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Tozer Talks

“The Transforming Power of Love I

The Transforming Power of Love I

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 22, 1956

I’m going to give two talks on the topic of the transforming power of love, one this morning and the other tonight. They will be separate and complete, each one in itself, but they will be on the same theme.

Now, in the 45th Psalm, verse seven, speaking of Jesus Christ our Lord: Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness. Therefore, God, thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And then in the Book of Matthew, the 22nd chapter, beginning with verse 35: One of them which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. Then in 2 Corinthians 3:18: But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Now, we will begin at a common meeting point where we can all agree, that we are all in the process of becoming. We cannot stand still in our inner lives. We are moving, constantly moving in our inner lives. We have already moved from what we were, and we are now moving to what we shall be. That is why, one of the reasons at least that, the Bible talks about the pilgrim character of the Christian. It is not because he is on his way from the cradle to the grave only; that is true also. Or because he is on his way from earth to heaven; that is true also. But because he is as a creature, a pilgrim, he is in the process of becoming. He is moving from what he was to what he will be. And what he is now is not what he will be. John said, we know not what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him.

Now, this fact that we are moving, that we are becoming; that we are in process of transmutation. That we are not fixed but fluid, is not in itself a disturbing thing. I think, indeed, that the man who knows himself really well, or perhaps in the man who knows himself even slightly, he’s quite happy with the thought that he is not what he is ashamed that he used to be. And that he is not fixed in what he is now, but that he is moving towards something better than he used to be and even better than he now is. It is a comforting and heartening knowledge, that we can be changed from what we are ashamed that we ever were to what we ardently hope that we may become.

But the perturbing thing is not that we are fluid. Not that we are flowing. Not that we are pilgrims. That perturbing thing is what we are flowing toward and what the journey will end in. What is the future? What’s the destination for our pilgrim feet.

Now I want to point out this to you, and this will be the biblical basis upon which the central thesis of this talk and the one tonight. That we are becoming like what we love. Love is among other things a creative affinity. It changes and draws and wins and molds and shapes and transforms and ultimately transfigures. It assimilates and transforms and makes us over from what we were to what we will be. Love does this. So powerful is love, that we are destined to become what we love most. That is, morally what we love most.

And you may be sure of that. And that is true not only in the kingdom of God and in this church, but that is true in the kingdom of the flesh and in the nearest tavern that everyone is destined with a wholly fixed purpose and fixed decree. He is destined to become that which he loves most. That is, morally that He is destined to become morally the image of that which he loves most. For that reason, what we love is of present and eternal importance.

You know, there are not very many important things. I used to say that, and now as I’m getting older, I see that it’s true that there are not very many important things. You can pick up the newspaper and read it every day for one solid week and maybe never find one important thing in it. That is, never find anything that will be of any importance a week from now or a year from now. But what we love is of critical, most critical importance. Because loving wrong objects deforms the heart and debases it and twists it out of shape and destroys it, just as certainly as workmen raze and destroy a building. Just as certainly as a tree standing among the rocks on the promontory overlooking the ocean never grows into a strong, sturdy, symmetrical tree. But the constant pressure and twist of the storm, turns it into a dwarfed thing.

So if a man loves the wrong thing, he certainly will become deformed and debased in his heart. This is a tragedy that is being enacted, not on a stage, but in stark reality before us daily. There is the innocent, bright-faced a boy who still kisses his mother when he goes to school and who still listens humbly to what his father tells him. And then he comes up through that strange and mysterious period when he ceases any longer to be a little boy but becomes a young man. And about there somewhere, he learns to love the wrong things. He gets to going, we’ll say, out with a crowd that isn’t quite what it ought to be and goes from there to what may be innocent; to the pool hall and then from there to someplace else a little worse, and so on, until he develops a love for that kind of thing; rebellion and individual independence and self will. And he stops kissing his mother goodbye. And he stops listening to his father’s kindly admonitions. He’s in love with something else now. He becomes ashamed to show affection around the house. He’s in love with another thing now. He gets to talking tough.

And the simple innocency of his boyish language now changes and he begins to spit out harsh, tough, brittle words that he didn’t use to. And the parents look at each other and shake their heads and wonder what’s happened? The tragedy has begun, act number one of the terrible tragedy of becoming, the tragedy of transformation. The terrible story of the boy who learned to love the wrong thing. There’s that man now, maybe in his 20s or his 30s. He has a wife for whom he would give his life. He has little children that he adores. He has a home, a car, a good job. And then for some reason he begins to drink. First, it’s nothing. He waves it off. And when his wife smells it on his breath, he laughs it off and says, I just had one with the boys.

And then she notices they’re more frequent. And then she notices, a bleary eyedness about him. And it isn’t very long until she has an alcoholic on her hands. This man has been changed by his love of drink until the money goes there. And until his job is in jeopardy. Until he has accident after accident as he drives. And he swears and weeps as he promises his wife that he will not drink anymore and swears off, but it always comes back to the same thing. He can’t help it. He’s in love. The cells of his body, the tissue that makes up his system, have become addicted to alcohol.

Or there’s that young fellow who’s in college, maybe, and in love with Plato or Spinoza or the rest of them. He’s reading fine literature and thinking well. And then he leaves it and gets out into the world. And pretty soon he becomes a playboy, and he gets in love with the bright lights. Then the nightclubs and the entertainment world gets ahold of him. And at first, it’s alright. He thinks we’d love it. And he argues in favor of it and says, you just don’t know these people, Dad. They’re nice people. They’re nice people.

But pretty soon, act number three, act number four, moving on to a terrible climax. This boy ceases to have a sense of responsibility. He ceases to be even the good American and becomes a cheap, floating thing; floating because it’s light on the surface of the moving stream of society; a cheap lover of his own flesh. Or the girl, the sweet-faced, little girl that dashed to her father’s arms and kissed him. And then that strange thing happens to her. Something wakes up inside of her and she gets her eye on a boy. And she becomes what they say sarcastically, boy crazy.

And we shrug it off and say they all go through that, but they don’t all go through that. That’s a mistake. They don’t all go through that. They all arrive at a place as God meant it to be in nature, where the attraction of man for a woman is there. That’s perfectly all right. But the girl-crazy business is something else again. That’s where a girl forgets she’s a girl and forgets she’s feminine and forgets that she has and holds that which is in practically all societies of the world, except the degenerate ones, that which is more precious than gold or silver. And she falls so in love not with anybody in particular, but with just men.

And pretty soon you have not the tender, pleasant, innocent girl on your hands, but you have a wild thing, almost like an animal. And my friends, I’ve seen that in my days. I’ve seen that happen to homes. And I’ve seen those homes in tears because this lovely little thing, that was too pretty for her own good, had broken her anchorage and was out now at the mercy of the wild winds that roar across the sea. And she justifies it. Pretty soon she begins to look like the world and then ceases to look like the refined part of the world. And the very look in her eyes and the hang of her lip shows the sensuality and sex. And pretty soon you have not a lovely innocent young woman. But you have a girl who’s gone, or ready to go.

I’d say there’s the tragedy that’s being enacted all the time. And I’ve seen it in my ministry as I’ve touched here and there and throughout all our country. I’ve touched homes and lives and talked with parents and young people and heard awful confessions and tried to untangle the live wires, and counsel and pray and instruct. And I’ve seen what will happen when we love the wrong objects. When we get in love with that which is not good.

A quite a well-known violinist, probably the best-known violinist in religious circles, showed me once when we were staying in the same home what his violin practice had done to him. I never dreamed it. He took his shirt off, and with only his top on, showed me in private. He said, when I was five years old, I began to play the violin, a little one my father bought me because I couldn’t handle the big one. And he has never had an violin out of his hand except long enough to eat and sleep precariously from that hour to this hour. And you know what has happened to him, a part of his body is all twisted and sunk.

I think he wears padded clothes so it can’t be noticed much. But there’s a great hole here, and his chest, hollow and sunk. I didn’t know this could happen, but I actually saw this with my eyes. The man showed me that the constant use of the violin, the constant holding of it up here, twisted him all out of shape and until, if it were not for the padding, you would see that you had not a symmetrical man not even as symmetrical as the normal rank and file of us, but a man all deformed and twisted out of shape by his addiction to the violin.

Now I don’t say it’s wrong to play the violin, I only point out that the human body can get twisted out of shape, so the human mind can get twisted out of shape and more particularly, the human character twisted out of shape.

There are three things, my brethren, that can happen to a youngster; three things that can happen in a home. One is, that there can be a crippled, deformed condition in the home. Now, no one wants to think of this. No one wants to think. We all want to think that our families are all well and healthy. But it isn’t so in every home. Occasionally there will be through disease or through some genetic accident that we know not of, somebody born who is not sound physically. I always feel sorry for and deeply sympathize with anyone who is physically handicapped. But it’s possible to rise joyously above a physical handicap,

My son, Bud, who is now 32. This boy now, not that he was born that way, but in the war, he got it. One leg is four inches shorter than the other and so crooked that he has to have his clothes tailored to try to hide the fact that there’s a crooked twist there. And he’ll never walk without a cane. But you know, I can’t find it in my heart to be sorry for Bud, because he lives above it so completely. He is so utterly happy about the whole business that he ever got back at all, that he ever got back to see Rosemary and the babies. He’s so completely delighted and so completely free from anything like morbidity, that I can’t find it in my heart to be sorry for him.

You can rise above physical handicaps, my friends. You can get above that easily. And some of the sweetest characters living in the world are those who have been physically handicapped. They’ve had a twisted or shrunken leg, or they’ve had something wrong. We don’t like that. We wish that all of us could be healthy and well. But some of us can’t, so we have to get along with what we have. And if we can rise above it in our spirits, why, we will hardly notice.

Then there’s a second thing. And this is harder still. And in the grade of things we don’t want to happen, down a little further; and that is mental conditions, insanity. When the mind goes wrong and in the homes where anyone has mental trouble, always there’s a sense of shame as though somebody was to blame.

One of the most brilliant men in the United States of America, without a doubt; I don’t agree with him in everything, but I admit that he is one of the most brilliant men in America. You know that that man has two subnormal children. It’s not his, not his fault. His wife is a brilliant woman. But somewhere in those streams of nature, it happen that way. And we’re sorry when it happens. We’re sorry when the mind goes wrong. It’s still worse than when the body is wrong.

But there is a third thing. And here, my brethren and my sisters in Christ, here is the worst of all. And that is when the soul goes wrong. When our young people are not physically deformed and not mentally off, but are morally off. When up out of our Sunday schools, or up out of our Christian homes, or down out of our Christian homes there go young men or women to disgrace the name of Christ and to live a life that borders on crime or that becomes crime, indeed. I say this is the worst of all.

If I could ask God as David did of the three things that could happen. You know, God said, David, I’ll give you one of three punishments. Which would you like? David made his choice. And if God were to say to me, which would you like to have, which would visit your home, physical deformity, mental incompetence, or a crime.

And I would say, My God, I don’t care about the physical. The physical can take care of itself somehow. If they’re mentally all right and morally all right, they can lick any kind of physical trouble. We’re sorry for it, but, God, it’s alright. You can send it. And then I would say, God, if it should be that any of my family should lose their mind and they would have to be committed or would have to be understood as being mentally beneath, below par, I would say I’m sorry God, but still, they can help that. And they may be as dear to God as the brightest intellect that walks America’s streets.

But, O God, spare me, spare me the horror. Spare me the tragedy of crime. Spare me the tragedy of a twisted, deformed life. A man to be made in the image of God and then take that image and twist it and deform it by loving wrong objects; bring to bear upon it the powerful, formative influences of a wrong love. And then live to see the innocent little babe that we used to hold in our arms, look at us with cold, unseeing eyes and snarl. And now, a sinner confirm and defending his sins. And yet that’s what happens to people.

But on the other hand, loving right objects does exactly the opposite. Loving right objects will change us and transform us and turn us and put the shine upon the countenance so that no matter what nature does to the body, and no matter what weary nerves do to the mind, they still can’t get away from it. God is in that man.

Dr. A.B. Simpson, the founder of the society which this church is a part. was 71 years old when his tired, overworked mind lay down and refuse to work anymore. And yet, they said he walked around smiling at everybody, shaking hands; God bless you, young man. God bless you. Good morning, sister. God bless you. I’m praying for you. And they said it was one of the few times when his mind would get right, was when he knelt to pray for his missionaries.

And the very afternoon that he died, he knelt out on the porch of his Nyack home and prayed for his missionaries by name. He didn’t have as many as we have now. He prayed for them all by name, and then went in and laid down and died. He would get normal when he prayed. But when he wasn’t praying, he just walked around in a haze. He didn’t know people. There’s nothing wrong there. I think that’d be nice way to go, wouldn’t it? I think that would be a nice way to go.

God just looked at him and said, Albert, you’ve suffered so much, and you’ve worked so hard, and you’ve never had but one vacation, and you’re ran home from it to get back to the office. And you have loved me so much and prayed so many nights in silent, secret prayer, that I don’t think I’m going to let you suffer the pangs and irritations of old age. And so, he just pulled a veil over Albert’s mind, and He walked around smiling until he died. He didn’t know his friends, but was happy in God, a beautiful way to go, I think.

If you have somebody that loves you enough to take care of you when you’re like that, and he did. So, it isn’t so bad, if about the mind. But, oh my brother, to know that the heart is right and that the shine of God is on the heart.

Now I thought I had enough for two sermons, but I see I’ve got enough for three or four. But I’m going to try to stagger through this, anyhow if you will wait another 5-10 minutes.

Now I read a verse here that tells us what the first and great commandment is. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. Now, why is this here? What is the rationale, the reason, the sound reason underneath this? It is, that to become godlike is the supreme goal all moral creatures. To become like God is the reason for their existence. And the only justifying reason that can be given for their ever having been created in the first place. And leaving out of consideration for the time being, those strange and wonderful creatures that we call seraphim and cherubim and archangels and angels and principalities and powers. We don’t know too much about them. They’re hinted at, but not a very full picture is given. Leaving them out of consideration and thinking only of man as a moral creature; that he was created in the image of God, that he fell; and that under God, he’s now in process of restoration.

Thinking of this now, I think I understand this commandment. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, because it’s the business of God, now in his work, to restore again to the divine image man who fell and lost, to a vast degree, that image. And so since man is in process of becoming, and since he is destined to become what he loves most, God said, you shalt love God most. Because your reason for existence is that you should become godlike, and the power of love is transforming. It is like a potter shaping clay. It is like a sculptor chiseling out the rock. It is like an artist using his paints on the canvas. It is like a carpenter building his cathedral. And so, love is the workman, making us like what we love. Thou shall therefore love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and strength. This is the first and the greatest of the commandments.

Now, we can’t begin by loving God, for the reason that man is fallen, and there must be an impartation of divine life. Fluid as human nature is, it cannot run up hill over the falls. We ran down over the falls and roared away in dirty foam below and we can’t reverse ourselves. The human race cannot run backwards over the falls. Neither psychiatry nor education nor psychoanalysis nor brotherhood nor integration nor anything else can cause the human race to run backward over the falls, because we run the other way. We don’t run backwards. The human race does not normally run upward, it runs downward over the falls.

But when God implants and imparts new life, then the whole stream is lifted up onto the divine level. And after that then, God goes to work to model that life and shape it and mold it until it becomes Godlike; until it changes from what it was to what it is to be, when we see Him as He is. And God provides approved models and proper moral objects for our admiration. And toward these objects, we move by moral likeness.

Now my brethren and sisters and young friends, you don’t have to listen to this and say that it’s too philosophical or too mystical. I tell you, that it’s much a part of you as the blood in your body. It’s just as real as the physical laws that hold and govern your physical life, that you are in process of becoming what you love and you are destined, finally, to be like that which you love most.

You may not know it now. For remember, the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small, and so slow and slow the great mills go that they hardly move at all. But they move nevertheless. And you will be next year a little more like that which you love now, whether it’s God or whether it’s something else.

Young fellow, you’re beginning to feel your oats. And the old man’s bald head looks quaint and wonderful and funny to you now. And his old-fashioned moral ideas aren’t what you like. He’s not hip. He’s a square. All right, Junior. Let me tell you, you’re busy becoming what you admire. You will be a year from now nearer to your heart’s desire. For remember God gives every man his heart’s desire. If his heart’s desire is to be God-like, he will be. If his heart’s desire is to be like the world, he will be. And the sadness of looking upon a face, a young beautiful face and seeing the great old artist sin, sketching and making his preliminary sketches getting ready to paint, darkness and sin and hell under that countenance. You will become what you are in love with. It’s a sweet and solemn thought that human nature never moves on a horizontal plane.

It’s sweet, because it indicates that we can move on an inclined plane going upward. And it’s solemn because we can move on a plane going downward, but the human life never moves on a horizontal plane.

In the book of Revelation, it says: He that is unholy, let him be unholy still. And he that is evil, let him be evil still. And other translations point out that actually what that says is this: Let him that is evil become more evil still, and let him that is unrighteous be get to becoming more unrighteous still. And let him that his holy, be holy still is not that. It’s let him that is holy become holier still. Never does man move on a level plane. Always, he’s mounting up or sinking down. That’s the sweet thing that he can mount up and the solemn thing that he can move down. And so God the great Potter is within us, shaping us and working and molding and helping us to become.

Now, I gave you this verse that was the text, from the Philips translation and on through. But all of us who are Christians have no veils on our faces but reflect like mirrors the glory of the Lord. We are transfigured by the Spirit of the Lord in ever-increasing splendor into His own image.

Oh, you older Christians, you older Christians that have had a long time for the artists to work on you. Why don’t you look more like God? The young convert just newly bounced out of Adam’s old world into the kingdom of God, all flustered and doesn’t know where he is yet. You demand more him than he demands of you. We expect saintliness in the teenagers.

What about you, Grandpa? You’ve had a half a lifetime. You were converted in your teens and now you’re old, and the days of your years aren’t many. And it says here that if we look into the face of Jesus Christ in love, that God will, the Spirit of God will in ever increasing splendor transform us into God’s image. Grandpa, why is this? Why are you so testy and churlish and hard to live with? Why are you so cruel in heart, Grandpa? Grandmother, you say it’s your nerves. It isn’t your nerves. It’s carnality. And it’s a lack of the image of God.

I’ll die a disappointed man. I’m sure of that. But some would say, well, a man with a temperament like yours, nothing would ever satisfy you. Maybe that’s true. But I’m sure I’ll die a disappointed man, because I would like to see a company of men and women with shocks of white hair, that is their crown of glory, and that age and experience and suffering and prayer and study of the Word have worked to change into the likeness of God. And the Holy Ghost, the artist working inside their souls, painting on the inside of the lens, and then the people on the outside see it? They should, they should be the saints, the dear old people. They should be the saints. And that’s why you young people need the old people. Because there are some like that. You need them.

But I’d like to see, I wouldn’t mind being a pastor of an old congregation, or congregation of old men and women if they all had yielded to the indwelling Artist. And as the years went on and elections and presidents came and went, and wars came and went, and time mowed them down and bent them to the earth. If their faces became more and more radiant with the love of God. If they were tender and sweeter and more understanding and sympathetic and reminded me more of Jesus, I’d like to preach to people like that. I’d like a congregation like that, just to help me.

But it isn’t that way as a rule. Too many never change for the good as they get older. Why? Because they’ve become like what they like. They have taken on the image of that which they love. They love themselves and God fated them to be like themselves. They love money and God let them look like the dollar sign. They love easy living and God let them look like the gourmets they are. They love this world and God let them look like this world. Maybe they’re Christians. I don’t know. Don’t press me for that. But only I know that theoretically, as we get older, we ought to get more like Jesus; being transformed with increasing splendor into the image of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Remember, you will be what you love most, and you are becoming what you love.

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Tozer Talks

“Three Dimensions of Christian Living

Three Dimensions of Christian Living

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 13, 1958

Now, we’ve been talking about grace. From the book of Titus, the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world.

Grace divine, how sweet the sound; sweet the grace that I have found, wrote one old brother. Another one said, sweet the sound of grace divine, sweet the grace that makes me Thine. Grace is a charming sound harmonious to the ear, said another one.

Now, that’s the grace of God. And I have been talking about it these Sunday mornings. And have said that if the grace of God has reached you, it has taught you also by inward impulse. And the first thing that it teaches is denial. That is, it teaches us to disavow, renounce, and repudiate. And there are two things mentioned here that are to be renounced: ungodliness and worldly lusts. Ungodliness means of course, impiety, irreverence, and whatever is not of God; whatever God is not in. Whatever God’s not in is ungodly by definition, “un” being a negative of God, godly.

Now, the dictates of grace teach us that whatever is ungodly is forthwith to be renounced. Impiety, irreverence, forthwith are to be renounced. And it is to be renounced even if accepted, say, at school. We spend an awful lot of our time in the hands of pagans, an awful lot of time. We start in the preschool classes with finger painting. And we end up with a PhD taken in some university where the name of God is about as welcome as the name of Hitler would have been in the Jewish synagogue. And the schools place their approval tacitly or overtly from lots of things that are still not of God. God isn’t in them. They’re ungodly.

Either we are not to be Christians or else we are to renounce these ungodly things. Even if, for upwards of twenty years, we have been taught that they’re all right in the schools. We are to renounce them even if they are set to music on TV or radio. And many of the things are set to music on TV and radio that are irreverent, ungodly, God-less; that God isn’t in them. The fact that they are set to music or illustrated doesn’t make them good. The Christian has got to have backbone enough.

You know, there’s one kind of person that will never get to heaven; and that is the one without a backbone. The fellow that has no backbone we’ll never make it through. Because it takes a certain amount of backbone to deny when everybody else is affirming and to affirm when everybody else is denying. Anybody that thinks a Christian is a weakling, he’s never been a Christian. He’s never been much around Christians. Any dead fish or dying fish can turn over on his back and float belly up with the stream, but a salmon goes up the Columbia River over falls as high as this building.

And the Christian, the grace of God, and the Word of God unite to teach us that we are to deny ungodliness and renounce it for good even if it is practiced by celebrities. The saints and prophets of the day are the celebrities. And some celebrities practice things that are ungodly. And the fact that they are practiced by widely known people doesn’t in any wise mitigate the ungodliness. They’re still ungodly, denying ungodliness. And all ungodliness is the be denied by the Christian even if it is found in classic literature.

The fact that Bokorshow or somebody else wrote it, doesn’t make it good, doesn’t make it godly. It’s still dirty if it’s dirty and it’s still ungodly if it’s ungodly. And it isn’t better because it’s found embalmed in classic art. Go to the Art Institute and you will find some things there God isn’t in, and every Christian is to have backbone enough to be sneered at for repudiating such things.

And even if they’re approved by our friends, good kind friends who love us. And even if they’re practiced by church people, they’re still wrong; and even if they’re defended by priests or pastors. And outside of murder and adultery, I don’t suppose there is any sin anywhere that some priest or pastor won’t come out in favor of. Shakespeare said the devil could always quote a text for a purpose. He must have gone to church sometimes anyhow or been among religious people.

Now, if this sounds severe, what I am saying to you my friends, remember what Jesus said: if Thy hand offend thee, cut it off. If thine eye offend thee or cause thee to stumble, pluck it out. For it’s better to go to heaven with only one eye and one hand than to go to hell having two of each.

And if he just turned back a page here, to 2 Timothy, Paul says, I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at is appearing and His Kingdom. Preach the Word. Be instant in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. But after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears. And they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables. Watch thou in all things. Endure afflictions. Do the work of evangelist and make full proof of thy ministry.

And then the second is worldly lust. Of course, the old word lust in English. And I looked it up in Greek and it means about the same thing, that is, the original word, which was translated lust, means desires. It means pleasure longing, pleasure longing, longings for pleasure. And these are indentified elsewhere in the New Testament by modifiers. I have gone over the New Testament to find them. And there’s a modifier called foolish lust. Another one is called hurtful lust, fleshly lust, ungodly lust, former lust in your ignorance, youthful lust and lusts that war in your members.

Now these are here and they’re natural to fallen man; perfectly natural to fallen man that he should have foolish, hurtful lust, fleshly ungodly lust. And of course, because they’re natural, they’re defended; defended and excused by the psychologist and the sociologists and the modern writers and the marriage counselors and consultants. But the Christian doesn’t ask advice about them, He renounces them. Because he’s taught both inwardly and on the pages of the Book. He’s taught on the pages of the Book to renounce worldly lust. And he’s taught by the Spirit in his heart to renounce worldly lust. And so, when he picks up a book excusing worldly lust, he turns, shuts it up and turns it away from him, because he’s taught inwardly and by the book of God.

Now, God doesn’t leave us there. He says, we’re to deny, and I’ve born down heavily upon that. But He doesn’t leave us there. God never calls us to dwell in a vacuum, and He never calls us to sterile negativity; negativeness, nothingness, not doing things, not being ungodly, not being lustful, not being unbelieving. He calls us away from those things to something else. He doesn’t leave us in a vacuum. He calls us out that He might bring us in.

And so, the indwelling Spirit and the Word agree that we should live. There’s your positive word. Deny, there’s your negative word. Live, there’s your positive word. And just as this electric light has a negative and a positive pole, and if it doesn’t have both we have no light Just as this recorder must have juice, it has both negative and positive. If you don’t have the two you don’t have a recorder. So, the Word of God teaches us that there should be held in suspension the two. We must say no and yes. No to the ungodly, yes to the godly.

Perhaps somebody could get me a glass of water. I got a little laryngitis last Tuesday night. I haven’t been able to get free from. I am not sick. And I’m not discouraged. I’m just hindered. Now how shall we live? I remember hearing Churchill one time during the war make a speech and he coughed all the way through it. I remember that and that gives me a little consolation to know that the great Winnie. Thank you, my friend. I don’t know if that cures what I have but it may help. I never liked to drink water while I preach because it makes me self-conscious. I always remember a story about the windmill that ran on water.

Now, how should we live? How should we live? Well, thank God, live, live, live. Get that word, live, live. There’s a good positive word, live. We should live. We couldn’t live before because we were dead. Now we can live. Well, to live soberly, righteously and godly, and in this present world.

And here we have, and I’ll be brief with it, the Christians three-dimensional life. These are sobriety, righteousness and godliness. There are your three dimensions for the Christian, sobriety, which means temperance and self-control. This is the self-dimension and has to do with our relation to ourselves. A man who can’t control himself, you’re not going to make much of a Christian. Sobriety, self-control, temperance, self-mastery. This is the self-dimension. This is Christianity as relates to me.

And there’s righteousness, which means justice, honesty, loving kindness. That’s the “others” dimension, or it’s Christianity as it relates to others through us.

And then there’s godliness. And this is the god dimension, our relation to God: faith, reverence and love. And on those three dimensions, man lives. Christians live if they deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. But if they do not deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, then they’re all confused and mixed up. If they do not deny ungodliness they can join a church, but they can’t have godliness. And if they do not deny a worldly lust, they may join the church but not have sobriety or temperance or self-control. And if they do not have godliness, and sobriety, how are they going to have righteousness?

So, we find ourselves dwelling there, this triangle, or these three dimensions. Sobriety, that’s self-control. We’re not much of a people for self-control now. They believed in it once, sober, serious people. And now an unsober, uncontrolled, lawless generation is writing books about those serious-minded, self-controlled, disciplined men who lived their Christianity like a soldier.

They’re writing now, I remember Papa, one foot in heaven, chicken every Sunday. How I got on with Grandpa. The young smart alecks of the day who are living in Sodom in lusts and sinful self-indulgence, now write serial comic books about the old Puritans and the men of God who said, let’s do right if the heavens fall. And they show some of their extreme and radical beliefs. They had radical beliefs, I suppose. Lot was a radical in Sodom. And Noah was a radical before the flood. Daniel was a radical in Babylon. Luther was a radical in Germany. John Wesley was a radical in a rotten society in England. Maybe they were radical, but they were sober men who were full of the Spirit and who controlled themselves.

Incidentally, that Book of Proverbs, I don’t want to steal any of the thunder of the brother who will be giving a series on the book of Proverbs to the young people. But that book of Proverbs deals with that kind of life. It’s a grave. Life to the book of Proverbs is a serious thing. There’s no yakking and no empty laughing. In fact, it calls laughter, the laughter of fools it says is like the crackling of thorns under a pot. Did you ever try to take dry thorns and light them and put them under a pot to try to cook an egg? Notice how that crackle and pop in all directions and then die down. The old man of God said that’s the way of the laughter of fools.

Well, sobriety that’s self-controlled, you know, the Holy Ghost is in you, and you’re living right. That’s your self-dimension. Then there’s righteousness, your attitude toward others. The Spirit teaches us both in the Word and in the heart that we’re to live righteously toward others. You don’t cheat others. You don’t rob others, don’t lie about others. You don’t gossip about others and do them harm.

And then there’s godliness; faith, I say, and reverence and love. That comes first. Our attitude toward God is first, but it’s put third here because it starts with self and goes up. I am last. My neighbor is next, and God is first. God is first, my neighbor is next, and I am last. That’s the way it’s supposed to be in the Christian life.

Somebody said, what a cold and colorless life we would live to be sober and righteous and godly. That’s just where you’re mistaken my friend. That man who fell out with his wife here yesterday or day before yesterday. He went to get her. She wouldn’t come back. He drew a gun. She started to run. He started to fire, and he hit her a few times, I guess. He didn’t kill her and then turned around and blew whatever that was he had in his head out. It wasn’t brains because his brains were cooked, steaming with fury.

They want me to believe that that is superior to the self-controlled, righteous, God-fearing man who lives his holy life, so he dares to die. They want me to believe that a bunch of shapely mares out in Hollywood nay over the fence; that shapely stallions out in Hollywood; they want me to believe that they are superior to those serious-minded fathers of whom we now make fun and about whom comic books are written; who walked with God and were not, for God took them.

If you want to get your faith up and get your heart helped, go to Plymouth where our fathers landed and read the tombstones. Go on up on the hill and read the tombstones. That’s all I want you to do. That’s enough for a day. That’s Bible enough for a day. You’ll get more text there than you would get in University of Chicago. Right there on the hill, men of God lived there. They had their good old bishops with the Bible along with them and said the King James was modernistic. But they carried their Geneva Bible along with them and they read it, righteous men, sober men, godly men. Don’t forget, my brethren, that the states were founded mostly by sober men, godly men.

The nation was whittled out, this is close to the Fourth of July. I can wax patriotic and say this nation was whittled out by men who held God in reverence and held their neighbor in loving affection and held themselves in control. The other kind went along for the ride. But the nation was founded by the other kind, this kind: sober, the righteous, the godly. And our hospitals were founded mostly by that kind of people. The very word, hospital, comes up out of a religious context.

When they marched from Europe at the preaching of Peter the Hermit and marched for Jerusalem. They went in there and they built hospitals and called some hospitallers. And almost every alleviation of human suffering and woe that’s known in modern society has sprung up out of the Christian ethic, the sober, the righteous, the godly people. And when the human heart goes free, and the human brain runs away, and we have atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, death rays, bacteriological warfare, destruction of cities.

No, my friend, the Holy Ghost isn’t calling you to negativity. The Holy Ghost isn’t calling you to sit around solemnly like an owl in the daytime, staring unseeingly ahead of your waiting for the end. The Lord is calling you to live. Do you hear that word—live. But live soberly and live righteously.

And the word righteous; always remember, is not a negative word. It’s an explosive, dynamic, positive word. The man who determines to live righteously in this unrighteous world is going to have a full-time job on his hands. You say you have nothing to do? You live righteously in an unrighteous world, and you will have something to do.

So, I call you have to renounce. Renounce what? Renounce your prison and take all of God’s great out of doors. But until you have renounced your prison, you’ll never go free. Renounce your chains and take all the infinite, limitless, liberty of God. And renounce your darkness and take all the shining light of God that shineth more and more unto a perfect day. Sweet the sound of grace divine, sweet the grace that makes me Thine. That’s what the grace of God teaches.

He just wants us to be good people, loving people, generous, kindly people, God-fearing people, self-controlled people with temperance and sobriety as a part of our nature. But at the same time, I have all the freedom of God’s vast out of doors and all the liberty of the sons of God; all the shining light, the Light of the world pours on us. Amen.

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“Prayer for the Glory of God II

Prayer for the Glory of God II

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 17, 1957 Evening Service

I have again tonight three texts. This one: the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. And this one: ye have not because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Then this one: He spake a parable unto them teaching this, that men ought always to pray and not to faint.

Those are the three texts, and they say that prayer has a tremendous potency: it availeth much. They say that sometimes, we don’t have because we have failed to ask–that’s prayerlessness. Or, again, we have not failed to ask. We have asked, but we have asked amiss, secretly and maybe even unconsciously, we want to consume it upon our own selves. But that nevertheless, we ought always to pray, and not let any difficulties get in the way. Now, that’s what our Lord says in these three texts.

And I said this morning that our prayers and our desires and our work and our expectation should go along with each other and should go hand in hand. And I said that they should aim toward two things. And after I have said this, then I’ll go over under new ground. That those two things should be the return of the glory of God again: the elevating of the concept of God in His church. And the restoration of that church from her Babylonian captivity, back to New Testament pattern again. But you know, we can have those two requests and those two aims, but still ask amiss because we haven’t, we were not asking it for His glory so much as for our own. I’ll explain as I go along.

Now, there is a serpent in the garden still. He wasn’t killed. After Adam and Eve fell, nobody came with a hoe and slew him. The serpent is still in the garden, and it twines itself around the loveliest trees thereof and destroys the fruit. And self is the serpent that destroys our prayers so that we may pray and pray and pray and continue to pray. We may even fast and pray, rise in the night and pray, and still, they are not pure prayers, for we’re using religion to get something else. Whenever religion becomes a means to something else and not an end in itself, it is not pure. Whenever the worship of God becomes a means toward something else, it is no longer the worship of God. Whenever prayer and our relationship to God is held and had for an ulterior reason, it is no longer pure.

Now I say that there is much prayer going on today and people are forming prayer bands and groups everywhere and trying to get people to pray. But my friends, I am afraid that if it cannot be said, ye have not because ye asked not, it can be said, ye have not because ye ask amiss that you might consume it upon your own desire.

Now I want to point out to you how self entwines itself in our desires; crawls its sinuous way through the garden of prayer and spoils even our prayers for us. For instance, we want the glory of God revealed again to this generation. And cheerfully we say, yes, God. We want men once more to know how great Thou art. And we want Thy sovereign perfections to be displayed throughout all the world; true, the sun and the moon and the stars. And when the evening shades prevail, the moon takes up the wondrous tale, forever singing and forever shining and forever crying along with the stars and the planets the hand that made it is divine. But how many people look at the stars. More people have looked up to the heavens to see the Sputnik in the last month than they ever had looked at stars in the last 1000 years, the average man and woman. We take God’s stars for granted.

So the stars are singing to the heart of the Christian, but they’re saying nothing much to the fellow who’s either unsaved or is a carnal Christian. We want the glory of God revealed to His church again. But here’s the catch, we want to be the one He uses to reveal it. And there is where the serpent crawls and entwines itself through the rose bushes and fruit trees of the garden. We want the glory of God revealed, but we want to be the one to reveal it. We want the veil taken away from the face of God, but we want to be the one that can dramatically go up and pull the veil aside.

Now, I don’t say that all of us do at all. I don’t say that all of you do. But I have pointed out here what’s wrong with our prayers and why God hasn’t been able to answer them up to now. Some of us who see it may secretly want to be the one that pulls the veil away and shows the glory of God. Well, whose glory are we wanting to be revealed then? We’re wanting God to reveal His glory and ours. And God says, no man shall ever share my glory. God will not give His glory to any other. And therefore, we ask and receive not because we want to consume it upon our lusts. And we want the church to return to the New Testament standard as I said this morning.

You remember, I said that there were two things that the glory of God should be revealed, and the church should be restored. It’s my conviction now. I won’t have mobs hearing me say this, but there are key and strategic people all over the world that are hearing me say it, and surely, surely God will be finally bringing us together. But remember this, that that church is in Babylonish captivity, and even the evangelical church is. And the result, we pray, O God, deliver Thy church, but we want to be the one to deliver it.

Now, that’s how self destroys our prayers. Our motives are carnal, and God has no respect to them because they are carnal. And we can call a prayer meeting for all night or all day and pray an hour at a time all day and still only want to do get a bit of glory in order that we may share it or that God may share it with us. We want the church to be brought back but we want to be the one to lead it back.

But dear friends, we’re going to have to learn this and I’m going to have to learn it. And I speak of the two-edged sword tonight, and the one edge slashes, you remember, the other edge slashes me. And I want to have an understanding.

I thought the other day that I would write God a letter. You know, I can pray and talk to the Lord, but sometimes our in prayers, we’re talking to ourselves. But if you put it down in print and say now, God take this, this is what I mean. However, I might chatter, this is what I mean. Take this God, is what I mean to say. And I’d like to write God a letter and tell him this. Now God, I want Thee to understand something here, that I want Thy glory to be revealed. And I don’t insist that I be the one to reveal it. That if Thou wilt send who now was sent; if Thou wilt raise up whom Thou wilt raise up. If Thou wilt send a chariot and take one away and raise up another to reveal Thy glory. If Thou wilt push one man aside as He pushed aside Evan Robertson and He pushed aside certain others and we’ll not name because they’re still living and not using them much. Not because they backslide, but because God had done His work with them.

All right, I want God to know that, that I want the glory of God to be revealed again to the world, but I don’t insist upon being the one to reveal it. I want the church to be brought back from her Babylonian captivity, but I don’t insist upon being the one to bring her back.

Well then, we want the walls of Jericho, or the walls are Jerusalem. The walls of Jericho fell, but the walls of Jerusalem rotted away and tumbled down and the foxes ran on those walls. And we’d like to see the walls of Jerusalem again brought back. I’d like to see a church so purified all over, not this church only. That would be a small thing.

But I’d like to see the church of Christ so purified, so visited again with the gifts of the Spirit, so filled with the Spirit, so lofty in her spiritual standards, so pure and so spiritually cultured, that she would recognize a racketeer when she saw him. And she wouldn’t listen to the “come on,” what did somebody say to somebody. There wouldn’t be any of that stuff possible. There wouldn’t be any of this stuff possible. The saying of putting in the newspaper, this man is a wonderful man of God and preaches in power and come and hear so and so. There wouldn’t be any of that possible, for the church would instantly boycott the whole thing. The church of Christ was as pure and as open-eyed and is full of vision, they should boycott all that instantly. And as the Methodists used to do; the man who wasn’t spiritual couldn’t get a hearing.

But you know, I’ve got to be willing that God should build the walls of Jerusalem and not use me for a Nehemiah. I’ve got to be perfectly willing that God should take somebody else and let him be the one to build the walls. We study the book of Nehemiah and say, wouldn’t it be wonderful to build the walls of Jerusalem again? Yes, but suppose that God said, Nehemiah, I’m going to build the walls of Jerusalem in answer to your prayer, but I’m not going to use you. You stay back of the things and pray. I don’t know what Nehemiah would have said, but I suspect that Nehemiah would have said, be it unto Thy servant even as Thou wilt. And if he hadn’t, his prayer would have gone for nothing. God will not answer the prayer of any man, not even to build the walls of Jerusalem, if he insists on building them.

And then I think that also that we want the prophets of Baal defeated. Jehovah’s Witnesses are just around the corner here now. They’ve got a Kingdom Hall which is a storefront church though they won’t call it that. And we’ve got them all up and down the country, this boom of religion which is incidentally, let me open my mouth and say something wise to you Brother. Just let me say something to you that’s wise. Here it is. Religion is running on financial inflation.

And the reason we’re booming is we have the money to boom. And when financially we bust religion, we’ll bust along with it. You bet you boy, if it doesn’t bring in shekels, and the legal tender doesn’t come in so easy when you’re working for $26 a week, or 16 as they were in the Depression. It killed a whole of depression in 1929, killed as by a pistol shot. I could name evangelists that it killed dead, and they couldn’t turn a wheel because the legal tender wasn’t forthcoming and the do-ray-me in the E Pluribus Unum wasn’t available. And the result was that they died overnight. And it’ll be the same, you watch it.

We’re booming. We’re not only booming In Christianity, were booming in all the cults and booming in all the religions that deny the truth our fathers died to promote. And it’s possible because there’s money, lots of money, lots of money. You can wipe your shoes off with $10 bills now all over our country. I mean it we’ve got more money than is good for us and religion is booming, and the devil is using the fact that there’s an inflation on.

Well, I don’t know how I got over on that, but I thought I wanted to say that to you. It wasn’t a part of my outline. I say we want the prophets of Baal defeated, these prophets of Baal. And God knows how many there are. Every once in a while, in our religious news service, in the Alliance Weekly we take the RNS, the Religious News Service, and they keep feeding news constantly in from all parts of the world to us. And we got it into our office here. And it’s strained out and a bit of it put in the Alliance Weekly. But remember that the cults are claiming millions now.

And this cult, they’ll suddenly announce, we’re now, we have 1 million memberships. Another cult will announce, we have $27 million this last year to promote our work. And the cults, the prophets of Baal are still moving up and down under the sponsorship of that evil woman Jezebel. And we’d like to see the prophets of Baal set back on their haunches and the altar of Jehovah blaze again with the glory of God that would make these theological rodents run back into the ash cans and hide.

But you know, the trouble is when we pray, we’ve got to sneak and hope the Lord will use us to chase them out. We want to be the one to get the stick and start driving out the theological rodents. We want everybody to say, ah hah, that man. Isn’t he wonderful? He’s God’s Elijah. We would like to be Elijah. And there’s just the sad thing my brother. If you insist on being Elijah, you will never call down fire from heaven. Elijah did that because God told him to. But if Elijah had wanted to do it and had insisted upon doing it so that he might look around and bring up his publicity rating, he’d never have done it. They would have pull him apart and tore him limb for limb and thrown him off the top of Mount Carmel. They wouldn’t have found a piece to bury. But Elijah was God’s servant, devoted to the glory of God alone, and he didn’t care about Elijah. And the result was, God did use the man.

And we want Israel brought back from Babylon all right. And this is my cry. I tell you; this is my cry. We want Israel brought back from Babylon. But we want to be Israel and say now, I’d like to be the one Israel. We want to be like Israel.

Well, my brother and sister, it just won’t do. The only kind of praying God will hear will be, O God, bring Israel back from Babylon by whom Thou wilt bring Israel back from Babylon. And we humble ourselves and take the lowly place and say, Father, use me if you will. I’m before Thee. I’m like a sword lying here on the table, Lord. Pick me up or let me lie there and rust. Use me or ignore me. But for Thy glory, Father, bring back Israel from Babylon. Build again the walls of Jerusalem. Bring Israel out of Egypt and let somebody else be Moses.

And we want a reformation without a doubt. We want a reformation. God knows how desperately bad we need a reformation. You know what they’re doing now in evangelical churches, and we’ve slid into it? And they wouldn’t listen. They won’t listen to you. We have become kitchen orientated. Do you know what I mean by that? I mean that instead of the cross of Jesus being at the center and all of us gathered around the cross of Jesus and it’s said of us, we’ve ministered unto the Lord and prayed and fasted. Instead of that, we minister unto the stomachs of the multitudes.

I have come almost to the place where I don’t know whether I’ll ever attend another banquet or not. We occasionally have one in this church, one or two years, because we don’t need them; we get along without them. And if we never had one, we wouldn’t lose one soul. And the having of them has never yet won one soul. And we’ve never had two more people that I’ve ever discovered ever attend our Sunday school or church as a result of any of our gatherings. So that we haven’t, because we don’t need them. But if we needed them, it would be a sin to have them. Whenever you have to gather around the smorgasbord in order to keep spiritual, you’re not spiritual any longer, your God is your belly and you glory is your shame.

Israel returns from Babylon, and I pray that she may. And God knows how far, far we are and how desperately we’re in need of a reformation to orientate the church around the person of Jesus instead of around the kitchen and around the table. We’re sliding into that more and more. We’re sliding into days and seasons and weeks and Mother’s days and Father’s days and Kiddies days, Poppy days and all the rest of the days. And we’re listening to the world. And Martin Luther almost lost his life, and many people did, to bring back again the pure Christianity to the world. And we’ve took that holy legacy stained with sacred blood, and now we’re letting it get away from us. And back we are going again to days and seasons and years; back to the celebration of this and that and the other and forgetting that a true church is a group of people separated from the world to Jesus Christ.

Well, there’s a dozen or whether there is 1200, it’s all the same. And we need a reformation, and we need it desperately bad. But when we pray for it, let’s watch out for that serpent. For the serpent will crawl in and hiss in our ears, wouldn’t it be wonderful if God would send that reformation and let you be Luther? Ah, Brother Martin Luther is gone, and I don’t know. I still think that the great reformations and the great openings up of areas weren’t done by the men who we thought did it. I still believe that Martin Luther wasn’t the important figure that the world thought he was.

When we get to glory, we’re very likely to find some anonymous saint who prayed Martin Luther through. He was the warhead in the nose of the missile. And God Almighty used that tough German to do what the weak pastor couldn’t do. The weak pastor, he couldn’t have done it. He wouldn’t have had the fortitude. He had no nose on him, but Luther had. So, God used the man with a hard nose and brought about the Reformation. But I still believe that if there hadn’t been some people, unknown and unheralded and unknown to this hour praying him through, there wouldn’t have been any Reformation.

So, I believe with Dr. Jaffrey. Dr. Jaffrey opened sections of South China. He opened Indochina and he opened Borneo and what they used to call the Netherland East Indies. But Dr. Jaffrey was a busy man and a man hurrying about. Somebody was back of him, or some persons, for there might have been easily more than one. And I believe that that tough customer, that Canadian who didn’t know how to retire and couldn’t retire. And when they offered to retire him, he said, sure, I’ll retire. Retire means to put on a new set of tires. So, he said, I’ll do it. And he went right on and opened another country for Christ and then died in a prison camp.

But who was backing him? We have his name, and I wrote his life and it’s all very well. But who was backing him? Somewhere, there was somebody that didn’t insist on being Elijah. Somewhere there were humble men and women praying who were willing that somebody else could take the spotlight. They worked back of the stage and operated the machinery. And when the solo was sung and the multitudes cried bravo, they weren’t even known to be back there, hiding away, sitting on the barrelhead, somewhere waiting for it to get over with, doing their part backstage.

But as old Meister Eckhart said in a burst of grief and anger; he said, who is there that’s found that will even open the house door of the house of God for nothing? Well, there were some and he overstated it, but there weren’t many. And we want the army of the Lord to win, and I do. I belong to the army of Lord.

Brethren, I’ll tell you something. But if the army of the Lord doesn’t win, I’m going to be one, the first one the enemy hunts up to liquidate. I’ll tell you that now. God had better win if I’m going to escape liquidation because I’ve made myself an unholy pest to the devil. And I intend to continue to do it till I die. And if there’s any place in heaven, where God hears prayers. I don’t know whether we can pray up there or not as we can down here, but if it’s permitted, I still want to pray against what our dear old brother William Nicholson called that dirty pig, the devil. I still want to pray against him.

Well, we want the army of the Lord to win, but you know when we dream about the host of Israel rushing out and holding their banners high and driving out the Philistines and coming back conquering, we’d like to think we’re riding up ahead in an open car like Mac Arthur and the mobs lined the streets to see us.

Well, battles aren’t won by Mac Arthurs. They’re won by dog faces and navy boys and marines and kids that only have to shave two or three times a week. They’re won by kids that lie out there; now some of them buried row on row like the seats here in this church that ought to be filled. Row on row. There lies Junior. There lies Bobby. There lies young Chuck. There lies John. Their lies Ed. There lies the boys that used to drive the old junk cars around and work on all Saturday afternoon, come in dirty and grimy to suffer. They won the wars. And when the next war comes, if it comes, they’ll win it. They’re not heard of. And when they come back crippled and disabled, hard to find a job, they’re forgotten. And a half dozen generals get the credit.

And a general, not a one of them ever smelled powder. They’ve got to be there. I believe in them. And if it hadn’t been for them to head it up, there would have been no winning. I admit that. But not one of them ever smelled powder. The boys had walked out there and took it. They get enough. Get a Purple Heart if they cut themselves shaving somebody said, they give you a Purple Heart. They can tear you to pieces, and if you don’t bleed, you don’t get it. Kids come back home; they’ve lost three, four years out of their lives. They’ve been disillusioned and embittered. And their faith in God shocked by what they’ve seen. And they go back to a job someplace, America’s unheralded heroes. And the generals ride in the big car.

We all want to be the generals. But the battles of God are not won by the generals. They are won by the privates and corporals. They’re won by those who don’t expect anything but hard work and mud holes and bullet pierced planes, a wing and a prayer if they ever do get back.

So, in the kingdom of God, my brother, we want the army of the Lord to win, but we want to ride up front. And we want our church to triumph over its enemies here. I’m searching my heart these days about our church. We want our church to triumph over its enemies. But the temptation is to pray and work toward that end but do it with a selfish motive. Do it to prove that we’re right. Do it to show that we’re a better-class Christian than those others. Just as soon as that enters, prayer dies. You can pray all night and fast and miss two meals a week, your prayer is dead. It never rises above the ceiling.

Prayer, said old Molina, let me give it to you again. Prayer is an ascent or elevation of the mind to God. That that prayer never ascends or elevates itself to the presence of God if there’s a desire that isn’t pure, selfish motives. We want our church to grow, but then we want it to grow because we’ve got a vested interest in it. Do we pray just as much?

Some years ago, I was in a campaign with some other preachers and God was blessing us quite tremendously. And God made me pray for the others as much as for myself. And He made me have an understanding with Him, that if the Lord wanted to bless these other preachers in that campaign more than me and just let me come along and be ignored, I would agree to it. I wanted God to know that. And I think God knows I mean it.

Now, I know all about our hearts being desperately wicked and all the rest, but I also know that there are times when you know where you stand, Brother. There are sometimes when you could write God a letter and sign it and say, now God, however I feel, however my emotions may float around like clouds, remember, this is what I want. And I want Thee to bless this campaign. And if You can, bless me and bless the other brethren. And whenever you want any other part of the church that you’re not particularly in, whenever you want that blessed as much as the part you’re pushing, then your prayers are likely to be pure. But if you’ve got anything that centers around you and your prayers are for the success of that, it’s not likely to be pure.

Now, we must elevate our hearts and pray. And here’s the kind of praying we’ve got to do. We’ve got to pray, O God, honor Thyself in this fellowship during this week ahead and all the days ahead and months and years. But particularly God, honor Thyself in this fellowship. Honor Thyself through me, or ignore me, and honor Thyself through others. Honor Thyself apart from me if it please Thee, O God, but honor Thyself. Restore Thy glory to the church but do it in Thine own way. And if that means passing me by, Lord, all right.

I wonder tonight how many young men there are in Bible schools and Christian seminaries burning the midnight oil, working to pay expenses, losing weight, and getting jumpy in their nervous eagerness to get through. And secretly in back of it all is a hope that someday they can be as popular as Billy Graham; that someday they can be leaders of great Christian movements. No, it won’t work, Junior. It won’t work. God will never elevate you until you humble yourself.

But we’ve got to pray, O God, do it, but do it through me or apart from me. Ignore me or use me. It makes little difference, God, but just so you do it. O God, reform this church. Reform this church but use Thine own way of doing it. For there might be another that God delights to honor. You remember Haman who wanted the honor, and you remember how they twisted it around and finally the Jew got the honor and Haman got the noose. And there may be another that God delights to honor, and He may ignore you and overlook you. If you had to take a lowly place among the shadows and your name, not be bandied about at all or heard, would you pray just as earnestly for these two things I’ve set before you, that God’s name might be glorified once more among men and that the church of Christ might be restored again from her Babylonian captivity?

Well, if you can pray like that, O God, at any cost, let it cost me. Let it cost me, Father. Not give me something, but let it take something out of me, Lord. Then your prayer is pure. But you can pray all night and not be heard if there’s any sneaking idea that you’re going to share in the glory?

Now, can you pray, O God, we want Thy glory to be revealed by whomsoever Thou revealest? We want the church to be restored to New Testament pattern by whomsoever Thou wilt restore it. We want the walls of Jerusalem rebuilt by whomsoever Thou wilt rebuild it. We want the prophets of Baal, the cultists to be defeated, and we want them defeated by whomsoever Thou wilt defeat them. We do not insist upon being Elijah. We want Israel brought back from Babylon, but we’ll go along as a red cap to carry his suitcase. We want a Reformation, O God, but we will not insist upon being Luther, Lord. But let it cost us something and let us be not heard of.

We want an army of the Lord to win, but we’ll stay on the ground and, and re-service the planes and let the generals have the credit. And Lord we’ll live our humble lives, but you’ll hear from us God. And our prayer is going to be that you’ll do these things. But we don’t insist upon having any glory out of it nor any credit and nor getting known. You know, the awful thing about it is, my friends, that when you take this place before God, you do get known. And just as soon as you take this place before God, the chances are very strong, the percentage is very high, that you will be. And if nothing else, you’ll become known as a prayer warrior. And when you get to be known as a prayer warrior, then you pray in order to stay in character with your saga, with the story they tell about you.

And you get a myth grows up around you, being a great praying soul, and that’s dangerous too. And yet, the Bible says men ought always to pray. And it says that the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. And then it gives us illustrations by the dozen from the Bible of prayer that brought down hailstones that closed the heavens, that made it rain, that made the sun and moon stand still. God answered the prayers of the people and you and I have got to pray. And the difficulties in prayer that I’ve placed before you tonight are not difficulties. They should challenge you. They should not stop you but challenge you. You should purify your praying.

And we should purify our praying as a company of people. And I want to lead a good company of people starting Tuesday night, every night at seven o’clock in prayer. But I want a people who are unselfish, who want two things above all, that we should have again the name of God brought up before the world and before the church so that men might tremble at His presence and that the church might be restored again from her captivity. And as this church as a part of that church we might triumph in holiness. We want this, but we don’t want anybody to get any credit except our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, can you pray like that? And do you want God to do anything bad enough to insist that He do it at whatever costs, even if it costs you something? Jesus wanted the world redeemed. He wanted the world redeemed. The Father said, I’ll answer your prayer and redeem the world. But you know what it’ll cost you? And He replied, I lay down My life of Myself. He was willing. He redeemed the world and answered His own prayer by giving His life for others. Do you want to be a useful Christian? Are you willing to let your usefulness cost you anything that He chooses in order that His glory should be revealed.

My dear friends, I think I might have a reputation of being a bit critical, and that’s an understatement. But I’ll tell you this much. When I see the glory of God moving, I want in it. I want to be there. I want to go along with that. And even though I’m just an office boy and go along and help and file cards, anything that would bring the church of God back again to the Holy Land and build up the walls of Jerusalem. And my criticism is not of those who are seeking to glorify God and restore his church. But I recognize merchants when I see them in the temple. I want to pick them up by the scruff of the neck and throw them out. I have good precedence for that. Great God, hear us and enable us to pray.

I wonder how many tonight there are here who would say, I agree with you, Brother Tozer. I believe these two things that are so desperately needed, that the name of God might be exalted and that hallowed, His name should be hallowed above all else, and that a new concept of God might be brought back to the church again, the concept our Baptist and Presbyterian and Methodist fathers had. The concept of God, the opinions, the notion concerning God, the idea of God in the hearts of the reformers.

We want this back again to a church whose God is too small. And we want the church restored again to New Testament pattern. And we want it so bad that we will pray and work and labor, even if it means loss to us. And even if it means that we are overlooked and neglected, and God gets all the glory and all we get is the blame. Are you ready for that? Are you ready? Is there anybody here that can write God a letter tonight and sign it and fold it and put it where you can get to it and say, now, God, here’s what I want to say to Thee. I want to say that I want Thy church restored and I want Thy name hallowed and I want this fellowship blessed for Thy glory only. And I don’t ask a thing but the privilege of seeing it happen.

Could you do that? Come down here to the place of prayer–right now. Is that real with you, Brother? Sister? When you get down here start to pray. Don’t let’s wait on each other. Let’s call on God tonight. Kneel in the seats. Kneel along the platform here as an altar. Lead right out. Somebody lead us right out.

I want you to pray that God will bless our fellowship and give us success here in a mighty tough situation, for this changing population and people moving away over the last two years. We’ve suffered, but we’re a long way from this. The God of our fathers is with us. But we don’t want anybody to get any credit out of this. Don’t anybody say, Tozer won. Tozer never won anything but sin. Will you pray? Somebody, lead us out. Who else wants to come. Anybody else want to come and join us? Come on. Come and join us. I think there ought to be others here. You want to get down on your knees. Have you ever had anybody go after you and penetrate through to you the Holy Ghost maybe has done. Come on down and join us we pray. Amen. Amen. Now somebody lead us out. I see you here, you lead, and we’ll join you then, one after the other.

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“Prayer for the Glory of God I

Prayer for the Glory of God I

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 17, 1957

Without any doubt, I have spoken on the text I will be using this morning. Not once, but I suppose 100 times, more or less. But on Tuesday, or perhaps it was Wednesday, I was with the Lord in prayer and it came so very clearly to me, not from heaven direct. I don’t claim inspiration in that sense, but through the Word, that I was to talk to you twice today. And I grabbed a pencil and took down some notes. It’s almost as though I were taking dictation. I don’t mean to make the Lord responsible for all my mistakes, but only say that at least the gist of what I’m going to say, certainly, came from the Scriptures and from God.

So, I want to read a very familiar verse, part of a verse from James 5, the latter part of verse 16. It really starts another verse, another paragraph: The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Now, there is a positive statement, positive. Then 4:2,3 of the same book: Ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss that ye may consume it on your lusts. There’s a negative statement. Fortunately, James hadn’t read any books about presenting the truth positively only. He presented the other side. Then our Lord in Luke 18:1: and He spake a parable unto them to this end, that men are always to pray and not to faint.

Now, there are the three texts. And we’re to talk about prayer. And I want to give you a definition of prayer which I got from Molina, the great Spanish saint, who said this: that prayer is an ascent, or elevation of the mind to God. Very simple, isn’t it? Prayer is an ascent of the mind to God. It is an elevation of the mind. Saying that it is an ascent, simply means that it ascends to God, but saying that it is an elevation of the mind indicates that there’s something you’ve got to do to elevate it. God is above all creatures. And the soul cannot see Him nor converse with Him unless she raise herself above all creatures. Now, that’s what Molina said, that prayer is the elevation of the soul, the flight of the soul of the mind to God.

Now, that’s a definition of prayer, but the texts we have before us say some specific things about prayer. The first one says that prayer is a potent thing; that it availeth much. And I would cite those words “availeth much” as constituting a terrific understatement. For the Old Testament and the New Testament combine to teach and demonstrate how much prayer availeth.  And the Holy Ghost Himself, labors in this same James, the fifth chapter to show us by example how much prayer available by citing Elijah’s ability to turn to heaven off and on; the clouds to make them rain or not rain as he please. Now, that’s the one statement: prayer availeth much. The second statement says that sometimes we do not have the advantage of prayer for one of two reasons: either we have failed to ask or we have asked selfishly. And therefore, we do not have the benefits that prayer could bring. That’s the negative side. Prayer availeth much, but you’re not getting much availed. Therefore, it could be because we have failed to ask or having asked, we’ve done so selfishly. That’s what James says.

Then our Lord says that, nevertheless, in spite of the difficulties and the problems that are before us, we ought always to pray. And in this 18th of Luke, as far as I know, the only parable that starts out by telling what it’s going to teach. This is one parable that none of the commentators ever quarrel over. Mostly, they quarrel in a good natured, nice way, but they disagree over what the parable teaches. But this one they can’t disagree over because we are told, He spake a parable unto them to this end. In other words, before He told us the parable, He told us what the parable would teach. He made His statement and illustrated it with a story, a short one, but a story. And He said, the reason I tell you this story is, that men ought always to pray and not to faint, and I want to make that point. So, there we have those three texts.

Now, my friends, there’s a lot of prayer going on these days, a lot of prayer being sent up currently. In fact, I don’t think it would be irreverent to say that God seems to be on everybody’s mailing lists. Because you know, mailing lists are made up of persons who have something that the mailee can get or that he wants from the mailer. The mailer is the man who sends it out and the mailee is the man who receives it. And so, if you’re on the list, you’re a mailee. And the mailer knows that you have some thing that he wants, and therefore he writes you. And we have now a God who is on everybody’s mailing list all over the country and all over the world, asking for things. But I think that mostly the motive is not any higher than the motive of the man who sent the mail that we referred to.

Some years ago, I read a very amusing and also a very enlightening article about rich men. Somebody had gone around, investigated and interviewed rich men of the Edsel Ford and Rockefeller stripe, and had gotten enough anecdotes and information that he wrote a very fine article about it in one of the national magazines. And you wouldn’t believe it if you didn’t know that it’s been documented and was true. What these rich men suffer are from the people who want to get something out of them. They’re being bombarded continually by people who want something of what they had.

One I remember, this sticks in my mind. It might have been the most ridiculous, but I do remember this one, that a man wrote into one of the two great, rich men Ford or Rockefeller, and said, Dear Mr. so and so, I have a little proposition that I want to make. You are a rich man, and you also are familiar with finance. And you know where money can be best invested to multiply itself. Therefore, my request is that you lend me $500, and then invest it for me. And then send me the proceeds. Now, can you imagine anything as foolish as that, and yet they say things like that happen. Not only lend me the money but invest it for me and then send me the proceeds. Well, that’s philanthropy was a double “F”.

And now there is danger, my friends, that God shall simply be the great rich man, the composite of all rich men. That He shall be the buyer, the consumer, with His big pocket book at which we aim all our advertising, and whom we try to win to our side in order that we can get something from Him. There’s a great danger, because you see, every sort of personal and selfish interest these days is being baptized with the waters of prayer. And though they may be unscriptural or unspiritual and even downright injurious, and they may have no higher motive than to relieve the receivee from the necessity of earning an honest living, or, to provide him an opportunity to travel at other people’s expense. There are a lot of people that are doing that. They don’t want to earn an honest living and they want to travel. They like to do the two things, and wouldn’t you like to travel? And wouldn’t you like to do it at other people’s expense and have no obligation and audit your own books and be responsible to yourself?

Well, a lot of people are praying and boasting of how they’re succeeding because they’re praying; asking everybody everywhere to pray, forgetting that after you’ve persuaded a man to pray with you for a sum of money, he is psychologically persuaded to give you that amount of money. Well, we even call prayer meetings and continue all night in prayer in order that a project might succeed, and that project, I say, may be nothing, but to save a fellow from going to work and getting the 8:17 and sitting at a desk and doing an honest job or driving a truck or running a grocery store. And the fellow wants to run around.

Well now, let’s not imagine that you can’t take personal things to God. In fact, there is nothing so personal that you can’t go to God about it. Brother McAfee and I have often quoted together and talk together about a little saying of Julian, the lady Julian, that Saint of Norwich, England who lived 600 years ago. He calls her my girlfriend. And when I go, he says are you taking your girlfriend along? Well, my girlfriend is a little book that you could put the average woman. Oh, well, that’s no illustration. You could put a dictionary in your pocket book. But it’s just a little book you could slip down here and not notice it. And she wrote on the revelations of divine love.

And she tells about how utterly amazed and filled with joy she was to think that her Lord, so high and lofty, yet not considered Himself too high to humble Himself to be concerned about the commonest, little things that belong to our earthly lives and to our bodies, she said. The Lord looks after everything, and the Lord is more concerned about your temperature than your nurse is. And He’s more concerned about your health than your doctor. He’s more concerned about your business than you are. He’s more concerned about your family than you are.

So, all the little details we dare take to God, let nobody preach that out of you. That’s in the Bible. We can talk to God about the little, simple things. But always remember that these things should be talked over with God. There are things you men don’t talk over even with the family. You talk them over with your wife. Well, there are things then that you can’t even talk over with your wife. There are things that you talk over only with God. God is the final One who understands and who will hear us for all the personal, intimate things. These things need not be and mostly should not be brought to prayer meetings.

I think we kill most prayer meetings. And most prayer meetings I’ve ever been in are dead. Some people don’t like the way I conduct a prayer meeting, but I’ve never been to one conducted any better. They just meet and then we go over the same things. These things are brought up and we take our friends into our confidence and tell us things that we only ought to tell God. When we pray in private, we ought to pray about private things. And when we pray corporate prayers, we ought to pray about things that pertain to the corporate body and to the glory of God. Often, it’s embarrassing and a waste of other people’s time.

For me, I have a cousin in Oil City, Pennsylvania. I don’t, but suppose I had, and his son is getting into bad company. And the teacher wrote and said, would you want to do something about Elmer. And so, I get that letter from my cousin in Oil City, PA. So, I take that to a prayer meeting.

Now, my brethren, that’s too intimate a thing to take to a prayer meeting, and that concerned me and my cousin and his boy Elmer. And that does not concern the corporate body. There’s a lot of waste of prayer, and I believe the Holy Ghost is displeased because of our so-called prayer requests which turn out to be personal, private, and sometimes I’m afraid, selfish things. So, the Holy Ghost says you don’t get your prayers answered often because either you don’t ask. You get discouraged and quit asking, or if you do ask, your motives aren’t right.

Now I want to talk about the corporate prayer in the time I have left. That is, the body praying, the people praying, we, praying together Wednesday night, the women praying on Wednesdays and Tuesday nights, and the men praying as it did here last night, and we praying as we do and will be praying.

Now what should be the aim of our prayers? Well, the aim of our prayers should be also the aim of our lives, so that our prayers and our lives parallel each other. That we don’t live one way and pray another, but that we should want something and then we should live for that thing. We must pray in harmony with our work. I say that a great many people are carrying on work, and numerically they’re successful, and financially they’re successful because they happen to have strong personalities at the head of it, and they know skillfully how to take advantage of the known habits of the public.

You see my friends; you know how Christian people are going to behave. I know about how you will behave. You may fool me on details, but you won’t over the long haul. We know the expectation created by the known conduct of God’s people. And we know that God’s people have a generous streak. Newspapers know how to play that up. They know that a beautiful woman not too well-dressed, always get the interest of the public. They know that a little animal, a little pet will always get the interest of the public and they know that a baby always will.

So these are the three things the newspapers play up continually. And we see it every day. We see it almost every time there’s a pretty baby’s picture appears for any reason, I hand it and say, look at this, to my wife. Well, I’m a sucker for pretty babies and I’m a sucker for pets. I confess that I don’t go for the other, as avidly as some might. But there are a number of readers that it must, because the newspapers know the habits of the public. And all they have to do is know their habits and play to them and they succeed.

Well, it’s possible for religious leaders to know the habits of the religious public and then play to their habits. And when they take bold steps of faith after praying all night, they’re always careful to move in the direction that they know the public has proved they’ll be there to support them.

Well, you and I don’t want anything to do with that at all. I began preaching on the street corner and I suppose I can go back to it. But we’ve got to pray in harmony with high purposes, and we’ve got to work in harmony with high purposes and give in harmony with high purposes.

Now what are these purposes? Don’t brace yourself for a dozen, for there are only two that I am going to bring to you now, just two. And out from them, they may grow others, but these are two. And I stand to say to you, my friends, that these two requests, or desires, should be primary. They should be critically prior. They should be first. They should take priority over all other prayer requests, including even the intimate and little prayer requests that I might want to make about myself and family.

One of them is the restoration of the vision of the Most High God to the world again. When our Brother Fuller comes, I don’t know whether he will preach on any such sermon as that. But that’s the one thing his cry has been as he’s talked with me and as I’ve heard him pray and exhort in his Bible conferences. It is, that once more, this world should see a vision of the God who would strike them down. A God who wouldn’t hesitate to drive them dumb as he drove Daniel dumb, or cause John to fall flat on his face as John fell. This kind of God is gone from the church. He’s gone not only from liberalism, but he’s gone from the evangelical churches almost entirely. The honor of God has been lost to men. And the God of today’s Christianity is a very rich weakling that can be manipulated by certain psychological laws.

Now that the glory should return is imperative, my brethren. The glory should return, and that the glory of God should return and be seen among men. You know, we read it in the Psalms and don’t know what we’re reading. Let thy glory be above all the earth. Manifest Thy glory among the nations, cried the Psalmsist. And all the way through the Old Testament it says, the glory of Jehovah should be known among the nations. And we come to the New Testament it is, do this said Jesus to His Father, that men may know, and that I have manifested Thy name unto the men Thou has gave to me, always given me. Always it was the wish and desire of Jesus Christ. He died for it in fact, that God’s glory might be manifested to the world.

And the coming of Jesus to the world in the first place was, that a world that had lost the vision of God should regain it again. And when the Holy Ghost came at Pentecost, it was that He should give to the heart, as well as to the intellect, a vision of the glory of God.

Now, this is the first of the desires, and I have no hesitation to say to you, that God’s glory should be rediscovered, and the world should see what kind of God God is, and that the church should once more worship a God whom they could respect, the God of the Bible, the God who is the only God. That is more important to God than the salvation of sinners.

Now, that may sound terrible, but the Baptists and Presbyterians in other days boldly preached that and didn’t care what people thought. But we have gotten into this soft humanism in our time that will weep over rebels and weep over rebels and imagine that that’s the divine order. My brethren, the divine order is that God should be glorified among the nations and His honor revealed to His people. And that’s more valuable and more to be desired in heaven among the holy angels and seraphim and among all the elders and creatures around the throne than that people should be saved.

But here’s the wonderful story. It is this, that the glory of God and the salvation of men have so been harmonized in the loving heart of God, that God’s glory can be revealed as men are converted, so that it’s not an either or, I must choose one or the other. But it is that both can happen, one at the same time as the other. God will both glorify Himself by saving men, but He also glorifies Himself otherwise. And so I say, if we have to take a choice between the salvation of men or the glory of God, every being in heaven would say, Thine be the glory. Before they would say, man should be saved.

Now, the first corporate prayer of this New Testament begins: Our Father. And by the word “our,” it makes it a corporate prayer. That is, a prayer of a body of people. And the first request of that corporate body is what. Hallowed be Thy name. Have you noticed this, my friend, that when Jesus said, when you pray, you, as a body, pray and say “our,” the Lord’s prayer as we call it, is not for individuals, it’s for corporate praying. It’s for all of us to pray. It’s when the body of Christians unite to want something, to do something, to desire something, then we pray, our Father. And the first request, the first, our Father, is a salutation. It’s not a request. Then comes the request, hallowed be Thy name.

And before any other request, is that God’s name should be hallowed. That His holy, sacred name should be hallowed before mankind. And if we are to follow the teachings of Jesus, then we are to follow this procedure. Hallowed be Thy name, this is first, and not second and not third, but first. That the glory of God should be restored and that the vision of the Most High God should once more appear to men. And I want to tell you that if this vision should ever appear to men in churches and should be preached again; if the ministers of the sanctuary should go back to preaching on the perfections and attributes and character and being of God and keep at it and keep at it, it would soon have an effect of bringing sinners to their knees in confession. It would have an effect of making Christians separate from the world and hate themselves and their carnal ways. Even as Isaiah, when he saw the vision cried, I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips.

So, the glory of God is first and John 14:13 says, Jesus speaking, whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. So, notice here, will you, that the reason Jesus said I do it, is that He should glorify the Father in the doing of it. And anything that is done that is simply to help people but doesn’t glorify God, God will not answer. The humanist will. The tender, weeper will, but God won’t. For God says that the Father may be glorified is the reason I answer prayer. If he shall ask it that the Father may be glorified.

So, you see that no project, no organization, no need, no anything, is valid till the glory of God is restored. And in all that we do in all of our prayers, we ought to pray. Don’t take preachers for granted, dear people. They are the weakest of all the people. Don’t take preachers for granted. They’ll go along with anything.

I was a great, big boy when I learned that doctors went along with the advertisers. You go to Doctor Pill, and you say, Doctor, I’ve got a pain. And he remembers what he read in the medical journal, the advertiser. I looked at their advertising, their ads, and he prescribed something that he seen advertised. I was a big boy before I found that out. And I don’t say that universally. I don’t say that’s all they do. Certainly, they earn an honest living. But I do say that they yield to it.

And preachers are like that. If we were all holy prophets who walked down out of the presence of God with the dew of holiness on our brows, then I would say you better listen. And I would say that you dare to take us for granted. But when I know that preachers are subject to all the subtle persuasion of the religious advertiser that you are, then we better begin to pray for God’s ministers of the sanctuary, that they might get their eyes open to the fact that better than that their church should prosper, is that the name of God should once more be a hallowed among men.

Let me prophesy to you. Now I’m going to give you a prophecy. None of you will believe it probably, now. But the nice thing about true prophecy is, that it proves itself. Here’s my prophesy: we are now riding the wave of religion, and Christianity is more popular than it’s ever been since Jesus Christ died on the cross. And even though over on the Bible-believing side, it’s more popular. The very fact that this editorial of mine could get into newspaper proves it. They’re ready for anything religious now–anything. All right.

Now, let me tell you something, friends, and here’s my prophesy. The time is coming unless God should just upset the whole prophecy by a revival. If He did that, a genuine revival, then, of course, I’d be happy, happy if I’m around to say, Lord, I was mistaken. But I wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t come to our help. If the Lord doesn’t help us and the glory of God isn’t revealed and man’s mouth isn’t shut and God’s glory isn’t elevated, here’s what’s going to happen. We are going to have a reaction from modern popular Christianity that will be on a scale unprecedented in Christian history. We are going to have a bitterness, a disillusionment, and we are going to breed a cynical contempt for God and religion and the church that will turn this country of ours almost completely apart from believing Christians into a camp of religion haters. We’re going back where we were in the 20s or further down than that yet. And you will find cynicism and disillusionment and disappointment and bitterness and hostility, because people are thinking this way, that what we’ve got is Christianity when it is not. And the reason I know it is not, is hallowed be Thy name isn’t at the front of it, but it’s something else. But if God ever hears the prayer of a few of us and hallows His name.

I talked about this to R.R. Brown, Stacy Woods, Paris Reidhead and James Stewart of the European mission. The five of us stood around and discussed it and said, what are we going to do? What are we going to do that the glory of God should be manifested again and that we might be able to stave off this awesome, awful backwash? Well, it’s coming. I may not live to see it, but it’s coming. And the day will be when the people who are now singing over the radio and on the barn dance about God, how good He is, wouldn’t be caught dead singing about God, a disillusioned, embittered, hostile, angry, cynical crowd, the people that tasted Christianity that wasn’t Christianity. We’re going to have him on our hands. Well, that’s the first, the glory of God.

The second, I’ll be brief. It’s 12 o’clock. The second great desire is that the church should be delivered, and maybe I’ve already said that. That the church, not this church only, but the church of God should be delivered from her Babylonish captivity. Remember that the Scripture talked about the great harlot and her daughters. Well, when the great harlot spread herself all over Europe, there arose a thick-necked man by the name of Dr. Martin Luther. And he brought a reformation that set that lady back on her honches and gave us the Reformation and Protestantism and the present evangelicalism.

Let me say to you, my friends, that her daughters have now gotten almost as bad as she was, only in a different way. We don’t have a pope, but we have other things as bad. We don’t have holy water, but we have water not so holy. We don’t have holy bones, but we have other things. If you don’t believe this, come up to my office and I’ll let you run through some of the religious magazines that come to my desk. You’ll see holy bones there all right. The daughters have become as bad as their mother. The great harlot has had children. And the Scripture says, I’ll judge that great harlot and her children and her daughters.

Now, those daughters are in Babylonian captivity just as the church was in Luther’s day. And Luther brought a part of that church out of Babylonian captivity. And the disgraceful fornication with the world now going on among the churches–this you must pray about my brothers and sisters. This you must pray about. This is what we ought to pray about. This should be our corporate prayer. This is the reason we have meetings such as the ones we’ve announced. And until this is accomplished and until the church has been delivered from her mental bondage and from her way of living and her Babylonian captivity, then I say that nothing else is of first importance.

You say, evangelism? What does evangelism do but cause the church to bring forth in Babylon? The church’s children are brought forth, but they’re brought forth under Babylonish captivity when they ought to be brought forth in the land. You say missions, but what do missions do but transplant a socially corrupt and scrub Christianity on foreign soil? And you say books and schools and magazines and all the rest–very well– but my brother, many Christian activities are about the working of the bacteria in a decaying church, that’s all. You go if you want to do it and can stand it to a barrel of swill. But barrel of swill, look at it and watch it and see what it does. It bubbles and hisses and whispers, but it’s always active, always active. It is decaying and fermenting and rotting. And it shows itself by a constant activity.

And an awful lot of activity now is little more than the activity of bacteria in the decaying church. And we must pray and work that the church may be freed. We must pray and work that she may come back to separation and devotion and purity and sanctification. That she may come back again to the glory of God, and that she may devote herself not to being known, publicizing herself, but to the glory of God.

Now brethren, these are the two things that every church is under binding, terrible obligation to get done–to pray enough and labor enough and live in line with their prayers, that God’s glory should one time more appear among men. Oh, that God might appear again as He did for the Moravians, when God bestowed upon them a loving newness of the Savior instantaneously. And they went out hardly knowing whether they were on earth or in heaven.

This can only come to a church that takes itself seriously. This can only come to a church that accepts truth and will yield itself and settle itself to do two things. To pray for the glory of God to be restored and the church to be purified. Another generation of decay and rot in our churches, and what will we be sending to the mission field? We’ll be sending a decaying and burned-out brand of Christianity that will do the heathen very little good. To prove that this is true, you only have to go to some places now where liberal preachers have been and sociologists instead of preachers have been with their gospel of sociology and the toothbrush. Go where they’ve been. You’ll find Christians that are not Christians at all.

A transplantation of a humanistic, sociological Christianity into the foreign field is not fulfilling the text which says, go ye into all around and preach the gospel to every creature. And the transplantation of a publicity-mad, entertainment-rotten evangelicalism into Borneo or somewhere else, is not fulfilling it either. We must go, taking the glory of God and the blood of the Lamb, and calling the people to separate and come together in two minority groups, hated by the world, but loved of God; to be different and changed and transformed by the glory and the power of God. We must take that kind of gospel.

And we continue to go downhill; and our religious colleges and missionary colleges and Bible institutes continue to go downhill and rot and decay and tear apart and pull away at the seams, the next generation of missionaries won’t be worth sending to the field.

Oh, that we might have revival that would purge us, me, as a minister of the sanctuary and you and all of us, so that there may go out from us, not only evangelists and missionaries–and you can’t be a Bible church and not have both-but that they may go out with those two great things in mind, particularly the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And take to the heathen world and take to the dying world, not the story only that God loves them, but the story of a great God, high and lifted up Who made heaven and earth, and before whose face the heaven and the earth will someday flee away. Who, in His Majesty, rides across the heavens, but Who also, in His love, gave His only begotten Son. That’s the only kind of gospel worth taking and the only kind of preaching worth hearing.

Father, we pray Thy blessing upon the Word this morning. Meet us and meet us tonight we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.

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Tozer Talks

God is our Refuge and Strength”

God is Our Refuge and Strength

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 15, 1957

For the next three days at noon, from 11 to 12, I am to have the ministry to the outgoing missionaries of the Conservative Baptist Church. They’re meeting here in Chicago, missionaries, officials, and a number of outgoing missionaries. And they want me to talk to them about their souls; about the spiritual condition of a missionary. And that’s what I plan to do, for three times, 11 to 12, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Kindly pray when you have your devotions.

Now in the 46th Psalm. What do you say we read that Psalm responsively, all reading the last verse. The 46th Psalm, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea: Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled. Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof; There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved. God shall help her and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

Tonight, I want to do what I very rarely do and discuss some things that I very rarely discuss. You will notice that I specialize on talking about God and Christ, redemption, holy living, worship, and I rarely let myself go into the discussion of current events. And I shall do a minimum of it tonight. But a good prophet or preacher is one who preaches to his times and his generation, who speaks as the Quaker said, to the condition of his hearers. A good preacher is not one who has a tape in his head. And on occasion, he puts that tape on and plays it regardless of who’s before him, or what the changing circumstances may have put before him.

But I have noticed over the last year, or has been growing in intensity, the words of our Lord: men’s heart failing them for fear of things that shall be coming upon the earth. And I haven’t anything at all to say to the world, except, repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. But I do have something to say to God’s people. And there has been over the last years a mounting intensity of terror which has become the current psychology of our country, and I guess over the whole world.

Politicians have used the technique of terror to get out of the people what they want. They’ve manipulated the people as a bad mother threatens her child with a bogey or the devil or the policeman, and gets some kind of grudging and frightened obedience, but will have to pay for it all in time to come. So politicians have a way of stepping to the microphone or onto the platform or talking to the press, and literally scaring the populace into giving them what they want. And of course, as members of a fallen race, and as while we are Christians we’re still down here, we are affected by that. And I have noticed that it has affected God’s people very much.

I think I should not say too much about this, if it were confined to the politicians. We don’t expect anything from them. We don’t get anything from them, and so, two plus two makes four. But this is also the technique of much evangelism of the day. You can hardly turn your button on your radio, but somebody will be telling you that Khrushchev will get you unless you accept Christ.

Now, I sometimes preach after I’ve had enough of a thing, and Brother Thomas, I’ve had enough of that. I’ve had all of that I want, and my voice won’t be heard very far, particularly not on this wet night, when we’re not all here. But I’d like to say a few things tonight for you Christians. And if you have faith, you will take it home and your blood pressure will go down to least 10 points. But if you don’t have faith, then of course it’s so much as sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.

We have here in the 46th Psalm, a half a dozen words that I think probably are the most wonderful, among the most wonderful in the entire Bible. We begin with the word–God. We begin with the word–God. God, and every Jew knew Who that was. That was Jehovah. The Lord our God is one Lord. Hear O Israel, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. This is God, and that word, God, terrifies hell and sets all the hearts in heaven to ringing. And down here on the earth, that word, God, when it falls on the ear of faith, there is a response. And when it falls on the ear of unbelief, there is none. But we have that word God here, spelled in capital letters as it is set up here in the layout in our King James Version. But that’s a happy accident, typographical accident that it shouldn’t be there in capital letters.

For I want you to remember that after you have studied all the charts in the United States News and World Report, after Kiplinger has given you all the information he needs, and after you have heard all the dark brown and pessimistic talk out of Washington or from somewhere else. Remember always that you have a little three-lettered word that beats it all, and that’s the word–God. God says, this Psalm in its opening, and then you have a little verb that follows the word God and that is the word–is. So, you put one behind another and you have–God is.

I preached here some, oh, five months ago, maybe, on worship, a series of 12 sermons on worship. And in that series of sermons, I said that God is the Lord Christ. He’s the Lord of all being. That He is more than the Lord of beings. He is the Lord of being–itself. And I said then, having dug it out in myself, and not knowing that anybody else ever thought of it, I said that God, when they talk about God being, the son being of the same substance with the Father, that the Spirit being of the same essence with the Father and the Son, they were using the little word e-s-s-e-s-e, they were using a little word, which means, raw being. And I thought that I thought that I was the only person that ever thought of that–you often get in that fix. And so, I was preaching on: God is the Lord of all beings.

The other day in New York, I was shopping around with Bob Battles in a bookstore. And I saw a little book I’d never seen before by the famous and justly celebrated German theologian, Rudolf Otto. And Rudolf Otto, called attention to the fact that Being is God, God is Being and used my little essese. He’s a scholar, I’m a preacher. But this man who was a profound German scholar, and when Germany creates a scholar, you know, they create real scholars. And this man was one. And so, he had a chapter I haven’t finished yet. But I just began it and saw that he was after the same thing I had been preaching here, that Jesus Christ is not only the Lord of things and people and beings; He’s the Lord of all being, the Lord of essence, the Lord of being Itself.

So, we have, God is here. And you know what I think? I think that the devil is extremely afraid of the word God and the word Christ. And I think that when you and I are in trouble, that we ought to fall back on this, that God is. But that isn’t all and certainly, it isn’t quite enough. It would be enough if we knew what to do with it, but God knows our weakness, so he puts another little word, a pronoun this time after the little, after the little verb is. So, we have three words in this line. God is–our. Don’t let anybody scare you out of that, brothers and sisters, not for one little minute. I quoted the other day, one of the great theologians, I think it was Luther, who said that the power of Christianity lies in its personal pronouns. Don’t be afraid of the personal pronouns of Christianity, religion, Christianity, the Gospel, any kind of Christian worship, when it becomes so impersonal it loses its meaning for you and me.

But David said, or whoever wrote this Psalm said, God is our. And there’s a little, possessive personal pronoun that makes God ours. It isn’t enough to say, God. And it isn’t enough to say, God is. If we’re going to have it mean anything to us, we’re going to have to add, God is our, and that makes God ours and brings God to us. And in faith, we see that God, in a sense, belongs to us as a father belongs to his children. And we’re God’s children. God is ours.

Don’t be afraid of the personal pronouns. Don’t do like the man that I told about so often who never would say I. Leroy Thomas, you’ll know in a second. He’s gone to heaven now and I suppose they’re forcing him up there to say I. But when he was done here, he wouldn’t say it. He always said, one. He was a former missionary to China. And he’d say when one was in China, one saw Chinese and one did this in one day that need never say I. We couldn’t get him to do it. He thought it wasn’t proper. But David said, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. And he went right on using a personal pronoun. Don’t you be afraid of them. Only know what to do with them. The Lord is my Lord. He is my Lord. And the man of God cried, my Lord and my God. And he had Himself in there twice.

The coldest thing that I know, the coldest thing that I know is theology without the warm beating heart of the man. You’ve got to have us in there. You’ve got to put the man in there. God could be as cold in the Loop as the far frozen spaces. But as soon as the man of God said, God is our, then God is close, and we know that we have God Himself. God is our.

And then there’s another word that follows our and it is the word–refuge. And another word that follows the word refuge, and it’s the word–strength. Now you imagine that that’s simply writing, that’s just writing. You say, well, somebody had a page to fill up. He had some writing to do. No, the Holy Ghost never wastes any words. Always keep that in mind. If you have good translation, or you’re reading the original, you never need to worry about there being any padding. The Holy Ghost never puts any words in that do not belong there. God is our refuge.

Now what’s the difference between refuge and strength? A refuge is a place to hide when you haven’t any strength, and strength is personal. Refuge is objective. It’s outside of you. God is our external refuge into which we can run. What time I am afraid, I will trust in the Lord. The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe.

Now, we can think of God then as a refuge. We can think of Him as a place to hide so that Satan can’t get to you. Nothing can get to you that wants to harm you. But that isn’t quite enough. I don’t want to think of myself as a weak blob of moral jelly, a jellyfish, hiding somewhere, externally surrounded by protection. But if I ever got outside that refuge, I’d be set upon immediately, and would have no strength to resist. The Bible doesn’t quite teach that. It teaches that, but it doesn’t quite teach that. It teaches more than that. It teaches that not only is God a refuge into which we can go for safety, but He is our strength itself.

Now, the Bible teaches not only that God gives us strength, but that God is our strength. If Dr. A.B. Simpson had anything to teach the church of Christ, and he had, it was what God is to us. You see everywhere, it’s what God gives to us. You just turn over in the catalogs, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip from A to Zed, and you’ll find books on what God has done for me and what God has given to me and what God promises to give me and what God promises to do for me, but always, we’ve got God on the outside. Always God is the refuge into which we can all rush when we’re in trouble. But while that is true, that’s not enough true. It’s true, but it isn’t all the truth, is a better way to say it. There’s something else. And it is, that God becomes to us, not only a subjective place of refuge, but an objective place of refuge, but a subjective strength. And he does not say that God gives me strength. It says that God is my strength, which is something else altogether. So, we have this wonderful line here. God is. God is our. God is our refuge. God is our strength.

Now, I want to point out to you a number of things which the scare boys are telling us. They’re hinting it or they’re declaring it or they’re threatening us with it. And you know, I don’t threaten easy. I don’t know why. I guess it’s that old Pennsylvania something. I heard a little old dried-up Wesleyan Methodist preacher one time that said that he’d been criticized and condemned for his preaching, but he said, I wasn’t brought up in the woods to be scared by a lightning bug on the end of a corn cob. And I rather liked that expression. And I wasn’t either. And as soon as they start trying to scare me, something inside me rises up and says, now just a minute, I’ll get God on you here. And I’ll get into God here and I’ll get back to God and put God between me and you. And I just don’t scare easy.

Now, here’s what they’ve been telling us, dear friends. And I want to point out, give you a little Scripture, not three great passages, but a little Scripture. I want to tell you this, that no matter what anybody says, no matter what politicians says, or what Gottlieb Vangelis says it or who says it anywhere. Remember one thing, that a race will never be annihilated. The Bible says that. And when our Lord comes, that before him shall be gathered all nations. When the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations. And He shall separate them. You know that story too well for me to go on with it.

All I want to point out is, that when the Son of Man shall come in His glory, the nations will still be here. But isn’t it just like the devil to hide the point we ought to be afraid of and raise up a specter that we ought not to fear. They are telling us that the ballistic missile can come from over on Russia, and in 24 hours, wipe out the human race. And they’re trying to make us afraid of that bogey-boo.

And I am not afraid of it at all, because I know better. But instead of seeing that what we ought, in reverential fear, to prepare for, is that the Son of Man shall come in His glory and sit upon the throne of His glory and gather all nations before Him. Not Russia’s bombs, but the Son of Man coming in the glory. That’s what we ought to look up to, and that’s what we ought to expect. And it’s that that ought to throw fear into the sinful heart and joy into the heart of the child of God. But they’re trying to frighten us by saying there won’t be anybody here when the Lord comes back. That one or two strategically placed bombs and the human race will be annihilated, chewed up and destroyed. What nations will the Lord then come to at the end, when He shall come and sit upon the throne of His glory and gather all nations before Him? What nations will He gather before Him?

No, my brethren, let’s get that idea out of our head. Let’s not fall in with Buck Rogers now and Captain Space and all the rest. I don’t have a TV set, so I’m a little slow on these boys that flap their wings, you know, and leap from planet to planet. But don’t be afraid of them and don’t worry about them, because you’ve got God and you’ve got a Bible. And you’ve got a Bible that forecasts the future. And remember that God is our God. And He is our refuge and our strength.

Then I want to point out another thing. It is, that Israel will not be destroyed by the Arabs. One of my, one way I get my little education is listening to the reporters and the interviewers. And whenever I can get Meet the Press or Face the Nation or Capital Cloak Room, or whatever I can get, I listen. And I hear them talking, and I sense that there are those who believe that if we don’t watch out and don’t keep on taxing you poor people half to death and propping up Israel over there, that the Arabs will swallow up Israel and the nation of Israel will cease to exist.

Now I want to turn over here to the Scriptures and read a little passage and see if it sounds to you as if the nation of Israel should cease to exist. Thus, saith the LORD, which given the sun for a light by day and the ordinance of the moon and of the stars for a light by night; which divided the sea when the waves thereof roar. Jehovah of Hosts is His name. If those ordinances depart from before me, said the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus, saith the Lord, if heaven above can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out, then I will cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord God.

Now, my brethren, when we are able to destroy all the stars that shine, and when the sun in the daytime can be blotted out of the sky, and the moon by night can be blotted from the sky, then Israel will cease to be a nation from before God. So don’t let anybody tell you that the Arabs are going to suddenly fall upon little Israel and destroy Israel from the face of the earth. It just isn’t so.

Then, I want to point out a third thing, and it is this, that Russia will not conquer the world. It is not in prophetic Scripture that they will ever do anything of the sort. And if God were to permit a godless nation, dedicated to materialism and godlessness, who are now saying that they have proved what they thought all along, that there was no God. Now, they’ve said, we’ve shot our little Sputnik up into the sky, and there’s no god up there. These things running around there, what has God got to do with it? You know, brother, whenever you get over on the opposite side from God, God just winds you up and lets you run down. And He just lets you make a double-died, long-eared donkey of yourself and keep right on being a donkey till you die.

And so, that bunch over there, they’re simply moral donkeys. Don’t they know that that the little 350-mile affair they shot up is nothing compared with the 25,000 miles of our moon? And God never said that He had set up housekeeping between here and the moon. He never said that if you get up there and roll around that you would run into Him. He never said that. He said, lo, the heaven of heavens can’t contain God, and the world in the fullness thereof can’t contain God, and how much less this house which ye have builded. Why, God contains all of that, and that doesn’t contain God. And it’s simply the wild ravings of a moral maniac that will allow us to believe that anybody has proved that there isn’t.

And do you remember when Hitler started out and he was wicked, and he won. And he was wicked and he won. And he was getting more wicked every day, going mad and going crazy and going morally crazy as he got older, and everything he said he wouldn’t do it, did. And everything he promised, he brought to pass and everything he threatened, he made good on. And every nation he warned, he swallowed up.

I got up here in this pulpit 15 years ago or so and I said, now, I want to tell you something, especially you young people, I want to tell you this, you have been taught that sin must lose, and righteousness must win. You have been taught that God will win at last and that good will conquer at last and that evil will be destroyed at last. And Hitler is disproving everything you’ve been taught. Now, I said, let me warn you as a prophet of God, don’t pay any attention to what he’s doing now. Wait a little while and see.

Where is Hitler now? Where is Hitler now and all that gang of status and totalitarians and gas chamber artists? All we’re either hanged or else did whatever Hitler did. Somebody said, if he’s running, I’d vote for him, and somebody else said, he’s running if he’s still alive. He hasn’t stopped yet, trying to get away from the people that hate him, or hated him.

So, I tell you now about Russia. Russia’s warring and threatening. And that big hunk of vodka and baldness over there is standing up and threatening and sounding out his warnings. Now, don’t get excited, beloved, and don’t let anybody stir up enough decibels of Russian syllables to frighten you. God is our refuge and strength. And God has never ordered it in the Scriptures that Russia should conquer the world.

Again, there are those who are saying well, we might as well give up. Integration has taken over. And there’s going to be one brown race. We’re going to interbreed and interbreed, and the black with the yellow and the yellow with the red and the red with the white and the white with the pink. And in a very short time we’re going to be like barnyard chickens, all integrated and instead of being what we are now, races distinct, and each race proud in its own right and happy to be what it is. We’re going to be a bunch of speckled brown barnyard chickens without character. You can’t recognize a Swede nor a German nor a Chinese nor a German. Did I say German? All right, you can’t recognize any of them. They’re all separated and brought together now, and they’re going to be integrated.

Now, don’t let anybody tell you that my dear brothers and sisters, because that isn’t so yet. Oh, they’ll fool around, and they will make us miserable. They’ll make us sweat you know. They’ll push this integration business. All they’re doing is stirring up trouble between races to get us in a jam, so that we will be embarrassed before the world. And that’s Russia’s scheme. But I’m not talking now about the rights of the races.

I believe that all races are equal. I don’t think the white race is above any other race. I think that we are equal. God made us all and we are made of one blood, all nations to dwell upon the face of the earth. But he also made us into distinct nations and races. And when God laid the nations out, he laid them out according to the tribes of Israel. And there will be no such thing as one brown race. For I read back here in the book of Revelation, that when the time is coming, after this I beheld and lo a great multitude of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes and palms in their hands and they cried, salvation to our God that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood round about the throne, about the elders and four beasts saying, amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be unto our God forever and ever. And there were people there from all kindreds and tongues and nations and races that had come up out of great tribulation. And in the 14th chapter, we see it.

So the nations of the world are going to continue to be nations and they’re not going all suddenly to become hash. And the races of the world will preserve some distinctiveness and will not all be pushed together and integrated and become one according to the Scriptures. Again, the world will not be conquered from outer space. So don’t get that in your head. That’s Buck Rogerism. The world will not be conquered from outer space. You know, I had several opportunities to get up and look at that hunk of metal flying around up there, and I slept through. I just wasn’t enough concerned. I can look out and see some light flashing on the fender of an automobile and see exactly the same thing.

That’s what it is. It’s just the sun shining on a hunk of metal, which they threw up far enough that it was outside the tug of the earth gravitation. That is, it was held in by the gravitation but the centrifugal force if it’s going around, threw it out just far enough. I did the same thing when I was a kid. I used to do this. I used to pick up a pail full of milk and swing it, show my little sisters or show off, show my little sisters. And then I’d say, now watch it, I can swing this over my head, and I won’t be a bit of milk come out. And finally, you get her going, and round and round and round I’d swing it and then slowly let it come down. There wouldn’t be a drop spilt. Centrifugal force held it in.

That’s all. I did the same thing. What is Khrushchev yelling about? Only I didn’t push it up as far, that’s all. I didn’t shove it up as far, but I did the same thing. All he did up there is take advantage of centrifugal force and the Earth’s magnetic attraction and through something between the two, and that’s all there is to it. And yet here we are saying, oh, the world is going to get conquered from outer space and people are actually scared. Their hearts are failing them for fear of things that are coming on the earth. Well, if you’re not right with God, I suppose there isn’t anything else to do but get scared. But if you’re right with God, you hear the man say, God is our refuge and strength and a very present help in time of trouble.

There’s nothing in the Scriptures, no prophecy anywhere that leaves any remote impression that there’s going to be any conquest from outer space. The Scripture says the earth has God given to the children of men. We belong to the earth. We’re made out of earth. We’re animated earth’s crust.

And then I point out this, and it’s part of the other that we’re not going to be conquered from some other planet. Keep that in mind. All the planets in their turn are singing and shouting and saying that the hand that made them is divine. But I wouldn’t be afraid of anybody on those planets, because there was a God one time that made the heaven, and He made the earth and all things on the earth. And he looked it all over and he said, I’m lonely. I’ll make me a man.

And so, God knelt down by the river, and He scooped up the clay, and He molded the man in His own image. And like a mammy, said the poet, bending over her baby. So, the great God Almighty that flung the stars to the most far corner of the night, kneeled down by the riverbank and He molded that clay till it was in His own image. And into it He breathed the breath of life and man became a living soul, amen, and amen. And that man, He gave this earth and said, you have dominion over it. This belongs to you, this is yours.

And then one day when man had sinned and that great God who loved that image that He had made and loved it and He loved the breath he had blown into it and loved the image that it still had. His Son came down and became part of that, that we call humanity, and the Word became flesh. He became not only a man, He became man to dwell among us. And the second Person of the Trinity, the great Lord Jesus Christ, the Word became flesh of the earth.

And then somebody asked me to believe that there’s going to come some strange, weird looking, bug-eyed, green creatures with yellow hair from some other planet riding down on a saucer. Someday they’re going to paralyze us with a ray and take us all over and brainwashes and control us by thoughts and we’ll go and be going around like zombies. I don’t believe it and I’m not scared at all. I’m not one bit scared.

And I think it’s shameful that men should try to use such unscriptural, illogical, and ridiculous notions to bring people to the altar. I’d rather see the church emptier than it is tonight and this is bad enough. I’d rather see it I say, than to have anybody go to an altar because I’d scared them by a green fellow with a bulbar nose and yellow hair coming from another planet.

You know what these green boys with the bulbar noses are going to have to do? They’re going to have to get permission from God Almighty to invade the race that He made; to invade and destroy the race that has taken the image of which his Son took in the incarnation. Ah, no, they’re fooling us.

And then I want to point out something else. Radiation will not produce a race of monsters. Keep that in your mind. People are worrying about radiation. And no matter what happens, you know, they say I know what it is. It’s those, it’s those atomic tests. And they’re frightening us with that. I got a friend out in California, bless her, she’s scared stiff. She writes us sometimes. She’s afraid of radiation. She’s thinking about her great grandchildren, what little monsters they’re going to be. Brother, at times you think some of them are little monsters now, don’t you, when you’re tired?

But do you know what we have sitting on the dresser? An illuminated dial so you don’t have to get up and go clear over to see what time it is and turn on light. And you know, we get as much radiation from that as you do from the average atom bomb fallout a little distance off. And every time you go and have a toothache x-rayed, you get as much. They’re scaring us, and they’re trying to terrify us, brainwashes us and bring us under their control, and I refuse.

I am a Protestant and an American and a Christian. And when you get those three mixed up, you’ve got to rebel and I refuse to get on my knees and say, what wilt thou have me to do, unless I’m talking to God. I won’t talk to any politician, nor scientist, nor preacher, and say all right now, tell me what I’m to do. I know what I’m to do. I’m to worship the Lord my God and Him only am I to serve. And so they’re not fooling me with that kind of stuff. I don’t expect my great grandchildren will look much different from what I do. I hope there’ll be some improvement. But as it stands, I’m not frightened in the slightest. This will not produce a race of monsters, and don’t you believe it. And how do I know it? I know it because the Scripture traces the human race right down to the millennium and on into the new heaven and the new earth. And there are still people there, still people that looked like Jesus.

And when Jesus Christ became man, He standardized the human race and all that will be born down the years. They’ll have the natural mutations that come from having a redheaded grandfather and a black-haired great grandmother and all the rest, but normally will not be monsters. So, I’d quit worrying if I were you. I would just go home. You want to worry? Don’t have your toothache x-rayed. You just get as much radiation.

Then another thing is that the saints are not going to be destroyed from the earth. They’re trying to tell us that the saints will be destroyed from the earth. But Jesus Christ said, the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Do you believe that? The church is going to be here after Khrushchev is down there. And after all these politicians, I told somebody about the politician I had seen in the cartoon. He was talking to the press, and he said, all right, gentlemen, if my opponent wants to use guided missiles and satellites as a campaign issue, I am willing. I will match my ignorance with his any day.

And if that’s what they want, all right, but the gates of hell won’t prevail. Let people argue. Let them talk, and when it’s all over, we have the Word of the Lord, that the gates of hell cannot prevail against the children of God. God will never leave Himself without a witness. There will never be a time when there won’t be a voice saying, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. There will never be an odd day, when there won’t be somebody raising holy hands to the cross and crying, Lord Jesus, Thou art the Son of God. There will never be a time on this earth, until the Lord takes his children away and sends finally at the end, the fire to burn it up with a great noise as in Second Peter. Then the race will be gone from there.

But until that time, the church will still be around. He said over here in the book of Matthew, that if He didn’t shorten some of these terrible days, except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved. But for the elect’s sake, those days shall be shortened. Isn’t that plain to you, my friends, that there is going to be no time that will destroy the children of God completely. They’ll die martyrs, of course they will. There’ll be martyrs. There always have been martyrs. And the blood of the martyrs has been the rich seed of the church, and there will always be martyrs. And there will be times when the church is struggling and not knowing which way to turn as inside China now and in places behind the Iron Curtain. But if she’s not growing in one place, she’s growing in another. And the Lord Jesus Christ is getting himself a bride from all kindreds and tongues and tribes and nations from every place. And He’s going to take her home leaning on his bride. And He’s going to do that in spite of all scientific advancements. And He’s going to do it in spite of all the men who say there’s no God.

So, let’s believe. Will you? Come on, let’s shake this thing off. Arise my soul, arise. Shake off thy guilty fears. A Living Sacrifice is pleading at the right hand of God for you now, and you’re all safe if you’re right with God.

Then I point out one more thing, and it is this. That there will be no true world union, except in Jesus Christ the Lord. I believe in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Do you? I believe in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Now if there’s any Moody students here, there are smelling salts in the basement, and we will bring you to after the service.

But the Fatherhood of God means what? It means that God is the Father of His redeemed family. And I believe in the Fatherhood of God. I believe in the brotherhood of man, a two-fold brotherhood. I believe that the human race, born the loins of Adam are a brotherhood, made of one blood. So, there’s the brotherhood of the human race. Because sin is in the world, they’re all divided up hating each other. But they’re a brotherhood, nevertheless, a brotherhood of fallen Adam. But there is another brotherhood. It’s the brotherhood of the redeemed saints. It’s the brotherhood of the faithful, the brotherhood of the church. So, I believe in the brotherhood of man, the brotherhood of fallen men, living and dying and being damned together. And the brotherhood of redeemed man, living and worshiping and being glorified together. And I believe in the Fatherhood of God over His children, but not the Fatherhood of God over the race. He created mankind, but we are all children of God by faith in Jesus Christ, or else we’re not children of God at all.

So now you know what I mean. I believe in the Fatherhood of God. So, I’m not going to be scared and run when I see a liberal coming. When he says he believes in the Fatherhood of God, he means that God is the father of all mankind. He’s wrong. When he says he believes in the brotherhood of man, he says that all people are alike saved, and therefore are brethren. He’s wrong. But if he’s willing to believe that God is the Father of the redeemed and the faithful, I would go along with him. If he’s willing to believe that there’s a brotherhood of the ransomed, I’ll go along with him, but no further.

Well, now let’s just go a little further and we’re through. Therefore, we will not we fear. Though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountain shake with the swelling thereof, there is a river, the streams where of shall make glad the city of God the Holy Place of the tabernacles are the Most High. God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God shall help her and that right early. The heathen rage, that is the nation’s rage. The kingdoms were moved, and He uttered his voice and the earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Now, the old man in the Spirit, looking down the corridors of time, says, come, behold the works of Jehovah. What desolations He has made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth. He breaketh the bow and cutteth the Sputnik in sunder. He burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.

My dear Christian friends, science, I think, is just about overstepped her limit. I think God will put up with this just a little longer. And then He’s going to start exalting Himself. What is the final windup to be? The final windup is to be all these boastful, arrogant, godless people put down, and the saints of God put up, and the God of all the saints exalted in the earth.

And it may not be too long until they that are in heaven above and they that are on the earth, and that are under the earth and they that are in the sea, shall all join together to say, worthy is the Lamb that was slain. For he hath died and is risen and He hast redeemed us out of all kindreds and tongues and tribes and nations.

So friends, let’s thank God as we near the end of the old year. And let’s believe that the God of Jacob is our refuge. The God of grace is our refuge through Jesus Christ and go home and sleep well. He giveth his beloved sleep. I both lay me down in peace and slept. I woke for the Lord’s sake.

Do you want to worry, and you want to carry a burden? Carry the burden of the poor world and pray for the poor world and ask God for a burden for the poor world. Suffer with them that suffer and give of your money to the poor and to missions and try to help the world, but don’t be scared for yourself. You’ve got nothing to be afraid of, but sin. And if you’ve put sin behind you and let the blood of Christ wash it away, you can walk out of here with your chin up absolutely without fear. Amen. The God of Jacob is our refuge.

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Tozer Talks

How to Grow in Grace”

How to Grow in Grace

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 29, 1957

We may be very grateful to the Holy Spirit and to the man Peter who when he was very, very old and about ready to lay down his burden, said, wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance. Though ye know them and be established in the present truth. Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, knowing that shortly I must put off this, my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me. Moreover, I will endeavor that you may be able, after my departure, to have these things always in remembrance.

Now, that was Peter in his second epistle. And he wrote a little further and then said, in 3:10, the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with the great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless, we according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless. And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever. Amen.

Now, those last two verses, ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, why be careful, lest you be led away with the error of the wicked and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, this is the language of the dear old apostle. Ye beloved, he says. I still believe, I’ve said it a number of times in various contexts, but I still believe that old Christians ought to be sweet, mellow Christians, and that we ought to get more mellow and gracious as we get older. We find it here very plain in this last epistle of Peter’s, a perfect blend of tender love and severe faithfulness. Now one is necessary to the other, because without one, you will have only harm without the other. If a man is only filled with tenderest love, then he is likely to become sentimental, or he’s likely to become so tender that he’s harmful to those he ministers to. But, if on the other hand, he is simply faithful to truth, he’s likely to injure with the very truth he is using to help people.

But Peter seemed to have both. He said, you, beloved, seeing ye know these things before. And he took a good measure, an account to see that we would have this before us long, long after he was gone. He said, seeing ye know these things. And what are these things? Well, the things named above, the certainty of judgment for all mankind. That God holds up actions and doesn’t judge, not because He is careless, but because He’s waiting for men to repent. And then, that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. And the fiery passing away of the whole creation is before us and is coming, and the establishment of a new creation for eternity. These are the things, at least some of the things that he referred to; and said, seeing you know these things.

And so, he held them before us as a reason for our Christian living. Then he said, if you know these things, beware. Now here’s a red light. Here is a caution light. He said, you Christians, I’m going away from you and you’re going to be left here in what he called a wicked and adulterous generation. And so, you’re going to have to beware. That is, exercise moral caution.

Today, out in, I don’t know how many towns throughout the United States and on highways between towns, there will be men, or young men maybe, driving without caution. I suppose we tend to get more cautious as we get older, but I’ve seen old men drive with anything but caution. But there will be a number of them, I couldn’t tell you how many, I wish I could say none, but I know there will be many who will forget to exercise caution and will press on the gas and pull their great cars up to tremendous speeds and fail to, what the newspapers call, negotiate a curve. They mean they couldn’t make the curve and a hit or go into a gully or hit a bank or a bridge and they will be gathered up dead. They will not pay any attention to the markings. The markings are not put there by mean policemen or nasty state troopers in order that they might devil us. They’re put there because a little way ahead, there’s danger.

So, the man, Peter, said beware; not to take his spite out on the people. Neither do I repeat it because I have any grudges against anybody. It’s just a sign here, slippery when wet, sharp curve ahead, “S” turn ahead, and a crossroad and railroad crossing–beware. It’s just a sign on the way. And the moral fool disregards the sign, of course. He shrugs his shoulders, rushes on and perishes, but the wise man slows down and proceeds with caution and lives. And the man of God says, now you know what’s ahead. Therefore, you Christians, beware lest you be led away by the world as others have been.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about that fellow, that goat down at the stockyards that I’ve mentioned several times here, they call him Judas Iscariot. I can’t get him out of my mind. They say he’s down there. I’ve never seen him, but I’ve had it confirmed that they have him. He’s a well-trained old goat with a deadly cynicism and complete cruelty, or else just ignorance. I don’t know which. I hope it’s the latter. And when they want a flock of sheep to go into a pen so they can get killed. They won’t go in. They’re afraid to go in being timid things. So, they start this old goat down and he leads them down the runway to the slaughter pen. Then, they open a gate and he goes out. They kill the sheep and he comes back and leads another flock down. That’s his job. That’s his occupation, leading innocent sheep astray. They call him Judas Iscariot.

And that Judas Iscariot is in the church here and there, too. And some people live only to betray others and to lead them away and to drag them down. And after they have betrayed them, they have very little interest in them after that. So, he says, lest ye should be led away. Always remember that unless you watch, you can be led. But always remember that everybody is led by someone. You say not me. I’m as hard as a rock and I am not led by anybody. Do you know that you are led by your newspaper, your radio, the magazines? You’re led by Billboard, your schooling, your education, the people that talk to you. You are led by the history that you have read. You are led by the friends and associates and social companions. You are led, but you just don’t know it.

I have been hearing of something that I think; Mr. Chase and I sometimes say good naturedly, that if it gets any worse, we’ll hunt a cave and become monks. I don’t think we ever will, but under circumstances, but I’m inclined a little more that way lately because I’ve heard of a strange thing. It is a subconscious, subaudible advertising they’re putting on now on the radio. Your subconscious hears it but you don’t hear it. You can hear, God knows, you can hear an anthem sung now in favor of everything.

But they are now not only going to give you the ones you can hear, but they now are giving you ones that come through on a wavelength that your ear doesn’t receive, but your subconscious gets. And they keep plugging away at you like that. What is that but brainwashing? I wonder if we ought not to write our Senator and ask him if we can’t stop a thing like that. Who knows, one of these days when he’s going to rush out and buy a pink elephant? And his wife will say what’s the matter with you, Charles? Well, Charles said, I don’t really know. It just came on me, a desire to buy a pink elephant. And somewhere in Washington or New York or Chicago Loop, somebody has been advertising pink elephants on the subaudible wavelength.

And so, our subconscious gets all worked up. You’re being led Brother, don’t forget it; and you’re being brainwashed. But it just depends upon who does it. If the Lord does it; if the Holy Ghost, does it, if it’s washed by the water of the Word, then blessed are you. But you can be led astray. And the Scripture says watch it, that ye be led not astray.

Now, grow in grace rather than be led astray. Grow in grace. And I want to point out to you that whether it’s a child or a garden, it has got to be cared for. There’s got to be watchfulness and use of means. If you do not use means, we have a wilderness because nature will grow whether we like it or not. And the only way you can have a garden is to use means and care and thoughtful planning. Because if you don’t use thoughtful planning and take care, you will have something growing out there all right, because nature will grow. But you’ll have a wilderness. And the difference between a wilderness and a garden is that the wilderness grows without planning and the gardens is carefully planned. Grow in grace. Grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

I talked last week about backsliding, and I think it had some effect, because I’ve had a number of people talk about it, and not talk critically about it. That is, I didn’t hear the criticisms if there were any. I heard the other side. But have you ever stopped to think how many times we’ve gone to altars and knelt at chairs and benches, and prayed and stood when the evangelists asked us to and have gone forward and renewed our vows and consecrations? Have you ever thought how often we’ve done that? Well, a lot have done it and I wonder how many have gone on then and grown in grace.

The Word of God says it is better not to vow than to vow and not pay. But the Bible heroes vowed and kept their vows. And the Christian heroes since Bible times vowed and kept their vows. And there are those living now who have made vows and kept them. But we stand and we reaccert our vows and reconsecrate over and over and over and over again down the years. It’s like getting married again, taking your vows over and over and over and over again. Every time a new voice is heard, we come and take our marriage vows over again. I think it’s silly. But we might as well do that as to be doing all of this vowing and standing and promising and never doing anything about it. It’s better to vow and pay, but it’s better not to vow than to vow and not pay.

I have been reading about this Henry Suso, Heinrich Suso. This Henry Suso, if you will allow us to anglicize him. He was an old Saint and I just been reading again about his conversion. He began to serve the Lord when he was, let’s see, five off 18 would make 13, wouldn’t it. When he was about 13, but he got no place. And he said he was quite contented just to keep out of the sins that would spoil his reputation. But as he went on trying to live a good life, why, a conviction for sin came on him. And he got under the burden, not only for the sins that would have ruined his reputation, but for the sins that would have ruined his relations with God. So suddenly, instantaneously, he was converted; converted just as suddenly and instantaneously as the flash of an eyelash.

Well, immediately after he was converted, he began to get moved inwardly to become a saint, to become a saintly young fellow. He was 18 then, and to seek the face of God and to put the world behind him and the flesh under his feet. And he said, immediately, the voice of the tempter said to him, now Henry, it’s alright for you to be a Christian the way you’ve been, but you know, this, this saintly business, this desire to be an unusual Christian, that’s awfully easy to talk about, but it’s awfully hard to do.

And he said, he answered back and said, well, but God can help me. And he said, the voice of the Tempter said, Henry, God can help you, but will He? And he said, he went to the Word of God in prayer and settled that one. Then he said, I found that God not only could, but was willing to help anybody who wraughts righteousness in His name. So, when the voice of the Tempter couldn’t get any further with him that way, why, the tempter got awfully smooth and soft and patted his back and said, All right, Henry, it’s very good that God will help you. There’s no question about that. But now why make a production out of it? Why push it so far? And why be unlike other people. Take it easy. Eat and drink and relax and be like the other Christians around you. They expect to go to heaven. Why should you want to be any different from what they are?

Well, that was convincing enough, so he went to the Lord about that. And he said the voice of Eternal Wisdom said to me. I don’t know what that was. It could have been the Holy Ghost or the Scriptures or the voice of God in him. But he said, the voice of Eternal Wisdom said to him, Henry, anybody who tries to catch a slippery eel by the tail, or who will try to begin the saintly life with a cool, lukewarm heart, both are foolish men. Henry heard that, and God said, Henry, don’t let him talk you out of it. Remember one thing? Anybody who thinks he can serve God and live for the world is a fool. Don’t try it. So, Henry said, all right, God, I will go on and I’ll put the world and the flesh under my feet and sin behind me.

And he went awhile, and he was young, and he began to get discouraged. He had no help. So, he said, not having any help, I taught some of my Christian friends for a bit of consolation. And he said they shrugged and raised their eyebrows and said, no, I can’t do it. This kind of thing can never come to any good end; this yearning after holiness, this desire to be all out on God’s side. We knew nothing good would come out of it.

So he apologized and said, O God, he said, it’s my fault. He said, I wouldn’t have had to hear them if I hadn’t gone and listened to them. So, he apologized. But he went on and he became one of the greatest saints of the 14th century. And today, we sing his hymns. And today, we warm our hearts at the fire of His mighty devotion. But he had some temptations to put behind him, some vows to keep. He listened to the voice of the Tempter and answered it in the name of the Lord. And when he couldn’t get any help from his Christian friends, he said, I decided to go it alone. It wasn’t very long until he had others following him.

It’ll always be so. When you start out, determine that you’re going to have the best God has for you, you won’t have many who will understand you, but it won’t be very long until people come to you. And the numbers are growing. And I stand in great encouragement to tell you that the number of those who are determined to put away, not only sin and the world and the flesh, but degenerate and decay in Christianity behind them and serve God after the Bible pattern–they’re growing.

Mr. McAfee comes and tells me about a Dutch Reformed preacher from where? Holland, Michigan. And I just talked to a Presbyterian pastor the other day. Why, there are hungry men seeking the face of God, not many, but they’re growing in numbers. And they come up out of not only one group, but they come up out of where you wouldn’t expect them at all, seeking the face of God. They are there. You won’t find many, but you’ll find some.

And now grow in grace. How can I grow in grace? There won’t be anything new here in this brief recital from here on. But you should hear it again, or you should hear it until you do something about it. Why, have you been reading the Word of God with meditation? Have you read a good portion of the Book daily, the sincere milk of the word. You haven’t? How do you expect to grow in grace? How do you expect to keep healthy and resist the inroads of the virus of sin? How do you expect to be saved from the epidemic of iniquity that’s all throughout the land, a pandemic, indeed, for it’s everywhere.

Do you make time for private prayer? You come to church on Sunday. But if this is all you get, you certainly are in grave danger spiritually. Make time for private prayer and then learn to pray as you go. Learn to put things out of your mind. Sometimes I wake up at night and lo and behold, I’m thinking about myself, or something related to me or my family and I push it from me and say, O Holy Father, Holy Trinity, blessed Holy Savior, and try to turn my mind away from even my family and myself, because naturally we gravitate to ourselves and our people. And on certain times, that’s perfectly proper. God has given you your family to take care of them.

But I tell you, we ought to learn to pray when we go and as we go. And then I think we ought also to improve our mental attitude in church. I’m not satisfied at all with our church services. I’m not pleased, partly my fault, party my ignorance, partly my lack of insight and spirituality, but I think we all ought to join to see whether we can’t improve our mental attitude in church. Instead of joking out in front and joking up the stairway and all the rest, we ought to come with reverence, not into a building. There’s nothing holy about this building of bricks, but into the presence of the great God, O God is here. Let us adore and own how holy is this place.

So, let’s improve our mental attitude. Some are grieving God very greatly by their attitude in church, whispering, passing notes, and, or bored with the whole business. If the preaching is so bad, that it bores you, go somewhere else. Don’t come here and endure me. I mean that. I’m not being nasty. I just mean that. If I’m inflicting something on you that puts you to sleep, in God’s name, pray me out of here and get somebody that will keep you awake. But, if your sleepiness lies in your own heart, in your own failure to appreciate spiritual things, then let’s put the blame where it belongs. If it’s on me, I’ll take it. But if it’s on you, will you take it? And let us ask God whether we can’t improve our mental attitude. We’re grieving God. I’m sure we’re grieving God by our failures. We’re grieving Him by our failures in this thing.

And then, we ought to read. We ought to read good books. If you’re over 10 years old, you ought not to read Christian fiction at all. Throw it out. You ought to read good books. There are good biographies. I was called to preach by reading a biography of a southern preacher. God’s spoke to my heart when I read that biography. And there are missionaries all over the world that were called of God while they read, say, the life of Livingstone, the book that the Sunday school gave to some of the graduates this morning. So, let’s get a hold of good books. You don’t have to read trash.

Somebody says, oh, Mr. Tozer, I admit I don’t read but I just don’t have time. How much time do you spend waiting? Now, I ask you, how much time do you spend waiting? You know, I read lots of books. But you know, I rarely sit down to a book reading session, very rarely. I read them in between time. I take a bus up here and I read on the bus. I ride downtown; I read on the train. I wait for a train, and I read then. I wait to go to bed at night when I’m riding on a train, and I read then. You can get it read if you want to do it bad enough. So, while you’re waiting and while you’re arriving, and put some other things away, and read some good books, Christian biography, Christian devotional books, good sound, hard Christian theology. Read up on it, get it into your heart and so improve yourself.

And then take your stand as a witness and let people know where you stand. They’re feeding us now a soft, baby, pre-cooked mash that any baby could eat. It’s the mash of toleration and brotherhood. Don’t hurt anybody’s feelings. If you’re with anybody and you find he’s a Roman Catholic, don’t hurt his feelings at all by talking about the Savior because he’s got his religion. If you find he’s an atheist, don’t, don’t hurt him. Be tolerant. Be kind. Be brotherly. And the more they feed us that tasteless mash, the further we get separated from each other and the worse the nations hate each other. In the hour when we are being brainwashed from Washington on the subject of toleration and brotherhood and religion, we’re getting further and further apart, and our bombs are getting bigger and our guided missiles longer and our ability to kill more terrible. So, the whole thing is hogwash, and ought to be recognized as such. Be a witness For Jesus Christ. Tell somebody not later than tomorrow morning that you’re a Christian see what it does for you.

I remember when I was a very young Christian, another fellow and I, just two of us, neither one of us could sing, so we didn’t have a singing service, but we used to ride to Kent, Ohio. Kent, Ohio was a little town. We went to the mayor and asked him whether we could have street meetings. He took us good naturedly. I think rather with a grain of salt or maybe a whole pinch and said, sure, sure boys, you can have street meetings. And we used to go up there like an ox to the slaughter, you know, hating to do it. Oh, how I hated it because I never was much for approaching people anyway. I’d never make a salesman. I would walk past the door five times rather than push the button, the doorbell; but we’d get up on the street and I’d start to yell. And somebody would say, well now, just exactly what happened to him? And they would turn around and begin to gather and pretty soon in that little town of Kent, I would have great crowd listen to me.

And my brother-in-law was along. And he wasn’t anything of a preacher. He was a slow-talking southerner who kept his voice low. But His face shone in those days with the light of God. And after I had preached until I had worn myself out, I put him on to testify. And then after we would close, we would get on what they call nowadays, an inter-urban, a streetcar that ran between towns. Oh, what a relaxation and joy and delight on the way home. I had done it. I didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t the thing I liked to do. I’m not born for that kind of thing. I have met men that never saw a stranger.

I know a preacher friend of mine who went up to Washington and the United Nations. And where he was ready to sit and they were waiting on Mrs. Roosevelt, Mrs. Roosevelt, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. My preacher friend walks in, and I don’t know how he wormed it, but somehow, he got in touch with Ms. Roosevelt. And he stood there and talked about God for 15 minutes to Mrs. Roosevelt while United Nations waited. Yeah!

That same fellow went to Eastman Kodak Company, and he walked into with a big smile and said, I want to see the President. Well, the Secretary said the President is in a meeting of the Board of Directors. He can’t see you now. He said, I can’t wait. I want to see the President now. Well, who are you? Well, I’m Reverend so and so. She said, well, I’ll go to him. So, she went off rather tiptoeing in and not knowing whether it means her job, right, but what. She said, you know, Mr. So and so, there’s a preacher outside who wants to see you, a preacher. He says, just relax a few minutes. Have a coffee break, he said, I’ll go talk to preacher.

So, he went out and there stood my friend. And he talked to him about God. And this Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Eastman Kodak Company, a multi-million-dollar concern, broke down and cried and wept like a baby and said, Reverend, I’ve been around this town, I’m well known. But up to now, you’re the first man that ever talked to me about my soul or about Jesus Christ.

And the big shots of the Board of Directors twiddled their thumbs while this preacher, now, he can do that. There, he’s got that. But I couldn’t do that. If I went in and said, I want to see the President, they’d motion to a cop. And they would say, would you lead this, out? Would you lead it out, please. They wouldn’t even say he.

So, you see, brethren, we’re not all alike. And we can’t all do the same thing. But we ought to be at the disposal of the Holy Ghost. And if God leads you to do some hard, impossible thing, go do it. And if you go like an ox to the slaughter, you will come away feeling like a lamb that hasn’t been slaughtered.

Well, and separate yourself from pollution, all kinds of pollution, bad Company, bad habits, bad books. Begin to spread to the light. That’s the positive side of last Sunday’s talk. I talked last Sunday on backsliding and how we are bent to backslide. And I tell you, my friend, there’s a gravitational pull. There’s a moral, gravitational tug that is just as strong as the natural law of gravity. And it’ll pull you down and pull you down and flatten you out and mix you with the earth. And you’ve got to rise above it by taking the means of grace that God affords you; the prayer and the Word of God and the prayer meeting and the church service and testimony and witnessing and praying as you go and mingling with good people. If you can’t find any, then read a book about a good fellow. That’s next best. But somehow see that your fellowship is with the saints.

Many fall from their own steadfastness, because they don’t go clear over on God’s side. They get converted and then they listen to the voice of the Tempter. And the voice of the Tempter says, now take it easy. Take it easy. You see all these Christians? They’re all going to heaven. Why should you be unusual? I stand to tell you, if you won’t be an unusual Christian in this backslidden age, you won’t be much of a Christian at all. For the man who is much of a Christian is bound to be unusual.

If you were all as the whole city of Chicago were composed of little roots, four feet tall, I’d be an unusual man. I’m five foot 10. And in a Christian society where we’re pygmies, the man has got to be determined to be unusual to stand out.

Well, the wrecks are everywhere confirming the Word of God. The sad, miserable wrecks are everywhere. Because iniquity shall abound, the love of the many shall wax cold. But they that continue on to the end, the same shall be saved.

We’ve had that explained away, but it’s in the Book, and Jesus Christ said it and I can’t explain it away. Whatever dispensation that applies to or whomsoever it belongs, the principle lies there. They that persevere the same shall be saved. Somebody would say that’s Arminianism. Brother McAfee was reading out of the Calvinistic catechism to me this morning. You know what it said? It said, the grace of God that saved a man also worked in him to make him persevere and go on. That’s Calvinism mind you. To say that Calvinists say that you get saved and once in grace, always in grace. And from that time on you can put out your wings and you’d be borne home to heaven. They don’t.

That’s a misunderstanding and a misapplication. John Calvin never said it. He believed in a rebirth. He believed in a renewed life. He believed in a Spirit-filled life. He believed in a sanctified life. Why should we hide behind any misinterpretations of ancient theology when the Holy Ghost says, they that continue faithful unto the end, the same shall be saved. Saved up out of the wreck it means of course. Saved up out of the woe of the world. And for the moment it’s not talking about justification, but salvation out from the wreckage and rubble of the world.

Well, shall we go on? There are signs that God is blessing here and there. For a few days, we’ve got the next few days, I am to spend time preaching with James Stewart to the European Evangelistic Society; R.R Brown with Stacy Woods of InterVarsity, with numbers of others; Paris Reidhead and R.S. Roseberry. I don’t know what will come out of it.

But O Brethren, won’t you pray that God somehow or other, there are people everywhere hungry, but we’re not organized. We’re not together, we’re wasting our sweetness on the desert air if you will excuse the expression. I wonder if God won’t raise up some fellow like a Reidhead or somebody else who is young enough and vigorous enough to pull this all together. And perhaps the Holy Ghost will bring a new kind of revival to the world that won’t just scrape the surface but will go down to the roots in human living so that we may be saved from our sins and from ourselves and from the world and from iniquity and from our past and from our present; saved unto a life of saintliness and holiness before God. Won’t you pray? Won’t you spend a lot of time praying for this?

Tonight, I preach my third sermon on worship. I can hardly wait. I could wish I could start now. I had such a marvelous time preparing it. If the music tonight is anything like it was last Sunday night, I look forward to that with great relish and delight. God bless you. Try to come back.

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Tozer Talks

The Unequal Contest Between God and Man”

The Unequal Contest Between God and Man

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 29, 1956

I want to read first a passage from the Old Testament. Well, both will be from the Old Testament, but a long passage and then take a text from the book of Job. In the book of Numbers, the 22nd chapter and the 22nd verse. Not that I’m going to speak from this chapter, but that I want to lay a sort of background for truth that will follow. God’s anger was kindled because Balaam went. And the angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ass and his two servants were with him. And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way and his sword drawn in his hand. And the ass turned aside out of the way and went into the field. And Balaam smote the ass to turn her into the way. But the angel of the Lord stood in the path of the vineyards, a wall being on this side and a wall on that side. And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she thrust herself onto the wall and crushed Balaam’s foot against the wall and he smote her again. The angel of the Lord went further and stood in the narrow place where it was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left. And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she fell down under Balaam. And Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff.

And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass and she said unto Balaam, what have I done unto thee that thou hath smitten me these three times? Balaam said unto the ass, because thou hast mocked me. I would there were a sword in my hand, for now would I kill thee. And the ass said unto Balaam, am not I’m thine ass upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day. Was I ever want to do so unto thee? And he said, no. And the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way and his sword drawn in his hand. And he bowed down his head and fell flat on his face. And the angel of Lord said unto him, wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times. Behold, I went out to withstand thee because thy way is perverse before me. And the ass saw me and turned from me these three times. Unless he had turned from me, surely, now, also I would have slain thee and saved her alive. Balaam said unto the angel of the Lord, I have sinned. For I knew not that thou stoodest in the way against me. Now, therefore, if it please thee, I will get me back again.

Now, the text for tonight, is found in Job 14:20. Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth: thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away. I read the text again, Thou prevailest for ever against him. It is job talking to God and says, Thou God prevailest forever against the unbelieving and rebellious man, and he passeth: thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away.

Now, in the Bible, there is never any twilight zone. There is never any soft and gentle purring on the part of heaven over earth. You find it in pulpits and in literature, but you never find it in the Scriptures. The Scriptures take the sharp, bold attitude that God and sinful men are opposed to each other. And that God has a controversy with every man until that man surrenders, repents, and begins to obey God. Now, that’s the attitude that God of the Bible takes, and that God and man are in opposition. And Job takes it too when he says, Thou will prevailest forever against him. If I were giving a name to this sermon tonight, I would call it, the unequal contest because the contest between man and God is unequal.

Now, I like to make myself perfectly clear that if you’re not obeying God, then you’re fighting God. Just as the man Balaam was going in opposition to God’s will and God stood in the way. The angel of the Lord, which scholars believe is God, stood in the narrow way by the vineyard. And Balaam was too blind to see it. So, God stands to oppose every man who was going in the wrong direction, a direction of sinfulness, selfishness, or ungodliness, or all three. And God and that man are as the angel and Jacob were by the bank of the river. They’re wrestling against each other.

But the contest between God and man must ever, ever be an unequal contest, because power is with God and weakness is with man. Wisdom is with God and ignorance is with man, because the right is always on God’s side. Always remember this, if you don’t know what the right thing to do is in a given situation, always take God’s side and you’ll have the right side. And if you take any other side but God’s, you’ll have the wrong side no matter how fine the argument may have polished it up for you. No matter how beautiful the veil may be that covers the sin, if it’s not on God’s side, the sin is there, nevertheless.

So, the right is always on God’s side. And the length of years are always with God. How can we who live for a little day hope to win in contest with the great God who liveth forever. God has seen generation rise and go down again and rise and go down and rise and fall and pass away. And God has remained because God is eternal. God had no origin and God will have no end. God is moving on, always moving on and man is only moving on until the last heartbeat and then he drops down into the arms of mother earth again and God prevails. Thou will prevailest says the Holy Ghost. Thou prevailest forever. And all His length of years are on the side of God and man is only the ephemera.

When I was very young boy, I learned what an ephemera is. An ephemera is a fly that is hatched in the morning, lives a day, and dies in the evening. Now, it’s called an ephemera, I suppose because it’s ephemoral, it passes away. And man is an ephemeral creature. He’s here today, but he is not here tomorrow, and the place where he is will know him no more.

And then there is God’s side. He’s the creator and the provider and the right of the proprietor. Always remember this, my brother and sister, that you and I are God’s poor relation, and that we’re living off of God whether we believe it or not. And the proudest and richest man in the city of Chicago, who would scorn such a sermon as mine tonight, nevertheless, he lives off of God and God looks after him and feeds him even though he bites the hand that feeds him and hates the heart that provides for him and opposes the God who gives him his daily bread. Yet, nevertheless, he’s living on God’s property and God lets him have a house on His estate, rent free, and looks after him and takes care of him, but always, always, he’s opposed to God.

And the opposition is the opposition of the one who has accepted the good gifts of God for a lifetime and yet has opposed the very God that has fed him. You can’t win that way, you know. The person who is not with God, Jesus said, He that is not with me is against me. And he that gathers not with me scattereth abroad. And no man can hope. It’s not in the nature of things. It’s not in philosophy. It’s not in reason. It’s not in theology. It’s not in nature that a man can oppose God and win. Always, always God prevails.

Now, prevails forever against him. And thus, we find man fighting God. And the fight is always against right. Somebody says I am not against right. But I don’t believe in the church, and I don’t believe in accepting Christ and going through all of that. Let me tell you, that you’re fighting the right if you’re fighting the gospel of Christ. If you’re opposed to the will of God anywhere, you’re opposed to the will of God everywhere. The outlaw is not the man who breaks all the laws of his land. The outlaw is the one who selects the laws he wants to break and keeps the rest. An outlaw will steal from a grocer in order that he might have money to pay somebody else. He’s keeping some laws, but he’s breaking others. So, the man that God is opposed to and has a controversy with God, is not the man who’s breaking all the laws of God, but the man who’s selecting the laws that he wants to keep and breaking the rest. I will prevail, is forever against him.

Now such a man is this and I feel this very deeply tonight. I don’t know whether I can get it across to you; you can’t always do it. It takes the Holy Ghost and a lot of other combinations in order to get an idea across to an audience or even to another person in private conversation. But I feel it very deeply tonight that I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to oppose God. I simply can’t afford it. Because the man that is an opposition to God can’t win and he can’t succeed. The two things that always men want to do. And the man who is on the other side from God cannot win and he cannot succeed. He can succeed as writers say, but he can’t succeed as a man. He can win as an athlete, but he can’t win as a human being. He can win as a politician and get the most votes and take office, but he’s not half a man. He can’t win as a man. He isn’t what God meant him to be. He’s not fulfilling the potentials of his nature.

The man that is opposing God anywhere, that has any controversy with God, is a man that can’t win. If he’s a farmer, he can have crops. And the tall corn may wave, and the yellow wheat and oats may wave on the field, but he’s still not winning. He’s only raising corn and wheat. He must win as a man. You must succeed as a human being, my listening friends. You must succeed as a human being. You must fulfill that which God puts you in the world for. The Bible teaches us that we’re not born by accident into the world. That we come here in the will of a sovereign God. And that God gave us our nature and gave us the blueprint for our lives and gave us possibilities and powers and potentials and gifts and faculties that lie within us.

And I can win as a farmer, but if I oppose God, I am not winning as a man. I might win as an athlete and lose as a man. And no man can afford thus to divide himself. The man who wins in an election and takes office and does it crookedly and violates the laws of his own nature and the laws of God. That man hasn’t won. He’s lost, tragically, terribly, lost.

Emerson said way back yonder nearly 100 years ago, young man, you want to be President, do you? Alright young man, let me tell you this. If you knew how much of his manhood a man has to sell out to be elected to office these days, you wouldn’t want to be President. No, I didn’t say that, Emerson said that way back there nearly 100 years gone. So, a man can win in one thing and lose in another.

I’ve known young women who went out to get a man just as certainly as a duck hunter goes out to shoot a duck. They had that in mind. They intended to do it. They didn’t fall accidentally into the company of the young man. They are after him, or at least somebody of the masculine gender and they got him. And so, they were written off. They weren’t failures. They won. They said, I do. I will. But in the act of getting that man, they lost everything that was dear to them for time and eternity. I’ve seen this horrible thing, and dear God, I don’t know why it has to happen.

And I’ve seen sweet-faced, innocent looking young ladies, Christians, converted to Christ, walking with him carrying their Bibles. And I have seen that strange phenomenon that nobody understands grab them. And their eyes fell upon some alley cat of a man reeking to God Almighty, blue imperium with tobacco smoke, no culture, no education, no ambition, no polish, no gentlemanliness, no anything. And a refined, beautiful and delicate young woman marries that tomcat. And from there on, God Almighty knows what happens. Does she pull him up? Never. It’s always the other way around. No matter how good a swimmer you are, if you jump into the lake with an anvil around your neck, you won’t pull the anvil up. It’ll pull you down.

And I have seen young men, fine looking fellows with a clear light in their eyes. And I knew that the voice of God was whispering to them. And they could have sung the simple colored song, I know the Lord laid His hand on me and meant it. And I have seen them become enamored of these–you know that type. And I’ve seen them follow them away from God and the church out into the world. And they won, but lost in the winning, tragic, terrible loss. You can’t win and oppose God. You can’t do it. God has the power and God has the glory and God has the might and God has the kingdom and God has the dominion and God has the years and God has the experience. You have nothing, nothing. You must turn unto God in Christ and get over on the winning side.

Now, that rich sense of relaxation and rest that comes when the fight is over and the worry is gone and you cease to oppose and stop fighting, and the contest is over and it’s all right. And you know when a nation is at war with another nation and one nation wins and the other nation formally surrenders, there’s always a sense of relaxation and peace comes to that nation. You can’t escape it. During my lifetime, I’ve known twice that Germany surrendered and once that Japan surrendered and once that Italy surrendered. And always the pictures that come from those countries show a sense of rest. It’s over. The fight is over now, and I won’t have to fight anymore.

Well, the man that’s fighting God is fighting a war, a battle that he never, never can win while the world stands. He can never have peace and happiness. What little he gets is only a passing thing, because God is always right and you’re always wrong. People call me up or write me and they want me to approve their lives. I get lots of letters wanting me to approve a wrong that they’re doing. They’re hoping to be able to get a little help from me saying chuck up, keep your chin up. You’re fighting God, but maybe one of these times God will drop asleep, and you can win. But they never do it, never.

When I was 17 years old, I formally took God’s side of every question. And I have not lived perfectly down these years. Don’t look at me and think I have. I haven’t. But at this moment, by the grace of God and the blood of the Lamb, I am on God’s side on everything. And I will not give any approval to anybody that are not on God’s side. I’ll never tell anybody they have a chance in the wide world if they’re not on God’s side. They have no more chance than you would have walking into a tornado hoping to turn it back. The Great God Almighty prevaileth forever against him and sendest him away. Thou changest his countenance and sendest him away. Thou changest his countenance and sendeth him away. I don’t think Shakespeare ever thought of anything more brilliantly imaginative than that. And yet, how simply true it all is. God changes His countenance.

There’s the pink-cheeked boy. And you never see a homely boy never. If nothing else, the very look out of their eyes is good to look at. And their round cheeks devoid of all this dope that you put on, the round cheek boy, the red cheek boy. Come back again in a few years, you’ll see a strong-faced man were a pink-cheeked boy has been. God’s busy changing his countenance. Come back again in a few years, you’ll find the sagging face of middle life. God has changed his countenance again. He doesn’t change it by snapping buttons. He changed it so slowly. People don’t notice it. And we come up to each other and lie like thieves and say, you haven’t changed a bit. God Almighty knows, He’s changing his countenance.

And then there’s the wrinkled, dry face, the flaky face of the old man. And then there’s the pale, cold face of the dead man. Thou changest his countenance. And if I didn’t believe in God for any other reason, I’d believe in God by looking at my own pictures over the years. Somebody’s changing my face. Somebody’s changing yours too. Don’t you think they are not.

Thou changest his countenance and sendest him away. Sendest him away from where? Well, away from his comfortable little nest. You know, we are all old dogs at heart. We love our homes, and we love our bedrooms, and we love our chairs and we love the presence of familiar things, the pictures we’ve known for so many years. And even things that are not so nice, they’re precious to us because we’ve had them a while. We all like to go in there like good old hound on a winter night and turn around three times and lie down and breathe deep and say it’s good to be under a roof. And we have our little nest, don’t we?

Well, it’d be sweet if the kind smile of God was on that home. Beautiful, if the kind smile of God was looking down like a moon that never changed and a sun that never set. But so many haven’t God in their homes at all. And God changes their countenances and sends them away from their little nest. Away from the familiar things that they love. Away from the people they knew and away from the reassuring landmarks. Thou sendest him away. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to go from his familiar haunts. He doesn’t want to leave the world.

Take a boy that has lived in a neighborhood; and he said lots of unpleasant, unkind things about the neighborhood and wished he could move out of it. And then, Uncle Sam grabs him and ships him off to Germany or Japan or Korea. And he isn’t there very long until he begins to paint a picture, a sweet picture on memory’s canvass of that back home, that little, dumpy corner where he used to get a soda with his girlfriend. It begins to shine like a palace of a king. And that crooked street with holes in it that trucks bumped in as they went along and waked him at night. And he turned over and grumbled, oh, the sound like the sound of the chariot that took Elijah home. He’s homesick now. He wants to come back where it’s familiar again.

And when he gets off the boat, nothing looks good except that little section where he comes from, where home is, where Ma is, and maybe his old, awkward father, who’s so glad to see him but wouldn’t let on, and maybe he is half-grown, freckled sister. Brother, does it look good to him back home there. He wants to come back home, and everything looks good to him. And when he walks up carrying that telltale canvas bag over his shoulder that says he’s Uncle Sam’s boy. When he walks up the street, he doesn’t see the holes anymore, and he doesn’t see how dumpy the corner delicatessen, or the corner candy store is. Wonderful as he comes home.

Am I describing to some of you fellows that went out and came back? Come on, fellows, isn’t it so? That’s the way we think about it when we go away. They’ve become familiar to us. And when we’re pulling away from them, torn out like a plant out of the soil, how darling, how sweet, how wonderful to come back and get our roots back down in again for a while and rest.

But Job says, Thou changest his countenance and sends him away. He’s fought God these years. He’s heard the gospel. He’s resisted it. He knows what’s right and he won’t know it. And he knows whose side he ought to be on, but he won’t take it. And one day God says to him, all right, boy, get going. Get going, Depart from me and God sends him away and he passes. Thou sendest him away and he passeth. I tell you, Shakespeare never wrote anything like this. Thou changest his countenance and sendeth him away and he passes.

There’s the biography of the human race. There is the biography of that old uncle of yours that fought God until he died. There is the biography of that old aunt of yours that never went to church and laughed at you and your family for going. There’s the biography of that smart aleck young fellow who had all the answers down the road there a few years back. Where is he now?

Where’s Voltaire? Where is Hitler? Where is Lenin? Where is Stalin? Where is Tom Paine? Where’s Bob Ingersoll? Where’s the man who founded the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism? Where’s the gangster? Where’s the fellow who had the north side under his thumb and carried a gun under his arm? Thou sendest him away and he passes. Thou changest his countenance and sendest him away. And they’re all gone. Where’s the big, bloated woman who used to come in at nine o’clock in the morning bleared-eyed drunk, and then cursed when you tried to talk to her about the Lord Jesus. God changed her countenance and drove her away and she’s gone.

Where are the multitudes that used to meet in Rome in the amphitheaters and watch the Christians being killed, and shout and scream like a breakfast club or a Bob Hope audience now and laugh as the Christians went in to die? They gained strength from the sound of their own voices. And the very volume gave them the idea that they could live forever and couldn’t perish. But God changed their countenances one after the other. The pink-cheeked lad was changed to the stern-face man, to the tired, middle-aged man, to the drooping old man, to the dead man. One by one they went and not a one of them lives now.

Where are they? Gathered on a Sunday night in the rain to watch the prize fights out here when John L. Sullivan fought bare-fisted 75 rounds? They thought they could get away with anything and everything, but where are they now? Where are the boys that get in the cars? Where will they be a few years from now and drive away in a roar of smoke and egotism, and whistle up the girls down the street? Where will they be a few years from now? God will change their countenances and drive them off. Send them away. God prevails forever against them and stands in the way. And always God is there. Always He’s there. The boy that steals the car, Gods there. The girl that goes out into questionable company, God is there. The man that lies soaked in nicotine and alcohol and looks blear-eyed at the TV set till one o’clock in the morning and neglects the church and God. God is there. Thou prevailest.

There it is Jacob. There it is Balaam. There He is Paul, on the Damascus Road, there’s God. God surrounding him like the air, going before him, following up, on the right of him and the left of him, above him, beneath him, all around him, there is God. The most awful thing about him is that he doesn’t know the jackass inspired by God could see the angel and the Prophet couldn’t.

McAfee, it’s an awful thought, a prophet of God with two men with him. A prophet of God and two men with him going on their way to get an offering, make a little money and bring in a little change. And the angel of God was opposed to their program, and they didn’t know it, but only the donkey knew it. But God was there, and they were turned back.

Now what is the answer to all this? You can’t win. You can’t know enough to win. You say, I want to get my M.A., then I’ll be all right. Your M.A. will only push back the frontiers of your ignorance and show you areas that you will never know that you didn’t know that were there. That’s all the M.A. will do for you. Somebody else says, I’m writing my thesis now and I’ll have my PhD. PhDs are a dime a dozen. I’ve got a seventh-grade education and PhDs write me and ask me questions, and I’m just an ordinary dumb fellow. I’m only telling you that because PhDs, they just have Doctor of Philosophies, that’s all.

That’s all a fellow that got a PhD told me this. He said, you know, Brother Tozer, what they do to you when they take in to examine you? He said, they examine you in fields where you’re not familiar in order to make a fool out of you. And he said, after they have reduced you to groveling idiocy so that it’s obvious that you don’t have the IQ of a half-grown tabby cat, then they give you your degree. So, they just want to show you how little you know and then they make you a doctor of philosophy.

Now, I worded that after my own method, a PhD couldn’t word it like that. But I worded that myself. But that’s what he told me. He told me that they just reduced him to a palpitating protoplasm and then give him and say, here’s your PhD, Brother. When you know you don’t know anything, then you’re smart enough to get a PhD. So don’t think a PhD is going to help you, son. It won’t help you at all. It’ll just make you proud, proud of your ignorance.

But what to do? What is there to do, change your religion? Somebody says, I’m going to change to be Catholic or Jehovah’s Witness or something else. It’s just like an enemy of God changing his clothes, that’s all. Just like Al Capone putting on a gray suit when he’d been wearing a blue. You’re just changing the externals, but you haven’t changed one thing; that you and God don’t get along. You and God have a controversy.

You never, never get any help by changing your religion. You never get any help by reading Aristotle. You say, I’ve heard the name Aristotle. He was a wise Greek. I can read him. I was just reading his categories this afternoon. But he didn’t say anything to help me. He’s just defining things, that’s all. Just helping me to know how to rot when I die. It’s helping me to know the laws of nature that reduce me to dust. But he never in any wise ran up a white flag and brought me and God together and he can’t. Nobody can.

What do we do then? Well, there’s only one thing to do. Quit the fight. Put up the white flag. Throw in the towel and say, O Great God, what a fool I’ve been that I have tried to run my life. Live my life and go my way and neglect the Savior and neglect the cross, oppose Thee and live an unrighteous life. O God, I can’t do it and I won’t continue to do it. Cease the fight.

You know, part of the joy of conversion is, the fight’s over. The fight’s over. You’re not fighting God anymore. That’s over. Amen? No more fight. Say, O God, I fought until it was awful. You know, it’s nice to get knocked out in the ring when you’ve really fought, until you’re exhausted. Some of those follows that are lugged off on the shutter are the happiest fellas in the world. It’s over now. They’ve quit. They’re done. Well, God won’t knock you out. But God will reduce you as he did Jacob. Jacob wasn’t happy one second all night long as long as he wrestled against God. But when he threw in the sponge and quit wrestling, then the sun rose upon his forehead.

I have a picture. If I had the ability of an artist, I’d paint the picture of old Jacob with the sun reflecting off his old bald head there by the river Jabbok. And I’d put an old Jewish smile on his face and mix it in with his old beard. And I’d show a happy man completely relaxed from head to foot. For the first time in his life, he’s relaxed. He wasn’t fighting anymore. God was on his side and he was on God’s side and he was on the winning side, and there was nobody opposed to him that amounted to anything. If you’ve got all the world on your side and God is opposed to you, you haven’t got anything on your side. But if you’ve got God on your side and the world is against you, you haven’t anything against you that amounts to anything. For John tells us that if God is for us, who can be against us.

So, give up the fight and kneel before your Maker. Kneel before your Maker. It would be a great thing for some of you if you would kneel down on your knees before your Maker. Get down on your knees, bend those knees of yours. Get down on your knees. Say here I am, God. It’s strange for me. I haven’t been on my knees except to work for a long time. Here I am on my knees. What a change.

I heard a Methodist preacher many years ago preach a sermon on the text: behold, he prayeth. It was about Saul when Saul of Tarsus was fighting Jesus Christ, you know, fighting him all the way along breathing, threatening slaughter, fire coming out of his nostrils like a dragon. And the Lord met him on the Damascus Road. He knocked him flat and blinded his eyes. And God said to Ananias, go down to such and such a street and find Saul. Behold, he prays. And the Methodist preacher made a great deal of it, that God is even a bit taken aback. He’s praying. This hard, vicious man, this heresy, this self-righteous enemy of the church was like a little lamb on his knees bleating up to God in his blindness.

It will be a great day for you, Brother, the day you will drop to your knees and not be ashamed and say, I’m quitting. I’m throwing it in. I can’t fight eternity. I can’t fight time. I can’t fight nature. I can’t fight God. Now give up and quit. What do you want me to do, God? What do you want me to do? And I know what God will say. God will say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. He will say as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on His name. That’s what he’ll say. He’ll say, you believe in my Son now. Obey Me for now on and your troubles, the main problems are over. You will have little troubles, but your main troubles are over.

And then take refuge from God’s anger in God’s love. I read that again. Dear old, what’s his name, the great medieval poet. It said he wanted to take refuge from the wrath of God in the mercy of God. The wrath of God blazed out of one side and he ran around on the mercy side and took refuge. There is a wrathful side of God and don’t you think there isn’t. But there’s a mercy side of God to that side of the cross. So, if you will get over on the side of the cross, you will meet God in peace at the cross of His love.

For Job said just above, Thou hast the desire to the work of Thine hands. Thank God. He has a desire to the work of His hands. A mother, yea, a mother may forget her second child. Do you know any mother would forget her child? Occasionally they do. Occasionally, the police find them in doorways or alleys. Occasionally, they’ll find a little foundling at the door of a hospital, but not very often. God selected the most wonderful thing He knew and said, can a mother forsake her baby? No. Not if she’s human. Not unless there’s some awful tragedy that’s taken her that makes her heart hard for a moment. She has a desire to the child of her love. And God has a desire to the work of His hands. I’m glad I can preach that tonight too. He has a desire to the work of His hands.

Well, what about you now? You. Don’t make excuses and don’t put up reasons and don’t try to make terms and don’t try to bargain and don’t try to make a deal with God. Come just as you are. Believe just where you are. Trust God just where you are. Throw up the hands of the inside your heart and say, Lord, I surrender all. I give up. I quit. No more fight. I take Thee Lord Jesus as my Savior forever. Would you do that, and will you do that? Have you done that? I wonder how many have done that? Good. Would you learn if you haven’t? I don’t want to embarrass. I don’t want to press you.

But if the blessed Holy Spirit has talked to your heart tonight and told you that God has a desire over you, that He hasn’t forgotten you. If you go, you’re away, he’ll stand against you though He’ll follow you and follow you as the angel did Balaam the renegade prophet. He’ll follow you on and on and on and on. But there will be a day when He’ll send you from Him and you will pass with a changed countenance and a broken heart. That’s a fact. But it’s also a fact that He has a desire to you. And He sent His only Son to die. And mercy’s door is open, and the grace of God can be yours. Let us pray.

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Denial of Self; Taking up our Crosses”

Denial of Self; Taking Up Our Crosses

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 23, 1956 Evening Service

Then said Jesus unto His disciples, if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it. And whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then He shall reward every man according to his works. Those of you who were not here this morning know that I promised that we’d have two sermons today on this one text. This morning I spoke, and we tried hard to listen to our Lord tell us that we must deny self and take up our cross and follow Him.

Now, it’s necessary, I suppose to repeat a little. Nobody likes it for some reason or other, but it would seem to be necessary for me to point out that this morning I said that our Lord stood at the threshold of the way of power and said, if any man will come after Me, let him take his cross and follow Me. Let him deny himself and take his cross and follow me. And I said that it was very odd of Christ, as seen from our human point of view, that He should place such a tremendous obstacle before His followers. And I pointed out that it is exactly contrary to all the techniques and methods and ways that man has of getting things done. No one, if he was going to try to succeed in anything, would lay down conditions that were exactly contrary to human nature; and that’s what Jesus did.

Nobody that was going to try to run a human institution would ever be guilty of laying down conditions that contradict the very instinct for self-preservation. And nobody that hoped to win and succeed, if he ran things the way man runs them, would ever deliberately array against himself, all the powers of the self-life, and yet Jesus did. Nobody, I think, who intended to succeed, would lay down terms that would drastically cut down the numbers of those who would follow him and yet Jesus did. Nobody who hoped to succeed, would lay down conditions that all but guaranteed that he would fail. And yet Jesus did all that.

If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and let him take up his cross and follow Me. And everybody knew what Jesus meant when he said, let him take up his cross. Nowadays, we don’t, because the cross has been made into hymnology, into art and culture, and church steeples and gold watch chains and Easter cards until it has taken upon itself the beautiful glow that something very, very old and very remote always has. But when Jesus said, let him take up his cross, the word “cross” struck home to the hearts of those ears with tremendous force because they had seen outside the cities in Palestine, crosses with men nailed on them and birds coming down to pick the remains and flies. And they had passed by and turn their noses away. They knew what a cross was.

The cross in Jesus’ day wasn’t a lovely thing that it is now, that we have made it in Christian tradition. It was a place where a man died. And Jesus said, if any man will come after Me, let him take his cross. Let him deny himself and take his cross and follow me. Now, that’s the negative side of the thing. And because some people never get beyond the negative side of it, I guess, we are uncertain and weak followers of Christ.

Now. I would speak tonight about how this can be made active in our personal lives and in the life of the church. Whosoever, said Jesus, will save his life, shall lose it. Now a timid man will never take up a cross because the cross is that upon which men die. And the timid man would never take it up. The timid man is going to protect himself in every way possible.

Did you ever stop to think brothers and sisters, how fear has determined our politics and our systems of economics; and they’ve gotten in, elected to office and kept them in office and then dumped him out of office. Our fears have done these things. The breed of bold man who used to go in and conquer bears and Indians and mountains and forests, seems to have given way to another breed of men who want to conquer nothing, but to be guaranteed that everything will be alright and that they will not have to face up to anything they’re not familiar with. Psychology has come in and cursed us by teaching us that if you’re frightened when you’re young, that you’re certain to develop some kind of a frightful disposition later on. So, we try our best to surround people with walls of protection and we build timid people. But the timid man will never lift a cross. And the timid man will never see the kingdom of God; without are dogs and whoremongers and idolaters and timid people. Jesus said that it said back in the book of Revelation.

Now, I want you to notice something about a man with a cross that whenever he takes it, he surrenders his future. You and I, because God put eternity in our hearts and because we have imagination to picture a bright and beautiful tomorrow, we all have our tomorrows laid out for us. And I don’t know how Jesus ever could have expected anybody to follow Him when He said, if you follow me, you’re going to have to give up your tomorrows. If you follow me, you’re going to have to surrender your plans. If you’ll follow me, you’re not going to have any future. If you follow me, you’re going to have to die. Now, my friends, a man who took a cross on his back didn’t have any plans. If he did, he gave them up. He didn’t have any ambitions and he didn’t have any wants.

I don’t want to introduce anything humorous right here because I’m very serious, but I heard this and it actually was true. This is not just the story that somebody wonked up for the occasion, but this actually happened some years ago. A young man was going to die in the electric chair, and he had five days to live, a number of young men. And they had five days to live. And the warden came to them and said, boys, you’ve got five days to read. What would you like to read? So, they selected some books to read and I remember seeing the book list. It’s quite surprising the books these fellows, about to die, without any future, without any ambitions, without any plans, and without any wants, that they could ever hope to realize. One of them chose this book, and I have often wondered why. He chose a book called, “Common Mistakes in English and How to Avoid Them;” And he had five days to go.

Now, I don’t understand this nor know why. But what do you suppose was in the mind of a man, a young man in his 20s, who knew he had five days to live and then there was a fiery death, and he wouldn’t talk to three people probably during those five days. But he wanted to know how to use good English and avoid mistakes. I don’t quite think he believed he was going to die. A man who knows he’s going to die next Thursday, isn’t going to read books on good English this Sunday. There was something in him that dodged it, some blind spot there. He couldn’t see that electric chair. It just wouldn’t go into focus. They said you’re going to die; he heard them and his ears heard but his heart evidently didn’t hear. He wouldn’t believe it. He visualized and dream of the time when he should get out, and when he got out, he wanted to be able to speak good English and impress people.

Now, my friends, I think that in the church of Jesus Christ, most of us have succeeded in getting a psychology that won’t quite face up to the cross. We don’t quite believe Jesus meant what He meant, or that when He said what He said, He meant what He said. We don’t quite believe it, because He says, take up your cross. And by saying, take up your cross, He means that your ambitions are going to die right now. That you’re having no plans. I make your plans from now on. You will have no tomorrows. You have to borrow my tomorrows. You have no ambitions. You’re going to have to let me supply ambitions. You have no plans. You’re going to have let me make your plans. Take up your cross and deny yourself and cease to be ambitious and cease to plan and ceased to have wants. But the timid man will never do this. Whosoever will save his life shall lose it. And the timid man tries to save his self-life. He protects himself from danger in every way that he can. But in so doing, Jesus said, he loses himself at last.

Now, I want to talk a little about how this operates in practical living. For instance, if he’s a church leader, if he’s a leader in religious things, I have noticed that the timid man usually backs into his theological positions. I have been among the Christians, and timidity is one feature. You’ll find it almost everywhere; like flies on a summer evening, you’ll find timidity flying about. And when you get talking with people, they’re scared. We’re not afraid of the Pope because he’s a long way off and he hasn’t any particular interest in us. But we’re afraid of some theological pope who’s the president of our college or the president of our Bible school or the editor of our denominational paper or our pastor or the crowd we run with. We’re scared, and we’re afraid to go straight ahead. We back into our positions.

I find some people that are never able to move right out and lay hold of an idea and say, this is the way it is. They look around and see what others think. Then they look at the liberals and the the borderline fringe. And they say, well, if they believe that then I won’t believe it, and so they back into their position instead of walking straight in. They back in because they’re afraid not to go in.

Brother, anything you do because you’re afraid not to do it has no moral quality in it whatsoever. Anything you believe because you’re afraid not to believe it, is not righteous and it’s not good. And even if it’s correct, it’s wrong. And even if it’s good it’s bad. So, if you move into it only because you’re scared not to, it has no holy quality about it whatsoever. For so, the false prophets did before you. And so, the Sadducees and scribes and priests and all hirelings that have crushed the church down the centuries have always done. They’ve always been afraid that somebody just mixed over them the next layer of religious authority.

Some fellow had a notice on his desk. It said, if you’re looking for somebody with a little authority, I am your man. I have as little as anybody around here. And there are those that are afraid of the next man with a little authority. They’re afraid of that little authority. I don’t know, was I born in the dark of the moon or something? I don’t understand it brother. I never was afraid of people with a little authority, never. I don’t know, a farm boy grew up and I never was scared of people and yet here I am. I’m afraid of people, but I’m not afraid of my authorities. I’m not afraid of the man who’s going to look over my theology and see if it’s correct or not. Chances are I won’t understand it anyhow.

But this idea that we’ve got to back in, and the fear of consequences. Anybody that does anything out of fear of consequences is not doing a good thing even if what he does is a good thing. It’s not good, because he stands under the black shadow of fear. And nobody that does anything because he’s afraid not to do it does a good act. And anybody that refrains from doing a thing, because he’s afraid to do it, he’s not doing a good act.

Now, this operates also in this; that they won’t take responsibility. I was talking in New York a couple of weeks ago, about a dear brother who’s now in heaven. I suppose there never was a more gifted man, probably not a more gifted man on the North American continent than he. He preached to me when I was a very young man. And his voice was as the voice of an angel. He had a voice, not nasal and whiny like mine, but was a great, golden organ of a voice. And he could play that trombone, that voice of his, beautifully and pull in and out. And anything from a whisper that could be heard in the vast auditorium to a musical roar, he had it all, and a brilliant mind and an illuminated heart.

But he never made good as a preacher. He hopped like a flea from one church to another church to another church to another church and ended up taking a few engagements wherever he could. And I was talking to this friend about our mutual friend who’s now with his Savior. And I said, why was that so and so, with all his vast gifts, never succeeded in making good as a man of God. He said, I’ll tell you why. He would never take responsibility. Nobody could ever lay any yoke on his neck. He wanted to be free. And you couldn’t get him to join anything or become a member of anything. You’re couldn’t vote him onto any committee. He’d resign. You couldn’t lay any obligation upon him. He wouldn’t take it. He wanted to be free. He was afraid of obligation.

Now the timid man is like that in the church of Christ, and you’ll find them in the churches every place. I’ve preached to people here for years. You’ll all right. And when you die, you will go to heaven. Thank God for an escape hatch. I’m Calvinist enough to believe that all right. But you’re getting old and you’re sterile. And you’re not getting anything done. If there’s a prayer meeting, you’re not at it. If there’s a men’s prayer meeting called, you’re not present. If there’s a visitation to be done in the neighborhood, you’re not here. If there’s any hardship or sacrifice, you’re never here. And yet you’re a Christian and I’m not going to un-Christianize you. Hell’s full enough. I don’t want to put anybody else in it if I could. And heaven is empty enough, I’d like to see you go there by the grace of God. But you’re not getting anywhere. Because you will not work in the yoke. You won’t take responsibility. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, said Jesus. And the tramp on the park bench is free, but the tramp on the park bench is sterile. And the President in the White House is bound by the yoke of office. But he holds the nation together and holds half a world together.

So, a man that takes a cross can’t be afraid at all. He’s got to say, well, this may kill me, but that’s what crosses are for, and I may fail. If I’ve failed, what’s the idea? I died anyway. And if I fail, I’m dead. I never resigned but one thing in my life, never. I resigned the vice presidency of the Christian Missionary Alliance because after four years of it, I found out that it was a round peg in a square hole and I wasn’t fitted to be vice president of anything anymore than I’m fitted to be a cardinal under the Pope in Rome. And so, I resigned, I turned it over to somebody who just fits it like a glove. Because he just knows how to say, all in favor, say aye. And pass that second carbon copy, please. And it’s okay. But I couldn’t do it. So, I resigned it. I didn’t resign it because I was afraid. I resigned it because I couldn’t do it.

And then, so I don’t say that if you can’t sing, you’d try to sing and if you can’t play, you’d try to play and that you try to do what you can’t do. But I am saying that some people are wasting their lives, tragically, frightfully, terribly, wasting their lives, for they won’t take a cross. Take My yoke upon you. Take My cross and deny yourself. And be prepared to fail if you’re going to fail. It’s all right. Because if you fail, nobody living has failed because you’ve died and all the rest.

Now. I’d like to say a few things, drawing a few conclusions from these premises if they could be called premises: for this church. And if you’re visiting from some other church, maybe you can take the fire back with you and the ideas that I’m going to give you. If we intend to deny self, if we intend to carry a cross here. If we intend to lose our carnal selves and find our eternal self, then there are four or five things I want to tell you have got to do. We’ve got to open new areas of peril. You’ve got to stop being overcautious in our projects, in our prayer lives. We got to stop being overcautious.

A businessman that is going to make a success, he’s got to risk capital, invest $100,000. It may turn back a million and it may turn him back a goose egg. He’s got to risk it. The explorer has got to risk the unknown. He’s got to pass beyond the known to the unknown. And we at the Alliance church, like armyworms on the top of a jug, we’ve been chasing each other around and round and round and round and round. And we’re keeping in the safe, proved path where we can’t fail because we haven’t succeeded and where nobody is in any danger because we’re perfectly sure we’re not risking anything. And we’re allowing our conservatism to narrow the top of the jug little by little by little and we are on each other’s heels now, round and round we go.

My brethren, you got to pass beyond the safe, known to the perilous, unknown in your spiritual lives. And that’s the reason that some Christians never get anywhere in their spiritual lives. They get hungry for a while. They’ll hear a Redpath or somebody else preaching. They’ll get ravenously hungry and have a crying time. And then they’ll say, all right now, this just doesn’t look practical in a world like ours. And so, they compromised with their carnality and settled down to the old religious humdrum and carry their Bible and their tracts, but they’re not going to get anywhere. They’re in the wilderness. They’re not going to cross Jordan. They are just crisscrossing their old trail. And they see a footprint and they say let’s follow that, forgetting that it’s their footprint they made two weeks ago. And so round and round we go as fast as water flows.

Brethren, it’s possible to allow our very conservatism to slow us down. You know what you got to do sometimes. You’re going to have to become very, very courageous and reckless in your spiritual lives. God loves reckless people. He loves people who look toward Him and say, God, look out now, I’m coming. And I’m on my way, and I will be there in a minute, and meet me, Lord. Oh, I don’t know whether I ought to preach two sermons tonight or not, but I’ll risk it.

I wrote one time about the inner witness and somebody wrote me and said, Brother Tozer, I agree with you about that inner witness. Every Christian ought to have an inner witness to his salvation. But now, said the writer, you haven’t told us how to get the inner witness. Now, write some more and tell us how to get the inner witness. Well, if I’d scared easily, I would run for a storm cellar. But I don’t scare easy and so I’m not running.

My brethren, there are some things nobody can tell you. There are some things you’re just going to have to find out from God. And our problem now is that every step in salvation no matter what, every step in salvation has all been laid out and marked. Do it yourself projects, you know, are quite a rage. And so, text number one, text number two, text number three, text number four, and you’re there.

No, my brethren, all any honest man can ever do is what John the Baptist did: Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world, and he faded out. And after that, everybody was on his own. He had found the Lamb of God. He found the Lamb of God on his own. Nobody can take you by the hand and lead you in. Doctrines and texts and teachings and instruction and counsel can do nothing but point you to God.

And then there is a zone of obscurity. There is a zone of shadow. That obscurity is the light that surrounds God. And nobody can help you cross there, nobody. No midwife can help you across. You come up against that zone of obscurity where your soul is stunned and driven down by the whiteness of the light of God. And you’ve got to make a leap across the shadows into the arms of Jesus and nobody can help you. Nobody with his marked New Testament can help you at all. All he can do is point and say, go ahead, but he can’t take you in. And that’s why I’m not running for the tall timber, because somebody writes and says, you say a man ought to have an inner witness, but you don’t tell us how to get the inner witness. Repent. Turn hard unto God. And after that you’re on your own. Believe on Jesus Christ and you’re on your own. And anybody that tries to midwife you into the kingdom of God and pick you out of the shell and help you to be born is ruining your spiritual life for all time to come.

There is a mystery here, a wonder here; a light that no man can approach unto. A call to come and a little light that repels. And only the bold and the courageous and the cross-carriers and those who are finished with the old world. They don’t want Christianity tacked on to make their human life a little better. They’re ready to give up all of life and take Christianity alone.

Christ is not simply something more added like another degree in a German university or a penthouse on your already too big building, or a swimming pool in your lawn. Christ is all in all. He’s not in addition to anything. Jesus Christ is being preached as an addition. You’ve got everything, only you lack Jesus. Now take Jesus and it will be all fixed. That’s heresy, pure and simple and ought to be blasted as heresy. Jesus Christ is not in addition to anything. Jesus Christ is all there is. And all we can do is say to the sinner is behold Him who Moses and the prophets did write and then pray and watch and hope. And the sinner moves cautiously toward Jesus and his sin is on his back and the glory of the person that Jesus Christ–one pulling and one pushing. Finally, he makes the leap and into the arms of Jesus he goes. Nobody needs to come and reason with him. Nobody needs to come and say, now verse so and so said this and two verses below said that, and the conclusion ought to be this.  No, he’s past the zone of obscurity. His heart has found God. And he’s come through and know the Lord for himself.

But he had to put himself behind himself. And he had to stop being afraid. And if you and I are going to carry the cross and be real Christians in power, we’re going to have to open new areas of our being to peril. We’re going to have to pass beyond the known and the familiar and the safe in our spiritual lives. Some of us are on our way to heaven scared stiff. Every shadow, every night bird, every cricket, every hoot owl, every train whistle, every barking dog has our hearts fluttering. We’re afraid of this cult and we’re afraid of that creed and we’re afraid of this big fellow and we’re afraid of somebody’s fanaticism and we’re afraid of the failure somebody made. We’re on our way to heaven scared to death.

Well, no child of God ever ought to be afraid of anything. Did you ever stop to think the man on his way to the electric chair isn’t afraid of anything? Did you ever stop to think about that. They say, stop, or I’ll shoot. He grins and says, shoot. I don’t care. I’m finished. I have no future. I’m on my way out to die. You can’t frighten me. I’ll take away your property. God can’t use property. You can’t scare a man who’s on his deathbed. And Jesus said whosoever will follow Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and whosoever will save his life shall lose it. And our problem is we’re always saving something.

Talk about the pack rat that saves everything or the jackdaw that steals buttons and looking glasses and saves it. We’re the savingest bunch of people, always surrounding ourselves. You know, that gets into organizations too. It gets into schools and colleges and missionary societies. The first founders were usually those who hadn’t anything to lose, so they weren’t afraid. There was only one way to go and that was up because they were already down. And they founded an organization and somebody else comes along and steps in without a heartbeat and without a tremor and without the loss of anything and moves into their shoes. And then they begin to surround themselves a protective wall, a bit here enacted and herein there in article number two section three, it shall be thereafter. Oh, I get sick in my head and sick in my heart with this fear, afraid, scared.

The prophet never protects himself with bylaws. The prophet said, I heard God say and He said to me, go tell these people and they go tell the people. The more backslidden and unspiritual the church gets, the more regulations it has to have to keep from falling apart. And you can usually tell the spirituality of the church by the length of its constitution. If the Constitution is long and carefully worked out, it’s a scared church. There’s no cross there, the safe, the familiar. And everybody’s frightened and watching carefully out the window peeking through to see if there’s anybody coming. The man with a cross, the apostle, the prophet, the reformer, the man who knows what God’s saying to his day, the cross-carrying Christian, never peeks out to see who’s coming. He doesn’t care. He wants to know what God wants him to do and he will do that.

Now what does this fear do for us? It weakens the church, and it withdraws it from its area of power. For always remember that power always comes following peril. Church history shows peril and power ran hand in hand. And I’m not trying to be alliterative. I’m not an alliterative preacher. I avoid it all I can. You can’t separate peril from power. And wherever the church of Christ was in mortal peril, she was usually in glorious power. But as soon as we find a safe retreat and box ourselves in, throw up walls and stockades, power goes. You don’t need power when you’re surrounded by stone walls. And this fear gives the enemy territory that he never fought for and doesn’t belong to him. Now, that’s number one, we got to open up new areas of our lives to danger.

The second, we’ve got to act instead of react. That is, we’ve got to hear from God and act boldly. I’ll explain what I mean. A man said this morning to me, God bless him. He may be here tonight. I think he is and he meant it and I agreed with him. He said, Brother Tozer, I don’t know how many people understood your sermon this morning, but I believe it’s Scripture. So, I’ll try to break it down and explain what a mean.

Being forced into things because it’s in vogue. Because other Christians or other churches are doing it and then their leaders say, well, other churches are doing it, and just as sure as you live, if you don’t do it, you will lose everybody. That’s what you call reacting instead of acting. It’s a reaction from fear. Many a heartbroken pastor is doing things in his church and permitting things in his church that he hates like the devil. But his Board has forced him to do it because they’re scared. And they say, now listen, we got an institution here that has got to go, and we got to have so much money if it’s going to go. And unless we do what the others are doing, we will not have the money. Well, you can always join the Salvation Army. You can always break up and go somewhere else. But that’s what you call reacting instead of acting.

Now brethren, the New Testament is our authority, and if we obey it and follow Jesus Christ and meet the condition, we’ll have His mighty presence. And the church that has His mighty presence is a New Testament church. Do you believe in the apostolic succession? I do. Do you? I believe in the apostolic succession. I believe in the perpetuation of Pentecost. I believe in the organic unity of the church of the 20th century with the church of the first century. And wherever the church of the 20th century is really found, under whatever name or denomination or group, wherever the true church is found, she’ll be organically one with the church at Pentecost.

In my mind, that’s success. Twenty-five people sitting around worshiping Jesus Christ waiting for Him to say go, that’s the Church of the Firstborn. That’s the New Testament church. That’s it. And nobody ever needs to worry about that church.

Now, the third thing we’ve got to do. We’ve got to break from the religious rat race. I mean by that, competition, biggest church, most expensive building, most famous pastor, largest enrollment. You hear that all the time. Some of you know our good brother who preached here, Brother Woychuk of St. Louis. I don’t know whether he was a Presbyterian or a Baptist. Which is it? Somebody ought to know here. I’ve forgotten. It doesn’t make any difference.

He wrote me a letter about something else altogether. He told me he was sending me a book, a complimentary copy of his new book, and then he sent along a folder. And the folder says this, featuring the greatest array of Christian talent ever presented on a St. Louis platform. About the speaker it says, nearly two years spent in campaigns in the British Isles, Europe, South America and other foreign countries. Featured speakers in scores of colleges and universities including Taylor University and Moody Bible Institute Founder’s Week. And then about another musician it says, widely known pianist. About another, a singer this time it says, has given command performances at the White House and before royalty. They’re so dumb they don’t know that a president has no right to ask command performances. And about a musician, it says master of the keyboard and famed pianist. And about a woodpile beater it says, the world’s greatest marimbaist. And then it says inspirational music, wonderful prizes and fun galore. And our good brother Woychuk wrote above it in blue pencil, how cheap can you get? How cheap can you get?

Is this the same Jesus Christ that wrote this New Testament? Is this the same Jesus that is now forced, in order to keep from failing and going into bankruptcy, to gather together an array of Christian talent such as never was presented before on a St. Louis platform? Is He compelled now to ride in on the coattail of a man who once spoke at Moody Institute Founders Week? Is He now forced to be sponsored and paid for by a widely known pianist and a world’s greatest marimbaist. If that’s the same Jesus, I confess I’m cross-eyed. I can’t notice the similarity.

This awful, glorious, wondrous, magnetic Jesus that walked among men and said, if anybody will follow Me, let him deny all this and take up his cross and follow Me. And now we have His name and His gospel and His language, but instead of denying all this, we build our church on it. And nobody dares say a word or they say you’re negative and a fanatic.

Well, I’m too old to care and too happy to mind. But all this, brethren, is a rat race. This is a religious rat race. I don’t know how much longer I can continue to be an editor. I don’t know. I’ve got to look at too many magazines. And reading magazines is one of the most discouraging things I possibly know. I told an editor not very long ago, I said, Brother, when I start the front of your magazine, by the time I’ve leaped to the back, I’m so blue I can’t get spiritual again for for hours.

They’re building on Adam’s flesh, no cross, all ambition, man’s way of doing it. They learned it from Bruce Barton and Dale Carnegie, and all the rest. For Jesus Christ stands tall and strong and glorious, and looks down upon a people and says, all that belongs to Adam. All that is flesh, all that rots, all that dies, lift up your eyes and see another kind of world. The world where the power of God alone keeps things going. A world where you don’t have to be afraid of people and things. Where you can act and not react. Where you can walk straight into your beliefs instead of back timidly into them because you’re afraid of somebody. A world where you don’t depend on big business methods, but you depend on the methods that come down from above. Where the power lies not in psychology, but in the Holy Ghost.

So, I say, we got to quit the religious rat race. If there’s anything of it in you, pray God Almighty will pump you dry and fill you with something new. For all this is vainglory, a show in the flesh, and it’s condemned on every page of the Bible.

And then fourth, and that’s all. If we’re going to be the kind of church we ought to be, we’re going to have to seek New Testament message methods, motive, and power. By message, I mean the message of Christ, and nothing added. God Almighty never allows Himself to follow a plus sign. God Almighty never allows His holy Son to be on the right-hand side of a plus sign. It’s not something else plus Jesus. It’s Jesus and nothing else or you’re no Christian. It’s not the Bible plus something else.

And then methods. They’ve got to stick to New Testament methods if we lose everything but will not lose everything. And motives. What are the motives that are back of most of our spiritual activities? I get frightened when I think about it. In the Alliance, the desire to have the biggest missionary offering in the Alliance or next to the biggest or the third and from the biggest motivates many an offering. And I would like to say to you right here, any church that gives because it wants to be known as a big missionary giver, is as carnal as a third chapter of First Corinthians. Our motives have to be pure.

Back here in 1 Corinthians 13, Paul said, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels–there goes the order–and have not charity, I’m become a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy–there goes your profits. And understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith–there goes your famous man of big faith–so that I could remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor–and there goes your philanthropist. And though I give my body to be burned–and there goes your martyr–and have not love it profiteth me nothing.

The only motive God recognizes is a crucified motive. The desire to glorify God and bless humanity and not to be known or heard or seen, that’s the only motive. What a terrible hour it’ll be at the judgment seat of Christ, what our Plymouth Brethren friends called the Bema, when we shall stand all stripped, no degrees will go there, brother. No degrees, no write ups in the press will ever go there with you. No great fame will ever go there with you. There you’ll stand along with black and white and red and yellow, and big and little, unknown and obscure, mighty and small and rich and poor who have believed in Jesus. And there we’ll all stand without a degree.

The average preacher can last out five years hiding behind his honorifics. He starts out with Reverend and goes on to DD, and then he gets a few more degrees tacked on. And after a while he gets so he can hide. He can last at least five years hiding behind his degrees. But before the Bema, no degrees will come. It’ll be a naked soul. And it’ll not be how many sermons did you preach, how famous were you. It’ll be what were your motives? What were your motives? But O Jesus, I gave everything to Thee. Why did you give it? O Jesus, I was a silver-voice speaker. Why did you speak? O Lord, I died for Thee. Don’t you remember, Lord? Why did you die? Not what did you do, but why didn’t you do it?

And that goes for every dime dropped in the plate. That goes for every teacher that teaches a class. That goes for every solo song. That goes for every sermon preached and every book written, and every Christian deed done. That goes for every soul we try to win, for every missionary activity we carry on. That goes for everything we do. Not what did you do, but why did you do it?

And we can say, Lord, Thou knowest my heart, and I Thou knowest. But back there in Chicago, I gave my all to Thee and died and said Lord, I have no ambition, no plans, no future. Thou art my future and I am as ready to be obscure as I am to be famous, as ready to be unknown as I am to be known, just so Thou art glorified, Lord. He put His arms around this man and says this is your reward thou good and faithful servant.

And then lastly, finally now, we’ve got to return to New Testament power. I think now it’s time. Every place I go, people are coming and saying, Brother Tozer, did you hear so and so was filled with the Holy Ghost? Somebody else would say, did you hear about Dr. so and so? He’s gone to a wonderful experience having been filled with the Holy Ghost.

I was over in Highland Lake. They came to me and said, did you hear about the man who runs Highland Lake, he was wonderfully filled with the Holy Ghost. I was up to the InterVarsity in Canada, a man came to me and said, I’d been talking with Paris Reidhead and I’m on my way now to Hong Kong, but unless I’m filled with the Holy Ghost, I want to die. And I laid my hands on him and prayed that God would give him his heart’s desire before he reached Hong Kong.

They’re rising here and there, here and there. They’re not Pentecostals, the tongues people, they’re ordinary evangelicals. But everywhere I find them, they’ve read something that puts salt in their water and made them ravenously thirsty. And they say it in different ways, but it all adds up to this, I want to be filled with the Holy Ghost or I don’t want to live. They’ll be filled all right. We must seek New Testament power. Have we the courage to seek an outpouring and take the consequences?

We’re such a lovely bunch here at the Alliance. God bless our cultured souls. Our education level is very high, and we live in nice homes and pull up in great big, smooth cars that stopped without a jar. And we’re well known as being safe and spiritual. Are you ready to have God pour Himself out on you in such power? And some of the evangelical bigwigs will say, have they gone crazy over at the Alliance?

Are you ready to be a fool for Jesus sake? Are you ready to give up your place in the rat race and seek to compete with nobody anymore, except to love of Christ more than anybody else and then wait for God’s smile alone. For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father. And there are those who think it won’t be long. It won’t be long. He shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels. And then He shall reward every man according to his works.

Well, you don’t have to like me, and you don’t have to like this severe preaching. But I tell you, He’s coming in the glory of the Father. And all of the religious pretenses will perish like a leaf in a furnace. And all the noise and all the great array of Christian talent and all the two years of campaigning in somewhere and all of the widely known pianists and masters of keyboards and world’s greatest marimbaists shall stand in trembling fear before the eyes that are like lightning. Before the head that is white as wool and feet that are burnished brass.

And I don’t want to face Him unless I can face Him right. I’d rather have died by the grace of God, a black, snub-nosed man in a hut in Africa that never heard of God or Christ than to go out to the judgment seat knowing what I know and yet not having my motives right nor my heart right and never having taken a cross or denied myself but live for what I can get out of it. And use the church for a sounding board for my pride and use the poor sheep to feed me and pay me.

I say I’d rather die a colored man in a forgotten tribe in the hinterlands of Africa than to die a Chicago fundamentalist. And face Jesus Christ, having preached His cross and never carried it. Having preached self-denial and never denied self. Having preached pure motive and never had it. My God, what a terrible day it’ll be. Oh, those eyes, and that terrible face. Or is it going to be the sweet smile of the Savior who says, well done, good and faithful servants?

Please pray brethren. I want to help them, God. The rut, the routine, the safety of our position, our forms, all of that we’ve been the victims of. And I want to be courageous enough to take a cross on my shoulder and wave goodbye to grandfather Adam and all of his dirty brood and say, Jesus I come to Thee. I take my cross Lord and I follow Thee. That’s what I want to do. What do you want to do?

How many will say tonight, Mr. Tozer, pray for me. I understand what you’re talking about. I’m going to conferences myself and I’ve got to preach three times to brethren of this district and conference. And I got to be right, and I’ve got to be more than a name. I’ve got to have God.

And you say, Mr. Tozer. I want you to pray for me too. I’m not preaching this week, but oh, I know what you’re talking about. I’ve got to have this too. And I want to know what it is to die and to have no future except God, and no ambitions except to honor Him. And want to know what it is to die and rise in newness of life. Would you pray for me? Who will stand and say pray for me, Mr. Tozer.

We’re going to pray. Who will stand and say, pray for me. Pray for me that I might know what this is that Jesus meant. We’ve heard Him say today, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. And I want to know what this means in living, vivid experience. Pray for me Brother Tozer. Who else? God bless you. God bless you. God bless you.

If this is just a religious show. I don’t want any part of it. If Jesus meant what He said, then this is a glorious and terrible thing. So, who else will stand and say pray for me? Pray for me.

O Lord Jesus, here we are in Chicago’s Vanity Fair surrounded by Sodom and Gomorrah. And every temptation and every evil, and concentration and meditation and contemplation are all but impossible. And with radio and television and magazine and newspaper and billboard. O my God, Thou knowest how we’re brainwashed and our psychology is secularized and materialized and made worldly. But O Lord, even here Thou hast some who never bent a supple knee to Baal. They’ll die before they’ll do it. And their motive is pure. And now, here are some standing who say, they want, Lord Jesus, to know what this means in its intensity and fullness and depth.

They want to know. They don’t want to be fooled. They don’t want to be fooled by men’s secularized Christianity. They want to know the Truth. God bless these young people. And Lord, fall on them with an infusion and an effusion of power that will make them firebrands in their day. Lord, Thou knowest we’re looking back, back, back all the time. Thou art the God of today and tomorrow and Thou can meet these people, everyone. Send them out not to quip off what they’ve heard, nor laugh off the day, but seriously to seek Thy face and put their tomorrow on the cross and their ambitions alongside of it. Graciously blessed Lord and we’ll give Thee the praise. Let’s all stand.

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Tozer Talks

Denying One’s Self”

Denying One’s Self
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
September 23, 1956

Again today, I want to take one text and preach two sermons one this morning and one tonight. This does not mean that I preach half the sermon now and finish it tonight. It means that there are two sermons which I preach from the one text. It is the text in the sixteenth of Matthew, a familiar passage, but one that needs to be recovered from its very familiarity. Then said Jesus unto His disciples, if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it. And whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it. For what does a man profit if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with His angels and then He shall reward every man according to his works. Those are the words of Jesus. If any man will come after me.

Now, last week I preached two sermons on the text, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. And our Lord is interested, he’s inviting, and He is even urging people to come unto Him, but He is not begging. To think that our Lord must be placed in the position of begging people to come to Him is to be guilty of an error equal to those of the heretics of all ages, because thus to think dethrones Christ. Christ must sit on His throne and always Christ must sit on His throne.

I believe and have said, I suppose, to the point of tedium, that the great problem of the day in religious circles is a small God and the dethroned Christ. And the great need of the hour is to see Jesus Christ as He is. And when we see Him not as He is, then we overplay His invitation and we put Him in the position of being on trial again before us as though we sat on the throne, however shaky, and He stands before us handcuffed once more with marks on His back. It’s all very poetic, but it’s also all very false. For it makes the returning sinner the hero which the Bible never does.

In the book of Psalms, 45:4, it says about our Lord Jesus Christ: gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty. And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.

We have two words here, majesty and meekness. And in His meekness He stands outside the door and says: Behold, I stand at the door and knock. In his meekness, He says, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. But He is not all meekness, there is also majesty. And in His majesty He appears this way: and being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks. And in the midst of the seven candle sticks, one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot and gird about with a golden girdle. His head and His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow. And His eyes were the flame of fire. And His feet like unto fine brass as if they burned in a furnace. And His voice was the sound many waters. And He had in His right hand seven stars and out of His mouth with a sharp two-edged sword. And His countenance was of the sun, shining in His strength. When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His hand upon me saying unto me, fear not, I am the first and the last. I’m He that liveth and was dead, and behold, I’m alive forevermore, amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. There’s the majesty and the meekness of the Savior. But don’t let’s overplay the meekness, for someday we’ll face the Majesty. If any man will come after Me, He says. And so He passes by if any man will come.

Now, if any man will not come, that man will lose eternally, but Christ will lose nothing at all. But if a man will come, then he shall gain eternally, but Christ will gain nothing at all. Could we not even think as Christians once in a while and remember this? Could we not see Him where He is at the right hand of God the Father Almighty? Could we not see the shining, burnished crowns that are to rest upon His holy head while the ages beat themselves out into nothingness? And can we not know that if a man will not come, he loses forever, but Christ loses nothing at all.

And if the man will come, he gains eternally, but Christ gains nothing at all. He being the Eternal Son who was before the world was, whose creating fiat brought all the creation into being. How then can He gain from me? If I must take it out of His left hand to put it in His right hand? How can He gain from me? If He must give me the strength to worship, then how can He gain anything from me?

No, my brethren, nothing that anyone can do or refuse to do can diminish the glory of the Eternal Son. I wish that men might see this again, and we might begin to preach it again until there was more fear and less frivolity in the church of God, and our approach to Him was with greater reverence and solemn fear instead of the unworthy manner that it now is in too many instances.

In the book of Isaiah 49:5, there is an odd passage, a very odd passage. It says: Though Israel be not gathered, verse five, and now saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be a servant, to bring Jacob again to Him. Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord and my God shall be my strength.

God sent His Holy Son to gather Israel, but said Jesus through the prophet Isaiah, though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of Jehovah. Nothing that Jesus did or can do can make Him any more glorious in the eyes of His Heavenly Father. He was with the Father. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. And He can gain nothing by anything that He can do. As a man, He was elevated and made Lord and Christ. As a man He humbled Himself and was exalted. But as God, He never could be exalted, because He already occupies the apex of all thought and possibility and being.

So that no matter if no one were converted and if nobody was saved and nobody followed Christ in this whole wide world for a generation, still would He be glorious in the eyes of His Father. In meekness He came, but in majesty He reigns, and He will be none the less majestic if the whole world turns against Him.

And if an antichrist reigns and everything that is of God is trampled under feet and every statue and every picture and everything that the cultured world understands that’s religious is burned or destroyed, and every church is turned into a garage and every preacher is put in jail and every Christian is hounded to death, He will still be majestic in the eyes of God and all intelligent moral beings.

If any man will come after Me, He says, and He puts it back on the man himself. For always remember we do not rescue Christ by letting Christ rescue us. Always remember that if we come, we come because we ought to come. We’ve come because we should. We come because every moral argument is on the side that we should come. We come because we hear his voice inviting. But always remember that we do not rescue Him from failure by letting Him rescue us from sin. He will be glorious in the eyes of God if the church fails and all the world turns against Him. If any man will come after Me, He says, let him deny himself.

Now, in the dim light of modern religious notions, it’s a very odd thing indeed that Christ should place such an obstacle here before His people, for undoubtedly, this was done as a test. Undoubtedly, the Lord God here caused everyone who’s looking His way to pass under the rod. This is the elimination contest. This is the word that tells us whether we go any further or not. If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself. And right here at the beginning, He lays down a condition for following Him, or conditions for following Him. And that which He lays down is exactly contrary to human nature.

I hear it said that we ought to try to harmonize Christianity with human nature. And that seems to be the philosophy of modern times that men are harmonizing Christianity with human nature and showing that the two harmonize dutifully. But at the very door of the Kingdom, the Majestic Savior lays down terms exactly contrary to human nature, terms which run counter to everything that we’re taught in school that contradicts the instinct for self-preservation, and erase all the power of self against Him, and cuts down drastically the number of those who will follow our Lord Jesus Christ and almost guarantees the failure of His religion.

Oh, I’m glad heaven isn’t going to be like earth. There are some things that I’d settled for. I like some things in this world, very beautiful things indeed. But there are other things that they stem out and bubble and ooze up out of the putrid cisterns of man’s iniquity, and I don’t like them even when they overflow unto me. And I’m glad that God does things differently.

Now, they tell us how to sell toothpaste and they tell us how to get elected. And the wonderful thing about it is, or the strange thing is, you’ll sell toothpaste if you follow them. They have found out how to do it. They have tested the housewives and know just exactly how intelligent they are. And you gals would not be nearly so proud if you knew what they thought of you back in the offices where they think up the advertising slogans that will get you to buy their goods. But that’s the way they do it now and it works. They know how business is to be run and it works. They know how to get a man in office, and it works. And they know how to sell and that it all works. And they tell us that we’ve got to use all those same methods to promote the gospel of Christ.

But have you ever thought that Jesus Christ turned this whole thing upside down and did it backwards? Did you ever stop to think that instead of getting the backing of big businessmen, He was born of a virgin under circumstances which were extremely shady from man’s standpoint. Did you know that instead of His being a son of one of the rabbis or the great men, He was the son supposedly of a carpenter, very little-known outside of His own tiny village. That instead of His going to the great and getting them to sponsor Him and help Him, He started out from scratch, a poor man, instead of gathering the mighty, and saying we’ll get this PhD over here and we’ll make him the first apostle. And we’ll get this DD over here and we’ll make him apostle number two. And we’ll get this man over here who’s had a book published and he’ll be apostle number three. And we’ll get this man who’s painted a famous picture, and he’ll be apostle number four, and on down the line. He went to the simplest people in the world and took them and said, come and follow Me and He upset the world starting with nothing.

He didn’t understand our methods at all. And He didn’t now know how you get elected. Jesus Christ could never have gotten Himself elected to any office in Israel. He couldn’t have, unless of course, they’d given Him a vote and may have elected Him because He healed them. But He’d never have gotten any place. There’s no party who would ever have nominated Him, nobody. They’d have said, He isn’t a vote-getter. He’s in trouble all the time.

And then when He did that final, holy and solemn act at which angels fold their wings and man looks in wonder. It was to die as a common criminal on the cross, and then send out men to ask the proud world to believe and believe in an executed criminal. They’d have chased Him out of every office in New York City and Chicago. They’d have said, your advertising methods will ruin you. You don’t know how to get along. He doesn’t do things as man does. He does them backwards to man, because man is wrong and God is right.

Let him deny himself He said. And everything but guaranteed the failure of His religion. And yet, old Napoleon on the island of, where was it? Oh well, they had him somewhere out of circulation. I can’t recall the name of the island. It doesn’t matter. They had him there and he said to one of his exiled generals with him. He said, General, what do you think of Jesus Christ. The general said, sire, I prefer not to reply. He knew Napoleon. Napoleon said, well, if you won’t tell me, I’ll tell you. He said, Caesar, Alexander and I, we have conquered nations, but we’ve had to do it by blood and tears, and we’ve had to do it by killing men. And we’ve had to do it by being present there to give enthusiasm to our troops.

But he said, here is One who never held a sword in His hand. Here is one, this Jesus, who never used force at any time in His whole life. And here is One who died and is gone, and nobody’s seen Him for 1900 years. And still today, He has an empire bigger than the combined empire of Cesar, Alexander and Napoleon. And all around the world, there are people that would die for Him at the drop of a hat. No, he said, I don’t know what you think of a man like that, but I think He’s God.

I’m glad for that testimony from Napoleon, but we didn’t need it. Because when God sent the Holy Ghost down from the right hand of the Majesty, He said, God has made this man Lord and Christ and we don’t need Napoleon. We’re grateful for any testimony, but we’re not needing it.

Now, our Lord Jesus Christ simply upset everything here. And I wonder if this is the same Christ I’m hearing about now? I wonder if this is the Christ that we’re forced now to excuse and edit and amend and apologize for? I wonder if this is the Christ that now must get on His two knees and coax and beg and plead to gain followers. I wonder if this is the one who sends his people out and say, don’t offend anybody or I won’t have any following. I wonder if this is the same Jesus that takes every little rock and thorn out of the path of the just now and says don’t bump his foot. If he bumps his foot he’ll probably backslide. Is this the same Jesus that said, if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take his cross? Is this the same Jesus that now has to give everything and ask nothing, that smiles and goes along with covetous businessmen and crooked politicians and carnal entertainers and tries to get along with everybody?

Is this the same Jesus? I’m inclined to think there must be two Jesuses. The one who said, if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take his cross. And the one who mules and whines and whimpers and waits and begs and says, please come, I’m a failure. If you don’t come, I need you. I’ve got to have You. That’s degenerate Christianity. I think God just as soon become a Capuchion father as belong to that kind of thing–a Capuchion father. Well, I couldn’t be a father, I’m married and got children. But anyhow, I don’t know what I just as soon be a monk somewhere and join Tom Martin and have days of silence and live on whatever they get than to follow a Jesus I couldn’t have any confidence in.

Oh, brother, the Jesus Christ I’m following, I want you to know that I want him to remain what He is if He has to send me to hell to accomplish it. I want you to know that I don’t want Him any less than He is. And that I don’t want Him to in any wise yield to this streamlined job they’re giving Him. I don’t want anybody to say as they’re saying of Nixon and Stevenson. Oh, he’s a new man now. I don’t want any new Jesus. I want the Jesus that could bring an apostle down in a dead faint by looking at him. I want the Jesus that dare turned His face up to the whole world and say, come and follow Me if you want. They don’t want to–well all right, but if you come, you’ll have to take your cross and deny yourself. I want that kind of Jesus. And I want the kind of a Redeemer that I don’t have to apologize for. I don’t have to excuse Him and say, well, He’s a wonderful Savior, of course. I don’t want any of course when I’m talking about Jesus. I want him to be what He is, but always was and will be forever.

You used to stand the little old Calvinists up in a line, you know, God bless them in the olden days of the early Presbyterians and Covenanters. They would stand a little old Calvinist’s kids up and line them up there Sunday morning, and they’d start them out on the catechism. The first word was, what is the chief end of man? And it hadn’t gone very long until they said, would you be willing to be damned for the glory of God? And every little liar along the wall said, yes sir. But he didn’t know what he was talking about. But that was the answer, you know. That was the answer. But brethren, after you know Jesus Christ, you know what those old Calvinists had in mind. After you ever come to know Him once, you know that you’re so jealous for His glory that you’d rather lose everything than to have Him change at all.

Now, what is deny himself mean? Well, let me show you what it isn’t first. It isn’t to deny something to self. It isn’t to deny self luxury, but let luxury live, to let self live. It isn’t to deny self food, but let self live. It isn’t to deny self sleep, but let self live. It isn’t to deny pleasures to self. It isn’t to deny freedom to self and go to jail or life to self and die a martyr. Many a murderer has died a selfish man, died in his selfishness. He died but he was still self that died.

Milton says this. God bless the old, eyeless saint. They said he read the Bible so much, though he was a Englishman, he had a Hebrew mind. And listen to this. He says, though ye take from a covetous man all his treasures, he has yet one jewel left, his covetousness. And you can take from a selfish man all that ministers to self. And he says, well, they’ve stripped me but thank God, I’ve got self left. And self, naked and hungry and cold and tired, can go proudly on its way.

Jesus said, deny self. He didn’t say deny things to self. And Eckhart says that a man can give up a kingdom and a fortune and still have himself. He hasn’t given up anything yet. Then he turns it around, thank God, and says, the man gives up self, then you can have a kingdom and a fortune, and he isn’t selfish.

Now, self, selfness, expresses itself in two ways. It wants its own way and it wants a reputation. And, first of all, briefly, it wants its own way. Here’s what the old theologian says. Now, since the life of Christ is in every way most bitter to nature, and to self and the me, therefore, in each of us nature hath a horror of it. And think of it evil and unjust and a folly and graspeth after such a life as shall be most comfortable and pleasant to herself. Now nothing is so comfortable and pleasant to nature as a free, careless way of life. Therefore, she clingeth to that and taketh enjoyment in herself and her own powers, and looketh only to her own peace and comfort and the like. And this happeneth most of all, where there are high natural gifts of reason.

Some of you that have high IQs, you’re worse than the rest of us. It soareth upward in its own light, he says, in its own power. So, if self can just be allowed to live, he’s willing to live in the doghouse. If he just be allowed to stay just willing to sleep on the floor. If you’ll just permit him to live, he’s willing to wear rags. He’s willing to go to Ecuador. He’s willing to go to the Baliem Valley. He’s willing to eat monkey food. He’s willing to do anything if you’ll just let him live. There are many missionaries from Ecuador here, don’t think I mean you. I was just grasping for someplace far off where people have to go to it.

Now, it just wants its way, that’s all. So, it will sacrifice. It’ll give. It will work. It will wear old clothes. It’ll study and burn the midnight oil. It’ll take abuse, just so it can live. And Jesus said, if any man come to Me, let him deny self. And self says, oh, please don’t deny me. Don’t repudiate me. Discipline me, chasten me, starve me, but don’t repudiate me.

And then self wants a reputation. And a desire for reputation is one of the last things to go in a man. And the very last thing to go into man is the desire for reputation among the saints. After we’ve given up all hope that we’ll ever get on the front of Time magazine, we still have some hope on getting on the Alliance Weekly. And after we have given up all hope that the world will ever count us great, we still have a sneaking hope that maybe the church will recognize us. If only we can get a reputation somewhere, self says. If I can’t wear the gold crown of public favor, could I not at least wear the little hoop of religious favor.

And in lots of our meetings, lots and I don’t mean Alliance meetings, which could happen there. I’ve been around a little and I’ve read a little and talked to a lot of people and I’m prepared to say this, that an awful lot of the saints, great numbers of the saints, so called, who have got a reputation, have earned it by being a little queer, a little excessively spiritual, shout a little louder or do something, and they live and bask and revel in their reputation for being great saints.

Some of them will stand up and wave her hand and shout while the preacher is preaching. Everybody will chuckle and say, isn’t she a card. She’s got a reputation among the saints. I hate to think what they would do with her in some places. But at least in the church, they allow her to live and make a little hero out of it, or him. It could be him just as easily. Self wants to shine. It wants to be allowed to live, willing to live in the doghouse, but wants to live, and wants to have a little reputation, however small, even if it’s only among the saints.

And the most refined form of this is a desire to be known as a man of prayer. And the very act that’s meant to humble us, becomes an occasion for our exultation. Oh, he’s a man of prayer. R.R. Brown pointed that out to me years ago. At the time I didn’t believe it, just as some of you don’t believe it now. But usually when Brown comes through with something, afterward, I find out he was right. And he was right on this. He said there’s nothing so dangerous as for a man to get a reputation of being a man of prayer or seek it. And just as soon as you get that reputation, dangers come from the inside and from the outside. And the dear people say, if old brother so and so isn’t present, they say, I know where he is. He’s off praying. He may be asleep, but he’s got a reputation. He’s off praying somewhere.

Now, here’s what we should do. We ought to pray a lot more than anybody knows we pray. And we ought to be men and women of prayer, but not seek a reputation for being men and women of prayer. For Jesus said, you stand on the street corner and you pray and pray. He said you do it to get a reward and you’ve got your reward. Goodbye, here’s a receipt. But he said, If you really want to pray, when you shut the door when nobody knows you’re praying, and do your praying there. It’s dangerous, I say, to get a reputation or to seek a reputation for being a man of prayer.

Now, take up his cross, and I’m finished. The cross is always God’s way of dealing with us–always. Self has to be sentenced. You can’t slay self. You can only repudiate self. The word is denied. Denied. A man stood one time, and they were holding Him and captured Him as you capture an FBI wanted man. There he was. There he stood. And they turned to Peter and said, Peter, do you know this man? He said, no sir. I don’t know Him. He’s stranger to me. I never saw him. He’d been with Him three years. He said I don’t know Him. I don’t know Him. That was denial. He denied Him. He repudiated Jesus. Thank God, he wept and wept later on when the cock crowed, and Peter got right with God again. It’s good not to sin, but if you do it’s good to know you can get right again and Peter did.

And that’s what repudiation means. You turn on yourself, you, you. All those cute little idiosyncrasies that you have cultivated. And that little reputation that you’ve built up about yourself, such a nice husband, such a dear daddy, such a thoughtful husband. Such an efficient wife. Such a brilliant man. Such a fine saint. That’s our little reputation. It may only be the size of a small grain of rice, but it’s ours. It’s our little reputation. If we see our name in print anywhere, we glow all over. Our reputation, it’s us, it’s I.

Jesus said you see that little thing there that you’ve allowed and around which all your life revolves. That’s you, you, a businessman, wonderful fellow. You get slapped on your back until your back’s sore. What a wonderful fellow. Jesus said, you know him? Do you know him? And if you say, yes, I know him, that’s me, the Lord turns His back. But if you say Lord, I’m sorry, I know him, but I don’t want to know him. I repudiate him as of now and henceforth I know not the man. Then you’re beginning to be a Christian. Take up your cross He says.

You’ve got a sentence. God sentenced you long ago. You with all those cute little ways you have. Some of us can even get bald in the cutest manner and enjoy it, enjoy our friend’s jokes and all the rest. Look at our pictures and smile and show them around and say, look at this. Well, I don’t mean it’s wrong to show your pictures certainly. But I just mean, you know, we can get self there. Self takes the throne. And Jesus Christ said, well, I’ve got a journey to make, a long, bloody, cross-filled, thorny, rocky journey. You can’t go along unless you’re ready to deny yourself, take your cross and follow behind me. Are you ready? And a few have said yes, but most have said no.

Most have said as the old theologian has it, I’d rather be comfortable and pleasant, and have a free and careless way of life, because self, to deny self and me and nature is a horrible thing, evil and unjust and folly itself. That’s what nature says. But Jesus says, if you’re coming, you’re going to have to meet my terms.

Now to try to be a success in your Christian field, that builds up the ego. But we’re willing to be a failure before your God and to repudiate yourself and to take your cross and follow Christ. So you must come and pass sentence against yourself. No excuse. Nowhere to hide, no cover up, no defense, but let yourself go. For said Jesus, whoever will save his life shall lose it. Whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

Now, there’s Christianity, brethren. That’s it. And in case you think that this is just one man’s queer notion of it, that’s historic Christianity. That’s what Luther taught. That’s what Wesley taught. That’s what John Knox preached. That’s what Augustine preached and Chrysostom. That’s what Bernard believed. That’s what Simpson taught. It’s historic Christianity without a doubt, but it’s so strange and so foreign in an hour like this.

But if we know what’s good for us, we will repudiate everything that hasn’t come up to this. Take this and say, Lord, teach me. Teach me to take the cross and deny myself and follow Thee. This is the negative side of the message. There’s another side and I give it tonight using the same text. I hope you’ll be back for a warm and rousing song service and message.

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The Great Common Faith”

The Great Common Faith

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 9, 1956

The first chapter of the book of Titus, Titus, the first chapter, Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ according to the faith of God’s elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie, promised before the world began, that hath in due times, manifested His Word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God, our Savior. To Titus, mine own son after the common faith. Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior.

Now, there are four phrases here; according to the faith of God’s elect; and the acknowledging of the truth; and manifested His Word through preaching; and after the common faith. Now they all mean about the same thing, the faith of God’s elect, the common faith, the truth that is preached, and the truth that is acknowledged.

Now, every so often, it’s necessary that a minister should restate what is the common faith, the faith by which we live. I want you to notice that the word “faith” has two meanings. It means a body of truth. That is it’s one meaning. It means the response of the heart in belief to that body of faith. That’s its second meaning. And we’re never sure except by the context which is meant in the Scriptures. And when Paul talks about the faith and we sing about the faith of our fathers, we’re not talking about their heart’s faith. We’re talking about the body of doctrine they held.

Now often in our teaching and preaching we take for granted too much. We assume that our hearers know things that they simply do not know. Many of them do, but some of them don’t, because a new generation comes up into its middle teens and are ready to be taught mature truth. New people come in and others go and great turnover occurs in congregations like this one particularly. So today, I want to sketch over what is it that we acknowledge? What is it that we preach as a church? What is the faith of God’s elect? What is the common faith, the faith shared by all Christians?

Well, it’s a pleasant job and not a difficult one at all. And I want to point out I suppose we’ll run to about 10 to 12. But I want to point out and sketch briefly the things we stand for.

Now these things do not constitute Alliance truth. You’ve never heard me use the phrase except to declare I didn’t believe it, Alliance truth. There is no such thing as Alliance truth. There is no such thing as Baptist truth nor Presbyterian truth nor protestant truth. Truth is truth. Jesus Christ said, I am the Truth. And out of His mouth came the Truth as out of a fountain. And that truth is so divine and so universal, that it will not allow itself to be joined by a hyphen to any man-made organization. So there’s no such thing as Alliance truth and there’s no such thing as fundamentalist truth. There’s no such thing as Moody truth and Nyack truth and Taylor truth and Catholic truth. Truth is simply truth without modification and without any qualifiers.

Now what is this truth that we Christians agree on? We disagree on a lot of things. We disagree on modes of baptism. And we disagree on certain eschatological truths, those that have to do with the future events in the coming back of Christ and the end of the age. We disagree on organizational truths. But if we’ll only look, we’ll find that the things we agree on are the fundamental things and the things we disagree on are only secondary. And that the things we agree on are very many more than the things we disagree on.

For instance, we agree and teach as the faith of our fathers and as part of the declaration of truth for which we stand, that the great reality is God. Now I spoke about that yesterday on the radio briefly, and for you who heard, I do not want to repeat too monotonously, so I’ll merely sketch this. It is the part and parcel of all the Christian teaching, that God is. This is the greatest fact.

But you say, don’t we all know that. Must it be brought up again? And the answer is that it’s astonishing how many people don’t know it, or know it only vaguely. But it is the foundation of all sane thinking nevertheless, that God is and that God is real. That is, that God is objectively real like a mountain hidden in the clouds. You can’t see the mountain but the mountain is there. And you only have to take the clouds away to reveal it. So the greatest fact the Bible teaches, the Christian teaches, and it is the foundation fact upon which all the temple of Christian truth rests, that the great reality is God. That God is, God created, God spake, God made God is, that’s the great reality. We begin there.

And then the second great truth that we hold, and it’s held by all Christians, that we’re made by and for God. Now, suppose a child asked the question, and they all do, Mama, where did I come from? If the mother answers the question, God made you, she is more profoundly simple and more scientifically sound in her statement than all the explanations that we might be able to give, the biological or physiological explanations. God made you. That’s what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that this God, who is a reality and who is objectively real, isn’t created, but He is. Whether there’s any creation or not, that this God made us and not ourselves. As it says in the Psalms, the Lord has made us and not we ourselves. So, God made you is a perfectly sound and right answer. And incidentally, it goes beneath all the physiological answers possible to give.

And then a second question the child might ask would be, what did God make me for? Now, the child who hasn’t intelligence enough to begin to probe around and ask who made me? Where did I come from and why am I here? That child won’t amount to very much when he grows older. He’ll be a taxpayer and he’ll vote you know. You know, you don’t have to know anything to pay taxes and vote. You just have to be able to breathe. And this child will grow up and pay taxes and propagate his kind. But if he amounts to much, he’s likely to ask this question, what did God make me for? And what’s it all about? Why am I here?

Now, he may not hold that serious attitude of mind very long, because he’ll see a cat walk across in front of him or a dog run down the alley, or somebody will come out and play ball and then he disappears in the cloud of joyful dust. But when he is or she is for a moment asking the question, what did God make me for, you don’t need to quote Plato and go into any profound explanations. You only have to say, He made you for Himself. For that is Christian teaching that’s foundational. That’s a part of it, and yet it’s the part that’s overlooked. God is. God made us. And God made us for Himself, to honor Him, and to enjoy him forever. To live in fellowship with Him while the ages roll on and millenniums roll on. That is what God made us for.

Now, just there you have two great truths, just there. Up to now they’re not saving truths, but they’re there, God is, and God made me and God made me for Himself. Those are great truths. And they’re woven through all the fabric of New Testament Christianity. They’re woven through all the sermons preached by the saints of God, from the teachings of Jesus and John the Baptist, and Jesus on down to the latest evangelical preacher that rises to preach in any simple church anywhere in the world. That’s what God did. He made us and made us for Himself.

And the third is, that our relationship to Him is all that really matters. Now, you may hear all kinds of approaches made to this subject, but after all, that’s what we’re all trying to say. And that’s what’s all the preachers are trying to say and what all the writers and editors and book publishers are trying to say, that is, Christian. That our relationship to God is all that matters. It’s of first importance, and that it should be the first responsibility of our lives. But that we broke that fellowship by sin. This is a part of Christian truth, and right here, we diverge sharply from ordinary pagan religion that is so broad, widespread everywhere in the world, particularly in the United States. We broke that fellowship. Our relation to God is all that mattered and we violated that relationship and broke that relation by sin in what we call the fall of man.

Now, there we have it. These things, they are the faith of our fathers. These things are what men lived and died for and died by; that God is the great reality, that God made us, that God made us for Himself. That our relationship to God is all that matters, and yet that we’ve broken that relationship through sin.

And then we go on and somebody says, well, what is the next answer? What’s the next? What can you tell me next then? The child asked the question, who is Jesus? I hear the preachers talk about Jesus and we sing sometimes about, Jesus loves me this I know. Who’s Jesus? Well, the answer is Jesus is God come to us. Now that’s the best answer in the wide world. And incidentally, that’s all the early church knew. Long before we knew about persons and substance and had invented words to try to set forth philosophically the doctrines of the faith. Long before that, whole generations of fire-baptized Christians had gone everywhere, almost, throughout the civilized world and had preached the gospel and they didn’t know any more than this about Jesus. Jesus is God come to us. That’s all. His name is Emmanuel. He is God come to us.

How He could be both God and man in one individual. They thought about that later, but they didn’t think about that in the early days. Paul didn’t even try to explain it. Peter didn’t try to explain it. The early apostolic fathers scarcely tried to explain it. It was only when they began bringing human reason to bear upon these doctrines that explanations began. We got the word “person,” the word “essence,” the word “substance,” and oh, the very many, the word “trinity” and trinitarian. Those words came later as an effort to explain that which can be summed up in these words, Jesus is God come to us. That’s all you have to tell your child at first. And that’s all we have to tell the heathen, Jesus is God come to us.

I don’t know. I’ve never been on the mission field, but I would risk that the Christian missionaries don’t try to tell the heathen at first all about the Trinity and about the indivisible substance and not confounding the persons and all of that; and the pre-incarnate glory of Christ and the fusion of the two natures in one personality. No, I don’t think they talk about that. They simplify it and say Jesus is God come to us. And when we talk about Jesus, we’re talking about God. That is the Christian faith. That is what the man of God meant when he said, the faith of God’s elect and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness. And through preaching the Word, the common faith, by which you’ve been converted Titus. That’s what he had in mind.

Jesus is God coming to us, to win us and to restore us and to redeem us. This is one of the impregnable rocks upon which we build. And it isn’t very hard to grasp, is it? You don’t have to take a course anywhere nor learn Greek to know it. Greek is all right. But that’s where we got our New Testament, that we have good faithful translators that have given us English. So, you don’t have to know, you don’t have to be a theologian, thank God. You only have to be a believer that Jesus is God come to win us, come to restore us. I said that part of our faith is also that we broke away from God by sin in the tragedy of the fall, but that Jesus is God come to restore us and to redeem us.

And now somebody may ask the question. I imagine some child asking, now, if Jesus is God come to us, then why did they kill him? Why did Jesus die? What’s it about? Why did He die? Well, He died to undo our sins. We don’t know exactly why that had to be, but we only know that it had to be. And we don’t know why it had to be.

The temptation of the human mind is to bore in and bore in and try to find reasons under the profundities of God’s dealings. Sometimes we can find those reasons, but more often we can’t. I don’t know why Jesus had to die. But because we had broken fellowship and because our relationship to God is all that matters, seeing that He made us and made us for Himself. Then that fellowship was broken and that purpose of God was frustrated. Then God came to us in order that He might undo this, in order that He might undo our sins and destroy our old record. Justice demands that the soul that sinneth, it shall die. That’s why when we sinned, we died. But Jesus came to destroy that old record.

And there’s one thing absolutely sure, there are no mugshots anywhere of a Christian. Sometimes a man is pardoned. I heard a John Callahan tell about being pardoned after he was converted in prison. He was in on a hold up that resulted in death, though he didn’t kill the man, he was sent to prison for murder. He was converted in prison, and then he got out and was, rose so fast in his work, that he got popular and got to eating with governors and great men. And finally, a governor asked him what he could do for him. And he said, there’s just one thing. I’ve been pardoned and forgiven for my crime against society. But my mug shots, my face, two pictures of me are still somewhere in your records, and I want them back and the governor said, I’ll see what I can do. So, the governor sent them back. And not only was he forgiven and every record wiped clean, but even his picture was taken out of the picture gallery of crime that they keep in the state institutions.

Now nowhere in the wide world, not in heaven or earth or sea or in the depths of the hell, will you find any mug shots of a child of God. You will not find any rogue’s gallery where God keeps the old pictures of what you used to be. Jesus came to destroy our record. That’s what He came for. And He came to reconcile us to God. He came to reconcile us to God that we might be reconciled. Be ye reconciled to Him, because He has been propitiated and we’re now reconciled. That’s the message of the gospel. To God I am reconciled. His pardoning voice I hear. He owns me for His child, I need no longer fear. In confidence I now draw nigh and Father, Abba Father cry. That’s simplifying it and saying it beautifully and musically, and that’s what the Bible teaches.

So, answer the child, why did Jesus die if He was a good man and He was God come to us? Why did He die? And the answer was, He died that this friendly God can now befriend us. That this wounded God that we have wounded by our sins, can now befriend us and be our friend.

Well, then someone says, now I’ve heard about the gospel all of my life. What is the gospel? Well, the gospel is God’s official proclamation that now, because God has come to us and has died for us and risen, died to undo our sins and destroy our record, and reconcile us to God; therefore, we now can believe and we can get the benefit of all this by believing in Jesus Christ. And of course, it always carries an invitation. There are those who would strip the gospel down to a mere statement of fact: Christ died and rose again for our sins. No, the gospel is more than that. The gospel is an invitation. Let me illustrate.

Suppose that you quarreled bitterly with some lifetime friend of yours. I hope such a thing wouldn’t happen. But if you had a bitter quarrel, your families quarreled and there was litigation and stern looks and angry talk and refusal to speak and the two families were alienated from each other. And then the time came when they forgave and the wronged party said, now, I want you to know, I forgive. It’s all over. As God forgave me, I forgive you. And I will hold it no more against you.

You know, one more thing he’d have to do before you’d feel real good about it, he’d have to invite you over. Come over for dinner. And when he said, come over for dinner and bring the family and we’ll have a reunion, then you’d know, okay, he means it. It’s all right. Before he proclaimed a fact, I had been forgiven. But now he invites me to come. The gospel contains not only an official announcement that the kind God is now able to be kind, the merciful God is now able to be merciful because He came to us in Christ and died for our sins to sweep away all the hindrances.

But along with that proclamation also, there’s an invitation. Come on, come on, come to my house, come to see me coming, that is, eat together. I stand at the door and knock, and if any man open the door, I’ll come in. It’s an invitation and a proclamation. That’s the gospel.

And then, how can I receive this? If it’s true, why doesn’t it work without my doing anything? What response must I make? And the answer is, you must believe what you’re told about this, because God told it. You must believe it, and cast in your lot with Him. Then it becomes effective in your life. Turn away from your sin and cast in your lot with Him. The sins that He died to deliver you from, turn your back on them and cast in your lot with Jesus who is God come to us. And it becomes effective in your life at once.

And there are 1000s of people, almost I might say millions of them if you were to count them all, even now, in this tragic, terrible age in which we live, this age of immorality and degeneracy. There are still perhaps a million or more who can say with shining face, I know you’re telling the truth. I heard the proclamation. I heard it that God made me, made me for Himself, but that I sinned and broke, broke, all forfeited, all rights to His fellowship, but that He sent His Son, and that Jesus came. God came to us, that He died and rose and lives and I’ve heard that and I believe it. And the change in my life has been wonderful. That’s what the gospel is. That’s what the gospel is, and all we have to do is receive that gospel with a firm determination that from here on we’re not going to live the old life anymore.

I have had some unkind and unpleasant things to say and I don’t apologize at all about those who teach that all we have to do is believe and are ready to bring people in in this easy believe fashion. No, no. There must be a determination to turn away from sin and cast your lot in with Jesus and carry His cross along with Him. And then after that, all you have to do is believe for that’s all you can do is believe.

When I was a young man studying hard in the great doctrines of the faith, I remember I went to God and I said, God, why is it that you’ve got to believe to be saved? And why is it that faith does save. Why is it that you didn’t make some other condition? Why didn’t you lay down some other conditions instead of faith? And I went to bed thinking about that.

Now, psychologists say that if you get a question in your mind, go to bed, your mind will work by unconscious cogitation and you may have the answer in the morning. I don’t think this was a miracle. And I don’t say that God woke me in a dream, but only say that the next morning as I stepped out of bed onto the floor after a night’s sleep, I stood straight up on the floor and had the answer. It came to my heart like this, because that’s the only thing you could do. I saw that and I’ve never had reason to change my mind since.

The Bible confirms it that God said you are to believe in His Son because that’s the only thing left. You can’t do anything else. You can’t fix yourself up any, even repenting. You’ve got to repent and turn away from sin. That’s what that means. But even that wouldn’t save you. Judas repented, but he perished. You’ve got to believe in Jesus, because that’s all that’s left that anybody can do. Just as the dying Jews back in the Old Testament, in their great pain and when they were being poisoned as the deadly virus went through their veins. All they had to do was look at a serpent on a pole and believing in that serpent they were instantly healed. Why did God make it so easy? That was all they could do? What else could they do? And so, that’s all we can do, granted that we have turned away from sin.

And now another point is, and this is part of the faith which we teach, that we can experience God, that God can be known. But somebody says, can I really know God as I know my grandfather or as I know my friend across the street? Can I really know God, speak to Him and have Him talk to me and talk to Him? And the answer of the Bible is all the way down the line, yes. That’s part of the faith by which we live, that I can know God. That God knows me. And that by meditation on the sacred writings, with a quiet heart, I can hear God speak to me. And then by prayer, I can speak to God. And so, I can know God and yet, I can know God in an inwardness that is beyond speech, either written speech or spoken words. I can know God inwardly when I pray. There is a conscious awareness of God deep within the heart. He that believeth on the Son of God hath what?, the witness were?, in Himself. And so, we can know God in our deep hearts.

Now, there is another thing yet. All these are on the positive side, that you and I are called to believe this, this faith by which men are saved. This faith of God’s elect, this acknowledging of the Truth, this common faith, which saved Titus, and Paul and all saints and saved men today. Yet, we have a responsibility above this. There’s a generation to serve. David served his generation and fell on sleep. And you and I have a generation to serve. The Bible though it teaches that salvation is by faith, it still does not teach that we must stop and sit down there, but that there’s are two jobs to do. One is to do good in every practical way to everybody we can. And the other is witness to this truth, this faith of our fathers to all nations, starting next door, and ending up wherever the last heathen may be found in the far reaches of the world.

Now that’s a generation to serve, and this is a part of the Christian faith too. For God does not save us and then put us in what my grandmother used to call a bandbox. I’ve always been curious to know what a bandbox was until after all yours I never saw one. But she said why she thinks she got married to live in a bandbox. That was my grandmother’s sarcastic way of cutting down some lady who was putting on airs.

Now, what a bandbox is I do not know. But it evidently is a very fluffy place that you can get put in. And God does not save us to put us in a bandbox. He saves us in order that He might put overalls on us, and that He might put boots on us and tools in our hands and send us out rightly dividing the Word of Truth. Working like a carpenter, fighting like a soldier, planting and reaping like a farmer, hunting like a fisherman for the fish. So, we’ve got a job to do.

I don’t know what you think about all this. But brethren, I think it’s simply wonderful. And after all these years, I still believe that this is the greatest thing in all the wide world, that the great reality is God, that God is and God is real, that God made us for Himself. And that our relationship to God is all that matters. That we broke it in sin. But God came in Christ to restore us again, and that He restores us by believing the very things that we’ve stated. That God came in Christ and died and rose that He might restore us. And that we receive it by believing the Gospel and that it brings us into conscious experience of God. And that that conscious experience of God then eventuates in service, hard work.

One of the charges they bring against some of us is we’re mystical. But I have noticed and I’m prepared to make a case for it if I ever am forced to do it. But the mystics were the hardest working people that ever lived. The mystics, those who believed in the fullness of the Holy Ghost and the life in union with God, believe that men could experience God. They were nevertheless men, who wrought and labored and worked beyond all measure.

Finney was an evangelical mystic and one of the hardest workers that ever lived. Moody was in some measure what you might call an extroverted mystic, but he was a great laborer. And so were some of the great missionaries and the great reformers, and so were they down the years. They were men who believed that you can experience God. But they didn’t sit down and twiddle their thumbs. They got up and went to work to let this generation know that these things are true.

Now, those are the positive things briefly, there are two more and they’re the negative ones. They are, that all this glory can be missed by rejecting or denying or despising, by loving sin or refusing to believe or letting our egotistic pride prevent us. We can miss all this. As a poor farmer, living in a tarpaper shack and eating what little he could get. He may, only a few feet under his house and within easy reach of a pick and shovel, there may be uranium that will make him fabulously wealthy and buy him a yacht and a home in Florida. But instead of that he grubs it out, wears his overalls, has no decent suit, gets on the best he can. He hasn’t a dime to rub against another; fabulously wealthy if he only knew it. But he can miss the whole thing and die and be buried by the county.

And so we, says the Bible, in effect, can miss all this glory. We can live within reach of it and miss it all by refusing to believe it’s there by refusing to humble ourselves. And then at our death, the friendly invitation is withdrawn. The proclamation of the gospel is heard no more. The status of the soul is fixed for good. And we are lost without hope of reclamation. Now, that’s what we believe.

Is that worth giving for? Is that worth supporting? Is that worth uniting yourself with groups that believe that kind of thing? Is that worth anything? Ah, God gazes down like the sun. I thought this morning this and I’ll close. I thought how the gaze of God never fails. God never closes his eyelids, but like the sun that has no lids to close, shines down always, always, always upon the people. Always His friendly gaze is upon all mankind. But we don’t see Him because the clouds and mist and smog had shrouded it between us and Him and have shrouded the glory of His countenance.

And I thought, by way of kind of illustration, would you believe that this was the same city as yesterday. Do you remember yesterday morning this time? Do you remember the smog and the fog and the mist and the clouds and the gloom and everybody was shrugging and smiling and saying, this is a day isn’t it. Street car motorman, this is a day, was a day, a gloomy day. And it looked as if the sun had gotten lost somewhere in the immensity. But it was the same sun. And he’s in the same position, as it was this hour yesterday. The difference is the clouds have been swept away. I don’t know what happened to them. Whoever got them, I don’t pity, I mean, I don’t envy him. I do pity them. Whoever got this mess or whatever hit Chicago yesterday, but you and I have the sun shining down in brilliant glory.

Now the face of God shines upon all men. And the voice of God calls all men home. You and I can shroud ourselves in the cloud banks of iniquity and never see it during a lifetime, that smiling countenance and never hear that Voice. And if we do, says the Christian testimony, we shall certainly perish without end.

There we have it. That’s what to tell children. That’s what to tell the Jew down the street. That’s what to tell the Catholic or the Christian Scientist over here. That’s what to tell the paperboy. That’s what to tell the heathen over there. All so simple. It’s the faith by which men live. It’s the faith of our fathers. There’s infinitely more of course. But these are the great beliefs and if you believe them and teach them and live by them, blessed art thou and well shall it be with you. For the God of our fathers will be your God and will be to you what a father should be to his family.