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Cooperating with God in our Spiritual Lives”

Cooperating with God in our Spiritual Lives

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 30, 1955

I want to read a passage that I read and preached from at council during the Second World War in New York. It will not be the same sermon, but it’ll be the same text at least the same passage of Scripture. In the 30th chapter of Isaiah beginning with verse 18: Therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you. And therefore, will He be exalted that He may have mercy upon you. For the Lord is a God of judgment. Blessed are all they that wait for Him. For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem. Thou shalt weep no more. He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry. When He shall hear it, He will answer thee. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner anymore, but thine eyes shall see thy teacher. And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee saying, this is the way, walk ye in it. When you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left.

And then, with the verse 26, moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound. Behold, the name of the Lord cometh from far, burning with his anger, and the burden thereof is heavy: his lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire: And his breath, as an overflowing stream, shall reach to the midst of the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of vanity: and there shall be a bridle in the jaws of the people, causing them to err. Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel. And the Lord shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones.

I think I skipped verse 25, if I did, let me read it, there shall be upon every high mountain, upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters in the day of the great slaughter and the towers fall. Now, that’s a section from the 30th chapter of Isaiah. And there is a verse in Deuteronomy 5:29, O that there were such a heart in them that they would fear me and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them and with their children forever.

Now, those who attend this church know that while we have a sense of humor, we do not approach the things of God in anything but a serious vein. That we are in dead earnest about the service of God; in dead earnest about what the Bible has to say. In dead serious, earnest about our responsibility to God, the fact that we’re getting along. That time, like an ever-rolling stream is bearing all its sons away. That the world is growing old and the judgment is growing near. And this church, if it must be alone, this church is having no part in the fun and fanfare and noise and pleasure and carnal delights. We are serious-minded men and women. And we take God seriously. So, I want to talk about this and about progress in our spiritual lives and in the life of the church.

Now somebody will say, there goes Mr. Tozer again. He apparently has a feeling that we’re not where we should be, and that there is progress. Our friend Ed Maxey, gave a talk somewhere here in the city. I’m not saying where here a few weeks ago. And there was an old deacon there. And the old deacon came around to him afterwards and said, my brother, the apostle Paul couldn’t live the way you preach. You are setting the standards too high, which you deacons forgive me for saying it’s typical of deacons. I don’t know why that should be, but it’s typical of deacons. Not of the deacons of this church, maybe, but it’s typical. They don’t want anybody to disturb their dead level of mediocrity. They want to be what they are, clear their throat, solemnly lead in prayer extensively on a Sunday morning and not be bothered any or have anybody disturbed the pattern of their lives.

Now, I believe that there must be somebody behind this if we’re going to make any time. I remember hearing about a preacher who was something of a crusader in his day. And he liked to get out and get into the newspapers and was somewhat a little sensational and something of a crusader; and was attacking the wrongs in the city in politics and in society. And somebody took him aside and said, my brother, I admire your zeal and all, but aren’t you a little bit unscriptural in taking out after the devil the way you do? Does not the Bible say that the wicked flees when no man pursues him? And he said, yes, I read that verse, but I’ve always thought he’d make better time if somebody got out after him. He flees when nobody’s after him, but he’ll speed it up when somebody gets after him.

And so in the church of Christ, I suppose there is something natural and normal. Take a little baby. And that baby will grow if it’s neglected. It’ll grow if it is just fed. It’ll grow. It’ll grow even if it’s covered with rash and neglected. It’ll grow. But it’ll do a much nicer job if it has the tender care of its parents. And so a church will grow if you have the seed of God in your heart and the root of the matter is in you. You will make some kind of growth, I suppose. It’s biological necessity that we grow. It’s in us to do it. But we’ll do it with a great deal more precision and correctness if we have somebody to help us along. So, in the moral life and the spiritual life, I suppose we’ll make some progress. Some don’t, but most do. And yet I think that if we would listen to the exhortations and even sometimes to rebukes of men God has sent, we’ll make a great deal better time.

Now, when I say progress, progress in my life, progress in yours and in our church, what do I mean? Do I have some wild, weird, insubstantial, fanatical idea in mind? No, I think not. I mean that there should come upon people a great seriousness. I think you know me well enough to know that I am not a man without a sense of humor. In fact, I’ve had to fight a sense of humor all my life. It has been my biggest hindrance in the pulpit next to my pride. It has been my biggest problem as to how to keep from being funny.

And at home, I am somewhat of a mess, I think. And my sons and daughter know that I can be a tease. But my brethren, before the Holy Throne of God and in the church of God when the believers are assembled to talk about God and Christ and the blood and the future and judgment to come, there’s no place for anything but dead seriousness. And I believe that a dead seriousness ought to be upon the people of God. I believe that we ought to take this whole thing seriously and that never for a moment, should there be anything but gravity when we think about God and Christ. And I’m preaching to Christian people ostensibly now and I therefore make no apology. And when I say that we ought to make progress, I mean that we ought to make progress in seriousness.

And then, I believe that we ought to have a great hunger of God upon us, a great hunger of God. We will only move in the direction of our hunger. You can be certain of that. Everything moves in the direction of its hungers. The sunflower that rises when the sun rises in the morning will turn its broad, yellow face to the sun and will follow the sun all day long and gaze on the setting sun with the same devotion that it gave when that sun rose in the east in the morning. And so, with a potato that is put in a basement. It will by Spring, that was put there in the Fall, climb for the light and begin to push out those brittle, juicy, long, little rootlet affairs. Not a root really, but a stock, and it will climb up to the side of the wall and climb to the light and if it could get through, climb out into the sunshine. The very potato in the basement has a hunger and it will move in the direction of its hunger. And so, it is with everything my friends. You will move in the direction of your hunger.

Some young men get married and establish a home and go in deep for a house. And they figure they’ve got to make a lot of money and I sympathize. It costs 10 times too much to live these days. And I’m certainly sympathetic with every effort of every young man to establish a good home for his family. But if that young man allows money to become his hunger, he will move in the direction of his hunger. Just as sure as he lives, he will move in the direction of his hunger. And the very little newborn creatures, the very newborn calf will stagger to its feet and put its legs all out in four directions and prop itself up and stagger toward the soft, fragrant side of its mother. He moves in the direction of its hunger. And the birds move in the direction of their hunger. Everything does. And it’s not otherwise in the kingdom of God. We move in the direction of our hungers. And when you will become God hungry, you will move in the direction of God and the direction of of spiritual things and eternal things.

I think that if God were to be unkind enough or kind enough, whichever way you view it, to take away the veil of unseen and show us briefly how much we have that’s perishing and how little we have that can’t perish, there would be weeping in this congregation. I believe that if we knew how much that we have is perishing who, who loves any better than I to hold in his hands a tiny little, warm, soft, fragrant baby and yet give that baby a few years and go up through the swift cycle to womanhood or manhood and then go down the other side. And those who helped bring it up to the pike will have long gone when it starts down. Everything parishes, homes parish, cars parish, jobs perish, our children leave us and go. And all that we have set our affections upon that has the stamp of mortality upon it. The stamp of mortality, it all dies. Change and decay and all around I see, O Thou who changes not abide with me.

I hope you’re all going to have a good dinner. I know we’re going to have it. We’re going to have our little grandchildren with us. And we’re going to have a good dinner and I hope you’ll have a good dinner. But my friends, remember this. If God should suddenly show some of you how little you have that can’t perish, you wouldn’t eat a bite. You couldn’t. You would be a miserable distressed person if you walked around and said everything I have is made a celluloid. Made of celluloid, a spark of fire and it will go in a quick blaze and leave me with nothing but gray ashes. O my God, how that moves me. How little I have behind me. How little I have that can last. Now, much that I have given my life to has perished before me and died and gone. And how little there is that is left that can’t perish, gold and silver and precious stones that can abide the fire.

Now my brethren, the most important thing is that we should have a great hunger for God upon us and a great seriousness and a great gravity and a great longing for everlastingness. And then, am I all out of place and fanatical when I say, that when I talk about progress, I mean a new zeal after personal righteousness. Are you as good as you want to be? Are you in there where you feel you’ve arrived and say, thank you, thank you. I accept congratulations for my spiritual growth and my high acquisition in the kingdom of God. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Are you in that place where you’re receiving congratulations from the devil for you are spiritual, or is there a hunger to be better person than you are?

I tell you friends; God will go a long way with a man however many faults he has and however he might be criticized justly for his blemishes. God will go a long way with that man if he knows he’s hungering after righteousness. If God knows that in the heart of a man or woman there is an honest hunger to have to be a better man, God will go a long way with that man. It is when we arrive and start taking bows. And we feel worse with where we ought to be and want to be let alone and say, why doesn’t the fella talk about something else? Why does he want to stir me to be a better man? Well, when we arrive at that place of course, too bad. But I don’t think many of us have. And I don’t think you think I’m fanatical or off the track when I say that we ought to have a new zeal for personal righteousness, that we ought to be better men than we are. Occasionally I get attacked and torn apart.

Recently, a brother told me about a little attack that’s been made against me in one of my books; that I’m sarcastic in a lot of things, and I may be it. But brethren, I don’t mind those attacks for one thing, for one reason, they drive me to God to search my own heart and say, God, please take out of me that which may offend my brethren. Take out to me that quality in my character that makes other people raise the eyebrow and say that fellow claims he’s a Christian and look at the way he acts and talks. I want to be a better man than I am. And if any of you have arrived, God have mercy on your poor, dead soul.

The progress in the Christian life is a constant, a constant progress. We’re always moving up. I mean the Christian life is a constant progress. And if there’s no progress, there’s no Christian life. Paul did not say I have finished my course until he heard the fellow outside wetting a sword. He heard, a wing a wang, a wing a wang. Some fellow had a stone and a sword and he was making that sword sharp and then pulling out a hair and like my father used to do with his razor to see if that was sharp enough or not. And when the sword was ready for the neck of the man of God, he stopped progressing. He said, I have arrived. Thank God I’ve arrived. I’m now ready to die and lay down my life. I have finished my course. I’ve kept the faith and I’m now ready to be offered, and God the righteous judge has a reward for me. Now, I don’t mean that that ended his spiritual progress forever, but I mean that his earthly progress had reached its climax with a whistling sword of the persecutor. And if the man of God, Paul never quite was satisfied with his spiritual life, why should you and I be?

My brethren, it isn’t that I can say, I’ve arrived. Everybody that’s arrived stand up. No, no, that’s not the point. But it’s that we are marching, we’re moving, we’re on the way, we’re going there. We have the life before us and the star that shown over Israel shines over us today and we move in that direction. I don’t want to know how fast the army is traveling. I want to know what direction it’s traveling and I want to know that it’s traveling. So, I’m urging you to this.

And then a new unity of heart among all the people who God. I believe in oneness, oneness. I don’t believe in the oneness that takes in the evil along with good. We talk about these United States of America. But when we use the word united, we mean that there is a union of like mindedness, a union of Republican and Democratic ideas. A union of free ideas, and that our union lies in that which is good. But the moment that we introduce or allow to be introduced anything subversive or destructive of those ideas that holds us together, it’s no longer unity, it’s asininity.

And when we talk about the union of the churches, we mean the union of those who believe in God the Father Almighty and Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord, and in the Holy Ghost, and in the communion of saints and the forgiveness of sins and the life everlasting and the resurrection of the body and the ancient holy faith of our fathers. But it does not mean that I reach out and draw into that union beliefs and ideas and doctrines and notions that would like a torpedo blow me up and sink me, and blow up the church of Christ and sink it. But within every church and among all the churches where God is loved and Christ is believed in, there must be unity; unity of heart whether they go along with us or not, unity of heart in all the sons of God.

Two little boys came selling Christmas cards to our house last week, and my wife wasn’t there. So, I went down and talked with him. They came clear into the dining room with two huge bags full of Christmas cards. One of them was a pronounced brunette and the other one a pronounced blonde. And I said, are you two fellows brothers? They grinned and said they were brothers.

Well now, here was one, a blue-eyed pronounced blonde and the other fellow a dark, dark haired, brunette, and yet they were brothers. One may be a year older than the other; out making themselves a little Christmas money selling cards. God bless the boys. They told me they were of Catholic parents, but they were selling nice cards. Well, we bought some cards. But you know what? They were brothers. The same father, same mother, same home, same environment, same food and probably the same bed for they were about big enough. And yet, one was pronounced blonde and the other equally pronounced brunette. Now, in the kingdom of God, all God’s people don’t look alike. All God’s children got shoes and all God’s children have got a robe and all of God’s children have a father, but they don’t all look alike. I leave a room for variation.

And maybe I told you this, but a gentleman who is a university professor, Northwestern University, incidentally, wrote me a very lovely letter. He said he criticized me in public and his conscience was bothering him and would I please forgive him. And I wrote him back and told him that I didn’t feel bad about that. I didn’t know about it, but beside that, I was harder on people than he was and so let’s just forget. But I said there are so many areas where we can agree, so let’s agree and shake hands and be friends. And I’d like to meet you, a gracious man like you that would write and apologize for criticizing me in public.

Well, brother, that man and I see not together on a certain matter of about what you criticize me. We don’t see together on that, but I feel warm in my heart for that man though I’ve never met him to my knowledge. But I feel warm in my heart. A man who has a tender conscience and a loving Christian spirit that will make you want to apologize for saying what he considered an unkind thing about a brother in Christ. Even though he disagrees with me, he’s my brother, whether he knows it or not. And he does know it. That man knows it.

So, unity, unity, unit, that’s what we need. And we need not the unity of the cemetery; for the most unified and perfectly ordered institution in the whole world is a cemetery. And the least orderly is a kindergarten. The most orderly thing is the cemetery because everybody in it is dead. But in the kindergarten, there’s not so much order, but there’s a lot of growth and vitality.

And so, in a church where there’s growth and vitality, you can expect that some people will be rubbed the wrong way and some people will be criticized. They blame Billy Sunday for rubbing the cat the wrong way. And he said, let the old cat turn around. He wasn’t going to rub it any other direction than the one that he was rubbing. And so, there’s a lot of rubbing the wrong way and occasional sparks, of course there will be. But there was in Jesus’ day among his very disciples. There was in the book of Acts among the very ones who were baptized with the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. But at the same time, there’s a unity that’s deeper than those surface things. So, we want a unity, a great unity of worship, a great unity of devotion, great unity of love and prayer and purpose. We want that and we want a new charity for each other and new concern for the church and for perishing souls.

Now, how are we going to get this? I haven’t much time left. But we’ve got to go along with God in getting it. I know I told you years ago about what John Wesley said a fanatic was. John Wesley says a fanatic is one who seeks desired ends, but ignores the constituted means of obtaining it. That’s a fanatic. A man who wants to reach certain ends, but pays no attention to the means. He’s just going to blunder toward it somehow. Like a boy to stand out on the hill and reach for the moon; he wanted it, but he ignored the desired end. Maybe in another 100 years they’ll be going up with rockets. And then if he’s around he can go. But you can’t get up and pull it down that way. And so, some of our spiritual longings are the results, or at least all we do about it ever is too long. We don’t use the constituted means. But my brethren, God has laid down certain rules and said, O that ye had a heart to obey my word and do my commandments, then you would prosper and then all your children would prosper.

Now we follow certain appointed means, constituted means to quote Wesley exactly, and by following these that God has pointed out plainly for us. And where are they pointed out? They’re pointed out specifically in the Scriptures. And they’re pointed out by the example of the early church and by the experience of the saints down through the years and by the plain indications of reason. And there isn’t anything I ever tell you contrary to reason. And never at any time, when I try to make you see there’s chariots and horses camped around about and chariots and horses of fire around the province of God. Everything can be brought to the sharp criticism of reason. And plain reason, tells us that these things are right. And by setting our hearts to do them and obey the Word and do the things God tells us to, counting upon God to enable us, we can reach the goal.

Now I’m going to give you two points that I want you to consider very seriously and then I will give you some more and finish my talk next Sunday, where God is offering us seven times, the night will be seven times brighter than it was, seven times as bright. The moon will be like the sun seven times as bright in the great day when the towers fall. One point is and I want you to take these down: read with meditation a generous portion of Scripture every day to feed and nourish your heart. People come to me from all over to get counsel and instruction and prayer. And I counseled and pray with people until I’m exhausted sometimes.

And it all comes down to this one thing. You don’t need me. You don’t need my counsel. Go down to these companies and buy yourself a dollar and a half Bible and read your Bible and obey God, then you’ll get along without counsel. We don’t need psychiatrists and pastoral counsel so much as we need to read the Word of God. Read a little of it every day, meditate on it, a generous portion of it. It will feed you and nourish you and give you faith and instruct you. How can you hope to be prepared for heaven, when all the reading you have to do is preparing you for earth? How can you hope to be ready to die when all the reading you do is good only while you live? No, no, meditate on a generous portion of Scripture.

Sometimes when people come to me, I say all right now I find out where they are in their spiritual progress and I say, now here, I want to tell you something. Go to the book of Psalms and read it on your knees every day. Read a Psalm. Meditate on it. Ask God to help you. Ask God to give you light every day when you read some of the Psalms. A new spiritual experience will come into your life on that Book of Psalms, just alone in the book of Psalms to say nothing of all the other great books of the Bible. And then when you read this book, it’ll crowd out some other things that you ought not to be reading for you’re wasting your time on.

So read this book and you will be delighted with the result. I’m positive of it. It will not lead you into any false paths. It will not lead you to any ideals an apostle couldn’t keep. It will not make a fanatic out of you. It will deliver you from fanaticism. For fanaticism means, according to Webster’s definition, that I am hoping for a crown in heaven and doing nothing on earth to obtain it. And I’m singing about the crown that I shall wear and I’m not doing anything toward getting a crown. That’s fanaticism, brethren, not the man who spends an hour on his knees with his open Bible. He’s not the fanatic. He’s the fanatic who comes to church and sings about the starry crown he’s going to wear. And he hasn’t read a book of the Bible for 20 years and he hasn’t prayed an hour for God knows how long. He isn’t living. He isn’t taking constituted means. He isn’t laying hold of the means God has put in his hands. God says, O that thou had such a heart in thee that thou would obey my commandments and walk according to my word. Then should you be prosperous and your children prosperous after you.

So, I say read with meditation, and this is last. Make time for private prayer. Find a way to do it somehow or other. Find a way to do it. You say, well, I can’t pray. I don’t have the time. I dash out in the morning and I grab the train. I don’t have time to pray. My brother, how can you expect to grow in grace if you don’t take the means toward that growth? You ought to pray every day. You want to learn that habit of praying every day. And you ought to wait on God every day. I recommend this to you in the morning instead of the Tribune. I recommend that your hymnbook sits beside you off to the left. Your wife won’t mind that. Look at a hymn.

The other morning, I got up early, and my wife hadn’t been well and so I got up and got my breakfast. And here I ran on: when morning guilds the sky my heart awaking cries, let Jesus Christ be praised. And I’ve been singing it ever since. And I said to myself, why should I ever read anything else in the morning except something like this. Let Jesus Christ be praised. In all our work and prayer, we ask his loving care.

Brethren, you can if you will, turn your shadowy day into the brightness of new if you will begin with the Bible and then you will make time for prayer. And you will memorize a hymn or two and begin to hum it in your heart as you go along. Now, don’t do what the Moody student did. Ray and I were on a street car one time when they still had street cars on Halsted, and we heard somebody whistling gospel songs and he had a ventriloquist effect. We couldn’t tell where he was. Finally, Ray hunted him up. He was a big, friendly Moody student. And he felt I guess that he wanted to have an evangelistic service. So, he was whistling gospel songs on the street cars. It’s all right only I wouldn’t do it, and I don’t recommend you do it, although it’s alright, if you want to do it you understand. I’m not condemning, I’m just saying that I wouldn’t feel I would want to do it. I couldn’t carry the tune that much anyhow.

But when I’m singing in my heart nobody knows when I’m flat. When I’m singing in my heart, nobody knows when I miss the tune. When I start, I say don’t you like this hymn and I started one at home. And then there are some giggles, and I’ve got two tunes consumed and I’m singing one of one and another of the other. But I don’t mind it because inside of my heart, nobody knows it. And I’ve got the words in God’s hearing the song and I’m sure that it’s just as good as Beverly Shea in the ears of God. Because it’s the heart of a worshiping man singing in his poor way.

So, all right now, I’ve got some tougher stuff to say to you next week. I asked God to pray for you. I am going to preach at Keswick downtown and ask Ray to pray for you to God. I was going to preach at Keswick downtown here and Dr. Thomas, Dr. John Thomas of the St. Paul Union Church was just leaving. He said, I’m sorry, Mr. Tozer, I can’t stay for the sermon but he said, knowing you, I’ve prayed for your congregation. He said, I know what you’re going to do and he said good-naturedly and ducked out. 

Brethren, next Sunday morning, if you can’t take it don’t come to church. Because I want to talk bluntly and frankly about some things that I think are going on among us that ought to stop and some new habits we ought to form and some older we ought to quit. And I’m preaching out of my own heart as brother Chase read to me this morning something some old preacher had written. I am not standing up saying here am I. I have kept the law. I’ve done righteousness. No, no, no, I’m a man that has by act and by spirit, broken all the commandments of God including the last one, to love my God and my brother.

But I have found my way to Calvary’s bloodstained cross and been forgiven and cleansed and in meekness and humility. With the boldness of a prophet, I can tell you that there are some things we’re going to have to do if we’ll ever have the blessing of God on us as we should. And I want to continue and finish this sermon next Sunday morning. So, pray for me and come back. All right.

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Tozer Talks

The Real Burden of the Lost Man”

The Real Burden of the Lost Man

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 16, 1956

Matthew 11:28-30. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Now, I had this text for this morning and for tonight. And this morning, I tried to show what our human burden is not. And I said then that our human burden is not the one that the scientists and the philosophers and the sociologists imagine it to be. The burden man carries is not a political burden. It’s a burden, but it’s not the burden. It is not toil that can become a burden, but it’s not the burden. It is not illness. That is a burden, but not the burden. It’s not intolerance, that can be a burden, but it’s not the burden. And then I showed that, in essence, the burden man carries is a spiritual burden. And because it is a spiritual burden, there is no possibility of its being relieved by social methods nor political methods nor scientific methods.

Now, I said that tonight I would break this down and try to show what the human burden is in particular. What is that galling, corrosive burden that eats, that abrasive burden that wears away, that destroying burden that is carried by the human race?

Well, it is first of all the burden of alienation. In Ephesians 2, we learn that mankind, all of us together, every human being except those who have heard the call and come, that we are alienated from the life of God; that we are without hope and without God in the world; that we’re under the wrath of God controlled by the evil spirits of the world and are by nature, the children of wrath, even as others. And there is the burden of alienation.

Now, the human heart knows more than the learned man would do know. It knows that there is a Friend; that there is a Friend spelled with a capital letter or capital letters. There is a Friend. And he knows also that he has fallen out with that Friend. And he knows that the Friend is right and he is wrong. He knows it and in spite of all his brave talk, it’s a secret burden that he carries. And he carries it through time he’s old enough to know right and wrong until the time he lies down to die. It is the burden of alienation from God. It is the burden that the bough carries when it has been wrenched loose from the tree and broken off from its native trunk. It is the burden the star carries when it whirls away from its central sun and is lost in the far darkness, as Jude tells us.

And this is the burden. This is the burden. It is one burden and all of the burdens of which I shall speak tonight on one burden. It is the burden of alienation and it is the burden of sin, Romans 7:14-18. Maybe we’d better read that because it is very important. It says, for we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 

And that is said by some people to be the normal place for a Christian to live, and I don’t believe it for a minute. That is the burden of sin. And when our Lord says, come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest, He means that I will give you rest from this very abomination that we have had described in Romans 7. Sin came as a serpent to the Garden of Eden, a heinous, hated, and offensive thing. And man has never quite learned to live with the serpent.

Not even the boy in the far country sleeping among the hogs ever quite got used to the smell of the swine. He said, I’ll arise and go unto my father and I will say: father, I have sinned. And he carried with him there the burden of sin and had it with him even when he was sold out to the far country. He still carried with him the burden of sin. And man has never quite learned to live with a serpent. His many religions prove that.

The fact that all over the world there are religions, and they all prove that there is an inner revulsion, an inner repulsion and you can’t cure it by educating the man and you can’t take the burden of sin off by any kind of culture. He can study art in all of the great galleries of the world. He can listen to the opera until he can hum all the arias. He can gain wealth and live in the Gold Coast and now have servants. But still, it cannot be taken away from him because it’s the inner burden that boils up from within. Its silt lies like a great load upon his spirit.

And thirdly, it is the burden of fear. I John 4:18 says simply in three words, fear hath torment. Fear hath torment. And it is fear that is riding the heart of the world to death like some vicious man who takes a beast and rides it and lashes it and rolls it and sinks the spurs into it. And when it is ready to drop and it’s tongue is hanging out and besides bulging, still sinks in the spurs and lays on the whip and rides it till it falls exhausted and can’t get up. So, fear is riding the human race.

Fear is riding it not only in the jungle, not only in the valley where Ed Maxey is tonight, but in Chicago and out on the Gold Coast and up toward Evanston and down in Beverly Hills. Fear is riding the human race like a man rides a beast. And the human race is staggering and its nostrils are distended and its tongue is swollen and its eyes are bulging out. And fear lies upon the heart of the world as a great burden. Fear of the unknown, fear of the known, yes, fear of war, yes. The speech will cause the stock market to go tumbling down the stairs. Sickness and fear of bereavement, all these are fears, but they’re not the fear.

The fear is fear of the unknown. Fear that constitutes the burden of the world. Fear that’s where we must go and don’t know how we’re going to make it when we get there. It is the fear of the unknown that brings the man and woman to the nervous collapse.

And then fear, an end the burden of pride also. It’s one burden, but these are the ingredients of the burden. And the text tells us that it is the burden of pride. For the text tells us to come unto me ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest and how? I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest unto your soul. The burden of pride is the burden that the Lord would deliver us from.

Now, what is pride after all? Pride is misplaced honor; that is all. We are created to honor Almighty God and we turn that honor around upon ourselves. We are created to place our crowns at His holy feet but we put them on our own empty heads in place of that. And that burden of the misplaced honor is a burden that rides this all the time. Because of the deep-seated accusation that lies unknown in our hearts. The psychologists tell us of the subconscious. I believe that it is at the subconscious level that all this burden lies. It’s not conscious and it has to be called to our attention before we even know about it, but it lies there.

The great burden of human pride and human pride’s burden is twofold. I say it’s the deep-seated accusation that our conscience brings against us for robbing God of the crown that belongs on His own thrice Holy Head. But it is also the anxiety and distress less we who are kings, less we, you, are the crowned kings of our own lives, shall lose some of the glory. We shall lose face or shall be less than we want ourselves to be, until this burden rides us and rides us. We’re ready to flare up in a moment if a word is spoken against us.

If a word uncomplimentary to our children is spoken in our hearing, men are ready to flash up and talk back. If a singer, someone says you are flat, instantly, the heart flies up and the face flushes and they’re ready to defend it. If the organist, the pianist, the board member or the prayer band leader or the teacher or the pastor or the associate pastor or the assistant, unless the grace of God delivers us from it all. We shall put ourselves on the throne where only God belongs and wear a crown on our head that belongs on the head of God, and then defended it with anxiety and bitterness and tears and resentfulness. Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will deliver you from that burden of pride.

And then there’s the burden of self; Roman 7:24. He cries out, O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death, this burden? And that means the wrong one is on the throne. That’s what self means. It means the wrong one is on the throne. Pride means the crown is on the wrong head. And self means that the wrong one is on the throne.

Now, in each heart there is a throne. And on that throne there sits God or the human ego, one or the other. In your heart, there is a throne, a golden throne, a throne that God gave you when He said, let us make man in our image and let him have dominion. There is the throne. And on that throne there sits God or there sits your human ego, one or the other; there is no third. It is either God or your ego, yourself, sitting on that throne, and the war and the tumult and the mutiny and the uneasiness and the troubles and the tumults of the world, all come because the usurper sits upon the throne.

You crawled up onto the throne that belongs to Jesus Christ, the Crucified One. And you sit on that throne. You say, but I have been born again. I don’t doubt it. But if you’re born again and you still sit on your throne, you’re a carnal and unsanctified Christian and the curse and the woe of your life is that you insist upon crawling up and sitting on a throne where Jesus Christ belongs. And though He’s so tender that He could weep over Jerusalem; though He’s so gentle that He could take babies in His arms; though He is so kind that He could forgive the cringing harlot at His feet. Still, our Savior is so bold and so strong, that He will not sit on a throne with anybody else. It’s either His throne or it’s yours, one or the other.

And some of you wonder why you can never get victory in your lives. You’ll wonder why you can never get delivered from yourself. You take a course from Moodys, and then you get a book in New York. And then you write to London for one. And then you follow an evangelist from one town to another and then you turn the radio on. And you rush about trying to find deliverance, and seeking to find the deliverance from the burden of self that rides you and wears you and eats at you and curses you.

I tell you, you’ll never, never find peace and there isn’t a book ever written that will give it to you. And there isn’t a preacher that ever existed that will give it to you. You’re a wrong man on a right throne when you sit on a throne that belongs to Jesus Christ alone. He’s earned it by every right and virtue in high heaven above and deep hell below. He’s earned the right to sit on the throne of your heart and boss your life and you won’t let him do it. And that’s what’s the matter with you. And wherever I go, I find two classes of people. Thank God I find the one. I find the heart-hungry people. They may be Calvinists. They may be Arminians. They may be Methodists. They may be what have you, but they’ve broken through all that to a hunger after God.

One man told me up at the lakes in Canada last week, called me into his room and sat and said, Mr. Tozer, I was brought up among the Plymouth Brethren and I knew the Truth from the time I can remember. But he said in recent times, and he told me what it was, what kind of ministries they were that led him to this conclusion. He said, I want God so bad that I have nothing to live for unless God will come into my life and fill me and be filled with God.

You don’t have to worry about a man like that. The man you have to worry about is the fellow that comes in self-assured, crosses his hands and sits through the sermon without a conscious twinge of longing after God. And he may be on your board and he may be high in official circles and he may have degrees, but he lacks one degree. He lacks the degree of longing after God. He sits on his own heart’s throne and is proud of his orthodoxy and proud of his theology and proud of the fact that he’s a spiritual man. But he’s a selfish man and he’s an unsanctified man and he carries the burden of self and it wears him out and wears him down and eats at him like acid, deep, deep within him.

And then there’s the burden of mortality. Hebrews 2:15, who all our lifetimes. How does it word it? It’s Hebrews 2:15. And it’s a particular verse it’s always difficult for me to remember verbatim. I delivered them who through fear of death, for all their lifetimes, subject to bondage. There’s the bondage of mortality, the bondage of mortality. God has created us for life, and death is an enemy. God has created us for life, and death has invaded our territory and taken over. And we have been invaded and we are an occupied country, the human race is, occupied by the foe.

And He has set eternity in our hearts, and time is dissolving our bodies away. Here we are living on two plains at once, the eternal and the temporal; the spiritual and the material. Here we are living on two plains at once, akin to the angels in our spirit and akin to the beasts in our bodies. And in the part of us that came from God, God has placed eternity and taken and thrown away all the clocks and all the whistles and placed eternity there. Time is wearing our bodies down and dissolving them and the burden of mortality that we carry it upon our hearts. We think it’s only older people that carry upon them the burden of mortality.

On the my sons, Wendell, when he was a little lad, maybe he was 12. He was to write an essay for school. And he wrote it and showed it to me. And I had never dreamed this could be true of a boy of that age. And of course, it was only a sample of how youngsters think. But it was a self-revelation, a disclosure, a confession of fear. Fear, less Daddy died, fear less Mama die, fear lest his brothers should die, fear the future, fear of death. And a 12-year-old normal boy, for he is that. He’s 30 now, but still a normal man. But the burden of mortality rested upon the heart of a 12-year-old boy. And that burden of mortality lies upon the human race and rests there, but not rest, no, not rest; eats, wears, destroys.

And now, my brethren, I want you to turn out all the lights of the world. And I want you to plunge all the world in darkness so you can focus your attention. And then I want you to spotlight and let just one little light flash down into a valley, the dark valley of sorrow. And there you will see a frustrated, frightened, hurting, scurrying, busy, weary, little man struggling on between the rocks and the crust, the thorny ways, bowed under a weight that is destroying him, falling under the load. Getting up again, struggling on, throwing his shoulders back and bowing them again. Always, always the load, always the burden. Always the galling yoke, always, always. And I want that spotlight to rest on that little man as he struggles on through the valley we call this world in mortality, struggling on.

And look closely now, look closely for all the lights of the world are out, and we’re looking only at the one little man there. And do you recognize that man? Why, you say he looks like me. He’s you. That’s you struggling there. That’s you there, out of Christ. That’s you, sinner man. That’s you staggering under the load, the burden. It’s too great for you, the burden of nature, the burden of mortality, the burden of fear, the burden of alienation, the burden of sin and of pride and of self, cursing you and writing you and wearing you. That’s you there in the dark valley of sorrow.

And now I want you to shift the spotlight while all the lights of the world are out. And I want you to turn it on another man. This other man, a great tall man on a winding hillside also bowed under a weight that was destroying Him. Look closely now and see who that was. That other Man was there on the hill because you’re there in the valley. That other Man carried the load that destroyed Him because you’re in the valley carrying a load that destroys you. And look closely now. Who is that man on the hill, that Man on the winding rocky way carrying a load that was destroying Him and did within six hours, crushed and squeezed the life out of His body? And that Man who was He? That man was Jesus. That man was Jesus because you were in the valley struggling there, scurrying, falling, stumbling, with the load on your heart. He was on the Hill stumbling, falling, being crushed under a load on His back.

And up in the darkness of that hill with all the spotlights off and all the stars dim amd the sun refusing to shine. He died there for the man on valley. He died there, the Just for the unjust that He might say, come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. Come unto Me and what? Come unto Me and off goes the crushing burden of alienation and you know you belong to God.

Am I talking to some people tonight that are the children of God and know it? Am I talking to some people tonight that know you’re children of the Father, that you belong to God? Are you here tonight? Say, amen. Am I talking to people that the burden of alienation is gone. Do you know that the Friend isn’t angry anymore. And you know that the fallout you had with Him by sin is all over now. And you can say to God, I’m reconciled, His pardoning voice I hear. He owns me for His child I need no longer fear. With confidence I now draw nigh and Abba Father, Abba Father cry, the burden of alienation is gone. You can look up to the stars above and know nobody’s angry up there. You can lay your head on your pillow at night and know that nobody in the darkness is angry. And you could get up in the morning and know that the God that brought up the sun isn’t angry with you anymore. Nobody’s mad at you in the heavenly home up yonder. The blood of the lamb has taken away the alienation. And you’re no longer an alien and a pilgrim and a stranger, but you are now a member of the household of God. And you can say, Abba Father, Abba Father.

You know what Abba Father means? It’s just, Abba is in Arabic, and I think maybe a Hebrew, but at least it’s a Middle East word for father, Papa. It’s the word they tell us you can say before you get your teeth. And I take it it’s a word you can say after you lose them too, brother. Thank God. It’s a word you can say because it doesn’t take any teeth and it doesn’t take very much to say, Abba Father.

It’s all right now to walk out under the stars at night and know that there may be enemies lurking in the bushes, but there’s no enemy beyond the stars. Come unto me and the burden of alienation will fall away. Come unto me and off rolls the burden of sin. God hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. And God doesn’t lay on the same burden on two men. And the burden He laid on Jesus was the burden you were bearing, the burden of your sin. And because He bore it, you don’t have to anymore. And because He climbed a steep hill amid the rocks and thorns to die in the darkness, you can now shake your shoulders and the burden will roll off by faith and the burden of sin will go.

Come unto me and off comes the terror and the nightmare. He who once died for us now lives for us. That’s simple Christianity. What more could it be? That’s Christianity. Christianity, He who once died for me, now lives for me. And the nightmare is gone. And there’s no fear anymore and the terror. And off rolls the burden of pride; to God goes the glory. To God goes the glory, not I but Christ.

And you know, I think I’d better stop and talk a little more about that here. Because that’s something that doesn’t go off with first contact. That’s something the new birth doesn’t take always. That’s something that it may take a second grace, a second touch, a second encounter with God Almighty to deliver you from. But it’s the great curse my brethren. It’s the curse of self. Not I but Christ, not Christ but I, we say. We sing our songs about Him. And in our testimonies, it’s all about Jesus. But in our private lives, it’s all about I and me and mine. And I told them up yonder last week in Canada that the unknown anonymous writer of the Theologia Germanica had said, all that burns in hell is I and me and mine.

If you want to know the fuel that keeps that gloomy furnace burning, I’ll tell you what it is. It’s I and me and mine. It’s the stove wood, it’s the kindling wood, it’s the fuel of hell. I and me and mine. And it burns and burns my brethren, and until you’re free from I and me and mine, until you get to a place where you’ve got no ambitions anymore, no ambitions. I think I only have one. I think, thank God, I’ve only got one. I want to be a better man and glorify God more. And I think that’s an ambition that’s legitimate and right.

But do I want to be known no more? Do I want to be celebrated no more? I thank God I think it’s over. You know, it’s painful to give up self. It’s painful. You’ve got to attend your own funeral and see yourself die. And it’s not easy. It’s easy if you do it technically. Somebody said to Moody, Mr. Moody, don’t you know that judicially the old man is dead? Moody said judicially he is, but actually he ain’t. And there’s a problem with the world, my brother. Judicially, that fundamentalism is rotten with judicial Christianity. Judicially, we’re crucified with Christ. Judicially, we’ve risen again, Judiciously, the old man was crucified. Judicially, we’re seated with Christ at the right hand of God. Judicially, all that’s true, but we carry around the cancer in our soul called self.

And then defend ourselves. I said a while ago that there were two kinds of people I meet wherever I go. And the one man I said was the man who said, if God doesn’t meet me, I don’t want to live. And the other man who will take you aside and talk to you for an hour defending his carnality. He said, what did you mean in that book when you said, thus and thus and thus? Defending his carnality. If the children of God were as concerned with being holy as they are concerned to prove you can’t be holy, we’d have some saints instead of children in the kingdom of God.

But because we defend our sins and our self and our carnality, and will not be washed and cleansed and will not ask and trust and believe that the fire of God can make us clean, we’ll always find a text to hide behind somewhere. If nothing else, it will be a marginal rendering. But we’ll always find a text to hide behind. Paul said, they use the grace of God as a cloak to hide their sins. And we find it in this day in which we live my brethren, but not I but Christ.

The day you cease to have any worldly ambitions except to glorify God and enjoy Him forever will be the day the burden will roll from your heart. Come unto Me and what? Come unto me and we lay down the burden of self and off goes the weight of mortality. Eternal life is the word. In Christ is the word.

Oh, that noble, that golden, that beautiful phrase in the 15th of Corinthians, but now is Christ risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of them that slept, said the old, sanctified logician. If the dead rise not, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, you have believed in vain. And if you believed in vain, my gospel has been a lie. And if my gospel is a lie, I’ve convicted myself of being a sinner before my God. And if the dead rise not, and if not Christ is risen, you’re still in your sin. But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. Do you remember in the Messiah where they read that verse out as though it would fill the world with the glory of it, but now is Christ risen from the dead.

My brethren, whether I live 20 more years, and I may in spite of everything. And whether I die tonight at midnight, I want to leave this testimony with you. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was crucified and buried, and rose the third day according to the Scriptures. And I believe the burden of mortality has gone. The old carcass can wear away, and the winds of heaven can blow the shingles off the roof, and the birds can roost on the eaves, but that which is immortal within us which can’t die is safe in the arms of Jesus, safe on His gentle breast.

And off goes the burden of fear of death and mortality. Off goes the abrasive, corrosive, eating, wearing, cursing, biting sense that I am made for eternity and must die like a man. Jesus said, ye are gods but you must die like men. Jesus said that, I didn’t. Ye are gods, and he quoted the Old Testament. And He said, if God called His people gods, that is, you’re sons of God, you’re sons of God. And being sons of God, how can you die like men.

And brethren, we lay down and sleep like men. Now I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I think old mother nature, I think God has worked it out all right. You get tired after a while. You get weary of it all. You get weary. You’ve seen everything or else your your imagination has pictured and you’ve heard everything. I’ve heard everything. And I have been everywhere I want to go. I get invited everywhere. I don’t want to go. I’ve seen everything. I’ve seen a city. I don’t want to see cities. I’ve seen a river I don’t want to see a river. I’ve seen mountains. I don’t want to see one mountain. I’ve heard people talk other languages. I have no desire to visit. They want me to go to Europe. They want me to go to Asia. But I don’t want to go anyplace unless God sends me. All you have to do is use your little imagination and you’ve seen the world. People spend $5,000 going around the world. A man with a good imagination can sit sit home and know everything he sees and know everything and describe it for him. But, oh, brethren, He lives, He lives and we have eternal life and the burden of the fear of mortality is gone. Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.

A good many years ago now a 17-year-old boy sat in a Methodist Church on Market Street in the city of Akron, Ohio. And here stood up a man, a Methodist preacher, of course. He took for his text, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And the Methodist preacher said, some people may wonder why He said, take my yoke upon you. And they may withdraw from the yoke and say I don’t want a yoke. And said the preacher, but my friends you already bear one. The difference is the one you now bear is killing you. And the one He offers you is a light and easy yoke. Here I was, a 17-year-old boy and I heard that message by a Methodist preacher. I wasn’t converted that night. But a few days later I heard another man, not such a good preacher on the street and that clenched it and I went home, and in light of this truth, come unto me and in the light of the one that tells us, God have mercy on me a sinner, I found the Savior. The way has been a little rugged and it’s been a little crooked. And all my fault where it’s been crooked and all His glory where it’s been straight. But by the grace of God, I wear the yoke no more. Only the light, light yoke of His love.

And I invite you tonight. He invites you. I invite you. Come unto Him. Come unto Him all ye that labor and are heavy laden. You don’t have to carry a burden out of this room. You don’t have to carry a yoke out of this room except the gentle light yoke, with you on one end and Jesus on the other. And as the song says, He always takes the heavy end and gives the light to me. The Lord doesn’t deal in single collars. He only deals in doubles. The Lord never lays a light single yoke on any man’s neck. He lays a double yoke and He takes the other end.

So, if you are sick, now if you’re not, if you still love yourself, I worked up a sweat for nothing. If you still love yourself and you still won’t call sin sin, and you’re still satisfied with your car and your television and your radio and your good clothes and your job and your future, I haven’t said a word to you. You’ve been asleep. If you’re still satisfied, I might as well have stayed home. But if the Holy Ghost has heard our prayers, and there’s somebody whose heart He’s uncovered, and you’re sick of the burden and sick of the weariness and sick of it all, then I invite you to come unto Him and He will give you a rest.

Let us stand please. Thou in our midst, unseen, but present. We cannot touch Thee with our fingers, but we can touch Thee with our hearts. We cannot see Thee with our physical eyes, but the eyes of our faith look upon Thee. O Christ Jesus, Thou knowest. Thou knowest how we struggle, how the world is weary and tired and sick; running to doctors and brain specialists and nerve specialists and psychiatrists, and buying tranquilizing drugs and seeking to get rid of a load. Still, the load is there, wearing and eating and killing? O Lord Jesus, we would think that Methodist preacher back there never knew that a boy present who heard the sermon went home to be converted. He never knew it. So maybe we will not know tonight. But O Christ hast Thou somewhere, here, one or two or three or four, who will quietly slip out under the hush of Thy presence. And before the lights are out tonight and before retiring, will settle it forever and no more carry the load of alienation, the load of sin, the load of fear, the load of mortality, but roll it over on the back of Him who carried it up to the hill. And go free and begin to praise and thank and testify and tell and witness to everyone who will listen, how good the Savior is and how wonderful Jesus is. Bless these friends here tonight. We pray that we may not follow the world. We pray we may hate it and turn from it. We may pray, we may separate from it with violence if we need to. It may bring the fury of the world down on us and may bring the scorn of the religious world down on us. We don’t care. Only we want no more to carry the load. We want to go free in Christ Jesus the Lord and bear the sweet light yoke of Thy love. Bless us graciously while we wait. Amen

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Tozer Talks

The Real Human Burden”

The Real Human Burden

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 16, 1956

In the book of Matthew, the eleventh chapter, beginning with verse 25. At that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hath revealed them unto babes. Even so Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight. All things are delivered unto Me of my Father and no man knoweth the Son but the Father. Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly in heart. And ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Now, those three verses beginning, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, will be the text for this morning’s message and for tonight’s. The sermons will be complete in themselves, but they will both be on this text. So, I want you to hear, and we’ll hear together today and tonight, the Savior, calling men to Himself. If you only hear a sermon, then you’ve wasted your time. If you only hear a man’s voice, then you have fallen short of the possibilities here. And let us together hear the Savior calling men to Himself. Calling them from a burden that is too great for them to bear and calling them to rest. Calling them from a galling and exhausting yoke to a light, golden freedom and calling them to the ease-ful yoke and the burden that is light.

Now to hear our Lord profitably it is necessary to know what is the lost man’s burden? And of course, what it is not. It is necessary for us to know what is the human yoke that we bear. This morning, I’m going to talk chiefly about the burden, the human burden and what it is thought to be by many, but what it actually is not. And then I’ll talk a little about the verses themselves to close and then we’ll sing, his yoke is easy and His burden is light.

We all know that we are under a load. The human race is under a load, that it’s bearing a burden, a galling corrosive, wearing burden. But there is no unanimity of agreement about what the burden is. And the scientists and the social philosophers have, I think, quite agreed that there are five burdens which man bears from which if he could be delivered, he would be free. They are poverty, war, sickness, toil and intolerance. And if we could get free from these; if by some shift in the social scheme, if by the introduction of something. Communism, of course claims that they will free us from these and therefore will have a social order and the burden will be gone.

That is why so many people have taken up with new schemes, because they feel a load on their hearts and their backs are sore from generations of carrying it and they want to be free from their burden. Only they don’t know what their burdens are. Particularly, they do not know what the burden is. For our Lord, while He didn’t name it, He talked about it here. Come unto me all ye that labor, labor and are heavy-laden. That was the laboring under a yoke or the bearing of a burden on the back that was too heavy and the yoke that was too hard.

Now let’s look at what the philosophers say. First, there is poverty. And they say that human poverty is a burden. And so, plenty will relieve that burden. And if we could get free from physical needs and everybody had enough, we could introduce a social order or economic order and social order which would guarantee that everyone should have at least enough of all the world’s goods, we would then be free from the greatest burden in all the world. Of course, as you know, communism is built upon this. It is built upon the idea that economic determinism decides all man’s acts. That is, it determines economy, the economy, and the need for money and food and goods. It determines all of man’s acts. It brings them all wars, all divisions, all troubles, all burdens, all heartaches to the world. And if we could only free man from this burden, he would be free.

Now, let me say to you, my friends, that I grieve for those who suffer wants. And all my life long I think I have grieved for those who don’t have enough. For the little child that knows not where his breakfast is coming from or the little blue-eyed girl that must go to bed without sufficient to eat. And I agree when I hear them say that there are millions in Asiatic countries that never know from one year to another, perhaps from birth to death what it is to have a real, full stomach, and to have enough. And I could wish and God knows that I could wish that it were possible that it could be that the wealth that is ours, so richly here in our land, could be distributed all around the world so everybody would have enough and nobody would have too much. I know of no scheme, Democratic, Republican, socialistic, communistic, that could ever do this. Some of them claim they can, but they’re lying in their own teeth and they know it can’t be done while the hearts of men carry this other burden.

For I have noticed this that while poverty is a burden, increase of goods never makes people happy. If you have ever taken a little look around, you will know that increase of goods only shifts the burden to the other shoulder. And it’s a common testimony for older men and women to say after they have risen to all the ranks and now are making their 20-30-40-$50,000 a year; and after they own their estates and can afford to go to Florida for the winter and Canada in the summer and all the rest, they sit and in their weak moment when they are not trying to hide, they say to their friends, we have everything now. But Mum and I were happiest when we lived in two rooms and had to budget carefully our expenses.

You will find it often is the case that people are happy when they have least, and increase of goods never makes them happy, but only shifts the galling burden from one shoulder to another and creates desire for more, so that the man who has more wants more and when he gets that more he wants more. Like Lincoln told sarcastically of the man who said he was not covetous at all; it wasn’t true that he was a covetous man. He didn’t want anything. He only wanted the land adjoining his. And so that desire for more and still more, always wanting the land adjoining mine.

Wealth, I suppose, and the distribution of it, the proper distribution of it would cure certain physical ones, but it introduces a new set of anxieties and burdens still. If so, if there could come to the world an economic utopia, men would still carry their galling burden. They would get up with it in the morning and carry it around all day, even though they work to five-hour day and had plenty. They would still carry around their galling burden and would lie down with it at night. And when that summons came to take them to that dark, born from which no man returns, they would carry their burden down to the grave with them.

So, when our Lord said, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest, He was not talking about the burden that poverty brings, though He promised in the Scripture that we read, that our Father would supply our needs. So, He doesn’t want us to be poverty-ridden, but He was not talking about it. He who spoke was a man who knew not where to lay His head. And the very Man who offered rest from toil and burden, was a man who knew not where His next meal would come from. And He said, foxes have holes and the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.

Then the second burden the world tells us is the burden of war. And if we could have a war-less society, man’s burden would roll away down over the cliff into the gully below and break up on the rocks and man would walk free and upright and happy for the rest of the millenniums to come. Now, no one could have bore the insane business of war more than I. No man could possibly hate it more than I could hate it. And I grieve for every drop of young blood that ever was shed. And if they have their way over there in that little ugly ditch in Egypt, they will plunge us into a war that will cost us the blood of millions of young fellows and some of them who’ve never yet put a razor to their cheeks. I hate this vast, insane, devil-inspired, heinous thing we call war.

But I asked you to note, my listening friends, that a world at peace would not be a race at peace. A world at peace would never mean a race at peace, because man’s troubles churn up from inside of him and they do not come from war. Neither do they come from poverty. Man’s burden churns up from within him and it is not laid on from the outside.

And though we were to achieve a society where no soldier ever stood at attention and where no gun was ever oiled and where no war ship ever lay ominously at anchor and where no bomb was ever made, still, if we had such a society and it were ours today, still, many wives would pack and leave home tonight and go away from a home where hate dwells. And though we had a war-less society, still, many children would sob themselves to sleep tonight and cry their little eyes out because of the fight they’d heard in their home between father and mother at bedtime. And many men would walk the streets alone and grind their teeth and curse the day they were born and the day they’d met the woman they felt had brought nothing but grief to their lives.

And how many, even though there were no war around the whole world, still how many would seek oblivion in liquor and would try to hide their griefs and lift their burden by liquor. And how many would seek amusement and how many would seek the draught that the old Greeks called linky, the drink that made them forget in wild music? And how many of them would tonight blow their own brains out because they couldn’t stand the burden?

Though not a warship floated at anchor and though not a bomb was made in the world and not a man was threatening another man or a nation, another nation, still, a man would carry his burden because it’s not the burden of war. It’s a burden that comes from within him. It’s a burden he was born with and a burden he carries and a burden he’ll die with. Some say it’s the burden of sickness and when we have licked polio and cancer and heart disease, and when we have fixed it so all over the world there is not a sick man.

And when we have learned the human mind and psychiatrists have worked out a way to rest everybody mentally and we’ve had peace with our nerves, then the world will not have a burden anymore. Again, I say I rejoice in every anidyn of grief and pity every sufferer that lies today in any hospital in the world. But we must be realistic and face up to this that man’s heartbreaking burden is not a disease. Burden is a disease. It’s a burden, but it’s not the burden. And when Jesus said, come unto me all ye that labor, He didn’t mean all you that labor under sickness. He was healing sicknesses right and left. He recognized sickness as being a burden. He recognized it as being a hateful thing and a painful thing, but he’s not talking about it here.

Millions of healthy persons are completely miserable. You know that. Millions of people are going to psychiatrists or doctors, and they’re examined and sent to clinics and turned loose with a clean bill of health. And yet they go out in gloom and despondency completely miserable because sickness is a burden, but it is not the burden. It is a yoke but it is not the yoke. It is a labor but it’s not the labor. It’s not that crook that Christ would free us from only. I think he will free us. I think if we had more faith and trusted God more, we’d have less sickness in our own bodies. But that’s another matter for the morning. But this is not what our Lord was talking about.

And then there is toil. The labor philosophies have told us about the same thing no matter where they came from. And they have said that misery is in proportion to our toil. And I know excessive toil is a burden. And I have read with great grief the stories of the child laborers, child labor of early times. And I thank God that Charles Dickens wrote his terrible revolutionizing books that helped stir the English Parliament to abolish child labor. And I’m glad for every man whether he was a Christian or not who has helped lift the burden of excessive toil from the shoulders of mankind.

And I cannot get over Hood’s poem written about the woman who sewed to keep her family together. Work, stitch, stitch, stitch, I think it is in poverty, hunger and dirt, sewing at once with a double thread, shroud as well as a shirt. And I remember the artist, French artists Malay who went out into the wheat fields of France. And there he saw the peasants at work and saw the light had gone out of their eyes and the vivacity out of their faces. And saw them with great heavy hoes working from one end of the field to the other, waiting for the call when the bell would call them in at even and at night darkness to their meal. And out of it he painted his now famous piece called, The Man with a Hoe. And our own American, Markham, saw that and wrote about it. And said, bowed by the weight of centuries he leans upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, the emptiness of ages in his face and on his back, the burden of the world.

And I know how much toil lays upon us. But brethren, idleness would not lift man’s killing burden. Who are the miserable ones today? Who are they who are the most miserable of all? Who are going from divorce court to divorce court? Who are going from psychiatrists to psychiatrists? Who are they that are running from doctors to doctors–Idle wives and rich play boys. The idle wives and the boys that play, they’re the most miserable of all. They’re the ones that are fighting in the nightclubs and trying to drown their burdens in liquor. They are the ones. No, no.

Scofield has a note in his Bible, when God said, let men work the garden and keep it. He says it’s better for a man to struggle to make his living than to be idle in a world like ours, and he’s perfectly right. So, though they are to shorten our hours some three hours a day and a four- or five-hour week will be enough, it will never take the burden from the hearts of men. The man who works eight hours now wants to work five and the man who works five wants to work three. But when he’s working three, he has 21 hours to carry a load that work helps him to forget. For it’s the toil, it’s the burden of a sinful man and not toil. So, the labor philosophers have nothing to offer us except rest from excessive toil and I’m glad for them. And I’m glad for anything they’ve done. And I’m sorry that unions have in a measure have gotten into the hands of the wrong leaders in the last few decades. But still, if we didn’t have to work at all, we would be as miserable as a race as we are now.

And then there are those who say political misrule, that it’s political miserable and it’s the State. The anarchist and the socialists and the communists and various others have said, it’s the State that’s the trouble. And if we can get a right rule politically, we will be a free race. I want to ask you, where is there a freer land than America? Where is it freer than it is in this country? In spite of all they’ve tried to do with it in the last years. Still, it’s a free, free, wonderful land. Where is there more prosperity than there is in America? I doubt not, but that there are little nations in Europe that could live on what we throw out and is hauled away on Wednesday or Thursday or Tuesday morning by the garbage man? I doubt not. I doubt not that there are families that could subsist on what you throw away. Where is there a freer nation than America? Where is there a more prosperous land than America? Where is there a land in all the wide world where politics talks louder and does less, and we’re freer, freer to stand up and make a speech against the President? Free to stand up and condemn the Supreme Court. Free to call a mayor a name your conscience will allow you. We’re still free in this land in spite of all they tell us.

But in this free land of America, where, where, what land in the world has more crime than we have? What land has more divorces than we have per capita? Where is there more child desertion and need for more children homes? Where are there more insane asylums, and where are they building them bigger than they are here? Where is there more sheer boredom than here in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Where is there more excess in irrational drinking than in this land of America? Where are there more psychiatrists in this land? And where are there more sleeping pills taken than are taken here? And where is there more violence than here? And where is there more robbery and murder in general unhappiness than in this very land of the free, this very land of prosperity and political freedom?

Where the worst party, the worst party that could get in office, still rules with a hand so light. You can live 10 years and apart from your attacks and never feel them at all. And yet we’re one of the most miserable nations in the world. Indicating that when Jesus said, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, He had not political rule at all in mind. Christ never entered politics. Christ never said a word. He even said pay your taxes to Caesar. That was about it. He knew that politics could never cure what was wrong with the human race.

Well, one more thing they tell us. They tell us the trouble with the world is intolerance and race-hatred and lack of integration. And that if the doctrine of brotherhood could come and every man would be every other man’s brother or for all that, that would cure everything. Now I don’t deny that race hate has caused much misery in the world.

I don’t want to deny that many a little Jewish boy has sculpt off to school in the morning looking down at the sidewalk because he knew when he reached the playground at school, they would yell, here comes that Jewish boy. I know that many in Italian boy has gone off sick at heart to the school knowing that when he got there, they’d yell, look at that Italian boy. I know that. I know that many a black man has lived his intelligent, but grief-stricken life filled with burdens from his birth to his death because the white-skinned people felt he was beneath them. I know it. And I would look forward to the hour when we all like brothers be and loving harmony could be enjoyed round the whole earth. Not integration as they’re trying to press upon us now but loving fellowship.

I came back from Canada Friday morning. And up there we had delegates from 14 or 15 countries of the world, Japanese, Chinese, Jamaicans, Mexicans, French, Swiss, German, Australian, Canadian, United States, and I think there were some others. And we worshipped God together. And nobody even thought to inquire except out of good-natured curiosity where anybody was from. And in the church of Christ, there’s no color line. But brethren, let me put you straight on something. If by some miracle of God or man this morning, all race-hatred and nationalistic hostilities could be destroyed around the world, and Jordan didn’t hate Israel and Israel didn’t hate Jordan and Egypt didn’t hate America and Russia didn’t hate England. If all of that could be swept away by a gracious wave of an angel’s hand, man would still carry to the grave his galling, withering, damning, soul-destroying burden.

For it is not human hostility that breaks the human heart. It is not man’s inhumanity to man on the playground or in the shop that breaks the human heart. It’s something worse than that. Man’s wearing, corrosive burden is within him. He’s born with it. Whether he’s born black or yellow or white, he’s born with it in his heart. Man’s corrosive burden is primarily a spiritual thing because man is primarily a spiritual being. You cannot cure spiritual troubles with economic panaceas. You cannot cure spiritual troubles with social panaceas. You cannot cure spiritual diseases with political panaceas. And that’s why Christianity stands boldly to denounce all that as being, peace, peace where there is no peace. Peace, peace when there is no peace.

And not all of these philosophers, good as they may be, and as much God blessing as we may wish upon them in the natural world, man’s problems don’t come from the natural world. They don’t come from how much he has to eat or where. They don’t come from war, ghastly and horrible as it is. They don’t come from sickness nor from toil or from intolerance nor from politics. They churn up from within him, for man is a spiritual being and the burden is a spiritual burden. Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. But if somebody wants to challenge me here and say, Mr. Tozer, He didn’t mean economics. He did mean freedom from political misrule. He did mean it.

And I say to you, how is it that for the first 200 years, when the church was the happiest and the freest and the most powerful, when her songs were the most radiant and her testimony the brightest, and her joy, the flowing up like a fountain, why was she always poor and stripped and ragged? Why did her people have to go to the caves and mountains? Why were they slain and thrown into prison? And why were they standing for 200 years under the black shadow of the Roman law? And why were there ten emperors who rose in the period of 200 years to try to stamp Christianity out with the sword and with fire? And yet all of these knew what it was to have their burden lifted. They had their burden lifted, and because their burden was lifted, they’d go out singing to die. It wasn’t a political misrule. It wasn’t economic pressure.

It wasn’t they didn’t have two chickens in the pot. It was a spiritual burden, a load from within, a sinful thing. And Jesus delivered them from it. And that’s why the architect could build a great colosseum, or at least, we would call it a coliseum, an arena. He built a great building there as a Roman. And then one day after years had gone by and Christianity had come. This celebrated architect, the Frank Lloyd Wright, maybe of his day, celebrated, and the emperor let him in and said, this is a monument to your genius. And I want you to come as my guest and we’re going to have something today you I’m sure you will enjoy. He said we’re going to kill Christians today. We’ve starved lions and tigers until they’re ravenous. And these Christian stubborn fellows following some criminal named Jesus. Stubborn fellow as they are. And we’re going to turn them loose and let the lions have them.

The architect sat beside the emperor. And finally, that movement came on the schedule, the program. When they raised the gates and let the lions through. And there stood the Christians were their faces raised to God, and was only a matter of moments until long, powerful claws and grinding teeth had taken the life from these Christians. And the architect leaped to his feet and turn to the emperor and said, Sire, I don’t belong here. I am a Christian too! Goodbye and leaped into the arena.

And they tried to stop him but there was no stopping him. Assume the greatest of the Roman architects was lying, torn and shredded. His burden had been lifted and he could die because he died without a load, without a yoke that was killing him.

Now, my brethren, they’re fooling us. They’re fooling us. Your newspapers are fooling you. Time Magazine is fooling you. Life magazine is fooling you. The politicians are fooling you. The big speech orators are fooling you. They’re all fooling you. They’re telling you that America is a great land for political, economic or some other reasons. America is great because she has a lot of Christians in her and she’s great for no other reason. And they haven’t got a cure for any disease, except, as I’ve said, these shallow, lesser diseases, such as overwork, and illness, and so on.

We can help cure up them some, but it’s like scrubbing the deck of a sinking vessel. It’s like giving a man dying of cancer a careful shave and haircut. It helps a little bit it doesn’t cure the cancer. And so, all the help we get from philosophers and sociologists and scientists and politicians, it’s good and we’re not going to be so ungrateful as to be thankless. We’re only going to say, thank you for the haircut. But you haven’t cured my disease. I know where there’s Somebody that can. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me for I am meek and lowly in heart. Ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

There He tells us and I’ve hinted that a real burden, and I’m going to preach about it tonight and tell you how to get free from it. I trust you’ll come back. In the meantime, I just want you to hear Him say, come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. And whether you understand it or not, if you got a sick heart, you’ve got an invitation, not to come to this church. Come unto me, not to this church, to me. Come to this church if you want. We welcome you, but not to this church. We can’t cure it. Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. God bless you

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Tozer Talks

Concerning the Blessings of Christ”

Concerning the Blessings of Christ

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 7, 1959

For a brief preparation of minds for the communion service. Let me go to a section of Scripture not, I think, usually associated with the Lord’s Supper, the 14th Chapter of Joshua beginning with verse six. Then the children of Judah came unto Joshua in Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite said unto him, Thou knowest the thing that the Lord said unto Moses the man of God concerning me and thee in Kadeshbarnea. Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadishbarnea to spy out the land. And I brought him word again as it was in mine heart. Nevertheless, my brethren that went up with me, made the heart of the people melt, but I wholly followed the Lord my God.

And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance, and thy children’s for ever, because thou hast wholly followed the Lord my God.  And now, behold, the Lord hath kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, even since the Lord spake this word unto Moses, while the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness: and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old.  As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in.

Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the Lord spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and fenced: if so be the Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said. And Joshua blessed him, and gave unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh Hebron for an inheritance. Hebron therefore became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite unto this day, because that he wholly followed the Lord God of Israel.

Now, the background of this I think is known to every Bible reader. Joshua had led the children of Israel into the land of promise. And they were now having the land portioned out to them. God had given them the land. It was theirs. And He had given to each tribe a certain portion. And he was making this grant free of charge. There wasn’t any merit there, no character necessary, no deeds of merit, but only that they were God’s Israel. It all belonged to them now, and there was enough for everybody.

And I want you to notice about this, that no one lost by anyone claiming that that belonged to him. In the field of athletics, politics, business, and almost everywhere in human life, there is competition. And if one wins, the other loses. But in the kingdom of God, there is no such competition. There is enough for all, and nobody loses anything by somebody else claiming more; and no one gains anything by somebody else’s failure to claim his, because God has already portioned it out. If Judah or Gad or Zebulon, Nephtali, whoever it might be, didn’t claim all their property, nobody else can take it anyway. So that if one tribe didn’t claim all for himself that was his, nobody else gained. And if he did claim all, nobody else lost.

Now, that applies to New Testament things, too. And that’s what I want to speak on briefly, that when we come into the kingdom of God by the door of the new birth through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord, we are rich. And we are rich in three ways. That is, the riches of the Christian in Christ Jesus may be divided, for convenience’s sake, three ways.

First, there is that which we received by virtue of the fact that we are in Christ and there isn’t anything that we can do about it. We believe on Christ. We commit ourselves to Him and we have this. We have the new birth, for instance. We have a portion of the nature of God given us through exceeding precious promises. We have our name written in the Lamb’s book of life. We have God as our Father. We have Jesus Christ as our advocate above, our Savior by the throne of love. We’re members of the body of Christ. We receive a portion of the Spirit who unites us to Christ’s body and makes us a member thereof. All this God does when we believe on His Son. And you don’t have to know about this in detail. You will only have to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and this is yours now without you doing anything about it.

The second thing is, that is, the second division of our blessings in Christ Jesus is that classification covering the blessings that we cannot have now and that there had been no use to ask for now. For instance, you cannot have your new body now. There is going to be a day when you will have a body like unto His glorious body. If you’re a true Christian indeed, He is going to raise you from the dead or transform you in glory so that you will have a body like unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself.

So, there isn’t any use for anybody to get down on his knees and say, glorify me, Father. God won’t do it. He has laid His plans out here before us. He has sent us prophets and apostles and our Lord Himself to teach us, and we must use our intelligence. We cannot possibly turn back the clock. Nobody needs to go to God when he’s 65 years old and say, O God, please make me 25. God won’t do it. There will be a day when he will be at the peak of human possibility, whatever that is. I don’t know, Christ died at 33, and I have always thought that since Christ died at 33, He died at the peak time of human possibility. Some say that that’s a little late, but I believe that Christ was at the peak of all possibility. I don’t think there was any maturing to be done, anything to be done. When He was a boy it said He grew in the knowledge of God and in stature and wisdom. But I think that the moment He died, He was a human being in infinite perfection.

So, it’s possible that will be the age that God will chose. I don’t know that isn’t important. I only know that you will someday have a perfect body, but that day is not now and there isn’t any use for you asking for it. Neither is there any use for you to ask to sit down beside Him in the Kingdom at His right hand, because that will be for whoever earns it and wins it. He said that Himself. There are some things we will receive in the days that are ahead when our Lord comes, but that are not now to be ours.

Some people say, do you believe in healing in atonement? Now, of course the Christian and Missionary Alliance has always believed in healing in atonement, that is, they’re supposed to believe in it. And somebody would press me and say, do you believe in it? The answer is, yes, I do. I believe that everything that Christ is to us is in the atonement. I believe that when Christ died for us on the cross, He died for a new body for us. He died for a new mind for us, a new Spirit for us. He died to deliver us from this earth. He died to deliver us from our bondage. He died to deliver us from the wrath of God. He died in order that we might have a body like His, that we might be members of His Body, and that we might be perhaps members of the bride.

And He, all this, is in the atonement, including a glorified earth where there will be no thorns nor briars nor graves nor prisons nor bones nor wars nor pain nor crying nor tears. All this is in the atonement. That isn’t the question before the house, whether healing is in the atonement or not. The question before the house is, yes, it is in atonement, but when can we receive it? And some say we receive it now? And of course, they are very strong believers in this. And God heals some people in answer to prayer. There’s no question about it. He’s healed many in this church. Some of you here now could rise and testify to that fact. But it isn’t a question or problem of whether the healings in the atonement, it’s a question of whether it belongs in that class of blessings that we can receive now, or the class of blessings which we must wait for the glorious day.

I personally think that we can reach out by faith in the will of God and receive some measure of the glorification and many have in the healing of their bodies. But to expect that they will never get sick and that they will not get old is ridiculous, because God has said that the man should die. It was appointed unto man to die and all the saints who from their labors rest did die. They did, Paul did, and so did all the rest. I have heard men say you didn’t have to die. All you had to do lie down like Moses. That’s convenient and all right, and if anybody wants to die like that it’s his business. And if he has the faith, far be it for me to talk him down. But I only say that a glorified body, you might as well not ask for it, it isn’t yours.

There is a third classification. And it is vast, it is vast, and that is the classification of blessings which we have in Christ Jesus, but which are not automatically ours and which we will not experience unless we do something about it. Now is that clear? There are blessings which when you took Christ you did receive even though you didn’t know it. There are blessings which in Christ Jesus you will receive in the day ahead at the coming of Christ when the children of God are manifest. Then there is the third classification. And that is the victory, the deliverance, the purity, the power, the God communion, the worship, the high enjoyment, the fruitfulness, all of this, we don’t get automatically any more than Caleb automatically got his mountain. We get them when we go after them.

Now I lay down four principles here, four little rules which I want you to hear about these blessings in Christ Jesus. One is that you now have as much as you really want. That hurt some people to hear that, but I believe it and I am believing it increasingly, that every Christian is as holy as He wants to be. He may not be as holy as He wistfully wishes that he were, but he’s as holy as He wants to be. It is so in the will of God. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for what? They shall be filled.

Now, either Jesus Christ was wrong when He said that or it is true that everybody that thirsts is filled. But of course, the emphasis must lie upon the word thirst, hunger and thirst, depends upon the intensity of our hunger and thirst. Some people aren’t thirsty enough or hungry enough, so they don’t receive. At under high emotion at the singing of a hymn or in a revival meeting or at a time of prayer, they may yearn and even weep that they might be holy. But if they don’t want to be holy bad enough to do something about it and take the means of grace toward it, they will fall short. So, everybody is now as holy as He wants to be and has as much as he wants to be.

The second proposition is that everybody will have as little as he’s settled for. And this is one of the most heartbreaking things I know in the whole Christian life. If it’s persecution I wouldn’t mind that. If our people were dying in prison, I would have to lift up my hand and thank God for the privilege that Christians have of dying in prison. I don’t mind that, but what grieves me is that everybody has whatever he’ll settle for. And what you’re willing to settle for is what you have of the riches that are yours in Christ Jesus. The intensity of your life of worship, the purity of your life, the power of your life, the fruitfulness of your life, the extensiveness of your ministry and witness, all this that’s in Christ Jesus for us now that Paul prayed about in Ephesians. You’ll have as much as you’ve settled for.

Remember that what you have is what you’ve compromised and told God you’d settle for. And that’s the hardest thing I have to endure my brethren. The hardest thing I have to endure, is to know that I am among Christians all the time everywhere that have settled for less than enough. We’ve said to God, O God, I thank Thee I have it all in Christ Jesus. The Lord will come and I will go to be with him, but as far as this life is concerned, we have settled for less than enough. And if it grieves my heart to think about it, how terrible it must be to the Jesus Christ, our Lord. For remember that in the skies, He still remembers His grief, His sorrow and His cries. And He hears and knows about ours, and He still suffers for us in his heart.

And then the third proposition is that you will get nothing unless you go after it. Now, the first, yes, as a believer in Christ Jesus and the new birth, having been baptized into the body of Christ by the Holy Ghost, that I have, so to speak, automatically. As a baby born into the world has certain equipment automatically by virtue of the fact that it’s a baby and by virtue of the fact that you’re a believer, certain things are yours. By virtue of what Christ did do, is doing, and will do, there are certain things out ahead that are going to be yours. But now in the meantime, there are vast riches of untapped treasure which you will never get unless you go after it. If you’ve learned to live with mediocrity, you will live and die that way.

A few funerals in my time I’ve had, that have been borderline revival meetings because there was something you could say. But the average funeral, even of an old Christian, the pastor has to walk on eggs to keep from hurting feelings. He doesn’t dare tell all the truth about the dead. Any other time I’ll tell all the truth and take the consequences, but I have never felt that God wanted me to make an assault on any human soul in the presence of the Grim Reaper. I believe with the poet, that once they’re gone, you leave with them, with their weaknesses to the bosom of their Savior and their God.

So, you are where you’ve settled. And you’ve got as much as you want. And you will get nothing unless you go after it. But the third proposition is, you can have as much as you will insist upon having. Caleb the man of God remembered 45 years before. Caleb carried in his heart, 45 years he carried in his heart, the promise God had given him. God had said, I will give you this mountain. It was within the bracket of the tribe in which he was a part, that this can be yours. And he remembered it. Forty-five years, he remembered it. And then when the circumstances came around where he could, he went straight to Joshua and said, Joshua, I come to claim my mountain.

Now, there was an awful lot against these getting it and do know there’s so much against your obeying my sermon this morning that only the grace of God, or if the devil should fall asleep. And the latter, he’s not going to do. But the grace of God we can always count on and it will help you to get there. For forty-five years, time was against him. The promise made to you forty-five years ago, it’s hard to keep such promises untarnished. It’s hard to keep them fresh, hard to keep them watered so they’re still green. How many promises there are in your heart, brown, dried twigs?

And then there was age, a man when he’s 85 years old to say the least about. He was not a boy anymore; and here he was 85 years old. He was 40 when the promise was made. And they had been traveling around and now they had been 40 years in the wilderness. Now they were some years getting into Canaan, and now he’s before that mountain. And he remembered the promise. And Moses had been busy all the time, you know and there were giants that occupied the land. And then in verse eight, this poor little verse. I’m so sorry that it’s here. But this poor little verse says, nevertheless my brethren, that went up with me, made the heart of the people melt.

Vance Havner, said once, I think it was in this church that he said it that, I forget how he worded it, but something to the effect that there isn’t anything quite so happy as a new convert or anything quite so miserable as a new convert who had been worked on by Bible teachers. And I know what he meant when he said that. There was a lot of irony in it, but I know what he meant. I know that he meant that when the Christian bursts out like a newborn morning into the kingdom of God, nobody could be happier. But after he has been exposed to the brethren, his heart melts, after he’s been exposed to the brethren.

A man wrote me from the south, a preacher. He’s a former preacher running a store now. I think he will be a preacher later on, but he wrote me. I had written him a word and told him I was his friend. I wanted him to know it. I’d heard some things, but I love him. And he wrote me a long, warm letter back and he said, Brother Tozer, he said, I have been hurt so by a Christian, being pastor of a church where they never got along and I was just another victim. And he said, I had been hurt so by Christians and by those over me and by examples of people I saw, that I quit. He said, I just gave it up and quit. And he’s a middle-aged preacher. And I believe God would bring him out of that. But the brethren made his heart to melt. And this man, Caleb managed to keep his heart hot and didn’t melt. He managed to keep it strong even though the brethren around him were making his heart to melt.

Now, let me say this to you. This won’t hurt anybody’s feeling because each person will think he’s the spiritual one. Let me say this to you. If you don’t insist upon rising above the level of the church, you will be a mediocre Christian all your life. And if you don’t insist upon rising above the dead spiritual level of this church, you will be mediocre Christian all your life. God’s people just have to claw their way out of the mud. The kingdom of God suffereth violence. And God’s children just have to claw their way out.

They say that Ted Williams, the great baseball player who hit .410 one season I think it was, or 20 or something, and still at 39 years old is knocking them over the back fence; you know what he used to do? He used to have two rubber balls, one in each side pocket. Wherever he went, he went squeezing them all the time. Why? To keep those big forearms powerful. So when he snapped that bat, he could watch the ball come in and then in a split second of arriving, he could snap and he didn’t have to depend on the rest of them. Those big forearms cost him. It cost him to get that .400. It cost him.

And the musician, cost him. I sat beside a young woman with my wife and several others in a box, the only box I ever occupied incidentally, to hear a great pianist who was a concert pianist, who died of tuberculosis later. And I said something complementary to the sister of this man who was sitting there who had taken my wife and me. And she said, ah, Mr. Tozer, it isn’t worth it. And I said, what do you mean, it isn’t worth it? No, she said, it isn’t worth it. She said, he’s chained to his piano six hours a day. She said he’s a great pianist and he was just a young fellow. He’s a great pianist all right, and he’s on his way, but it isn’t worth it.

I think she was wrong. I think if anybody can do anything infinitely better than anybody else, no price is too much to pay. As long as it’s not immoral, as long as you don’t have to give up righteousness. And I think chained six hours a day, why there’s some people that read the sports page that long, nearly that long and arrive at nothing. By the time they watch TV three hours, read the comic strip half an hour, sports page an hour; there’s four hours and a half. Just one more hour and a half, you might have been a concert pianist. You’ve got to pay the price.

And so, it is with Christians. The Christian who won’t claw his way up, he’ll never get there. Caleb passed over everybody. And the beautiful thing about it was in doing it, he didn’t have to hurt anybody nor take anything from anyone. It was his by right. The businessman who claws his way to the top does it over top of 100 wrecks that he leaves behind him, men that he had to beat in business. The athlete that claws his way up has to push out other men almost as good as himself. But the Christian who climbs Jacob’s Ladder can climb all by himself and never hurt a soul, but He will bless a lot of people. And they will look and see him go and start up after him. So, keep that in mind.

Now, he pressed this promise and he asked for and he got and he took and he possessed. And it says until this day it belonged to him. He would have never gotten anything except he’d gone after it.

Today, this morning, I tell you, we’re going to have the Lord’s Supper here in a minute. We’re going to go through another routine. You say this is the way we do that the Alliance Church. That’s not important. What’s important is that He said, you do show forth the Lord’s death. He said, I’ll be there in the midst of you? No, He didn’t say that. He said, I am there. That’s better. He is present, the Real Presence. Infinite riches are yours. Why don’t you start now? This Lord’s Supper, experience, and bow your head and say, O God, I set my heart now. I won’t be mediocre. I won’t be a common, average Christian. I insist, God, I insist.

And here are the promises and then show God the promise. Here are the promises, God. You tell me I can be filled, that I can be holy, that I can have prayers answered, that I can be fruitful. I will insist, God. Why don’t you do that today? Start.

Caleb had to start somewhere. Caleb got up one morning and splashed cold water on his face, shook his grizzled head. He said, I’ve put this off long enough. He said, I’m going to visit Joshua. He’s a big shot, but I don’t care. God promised me the mountain and off he went. But he said where are you going grandpa? And I have an earnest and pushed his way through the crowd, pushed his way past the policemen and guards around Joshua, the big man. Pushed his way up and into the presence of Joshua. And Joshua said, hello, good morning, Caleb. What are you doing here so early. He said I’m here to claim my mountain. He said, it was promised me and I’ve fooled around long enough. Joshua said, all right, get the records.

To Caleb, deed was made out and Caleb and his people after him had it down to whatever this day means, whenever that was written. I think when the glory breaks and Jesus returns and the saints go marching in and the glorified bodies of the saints are floating everywhere about in happy union and communion, I think Caleb sometimes will smile and go sit on his mountain, just to remind himself and God and the universe that there was a day when it wasn’t his actually, his by promise, but not his by possession, and he went and took it.

But let’s take this morning. Let’s take. Let’s not wonder how Strat Shufelt is going to lead the singing. How Tozer, when he’s going to get through. That Mr. Chase is going to remember to do that right at the communion table. We’re going to run over 12 o’clock. My visitors will be there when I get to them. Put such things out of your mind. We’re in the presence of God and we’re rich as King Midas, but we won’t have a lousy dime unless we take it. Let’s take it this morning. Will you? Let’s take. Amen. Now, the brethren will gather as Shufelt leads us in a song. We’ll reverently and prayerfully celebrate the Lord’s death until He come.

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The World and the Kingdom of God”

The World and the Kingdom of God

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 16, 1956

The words of our Lord in the seventh and in the fifth of Matthew. Enter ye in at the straight gate. For wide is the gate any many there be which go in there at, because straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it. Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name hath cast out devils, and in Thy name done many wonderful works. And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from Me ye that work iniquity. Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of Mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon sand. And the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell. And great was the fall of it.

Then, a passage in Matthew 5:29,30. And if thy right hand offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee. For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Now, when the seasons roll around, the feast times, fast times on the Christian calendar, so called, I like to simplify and say now, what would I tell a stranger? What would I tell a man or a woman from some land that had never heard of Christ or the Bible or Christianity? There aren’t many anymore, but what would I tell them anyway? So today, I want to talk just a little about the world and the kingdom of God, and how important it is that we should enter the kingdom from the world, and how.

Now, to our Lord Jesus Christ, salvation was a very simple thing. He saw very clearly and He spoke very simply. And here’s the state of affairs as our Lord explained it in the verses which I have read. Now, naturally, I will say more than He said, because there would be no reason to preach if we didn’t. We hope we stay within the framework of what He said and extend what He said, but do not change it. But here’s what our Lord said in His earthly teaching. He said, that the world is full of sinners. And He defined sinners at various times as being lost as a sheep is lost, he said. Out in the wilderness, as away from home as a runaway boy is away from home, as perishing as a drowning man sinking for the last time, as being guilty as a rebel is guilty who rises against his country.

Now Jesus is very kind and was and still is very kind. He’s not changed. But because we need kindness so much, there is a danger that we should overplay the kindness and should forget that He said some very severe things too. I suppose that you can hear all up and down this country from, as the politicians would say, from the rock-bound coast of Maine to the sunny slopes of California. And you will not hear for the next two weeks one lone word that Jesus ever spoke that was severe or that was a warning. You will hear only the nice things He said. But the fact is, He said that sinners are lost, that the world is a land of darkness fallen off from God, as a planet that has left its central sun, and that in this world dwells the mortal enemy to our souls, the devil and sin. And that here human beings in this fallen, dark world, suffer without recompense and shed tears without reward and toil without permanence.

These are the three things that our Lord came to change in the world out there, in that kingdom that we call the world. You know it, we know it, whether it’s barbarism, hedonism, civilization, what it may be. We call it the world and it’s well named of populated cities and countries and towns, populated, organized loosely, and held together. And they suffer, but without recompense.

And our Lord came that men might suffer and have reward for it. And they shed tears without any reward to follow. And our Lord came that we might shed tears and those tears, everyone, should be diamonds in the coronet of God. And here, men toil without permanence, and everything they do passes away. But our Lord came in order that we might toil with permanence, for he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.

Now, that’s the world out there and you’re pretty familiar with it. It won’t let you alone. It comes into your living room. It flashes its lights at you from the shopping centers. It comes and is thrown onto your porch as a newspaper. It’s up and down the streets everywhere with its horns honking and yelling out at each other as they go up and down, at least down on our street, making a speedway out of it. The world won’t let you alone. The world with its toil and it’s tears and it’s suffering. But without permanence and without reward and without recompense, that lost, frightened away from home, guilty and perishing world is the world into which Jesus came. Now, over against that, and as we say now, coexisting with it, that is, existing parallel with it in time so that it can be entered now by the soul, is another kingdom we call the kingdom of God. I read about it to you. And of that kingdom, Christ of whom we sung is the Lord and arbiter.

Now, that’s the teaching of Christianity. That’s what the Bible says. That’s what our Lord Himself said, that this kingdom of God that Jesus Christ is the Lord and arbiter of that kingdom. And that into that kingdom, because they coexist and parallel each other like two buildings standing side by side with doors, gates that you can enter; because it’s true that these kingdoms, the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God coexist.

Therefore, we can enter into the kingdom of God from the kingdom of the world. If there was a vast gulf separating, or if one had existed and then perished, and the other one had come on later, it would be impossible to enter from one into another. But now says Jesus, it’s entirely possible to enter the kingdom of God from the kingdom of the world; the same Person to have dwelt in both, first in the kingdom of the world, and then in the kingdom of God. And the same Person then afterwards that dwells in both simultaneously. His physical body and His earthly part of Him shall dwell and does dwell in this kingdom of the world. But His heavenly part of Him, His spiritual part, enters the kingdom of God and dwells there.

So that like our Lord, who said He had nowhere to lay his head and like Paul who traveled around in this oft, he’s in this world’s kingdom, but he’s given up the things that made this world’s kingdom evil. He’s given up lostness. He’s no longer lost, he is found. He’s no longer away from home, he’s come back. He’s no longer perishing, he’s saved. He’s no longer guilty, he’s forgiven. And still, the physical and natural part of him remains here on Earth in this world of darkness. And here, instead of suffering without recompense, God gives him joy for every suffering. Here, instead of shedding tears without reward, God gives him great recompense for all of his tears. And here, instead of toiling without permanence, he’s working co-laborer with God, building and working and laboring with God Almighty.

But now, this kingdom is entered, said Jesus, this new kingdom of heaven, of the Spirit, is entered out of the world, but it’s entered only one way. There are not, as the world says, a dozen ways to get into it. You can get into it according to the world which doesn’t know, any one of a dozen ways. You can get cultured into it, educated into it, born into it by nature, or you can get into it by cultivating your good part and putting down the bad part, doing good deeds. They have very many ways of getting in. But our Lord says there’s only one gate out of the old kingdom of the world into the kingdom of God. And that is, by Jesus Christ, our Lord, by way of the cross, now escaped from the dark land, and entrance into the blessed Kingdom is by one, lone gate, I repeat. And Jesus said that it was a small gate and a straight one. And it’s always necessary to explain that by straight, he didn’t mean straight, like a foot rule. He meant tight, narrow.

And so, that gate is very narrow. And our Lord shows the bleak, deep, utter ruin of the world, and He shows the wondrous everlasting delight of those who come into the kingdom of God. And He says that nothing dare prevent our entering. The cuddly, little Jesus that the world talks about with His kind thoughts and His peace on earth, is not the same One who warned us that we should not allow anything to prevent us from entering this kingdom, this eternal and permanent kingdom.

And He said, if we allow anything to prevent us from entering the New Kingdom, we’re doomed. He said, that there should be no compromise at all. He said that there is no easy way of getting in. That is, we’ve explained not any two ways, but one way. And it is through one gate, a cross-shaped gate, and it is a very narrow gate. And it is a gate you can’t drive a trailer through. You can go through, but you can’t push a wheelbarrow through. You’ve got to leave your stuff outside. It’s a narrow gate just big enough for the individual to come. And He says, there will be no compromise.

Does it sound a bit strange and off-key to hear that this baby Jesus grew up and said to people, if your right hand gets in your way you had better chop it off than to go to hell? You’d better enter the kingdom of God with one hand than go to hell with two. Doesn’t it sound strange that this Jesus should say, if your eye offends thee, reach in and pluck your eye out rather than with two eyes go into hell. That’s what He said nevertheless. And He said, that we should leave if we have to, father and mother and wife and children and life itself that we might leave the old, fallen, lost, perishing, guilty kingdom of the world and enter into this new kingdom of which He is the head. Now that’s what Jesus said, and that’s what everybody’s yelling about, but we don’t know it in this day.

Now, if Jesus Christ knew, and there are millions of people all up and down the world that believe Jesus Christ knew; and they have proof that He knew, proof which others may not accept, but which they do accept and which is satisfying to them. Proof, that there exists for every man a critical emergency. That we are not simply to lean back and sing Christmas carols, whatever sweet they may be, and not simply go shopping to give gifts, and that’s a delightful custom and I wouldn’t stop it though I think it could be wised up a bit. But nevertheless, I don’t want to be the old Scrooge that says the baby shouldn’t have a toy and Aunt Mabel shouldn’t have a new scarf. I don’t want to do it. But I only say that it’s over-done a bit I think.

Now, until we have left the old world in our hearts and entered the blessed gate of the kingdom of God, we’re in grave danger of what the Bible calls the second death. Now that’s what He said. And that’s as much a part of Christmas as the Babe in the manger and holy night, silent night. For the One who was born said that. That’s what He came to say. That’s the message He has for mankind. He has a message of peace on earth to men of goodwill, but He also has a very critical message, a message of critical emergency; that there exists two kingdoms, one perishing and one eternal, one lost and one found, one natural and one spiritual, one blessed of God and the other under the curse. And they exist paralleling each other and touching, coexisting, and that there is a narrow gate–cross-shaped–which will allow you to leave the old kingdom and enter into the new one forever. And anybody can come, black or white or red or yellow, or old or young or rich or poor or cultured or a barbarian, or Scythian or bondman or Greek or Jew around the world, at anytime, anywhere. They can leave the old kingdom and enter the new. And until he does, each man is in grave danger of so arranging it and so setting things up, that he’ll never enter the new kingdom at all, but will perish with the old kingdom.

It’s as though, take two great ships at sea that were to get in radio contact with one another. And one ship would say, we have sprung a leak and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s too huge and we haven’t the materials. We can’t stop it. We have, we judge, about two hours to get our passengers and crew off. And another great ship pulls up close to it and a proper way of getting across is set up. And those who want to do it, can come across from the sinking ship into the one that isn’t sinking. And after all that come that will come, then the unwounded ship, the great ship, will reverse her motors and roar away at a safe distance and watch the great, old, wounded vessel go down, great, old noble wide thing, plunge into the sea. But everybody that would leave her could leave her. And everybody that had wisdom enough to do it, could cross over the improvised gang plank and could be safe on board the great unwounded ship. And so, with a change of direction, life nevertheless could go on their way to port.

Now, that’s exactly as it is changing the figure a bit, out on the great, great, sea of life. Two mighty ships are near to each other, within touch. And one of them is wounded unto death. And she’s leaking and listing and going down. But the other great, wide ship appeared. It was the Old Ship Zion the colored brethren sing about. And the old ship of Zion pulled into sight, and the, ahoy there, sounded from the deck. And it’s, come on over, come on off the wounded, sinking vessel. And it’s a strange thing that they won’t come, only one now, and one again.

Strange thing isn’t it, that it costs millions of dollars to keep churches and evangelists and preachers going and missionaries to try to coax people off of a sinking vessel. And yet that’s exactly what we’re faced in the day in which we live. We’re faced with the incongruent situation of a ship going down and another ship unwounded and ready to receive all passengers and crew. And yet only one and again will come across. And yet she’s sinking, settling deeper in the water and the stern beginning to go down, and obviously should plunge soon. And yet we have to coax and sing and pray and work and do personal work and beg to get people off that sinking ship onto the unwounded ship which will soon be in the harbor with all hands safe and all passengers perfectly well. Yet, that’s where we are.

And Jesus our Lord says, there’s a critical emergency. The great old ship we call the kingdom of this world has hit a reef and she’s leaking badly and she’s listing, and nothing on her decks are never level. They’re always crooked and everything on her is crooked, and it’ll only be a matter of time in the fulfillment of the prophecies and the sound of the voices of the sages and seers gone by. All are focused on us now and all the sounds are coming from the past ages to tell us that before very long that great old ship will go down.

And yet, we have to coax people to come and beg them to get off a sinking ship. That’s because the parallel won’t hold and because the illustration is imperfect, because anybody on a sinking vessel would want to live. But the sinner thinks he does live. And part of his very lostness is, he doesn’t recognize that the deck is not level and that the ship is settling in the water. Part of his very lostness and part of his very blindness and darkness is that he doesn’t know how lost he is and how soon he’ll plunge down. But for everyone that will there is a gate that stands ajar. And through its portals, beaming rich mercies from the cross afar, the Savior’s love revealing. O depths of mercy can it be, that gate was left ajar for me?

Now, any consideration of Christ is ruled out our Lord says. The emergency is so great on that sinking ship, if a man was bringing back antiques from Africa or artwork from Paris, he’d be very happy to leave them on the sinking vessel and escape with his skin and his suit and no more. Perhaps a toothbrush and a change of garment, that’s all. And if he had to leave them behind, he’d do it. And so, our Lord says the emergency is so great that everyone should at once give up all, even the last price if they have to, physical death in order that they might save that inner man which is all that’s worth saving.

Now, is that a dark picture? No, my brother, it’s not a dark picture. For we are saved unto the glory that exceleth. And that great, wide ship that lies there so easy and graceful with her great motors hidden there and her great screws ready to propel her swiftly to a safe harbor, she would take them all in. And the glory and the wonder that exceleth are to be found there.

Or to change the figure again, let us move over out of that old dark world and let us enter the new kingdom of God and let us start our pilgrim journey. Let us start our journey toward that new heaven and new earth which before very long we shall see.

Now, I want to do what I rarely do. I know some preachers quote and read until people don’t like to hear them, and I try to spare my audience. But I do want to read you something here too beautiful, too beautiful for me to keep to myself. I wrote a long time ago about the man I call the saintly silk weaver, Tersteegen. The German suit weaver who spent his time weaving silk, but who spent his off hours in prayer writing hymns as sweet and smooth and wonderful as silk. And one that he wrote was called, the Pilgrim’s Song. Let me read it. Those who don’t like hymns, why, you bear with me and excuse me.

But those who do, why, you listen for I don’t do this often. But I hear this dear old German. Now, he never spoke a word of English of course. And if you heard him speak, you’d hear the great heavy, deep, musical and guttural voice of a German speaking. But they translated into English for us. And here we have it about as he wrote it in English. It’s called, A Pilgrim’s Song.

On! O beloved children, the evening is at hand. And desolate and fearful a solitary land. Take heart, the rest eternal awaits our weary feet. From strength to strength, press onward; the end, how wondrous sweet. Lo, we can tread rejoicing, the narrow pilgrim road. We know the voice that calls us, we know our faithful God. Come children on to glory, with every face set fast toward the golden towers where we shall rest at last.

Now listen to this description of our world in which we live. Listen to it. The praising and the blaming, the storehouse and the mart, the morning and the feasting, the glory and the art. The wisdom and the cunning, we’ve left amid the gloom. We may not look behind us for we are going home.

That’s what we’ve got now, isn’t it? The praising and the blaming and the calling names in the United Nations, and bitter editorials in the newspapers cussing out some governor or mayor. The praising and the blaming, or maybe it’s only shouting an angry abuse across the back fence because you let your hose run or your dog bark? The praising and the blaming, the storehouse and the mart, the morning and the feasting, the glory and the art. The wisdom and the cunning left far amid the gloom. We may not look behind us for we are going home. Oh, speed, unburdened pilgrims, glad empty-handed free. Why are we empty handed these pilgrims? Well, partly because they’ve taken most everything away from us. And partly because we gave the rest of it away.

I remember what my dear, old daddy said. He’d only been converted a short time and the kingdom of God was very puzzling to him and so completely backwards from everything he’d known for 60 years. And he said about my older brother and myself, the younger brother was then too young to count. So he only mentioned two of us. I had been converted a while and he’d watch me operate. And he said, I don’t understand it all. He said I have two sons. One of them makes all the money he can make and saves all he can save and the other won’t take anything, and what he gets he gives away. He said I don’t understand it.

Well, that’s not true only of me and it isn’t all together true, but it’s true of all God’s children. To speed unburden pilgrims glad empty-handed free; couldn’t bring much with you to cross the trackless deserts and walk upon the sea. The strangers among strangers, no home beneath the sun; how soon the wanderings ended, the endless rest begun. We pass the children playing for evening shades fall fast. That’s an allusion to Jesus saying the children are playing in the marketplace. Sadly, he saw the children playing in the marketplace. Don’t be angry with them friends. Don’t feel superior to them. Don’t feel contempt. They’re the children playing in the marketplace out there among the shadows.

Bob Hope is playing out there and making people giggle. And they’re paying him frightful, great salaries for it. And Jack Benny’s still doing it. He’s still 39 and still making everybody laugh. And we add a new clown every year and a new star every year. And an old star dies somewhere in a boarding house forgotten, then a new star shines in her physical beauty for a little while. Still the children are playing. We pass the children playing for evening shades fall fast. We pass the wayside flowers toward God’s paradise at last. If now the path be narrow and steep and rough and lone, if crags and tangles cross, it prays, God we’re going home. We follow in his footsteps.

What if our feet be torn? Where He has marked a pathway, all hail the briar and thorn. All hail the briar and thorn, he says. I see the footstep of Jesus and what did I get my foot caught? Scares seen, scares heard, unreckoned, despised, defamed, unknown or heard but by our singing, O children, hurry on.

Brother, do you get that line? We’re heard but by our singing. And I walked around up in my study just before service and I was as near being blessed as a tough old fellow like I can be. To think that there are the children of God, the true children of God and mostly they’re overlooked.

Now, the philosophy of evangelicalism is now, that if you can get a big wig to but trim his wig and parade him for everybody to see and say he’s a Christian. But they’re never known for their Christianity. They’re known for something else. A politician, he’s a Christian, but he’s never known because he’s a Christian. He’s known because he’s a politician. A movie actor goes to a prayer meeting in the morning. He’s known because he’s an actor, not because he goes to a prayer meeting. An athlete wins the decathlon and he’s a Christian, all right. He’s not known because he’s a Christian, he’s known because he wins the decathlon.

So, all up and down the world, the modern philosophy is, a big shot is a Christian. Let’s yell about it. But they’re never able to put it across, because the fellow they’re talking about is never known because he’s a Christian. He’s known because he’s something else. Then they tag Christianity on to him to try to suck what little goodie they can out of his testimony.

But this old man of God who wove silk and prayer, he knew better. He knew better brethren, there’s no question about it. He had more sense than all of us today. He said scares seen, scares heard, unreckoned, despised, defamed unknown, and heard but by our singing. O children hurry on. We’re only heard because we sing. I tell you I want that to be true. Like the bird that Milton wrote about, the bird of night sings darkling, he said. There in the shadows unseen, but she’s there and how do they know she’s there? She’s there because while the shadows hide her form, out from her sweet, melodious throat, their floats the music of that gifted bird.

And so, the children of God are known only for their singing. Wonderful, isn’t it? I think wonderful. I got to do something with that. That’s too good to let die. God’s children are not known for any, and they’re not because they’re Christian. They’re known for something else all right, but not known because they’re Christians. If you say, I’m born again, everybody looks embarrassed and turns away. But if you sing they’ll at least know you’re around. We’re known but by our singing. Thank God, my friends.

So, our Lord did not leave us on a low note. He began on one, but He left us on the high, high crescendo. Would that be a good word. I want to use a musical term meaning high and beautiful and sparkly, for that’s it. The glory that exceleth. And it’s out there before us. And so, every time you hear a bell, even if it’s over a country store like this we pass down here at 69th and Halsted Street. Since October, they’ve been playing out of a loudspeaker, way out of focus and off-key, they’ve been playing Christmas songs.

Even if you hear a bell ringing or see an old fat Santa Claus, let it remind you that there is something real back of all this even if the world doesn’t know it. There was one who came to tell us that these two kingdoms coexist, that you could enter one from the other by way of the cross. And having entered then, you’re a pilgrim on your way to the holy, permanent, happy land, singing as you go, overlooked, forgotten, despised, but nevertheless heard through your singing while you go on your way to heaven. Praise be to God above. Amen.

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Tozer Talks

This One Thing I Do”

This One Thing I Do

Pastor and author, A.W. Tozer

October 5, 1958

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God and Christ Jesus. And I want to select this without doing violence to the rest of it. But selecting this: Brethren, this one thing I do.

Now, I think that it is quite agreed everywhere throughout Christendom, now called St. Paul; Paul, the apostle, was the most successful Christian that ever lived. That is, he put more in and got more out and did more good and served more nearly to the fullness of his capacity and succeeded in being what a Christian ought to be to a degree, probably not approached by anybody else that ever lived.

And I would not be guilty of picking out one statement from the lips of the man Paul and saying this was the secret of his success. I am not sure that anybody will ever be able quite to discover the secret of his success, but I would say at least this much, that if Paul had not said this that I have read this morning, no matter what else he was, he could not have been the great soul that he was. Paul’s statement, this one thing I do–five simple words–this one thing I do, if they are not the key to his success, they are at least so important that without them, there could have been no success.

Now, Paul narrowed himself down deliberately. And the living question before every Christian is, what is important? When Paul said this, one thing I’d do, he meant, there is one thing which, in the light of who we are and what we are and who God is and what God is, our relation to God in His to us, there is one thing which is of exclusive importance, vital and excluding all others. And now the question comes to us and Him, what is important to us?

Now, for all of us, I’d like to say that there are a thousand things that you might do. I’m talking about Christians now of course and to Christians only. I’m talking to those who know God, who are renewed by the Holy Ghost. There are a thousand things that you may do, but you have time for only one. And the trouble with us in America is, we go too many places. We have too many things. We see too many things. We hear too many things. We can buy too many things. And in every way, we load ourselves down with things. And you have time really only to do one thing. And then the question, what is that important thing?

Now, I would recommend to all young people that you don’t waste your time fooling with incidentals. The world is full of incidentals. I’ve been a great admirer always of Robert Louis Stevenson. But he said one thing. Maybe because he said it for children is why he said it, certainly it isn’t grownups. He said, the world is so full of a number of things that I think we should all be as happy as kings. Well, I am not a poet, but I should like to change that around, and ignoring the rhyme. The world is so full of the number of things that I wonder we’re not all as crazy as loons. There are too many things in the world and we’re busy creating new ones all the time.

Now, we have an answer and you will find an answer, and it’s a relatively easy thing, when a man stands to speak in the Spirit, to brush him off, just brush him off. That’s a relatively easy thing to do. But we’re Christians, and as Christians, we are answerable to God. And so I recommend that you don’t waste your time fooling with incidentals. For the world is full of incidentals. The world is full of things that have no more, that do not minister any more to your holiness than the chrome on your automobile ministers toward your travel.

You know, the purpose of an automobile is to take you somewhere. Where you can put all kinds of beauty spots on it, paint it any color of the rainbow, and load down with 40 pounds of shiny metal. But that is incidental, and you are paying for incidentals. You can do that. That’s perfectly all right for you, go ahead, but it doesn’t add anything. It doesn’t get you there any quicker. It doesn’t get you there any safer. It is just trimmings on the cake.

And so, life has its certain vital, beating, throbbing heart. And then all around that, man and the devil have placed a thousand shiny things and they want you to get interested in them. But I recommend that you watch it and find out what is incidental and what is fundamental and then work the fundamental for all that it is worth.

Now, the man with a cross can only do one thing. The man with a cross is only doing one thing. Jesus bore His cross out to the hill. He was only doing one thing. The man with a cross only has one plan and he didn’t make it. It was made for him by somebody superior to him. And the man with a cross on his shoulder in this country, now, today, in this church, can only do one thing. He only has one plan and he didn’t make it. Someone else made it for him. The Man who bore the first cross, or the first Christian cross that went out to the hill with the first cross on His shoulder, that man makes your plan for you. And if you want to escape the tragedy of waste, you’re going to have to find out what is important and what is not important. What is fundamental and what is incidental.

Now, every Christian should learn what is important, because you’ll have invitations to give your time and strength to a bewildering multitude of activities. You will be invited as a Christian, mind you, and in the name of religion, to do a thousand things, and 999 of those things won’t be worth your trouble. They’ll be religious, but they will not be worthwhile. You must pray for heavenly wisdom to enable you to eliminate the incidental and recognize the fundamental and work the important thing for all it’s worth. Paul did this.

But this will narrow me, somebody says. This will limit me. This will make me narrow and small. I’ve got to be cultured. I have got to expand. I’ve got to become cosmopolitan. I got to be big and broad. Well, you’ll never get so big and broad but what four feet one way and six feet the other will take care of you. Keep that in mind, always everybody. You’ll never get so big nor broad nor expansive, that they don’t have little boxes down here that will contain you at last.

And then the next place. This doesn’t narrow anybody, or if it does, it narrows them in the right way. You know, you have to be a specialist now in the day in which we live. There was a time when a man could learn about everything there was to know. Aristotle was supposed to know about everything that could be known in his day. But so vast has the body of knowledge become that nobody can know even the beginnings, the first low percentage of all that can be known. We’ve got to specialize. Scientists specialize. They don’t pretend to know anything outside of their field more than just what the average man knows. But within their field, they try to know all they can. And that field has another field within it. And that field has another field, so that, the men who are doing anything in any sphere, are the specialists. And the specialists are the narrow persons, the persons who have deliberately laid aside, the unessential in order that they might specialize on the essential.

Abraham, for instance, was a specialist. Abraham believed God. Abraham obeyed God. And when he got up and left Ur of the Chaldeans and started for the land of promise, the land which God said He would give to him and his descendants after him, Abraham became a narrow man, a very, extremely narrow man. But would you change it? Would you go back and have Abraham interested in real estate in Ur of the Chaldeans? Would you have had him run a scissors-sharpening shop around the corner? Would you have had him be mayor of Urville? Would you have had him stop and expand himself and enlarge himself and join this or that lodge and another two or three other societies and lay cornerstones and be around to sign requests? Would you have had Abraham do this? If you would, then you’d take Abraham out from being the father of the faithful and the father of the Messiah. And you’d have made him into one more man to lie and gather mold in some rocky cavern in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abraham did one thing, he obeyed God. He did what he was told to do and became the great man that he was.

And then there was David. David was a man who could do I suppose, as many things as the average man. I won’t go into it. But I think a book could be written showing how versatile David was. How he was a poet and a soldier and a king and a lawmaker or at least an administrator. And in many ways, David could have done many things. And yet, David specialized. David was a worshipper of God, that was first. And the things that he had to do, he melted them down and poured them into this one crucible. They all belonged in one thing. Everything David did ministered to this one thing.

And take our Savior Himself, He set His face like a flint to go up to Jerusalem. He could have done many things, but He only did one. They’re trying to make out that Jesus could have been or would have been this or that, but Jesus was only one when He came to this world. He narrowed himself down deliberately.

And so did the man Paul. Think of what this mighty brain could have done. Think of it. This mighty Paul. But Paul said, this one thing I do. I forget the things that are behind and I press forward toward the mark. I tried to be Christ-like. I tried to show forth Christ and put my flesh under my feet and be a Christian. That is my one thing. The one thing that I do.

Well, was Moses narrow? Would you have Moses change? Would you have gone to Moses and told him that he was too narrow? Would you have gone to David and told him that he was too narrow? Would you go to Jesus and say, Master, we’re sorry, we don’t like to criticize, but we think that You could well expand. You might, for instance, have a better public relations committee and you could get on better with Herod and with Pilate. You can do far better than you’re doing if you only had hired somebody to get your name in the press in the right way.

We could have changed Jesus, I suppose, if we can theoretically think so. But of course, we could not have changed Him because He was doing one thing. And so was the man, Paul, and so was every great soul down the years. I suppose the complaint of every sword that ever has been sharpened has been, you’re making my edge so thin, I’m so narrow. I’ll be criticized for being narrow. But it was the very narrowness of the edge, the very fact the edge is so narrow that it couldn’t be measured that made it the terrible, sharp thing that it was and is.

Now every church has got to learn what is important. Churches of Christ are so busy doing things that aren’t important that we’re scattering ourselves all over the world. And we have never learned the meaning of Paul’s words, this one thing I do. The Word of God answers the question, what does this church exist for? Well, it exists to evangelize and to perfect the saints and to do good unto all men. That’s what it exists for.

Other things exist for other things. And they have a right to exist in this complicated world we live in. There are literary societies. There are scientific societies. And there are societies of every sort. There are institutions of every kind. There are organizations dedicated to a thousand things and there are legitimate things. And in this mixed up and confused sin-cursed world in which we live, I suppose that we have to have them, at least we think we do.

But the church of Christ is another organization altogether. She’s more than an organization. She’s an organism. She was born for one thing. She’s made for one thing and the one thing she’s made for, is to spread the gospel message and tell the story of the redemption in Jesus’ blood and see to it that it gets out just as far as it can.

I had quite an interesting experience yesterday. A nice little lady, a cultured, lovely little lady who said she’d been the wife of a Methodist preacher for 45 years. And she’s now the secretary of the missionary guild of some Methodist church, and she came to see me. She called up and wanted to know if she could. She said she wanted a letter to write on missions. She takes the Alliance Witness and she wanted to know whether I would write her a letter which she could send out to her guild or group. And I said, well, I don’t know why you couldn’t do it. Oh, she said, you could do it so much better. She didn’t know how she overestimated. But anyhow, she came over here after the broadcast and I talked with her about a half an hour, then I sat down and typed out a letter for her.

And I used this which appears in the Alliance Witness, not written by me, that says we are losing the race, that all the missionaries in the world can only reach a certain limited number of people each year. And yet, people are being born into the world, many millions more are being born into the world each year than can be reached by all the missionaries in the world a year. Therefore, plain, blunt, downright cold, hard figures show that there are more people being born than are being reached. And therefore, with all the missionaries in the world of all Christian denominations and societies in the world working full time, we’re still losing the race to the devil. And there are fewer Christians per capita in the world every year. Every time the bells ring to announce the arrival of a new year, there are several million more people in the world, many million more people in the world. Only a few have been reached and the Christians that have been made.

Now, when we say “reach” understand, we only mean approached. We don’t mean “won.” No, no, no. If you could win millions every year, we could take the world for Christ. But reaching them with the gospel is one thing, winning them to Christ is another. And so there are only a few Christians, relatively, and the percentage gets less and less every year. Therefore, my friends, you may be assured of this, that every year when the bells ring out the old and ring in the new, the world is less Christian than it was one year before. Now that’s just plain, cold, hard facts. I wrote that into that letter and signed it. And the dear little lady said, here take this $10 Oh, no, no, I said, I wouldn’t take $10. She said take it and give it to missions. So, I turned it in this morning, for missions.

Well, my friends, I mention this because the church isn’t doing what she has been sent to do, you see. She’s supposed to do one thing, but she’s doing a thousand things. She’s being told what to do by politicians, boy scouts, women’s guilds, learned societies, schools, and a whole dozen others you could name. She’s being told what to do. And the poor preachers don’t know any better than to give themselves to it. The ministerial office is becoming corrupted. And preachers have become general utility men. And the bought and paid for flunkies of the pulpits these days, they’ll get behind anything at all, if somebody comes starry-eyed and says, Reverend, I’d like to have you give this a push.

So, we forget that the church of Jesus Christ is a unique, a peculiar organization; an organism something as peculiar and as unique as an angel in heaven, and more so because there’s only one church and there are many angels. So, we are born to see that the message gets abroad.

Then, to perfect the saints. Now, that’s all a part of the one thing we do, the perfecting of the saints, to teach the Word, to worship the Lord, to learn to live together in love. Learn to live together, worship God, and perfect the saints, teach the Word. All this is in the one thing the church is to do. And to do good unto all men and giving to the distressed and relieving the pains of men wherever it’s possible, and binding up the brokenhearted and bringing help to the needy. This the church was sent to do. Jesus Christ was anointed by the Holy Ghost and went about doing good, healing all at the were oppressed of the devil.

And this going about doing good is a part of the work of the church. It is that one thing, to spread the message, to become Christ-like, to build up her members to become Christ-like, to learn to worship the Lord, to press on toward the beauty of holiness, and to do good all the way as she goes. This is the work of the church. And when she goes astray from that, she forgets the reason for her existence.

Now, if we do this, we shall save ourselves a world of vain effort. And we shall conserve instead of waste our limited resources. Don’t forget, though you have all of God for your resources, yet here below, your resources are limited. What do I mean? I mean your strength is limited. I mean your intellectual ability is limited. I mean, your time is limited and my time and my intellectual ability and my strength. We must sleep so much. We only have so much money. We only have so much time. And the leaves of life keep falling one by one, and the wine of life keeps oozing drop by drop. And the bird of time is on the wing and has a little way to fly. And we don’t have much time. Our resources are limited. Jesus recognized that when he said work while you have today because the night cometh when no man can work. They had a limited a number of hours in the day and Jesus said you better use them while the sun is shining, so when the darkness settles, there will be nothing you can do.

So, I say that if we narrow down and take Paul’s word, this one thing I do, go to the New Testament, find what it is and do it with all our might, we will save ourselves the tragedy of wasted, wasted lives. And we’ll win the Lord’s “well done” in that day when “well done” will be worth more than all the gold of Ophir. One by one by one by one, our people leave us and go. One by one, God’s children step over the river, one by one. And that well done will be worth more than all fame and all knowledge.

You see, our trouble is my friends, we have too much. The trouble is we have too much money. And we get something and that suggests something else, and that suggests something else. Then we say, sure, we can afford that. And that suggests something else, and then we get that. And we say yes, that’ll enable me to do this. And then we do that and that what’s our appetite to do something else. Instead of getting and doing satisfying us, the ear is not satisfied with hearing nor the eye with seeing as the Holy Ghost said in the Old Testament. And as Shakespeare said, ambition is a beast that grows, whose appetite grows with feeding. And the more it eats, the hungrier it gets. And that’s where we are in America. We’re in a place where we can afford so many things and afford to go so many places and do so many things, that our appetites are growing on what we feed it. But there will be a day when this one thing I do will echo in our ears.

When I talk to some people, simple people, older people, people who have no income anymore, when I talk to them, I feel very, very bad. When some simple old person sees me and tells me of the $3 she could save out of her allowance, or the $7.50 that she sent to Billy Graham, the $3 and a half she managed to get off to Fuller, and the $13 last year she managed to give to missions. I don’t mean this church, people, but I mean where I go here and there. Simple-hearted people with shining eyes wanting to do the will of God, but having nothing. When I think of how we, God’s well-to-do people, waste our money. When I think how we waste our time and then I think how we fail to sharpen up and narrow down. What a tragedy it is.

And I wonder if in that great day, the widows with their mites and the little ladies with their three and a half, which they bring wrapped up in brown paper, won’t mean more in the eyes of Him who judges according to every man’s inner conscience. I wonder if it won’t mean more. It’s a simple matter to throw $100,000 check in the offering and take it off the income tax. Men do that everywhere, then go out and get in their Cadillac and drive off.

My brethren, to narrow down to a point where our spiritual lives are as sharp as a sword blade, narrowed and selective and sharpened, doing one thing for Christ and doing it well and doing it in His name, and doing it in His power. That’s what makes a Christian great. That’s what made Paul great, one of the things. And that’s one thing we’ll wish we’d had in the great day when He sees to us.

Now, I asked you only a couple of questions. Dare we bring our waste to the communion table? Dare we Americans, who respect nothing and respect nobody, who call our president Ike and now his wife, Mamie, who know everybody’s first name and give the preacher a nickname. We who know no reverence, no respect. Dare we bring our cheap carelessness into the holy place. Dare we bring our waste to the communion table and take the bread and the wine as carelessly as we would accept a lifesaver from a friend who handed it out to us.

My friends, Paul said, I do one thing. Whatever you do, I do one thing. I do one thing. Sometimes when I write something to the effect or say something to the effect as I did last week in Pittsburgh, that preachers ought to do one thing. Somebody will write me as somebody did, and say, don’t you think preachers ought to do this and this and thus and that and the other? The man who wrote it said, I’m a little man–he’s an old man too–and what I say doesn’t amount to very much. I’m not very well known. But I’d like to just say that I think that you’re making it too hard. Preachers ought not to narrow down so. Why must he say, I’m a little man and nobody knows me. Why, must he say my work hasn’t been very great. I’ve not done much. Why, it’s contained within his own argument. He’s done too many things to do anything well.

Dare we bring our wasted life to the communion table? Dare we bring wasted hours? Dare we bring wasted money? Dare we bring wasted years to the communion table? But thank God for the cheerful knowledge that here around our Father’s table is mercy, and here is forgiveness, and here is cleansing. Nothing you have done in the past can keep you from the Lord’s communion table if you’re ready to do what you should in the future. All God wants to know is the past is past and bygones are bygones. All he wants to know is that you’re not going to live as you have lived. You’re going to live as you should live. Then you can bring your wasted life, and you can bring your scattered, fragmentary, tattered life to the Lord and there’s mercy there and forgiveness and cleansing. And by the blood of Jesus and the Word of His everlasting testimony, you can and dare this morning believe that you’re delivered and cleansed, and you can start life over. This first day of the week can be the first day of your life. This first day of the week can be the first day of a new life. Yesterday, the last day of last week can be the last day of a wasted life. And this morning, you can start all anew. Grant it to be so, Lord. Grant it to be so. Amen.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

For the next ten weeks starting May 21, we will release once again A.W. Tozer’s noted series on the attributes of God titled, “A Journey into the Heart of God.”

May 21 – Attributes of God #1 “A Journey into the Heart of God”

May 28 – Attributes of God #2 “God’s Immanence and Immensity”

June 4 – Attributes of God #3 “God’s Goodness

June 11- Attributes of God #4 “God’s Justice”

June 18 – Attributes of God #5 “God’s Mercy”

June 25 – Attributes of God #6 “God’s Grace”

July 2 – Attributes of God #7 “The Omnipresence of God”

July 9 – Attributes of God #8 “God’s Omnipresence and Immanence”

July 16 – Attributes of God #9 “The Holiness of God”

July 23 – Attributes of God #10 “The Perfection of God”

The Causes of Chronic Spiritual Failure and the Cure 2

The Causes of Chronic Spiritual Failure and the Cure 2

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 10, 1957

In the Book of Micah, the sixth chapter. Hear ye now what the Lord saith. Arise, contend thou before the mountains and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear ye O mountains the Lord’s controversy and ye strong foundations of the earth. For the Lord hath a controversy with His people. He will plead with Israel. O My people, what have I done unto thee? Wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against Me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt and redeemed thee out of the house of servants. In Deuteronomy, the 28th, chapter, verses forty-seven and eight, because thou serveth not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.

Now I said, I would give two talks on the causes of chronic spiritual defeat, and the cure. And briefly, in order to relate the morning sermon to this evening, I said that the summary of God’s Word here to Israel and to us by extension, is that men will not serve God gratefully so they must serve the enemy sorrowfully. And he’s talking about His people here. You will not serve God thankfully so you must serve the enemy sorrowfully.

And I said, that most Christians, I don’t know whether I said most, but I think I could say most Christians, even though they’re Christians, they’re secretly not free. They’re not serving the Lord with much joy. And the reason is, that they have an erroneous spiritual philosophy. Their outlook is wrong. They look on things wrongly. And the Lord dramatically says here, My people, what have I done? What have you got against Me? There is a controversy here between God and His people. And these people can’t get along with God. They live in God’s household, I suppose, but they can’t get along with God. And the result is a resentfulness, a sense of bitterness in greater or lesser degree and a muting of the high trumpet note of joy that ought to be in their souls; muted till it’s hardly heard of at all.

And the reason for this is that there are two things we don’t see as we should. We do not see that God owes us nothing. That anything we get is pure grace, and that if we got what we deserved, we’d be dead. And if we went where we should go, we’d go to hell. And if we got what we should get, we’d get judgment and justice, and that anything else is sheer mercy and grace on the part of God without merit or works. And while all that I’m saying is old, familiar, fundamentalist truth, we hold it in our heads, and our hearts fight back. And we say inwardly, what have I done that I should deserve this? We grumble inwardly against God for failing to answer prayer. We find fault and censor the people of God. And this becomes a chronic thing within us. And we do not serve God joyfully, therefore we serve our enemies sorrowfully. And if we could get these two things settled, that we have sinned and come short of God’s glory, that every thought and intent and purpose of the heart of mankind apart from the new birth and the indwelling Jesus, is only evil continually. All of them are evil continually. And that grace, the grace of God which came in Jesus Christ, to go 100%, forgiving and blessing without merit. This we believe, but this we do not believe. This we believe creedly, but we do not hold it as a part of our working philosophy of life.

Now I want to talk to you and I want to use these two great truths. Let them be the left and the right eye. Let them be the two sides, the two pillars to hold up the temple. That we should perish that we none of us here has any right to be alive. Not one of us has any right to sing. Not one of us has any natural right to sing when the gates swing out and never I’ll be there. None of us has any right. This is a gift of God without works. This is a gift of God by grace. This is mercy, pure and simple 100%. And if you take these two pillars and you can let all the temple of God rest upon them. And you can view all your future and all life through these two eyes, man’s absolute depravity and God’s absolute grace set against each other and confronting each other.

Now, therefore, if you’re ready to believe those two things, then I’m going to give you, not a spiritual experience, because spiritual experiences, I say, won’t take care of this. You can come down and get blessed and wipe your eyes and go away feeling a little bit humbled and a little bit better, and tomorrow it’ll be back on you again because you’re not seeing things right.

Now, I want to go down the Scriptures beginning back there with Cain and Abel. And see whether the attitude of our secret heart isn’t to blame God and find fault, instead of take the other way around. Look at Cain and Abel. We wonder why it was that Cain killed Abel. And Brother, when you consider that God said, the day thou eatest there thou shalt surely die. And when we consider that sin came into the world and death by sin. And when we consider what the Bible says we are, then the thing I wonder about is not that Cain killed Abel. Cain was acting in conformity with his fallen nature.

But what I wonder about is why Abel offered an acceptable sacrifice unto God? Who taught Abel the fallen man? Who came to the heart of Abel and whispered in his deep spirit that he was a sinner and would have to have a lamb for a sacrifice? That wasn’t natural. That wasn’t according to human nature. Human nature never responds that way. That was the grace of God preveniently operating to teach the man Abel the way of life.

So that when we look at Cain and Abel and we see how they went for a walk and one slew the other. We say, isn’t that terrible and wasn’t that terrible? We wonder where God was and we tend to have a controversy here. But the wonder, I repeat, is not that Cain killed Abel. That’s not the astonishing thing. The wonder is that Abel died and went to glory from a fallen race. The first two children of a fallen pair, who had been alienated from God and driven from the Garden. And now these two, the fallen pair, had these two boys, fallen boys, who walked according to the spirit of this world, the spirit that worketh within the children of disobedience. One of them rose in fury and slew the other and acted according to his nature. The other one offered to sacrifice unto God before that murder, and God responded and gave him the assurance that he was righteous through accepting that sacrifice. And so let all those who read the story sing the praises of God who delivered Abel rather than listening to the brainwashing talk of the devil, and where he overcame.

We come to Noah and the seven that were saved. It says that there came a flood upon the world of ungodly, and Noah and the seven were all that were saved. The rest perished and the flood swept the ungodly away. Now my friend, when God swept the ungodly away, have I wronged thee, says God? Have I wearied thee with my conduct? Is there anybody that can charge me with wrongdoing? Had not they sinned and violated the tenure and franchise under which they operated? Were they not worthy of death? Did not divine justice cry out against the world of ungodly? And when I turned the waters loose and broke up the fountains of the deep, was I not doing what a holy God must do to preserve the moral order of the universe? And were not the wings of the seraphim and cherubim and holy watchers and holy ones yonder all waving. And were they not crying, true and righteous are they judgments, O God, for Thou hath judged men for their sins? But the wonder is that there were seven and Noah that found grace in God’s sight.

So, my brother instead of my saying how terrible that all the world of ungodly should perish, my heart should cry out how wonderful that God saved His seed upon the earth. For He had no obligation lying upon Him. If your ancestors back yonder had all perished, there would be nothing now but weeds and jungle and wild ravening beasts roaming the world. And God in His great mercy saved Noah and his family. And Noah found favor in His sight, favor and grace in His sight. And the good grace of God operated to save the race and to redeem men and to bring you and me into existence.

Again, I go down the Scriptures and I find Lot and Abraham. They came out of Ur of the Chaldees and came down overlooking the green valley and the Jordan. And you remember that Abraham said to Lot, now, my boy. He was younger than he. He was his nephew. He said, My boy, we can’t seem to get along. Oh, we’re all right, but our herdsman fight and we don’t want trouble and so it’s better to separate than it is to be always having difficulties. So, you got a big lot of cattle and herds and I have big herds and a lot of cattle and camels. You take whatever you want. Now take the rest. And the Scripture says that Lot saw the green, watered valley of Jordan and chose that valley for his cattle and pitch his tent toward Sodom. And the preachers all down the years have properly dwelt on that. He pitched the tent towards Sodom.

And it’s a terrible thing that he did. But is that the strange thing? Is it a strange thing that dogs delight to bark and bite, for God hath made them so? Is it a strange thing when two animals tear at each other’s throats? Is it a strange thing when the serpent strikes. It is not, for they’re living according to their nature. But when the wolf lays down with the lamb and the cockatrice and the rattlesnake lie down, and the baby plays on their den without harm. That will be the wonder, my brother.

And so, when Lot chose for himself the green-watered valleys, the valley of Jordan, He pitched his tent toward Sodom. He was doing what sinners do. But the wonder was that Abraham heard the voice of God yonder in Ur of the Chaldees at all. The wonder was that in the goodness of God, that idol-maker back in the Ur of the Chaldees, without any light at all, was listening one day and heard a Voice. And the Voice said, rise and get thee into the land that I will show thee. Did God owe that to Abraham? Did He owe that to Sarah? Did he owe that to Lot? Did he owe it to anybody? He owed them nothing. But in the good kindness of God, you have these two things there for confronting each other. You have man’s sin, Abraham’s sin, Lots sin and you have the mercy of God confronting the sin of man. And that Lot should go on and sin and act like a sinner that he was, is nothing.

But that God should save Abraham; that was something. And can you while you’re thinking about it, my brethren, can you not see that it was a greater wonder that Abraham ever allowed Lot to choose? He was the big boy and he was the older man. He had the most goods, and he was the boss of the caravan. And he could have said, now you take this, and I’ll take this and Lot could have scowled and walked away and taken the little end to things. But instead of that, Abraham said to his nephew, you take what you want and I will take what’s left. And he stayed on the plains of Mamre and Lot took the best part of the grazing land.

Now I ask you, who should be honored there? Who should be glorified? One man acted like the sinner that he was, and the other man acted strangely like an angel. Why, because he was one? No, he was born of the loins of fallen Adam too and he was as bad as Lot was bad. And he was born into the world with his mind made up to have his own way. But the grace of God, the wonderful grace of God confronted the sin of man there. And God for the sake of His own love, the love that will not let us go, God delivered the man Abraham from the bondage to his sin and made him able to take his long trek to the Holy Land. And when the time came, made him arise unselfishly to say, you take what you want, and I’ll take what’s left.

My Brother and Sister, don’t you just see, that if we were to look around the other way at things, instead of assuming that God owed Abel life, instead of assuming that God owed the world of ungodly a right to live when they’d forfeited their right to live. Why, instead of assuming that Abraham did the right thing, and that Lot did the wrong thing, my brother. Abraham did the right thing. But why? Because God worked in him to will and to do of His own good pleasure. We ought to take that attitude and hold it, otherwise we’ve got a controversy with God.

And when we come to the burning of Sodom, some people have worried why God sent fire down from heaven upon Sodom and consumed Sodom and Gomorrah. The wonder is not that God consumed Sodom and Gomorrah. For they were sexual perverts to a point where the vilest, filthiest kind of thing went on, Paul described in Romans 1. And the astonishing thing was not that a just God, and as the liberals say, a God of love, the wonder wasn’t that this God of love should hurl fire upon the cities, but the wonder was the fire ever went out and that all Asia Minor didn’t catch fire, and it didn’t spread across the sea to Europe and eastward to Babylon and over to China and Japan. And that it didn’t burn and burn, until all of us should have been burnt out. All our ancestors before us should have perished. But that’s what we deserve. And we’ll never be right. And we’ll never think right we’ll never pray right until we know that.

Just as long as you think that there’s a little good in you, and that you have a right to God’s grace, why, you will be having a controversy with God. And God will be saying to you, what have I done to you? What have you got against me? Why the fight? Why can we get on, you and I? For I’ve given you all of this? And because you won’t serve me joyfully for all of this, you will serve your enemy sorrowfully. And so, Christians everywhere are defeated. I hardly find a Christian as I travel around that isn’t defeated. They have managed somehow to get on. But they’re defeated Christians. Most Christians are defeated Christians, and they’re defeated because they have got a bad outlook on the Scripture, a bad outlook toward heaven above, a bad outlook.

We’ll go on a little way and we come to Esau and Jacob. And the Scripture says bluntly, God says, Esau have I hated, but Jacob have I loved. And people say, I can’t understand this at all. I can’t understand it. How can it be that God hated Esau? We’ve been brainwashed by liberals. We’ve been brainwashed by Emersonian humanists. And we’ve been taught that we’re all a nice bunch, a nice bunch. Everybody’s fine and wonderful, and that we all deserve something, and the good God who puts His wing over all, and he loves us all. We forget that God said, the wicked have I hated and Esau have I hated. And we forget that the only proper reaction of a holy God to an unholy man is violent repulsion. The only proper reaction of a holy God to an unholy man is a violent break.

And if a heaven could love hell, then hell would be heaven and heaven would be hell and there would be more chaos throughout the universe. Yet, that’s what they teach us. They mix heaven and hell and compound it, and that’s our Christianity. But when God said, Esau have I hated, what is wrong with that? Have you got any controversy with God over that the holy nature of God revolted against the man who would sell his highest spiritual treasure for a mess of soup?

But the wonder of wonders that ought to set all the silver trumpets in Heaven to blasting out the joys of the Lord, to set every organ to that playing is, that God loves you. Why did God love Jacob? How could God love you? How could a holy God look at a crooked fellow like that and love him; how I say? Only because mercy and grace, greater than all our sin, worked in the heart of God, only because of God in His infinite wisdom in the council chambers of the Trinity had worked a plan out whereby He could have mercy upon Jacob. And Esau would not accept that plan, so he said, I reject it. And Esau walked away with his countenance fallen, a rejected man. And Jacob as crooked as he was, wrestled with his God on the bank of the Jordan. And God put his thigh out of joint and the sun rose upon his bald head as he went over the river to make friends with his brother Esau whom he had injured so long ago.

So the wonder here, my Brother, isn’t that God should hate Esau but that he should love Jacob, and you and I should see that. We should look at those two eyes and we should take that viewpoint and not another. And instead of saying, oh, it’s terrible that God should hate Esau and we should rise and take God’s side and not the liberal’s; and not the humanists and not religion of Cain. And we should say, O wonder of wonders that God should love Jacob. O wonder of wonders, not the soul that sinneth it shall die. That’s not an angry God hurling His thunderbolts like Thor. That is a holy God declaring a philosophy of rejection, that a holy heaven can’t take in an unholy hell. And that God, the Holy God, cannot fellowship with an unholy being. That’s just God declaring that. That’s all.

But that God should suddenly sound another note and say, Jacob have I loved, crooked old Jacob, sneaking old Jacob. Old Jacob who knew how to cheat and cheat and continue to cheat that God should say, I love Jacob. He loved Jacob, because within Jacob somewhere, there was an acceptance of an eternal plan that glorified the grace of God and put man in the dust where he belongs.

So my brother today I want to say before three worlds as Brother Ravenhill would say. I want to say before three worlds, with heaven listening and hell listening and a few people on earth listening, that I will glorify God forever for loving crooked Jacob. And I will cry with the angels above, true and worthy are Thy judgments for hating Esau.

And I think of this fellow David. Somebody wrote a book. A woman wrote a book. Women are writing sexier books now than men. I thought John Steinbeck had done it all, but there are women now doing it until they are ashamed to review it in Time magazine. Well, anyhow, a woman wrote about King David. David the King, she called it and of course she had David wallowing in iniquity. The Scripture says David sinned. David was born of Jesse. And Jesse was born of his father and his father was born of his father. And they trace them back, clear back to Abraham and clear back to Adam. And when David sinned, David was acting natural. David was a sinner. And when David sinned, he was acting natural. And if it hadn’t been for the grace of God, David never would have done anything else but sin. And David would have continued to sin, and continued to sinned and died sinning and gone to hell sinning.

Oh, the infinite grace and mercy of God that David could kneel down on his knees and say, have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness. And according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my sin, for against Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight. That’s the mercy. Not that Saul didn’t repent, for repentance isn’t a human thing. It’s a divine thing, and God has to put it in a man. So, Saul didn’t repent, but David did. And instead of our saying, O God, why didn’t Saul repent, we ought to kneel and say, my God, how wonderful that David repented. Oh, not that David committed that double sin, adultery and murder. When he committed adultery and murder he acted like a man. And when he said, the Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want. He makes me down to lie in pastures green. He leads me that quiet waters by, he talked like an angel. The grace of God had come in and confronted his sin.

Now I want to tell you whatever hell says about it, heaven is blowing a loud silver trumpet tonight. That David ever came back to write the 23rd Psalm and the 103rd Psalm, bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name. That he ever came back to be the father of the Messiah who gave His life for the world.

So, my brother, you see, we’ve been brainwashed. That’s our trouble. The devil has taught us an evil philosophy. And we go to an altar and we try to get blessed so we’ll have victory. And we get up with a bad outlook on life. We get up all crooked and cross-eyed. And we think God owes us something. And we won’t serve God joyfully, so we serve our own poor flesh sorrowfully.

David, I’m glad for David. And as long as I live, I will say, O wonder, wonder of wonders that a wild boy growing up in the wilderness at a time like that, with no education, that we know of, at least very little. And there in little old Palestine surrounded by the enemies on every side, that a boy should go out and lie down and look up and say, when I consider Thy heavens, and write such profound philosophy and compose such profound spiritual hymns, that the ages have been better for them. That’s the wonder of wonders and we ought to vie with Gabriel while he sings in notes all most divine. I can’t sing like Gabriel, if he sings. I don’t know whether they sing. They say he sings, but I can vie with him in singing. But I can do my best to glorify God that he ever saved David.

And then there was Elijah. We preach doleful sermons about Elijah and the juniper tree. And that Elijah went 40 days in the strength of those pancakes an angel baked for him. He did literally, read it, it says that. It says a little bread and it was flat pancake, a barely pancake, like our pancake now. An angel baked it and Elijah went, my brother, a tired man, a man who was all out of his element. He’d walked among the mountains, Elijah had. He lived up there on the quiet fastistes where the great, rugged jutting rocks touch the blue sky above where the white goats jump from peak to peak. And he lived in his little simple home somewhere up there. I don’t know where, somewhere up there. The love of God confronted the wild man, Elijah. And Elijah knew God. And Elijah learned even there among the rocks and trees and gullies, he learned to stand before Jehovah.

And one day God said to Elijah, Elijah, down there in the big world where there are cities and people and kings and princes and priests and where there are prophets of Baal and where my religion is being degraded by Jezebel, I have a job for you. No doubt Elijah asked questions and said, great God Jehovah, what have you for me to do? I have no education. I have no courtly knowledge. I have no etiquette. I know nothing. I’m dressed in this old rugged thing, a long beard. What am I going to do down there? I’ve heard tell, to use an old country phrase, I’ve heard tell of the fine court that they have. What can I do? God said, you leave that to me. Down went the man Elijah, and walked in without announcement and suddenly appeared before the King. The King leaped to his feet and looked at him and he said, I’m from God. And I come to tell you that there will be no rain until I say so. He clicked his heals like a sergeant reporting to the commanding officer and stalked out. I stand before God, say that.

Later on, after tremendous pressure and under the threat of Jezebel to take off his head, he gave up and fled into the wilderness. Preachers have blamed him ever since. Blamed? He was acting like a man, a nervous, pressed, distraught man. A man who would love God and had dared to face out his host. And who had gone up on the hill yonder on the place they called Carmel and had faced 400 prophets of Baal and had laughed at them and worked them up to fury. And then called down the fire of Jehovah to consume the sacrifice. That’s not the act of a man. That’s the act of a man of God. The wonder isn’t that he could flee like a man, the wonder is that he could pray like a man of God.

Are we going to let the devil and the liberals and the cheap religion of Cain brainwash us until we have a controversy with God, until we talk more about the cave of Elijah or the Juniper bush, than we talk about God, the God of Elijah? Ah, Brother, as long as I live, I’m going to thank God every time I think of it for Elijah. And I’m going to overlook the fact that he fled and got under a juniper bush and asked God to take him home. Any man might have done the same thing. There was a hero of a man. And yet, he hadn’t a thing to start with but a bad seed inside his breast. He had nothing to start with but sin and yet God delivered him and made a prophet out of him and gave him to the world and  the church of Christ down to this day. There’s you’re wondering. And if you want to ask God any questions, don’t ask God why Elijah fled, ask God why Elijah prayed. If you want to go and ask God any questions, don’t say God, how could it be that Elijah went into a cave. Ask Him how could it be that Elijah went into a court.

And we come down to Jesus. He was born into the world. Mary had a baby as the colored spiritual has it. She had a baby and named him Jesus. And when He appeared, only a few recognized Him. There were the four old people I preached about, God’s four old friends, Annis, Simeon and Zechariah and Elizabeth, four old friends of God, and a few others recognized Him. And He came unto His own and His own received Him not. And when His own received Him not, they acted like what they were. And any that received Him did so by the sheer mercy of God and that alone. For there wasn’t in human nature one trace of life, nor one eye that would have ever believed that this Jesus was the Messiah.

So that which we should ask God about is not O God, why did so few receive Thy Son? But what we should ask God is, O God, why did anybody receive Thy Son? Seeing who we are, seeing how bad we are, and seeing how selfish we are, and seeing how blind we are and seeing how we’ve sinned against the Light, that lighteth every man that comes into the world. And seeing how we are sinners by birth and aliens by choice, and seeing how we’ve studied the art of iniquity at the feet of the devil. Why did anybody believe in Jesus? And everybody that believed in Jesus when He walked among men was a bonus. It was something added, an extra that men will thank God for while they live. And that they nailed Him on the tree was entirely natural, seeing that men had the natures they had. But that He was willing to die for those who are willing to crucify him. There’s the wonder of wonders.

So, let’s get our philosophy right, my Brethren. You’ll never have and keep spiritual victory as long as you’re upside down. Get your feet under you instead of on top of you. And look at this thing right and see that all down the centuries men had sin because they’re sinners and God has saved some because He’s God. And that grace is operated in triumph over sin. And that’s what we need to thank God for.

And there was Peter. Poor old Peter has had to take a beating. I imagine there’ll be a lot of smiles in heaven. Some of us preachers will go sneaking up to Peter and Jonah and some of these fellas we had browbeaten and called out and used them as horrible examples and say forgive me, I was dumb. I didn’t know any better. Here was Peter; Peter was an impulsive, nervous man, quick to love and quick to pour himself out and quick to pick himself up again, that was Peter. Peter would have made a good American. He had all of our impulsiveness and our blessed dumbness and kinks. He had all that, and Peter denied his Lord. Here he was. Oh, he said, Jesus, Jesus don’t talk that way to me. Don’t talk to me. You say, I’ll deny you Lord; now all of these may. He said, John there, I’ve always suspected him. And the rest of them. I know they’re weak, but good boys. Now don’t think I’m talking against the Master. They’re good boys, but though all should deny Thee, yet, will I not. And he meant it and he meant every word of it. And he fully intended to go out there and die. But he forgot that he was Peter. Not an archangel. He forgot that he was Peter.

So, when the pressure got on and it was obvious that Jesus had lost out. He wasn’t able to help him anymore. They had him handcuffed and were leading Him off. The soldiers had him. It was evident that there was no help coming there. And they were after Peter. Peter said, I may as well salvage something out of this. So, he denied his Lord; caught in the pinch, he denied his Lord. We preachers have beaten him over the back for 2000 years for denying his Lord. In denying his Lord, he was doing just exactly what every sinner would do. He was doing just what you can expect a sinner to do. He was acting according to his fallen nature. He was doing what Adam had put in him to do.

Follow me a little. And look at this fellow Peter when the Holy Ghost came upon him and a flame of fire sat on his head. And Peter got straightened out and got to thinking right. He wrote his epistle about the blood that was more precious than that of gold that perishes. God got him straightened out and un-brainwashed him. Then look at Peter. Look at Peter in the jail. And he rejoiced and sang with the others that he was worthy to suffer for Jesus’ sake. And they said, we’ll let you out, but don’t preach. He said, I’ve got to obey God, and he preached and got checked back in again. So, for a lifetime that was left, he suffered like that. That’s what to think about. Who did that? Was that Peter? No. That was the grace of God in Peter.

And so, we should be thanking God every minute that the grace of God came to an impulsive, fast-talking, nervous man called Peter and made a St. Peter out of him. Thank you, Lord, for making Peter St. Peter. Thank you, Lord, for letting the sinful David write the 23rd Psalm and get cleaned from the 51st Psalm and get clean from his sin. Thank Thee, O Lord, that though Elijah fled into the wilderness, Elijah had the courage to go face Thine enemies and mine. Thank you, Lord, that though you brought the flood upon the world of ungodly, that you saved this seed alive. And you’ve given us this wonderful world. We’ve got no controversy with you, God, no controversy. You wouldn’t serve me joyfully for all I’ve done for you, said God. So, I’ll let you secretly serve your enemies sorrowfully. And that’s what’s the matter with a lot of us. Our philosophy is wrong, I repeat.

Well, I almost through. How do you yourself hear? On top of that I should have devised a series on that. But how about, how do you view yourself? You say you’re a Christian? Well, you’re a Christian, but you came late. Some of you came late. You are Christian, but you came late. Are you going to spend your days beating yourself over the back because you came late? Why don’t you thank God you ever came at all? For the Scripture says no man can come to Me except the Father draw him. Have you read that? Calvin didn’t write that. The Holy Ghost wrote that. No man can come to me except the Father draw him. You came, you said, I came. You thought you did. You were drawn by the miraculous, sovereign grace of God to come. And you came, and better men than you didn’t come.

I’ve got in Miami, Florida now a doctor brother who is and always has been a better man than I. And if he’d been here 29 years as I’ve been and lived with you, you would have said the older brother is the better of the two. For he is a gentleman and our pastor sometimes isn’t. But he’s a lost man. He didn’t come, I came. And I was the worse of the two and I came, he was the better of the two and he didn’t come. Why? Am I going to spend my days beating myself over the head because I am not as good a Christian as I ought to be?

Listened to me, Brother. You say I’m a poor Christian. Well, don’t you thank God that though you’re a poor Christian, you’re any Christian at all? Because that’s not natural under the circumstances. Jesus Christ our Lord laid down terms for the gospel that almost guaranteed that nobody would come, almost guaranteed it. Did you ever think about that? He laid down conditions at the door of the kingdom of God that all but ruled out the possibility of anybody coming. He said, If you come you got to deny yourself. You got to bear your cross. You got to give up your life and your soul and you’re all. You’ve got to turn your back on your loved ones and your sons and daughters and wives and husbands and brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers and love Me above them all. And you got to give up everything and deny yourself.

Now if that isn’t making it hard or almost impossible, I don’t know what is. And yet, in spite of the fact that He laid impossible terms down at the kingdom of God, they’ve come down the years. 13 million of them died in Rome under the persecutions, the 10 persecutions, from Nero to I believe his Diocletian. Down the years, they died. And over behind the Iron Curtain now, squared-jawed, high cheekbone Russians are stalking off to church in the day and standing in their unheated church without pews and listening to the Truth. In China, some of the Christians that our missionaries won to Jesus before they were chased out are still over there fighting.

I got a marvelous phone call this last week. A man called me on the phone and he said, I make and sell choir robes. Are you interested? I said, No. We’re not. But he said, why? How can you have a choir without robes? And I said, well, you must be an Episcopalian. He said, No, I’m not an Episcopalian. I’m of the Greek Orthodox Church. He said, in fact, I’m a priest of the Greek Orthodox Church, and was a priest of a Greek Orthodox Church, but he said, I quit being a priest and my wife and I make robes and that’s the way we get along. He said, I’m just calling. I just happened to call you, ran into you on your church in the telephone directory. And I said, you got to the Cs. He said, yes, I got down to the Cs, Christian and Missionary Alliance. What is that, and I told him.

And then we began to talk, and bless my heart. I found a Christian. Here’s a man and I said, we talked over the phone and I told him about the Lord. And he talked back and pretty soon my heart began to get warm. And he said, now let’s quit talking about robes, he said. We just talked like two Christians, two men. And he said, oh, say, did you ever read the Philokalia? I said, I’m looking at it while I’m talking to you. I said I have it on the desk.

Oh, he said, there was a day in my life when I got so discouraged, I got down. I was going to kill myself. And he said I ran into the Philokalia written by the old Greek fathers back there, the saints of old Greek days. And he said, I read in that and I got down on my knees and I said, O God, forgive me. And we had a Christian on our hands, Brother, just as sure as you live. Now, I don’t go along with him in wearing his long-tail coat and doing all the things they do. And I don’t have to, but I found a Christian there. And there are a lot them over there and don’t you allow old baldy Khrushchev to tell you otherwise, they’re over there. And they’re in China and they’re in Czechoslovakia and they’re in Spain and they’re in Italy. And they’re where they’re not supposed to be, according to the authorities. God has His people there and how’d they get there? Anything good in them? There’s nothing good in them, but the grace of God operating. That’s it. So, we’re not very good Christians. Somebody says, all right.

I preached a sermon, 14 sermons on being a better Christian, you remember, the first of the year, how we can go on towards spiritual perfection. And I have preached eight or 10 more on worship here recently. So, you can’t blame me for saying I’m preaching that we all ought to stand still. I think we ought to go forward. But instead of going forward with controversy in our hearts and our own outlook, we ought to say O thank God I got anything at all. Thank God, I got in. If I haven’t a big crown at least I’m in. You’d have a different attitude toward life, my brother. And the whole sun would be brighter in the morning, and the whole life would be different.

Well, how to view your church now. We’ll talk about that a minute. You know, this isn’t the best church you’ve ever been in, I suppose, and isn’t the worst, this assembly. I love that expression, assembly. I know some have copyrighted it and we shy away, but it’s a good word. And that’s what a church is. It’s an assembly of the saints. It’s a gathering together of the people of God. A despised minority group meeting together at stated times to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and minister unto the Lord and pray. They are despised and they’re few. And they gather in little groups, little cells and assemblies here and there called the church. This building isn’t the church. It’s a meeting house. The people are the church.

And how do you view it? You say, well, I know a hypocrite in that Alliance church. Well, if there’s only one, let’s celebrate together. Let’s dance out on Union Avenue and thank God from the top of our voices there’s only one. If there should only be two or ten, thank God that where a few hundred people gather there are only ten hypocrites.

Jesus had them in his little group and Peter had them in his and Paul wept over them till his epistles were smeared with it, with his tears. Of course, what do you expect? When a hypocrite gets in a church you have got nature. You’ve got Adam. You’ve got the thing the way it should be granting that we’re all fallen men. But when a company of people meet together and love each other and forgive each other and put up with each other and pity each other and help each other, you haven’t got nature, you’ve got grace. So, we ought to thank God for the grace that makes us a church at all. Not complain because there’s a hypocrite sneaking around occasionally. Ah, don’t forget that every fold has the lambs. Paul Rader used to say the bright light draws the bugs. And you’ll find that in every church where there is life you’ll find that there will be some who will be nuisances. But God uses that to buff you down and keep you humble. Amen.

And now about ourselves in our days. Some you don’t feel well. You’re afraid you’ve got the Asian flu. You’ve been listening to the scare talkers over the radio. Or you’re afraid maybe that that indigestion may turn out to be cancer? Well, it may. It may. I think you’d be as good a Christian as the old, what’s his name, was a philosopher? They came to one of these old Greek philosophers and they said, mister, whatever his name was, your son has just died. Well, he said, I never said I had begotten an immortal son. I expected him to die. That was a little rough maybe, but then, that’s looking at it isn’t it? That it’s facing that out. And did you think when you arrived here that you’re going to have a corner on the world and never die? Maybe you will die. Maybe I’ll preach your funeral. But is that a tragedy with the blood of Jesus Christ on the mercy seat and Christ mentioning your name to the Father and your name in the Lamb’s book of life and a good life behind you? What are you worried about? Must we sniffle like paddled spaniels? Why can’t we face up to it? Maybe I’ll die. Maybe they will wheel me down here.

Some of you remember meetings we’ve had, maybe sniffle a bit, one or two or many. Most I suppose would say you had it coming, and I did. I mean it. I did, I did. But I’ll tell you one thing Brother, just as sure as you live, I will tell you one thing. It’s contrary to the nature of my ancestors. It’s contrary to my English father. It’s contrary to all the high nerves that I’ve inherited from my people. It’s contrary to all the pessimistic outlook that I naturally have. It’s contrary to us all, but I serve notice on the devil this hour. The fact that I’ve lived to be my present age is a miracle of the grace of God, as pure and wonderful as turning water into wine or making the sun stand still. And if I die tonight at midnight, I want you to remember the last thing you heard me say was that I’ve lived too long already and that the good love and grace of God has prolonged my days and every day is a bonus every day.

And so instead of our taking the attitude God owes me something, why doesn’t He pay? Let’s take the attitude God owes me nothing and everything I have is His grace. You’ll be a different Christian if you’ll take that and cultivate it and believe it and take that spiritual philosophy. Let it become a part of your life blood. I’ve preached too long, but I had it to say. God spoke these things to me and I’ve given them to you. Let’s stand. Let’s not spoil it all by irresponsible chatter. Let’s go home and face next week in victory. Everybody said, Amen. Shake hands. We’re dismissed.

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The Causes of Chronic Spiritual Failure and the Cure 1

The Causes of Chronic Spiritual Failure and the Cure 1

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 10, 1957

I have from God a message for you this day. More particularly do I believe it today than ordinarily. And usually, I don’t come unprepared to the pulpit. I want to talk about the causes of chronic spiritual defeat. And, of course, how we can remove them. And I’m going to preach a sermon which will be complete in itself this morning, dealing with half of it. But tonight, I’m going to preach a second sermon breaking down these causes and showing how you can escape them.

Now, this came from God to me and I am convinced that it’s His voice. I hope that you can be here and that you can bring your friends with you tonight, to this house of God, this chapel, to hear the Truth. I want to read two texts, one from the book of Micah. The prophet Micah in the sixth chapter; here’s what he said. Here ye now what the Lord saith, Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord’s controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel. The simple truth is a lot of God’s people can’t get along with God. O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me. Then in the book of Deuteronomy 28th chapter, two verses, 47 and 48. Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.

Now what does God say here? In the first place, this is written to Israel. But it is an understood truth that these things were written unto us for our admonition upon whom the end of the ages has come. And that they are there for our instruction, and that the spiritual content of them is as true for us and as applicable to us as it was to Israel. Though the historic details may differ, the facts remain the same.

Now, what does God say here to his people? He says, I delivered you. I delivered you and I gave you everything. I delivered you by the hand of Moses. And I delivered you out from the hand of your enemy. I delivered you by blood and fire. I gave you a land for which you had not worked, harvests that hadn’t been yours, orchards that were not ever planted by you. Somebody else planted them and you took them. You got them. I gave them to you because they were mine. And yet, you act as if I owed you something and hadn’t paid. And because you will not serve me joyfully, therefore you shall serve your enemies sorrowfully.

You will not serve me joyfully though I have done all these things for you. And though you are in debt to me so far that you can never get out. And I’ll never throw it up to you. All I want you to do to pay on your indebtedness, to just live joyfully and praise Me thankfully. That’s all I ask says God. But you won’t do it. You would turn it around as if I owed you something and refuse to pay and says to God, what have I done to you? Testify against me. Bring in your evidence. Why am I, why am I up before the court of your judgment? Because you would not serve me joyfully, therefore you shall serve your enemies sorrowfully.

Now, the reason for spiritual defeat. I am not going to talk about smoking and so on, the causes of chronic spiritual defeat. One cause is this right here. We cultivate, or allow ourselves to cultivate, an attitude of thanklessness, of chronic thanklessness. We allow ourselves to live and think and feel as if God owed us something. And when anything comes to us that isn’t as we like it, instead of saying, be it unto Thy servant as thou wilt, I deserve this and much more also, we become sour inside. And we cultivate an attitude of arrogance that grows finally into a spirit of impertinence toward God Almighty. And so, we become sinful. Christians becomes sinful, not the kind of sin that can be practiced outwardly, like gambling.

Incidentally, I read a piece of news today I thought I’d pass on to you. The state of Colorado, the, what would he be? But the head lawyer in the state, ruled that bingo was a form of gambling and therefore forbidden by the laws of the state of Colorado. And immediately, a dear religious brother leaps to his feet and introduces a motion before the state legislature asking that a bill be passed exempting the churches from this ban in as much as they needed the money. And they were nice people and doing good. So, in Colorado, that bill passes and you can expect it. It’ll say, this is a sin and they will have a cop throw you in jail if we find you gambling, but it doesn’t apply to churches. They can sin under official sanction.

Now, to just let you know that. It’s why we don’t have any bingo rooms here. We believe gambling is gambling whether it’s done by gangster or whether it’s done by a Bishop. It’s still gambling and men like that will burn for their deeds unless they repent. And they’re not likely to repent if the legislature exempts them. And I’m quite sure in that great day when men rise and spend before the white throne, they won’t be able to pull out bill number HR 4, which says it wasn’t wrong after all. Well, gambling is a sin, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. You can be just as bad as those bingo churches in Colorado and nobody would ever know it at all. Not drinking and not cheating at your business. You can be honest in your business. Not lying and not fighting.

But another kind of sin which is as bad, and before God I think worse and is as certainly a cause of spiritual defeat and chronic defeat at that, is disappointment, this being disgruntled and sour and resentful. And the reason we Christians get disgruntled and sour and resentful is that we’re not taught on a certain thing. We have an attitude that’s wrong, and we need a new and a biblical philosophy. And when I use the word philosophy, I’m not thinking of Plato and the rest of them.

I’m thinking about a Bible philosophy, for philosophy means, as we use the word, a viewpoint, a way of looking at things, a body of truth which you hold. And we have allowed ourselves to let the word of God slide lightly over our minds. But we have in the meantime, there’s a little silt, a sediment that has come to the bottom of our hearts like the grit that settles to the bottom of a tea kettle after you’ve used it for a good many months. It settles and gets down there. It’s kind of a would-be stalactite or stalagmite if it were somewhere else.

But, in the bottom of your tea kettle, it’s just a thick, it’s sediment that has settled out of the water a hardened mineral, a rock formation. So that settles into our souls, and we hear the Word taught and we sing about it, an we pray about it. And we give to support it and all the rest. But at the same time, there is a silt, a sediment, a hard, gritty substance, that forms in our hearts. And we can get above it and we’re in a state of perpetual disappointment. And oftentimes, it goes on to be a state of disgruntlement. And the result is a sour, resentful spirit. We shake hands and we smile and we sing and we try so hard.  This isn’t hypocrisy and I’m charging nobody with hypocrisy. I’m charging no one of hypocrisy anymore than I would charge a sick child with evil because it was sick. This gets on us. This gets into people.

And this takes the joy out. It takes the bell out of the steeple and the chimes out of the heart. And God’s people go about trying so hard to be happy, but being disappointed and disgruntled and feeling that they have been wrongly treated. And God says I’ve got a controversy with my people. My people can’t get along with me. That’s the trouble. They can’t get on with me. God and His people can’t get on like a father whose children refuse to obey him and won’t speak to him and resist Him.

God says, I’ve got a controversy with my people. Why, what have I done to you to, He says. Where am I at fault says God. Didn’t I bring you out and didn’t I set you free and didn’t I give you everything? And yet you act as if I had given you nothing and what I did give you, you deserved and what I haven’t yet given you, I am in debt to you for. And so, you serve your enemies in secret says God. You have served your enemies. You have served them sorrowfully when you were meant to serve me joyfully. But you serve your enemies in secret. And I’m describing a lot of you people. Don’t think I’m not. And it’s only by the grace of God and a lot of prayer and self-criticism and judgment that I am not describing myself this moment, because, here it is.

Now I want tell you how to get delivered from it. And I’ll take for a few minutes now, then I want preach a full sermon tonight on how to get delivered. And I wish I could tell you that there was an emotional experience that would deliver you. But let me remind you of something my brother, an emotional experience doesn’t teach doctrine. An emotional experience doesn’t make you a spiritual philosopher. An emotional experience may bring you in contact with a person with God, and it does if it’s a correct and right spiritual experience, but it doesn’t instruct you.

The Bible is given to you to instruct you. The Holy Ghost through the Bible instructs you. And it’s a lack of spiritual instruction that bothers us. And there are some things we’ve got to learn. And we’ll never be right no matter how much we weep and no matter how happy we get. We can sing a hymn by Isaac Watts and feel goose pimples on our wrists and the sense of elation and feeling and all that. And when it’s over, 20 minutes after we left here, we can have a fender-scraping accident on the corner of something and something else and we’ll find that that didn’t instruct us at all. That gave us a lift, an emotional lift. And it properly should but it wasn’t enough.

We’ll never be right until we get delivered from an injurious, spiritual philosophy. We look at it one way and God looks at it another and there’s a controversy you see. We just can’t get along. We can’t get, some people can’t get along with God. Some of His family can’t get along with Him. Because of the controversy God has called it, and how else could you have a controversy? And we’ll never be able to receive a satisfying spiritual experience until we have a sound spiritual philosophy. That is, until we have been set right about how we should look at things and see them, and when we are set right about it and when we see things as God sees them.

And I’ll show how we can see them by going back to Abel and coming down the years. But I want to give you two facts against which everything else in your life must be set and against which all of the sermon tonight will be preached. Although I will repeat probably not more than a paragraph or two tonight. I want to develop rather than repeat.

But here are two facts you and I have to know my friends. Not only know them doctrinally, but know them as a part of our spiritual thinking until it becomes to us a creed. It becomes to us a philosophy. It becomes to us a way of life, a way of thinking.

First is, that it’s written in the Book that the soul that sinneth, it shall die. And God says all the thoughts and imaginations of the heart are only evil continually. And He says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And that by one man, sin entered into the world and death by sin. And that It’s appointed unto man once to die. And after that, the judgment. Now, that’s written in the Book, and that is held by every orthodox believer everywhere. But my brother and sister, we manage somehow to mean, it means everybody but me. And though if we were asked, is it so, Mr. Smith, that you have sinned and the thoughts and imaginations of your heart were only evil continually and you’ve come short of the glory of God, and that by one man, Adam’s sin entered into you, and death lies in you. And that after death which is ahead of you, you will come to judgment. Is that true?

Well, he’d say, oh, that’s the Scripture. That’s true, but it’s one thing to acknowledge it as being written in the Bible. It’s quite another thing to hold it as a way of life, a way of looking at things, a dye that colors our thinking and gives it a golden God color. It’s quite another thing I say, it’s one thing to hold it as a creed. It’s another thing to think against it and live against it and pray against that fact, and let that be the black background against which everything else is painted. The dark shadow that lies across the world is sin. And against that dark shadow, and in that dark shadow, we must place every other judgment. And men are rebels and sentenced to death.

Now, here we are. Some of you look as if you had just come down from heaven above. You’re all nicely done, and I’m glad for you. Certainly, that’s all right. I believe that we ought to do the best we have with what God given us. And you’ve done it and I’m glad. And some of you look as if you just come out of the cocoon and we’re flying about in the sunshine, and nobody would believe that you’re very bad and you don’t believe it. Then because you don’t believe it when you get in a jam, you react angrily against the jam. And you say, well, why should God treat me like this? Now, you wouldn’t say that, because that’d be bad. God’s people have learned the trick of never saying what they think. And you wouldn’t at all say that. But because you don’t actually believe that your heart has been desperately wicked and that sin has entered and death by sin and that if you were where you should be, you would not be here now. And that you’re a rebel and sentenced to die. We simply can’t get our hearts to believe it. And the result is that we react angrily and resentfully against anything that comes against us.

The Bible says men are rebels and sentenced to die and this is what we deserve. Now you’ll be sure of one thing, sir. We hear of men dying in sin and we tremble for them and pity them and say, isn’t it too bad and we’re sorry. And we almost feel as if we’d like to say, God, why did you allow that to happen? God says, what have I done? Why are you blaming me? Because every intelligent order of being yonder will cry, hallelujah for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, true and righteous are His judgments and His ways past finding out.

So, remember that always. That instead of the angels and those spiritual beings who understand what’s going on on earth. Instead of their going back to God with a scowl and say, God, why did you allow that woman to get a cancer? Why did you allow that man to get the flu and lose two weeks work when his family needs it? Why did you allow this? Not one of them goes back to God and finds fault with the Holy One who sits upon His throne. They all cried true and righteous are Thy judgments O God. For they see things in the right light. Theirs is the correct spiritual philosophy and ours is the incorrect one.

Now, I want to ask you are you man enough? Are you adult enough? Are you mature enough to take this? I’ve just been reading in Ezekiel where God says, Son of man, here’s a roll, eat it and it will be sweet, but it will make your belly better. Get into it and it will make you better, that is, in your deep heart. It’s a hard thing to take, but are you ready to take it that way every day” Your lives are borrowed days. Long ago God said, the soul that sinneth, it shall die and sin entered into the world and death by sin and it is appointed unto man once to die.

And every day you live is a borrowed day. Every day you live is a bonus given you by the kind mercy of God and you don’t deserve it. And every dollar you earn is a bonus which God gives you. And every year your child lives and grows up is a kind mercy of God and not anything you deserve. And God said you won’t take it that way. You insist on looking at it the other way. Therefore, because thou serveth not the Lord thy God joyfully and with gladness of heart for the abundance of all of these things, thou shalt serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, sorrowfully. So, my brethren, we’ve got to get this straight. That point number one.

Now, there’s your fact. There’s your fact. And if you fool with that, or if we try to exempt ourselves from it and say that’s true of the human race, but I haven’t done anything wrong. All right, you won’t serve God joyfully and instead of taking this day, this 10th day of November 1957 as the day the Lord gave you a bonus, something added and extra, which you don’t deserve, why you think that it’s alright for you to be here and live. Just so long God says, all right, you will be defeated inwardly because you look at things wrong. And you put the blame where it doesn’t belong and take the blame away from where it does. And you make God a sinner and you make yourself the saint. You won’t serve me joyfully, therefore, you’ll serve your enemies sorrowfully.

Then the second thing is that God is merciful. And this is the second fact. There are two of them. And against these two facts we must judge everything else. I am going tonight by the grace of God come down the years. I hope we can have time for seven minutes of testimony tonight.  And then, we don’t want to be late, but I want to, I want to start with Adam and come down the years and show how these facts are.

Now God is merciful, full of grace, long suffering, and the grace of God has appeared to all men. And He is so merciful and gracious that He gave His life for the very ones who took his life. You hear me, He gave His life for them that took His life. This would never be done since the beginning of time, no nor ever after, that any man should give himself for them, who took his life away. And yet He did this, so that against our sin, our unmitigated sin, against our unqualified sin, the sin for which there’s no excuse and no, cannot possibly be extenuated. Against that sin is the shining mercy of God, full of mercy and full of grace and long suffering. And this grace of God has appeared to all men. And Jesus Christ came in that grace of God and brought life and immortality to light and remitted for a while the sinner and because God is merciful, we who were sentenced to die, still live. And because God is gracious, we who ought to be dead are still alive. Because God is gracious, we who ought to be in hell are on earth, and we’ll be in heaven. What have I done against you, said God? Why can’t you get along with me? Why are you always in the state of sour defeat and grumbling? Why do you live like that? You blame me and you can’t get on and you’re serving your enemy secretly. You’re serving the enemy.

And you’ve listened to the devil and your brain has been poisoned, and you’ve got a wrong outlook on life. Keep these two great facts before you. I ought to be dead, and I am alive. O wonder of wonders, it’s the goodness of God. I ought to be in hell, but I’m on earth and I’ll soon be in heaven. Wonder of wonders, how good God is.

My brother, if you will get that attitude and hold it and keep it, then maybe on top of it, God can give you some spiritual experiences that will last and stick and turn you into a saint and make something out of you and out of me. We deserve to die, yet we live. And by whose mercy do we live? By the mercy of God, this poor soul is set free. And we took a life away. In addition to all our other sins, a Man came to us and we took His life away. And whose life did we take away? The only man in the world who didn’t have to give it up. There was only one man since the beginning of time who didn’t have to give a life up, and that was the man Christ Jesus. When He came squalling into the world and cried his baby cry, death turned away and shrugged his angry shoulders and frowned and said, I have no claim. Here’s a baby I’ve got no claim on. I thought I had a claim on every baby; and every baby that’s born has a mark on its forehead. Death puts it there.

But there was one baby born that didn’t. He looked like any other baby and nobody knew the difference. It was a seven or eight, nine-pound baby boy and there had to be a mother and He nursed at her breast. He got His little clothes changed and His little bits, a whisp hair brushed back by the shining eye, with the hand and the shining eyes and happy mother. He was like every other baby and nobody knew the difference. But death knew that he had no mortgage on that Baby. And if He ever died, He’d have to do it voluntarily. Everybody that’s born, he owns a first mortgage on their soul.

Death holds a first mortgage and he will foreclose when he feels like it. But not that baby. He had no mortgage and he couldn’t foreclose. But one day that Baby, now grown to be a tall Man, mature and strong and wise, walked out and died and gave Himself. He gave Himself for all the other little babies who had the mark unseen. His mother examined the tiny little brow and smoothed it and pets him and coos over him and says isn’t he pretty and he is. They’re nice, they’re nice. But death sees under the skin what the shining faced mother can’t see. I’ve got a mortgage in there, tattooed into his brain. There came One who had no tattoo from hell on Him. And that death had no dominion over. And He gave Himself to die, the Just for the unjust and took our place and died and gave us His place to live. And we’re alive now only for that reason. The angels that sinned and kept not their first estate, God hurled them down to hell. And the demons, those strange, sinister creatures from somewhere, God sent them into darkness. But us He let live. And we’re here because God is merciful. Do you get those two facts? We ought to die, but we’re alive. We ought to be in hell, but we’re on earth and will soon be in heaven. And through the infinite mercy of God, He lets rebels reign as princes in the house of David.

Oh, my people, what does God owe you? Oh, my people. What does God owe you? You won’t serve him joyfully. Therefore, you serve your enemies in frustration and resentment and bitterness, and I’m describing some. Instead of receiving the kindness of God joyfully and going about filled with gratitude as a man might be who was sentenced to die, but who walked out of the death cell a free man and raised his hand in the sunshine and thanked God he was alive. Instead of that, we fault find and criticize. A solo is off key.  Yours wasn’t Brother, but the soloist is off key. What kind of singing is that? The sermon isn’t quite as good. The old man is slipping. A Board member doesn’t come through quite as they should. What’s the matter with that Board? And so, it goes on all the way up and down the line. Brethren, what has God done to us? We see, we look at things wrong.

Tonight, I want to explain from Abel down and show how today you and I ought to be the most thankful, it’s a little early for Thanksgiving, but the most thankful and the most grateful and the happiest people in all of wide world. And we will be when we learn to get along with God.

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“Holiness and God’s Will for His People”

Holiness and God’s Will for His People

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 26, 1958

It hardly seems possible that it was 10 years ago that I preached through the book of Hebrews giving attention to every verse and was, it took some little time in going through. This morning, I want to go to a chapter that I dealt with quite at length then to talk a little about holiness and God’s will for his people. In verse 14 of the 12th chapter, read previously in the service: follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. Then, in verse 10, he says that the fathers of our flesh, our human fathers verily for a few days, chastened us after their own pleasure as it seems good to them. But God does it for our profit that we might be partakers of His holiness.

Now, I want to begin where every sermon must begin if it is to have any biblical basis at all. I must begin with the fall of man. If it were not for our having fallen into sin, there would be no reason for the church. For the church is the lifeboat in which are collected, the saved ones who have been saved in the going down of the great ship.

Now, with the sin of man came dreadful consequences. A number of them we are familiar with. They’re all about us: weaken bodies, impaired minds, and mortality–the necessity to die, along with sorrows and toil and tears. But the most fearful and the most appalling of all our losses, in the fall, is the loss of personal holiness, character. All the other woes that we know are only the sad children of this one woe, for it alienates us from God and makes us a stranger to Him.

I was thinking this morning and looking over it in the Scriptures that there isn’t any other condition which God recoils from in human life, except unholiness. He says to the sick, wilt thou be made whole. He says to the poor, come and He feeds them. He touches the lame and the homeless and the dying. That is, we find Jesus doing all these things in the Scriptures. So, our Lord does not recoil from our misery. He does not recoil from our weakened bodies. There’s nothing repugnant in our impaired minds. Nothing in our mortality nor our sorrows nor tears nor toil. But there is one thing God will not have, and that is, unholiness.

I read here in the Scriptures, he that overcometh shall inherit all things and I will be his God and he shall be my son. But the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone which is the second death. And in the 22nd chapter, I read, blessed are they which do His commandments that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter into the gates of the city. For without are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers and idolaters and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

God does call all they that are heavy-laden He calls to Himself. That isn’t God’s problem. The problem is the restoration of personal holiness of heart. This is God’s most urgent labor. And it is that to which God now sets Himself in this dispensation. And it is for this that He gave His eternal Son in death. It is for this that He gave the Bible, and it is for this, the church continues to exist. It is for this that the Holy Spirit is present and remains present. God wants to make His people right again. And He wants to make us right inside. Differences of opinion about what you do on the outside. But the outside has very little significance. It’s the inside that matters. And God wants us to have restored to us that which we lost in sin, and that is, inward purity.

Now, in the twelfth chapter here, he gives us a little inkling of how God goes about it. You know, we would like to think that holiness is a quality like, say, music or health or anything that you might impart, that you might hear or see or touch, but it isn’t. It is a state of heart. And God would bring us to a state of heart and He has many ways, but I’m thinking of one today. I call it the re-education of the heart. Holiness can’t be perfected without what God calls here chastisement, and says that while no chastening is joyous, it nevertheless yields fruit. And that fruit is holiness. We might be partakers of His holiness. You see my friends, resistance, he talks about resistance up here in verse four, you have not yet resisted unto blood, resistance. Holiness can’t be perfected without resistance. Resistance is necessary in human development.

For instance, a tree rejects the lumbermen, rejects the lumberjack. And he works hard cutting that tree down and taking it out to market. And in doing this, he develops those tremendous shoulders and huge biceps for which lumberjacks are famous. The mountain resists the climber, the mountaineer, and so he gets those great calves and great leg muscles and great chest from climbing the mountain; and so, with the wrestlers. So everywhere we grow by facing up to resistance, meeting it, and fighting it.

Now our enemy is ignorance according to this here. Our enemy is ignorance. We are said to be disciples. And you know what a disciple is? He’s somebody in school. It’s all the one word. The disciple is somebody who is in school and a disciple is somebody who’s going to school who’s enduring. It’s somebody who’s going to school and the discipline is what he’s going for, the chastisement, the discipline of God. God is teaching us. Our enemy is ignorance, and it resists every effort to learn, the native blindness that we have by having fallen in sin. And the struggle with ignorance is used of God.

And when God would make us holy, He does it by re-educating our heart. And He has to begin with practically total ignorance. Worse than that, He begins with bad teaching, which of course is worse than ignorance. Because you see, we’ve all been to the school of Adam, you and I. That old fellow, I don’t know whether I like him or not. I often think of Adam, our common father. I wonder what he looked like and all. He must have been a very wonderful looking being. God made Him in His own image, but he fell. And then when he fell, he began to beget his children, and we are of the loins of this fallen man. And we not only have his bad nature, but we have him as our teacher. And we’re victims of Adam’s false view of life. And so, we’ve got to unlearn so much. If we could come to God as a clean, clean slate, with no wrinkles developed on our moral brain and let God work, it would be a relatively easy thing for God to write on the blackboard that was perfectly clean. But for God to have to erase off the blackboard that which we’ve put on when we’ve been going to the school of Adam for so many years.

Think of a man converted, say, when he’s 50 years old. A man who has read a lot, thought a lot, studied a lot, listened a lot, suffered a lot, experienced a lot, traveled around a great deal, and has educated himself. He’s been to the school of Adam. And he’s got a number of degrees just from living in Adam’s world and going to the University of Adam. Well then, he suddenly is converted through faith in Jesus Christ. We like to think and sometimes we make it seem to be so, that our conversion is an instantaneous transformation, complete and final, and that old things have all passed away and all things have suddenly become new. But when Paul said that, Paul had been on the way quite a while.

The fact is, God puts the new seed of the Spirit in the heart of the new born-again man and begins to teach him. And it takes a long time to teach him properly, because he has to unlearn everything that he learns just as when a foreigner comes over here, he speaks with an accent because he has absorbed his mother tongue. He has nursed it at the breast. He has breathed it in with his native air. And his tongue and lips have learned to form the peculiar sounds of his own language. And so, it is very rare indeed, that a man or woman who comes to this country or goes from this country to any other, after they’re, say, in their middle teens, it’s very rare they learn to speak their new acquired language with anything but an accent.

And so, it is you and I that have a kind of spiritual accent. We learned it from Adam. We have learned unconsciously to think as he thinks and appraise as he appraises. And then we’re converted. We’re transformed suddenly and changed and transplanted to a new world. And we speak with a moral accent for a long time. And God has to begin to re-educate us.

Now, God is the teacher of course back of all, and it tells us that here in Hebrews very plainly, that God is the teacher back of all, but he uses many assistants. God has many assistants. And the humble ones, too, He has and he uses those humble ones to humble us. I’m thinking about how God taught some of His people in the Old Testament. There was the man, Job.

Now, Job got a degree from God. And he got it after going through a long, hard schooling. But it wasn’t a dramatic and beautiful thing with God coming down from heaven and sitting on a tuft of grass while the angels circled and played harps around him. And Job comes up and kneels before Him in ecstasy of adoration while God teaches Job. That’s the way Job would have liked it. And in the very doing of it, Job would have hardened himself instead of softened himself. God would have been too easy on Job if He had come to teach him Himself. So, He sent his three friends, Job’s three friends, commonly called with good-natured irony, Job’s comforters. And they did anything but comfort the man. They took the liberty of close friendship to skin the man until they had him all worked up. Well, Job had to learn and he had to learn from three people who weren’t worthy to teach him. That was to humble Job.

And then I think of another man, Peter. Peter had to learn from a rooster and Paul had to learn from a thorn and David had to learn from his enemies and Joseph had to learn from those evil brethren of his. God’s blessed people have had to learn from some mighty unworthy teachers. And he does this to humble us.

If he sent an archangel down, if you could imagine that 50-year-old man that I told you about that got converted. And now he’s got to unlearn a lifetime of wrong beliefs and learn a whole world of new ones. Wouldn’t that be something if God were to send the archangel Gabriel down and make a nice little booth with the honeysuckles up over the windows and the birds roosting in them? Wouldn’t it be something for that man if he could tell his children and his grandchildren and they tell their grandchildren. You want me to tell you about my Daddy? He must have been a wonderful man, because he was converted when he was 50 and God sent an angel to teach him. No, God wouldn’t spoil him like that. So, God doesn’t send angels. God sends comforters and roosters and thorns and enemies, and he sends resistance.

Well, a lot of people had to learn a lot of things in the Bible. For instance, there was Abraham. You know what he had to learn, one thing he had to learn at least? There were a number, but he had to learn that even his beloved son had to go if he was to keep God. God won’t play second to anybody. If the church people could only find that out and take it seriously and do something about it, we’d have revival on our hands. God won’t play second to anybody. If you love God first and most, then you can love whom you will. But if you have anybody ahead of God, God won’t endure it. And Abraham for all of his faith and all the rest, must have had his son Isaac a little too close to his heart. So, to push him aside, God said, take him out and slay him.

And you know, I read the other day something very beautiful. I had never said this before because I never found it out until last week myself. But I reread where some great old saint of God said this. He said that the more spiritually you are, the more you’re willing to change your mind when you see you’re wrong. And the less likely you are to set your teeth and go ahead even if afterward you find you’ve been wrong, but you won’t admit it. He said this. He said If Abraham had been a fanatic, he’d have killed his son, even after he was told not to. He wouldn’t have gone that far with it and said, well now just a minute God, here I have gone through all this. You told me to slay my son and I believe you meant slay my son. What about this now? Am I wrong? Have I got it wrong about this? He said if he had been a fanatic, he’d had killed Isaac.

And you know, that’s exactly what was the matter with Jonah. He was a fanatic. God said to Jonah, go preach to Nineveh, 40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed. And Jonah went and preached and then got up on the hillside and waited for the fireworks, but that didn’t come. Instead of that, there was repentance that went from the throne out to the farthest suburbs. Everybody repented. And Jonah the fanatic was mad. And he said, let me die God. I might as well die. You’re not following along with me. I said they’d perish and here you’ve forgiven them. While Jonah was a fanatic, Abraham wasn’t. Abraham learned when God said, go slay your son, and then God said, no, Abraham, I see you’re willing to do it and that’s all I wanted.

Why, lots of people would have gone right on and killed the son anyhow. They said, I believe that. That’s the faith of our fathers. That’s the doctrine of my church. That’s what I have learned. God said that to me when in prayer and I’ve got to do it. And you couldn’t have argued him out. But Abraham was ready to listen to God. God said, once, go slay Isaac. He said, again, don’t slay Isaac. And Abraham was charitable and broad-minded enough to hear him talk twice. Do you know what I mean?

I know a dear brother who’s now long, oh, not long, five years maybe, with his Savior. And he’s definitely, definitely way beyond me in spiritual growth and experience and all the rest and will be and I’ll never catch him. But he was such a great believer in physical healing that when he got something wrong with him that would have yielded to surgery, he refused to take it and he lay down and died. He’s in heaven with his Lord, but he had settled it that he’d never let a doctor handle him. And the result was he died rather than have anybody fool around him. Now, you know, I consider that that was great, but not quite great. He’d have been greater if it had been willing to say, Father, maybe you’re talking twice instead of just once. Maybe you’re saying it again, it is written, again is written. He heard it is written, but he didn’t hear again, it is written.

Well, Abraham learned and then of course, Job. And what did he have to learn? Job had to learn he was a self-righteous man. He was a good man and he loved God and eschewed evil, but he was still a self-righteous man. And he had to find that out. And he couldn’t find that out by being preached at. Knowing preachers, we have the panacea, just wind and words. All we need to do is make everybody over, to get up and talk to them. We ought to find out you can’t do it. You can talk to people till you die. I’m preaching to people right here now that have a, you’ve jammed my wavelength years ago. You don’t hear a thing I say. Well, you’re self-righteous and I can never make you see it, because you’ve jammed my broadcast and you’re not hearing me. You like me all right and you’re not against me, but you just don’t hear me.

And you could have preached to Job I suppose until he was 108 years old and Job never would have known that he was a self-righteous man. But when those three friends got working on him, he found it out. And later on, God said, Job, Job, let me speak to you. Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth? And He began to ask Job that series of tremendous questions. Talk about the space age. He had Job out there in space 10,000 miles from the nearest heavenly body, throwing him about, tossing him about with words, God’s words, not mine or the preachers. And when it was all over, Job knelt and said, I am vile. What shall I answer Thee. I’ve spoken twice. I’ve spoken three times, but O God, what shall I answer Thee. As soon as he found out he was self-righteous, why, God said to these three friends, now go ask Job to pray for you. He sent these very three teachers around to Job to be prayed for. But Job had to learn that.

And then there was Elijah. Elijah was a strong, bold man. Oh, I wish we had more Elijahs. I wish every pulpit within the confines of what they call Chicagoland had Elijah’s courage. The man who wasn’t afraid of anybody except a woman. And he was only afraid of her because he’d had a terribly heavy, spiritual nervous experience and he was afraid of her just for a few minutes. But Elijah had to learn what a weak man he was. He had to learn even though he had the courage of lion, he was still a weak, fallen man. So, God allowed Jezebel and Ahab and backslidden prophets and cowardly preachers and all the rest to work on Elijah.

Then there was Paul. Ah, what shall we say about Paul. I feel always like taking off my hat and standing quietly at attention when I mention that man’s name. There was a man that seemed to have as few faults as anybody and the most virtues. You can find virtues all the way along and hardly a fault. But I’m grateful for one thing; it comforts me in my necessity. I am glad for the time he turned around, raised his hand and called a High Priest a whited-wall. He said, you whited-wall, you wait for God’s judgment. Somebody jumped up and said, you dare talk that way to the high priest. And then Paul apologized, immediately and said, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That was a little too hot. I didn’t quite mean it like that. In the first place, I didn’t know he was a high priest. I’m glad for that at least one time, Paul evidenced that he wasn’t perfect. But he had to learn that he wasn’t. And he had to learn it in a way that was the most painful. He had to have a thorn in his flesh.

We won’t go into it. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know and I don’t know who does. Some people think it was his bad eye, but I don’t know. A thorn in his flesh. Do you ever have a thorn in your flesh? Did you, ever working around, say, on your hedge or in your garden and you get a thorn in here? And it’s just under the, just under the nail and you monkey with it a little while and say, oh well, forget it. And it won’t forget. It just keeps, you bump it, ow, you say, and draw back and can’t find it and examine it and say to your husband or wife, would you look at this. And they come and make it worse. And then the next day, the next day, it begins to what we used to call on the farm, beal. I don’t know whether or not you know that word means fester. And you’ve got a thorn there and it’s not serious. It’s just mean. It isn’t going to kill you, but it’s terrible. I had an equivalent of a thorn in the flesh here. It’s better now. I don’t know how I did it, but I cut my finger right on the end. And then I had to type out some editorials. You know, it’s a painful thing. No, it’s nothing to write and ask prayer about, but it’s just mean. And I endured that pounding away. The only two fingers I use are these and one of them had had a cut there. It wasn’t bleeding. It was just there.

Well, that’s what it was. It was It wasn’t going to kill Paul. It didn’t disqualify him for the fight. It just irritated him. And you know, he was just so good a man that he had to have it. If he’d been a little worse, he wouldn’t have needed it. But he was just so good that he needed it. That’s why God even has to send thorns to the holiest people that live. They’re too holy to be safe without a thorn. A good man who’s living in God and walking in the light, soon finds that out. And his own goodness would be a danger to him except his Heavenly Father sends him a little thorn. They are not nice, but they are mighty useful.

And then Jesus our Lord had to learn also, and with great reverence I say this. He had to learn obedience by the things He suffered. I wouldn’t even dare to say it except it says, says the Holy Ghost. It says He learned obedience by the things He suffered. And because He knew the pain and the terror of temptation, He can be now a faithful high priest to all of us tempted people.

Now, there are some weaknesses. Maybe I’d better skip it, but I just drop it here that there are some weaknesses that we hinder ourselves–we slow down our learning. Let me name them for you. One of them is to seek comfort from our friends. One of the worst things you can do when God begins to lay conviction on your soul is to run to your friend for comfort. If God begins to lay a lash on my heart, all I have to do is run to McAfee. He’ll comfort. No, no. It’s wonderful, wonderful. But I don’t do it. At least, I hope I don’t. It’s such a sneaking thing that sometimes you can start a conversation not knowing that way deep down in your subconscious, you’re going to work around to get a compliment and get your heart comforted. You know, it’s easy. Our cat, she’ll come up and wants me to scratch her under the ears. She’ll lay there by the hour with her eyes shut, that is, not by the hour, but at least as long as the hour will last, she’ll lie there, her eyes shut and let me scratch her ears.

Well, it’s possible when God Almighty is laying the lash on you to try to make you a partaker of His holiness, it’s possible to run to somebody to get your ears scratched. Having itching ears said Paul. I wonder what he meant. Well, let God correct you, friend. Take your medicine. He does it that you might be a partaker of His holiness. He does it in order that He might re-educate your heart–get Adam’s teaching out of you and Christ’s teaching into you.

And then the second mistake we make is seeking a blessing instead see of seeking a holy life. You go to the average audience and say, who wants to be holy and give an altar call and there won’t be anybody come. Say, who wants a blessing, and the whole front of the church fills up. We want blessing, but we don’t want it the holy. Let’s watch that.

And then, let’s watch the third thing and the last. Let’s watch comforting ourselves with our excuses. I’m grimly determined I’m never going to go to God with an excuse and say, God, but listen, circumstances. God, but listen, other people. God, but listen, my relatives, my wife, my father, Board members. No, no, never so help me. Let’s not be so weak that we negate and destroy the teachings of the Holy Ghost that he’s trying so hard to teach us that He might make us holy, that we might be like Him.

Let’s not run to the comfort of our friends. Let’s not go to God and seek to comfort ourselves with excuses. Let’s not seek to be blessed, but let’s seek to be holy. O God, makes me holy. Make me holy. That’s the prayer of every Christian. And you know that the more you pray that prayer, the more earnestly, the more sincerely, the more persistently you pray that prayer, the more God will send you the little teachers to teach you, but the quicker it’ll get over with and the fewer they will become. And you may be permitted of God to spend your last days as a ripe shock of corn, the sun shining on it.

So, may God give us the grace to remember that there’s only a one thing that alienates and that’s unholiness. And there’s only one way God can finally bring holiness to our hearts and that is by the blood and the Spirit and the teachings of His own discipline. Amen.

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“The Tabernacle of God is with Men”

The Tabernacle of God Is with Men

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 24, 1954

In Revelations 21:10, the chapter which I have chosen to discuss this morning, is used so often at funerals, that it has about it something of the flavor of cut flowers. And one hesitates to preach on a Sunday morning on such a theme for the simple reason that it has been preempted by the funeral parlors. This is not a funeral sermon and neither is this a funeral chapter. This is a chapter way beyond all funerals where there are none. I want to read again verse 10. He carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me that great city, the whole Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God.

Let me begin by saying this, that one of the supreme glories of man is his many sidedness. He can be and do and love and be interested in many things. A man is not fatally formed to be one thing only, as the rock there that has been a rock from time in memorial and will be a rock till the heavens melt with fervent heat and the earth passes away. Or as the star that shines, a star it has been, the star it will be. The mountain that pushes up into the sky has been a mountain since the last geological upheaval pushed it up there. In all these years it has worn a garment of forest on its back, but it has always been a mountain never anything else. It is just one thing, that man can be cause and effect. He can be servant or master. He can be doer and thinker. He can be poet and philosopher. He can be like the angels to walk with God or like the beast to walk the earth. Man is a many-faceted diamond to catch and reflect back the glory of the only God.

Now this versatility on the part of man has enabled him to enjoy both solitude and society. And every normal person loves both. Every normal human being loves these two extremes, solitude and society. Enter into thy closet said Jesus. There is solitude. Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, said the Apostle, there’s society. And this was written, these words, of course to Christians, so that even the Christian is supposed to be able to enjoy, understand and appreciate both solitude and society.

And every normal person must have time to be alone. He must have time to get acquainted with himself and to get orientated to the universe in which he lives. He must have time in the quietness and the silence to send out his thoughts like flocks of obedient birds to explore and with bright eyes to look down upon all corners of the universe. He must get acquainted with God and himself and the loneliness of his own chamber. But also remember that reaction always follows action, as the moon must always wane after she waxes and the tide must always go out after it comes in. And so, mankind must have both solitude and society.

And after a time of loneliness and heart searching and communing with the Universal Being, he must seek again the face of his fellow man. God has meant it so to be. And that is the reason for social groups. Whether a social group should be two people keeping themselves company in some settler’s cabin way back in the hills, or whether it should be the busy noisy activity of a great modern city, it is society. And God has meant that we should be together.

Now God has made us for each other. And we are, if we are normal, supposed to be together and understand and appreciate each other, but I realized what sin has done. You can talk twenty minutes, not five minutes about mankind till you come to this ugly hissing word we call sin; this disease of the heart that has ruined everything. And that is what has made us greedy and made us to hate and made us to lust for power; made us to be jealous and to envy each other and to covet each other’s property. That has destroyed anything like peace in society. But in the final state of humanity, in the final state of perfection, minus all of the diseases of the mind and of the heart, we will dwell in perfect enjoyment of each other’s company. And that will be the new Jerusalem, the Holy City, that descended out of heaven from God.

Now, in that society, we will appreciate each other. I realized that we do not appreciate each other as we might. In our time, the one who gets the appreciation is the noisy one or the aggressive one. And there are millions of rich spirits, rich spirits that might enrich your friendships, enrich your life, but they will not, because they’re quiet, self-effacing persons that do not push themselves to the front, or they are handicapped by a face that is not attractive. They’re handicapped by what we now call, a personality that is not winsome. Because they have not a face that wins us or a personality that draws us, we lose the richness of the fellowship of many a one that we might enjoy if we were wiser and bigger and greater than we are. But in that consummation, when the city of God descends, we will be able to appreciate each other.

I refer one more time to that biblical doctrine of the image of God in man. And I say this to you Sir, that apart from God Himself, the nearest thing to God is the human soul. The old writers tell us that the human soul is the nearest like God, and they’re perfectly right and it is found in the Scriptures. God made man in His image. And if it were not for the blighting effect of sin, the human soul would catch and reflect the light of God as a diamond reflects the light of the sun. And we would know each other because we would see in each other, something of God. And because God is infinite and without limit, we could come to know each other better while the ages roll and never feel I am weary of Him. I’m bored with Him. I know Him. I’ve traveled over His mind.

When young Boswell said to the great Dr. Johnson, Doctor, I don’t know whether we’ll talk much more. We’ve traveled over each other’s mind. He said, Sir, I may have traveled over yours, but I give you to understand, you have not yet traveled all over mine. He was sure of the vastness of his great mind. And I say that you may travel over me and get to know me and say, I’m weary of the fellow because I know him. But in that day when the limitations of the flesh are removed and the negative qualities in our personalities are removed and the minor notes are all taken out of the symphony of personality and we’re all in the major and we all are melodic and beautiful; in that day we’ll thank God for each other, because we will know God through each other. And we will find that we are simply prisms, simply lenses through which God shines.

God desires that He should shine through His universe, and He does shine through it. But He shines through it best of all in man. And it’s only sin that has cracked the lens and distorted the image. It is only sin that has marred the vision and spoiled the picture. So that when we look at each other we don’t see the potentialities that lie there. When our Lord looked at us, He saw not what we were, but He saw what we could become. And He took away the curse of being and gave us the glorious blessing of becoming. The greatest curse the world has is, it’s to be, to be, always to be. He is what he is. But Jesus Christ said, no, he is not what he is, he is what he can become.

And so He gives us the power to become. It’s the becoming, the ability to become. We know not what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, and shall see Him as He is. It’s the ability to become, to grow, to change, to develop, to move out to the edges of the perfection of human personality that is the glory of the Christian life. That we are to become. Not what we are, but what we are to become is what matters.

Therefore, in that day when the Holy City descends, we will appreciate each other for what we are. And in that day, there will be no one jealous of any other. Jealousy is a great blight. But there will be no jealousy there. We will not subject each other nor want to subject each other. And no warlord will want to march on another land and subject another country. We will not suspect each other. We will not arrest each other, nor try each other nor execute each other. But we will have a society where none of these things will come. There will be no slums there. While the children of the slums forage through the alleys for what they might find, the children of the rich trample great things under their feet and are bored with all that money can buy. But that will all be gone in that day. When, as it is written, I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them and they shall be His people. And God himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying. Neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.

Now, I ask you my listening friends, who dares rise to challenge the desirability of this. This is the desirable beyond all the dreams of avarice, and who that loves humanity. Who that loves the human race could dare challenge the desirability of that place where God and men dwell together, and where God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying nor any more pain. For these former things have passed away. Every lover of humanity will say a quiet and fervent “amen” to this dream of the future. And every social dreamer has sought it, everyone from the earliest man who dreamed of a perfect society down through the years, the Plato with his Republic, on down to Karl Marx, and Franklin Roosevelt and the latest politician, that sincerely and honestly wants to make a country a better country in which to live. They have all dreamed and all had their ideas all spoiled by selfishness and prejudice and cynicism, no doubt. But nevertheless, we give them the credit. They did and do want to make the world a better place in which to live.

And then the reformers and the groups who study sociology and want to make the world over in a better image. They want to do it by what they call social regeneration. But I noticed that the man who is in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day did not refer to social regeneration. He said that it did not come from the regeneration of society. That this perfect future world comes down out of God from heaven, in place of its being the result of a slow process of social regeneration. It is the result of a process of individual regeneration.

Always remember friends, whenever you hear the word “social,” or the word “society,” you’re hearing a trick word, a deceitful word. I’ve used it all morning here. But at the same time, it does not refer to anything in particular. It is a word that reaches out and rakes in a whole world of ideas. For there is no such thing as society, though we’ve talked about it and shall continue to. Actually, society is made up of a great many single individuals, so that I am society and you are society and the man next door and the boy that sells papers down there and the milkman and the mayor of the city and the President and his office boy that carries out his mail. That’s society. It’s the individual. But when we think of them together, we call it society. And we’ve built then in our mind or are likely to build in our mind a false concept. We are likely to think of society as an organism.

So, remember that it is a fallacy, a figment of the mind, a deceptive figment of the mind, that there is such a thing as social regeneration. No, my brother, there isn’t any such thing. It cannot be done. There is such a thing as social rot. There is such a thing as social decay. There is such a thing as a group of people forming a city or a state or a nation, or even the population of the world rotting and falling apart. But the only regeneration known in the world is individual regeneration.

Society is not an organism. Society is a name given to a great number of individual organisms. And when Jesus Christ came to the world, He threw to the winds the idea of the regeneration of society. And he said, ye must be born again. Ye must be born again. Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst. And He took the individual and He said, one soul is of more value than all the world. And he laid His emphasis upon the individual. Jesus Christ was an individualist and he taught individualism and He practiced it.

But He also taught that there was to be a society of the blessed. There was to be an assembly of the saints. There was to be the new Jerusalem, the spirits of just men made perfect. There were to be many mansions in the Father’s house where these individually regenerated should come together and form that holy society. And the old man of God who wrote the celestial city, dared to say it, and his English translator dared to translate it and make him say this, I know not, oh, I know not what social joys are there. What radiancy of glory. What joy beyond compare in that great day when the city, the holy city descends out of heaven from God.

John was a dreamer, and loved mankind. And there have been many who’ve loved mankind. I don’t think we should be cynical about the politicians. The jokesters and the gangsters have laughed at the politician so long. But I still think there are good men who’ve dedicated themselves to making the world a better place in which to live. I still think so.

After I went home last night from attending Keswick, I was nervous and couldn’t sleep, so I turned on the radio, and I heard a report from Washington. Somebody there was talking about the President. He was a lawyer, very close to the President. And he said this one thing–he didn’t emphasize it–but he said this one thing to those newspaper men who were interviewing him. He said, there is one thing about the president, one thing that inspires all of Washington–one thing. And he said we’re in danger of becoming starry-eyed in our attitude toward the man. And it’s this, he is dedicated to the welfare of all people. Now, he didn’t say he couldn’t be mistaken. He didn’t say that he was going to make a success of it. He didn’t say that he couldn’t even inadvertently lead us into a gutter. He didn’t say that. But what he did say was that the heart of the great General is dedicated. He said, he’s a dedicated man. He says, it goes like electricity through all of the spirits and the hearts of those that know him. He’s dedicated to the good of his country.

Now, I’m not speaking that from a political standpoint at all. I believe there have been other dedicated men, many other dedicated men. Little, as I followed the politics of the man who preceded him, I believe that the high hope of the man who preceded him was that America might be free and a good land. I think he did foolish things. And I think he allowed himself to be the dupe of men. But he wasn’t bad enough to appreciate how bad they were and they led him astray. But nevertheless, I still like to believe that he did have America at heart. And I believe a lot of these big, booming voice fellows that we laugh at, who come on the radio and use cliches until the cows come in, and next gong you hear it will be 3:15, but we laugh at them.

But ladies and gentlemen, I think a lot of them mean well. And they’re good man and they want America to be free, but they go about it in the wrong way. They do the best they can. But it’s all this political regeneration, social regeneration business, forgetting ladies and gentleman that the only way a society can be created fit to be the new Jerusalem is by individual regeneration. And there will not be a soul, not one member of that heavenly population that will not have some way, somewhere, somehow undergone the mysterious and mystical experience of the new birth. And it will be said of him as Paul said of the new man, old things have passed away and all things have become new. And now we find the same thing said of the New Jerusalem, these old things have passed away and lo, I make all things new.

How is it that the Holy Ghost said the same thing about the New Jerusalem that He had said about the converted man. Because the New Jerusalem will be the city of the converted man. This new Jerusalem will be filled with those who can say while they’re on earth, all old things have passed away and all things have become new. And now they are able to say, lo, He makes all things new and the former things have passed away.

Now, John sees a descending, and it is a strange thing that he sees descending here. It is not only a city, but it is a bride. Not only a bride, but it is a temple. And now in the order of time, it takes its place above the earth. And this is the city seen by men of faith all down these years. Abraham saw that city. He knew that it had foundations. Manhattan, they say is built upon the great rock, the island of Manhattan that juts down the Hudson and East River to the battery, is a solid rock. And when the great skyscrapers are built on that island, they are built down solidly on rock. But they still have no foundation. One H-bomb could level that great city to its foundations. But the city of God that descends out of heaven is a city that has foundations. Abraham saw it. And David in his prophetic dreams saw a city that was made glad by the streams in the south. And Paul saw it and the martyrs saw it. This is the city that descends out of heaven from God.

My brethren, I thought I wanted to give you this this morning because we’re living in a terrible, earthly earth, the terrible worldly world, the terrible, mundane society we live in. And it’s getting worse all the time. Materialism has taken over. And that which is spiritual and beautiful and transcendent is being all sullied over. And we walk among the rubble of the world.

I want you Christians to know that this is only temporary. I want you to know that you walk only in the world’s rubble for a little while. I want you to know that you stand and see cities fall only for a little while. There is a city descending soon that has foundations that can never be destroyed. And it says here, that it shines in reflected light, for it has no need of the sun nor of the moon, having the glory of God which delight in it. So, the light of the Holy City will be the light of God.

I think it is tomorrow. Is it not or would it be today that they’re celebrating Edison giving us the electric light. Now, I think that’s a good thing to do. I think that we ought to. I believe that our children ought to know that there lived a quiet, uneducated, but very brilliant man once who decided that, as Uncle Josh used to say that by putting a hairpin in a bottle and putting electric current through it, you could light up your house and that’s what Edison did. They’re going to recognize that. I think they started it already. It’s going to be electric light week or electric light day or something. All well and good my brother, but all the lights that are in the world, all the lights are artificially produced, or they come down from the sun above. But God says that that city will have no need of the sun nor of the moon, no kind of modern lighting, but the Lamb is the light thereof. And that city shines in the light of God. And that city will satisfy all of man’s nature.

You see, the trouble with you is, now you think the trouble with you is you’re too small. But the trouble with you is, you’re too big. The trouble with us all is that God made us in His image and we are too big to be satisfied with this little world that sin has given us. Augustine said it in classical language when he said, O God, Thou has made us for Thyself and our hearts are dissatisfied till they find rest in Thee. And that has been echoed and re-echoed and written into hymns down the years. And it’s true, that’s your trouble. You’re bored with life. You are bored because you’re too big for what sin has given you. God has made you too great. You are potentially too mighty. You’re a soul made in the image of God. Your spirit, which came down from the bosom of the Father, is too big for that which sin has offered you, too big.

And so, we’re bored with life. Men commit suicide, not because they’re little, but because they are big in a little world. Because God made them to enjoy all the vast expanses of His heaven, and they’ve been forced, through sin, to be satisfied with paying their taxes and running their lawn mower and driving their car and keeping their wife happy and keeping their kids out of jail and keeping their job and paying their debts and getting old. And they’re sick of it, sick of it. Their bodies are breaking down under them and their tabernacles are too small for the Spirit that dwells within it.

And like the popular song, This Old House, the thing has gone to pieces and the door has come off the hinges and the windows are broken. And it’s an old wreck of the thing. And man is too big for that which he’s forced to live in. That’s what’s the matter with this, ladies and gentlemen. That’s why they’re always trying to explore some new place or that’s why they’re wanting to go to the moon. That’s why we’re wanting to travel faster than sound. That is why somebody’s always trying some fool thing. That’s why a Charlie Lindbergh would jump in an old egg beater and fly the ocean, the first man over. And that is why Byrd will go down to Antarctica and that is why Amundson would go to the North Pole. And that’s why men try to do the impossible. That’s why we explore the secrets of the universe and dig up the atom bomb. Because men are too big for this little world. Sin has given them a little narrow, prescribed world–your world, Mama.

Isn’t it a little world after all, get the kids off in the morning, go back and do the dishes and then run the vacuum and be ready for the invasion at noon when they come in to eat. And then do the dishes, and maybe five minutes you rest and then get ready for supper when they’re back in the old man’s back. And if you have anything to do at night, you go tired to do it and come in weary.

A little world sin has put us in, a little world. Here we are with minds as great as the stars in the heavens above. And with little, tired, weary sick bodies want to lie down half the time and refuse to get up like a stubborn donkey. That’s what’s the matter with us. That’s why we’re explorers and poets and artists and dreamers and inventors. That’s why those who haven’t allowed their minds to run in those directions are so sick and bored with life, they wish they were dead.

But the society that God is sending down from above, that great City of God will fully satisfy a man’s full nature. There’ll be so many things you won’t find there. All that happy golden’s day without a cloud and without a sundown. You can travel over all the wide regions above and you’ll never find a wrinkle in anybody’s face or gray hair in anybody’s head. You’ll never hear anybody say, I’m discontented. You’ll never hear a criticism. You’ll never hear a peevish man. You’ll never see an unkind face. You’ll never hear a growl out of any throat. You’ll never hear a scream from any throat, nor will there be a tear fall down any cheek.

Yet somebody says, now, wait a minute here, Mr. Tozer, that’s the old-fashioned idea of heaven. We’re kind of glorified butterflies hanging up there waving our wings gently in the zephyrs that flow down from the celestial mountains. I wouldn’t want to live like that, you say I want something to challenge me. I want something to have to work for, something to do. Well, I can set your right there. I can tell you that all that God’s going to take out of the New Jerusalem, out of that redeemed society, are the bad things. The tears, I say, the wrinkles, the old age, the arthritis, the heart failure, the men who shoot policemen and hide. The boys who stab other boys in gang warfare. The wicked people and bad people will be saved in that day from two things I think that are equally hard to bear–the wickedness of the wicked and the dullness of the good. We’ll be saved from both in that day, ladies and gentlemen. And you can travel all over heaven’s wide expanses, and you will not find any of that.

But listen now I say, I promised that we would not be without something to do. For God is the great worker. He is the Creator. He is creative. And all He does is creative, constantly creative. God did not create the heavens and the earth and all the universe and then put period and say it’s done, finale. But He’s always creating, always. And God has made us in His image. And God is the great worker without limit and we are the little workers with limit, but up to our limits, and we haven’t found them yet. We will be workers too. When God put Adam and Eve in the garden, He didn’t put them in there to sit and look at each other and hold hands. He said they were to take care of the garden. Do you remember that? They were given something to do. Some people believe that work is a result of the curse. No. The idea is abroad that the man who works is a boot and that work is only for fools. But God made us to work.

You know the anthropologists say that when God made man with his four fingers here and his thumb opposing those four fingers so he could get a hold of a tool, He guaranteed he’d conquer the world. God made you and me like that, you see. Just look at your hands sometime. You have in all the machinery you have around your house, all the gadgets up from the hair curler to the television set, you haven’t got all put together one gadget that can remotely compare in intricacy, beauty of performance and versatility with that right hand of yours. Look at that hand sometime. Don’t do it now, it would look funny. But sometime when you have a little time alone, look at that hand of yours, that amazing hand of yours. God didn’t give you that hand to hang on to some chandelier in the New Jerusalem. God means that you are to go to work up there. But it’ll be a tireless work. It will not be a work of boredom.

You know why we’re bored, don’t you? We’re bored because sin has made us restless. We’re bored because sin has made us dissatisfied. We’re bored again because we’re too big for our environment. We’re bored because we’re made to walk with God and we insist on walking with a swine. We’re bored and tired of the gutter when God has made us to walk without sound, the holy streets of the New Jerusalem. Boredom will never visit us there. But it will be work without boredom, work without fatigue–happy joyous work.

I do not know what God will have us doing. Maybe He’ll have you doing the thing you can do. Some of you can sew like anything. I don’t know. Back in the Old Testament, God picked out a man and let him do the sewing. I don’t know why He didn’t choose a woman, but he picked a man named Bezalel. He filled him with the Holy Ghost and said–get busy. He gave him some great big sheets of cloth and said, here, embroider these. He did it. He did a beautiful job of it. It hung for centuries in the front of the Holy Place. God always wants workers. Our Lord was a worker says the hymn. And we’re all to be workers.

So don’t imagine for a second that heaven is to be a place where you’ll have nothing to do. Heaven is a place where you can rest. Well, you say, how can you make those two equate? How can they agree with each other? You work and you’re not tired, you rest. But Jesus, Jesus now works without tiring and rests always while He works. So, the saints of God will work.

What was it that Kipling said? I haven’t quoted it for years and if I break down, why, don’t look at me. I warned you. When Earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it – lie down for an aeon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen Shall put us to work anew. And I just thought of that till just on the spot here. And he tells us about how we will sit in a golden chair and splash in the ten-league canvas with brushes of comet’s hair. I don’t know whether angels have hair or not. But he thought they have. And he thought it was a nice way to do, get an angel and get a brush made of angel’s hair and instead of making a little canvas like Mr. Chase, no bigger ever than the top of his piano. Why a ten-league canvas and they’ll sit there and work? Oh yes, I believe Kipling had it right.

Heaven is not going to be a haven for lazy bums. Heaven is going to be a place where men are released from tensions, released from inhibitions, released from prohibitions from the outside, released from sin and made in the image of God, and go to work like the young gods they are. For he said you are gods. He didn’t mean you’re God. He meant you’re a little image of mine, and born to do the kind of work I do, creative work. So, the New Jerusalem will not be a haven for the lazy. It will be an opportunity for all the imaginative and the industrious and the busy, who like God, must find expression.

Ah, in the beauty of it all, how can I go on? The beauty of it all, not the beauty of a carefully done-up woman’s face. Not the beauty of a carefully-padded form. Not the beauty of the primrose that smiles in the sunshine, but the great, strong beauty of eternity in God and all that City of Gold with its beauty.

Now I ask you, the tabernacle of God is with men. I think that this is the consummation. Beyond this, nothing can be. This is the consummation. I mean, there can be nothing higher. There can be infinite developments in all directions. But they can be nothing higher. The tabernacle of God is with men. Way back there in the beginning, God made man to live with Him. Sin came and God divorced man like an unfaithful wife from His presence. But through the miracle of redemption, through the cross of Jesus Christ, man is reborn back to his ancient place and raised above that yet. And the tabernacle of God will be with men. And the God who once walked and talked with Adam in the garden in the cool of the day in sweet fellowship divine, will be present and will be the Light.

One little thing and I close. There was no tabernacle there. Why was there no temple? Why was there no synagogue or church? Why was there no meeting place where worshipers might get together? Because all of that new City of God was a temple. And God Himself was the temple. And like a great expanse of beautiful arches, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost surrounded and settled down upon and mingled with all that carefree, happy, busy, joyous throng. So, you didn’t have to wait for an hour in which to pray. All hours are prayer hours there. You don’t have to wait to go to a special place to pray. All is a temple. And God and the Lamb are the temples thereof. And there are no artificial lights to go out in the night. But the Lamb is the light thereof.

I think we can seriously consider whether we’re headed in that direction or not. Seriously consider this morning whether we have by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony, overcome and escaped from the loop of sin or whether we’re still bound by it, cursed with the curse, to be destroyed in the destruction. Or whether we are through grace made children of God and lifted and raised so that when the great city descends from God as the Lamb, or the bride adorned for her Husband, you and I can be part and parcel of that great society of the ransomed.