, working in the rice paddies, and he’d have to say, listen, when I preached to you, I didn’t know what I was talking about much, but now God’s met me, and I’ve come to tell you there’s something better for you than I preached to you when I first preached to you. He told it with rather a wry smile. He had to admit that one of his jobs was to go around and tell everybody that he’d converted and won to a wilderness experience, that there was something better for them than that which he had been teaching to them.

Well, the Presbyterians got blessed, and you get a Presbyterian blessed, you’ve got something on your hands. And these Presbyterians got all warmed up, you know, and so did the other missions around there, and a great revival broke out. And what you see over there today in South Korea is simply the result of that revival that began there in around somewhere around 1912 or 14, led by this little woman, Miss Jacobs.

But you know, now we hear stories and write-ups, we get the impression that these brilliant young men are going over there and having those revivals, they’re doing nothing of the sort. That is strictly normal for those Korean Christians. That’s the way they act. They pray and pray all together, and pray at five o’clock in the morning, and pray long periods. But they did that, I repeat, when these world travelers were still nursing on a bottle, or before they were born.

Now, I don’t know how I got over there, that’s not part of tonight’s sermon, but I just thought I’d say that to you, that Joshua is sent now to lead the children of Israel across. He’s sent to lead them over. And someone must lead and exhort the rest. I wonder if it isn’t so here now. It’s an unflattering sidelight on human nature that the individual rarely finds the way alone. It’s not flattering, it’s not complimentary to us, that the individual rarely finds the way alone. He has to have somebody to direct him, and it’s still less flattering to us that we more rarely take the way even if we do find it. Unless we are prodded by somebody sent of God to lead us across and over in, we’re not likely to get over.

So, Joshua was God’s man, sent to lead the children of Israel across the river. And so Joshua, says the Bible, rose early in the morning. Have you noticed in the Scriptures how many of the great Christians rose early in the morning? No, I do not refer to getting up early. What I refer to here, and I think what the Bible refers to, is the eagerness that gets you at something if God is in it.

I remember that when Abraham was told to offer Isaac, it wasn’t a very pleasant thing, but it was obedience. He had it to do. So, he got up early in the morning and took his son and started up Mount Moriah. The point was, not that he was an early riser, so much as that when God placed something before him, he couldn’t rest right until he got it. He couldn’t relax until he was in there obeying God. So he rose up early in the morning.

I wonder what the greatest disappointment to God Almighty is. I wonder if it’s modernism. You know, there’s an awful lot of yelling around these days about modernism, and liberalism, and the new evangelicalism, and all the rest. And the Christians are managing to have a nice cat and dog fight over the whole business, which I don’t like and I’m staying out of. But I wonder if liberalism is as great a disappointment to God as the languor on the part of the Christians who know the way and don’t take it.

Lots of Christians don’t know there’s anything beyond John 3:16. They were brought up on John 3:16, and they were told if they accepted Jesus, that would be it, the end of it. So they accepted Jesus and they got themselves a marked New Testament, and started out what they call winning souls, and making converts and witnessing. But all they knew was the wilderness. They never got beyond it. In fact, they were told there wasn’t any place beyond it. They were told the earth dropped off precipitously right the edge of the wilderness, and if you tried to go on beyond the wilderness, you’d become a fanatic.

So that’s where the church is, and many thousands are like that, and yet there are some who are taught, and they do know that there is a place further on in. You know, you Christians here, if there’s any people in the city of Chicago that ought to be living holy lives, walking in the fear of God, separated from the world, pure in your individual life, right in your relation to others, godly in your relation toward God, and indwelt by the Holy Ghost, you ought to be the ones. You ought to be the ones.

You’ve heard this, and heard it, and heard it constantly, and yet when Joshua was told to lead them across, he rose up early in the morning, and not only that, he blew a trumpet, and he got Israel up. I wonder if the most painful, disappointing thing to our Lord Jesus Christ is not how God’s people drag their feet. We drag our feet. We’re not concerned. We get more heated up over a baseball game.

There are some of you young people right here listening to me now that get higher blood pressure Monday night playing baseball than you do when the mighty call of the Holy Ghost comes to you. You don’t get concerned enough when God speaks to you to crack a smile, or frown, or bat an eye, but if you’re called out on a cheap little old scrub baseball, you’re all steamed up.

If some of you young people who claim to be Christians in this church could get as steamed up over God as you can over pizza, you’d be far out into the land by this time to next week, but you just can’t get your concern. You drag your feet. You don’t get up early in the morning.

Joshua rose early in the morning. There was the blessed land, and Joshua was going into it, and he got up early in order that he might not miss anything, and the languor on the part of us now is almost unbelievable. Now, he said, when you see the ark of the covenant, that’s 3:11, when you see the ark of the covenant going in, you go in.

Now, it’s vitally important, my friends, that in your eagerness for something further on and better and deeper in your spiritual life, that you go God’s way, that you see to it that God is there, that atonement is there, that the mercy seat is there, that the ark of the covenant is going that way.

Some of God’s children, when they get interested, get disappointed with themselves and dissatisfied, they get up and start in what they call activities, and they get out into the activities, and you know there’s an awful lot of activities going on now, and yet almost all of our religious activities begin in the wilderness and end in the wilderness. They never get across the Jordan at all. They begin and end in the wilderness, simply move around in circles. The test of anything is, am I nearer God than I was before?

Now, this is July 13, 1958. Go back one year, go back one year and see. Are you nearer the blessed land than you were a year ago, or are you in it? Have you crossed over? Has there been an epoch in your life, a specific crisis in your life? Has there been? Have you entered into the blood-bought privileges that are yours through the atonement in Christ Jesus? Have you entered in, or are you about where you were? I say that’s the test. Am I nearer the blessed land? Am I in the blessed land? What direction have I been moving?

We sing a great deal about pressing on, I’m pressing on the upward way. Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to break down and make a little confession to you. That song makes me sick. I’m pressing on the upward way, new heights I’m gaining every day. Lord, lead me on to higher ground.

There are old, dehorned deacons that have been singing that forty-two years, nine months, and fourteen days, and they’re not one inch higher than they were when they began to sing it. I have heard that song, Lord, lead me on to higher ground, sung so languidly, with such draggy-feated languor and such carelessness, that the result has been that I’m allergic to the song. I don’t like it. It’s a good song, I admit it’s a good song. A man wrote that song to comfort his dear old mother, and it’s a good song.

How many of you old people now that the pigmentation has gone out of your hirsutic adornment? In other words, you’re gray-headed, and you, my brother and sister, are right where you were forty years ago, still singing, I’m pressing on the upward way, new heights I’m gaining every day. What a lie! You haven’t taken one inch of ground in years, some of you, and all you have to do is to scratch you the wrong way, and you’ll find the carnal man less than eighteenth of a sixteenth of an inch under your skin.

I’ve had to learn how to get along with people that are hard to get along with. I’ve had to learn how to get along with old Christians that are so churlish and resentful and touchy that you’ve got to treat them like an old cross dog to get along with. Yet they lead in prayer, and they carry their Bibles, and they sing off-key, I’m pressing on the upward way, new heights I’m gaining every day.

I ask you, please, either make something out of this, or stop lying. Stop singing what isn’t true, for there aren’t very many that get anywhere. They just go on, just go on, round and round and round and round, the progress of a dachshund chasing his tail, round and round and round and round. Another dachshund is looking on and saying, that’s an Orthodox brother. Look, he carries a Bible under his arm, but round and round, not getting anywhere.

Well, we sing a lie a good part of the time, and I wish that we’d quit it. Jesus said, do you wish you were either hot or cold? If you were cold, I wouldn’t mind it. I’d know where to place you. If you were hot, I’d know where to place you. But here you are, dragging your feet, and I don’t know where to place you. I’ll spew you out of my mouth. You go the way the ark goes. A lot of religious activities, not following the ark, because the ark isn’t going in circles, it’s going to go in a straight line. It’s going to go across that river into that land where dwell the various “ites” of various sorts. The Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, and Gergesites, and Amorites, and Jebusites. They own the land, but God says they don’t own anything. They’re holding it by my sufferance, and I’m giving it to you because you’re my chosen people. And they’re not morally fit to possess the land they have. Out they go, and in you go if you’ll go.

Israel finally went, did a languid, poor job of it, but they did get in. Well, he said now in 313 about the soles of their feet. It had come to pass that the soles of the feet of the priests that bear the ark of the Lord, that is Jehovah, the Lord of the whole earth, shall rest in the waters of Jordan, that the waters of Jordan shall be cut off from the waters that come down from above, and they shall stand up as an heap. They had actually to wade into the Jordan, and it was only after they got into the water and got their feet wet that the water parted.

Now that took three things. It took courage, faith, and cooperation. They had to believe God, they had to have the courage to move in, and they had to have the faith to believe, and they had all three. Now there are too many of us, too many of you people listening to me now, that are waiting for the removal of all obstacles. You’re not going to make any progress in your Christian life until you get something, some obstacle.

You say, well, I got a more appropriate time. The removal of all obstacles, and you notice that the Lord had the obstacle before them, and not only that, He had it swollen out to maybe twice its width. It was the time of the overflowing of the Jordan. Some of you say, well, I live in a home where there’s not much spiritual help. If things change in my home, then I’m going to press on the upward way. You’re not following the laws of spiritual principles laid down here. They didn’t wait for the waters to abate. They went right in, and the waters were there before them. The angry, muddy waters were there. But some are waiting for a miracle of providence.

Some of you wives, you’re hanging around, you’re afraid to pray at home, and you’re afraid to take your stand because of your husband, but you say, I will do it. When my husband gets converted, then the two of us will go along together. If you want God to take all the obstacles out and do a miracle of divine providence ahead of you. No, that won’t work. God isn’t going to smooth the way. He’s going to lead you right up, so you can’t see your way. You can’t figure it out.

You see, the human heart is so sinuous, serpentine, and deceitful, that if we can figure out how it can be done, we’ll take the glory or give the glory to some brother. But God wants to lead us in in a manner and in a way, that’ll give him the glory 100%. So he takes us right up to the brimming river and says, put your feet in the water. And the moment you put your feet in the water, behold, it’ll stand up as an heap.

I like that old English expression. It’ll stand up as an heap. And so, the mighty, turbulent, angry, excited old Jordan, overflowing her banks at flood time, right then was when the children of God walked up against that river, instead of waiting for it to calm down.

Now, the Christians that I’ve noticed that get across, and I see one here and there that gets across, they obey God even if it looks as if they were going to drown in the process. Because, you know, when they stepped into that turbulent river with twice its width, they had no earthly expectation that it would open, because the river hadn’t been in the habit of opening. You never saw a river open up, did you? I never did.

Rivers don’t open up. Rivers are moving according to a natural law, water sinking its lowest level, and following the channels cut for it by the centuries. And rivers don’t just suddenly stand up on end. They had nothing on this earth. If they had gone to the University of Chicago, they could have hunted through all of the research, done research, and gone through all the books on the shelf, and they wouldn’t have found one instance where the river ever stood up.

They could have asked Dr. Von Braun, or Dr. Oppenheimer, or some of these others with great brains, and not one of them would have given any encouragement. They’d have smiled and said, well, I appreciate your faith, but don’t expect it. Particularly, don’t expect it now. It’s inopportune.

Oh, that devil. He knows the big words. And he says it’s inopportune, your parents are grouchy, and when you get a little older, you can move in. Dear young fellow, God’s calling you to get up and obey, even if it looks like drowning. It’s God Almighty’s business that you don’t drown. And if you obey God and go the way the Ark of the Covenant has gone, the way of atonement and blood and mercy, see, in the direction that God is, God won’t let you drown.

And if He does, you’re better off dead than wandering in the wilderness forty years. Better off dead. And oh, all that’s going to happen to some of you, dear young people, old mother nature is going to start working on you. Gravitational pull is slowly going to pull you down. That’s why people, when they get older, they begin to bend toward the earth. They’ve fought gravitation for years. Gravitation slowly pulls them down, pulls them down there. They are all bent over. That’s what’s going to happen to you.

And all these little things are going to happen. Your hair is going to let loose and your teeth and you’re going to get lined up and too much of this and not enough of that. Nature is going to work on you. And if you don’t get into the land of promise while you’re young, the chances are you’ll get a habit and never go into the land at all.

The people of God are the ones, the great people of God are the ones that obey God, I say. And count on God to do his part and take the leap of faith. Take that leap of faith and dare to believe the Lord. Dare to believe the Lord. Believe sanely, believe according to the Scriptures, but believe the Lord.

And there are the waters of Jordan. Oh, you waters of Jordan. There has gone that river of the obstacle, the hindrance to your Christian life. There it is. It’s been flowing how many thousand years? Only God knows. And it’s a barrier between you and the promised land. And you have learned to expect it to be there.

I think that one of the most terrible things that we can imagine in the light of eternity and the coming Savior is how we accept defeat as normal. When it’s just not normal. Defeat isn’t normal. When Joshua crossed over the river and went into the land and was subduing the nations and installing Israel in their proper places, every time they got defeated, it was abnormal. Something was wrong. Victory was normal.

I heard Dr. Shulman say one time that in the book of Acts, that Christians had learned the habit of victory. They lived with a habit of victory. But instead of victory, there’s defeat, constant defeat among the children of God. And now they rise up as in heap. They stand up and do what they’ve never done before because the Lord of all nature commands them. Jesus Christ wants to lead you into the place of complete victory in your life, a place of consecration and surrender, a place where ambition will die inside your heart.

Some of you dear people are so ambitious. God bless you. You’re so ambitious. I remember the poet William Cullen Bryant said that he admitted that when he was a boy, an old beech tree, he said, I wrote on high a name I deemed would never die. And there’s the ambition, the long, long thoughts another poet talks about. You’ve got your ambitions all laid out ahead of you. Do you know your ambitions may not be God’s ambitions for you at all? The will of God is what you want, my friend, not your ambition, the fulfilling of your ambition.

How many church singers have gone into TV and movies and nightclubs? How many there are? You’ll read along about somebody and say, got his start in a church choir. As soon as he found that the public would pay him for singing, out he went and sold out to the devil for 30 pieces of silver, learned the habit of defeat and has gotten used to it.

Just as a man with one short leg gets used to hobbling. He’s used to it and he doesn’t know how to do any other way except hobble. Because that’s the way he does. When he goes down the street, he hobbles. And he doesn’t expect to be any other way. Because he learned to hobble. It’s part of him. He’s got a physical pattern of hobbleness, if there’s such a word. I don’t know either, but there ought to be and I guess there is now.

And there are some Christians like that. They live a defeated life. And they have got the habit of it until it’s become a pattern for them. And they wouldn’t know how to do anything else. Many a fellow walks around over these hot sidewalks of Chicago hobbling, and if God were to suddenly lengthen out that leg and limber them up for him and renew them, they wouldn’t believe it. They’d say, I’m not the same fellow. They’d go home and ask their wife. They wouldn’t believe because they’ve got the psychology of hobbling.

And there are Christians, and there are by the hundreds, Christians who have the psychology of defeat. They’re so used to being battered around by the devil that they don’t believe there is any other kind of Christianity at all. And they even write poems about it. Yeah, I’ve seen them, little poems, telling about how out of their bitterness and their defeat, why they learned some lesson or other.

There are better ways of learning lessons than to lie down at the devil tramp on you with hobnailed boots twenty-seven days out of thirty. And some of you are like that. God bless you, God bless you. Is there any use for me to go on? I don’t know. I don’t know. The Lord’s people drag their feet so.

Well, when God Almighty says, you go in, put your feet in. Start out, start out as though there were no river there, and I’ll take care of the river. Now what is that problem that faces you? What is that thing that lies ahead of you? What is that? A husband that’s unsaved? A wife that’s nasty and hard to live with? Parents that don’t understand you. An office where to try to be an extra good Christian just opens you up to all of the persecution? A school where to determine to live a spiritual life makes you a target for the lampoons of the rest of the students?

What is your problem? That young fellow you’re engaged to, who’s a bum and you know it, and he’ll never help you spiritually? That pretty little snipe of a girl that you can’t stay away from, but she’s worldly and carnal and vain, and you know it? That job that you want so desperately bad. What is your problem? What’s that river that lies ahead of you? I don’t know, different ones for different people.

But I do know that when the Ark of the Covenant moves across it, and you know God’s calling you that way, and He’s calling it a consecration and surrender and complete abandonment of yourself to Him, you’d better take it. You’d better take it, because all around are the old derelict ships that went on the rock. Old derelicts.

You go to the average Bible conference, let me take my hair down, excuse the expression, but let me take my hair down and just talk to you about Bible conferences. I go to them; I’m going to one this week. You know what you find? You find a few bright-faced young people, and an occasional hungry one. But the majority of them are old hulks that have long ago washed up on the shore. The compass fell overboard, and they’ve missed the plan of God for them, and they’re desperately trying to make up for their failure to obey, their unbelief, their carnality. They’re desperately trying to make up for it by going to another Bible conference.

Well, I’ll go to another Bible conference, and then I’ll go to another, and some travel across the country going from one to the other. I usually can tell who they are. They come in in great big loud shirts with the tail out. Great big loud shirts like Harry Truman used to wear. And they sit down next to the back seat. They’ve got their Bible and their notebook. And then as soon as the meeting’s over, they’re off to the golf course. But there they are. Well, oh dear God, the old hulks, the wrecks on the sands of time, the old empties.

That’s why I like to preach to college students. I like to preach to college students. I wish I could be free to just go from one college to another. I get constant invitations. I don’t know why, but they’re always asking me, could I come here? Could I come there? Could I come here? And I say no to I couldn’t tell you how many dozens of invitations right along to colleges. I like to preach to college people because at least they’ve got a future. They’ve got a future.

Some of you, the only future you have is behind you. To people, young people, Christian colleges where they’re all alert, catch every nuance, every change of expression. They’re ready to fly off in a burst of laughter if it’s even a little funny. Ready to take it with wide-eyed seriousness and come to you afterward with their Bible asking you questions. And here we are.

But it says here that the priests that bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan. And all the Israelites passed over on dry ground until all the people were passed clean over Jordan. I like those good, strong modifiers in there. Clean over Jordan. Got clear over.

Well, next time I preach, I want to talk about the pile of stone they put there and why. And the man they met just across the river. Joshua said, who are you, for us or against us? And he said, no, no. I want to talk about that next time. That’ll be two weeks from tonight. In the meantime, now, all I want you to do is think this over.

Now we could have an invitation tonight and I could have you come down here and you’d get that all out of your system and felt that you’ve done God’s service. Then you’d go out and have your pizza and forget it. But I don’t intend to do it. I want you to take this with you home. And I want it to be with you tomorrow. And I want it to color your thinking about your tomorrow. I want it to be a gadfly to sting you out of mediocrity. I want it to be a needle to needle you on to seek the face of the Lord. Then we would have a revival indeed. That would be a revival when God’s children stop wandering in the wilderness and cross over Jordan.

I say, that’s the truth I was brought up on as a boy. And I’m sure that if I hadn’t heard it, I’d have gone back to the world. I’m sure of it. Because what I was seeing in the church where I was, there wasn’t enough grip in it to interest me. I got converted from hearing somebody preach on the street. And then I joined a church because it was closest. Always a bad thing to do. I joined the nearest church there was. And there wasn’t enough spirituality around there. Any lightning bug on the south side had more fire in one flash than that old church put together had if they turned the light on and kept it on all the time. Any lightning bug anywhere had more fire in just one flash. And I would have back slid, but fortunately by the grace of God, I heard about something better and went on to seek it.

And then I found I wasn’t alone. I found there was an Andrew Murray. I found that there was a Charles Spurgeon. I found there was a Saint Bernard and a Francis of Assisi and a Holy Ann. And I found that this, this burnt-out ember type of spirituality that I was seeing wasn’t normal at all. I found out that it was abnormal.

So dear people, let’s think it over. Let’s just think it over over the next few days. You say, what do I recommend? Well, did you ever try missing a meal? You say, that’s fanaticism. If it is, the Bible’s full of it. Did you ever try missing a meal sometime and going alone with God and your Bible? Shut out all outside contact so far as you could and search and wait on God. Then begin to clean up your life. Begin to clean up things.

Where you find things, you’ve done wrong, clean them up. Debts you forgot you had, clean them up. People that you’ve fallen out with, try to get straightened out with them. If you’re not tithing, start tithing. If you’re sleeping in instead of getting up and going to Sunday school, set your alarm clock an hour earlier. If you look at television instead of come to prayer meeting, turn the old one-eyed monster off and go to prayer meeting. Begin to do something. Obey God. Prove to God that you’re not just living in an ivory tower, a Christian by theory. Do something to show God you mean business. Move in the direction the ark is going. Start obeying, and you’ll see, you’ll see what it’ll mean over even the next few days.

Now shall we pray? Come on, let’s pray. Now I’m going to pray, and I’d like some direction in my prayer. And there are those before me who this rambling sermon has reached. And you know that I’ve described you, but in your deep heart of heart there is a cry. There is a cry there in that heart of yours, a deep cry. And it’s something like this, O God, forgive my wandering and take me across. Deliver me from my defeats and take me in. Save me from my flesh, my temper, my fears.

My God, save me from these things. May I begin to know something of the progressive spiritual life. May I get up there, God, where I’ve been singing so long that I was going. Then make your vow to God to do whatever he wants you to do. He’ll probably want you to sign over everything you have to him. Settle it, give it over to God completely, your life, your future, your ambition, your boyfriend, your wife, your husband, your child, your job, your home, your car. He wants you to sign that over to Him, so you don’t own a thing. God owns it all and will let you use it.

It’s a transaction that takes place inside the human heart. You own nothing. God owns everything. Then you can keep it and God will bless it. And you’re saved from its curse. But in your heart, there’s a cry. If there’s no cry there, we might as well nail up the church. But if there’s a cry there, you say, pray for me, pray for me, Brother Tozer. Would you raise the hand? Yes.

Who else? Yes. Yes, I see. Yes, over here in the middle. Yes, I see back there too. Yes. Now let’s pray. Yes, I see your hand. Yes, now let’s pray.

O Lord Jesus, we sang about Thee tonight and our hearts sang. We were telling Thee who Thou art, the mighty Lord, King of Kings, God made flesh to dwell among us. O Lord Jesus, our Joshua, lead us. Thou hast brought us out of Egypt’s bondage.

We’ve been born of the Spirit and we’re now the children of the Father. But

O Christ, thou knowest what poor examples of Christians some of us have been. Temper, grouchiness, jealousy, lust, carnal ambition, inordinate affection, fear, all these things have hindered. And they are the Amorites and the Hittites and the Jebusites. Thou hast said, I will lead thee in unto the land of thine enemies. And every one of these enemies is a friend turned wrongside out.

And every place where these enemies are camped or have their cities, they’re ours by right of blood. And Lord, wilt thou lead these people in. Lord, lead them in. We thank Thee one now and again enters. And it isn’t long until everybody knows that something wonderful has happened to that Christian. But mostly we drag our feet.

O Lord, grant that these who’ve raised their hands tonight and ask us to pray may cast off the languor, cease to be at ease in Zion, push their way on by obedience and faith into a place opened for us by Jesus Christ. We thank thee, Lord, there’s nothing that what has been purchased for us on the cross. We thank thee that Thou did die there.

And when the spear let out the water and the blood, that we can say as the poet said, let the water and the blood from thy riven side which flowed be of sin the double cure. Lord, this double cure people don’t believe much in, but there’s a double cure. We pray thee help us that we may know the double cure by the blood.

Bless these friends, every one of them. We ask Thee to disturb them, upset them, don’t let them find rest until they find it in thee. Their heart’s too big to find rest in things. Thou hast made their hearts too vast to find rest in trifles. It would be as ridiculous as a married couple getting married and settling for a parakeet. Lord God, Thou hast given us hearts big enough to take in a family, not a parakeet.

Lord, thou hast given the Christians hearts big enough to take in all the land of promise. And we settle for a little barren patch in the wilderness. God forgive us and let the Spirit of God guide over the next few days these friends. Let them push forward and enter. Lead us, O lead us, blessed Jesus. We thank Thee Thou wilt.

Amen.

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Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date July 6, 2025

“Halfway to Canaan-The Peril of Settling for Less“

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Halfway to Canaan: The Peril of Settling for Less

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

July 6, 1958

Over the past weeks, talking on the 23rd of Exodus, where the Lord told Moses, Israel, that he would lead them into the land. Behold, I send an angel before thee, and the series of sermons has been called, the angel before thee. And now we left that 23rd chapter and went to another passage where we dealt with the people of God at Paran, Kadesh Barnea, where they sent the spies over and came back with an unfavorable report, saying the spies were huge and the cities walled up to heaven. And they didn’t go over, they went back.

Now tonight, we skip ahead about 40 years, 39 years, I guess, anyway, and I read these words. Now, after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses, my servant, is dead.

Now, therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, thou and all this people unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses, from the wilderness and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life.

As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. I will not fail thee nor forsake thee, be strong and of a good courage. For unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance, the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them.

Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayst observe to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded thee. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, thou shalt meditate therein day and night. Have not I commanded thee, be strong and of a good courage, and be not afraid? Neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.

Now we have followed watchfully and reverently the teachings of God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel. Behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee, lead thee, defend thee, and bring thee in. And we have seen how, while the church dwells in the spiritual realm and Israel more or less in the natural, yet the principles that underlie the teachings to Israel underlie the teachings to us in the New Testament.

And therefore, we have been reverently trying to learn the ways of God with men. And we have been more than trying to learn those ways. We have been trying to learn in order that we might believe and accept and receive the benefits of.

Now, for ourselves and for this church and for the church. Now it says here, after the death of Moses, the Lord spake unto Joshua and said to Joshua, arise and go over this Jordan and take with you the people on to the land which I promised that I would lead you by mine angel, by my cloud and fire by day and night. And it’s all yours, and every place the sole of your foot shall tread upon. That have I given unto you as I said unto Moses.

Now they could have been in the land 39 years before. They could have been enjoying milk and honey and pomegranates and the grapes of Eschol. The cities built for them, the fields plowed for them, the orchards pruned and trimmed for them. They could have been enjoying that 39 years. But during those 39 years, they were wandering in a semi-desert wilderness.

And it had been their fault altogether and alone. Yet I ask you to notice something here very wonderful and very beautiful. That even though they had at Paran rebelled against the leadership of the angel and had gone back, declaring petulantly that God was going to destroy their family. That’s what God’s trying to do. Forgetting that God is love and that the kind love of God had brought them out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt. Forgetting that, they petulantly, impudently whined and whimpered against God and refused to go in.

And then to give it a little bit of respectability, they said, for our children’s sake we’re not going in. The worst thing you can do, brother, is to disobey God. And if you disobey God, your children will suffer all the rest of their lives and yours. And the best thing you can do is to obey God regardless of what it may seem to do to your children. Your children will come out all right if you obey God.

But if you disobey God for any reason, you are not doing your family any good. If you refuse to give your tithe because you feel you can’t keep your family on what’s left, you’re not doing your family any good. If you refuse to get up and scrub them up and comb them up and get them off to Sunday school because you like to see the poor little fellow sleep in, you’re not doing them any good. If you let them do things which your conscience tells you you should not, you’re not doing them any good.

Remember that the will of God is the best for you and for your family. And these Jews nevertheless managed to twist out of faith and obedience by saying you brought us up here to kill our children, an insult to God Almighty. And yet, after 39 years now, after that episode, they had not been able to alienate God from them.

God had promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that He would lead them into the land. He had promised Israel that He would lead them into the land. And they had not been able to alienate God from them. His covenant still remained with them, and His purpose for them was the same.

You know, some of you who have been disobeying God and are very despondent now, it would be wonderful if you could straighten up and come out of your despair and find out that though you have been unfaithful to Him, He has never been unfaithful to you. For He abided faithful, He cannot deny himself.

Now remember, my friends, whether you’re on the Arminian or Calvinist side, I don’t care nor ask, but I just want you to get one thing clear, and that is, if it wasn’t that God was working to be true to Himself, we would all have been in hell long ago. Remember that if it wasn’t that God was working according to a covenant which He made in Christ Jesus before the world began, purposed in Christ before the world began, there wouldn’t be one of us remain a Christian 24 hours, talking about the perseverance of the saints. They used to call it the perseverance of the saints, the doctrine being that the saints will persevere if they’ve ever been true saints.

Somebody asked Torrey, Dr. Torrey, do you believe in the perseverance of the saints? He said, no, but I believe in the perseverance of the Savior. That’s quite another thing, and that I believe in too, in the perseverance of the Savior.

Now, if it had depended upon the perseverance of Israel, about 80 percent of Israel was lying sleeping out in the sands of the desert. But still, God hadn’t forgotten them, and His covenant and His purpose and His promise still stood.

And then suddenly, Moses dies. We’ll not go into this about Moses dying when he was still healthy. He was. He was the only man I know of in Bible or out that died with nothing wrong with him. His eye had not dimmed, and he was as healthy a fellow at 120 as he had been at 40 or 50, and suddenly now he dies at the command of God.

And this must have certainly been a tremendous shock to Israel, because a whole generation had not known anybody else except Moses as their leader, a whole generation. Those who had gotten acquainted with Moses when they were adults and older and had come across the Red Sea into the desert, they’d all left their bones in the desert because they wouldn’t go over, wouldn’t go on into the land. But this younger generation, the ones that were now grown up and had reached the ages of anywhere from children on up to, say, 50, 60 years of age, they had known Moses only, and he had been to them a symbol of God’s leadership.

Here’s something I want to warn you about, my friends. It is this. Never get attached to any of God’s ministers as a symbol of His leadership. When I was a young Christian fellow, my pastor, S. M. Gerow, had a great organ voice, and he used to preach so beautifully about the great things of God. The first sermon I heard him preach was, was that one on where Sanballat and his crowd of Communists had tried to get Nehemiah to come down and stop building the temple or building the walls. And Nehemiah had sent back a word, I cannot come down. I am doing a great work. I cannot come down. He preached on that.

Well, I fell in love with his preaching, joined his church. I was looking around for one that preached the gospel. I’d been converted after hearing a street preacher. And I got so that he was to me the sound of piety, and the echo of spirituality, the flavor and timber of his voice, I made, I associated with godliness. So that for years afterwards, even if he had just said, pass the butter, it would have sounded spiritual to me, because I had associated his voice and his leadership with godliness.

Now, there is something you’ve got to look out for, my friend. Remember one thing. You need everybody, but you don’t need anybody. We are a church. Churches trust each other, and lean on each other, and long love each other, and help each other. But remember one thing. You do not need any body. There are no indispensable ministers. God had no indispensable prophets, not even Moses. Moses, my servant, is dead.

That sounded like the thunderclap of doom to Israel. Now, Moses is dead. And yet, God speaks now clear and encouraging, and said to them, you have Me, you have the angel, you have the fiery pillar by night, you have the cloudy pillar by day, and you have My promise, you have My covenant, you have My known purpose, you have Me all around you, therefore go on into the land. And now I give you another leader. Moses, my servant, is dead, and you don’t need Moses anymore.

Now, remember this. You don’t lose God when you lose a man of God. There have been great Christian leaders, so great that when they died, the whole Christian church worried about it. They were deeply grieved and shocked when they died. But the church of God goes on, for the gates of hell cannot prevail against her. You don’t lose God when you lose a man of God.

You know, God is the God of today, just as he was the God of yesterday and will be the God of tomorrow, because God dwells in an everlasting now, and there is no time in God. Someday I’d like to preach on that again. I preached on the eternity of God many years ago and have referred to it. But I’d like to give a full sermon. It would take a series of them really to do it even a slight justice.

But you and I are creatures of time. When you see somebody, you haven’t seen for ten years, you say to yourself, how he has changed. It’s strange that my friends are all changing, and I alone remain unchanged with the passing of the years. You’ve gotten used to your balding dome, brother. That’s what’s the matter. And you don’t notice how you’re changing. And people stand and look me in the face and smile and tell me the nicest little lies. They say you never change.

Well, they must have poor memories, because I know what time does the people. Friends, time cuts you down. Time, the ever-rolling stone, grinds you down. We’re the victims of time. We’re the victims of the sunrise and the sunset and the changes of the moon and the weather. But God’s eternal thought moves on his undisturbed affairs.

The eternal, sovereign God is unchanged. God is the same yesterday and today and tomorrow. Who’s yesterday? God’s? No. God has no yesterday. Who’s tomorrow? God’s tomorrow, no. God has no tomorrow. God has already lived all of your tomorrows as He lived all yesterdays. He’s alive forevermore and holds time within His heart. And all of the little sputniks and all of the little calendars and anniversaries and events all take place in the mighty heart of God. For the Scripture says that the heaven of heavens cannot contain God, and that God holds in His hands the stars of the heavens.

I’ve been listening to lectures Saturday nights after I go to bed. I lie and listen to lectures on astronomy. Why, my brother, they tell us about light years, distances, galaxies, stars. They tell us of a sun out there that you could take three a million, I think it is, of our suns and plop them into it and then still have room for some more little suns here and there to fill up the extra space. And yet God almighty contains all of that.

And think of the time. They talk about years and light years because they can’t measure time by ordinary calendar years. They talk about light year. What’s a light year? It’s the time, it’s 186,000 miles a second light is traveling. And they measure, they measure therefore years or space, space by light years. How far it will take light, how far light can travel in a year traveling 186,000 miles. Oh, there’s no use. There’s no use. It’s all beyond us, my brother. It’s all beyond us. But God is the God of today because God contains today and yesterday, tomorrow in His great infinite heart.

Now to most Christians, God is the God of yesterday. I’ve come to the conclusion that orthodoxy is pretty much believing that God was. And what God was, if you believe that really well. You believe in the spatial creation, and I do. And you believe in the creation of Adam and Eve, and I do. And you believe in the fall, and I do. You believe in the flood, and we all do. And you believe in the call of Abraham and Israel, and you believe in all of that, and we all do. You believe in the virgin birth of Jesus and the bodily resurrection and His ascension to the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and His coming down, the Holy Ghost coming down. We believe all this.

But don’t forget, all of this was in the historic past for you and me. And so, it seems that it’s possible to be entirely orthodox and be accepted by the orthodox churches, the fundamentalist churches, if you’re ready to subscribe to a doctrine of a God that was. But do you know that the God that was, is? The God that was is the God that is, and the God that will be.

So I’d like to, I’d like to, I’d like to inspire you somehow to dare to rise and believe that the God who was, is, and the God who is, will be; and ask you to cease to be an historic Christian, a bee in amber, embalmed in all the niceties of doctrine, but embalmed nevertheless, wrapped like Lazarus in the winding sheet of orthodoxy, but wholly unwilling to believe that God will ever do anything now.

Oh, my friend, the Lord spoke to Joshua after Moses was dead and said, now therefore arise and go over this Jordan. Now, 39 years before, He had told them to go into the land at Paran and they had refused to go and they had wandered around. Paran was south of the land and all they had to do was to wind their way through some hills and low mountains into the land. That’s all there was to it.

Now they had wandered around and were on the east of the land with a turbulent, muddy river flowing between. In other words, they had left a better place for a worse place. Their long wandering around had not helped them as far as they were concerned. It would have been easier to go into the land from their geographical position south of the land than it was from their position east of the land. And you know what? I think that often, if not always, God takes us in from the least likely spot.

But you say, what do you mean by taking you in, Mr. Tozer? Well, I don’t think I need to tell this congregation that I believe that there’s a better place for us Christians, and most Christians are willing to accept, that there is a place where we can live closer to God in a place of sweeter communion and greater power and more consistent spiritual victory than most Christians know. And it’s rather sad that there are people writing books and making lectures proving that that isn’t so. That just isn’t so.

When somebody writes you a letter or sends you a tract showing that there isn’t any better place than the wilderness, that the wilderness is it. Where God said no, the wilderness is interim. It is that through which you must travel to get to the land which I will show you.

Now, what is this land? Well, I’ve told you over the last eight sermons that it is an improved spiritual position here in this life, a better spiritual state down here now. Oh, after all, it’s only New Testament Christianity. That which we see everywhere about us is substandard. We bear the same relation, we Christians in the United States of America, we fundamentalist gospel Christians, bear the same relation to the Christians of the New Testament that a scrub hen bears to a full-blooded Minorca.

Now, on the farm where there used to be blooded chickens, that is, the great old Rhode Island reds with the feathers clear down to their feet, heavy bodied and fat, and the white leghorn and slim and egg layers, and the Plymouth Rocks, great friendly old heavy chickens, they’d lay eggs awhile and they always seemed to be good and fleshed, the kind you wanted when company came.

Well, all you had to do was just let them alone, just let them alone for say five years. And you know what happened? They crossed and crisscrossed and inbred and crisscrossed, and pretty soon you had scrubs. And most farmers had scrubs. They were just half-sized scrubs laying half-sized eggs because they were scrubs compared with what they could have been.

And I believe that the average Christian now is a scrub compared with what we Christians could be. What is a revival, brethren? A revival, it isn’t really too much. It is simply where God succeeds in producing a strain of pure-blood Christians, good ones, the Christians that are not scrubby, but that are full up to what they ought to be, pedigree, real, real Christians.

But the average Christian today is a scrub. He’s learned to love scrub music. He reads scrubby Christian literature, cheap books of fiction written by old maids who are subluxating their sexual longings and writing books and having them published. And we read that cheap trash, that literary garbage, and fellas write junk that never should have been allowed to exist in order that they might get it into a book and get the royalties on it. And we poor dumb scrub sheep who have never known what it is to see or gaze upon a flock of pure-blood breads, we’re living in the shadows, scrubs compared with what we could be.

Now, I know that doesn’t sound very good and it doesn’t fill a church as a rule. People don’t want to be talked to that way. They want to have their backs scratched. I know how to scratch people’s backs. You scratch them, I know how to do it with our gray cat. Scratch her back and she’ll close her eyes with a look of absolute feline bliss on her face. And the average preacher just scratches the backs of scrub cats, and they pay the bills and so that’s all a man wants. God Almighty help us, brethren. There ought to be a pressing forward. Moses, my servant, is dead now. Therefore, arise and get thee into the land which I have given you.

Why, one denomination calls it the victorious life. Another one calls it the deeper life. Another one calls it by some other name. But I think we’re all trying to say the same thing, that there’s a better place than the average Christian has found, a place of light, a place of spiritual fullness, a place of rapturous worship, a place of power, a place where prayers are answered, a better place. And that’s the place.

Now figure it out the best you can, but that’s what I’m talking about. And I say that often the Lord takes us in from the least likely spot. After we’ve made everything difficult. See, they had wandered around for 39 years and had complicated the simple act of going into the land. They’d complicated it terribly. They were psychologically all unprepared for it. They’d come to expect only the wilderness with its wanderings.

And I am perfectly certain, just as Jesus said to a man that lay by the pool, wilt thou be made whole? Why did He ask him, do you want to get well? That’s what the word means in Chicago English. Do you want to get well? Why did He ask a man, do you want to get well? Because illness has a psychology. And when it becomes chronic illness, after a while you learn to live with it. And pretty soon you’ll even may learn to like it.

There are people that are so small in their experience that if they didn’t have a pain, they wouldn’t have a topic of conversation. Now I mean this, I’m not kidding. And Jesus knew it. And Jesus said, do you want to get well? And the man said he did, and the Lord delivered him.

Now here, you’ll find there are Christians they wouldn’t want. There are some of you Christians listening to me, you wouldn’t want a revival to come to this church. You wouldn’t want it. You’ve got your life all carefully laid out. You know just what you do. You know just how many meetings a week you go to church. You know just exactly how much you give. And you have managed to work out a comfortable pattern for your spiritual life.

And if a revival came, the first thing it would do would be to disturb your comfortable pattern. And you’ve learned to live with your scrub Christianity. And any accelerating of your spiritual pace, any elevation in your spiritual altitude, and for a while you’d be dizzy.

So you pray send revival, but you don’t mean it. Just as Israel, 39 years Israel had been in the wilderness, they went to sleep at night to the sound, or whatever sounds there were. They woke in the morning to the same sounds, so they did not have the psychology of advance. And I believe that’s one thing that’s wrong with our churches. That’s why soft preaching will never bring revival to the church of Christ. That’s why preaching that tries to please everybody never will be, never will bring revival.

Now let me raise my hand to heaven and tell you this. That if the church, the fundamentalist evangelical church of which I am a part until you’d have to amputate me to get me out of it. If that church ever recaptures the glory of New Testament Christianity, it will be on the preaching of men who do not try to stay in good with everybody but are perfectly willing to make some people mad. Do you hear me?

The idea that we can glorify God and bless His church and bring revival to the world while at the same time walking carefully on eggs so as never to offend anybody, that is heresy of the lousiest kind. There never has been a revival touched the world yet that wasn’t led by some rough man who didn’t care whether people liked it or not.

Well, don’t forget this one thing, however. It is this, the land is a gift, the land which I give unto thee. Draw a line under that word, “give.” I do give it to them. We can’t overemphasize this, that anything you get from God is a gift from God to you out of the goodness of His heart. You can’t earn it; you can’t merit it. It isn’t yours by any right, nor justice, nor logic. It’s yours as a gift to be received and not a reward to be earned. It’s still there waiting even after the long blundering.

Some of us Christians have blundered so terribly after we get converted, blundered so terribly after the long years. And yet God says, every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given you. There’s the tread of faith, as much as you will take, as far as you will go.

Now I’m nearly finished, and I want to talk a little about the judgment of all believers. It is that everybody is as far along as he wants to be. Hear me. You’re as far along in the spiritual life as you want to be. I’ve been saying that for quite a number of years. The other day I read a devotional book or read in a devotional book. You don’t read devotional books through, you read in them.

And I read in this devotional book by some old saint many, many centuries ago, and lo and behold, he said, everybody is as far along as he wants to be. And I’d never read it from him, I’d been saying it. Which says once more that the Holy Ghost always talks the same language, whether he is talking in the 20th century or in the 14th. Everyone has as much as he wants to have, everybody’s as holy as he wants to be, and everybody’s as full of the Spirit as he wants to be.

Now, do you hear that? This is the judgment of God on all believers. Israel was as far into the land as she wanted to be. And you are as far into the land as you want to be. And you are as near to God as you want to be. So don’t say, pray for me that I may be near to God. No, no, no, no, that’s a cliche, a religious cliche, don’t use it. You can be as near to God as you will be. You can be as full of God as you will be.

When Dr. Torrey was a very old man, I heard him preach when his voice was practically gone. He never preached many sermons, if any, after that, and then he died. But I heard him preach on being filled with the Spirit. And he said this, and I’ve never forgotten it. He said, we talk about getting more of the Spirit, forgetting that we’re approaching it from the wrong direction. We ought to see that the Spirit gets more of us, instead of seeking to have more of the Spirit. You have as much of the Spirit as you want. For as you give yourself to God, you will be filled.

Bring your empty earthen vessels. Bring your vessels, not a few. And when they brought the vessels and kept bringing the vessels, the oil kept flowing into the vessels. And it was only when they came and said, there is not another vessel, that the oil stayed.

So, my brother, you are as holy as you want to be. You are as full of God as you want to be. You’re as close to God as you want to be. And you’re as far into the spiritual land as you want to be.

But you say, Mr. Tozer, I don’t want to contradict, but I know better. My heart longs and yearns, and I cry to God that I might be a better Christian. You cry to God to be a better Christian, but you won’t let God make you a better Christian. You won’t follow the Lord into the land. You say, O God, give me the land, but you won’t enter the land. You say, Lord, I want to be holier, but you won’t let God make you holier. You’re as holy as you’ll let God make you.

It’s time we took the onus off of God Almighty and put it on our own souls where it belongs. The fact we have no revival and that we’re scrub Christians living infinitely below our spiritual privileges in Christ is not the fault of our Father which art in heaven. For after 39 years of wandering, Israel was told, I’m with you still. I didn’t desert you. You deserve to be deserted. But I remember my friend Abraham. I’m with you still. The covenant still holds.

Some of you that are listening to me now, you’ve gotten old and bald, and you’ve hardened up, and your habits have congealed, and a kind of premature rigor mortis has set into your spiritual life. And still, the God who gave His son to die in anguish hasn’t given you up, and He won’t. He won’t. He’s still on your side, still waiting for you to wake and come to yourself. Every place the soul of your foot treads, that’s yours if you’ll take it.

Now, this is the eighth message that I’ve given. And I have told you from this 23rd of Exodus and pointing out that this is history and that it had to do with a physical nation in a physical world, but that the spiritual principles which underlie it apply to us in the spiritual world.

And I’ve shown you how God says, I will go before you, I’ll be an enemy to your enemies, an adversary to your adversaries, and I will bring you into the land of your enemies, and I will drive them out, and I will bless you, and there shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil. And I’ll send my fear before you. I’ve told you that.

And now I tell you, I’ve had no advantage to gain. What could I gain if any of you suddenly decided you were going to stop fooling around and take your Christianity seriously? What could I gain by that? You tell me, any raise in salary from me on that? Any big car, nicer parsonage from me? No. No, we’ve learned to get along, half dead the way we are.

And if we continue that way, we’ll still get along all right, as Israel got along in the wilderness, wandering around in the desert. They got on, but they died one at a time, and we buried them out of here one at a time, and I don’t know whose turn it’ll be next. And I’ve prayed, and I’ve labored, and I think unselfishly, for I’ve had nothing to gain. And I believe the Holy Ghost has spoken.

And what have you done about it, dear Christian friends? I’m not finished. There’ll be some more sermons on the same subject. We’re going to talk next week about the actual crossing over at the Jordan. But what have you done about this? Oh, I don’t want to listen to the devil. I don’t like the devil. I don’t like the devil. I don’t like Communists, Communism, and I don’t like the devil.

But if I wanted to get blue, I think that I could make indigo look pink by comparison, because just think of the people that have listened to my preaching over these last months and years and have kept coming back indicating that for some reason, something brought them, and haven’t done one lowly thing about it. You have not made any spiritual progress at all. You haven’t gotten anywhere. You’re right where you were. And not only that, but you also don’t intend to do anything about it tonight. You’re casting quick looks at your watch and wondering if you’ll be, I’ll let you out in time for that program.

Moses, my servant is dead. Now, therefore, arise and get thee over this Jordan. And don’t forget that it’s all by the blood of the everlasting covenant, all by the blood of the covenant. Everywhere we look, every direction we turn, every word we utter, every prayer we make is by the blood of the everlasting covenant. That Great Shepherd of the sheep which God brought back from the dead, took to His own right hand to be our Advocate above, a Savior above the throne of love.

And I think that He is both more severe with you than I am, but I think also He’s infinitely more understanding than I could be. Moses tended to get irked with Israel, and I’m afraid sometimes that I get irked with people I don’t want to, you know, that kept Moses out of the land. But brethren, why do we fool around the way we do?

Now, some of you got a pattern. First thing you’ll do is duck out of here and hit for Melody Lane or someplace else. And you’re going to do that, or dash home for some TV program. You’re going to do that, and you’ll do that regardless of what I say. Who’s that old guy anyhow?

Well, I’ve said that, and the devil said it, and there’s only one person who thinks I’m out to anything, and He went out and died for me on the cross. He’s the only one who thinks it. And if you want to dismiss me with a carnal shrug, I’m dismissible, brother. But there’ll be a judgment when we’ll all stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give account of the deeds done in the body.

And this sixth day of July 1958, at seven o’clock in the evening, there was a service, and you attended it. And you heard an exhortation based upon the imagery and history of the Old Testament, a typology, if you like, and then you went out to follow your pattern, convenient, undisturbed, the same rut you’ve lived in for years. Dear Heavenly Father, are we going to continue like this in our circle, or are we going to break out of it and move on toward God? Let us pray.

O Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Christ and Lord and King and Prince and Advocate and Priest and High Priest and Lamb that was slain, someone pointed to Thee and said, Behold the Lamb of God, and we followed Thee, and we thank Thee Thou didst accept us and take away our sins. Then Thou didst say, now if you will follow Me, take up your cross, deny yourself, follow Me, and where I am there my servant will be. Then began our compromising. Then we learned to make compromise. And we’ve learned it, we’ve come as skillful as a scholastic theologian. We’ve made ourselves comfortable and convenient.

O Lord Jesus, what shall we say to Thee? What shall we say to Thee? We send sixty-two percent of our income to the foreign field to make converts in Africa, Indonesia, South America, and the islands of the sea. But some of those same converts would be shocked if they came back and saw how cold we are, how full of jokes, how engrossed with the size of our automobiles and our rugs and our picture windows.

My Lord Jesus, we are ashamed before Thee this day. We pray that Thou will help us to set our hearts like a flint, determinedly and like Daniel, refuse to partake of the world’s meats. Help us, we pray, to hear Thy cheerful, encouraging voice even after our disgraceful wanderings, saying, now rise, rise, get up, move in, I’ll be with you.

Gracious Lord, we pray Thee, touch every one of our hearts and tear away all of our little playhouses. Tear away, we pray Thee, our God, all of the little idols that we’ve made unconsciously. We don’t know have. We have all the little comfortable pillows for our heads. Take them all away and bring us back down as Jacob was to the rock. Grant, we pray Thee, that there might be some serious heart-searching during this week that lies ahead.

Dear Savior, Thou knowest with rebellions and revolutions and hydrogen bombs and leagues of nations, Arab leagues and the United Nations and the shaping up of things for the end times, and with man holding in his hand a weapon for suicide, Lord, we can’t afford to play. Yet we’re so well off, so moneyed, so comfortable, that we’re learning to play and we stretch ourselves on beds of ivory and invent instruments like David and drink out of bowls and care not, care not that the tread of the advancing enemy can be heard till it shakes the earth and the sound of the shout of the enemy is carried to us on every wind, and yet we go our way.

My Father, help America. Help us of the fundamentalist churches. Help us of the gospel churches. Help us, we beseech Thee. Help us. We have our Bibles, and we claim to believe, but, O Father, so did the Pharisees. We beseech Thee, help us to put our beliefs to practice. Let it cost us something, we beseech Thee. Now we’re trusting.

We pray for our people that are out and gone and away, many of them, and they’ll be back tomorrow. They’ll be back in time to work, but they didn’t get back in time for church today. But bless them anyway, Lord, and help them and let them not leave their bones on the highways. Have mercy upon these poor people who are traveling in bumper-to-bumper, long lanes of traffic coming into the city tonight. Let there be few or no accidents. Preserve lives. We don’t deserve it but have mercy on us for Jesus Christ’s sake.

Put into the hands of the right people, the right literature, we beseech Thee, that we may break out of this conventional shell of dead level of mediocrity and break through into courageous, daring, unusual, radical, if need be, kind of spiritual lives that our frightened friends will call us fanatics. But Thou wilt smile as thou dost see that we are pushing on into the land which Thou hast promised us in Christ Jesus, the spiritual places, the heavenly places with which we’ve been blessed but about which we do so little. We ask all this in Christ’s name.

Amen.

Tags Obedience, Perseverance

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date June 29, 2025

“Turning Back at the Border of Blessing“

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Turning Back at the Border of Blessing

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

June 29, 1958

Sermons are like fruit, some of them, more or less come ready, and they don’t require anything on the part of the audience. They’re like grapes or oranges, they’re practically there for you. Some of them are like coconuts, you have to work to get into them. And this one tonight is going to be of the latter variety. There are two reasons, one, that I have a little cold in my throat, and I tend to cough, and so I’m going to have to talk like an old man tonight, keep myself in hand. And then, the message itself is not of the kind that you would preach to uninstructed persons. You’re going to have to help me, that is, you’re going to have to respond and work at it a little yourself.

I have been giving a series of messages for the last few weeks, from the twenty-third of Exodus, where the Lord said, Behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. If thou shalt obey his voice, and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, an adversary to your adversaries, and I’ll bring you into the land of the enemy, and I’ll give it to you, and you shall serve Me, and I’ll bless your bread and your water, and I will keep you alive to as long as I want you alive, and I will make you fruitful.

Now, tonight, I want to talk a little about this from other passages of Scripture. And once more, I want it to be understood that the Bible teaches that Israel’s history is theology. That the workings of God with the nation of Israel, a selected, picked-out nation, not because they were better, for there weren’t, He said so Himself. They weren’t better, but they were chosen for a purpose.

And God so interwove Himself with Israel that the history of Israel is theology. The New Testament teaches this. For instance, 1 Corinthians 10 tells us about it, and the book of Galatians also tells us about it. And those of you who know the book of Hebrews know that it is based upon the Old Testament ways of God with man. And that what in the Old Testament was physical and earthly, becomes in the New Testament spiritual and heavenly. Now, so much for that.

Now we come to Numbers 13 and 14. If you want to turn to that, I’m going to read quite a little bit of Scripture tonight. Numbers 13 and 14. We find the people, afterward the people removed from Hazeroth, and pitched in the wilderness of Paran. Pitched means that they put their tents there where they were traveling, and they had their tents along to live in. They were a traveling tent city, and they came to Paran.

Now, Paran was halfway between where they had been to where God said they were going. That is, it was about halfway between the bondage of Egypt and the blessing of Canaan. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel. Every every tribe, send a man.

And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan. And he said, Get you up this way, and go ye into the mountain, and see the land, what it is, the people that dwell therein, whether they be strong, weak, few, or many. What the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad. What cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents or in strongholds. What the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein or not. Be of good courage and bring of the fruit of the land.

And now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes. So, it gives us a list of the twelve tribes and the persons who went, representative of each tribe, being twelve of them. And they came unto the brook of Eschol. I think that’s one of the loveliest names. I wonder why nobody ever named their children Eschol.

They were at the brook of Eschol, and they cut down from the ends of branch with one cluster of grapes. And they buried between two upon a staff, and they brought of the pomegranates and the figs. The place is called the brook Eschol because of the cluster of grapes which the children of Israel cut down from thence. And they returned from searching of the land after forty days.

Now, it is critically important that we understand that Israel was on the march, on their way from a bondage that had lasted four hundred years, into the land of Palestine, a land flowing with milk and honey, and with grapes of Eschol, and pomegranates and fruit of every kind.

And it is critically important, I say, that we know two things. That we know they were out of Egypt. And that we know the second thing, that they were not yet in the land. That is, they had come out of the bondage of Egypt, but they hadn’t entered the land of Canaan.

Now, it’s very important that we find this out. If the history of Israel is theology, and the dealings of God with Israel become principles of truth, the revelation of principles of truth, then I say it’s important that we know they’re out of Egypt. These were redeemed people. They had come out of the land by blood and fire and were redeemed.

Now, there’s a new interest that has sprung up within the last, say, five, seven years, in what’s called the deeper life. And often, persons are interested in the deeper life that don’t have any life to deepen. They’re still in Egypt, but they want somebody to come and preach to them about the deeper life. And you cannot deepen what you don’t have. You cannot improve what isn’t there.

And many people are talking about mysticism, and spirituality, and the presence of God, and all this, who are still in Egypt. That is, they’re still in bondage. For Egypt is a picture, always in the Bible, of sin, with its bondage. And these people were out of Egypt when they stood at Paran, that historic moment when they stood there in the wilderness of Paran.

But while they were out of Egypt, they were not yet in Canaan. That is the place which I have prepared. God said, I prepared a place for you, my place which I have prepared. And I think that I can say with my heart, and mean it, that I want the will of God worse than I want to live. It is, living isn’t important. There’s lots of worse things than dying, as I’ve said many, many times. There are lots of worse things than dying. I think it is a proof of a very shallow Christian experience that we hang on to life so desperately. And I think it is a proof that we do not believe as deeply and certainly as we should in our resurrected living Savior, when we look forward to death with such terror, and cling every possible way we can to life right down until the last gasp.

People in their 80s and 90s come and want the preacher to pray for them if they get a pain in their neck. Well, I don’t know about you, but I always pray with a good deal of weak unbelief when I pray for people 90 years old, or even 80. They’re due over there, and I don’t want to keep them here. And even younger, even when we’re much younger than that, how long should we live?

Somebody says, how long should we live? Well, the answer is, God has a different will for different people. Now, don’t try to cram that down me, the days of our years are 3 score and 10, because it also says that if they be 4 score, yet the last 10 years are trouble and sorrow. The man that wrote that was 120 when he wrote it. So don’t try to tell me the Lord has set an automatic 70 years old.

A few years ago, I don’t remember now how many may be in their 20s, they came out with a doctrine that wasn’t very pleasant. I didn’t mind it that time, but it wasn’t very pleasant. It was a teaching some people were trying to get across and trying to get it into law in this country. What did they call that? I’ve forgotten for a moment, that when you reach the age of 65, everybody was to be put to death. That we in this country, everybody 65, nowadays they put them on retirement, but those people back there wanted to put them to death.

And I remember how it was bandied back and forth in the newspapers, and there were politicians and PhDs and doctors of this and that, batting it back and forth like a shuttlecock, wanting to know whether it was right or not right, or whether it was a good thing or not a good thing, and then it sort of died. And I didn’t mind it so much then, but I don’t think that I would be in favor of it at the present time, because I’d have still some time to be around, but I don’t want somebody to decide when I’m to go, because my life is in the hands of Somebody higher. The God that gave me my life is going to tell me how long I’m around.

You know, in the great theology of the Hindus, there are three gods. I never can remember their names, but one of them determines how long your thread of life shall be. The other one pulls the thread out, and the other one snips it off. Now, there’s truth in that, only it’s the same God. It is our God. He determines how long we’ll live, and He pulls the thread of our life out, and when He snips it off, that’s when He calls us over there.

So, I don’t want somebody else deciding that. I want to leave that in the hand of God. And it isn’t important how long you live, men and women, but what’s important is how you live and who you know, and whether or not you have come out of Egypt and whether you do have eternal life. Well, they were not yet in Canaan, the place which God had prepared. And that’s not heaven, understand, but that is a better and superior place right here in this world.

Now, there are millions of God’s children that are neither in Egypt nor in Canaan. They are partway in between. They’re in the wilderness of Paran, halfway between where they were and where they ought to be. And you know, I told you once in preaching on another topic that the word, mediocre, means halfway up the mountain. It means you start at the bottom of the mountain, and you start for the top. When you get halfway up, you bog down and finish there. You never go as high as you could go, but you’re a little higher than you would have been if you had never started. That’s mediocrity. The middle comes from the word medium, middle, medium, in the middle.

And I think that describes most of the children of God, I really do. I think it describes most Christians. They’re not as bad as they were, but they’re not as good as they ought to be. They know God a little bit, but they don’t know God as much as He wants them to. They are a little bit holy, but they’re not as holy as they could be. They have advanced a little beyond the Red Sea, but they haven’t advanced into the land. They’re not feasting on the grapes of Eschol. They’re waiting at Paran and spying out the land.

Now, that just about describes the Christians in our time. And one of these times, a lot of other fellows are going to start saying this, and they’re going to start saying it in good numbers. And when they do, then it will be heard all around, and there will be a looking to ourselves, and a searching of our hearts, and a seeking God, and there will be a putting away of a lot of the claptrap that now entertains Christians. And we will face up realistically, for you know, God wants His people to be realistic, for God is the great realist.

If you will look at this week’s Alliance Witness, you will see an editorial there called, Beware of the Romantic Spirit in Religion. That spirit of sentimentality that takes religion as a mood, it’s a mood, instead of a life. Well, God wants us to be realistic.

And so, now let’s see, Numbers 13, let’s turn over to that a little bit here. We already have read some of it. Now, let’s look at 17 to 25. He said, They cut down these grapes there at Eschol, so large that it took two of them to carry it. Then they returned from searching out the land.

Now, why did God send those men over there to investigate? He said, I am preparing a place for you, and I am leading you there. And I will be an enemy to your enemies, and an adversary to your adversaries, and I will take you there and lead you through, and they’ll turn their backs on you, and you don’t have to worry about them.

Then when they got near the place, God said, now here, send some leaders over in to look over the land and see how it is. Well, why? For the simple reason that God wanted Israel to know what they were facing. It is typical of popular evangelism that we overpaint the advantages of being a Christian, if you could overpaint them, and we underdevelop the disadvantages.

Now, Jesus, our Lord, never did that. Jesus, our Lord, never did what lawyers sometimes do, play down the evidence on one side and play it up on the other, so as to give a distorted picture. Never, never. He didn’t do what salesmen do. They tell you only the good points of their product, and they don’t tell you the rest.

They don’t tell you the disadvantages. But he wants to sell you a house, and says, I have just exactly what you want. Beautiful, secluded place, where the crickets sing all night, and it’s way back from the road, and the whippoorwills whistle and the owls hoot, and you can live there in quietness and peace, and you sign for it, and you find the reason that you can hear the crickets and the owls so clearly is because the roof has holes in it and there’s no windows in, and it’s so back so far from all main habitations that you’ve got no road leading in. That salesmanship is practiced here.

Maybe that’s a little extreme, but that’s done. Something like that is done. They tell you that you are to smoke cigarettes, but they don’t tell you a thing about what cigarettes do to you. They tell you that you are to drink their whiskey, but they don’t show you a picture of the poor bum that is the result of the whiskey they sell.

And so with everything else people are trying to sell, always playing up the advantages and shutting out the other side. Jesus our Lord never did it, never. He said to His people, if you follow me, you’re going to have to bear a cross. He said to His people, they’re going to persecute you, they’re going to misunderstand you, they’re going to hate you for My sake, and you won’t be popular, and even in under certain circumstances, My doctrine will divide families, and a stubborn old unbelieving father will leave his family, mother will refuse to live with her children, and there’s going to be division, and some of you will die for the sake of your faith, but be of good cheer, I’ve overcome the world, and it’ll be all right finally.

So God is a great realist, and so He didn’t want Israel going in there not knowing what they were up against, so He sent in 12 men. They went ahead, and Christ used this method constantly. I have told you before, and if any man will, let him come.

Now sentimentality is in control today, I say, and we’re accenting the positive, as they used to say. We’re accenting the positive, and everybody wants to go to hear a man talk about the happy positive side of things. Let me tell you, any view of life that takes in only the sunshiny days is a false view of life. Any view of life that tells you about happiness and fails to tell you about pain and suffering is a false view of life. Any philosophy of life that tells you that life is a bowl of cherries is a false philosophy. Jesus Christ never committed Himself to anything like that, neither did the God our Father of the Old Testament.

So, he said, now you go up and look it over. And they went up, and they came back, and there were only two men out of the twelve that saw God. The other two saw the giants. They said there are great big giants over there, reaching up, and their cities are walled up to heaven, and they’re huge fellas.

Now this is the story. They went and came to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation of the children of Israel unto the wilderness of Paran. That is, they came back to a place called Kadesh, and they brought back word unto them, and to all the congregation, and they showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him and said, we came unto the land whither thou sendest us, and surely, surely it’s ripe, it flows with milk and honey, and this is the fruit of it. Nevertheless, the people, be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled and very great. Moreover, we saw the children of Anik there, and the Amalekites dwell in the land, and the Jebusites and the Hittites, and that was nothing new, because God said that, told them that dwelt there.

But Caleb stilled the people before Moses and said, let us go up at once and possess it, for we’re well able to overcome it. But the men that went up with him said, we be not able to go up against the people. And you see, they had a congregational meeting there. And that’s the difficulty when you have a congregational meeting.

I think it would have been much better if Moses had just stood up and said, Follow me. But instead of that, he got democratic on their hands, and he let them have a congregational meeting, and there was a debate. And only two men were on the side of God. The other two were on the side of going back. And they said, we be not able to go up against the people, for they’re stronger than we.

And they brought up what had God said to them now? Listen. God had said, I will be an enemy to your enemies, and an adversary to your adversaries. Mine angel shall go before thee, and bring thee into the land of the Amorites and Hittites, and I will cut them off. Ye shall serve the Lord, and He will take sickness away from the midst of thee, and I will send My fear before thee, and destroy them, and so on.

Why then were they worried? But they were. The land through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof. They had great figures of speech in those days. They had eateth up the people that lived there. And all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. If it ate up the people, how could there be huge fellows building cities up to heaven and raising cattle and having beehives and pomegranates and grapes? But they said, It eateth up the inhabitants. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anik, which come of the giants. And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

Now, that’s rather a half-comic story, really. It would be humorous if it wasn’t so terrible that God had sent them over to look it over. And here they came back, and only two of them had remembered what God said, and the others only remembered what they saw, Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes. And they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel.

Now, I have learned this from sitting on boards and being at conferences and councils. When you’ve got a lot of unbelievers on your hand and you’re trying to make a speech to get them to do something, you might just as well save your Hart, Schaffner and Marx and not rent your clothes, because they won’t listen to you anyhow. And not only that, they won’t listen to your speeches, and they won’t listen to anything you say. They’ll smother you and vote you down and go back into their cave and peek out.

But Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes. That is, they rent their own clothes. They didn’t rent the clothes of the other ten. And they spake unto all the company of the children, saying, The land which we pass through to search, it’s an exceeding good land, just as God said it was. And if the Lord delight in us, then He’ll bring us into this land and give it to us. The land which flows with milk and honey, only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land, for they are bred for us. Their defense is departed from them, and the Lord is with us, fear them not. But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. And the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel.

And so now they turned their backs. They turned their backs at Paran, at Kadesh Barnea, with God’s promises ringing in their ears, with the angel of the Lord before them, with the fire and cloud to guide them, with the divinely chosen land already within sight, and the fruit of it in their hands. They turned their back, and they made this fateful decision. And there was a place and a time when that decision was made, and an act of their will. They might have gone in, but they did not.

Incidentally, do you know that Moody Colportage used to put out a book, I don’t know whether they still do, called “Turning Back at Kadesh Barnea?” I don’t think I read it all, but enough to know that this is the teaching that Moody had 40-50 years ago. It was written by one of their great evangelists of the time, and they printed it and kept printing it and passing it around, saying that there is a time in the life of a Christian when he isn’t where he used to be, and he isn’t where he ought to be, and he has to decide whether he is going on or not.

I don’t hear much about that now, but they did believe that, and they did teach it, and it is or was among their books, and was sold by the tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands. J. Wilbur Chapman was the man whose name I couldn’t remember until now. J. Wilbur Chapman, Turning Back at Kadesh Barnea. That was Turning Back at Peran here. They went back, and this was their decision.

Now, I said last week that tonight I would mention whether there is a place where we do make a decision, whether there is a specific place. A man has been writing me, trying to have a one-sided controversy, but it’s terribly hard to have a controversy for a man with a man who won’t talk back. But he’s been doing his best, and his idea is that there is no dividing line, there is no place where you make your decision, that this land which I give you is a vague, faraway, obscure thing, an ideal to keep us going.

The only illustration of that that I could ever think of was the college fellow down in Tennessee who had a lazy mule, and the only way he could keep the mule going was to take a fishing pole, strap it alongside the mule out past his head, and fasten a bag of oats on the end of the pole. And so all day long that poor mule, smelling the oats, went ahead. Always it just evaded him by a foot and a half. That’s the way he got a little activity out of the poor old mule.

And I don’t introduce anything humorous here, but I think that that perhaps would about cover it, that God says to his children, be filled with the Spirit. Now he says to Archangel Gabriel, now you’ll understand that I don’t actually mean that. I’m just putting that out ahead of them as a, right out on the end of a pole there. I’m painting a land of purity and spirituality and worship and power. I’m painting that for them.

Of course, they can’t get it in this life. We’ll all get it when the Lord comes back, but they can’t have it now. But I’m keeping it ahead of them there, so to keep them moving. I don’t believe that God would stoop to that kind of thing myself, and I do not want to believe that God is worse than people are. No father would do that with his children.

I heard when I was a boy, actually this happened, of a man so mean, he was so mean that he used to promise his children money for going to bed without their supper. And then after they’d promised to go to bed without eating, that was to save food, why he’d go steal the money out from under the pillow and do it the next night. Now that was one man I heard about, but I never heard of another, and I don’t think that another man that mean probably could live in the same generation.

Now there might have been one born since that mean, but that was back there, and I think that was all possible. I don’t believe that nature would have supported two men living at the same time. I think the atmosphere would have gone into revolt and refused to be breathed by two men that wicked, but they want me to believe that God’s like that. God says, I just want to keep you coming, that’s all, boy, just keep you coming, and always promising and never giving.

I don’t believe that at all. They could have gone straight into the land from Paran if they would have gone. God said, I am with you, I’ll turn the enemy’s backs to you, I’ll send hornets ahead of you, I’ll put my fear on the people, I’ll give you a land that is cultivated and rich and wonderful, it’s mine to give to whom I please, and I’ll give it to my people Israel, I’ll give it to you. Go ahead, go ahead, follow the cloud, I have an angel before thee. And they want me to believe God never meant that at all.

The only other thing I can think of as bad as that, perhaps not quite as bad, is for God to give a code of laws and threaten men with death for not keeping them, knowing all the time they couldn’t keep them. That’s where fundamental theology has sunk in the day in which we live. I was brought up on that, and I had to stand up and fight through it and get out of it. But the Lord gave us the law and said, Cursed is the man that continueth not in the law, and then said, but nobody can keep the law anyhow. This doctrine of moral inability has cursed the whole Church of Christ, cursed the Church of Christ, and we’re under a curse today because of it.

Well, now, let’s look at Numbers 32 a minute. Numbers 32. Wherefore, said God, discourage ye the heart of the children of Israel from going over into the land the Lord has given them. Thus did your fathers when I sent you from Kadesh Barnea to see the land. For when they went up unto the valley of Eschol and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel that they should not go into the land which the Lord had given them.

And the Lord’s anger was kindled the same time, and He swore, saying, surely none of the men that came up out of Egypt from twenty years old and upward shall see the land which I swore unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because they have not wholly followed me. Then he put them in a bracket, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun. They wholly followed the Lord, and the Lord’s anger was kindled against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the Lord was consumed.

Haven’t you met Christians that have been around a long time, converted way back years ago, and they’ve been going to church, having family prayer, and they’re supposed to be making progress, but they’ve never made progress beyond Paran. There they are. They looked over into a better land, a land of cross-carrying and sacrifice and self-discipline and surrender, and it was too much for them.

And they would not go, so they’ve been wandering ever since. Now, they’re God’s people, all right, for God protected and kept His people all the time. But Je let them die before they ever reached the place of spiritual delight which He had for His children. I think that is pathetic. Next to being lost, that’s next worse. Next to perishing and going to hell in the end, the next worst thing is to get out of Egypt through the blood of the Lamb and the power of God, face up to a better Christian life, and then back out on it and be afraid to go forward.

Well, there are difficulties, there are difficulties. This businessman, he reads a book, or he reads the Bible or he hears a sermon and he’s all steamed up. Oh, he wants the best that God has for him. And then as he presses on, he finds his wife isn’t with him in this. She hangs back and drags her little feet. So, he says, I don’t know, I don’t know.

If I go on to do what I believe the Lord has asked me to do, carry the cross and allocate some of my funds to foreign missions in the amount I want to and keep my business honest, I’ll have trouble at home all the time. So, what I’ll do will be this. I will compromise it for the sake of peace.

So, he compromises for the sake of peace and they both get old together. He gets old and he hasn’t got victory over his temper. He hasn’t got victory over his lusts. He hasn’t got victory over his love of money. He hasn’t got personal victory at all, because at a period somewhere when he should have made his decision to push through and take the cross, no matter what the cost, he backed out and didn’t go.

And we’re swarming everywhere in the United States, swarming everywhere. And the Christians have to be pampered and cuddled and coddled and fed and fed on a bottle. And you can’t get anybody to go anywhere much anymore to seek the face of the Lord unless you promise them that it is a playground. You got to promise them it’s a playground.

The only way you can get Christians to go anywhere at all anymore, to a Bible conference or a retreat is to send folders with cartoons of people playing tennis and shuffleboard and swimming and riding horses. Now there’s nothing wrong with any of those four things. I’ve done all of them except playing tennis. But I never played tennis, but I’ve ridden horses, and what are the other things I’ve said?

Well, let me say, I don’t say there’s anything wrong with them. I only say that the Christians are such weaklings, such children, and they’re telling us you’ll never hold your young people if you’re too severe, if you set too high a standard. In the first place, I’m not setting a standard at all.

I have a book in my hand and that’s the standard. I am not setting the standard. God sets the standard. And He says, take up your cross, deny yourself, follow Me. And if your right eye offends you, pluck it out. And if you’re right, hand offends you, cut it off. And if your wife won’t go with you, go by yourself. And if your family refuses to go, go by yourself. If your neighbors won’t go with you to the celestial city, go alone. The Lord says these things. I didn’t write the Bible. He wrote it.

So, we have them by the thousands. And I refuse quietly, and with such charity as I may have, I refuse absolutely to contribute to the delinquency of retarded Christians. You hear me? You hear me? And I’ve been that way since I was a young fellow, so there’s no change in me on that. I refuse to contribute to the delinquency of these wilderness lovers.

Forty years they wandered in the hot sand when they might have been sitting under their vine and fig tree, milking fat cattle, and eating honey out of the rock, and having for breakfast the sweet pomegranate juice, and living in the holy land. But they wouldn’t go. They said no, they wouldn’t go. They said there are giants in the land. Of course there are. Of course there are.

You’re an office man. You work in an office. If you go on with God, you can’t attend their office parties. If you don’t attend their office parties, they’ll threaten to fire you. God says, I’ll make your enemies turn their backs on you. I’ll send hornets in front of you, and I’ll bless your bread and your water. You’re not ready to have God bless your bread and your water. You want Him to bless your big car. You want too much. And in order to have it, you’ve got to compromise your Christian faith. And compromising of our Christian faith has now become standard doctrine in evangelicalism. Not only that, it is part and parcel of our modern evangelism. And what we’re doing is simply extending an effete, burnt out, third-rate Christianity.

Our friend Mr. Case here and his good wife will not be offended. I was afraid I might have offended missionaries at Council, but they told me, people that I talked with, said that they deeply appreciated what I’d said instead of being offended. I said this, and I repeat it now, that what we need is not more missionaries, but better missionaries. What we need is not more preachers, but better preachers. Because if we do not have better missionaries and better preachers, all we’re doing in evangelism is extending a scrub Christianity at home. And all we’re doing in missions is extending a scrub Christianity abroad.

There must be a reformation. God must raise somebody, and I don’t know who or where he’s coming from, God must raise somebody. Not to have popular mobs following him, but to say to the church what the Wesleys said, to say to the church what Simpson said, to say to the church what Finney said. Better one real Christian than 100 scrub Christians.

What we need is a better grade Christianity. Everybody’s writing books these days, and what we’re doing is simply giving a literary format to a backslidden Christianity. Mediocrity, spiritual mediocrity. We won’t go on with God. God is calling us. He’s calling us out. He’s calling us through. He’s not calling us to fanaticism. He’s not calling us to gotcheries and strange weirdnesses. He’s calling us to holy living and deep power and spiritual wonders. He’s calling us to live in the presence of God until our lives are fragrant with that presence. He’s calling us to sacrifice and discipline and discipleship.

But we’re backing out on it, and we’re getting support everywhere we look. We’re getting support from modern teachers. They’re saying, oh, but we cannot, we cannot, we cannot whip them. They cannot do it. This is the land, that’s the land that eateth up inhabitants.

And God said, I’ll be with you and I’ll drive them out. Seven nations will go out, head over heels, and I’ll put you in there and give you their land already for you, because that’s My land anyhow, and I can give it to whom I please. There’s the sovereignty of God. There’s Joshua and Caleb. It doesn’t say so, but I imagine Joshua and Caleb were pretty unpopular fellows around there for a while.

And they later went in, all right, both of them got in. Joshua led a new generation in. And here was the solemn, awful thought, the solemn, awful thing, that everybody over 20 that had taken part in that rebellion died in the wilderness except Joshua and Caleb. Everybody over 20, only the younger ones that weren’t considered mature enough to have made a sound decision, they were forgiven. The rest died in the wilderness.

Yet, their shoes were kept and their clothing did not wear out, and God supported them all the time and led them, but he led them round and round and round. And there are God’s dear children right now, hundreds of them, hundreds of them, that are moving around in circles.

We wonder why communism can make such tremendous inroads into countries that were before Christian, because we Christians haven’t lived lives that scared them. I’ll put my fear on the enemy, and I believe it’s possible for the people of God to so live that the enemy lurks around the edge but doesn’t come in and bother you much. They’re not afraid of us.

Politicians aren’t afraid of us. They want to use us. Always they’re wanting to use you. If it’s Boy Scout week, they want you to preach about Boy Scouts. If it’s Poppy Week, about poppies. If it’s Mama’s Day, about mommy. And they want you to, that was pretty bad, that pun, but it’s a fact they always want to use you. We want the Protestant block of votes as the cynical old politician. We want the Protestant block of votes. We’ve always got a block of something they want.

But we haven’t got moral ascendancy. We haven’t got specific gravity enough in our spirit. We’re not tough and hard enough, in the name of Christ, as we should be. So, little by little, we’re going downhill. If Depression ever comes to America, it’ll kill evangelism overnight. It’ll kill popular evangelism overnight.

I saw it in the early 30s. Great campaigns, healing campaigns, and other kind of campaigns, thousands and thousands of people attending. Dun and Bradstreet said of one evangelist, he was now worth a quarter of a million dollars. He’d started with a shoestring. A few years, very few years, he had a quarter of a million. People gave him an offering. This thing went, and then the Depression came, and it killed it overnight. And if another Depression comes, evangelism in America will die as it died in the early 30s.

But you can’t kill a Christian with a Depression, brother. And that’s one of the enemies God will make turn its back. If I wanted to go into it, which I won’t tonight, I could tell you how God helped us in this church right in the middle of the Depression, right in the middle of it. How God Almighty answered prayer and gave us what wasn’t around and did wonders beyond wonders for us.

You can’t stop the work of God by having a decline in the economic situation. We go forward by prayer, not by money. We go forward by the mighty workings of God. Behold, I send an angel before thee. And no matter what it is, if it’s the will of God at home or abroad or anywhere, God will see to it that nothing will stop us.

Well, this kind of truth has consequences, my friends. I told you that it wasn’t going to be an easy sermon to preach, nor an easy one to hear, and it wasn’t and isn’t. But there’s truth here, and I want you to take your Bible and go home. Summer is coming, and you’re going to go on vacation.

The Fourth of July is coming, three whole days to kill each other on the highways, make work for undertakers. And I want you to remember you’re a Christian. I want you to remember your call after that holy name of that Man who carried that cross up that hillside, who left the riches of heaven for the poverty of a stable, and who went from a carpenter’s bench to a cross on a hillside, and who said, “‘foxes have holes and the birds have nests, but the Son of Man has not where to lay his head.’

Don’t curse yourself by hanging on to your money. Let it go. Don’t bring a blight on yourself by demanding the best of everything. Use the old thing longer. You’ll never look like Clark Gable anyhow. You women are trying to look like Lana Turner. You’re only succeeding by looking like Lana Turner’s grandmother. Be willing to get along on less, and turn it over to God. I don’t say turn it over to this church. I say turn it over to God’s work.

Somebody said today, and I listened on the radio, in some parts of the world they’re trying to live on a penny and a half a day. Our missionaries tell us of the prophetic efforts of some people to stay alive. Thomas came back from the Far East and told us that he walked down the sidewalk in the morning and had to step carefully between little arms and legs and necks and chins and stomachs to keep from tramping on little children sleeping on the sidewalk.

And we’ve got to have the best that John M. Smyth can provide, or Marshall Fields. Remember your call to sacrifice and cross-carrying and discipline and hard work and suffering. But your call is to victory and to win, I’ll make your enemies turn their backs on you. And the victory you’ll get and the blessing you’ll get will all be inside your heart. Wonderful. Amen? Thank the Lord.

Tags Obedience, Sacrifice

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date June 22, 2025

“Bonus Benefits from a Big-Hearted God“

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Bonus Benefits from a Big-Hearted God

Pastor and Author A.W. Tozer

June 22, 1958

Over the last weeks we have been dealing with the question of a place. Oh, what a wonderful place Jesus has promised to me. This is Dr. Simpson’s song, and we have been dealing with the 23rd of Exodus and showing that there are spiritual principles underlying it which are for the church.

Behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. And I have shown that He brings us straight into the land of the enemy, and that He tells us then in verse 25, verse 25 to 26, and 26, ye shall serve the Lord your God. Or as another version has it, the Lord your God shall ye serve, Jehovah your God shall ye serve. And He shall bless thy bread and thy water, and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee, and there shall nothing cast there young nor be barren in thy land. And the number of thy days I will fulfill.

Now the idea before us is that God is bringing a people out that He might bring them in. He’s been doing that ever since Adam sinned and God brought blood redemption to save man from his reckless course. God is bringing out a people that He might bring them in, and there is no point in bringing them out if He doesn’t bring them in, and that to bring us into this place, He must lead us. And He chooses the place for us.

Our problem has been, as I’ve explained patiently, and met perhaps monotonously, that we try to choose the place and then try to get God to lead us in. But He chooses the place we don’t choose. And then He chooses the way into the place, and all we do is trust and follow.

Now He says, that if we’re going to be led into this superior place, this land of milk and honey, the Lord your God shall ye serve. We cannot make prayer simply a subjective exercise. We must serve the Lord our God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, as we know from further development in the New Testament.

Now the word, serve, here, of course, we’re going to have to look at a minute. And notice what it is. It has in our English dictionary, as a verb, serve, it has in the Webster’s Unabridged, twenty-six separate meanings, and as a noun, service, it has thirty separate meanings. But I have looked it up in the Hebrew, and the word basically means just one thing. It means to work for a master as a bondservant. That’s what it means. That’s what the Hebrew dictionary lexicon says it means, to work for a master as a bondslave.

As Jacob worked for Laban fourteen years, seven years to get Rachel, and you know how they tricked him, he served a master to get that wife. Then the Israelites served the Egyptians. And the old Pharaoh understood when Moses came and said, Israel wants to serve Jehovah. And he said, you can go out a little way and serve Him, and I’ll go out and bring you back. But they knew what the word serve meant.

And yet this word, even in Bible usage, has been greatly enriched, so it means more than merely to work for a master as a bondservant, though it retains that meaning. But it means to acknowledge the ownership of another. It means to own allegiance to that other. And it means to obey and trust and love and worship.

Now though the basic Hebrew word only means to serve a master, it has by its usage taken on these other meanings all through the Bible. So that the word serving the Lord means, I say, to acknowledge that God is our owner, to own allegiance to Him, to obey Him, trust Him, love Him, and worship Him. Obey is better, said the Holy Ghost in Samuel.

And many people want God’s gifts, but they do not want to obey. This is a marked characteristic of our day. We have cheated and rooked everybody that’s rookable, and advertising has refined the lie. The old horse trader that used to trade a swayed-backed, lop-eared, old balky horse for a good one has now changed his business and is making singing commercials on the radio. Same old horse trader, same old crook, same old liar, but he’s just doing it in a smoother way.

And we’ve even started trying to pull that on God, to get something from God, to coax God into a mood, or to do or say something that will persuade God to do something for us, never intending to obey, but to obey is better. So if we’re going to have this leadership, this guidance of the Lord, this angel before us into a better land down here, we’re going to have to serve Jehovah, our God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And the first word means obedience.

Next means trust. God demands that we trust Him completely. Confidence is necessary to friendship. All you have to do to destroy the finest, sweetest, and most longest lasting friendship is to rumor it about that you no longer have confidence in the character of your friend.

Mr. Maxey and I have been friends fifteen years, and all I have to do to bring a dark shadow across our friendship is to whisper to somebody that I think he runs a bookie on the side. And that’s all I have to do. I don’t have to insult him openly. Just let him discover that I’ve lost confidence in him, and while he probably would be too much of a gentleman to say anything about it, our friendship is broken. And there can be no such thing as trust apart from friendship, apart from trust.

And God demands, God requires that we, His friends, trust him. And if we don’t trust Him, if we don’t have confidence in Him, it is equivalent to telling all the moral universe that we have heard something about God that makes us doubt Him.

And how can God then be friendly toward us? Though He gave His son in friendship, though His son gave His life in friendship for His enemies, how can He cultivate that friendship? How can two look into each other’s eyes and smile and shake hands or throw their arms around each other and say, friend, when they know that there is the shadow of distrust between them?

So, serving God is trusting him, and serving God is loving Him. God is love. God is all the love there is. And increasing intimacy with God means intensified love for God. The Lord thy God shalt thou serve, and that God whom we shall serve is a God of love, and we must love God and then worship, worship. That is letting our whole being go in trembling adoration toward God, our whole being.

So he says, if I’m going to lead you and you’re going to enter this better place, this better place, let me warn you against taking the average rank and file evangelical as your standard, my friend. That is judging ourselves by ourselves, weighing ourselves over against ourselves, and judging our progress by the progress of others. That’s always wrong. The result will be a slow spiraling downward to a dead level where everybody will be backslidden. Everybody will be wrong.

So, we’ve got to rise and take the Book and prayer and see where God wants us. And God says, if you want to rise, but somebody says, oh, you think you’re more superior, it’s holier than thou. I repeat that nothing could be more wrong than this.

Just let any man, just let any hillbilly lying with 12 other hillbillies on his back under a plum tree in Arkansas hills, let him get up and say, I’m going to take a bath and put on clean socks and go down and see if I can’t learn to read. And he’ll get the same thing. Who do you think you are? Grandpappy couldn’t read. Pappy can’t read. Mammy can’t read. Uncle Zeb can’t read. Where’d you get this crazy idea? You’ve got, if you’re going to be go beyond the average, you’re going to have to push past them while they’re cussing you and telling you that you think you’re somebody. Every Christian has this to do. If you’re going to be more than the average, if you’re going to rise into the privileges God has for you, you’re going to have to leave others behind you if they won’t come along.

John Bunyan knew that when he wrote Pilgrim’s Progress. And he had the Christian, Mr. Christian, that man who suddenly became convicted that he, that the city of destruction was to be finally overthrown, and there was a celestial city waiting for him. He tried to get his whole family interested, and he couldn’t. And so he kissed them goodbye and said, if you won’t go, I go alone. And of course they said, Papa, something’s happened to Papa. And it’s always that way. And there never was anybody yet that ever made any spiritual progress that somebody didn’t come around and suggest that he thought he was somebody. Who do you think you are?

Well, now, many people seek guidance from God but seek it selfishly. You know, guidance books on how to get guidance and how to be sure you have God’s will and guidance for you. They are a dime a dozen; they’re writing them everywhere.

I wrote an editorial one time on how to find the will of God, and immediately it was printed in America, England, and Scotland, most at the same time, showing only one thing. Not that it was a good book but showing that it was a need the people had. They wanted to be guided. People want to be guided. They’re afraid of this big, dirty, crooked, dangerous world without a guide.

But our trouble is that we want to be guided but will not serve the Lord our God. The individual, I, you, this church, we can have His presence if we will serve Him. If we will obey Him, trust Him, love Him, and worship Him, we can have His presence if we will meet His conditions. And always remember that God’s conditions are never very strong, for His yoke is easy, and His burden is light, and His commandments are not grievous.

Now, we’re granting that God is leading us into a better land, that is, now down here, not in heaven. We’ve postponed so many things and put them over in heaven. You know, Bible teachers can get mixed up worse than a man with three legs trying to walk. They just get tangled up, just tangled up. And if they can postpone it into the millennium or some other vague period in the future, they can be happy. If they can give it to Israel or to Abraham or push it on into heaven.

When God wants to do things for us now in this life, now, down here in this life. Well, granted now that God is leading us into a better place, that He’s leading us into the place, the wonderful place that He has prepared for His own, we serve Him because we should. Let’s remember that. In saying, The Lord your God shall ye serve.

Remember, if we serve him, we serve him because we should. There is no merit in serving God. There is no reward in serving God, no merit, nothing that accrues to me as something fine that I have done for the simple reason that God being who He is, and I being who I am, it is only meet that I should serve God. It is only fair and right and just and equitable. It is only, it is a symmetrical thing, it’s a balanced thing in the universe that I should serve Him, a right thing.

And a man never gets virtue for doing only that which he should do, which is right to do. Paul noticed that, and Paul said, If I don’t preach the gospel, woe is me. He said, If I want any reward, I’ve got to go beyond that further than I’m commanded to do in order that I might pile up something for myself in the world to come.

So, let’s not imagine for a minute that we are earning anything by serving God, we’re not, that we are getting these things as a reward from God for serving Him, because it’s only right we should serve Him, and it’s sinful if we do not serve Him. Therefore, anything God gives us is by grace, sheer, pure grace alone.

Deliverance from the bondage of sin and all the whole land of promise and all the spiritual elevation which God gives to the yearning, thirsting, longing soul, all that guidance and protection, God gives us out of His grace. But there are supererogatory, that’s a long, seven-cylindered word, but it simply means this. I can’t think of another one, really, unless I use slang.

There are benefits that accrue to the child of God out of the bigness of God’s heart. God’s heart is so big, and God is Himself so good and His grace is so overflowing that there are benefits that accrue beside the guidance and the protection and the leading in and the angel before us. There are supererogatory benefits, benefits that more or less aren’t in the covenant for us, but God just adds them because He’s good and loves us.

Now, I want to mention them tonight. There are four of them here. You see, God being so infinite in goodness, He adds these extra benefits to us. He is far beyond our most optimistic hopes. You know, we, being what we are, we’ve been cheated and lied to and tricked and rooked so long that we never believe that anything very good is for us. Not one of you here, probably, would ever think you could win anything or that you’d find anything or that any great thing could ever happen to you, because it hasn’t, and because it hasn’t, you think it never will.

So, we get a sort of a psychology of defeat. And because we have been brought up in this gloomy, damp, dank cave we call modern Christianity, we just don’t believe there’s any place where the sun shines all day and the birds sing their little throats out and their little heads off, and where there’s happiness and joy and aren’t any flatworms, we’ve accepted those flatworms and queer-looking crawly bugs.

We’ve accepted this living spiritually in the cave. We’ve accepted it. We think that’s it. And we get a little bit worked up and say, I’ve been reading in my Bible that God says, I’ll go before you and lead you. Some brother will scrape a barnacle off his hip, you know, and kick a flatworm aside and say, my brother, don’t get too excited about this now. All this talk about sunshine and fullness and all that, that is just an ideal which God sets before us for some far-off time, but we never can really arrive at it. Somebody will argue you down, and if you don’t have a backbone enough to turn your back on him and start for the light, you’ll live and die in the cave, because that’s where they are.

When I was a kid, I visited a mine, a coal mine, in the state of Pennsylvania. My uncle William Williams, Bill Williams, took me down into the mine and showed me mules, little underbred mules, small mules that worked down there pulling—nowadays it’s all electrified, but then in those days they pulled the cars.

He said, these mules were born down here, and they have never been outside of the mines. They’ve lived down here, they were born down here, they have never seen the daylight. Now that’s almost unbelievable, but that happened back there. They bred them down there, they had stables, and of course they had these tall flumes where they could keep air coming in, not just for the sake of the health of animals and men and had great fans.

But these animals lived down there, and if you’d had one of them, suppose that one had strayed in from the outside, smelling of oozoo and fresh grass, and he’d have said, who are you? And they’d have said, we’re mules, we work for a living. And he’d have said, well, I do too, but I work out where the sun shines and the birds sing, a place my master has prepared for me. He turns me loose at night and I gallop around the field and lie down and roll over and get the loose hair off my back and they curry me down.

Oh, they’d say, you’re foolish, you’re foolish. And one would look at the other and lower a long ear and say, what’s wrong with that fellow. All because he had seen something, but the others were bred and born and reared and worked and lived and grew old and died in the artificially lighted caverns they call coal mines.

And my brethren, I want to say to you this, that the evangelical church as we know it now, and it affects this church too much, the evangelical church is living in the shadow. Partly because we’re a carnal bunch that won’t serve the Lord our God, and partly because our Bible teachers have tried to prove to us that there isn’t any place but shadows until the Lord comes, when the Lord comes, and everything is to be done. Everything is to happen when the Lord comes.

My Brother, there’s an awful lot that can happen to the insistent, believing child of God long before the Lord comes. Paul warned some Christians that they’d meet the Lord in disappointment, with tears. And I think a lot of us will.

So, God, I say, being so good, adds benefits. Here they are. I read it over here. He says, Ye shall serve the Lord your God, and he’ll bless your bread and your water. That’s the first one. You bless your bread and your water.

Now, of course, that is simply a brief, symbolic way of saying your food. He’ll give you enough to eat. These are bonus benefits, my brethren. They’re not rewards for serving him. They’re bonus benefits. If you want to serve God on a pay-by-the-hour or piecework basis, God will let you. If you want to serve God with the understanding that as much as you serve Him, He’ll bless you, He’ll let you. He’ll let you work piecework.

I worked as a boy piecework in the rubber factories in Akron. And I know what it is. Some of you work by the hour. And if you spend an extra hour, they give you time and a half. If you want to serve God like that, make God the employer, and you serve Him that way, okay. I suppose the Lord will work out something.

But brethren, there’s something infinitely better than that, and that is the knowledge that God gives bonus benefits out of His own great heart. And instead of our getting just what we deserve or what others have gotten, God will surprise us by opening His great, gracious heart and giving more than we’ve ever dared to hope.

Brethren, I have a little prayer book I carry around. It wasn’t published by the Episcopal people, either. I wrote it myself. Little prayers I put down. And I’ve had some of them written down for about 15 years or longer.

And it’s utterly astonishing how God has gone beyond what I’ve asked and given me. Because, you see, God being so big and so vast, and His heart being so big, these fringe benefits, these bonus benefits, are so great that if He could just get His people to believe it, we could all be walking around richer than Solomon.

First one is, you bread and you water. That is, God deals with our daily bread. Now, I’d like to say this to you, that there are two kinds of people who will deal with this passage. There are those that only have the faith to take it spiritually. And they will say, Well, God will give me the Word, which is the bread, and the water, which is the Spirit, and that’s about all I can expect.

Now, that’s very good. And if that’s as far as we can go, then I say, That’s all right. Go ahead. You’ve got that much. But you know what I believe, my friends? I believe, and I have proved it, that if we will dare to believe God for this, we can enter into a quiet, holy covenant with God that He will take care of His people.

One of the great curses of the church is the Reverend works for the church, and they pay him so much. And then some other church sneaks in around back and comes up through the coal chute and gets to the pastor and says, Pastor, we can offer you more. And he prays and gets called to the other place where he’ll get more. And as the little boy said when his father was called to another bigger and more lucrative church, he said, Is your father going to accept? He said, I don’t know. He’s still praying for light, but all these things are packed. And things are packed and we’re waiting for light.

And that’s the great curse of the church. And another great curse in the church is that official boards, when they don’t like a preacher, now this has absolutely no reference to this church nor the official board, because we get along wonderfully well. And they’re either twelve of the most magnificent actors ever to waste their time doing anything else but acting, or else they all want me and we’re all friends.

So, this is not talking out of school, it doesn’t refer to me here. But one of the things that I notice is that when a board or a church no longer wants a pastor around, they begin to put on the economic squeeze. Many a pastor has been squeezed out.

I knew a man who used to come and pray with me years ago in this city. And he said to me, Brother Tozer, my wife’s teeth are rotting in her mouth for want of care. My children are thin and anemic for want of food. And I am, well, he was thinner than I am, thinner, a lot thinner than I am. He was and is still. But I prayed with him and prayed, and he got out of there, thank God.

But you see, if they don’t like you, they put the squeeze on. Oh, brother, young fellow, if you’re going to be a preacher, if you want to serve in the kingdom of God like that and be a hired man subject to the will of people who want to pay you, go ahead and be a slave. But if you want to serve God and then have God run in with some supererogatory benefits, the bonus benefits so big that you won’t half believe it, God will say to you, listen, you serve me, and I’ll bless your bread and your water. I won’t promise you chicken breast always. I won’t promise you caviar, but I’ll see to it that you don’t starve.

Now I believe that my brethren. And I believe the time has come when young preachers ought to take that. They ought to get out on that. They ought to be willing to go and not have to always have a contract, how much you’re going to pay me, how much you’re going to pay me. They even talked about having a minister’s union. I’ve read about it. A minister’s union.

I don’t know whether they would have John L. Lewis or Dave Beck the head of it, but a minister’s union where the pastors could tell the churches, you must pay me union wages. Now that hasn’t gone through, but you can just believe anything, brother. Nobody knows who will think up that fool thing and then write a brochure showing the Lord led him to write it and led him to that thing.

Any jackass, you know, that hee-haws over the wire fence can write a brochure showing how he prayed two days and two nights and then the Lord showed him that thing. Well, there is such a thing as getting out of the hands of men. There’s such a thing as getting into the hands of God.

The Lord thy God shalt thou serve, and he’ll take care of your food. He’ll feed you. I may look as if I was hungry, but I’m not. Not only that, but my family’s also never been, except for a very little while when my wife and I were first married and we took our first little place and we got about three dollars a week. We confessed we did have to fry pickled corn one time. Now, if you want something to eat, fry pickled corn.

Now, pickled corn is just corn that’s been pickled, and then when you try to fry it. But that was just when I was finding my sea legs. But it wasn’t very long until that was all over, and I entered into this place where God looks after you, He looks after your financial, and you don’t have to worry about it.

So, I’ll promise you this, that if you’ll dare to believe God, you don’t have to worry about starving to death, and you don’t even have to worry about having a, what do they call it, sub-normal diet, a diet that doesn’t have enough calories in it. God will take care of His people if His people will believe in Him.

Old Brother Jerow, I remember hearing him, that great big old lion-headed, lion-voiced man, during the First World War when the prices began to skyrocket, he stood up on the platform, raised his great arms and said, I don’t care how high prices go, I’ll still eat. And those three words have rung down the years, and he did too. Last time I saw him, he wasn’t skinny. He went to heaven fat. So, he still ate.

God will take care of his people. Now do you believe that, or are you going to spiritualize that? Are you going to just take it spiritually in no other way? Just alone? Now remember, it’s a spiritual thing too, but if you just want to say, now this cannot possibly have an economic connotation.

All right, doctor, your degrees are in your way, so you go ahead and starve or serve God and churches and the rest for your pay. Go ahead. I won’t argue with you, but if you will just keep still, maybe some of God’s dear people will rise and get faith enough to get up and say, I believe this means me now down here. Give us this day our daily bread. This isn’t a spiritual prayer. It’s spiritual, of course, but I mean it isn’t solely spiritual. He meant your food, food.

Now, all right, now another thing is I’ll take sickness away from the midst of thee. Now again, this question is just how far you can go with this. Dr. Simpson said, if you can’t trust the Lord, get the best doctor you can afford. And I think that’s the finest possible thing.

Some people have written me or come to see me and said, Mr. Tozer, the Christian Missionary Alliance is known as believing in healing. Do they require a missionary to go to the field and promise that he’ll never take a pill? Brother, I’ll tell you, if we had all the pills our missionaries and preachers are taking, we wouldn’t be able to carry them away in any sack big enough, and the South Side isn’t big enough.

So, we don’t require that at all. But on the other hand, wherever faith rises and touches the hem of His garment, wonders are performed. I’ll take sickness away from the midst of you. Now you can make that spiritual and that’s good, that’s fine. But if you have faith to go further with it, all right. I had a sort of a, what would you call it, I wouldn’t know, I can’t think of a name for it at the moment, but I had a fear, a feeling, that I was going to die when I was 30. And I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t because when I was about maybe 28, I got a hold of this passage. I’ll take sickness away from the midst of thee, and the number of that days I’ll fulfill. And while I’m not a preacher of divine healing, and I’ll say frankly, I don’t believe in divine healing campaigns, I wouldn’t attend one, and I don’t believe in them.

And if you do, you and I don’t agree on that. We can still love each other and go to heaven, and you can prove, I’ll prove you’re wrong when we get there. But at the present moment, I don’t believe in divine healing campaigns. But I believe that there is a Lord who takes care of His people. Our bodies are for the Lord. And there’s no reason why we should not trust God to keep us going.

Oh, I could tell you stories here, I could stand for the next hour and a half, and I think you’d be listening. I don’t think many of you’d go and tell you stories of how God delivers people physically. But I am going to pass that over deliberately and say, it’s just up to you now.

You said, you take medicine, Mr. Toter, when I need it. Sure enough, sure enough. I take pills. One brother said the only pill he believed in was the “gos-pill.” But I believe in the gospel plus any good thing. And God says, lay some leaves on there, Jeremiah.

And take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake. That I don’t do because I don’t think wine would do my stomach any good, and I’ve never tasted the rotten stuff in my life. But I don’t have any objection to operations if you need them. I’ve kept knives out of my carcass up to now, and I hope by the grace of God never to have to have anybody stick a knife in me. But if he does, why, I will humble myself and say, dear Lord, help him to be skillful. So, I’m not being fanatic on this, but I’m just telling you that every child of God has a right to believe.

Our brother Chase has prayed a prayer too in my presence that I felt was divine. One of them was one time we were praying, and polio was hitting us right and left all around this city. And he prayed, O God, touch our people, and I don’t remember the wording, but give us a guarantee against this thing. Not a one of us, not a one, not touched our family anywhere. One dear little girl had had it and still among us here growing up, but that was before. And I believe it’s entirely possible.

You remember, friends, those of you who are left, when about 75 of our young men were in service during the Second World War, I had you rise one time, and we stood before Almighty God and took a covenant. And we covenanted that every one of our boys who’d ever been in our fellowship here would come back. Seventy-five of them went out, and how many came back? Seventy-five. They went through hell over there, but not one lost his life.

My eldest son, wounded by a mortar shell burst. My third son, wounded by flak burst in his face. Down on LaSalle Street any day you can see a boy crippling along, another son who was wounded in Korea, but he’s back. And he’s on top of it and happy as a lark with three lovely children, happy as a lark. I don’t mind a crippled leg, a crooked leg, because he’s back. I’ll protect you, he said. All right.

Now, the next is, there shall nothing be barren, nor cast their young. There’s fruitfulness. We’re going to pass that over because we talk about that an awful lot. And the number of thy days I will fulfill. There isn’t anybody listening to me that either isn’t now or hasn’t at some time been scared about when you’re going to die.

Now, I don’t want to seem facetious in any way. This is one of the most reverent passages in the Bible to me. The number of thy days I will fulfill. And you can take that passage and let the dispensationalist give it to somebody else. You’ve still got a hundred passages somewhat like it in the rest of the Scripture.

Jesus Christ could not die until His hour. Mine hour is not yet come, He said. And Paul had no fear until he knew his hour was come. And then he said, I’m now ready to be offered. And he laid down his life. How long do you want to live? If you have a set number of years out there and you’re frantic at the thought of dying, you’re not in this covenant. You’re not here. You ought to want to live just as long as God wants you to live.

There was one time a man by the name of Hezekiah, a good man, and he got sick. And a prophet came and said, you’re going to die, Hezekiah. And he sulked and turned his face to the wall and said, in effect, O God, I’ve been a good king and you’re going to let me die. God says, all right, I’ll add 15 years to your life. Had you ever read what happened in those 15 years? Hezekiah lived 15 years too long because he went to God and demanded that he live. If you want to live longer than you should, all right. But God will keep you going if you stay in His will.

The Lord thy God shalt thou serve. Obey Him, trust Him, love Him, worship Him. He’ll guide you and He’s got your number, He’s got the number of your days. I don’t want to know what it is. I don’t want to know. Some of you dear people, if you only knew, we’d all be pitting in, gathering around you and saying goodbye. Because some of you, your number’s just about up. By number, I don’t mean anything fatalistic. I mean the heavenly Father has given us, it’s nearly the time we’ll go.

Maybe I’m the one that you’d gather around. I don’t know, but you know it doesn’t make any difference. The number of thy days I will fulfill. My heavenly Father hears me say that I don’t want to live one day longer than He has planned that I should live. God, burn down to the socket long after our days is not a desirable thing. I would not live always, said Job.

The number of thy days, mother, the number of thy days, brother and father and sister and young people, in the will of God there is no failure. And in the will of God there is no accidents. And in the will of God there’s no premature deaths. In the will of God, thou shalt serve the Lord thy God, and I will fulfill the number of thy days. That’ll take away that frantic fear of cancer, that frantic fear of heart trouble. And dropping over on this sidewalk, I told this some time ago, but I’ll repeat it.

My dear friend Robert Kilgore, great, big, tall, learned, brilliant preacher, a mystic if ever one lived, that loved God. They told him he had heart trouble and tried to persuade him to give up and quit preaching. He said to me, Brother Tozer, they tell me my heart’s going to give out on me, but he said listen. Then he began to name them one by one, even in charity, but he named them one by one of the preachers who’d been scared by a doctor. If you’ve got a bad heart, reverend, better retire.

So, they all retired, and they’re all out in California vegetating. They’re all out there vegetating, getting old because they’re afraid to get up and exercise their heart preaching. Brother Kilgore said, Brother Tozer, I won’t do it. I won’t do it. I teach in a Bible institute. I’ve got them before me, and I’m going to teach and die teaching if I have to. About one year later, brother Kilgore’s wife found him lying quietly on the floor beside the bed. He’d gotten up out of bed and tumbled over. He’d gone to be with his lord, but he’d had one glorious year of teaching young people the truth. These other boys are still vegetating out there.

Do you want to live after God wants you in heaven? And uncle Sam wants to get you off of the rolls? The number of that days I’ll fulfill. I feel good about that. Do you believe it? Now you say, what’s that? What doctrine is that? Calvinism or Arminianism? I don’t know. Really, I don’t know.

All I know is that that’s a supererogatory benefit, a bonus which God gives to His children. I’ll send an angel ahead of you. I’ll lead you. All you have to do is push down the altar. Whenever you see one, go right on. I’ll lead you in. In the meantime, I’ll look after you. You won’t starve, and you’ll be fruitful, and I’ll keep you reasonably healthy so you can do your work, and I’ll keep you as long as I want you here.

Now that’s as long as I want to stay. I don’t know about you. We want the will of God, my brethren. He will set our time for promotion. We want the will of God. If we resist His will, of course, we may die lamenting. If we resist His will. I’ve found preachers that resist God’s will and are always going around over the country telling about how their district superintendents have treated them dirty. They say, ah, but he wouldn’t give me a chance. He wouldn’t give me a chance. Oh, brother. What an awful kind of godliness is that.

Any man who has the finger of God touch his shoulder and say, come son, preach the word. After that, he’s a man of pride, and no superintendent can stop him, and no bishop can stop him. Not even a cardinal can stop him. The Pope can’t stop him. You can’t stop a man when God’s laid his hand on his shoulder.

So, any of you young fellows that are going to preach, God help you. The first thing to do is get out of the hands of men. Work with everybody, work for nobody. You hear me? Work with everybody, work for nobody. I work for nobody except the Man who died for me.

Well, that blesses my heart just to know that’s here in the book. Anybody who wants to get me aside afterward and argue that’s not for me, go on home. I don’t want to see you at all, because you’d sour milk by looking at each other.

Believe it, brethren. Believe it. Believe it. Believe God. Dare to believe God. And if you make any mistakes, the Lord will correct you. Amen? Fruitfulness, daily bread, length of days are all as a bonus benefit out of the big heart of God, without money, without merit, and without price. Not because we’re good, but because God’s heart is good. Amen?

Amen.

Tags Benefits, Blessings