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“The Word Made Flesh – The Mystery of It”

The Word Made Flesh – The Mystery of It

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 20, 1953

In the Book of John, the first chapter, verses 14 to 18 inclusive: and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. John bare witness of Him and cried, saying, This is He of whom I spake. He that cometh after me, is in time, is preferred before me, that is, in honor, for He was before me, that is in rank. And out of his fullness have all we received, grace following grace. For the Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.

I remember years ago, I think I mentioned this before, reading somewhere, a great literary critic, comparing two men, Milton and Shakespeare. He said that Milton was great, but unquestionably, Shakespeare was greater. He said that Milton had imagination enough to select for his great work, a theme as vast as Paradise Lost and Regained, which gave him full sweep from the dim dawn of empty nothingness through to the triumph of Christ after His resurrection. And Milton says, when he starts out, that he’s going to soar above the Aeolian Mount, and justify the ways of God to men.

Now said the critic, Milton boldly declares that he’s going to soar high and do amazing things. Then, says he, he astonishes us by doing exactly what he set out to do. But he said further, so much mightier and so much more brilliant was the imagination of the man Shakespeare, that He limited himself deliberately to small subjects in short sections of history. He said, If he had attempted anything as vast as Milton, that is, the sweep of time from timeless yesterday to timeless tomorrow as Milton did, he would have died of plethora of thought. He’d have had a brain hemorrhage. It would have been too big for him, because the vastness of it would have called so much out of the man that he would have exploded.

Now, that was one man’s opinion. It sounds pretty good, and I introduced it here only because I feel in selecting this passage of Scripture, so completely inadequate, that if I blow up, even in a mild attempt, to expound what is buried here, you will know that it’s only normal, because John, this mighty man who was infinitely mightier than even Shakespeare, takes us up into the Godhead where an old Milton could go; and certainly no secular Shakespeare could ever go, and introduces us to spheres and circles of Deity so high and lofty and noble, that if we follow him, we’ll certainly die in the attempt. But all we can hope to do is to toddle along on our short legs and gaze heavenward like a goose that said, her wings clipped, and whose heart is in the skies but whose wings just won’t take her there.

Now I’ve said all this because, my best faith, my loftiest expectations could not possibly allow me to believe that I can do justice to a text that begins, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and ends, no man has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He have declared Him. We will do this then tonight. We will walk along the broad seashore of God and pick up a shell here and there and hold it up to the light and admire it’s beauty. And then turn away and say, we’ve only picked up a shell again, and have a pocket full of shells maybe to take with us. But on all sides, there stretches the vastness of the seashore, round the great lip of the ocean, and far beyond anything that we can ever hope to see yet buried here.

Now we notice first of all that he says the Word became flesh, or the Word was made flesh. And I would point out, that we have here, and stated in four words, one of the darkest mysteries of human thought. How the Deity could cross the wide, yawning gulf that separates what is God from what is not God. For in the universe, there are really only two things, God and not God. That which is God and that which is not God. And all that is not God was made by God. And God was made by none.

So we have God and not God. And the gulf that separates between God and not God, that is, between the Creator and the creature, between the Being we call God and all other beings, is I say, a great and vast and yawning gulf, and how God could bridge this. How He could do this, I say, constitutes one of the profoundest and darkest mysteries that human thought can ever give itself to, and how God could join the Creator to the creature. If you have never thought very much about this, it may not seem so amazing. But if you have given it a little thought, you will see how astonishing it is, that unbridgeable gulf between God and not God.

For the very archangels and the seraphim and the cherub that shield the stones of fire are not God, so that there is a gulf fixed, a vast gulf, and the Gulf of infinitude, and how God managed to bridge that, and how He could join Himself to His creatures. And how He could limit the Limitless, or in the language we hear more popularly, how the Infinite could never become the finite. And how that which had no limit which is God should deliberately impose upon Himself limitations. And how God and why God would favor one order of being above another. For if you read your Bible, you will discover that man is not the only order of being. Man in his sinful pride thinks he is. We don’t even believe in angels anymore. We think angels are simply Santa Clauses with wings. And Protestants don’t believe in angels anymore. Foolishly, you don’t believe in angels.

No, we don’t believe in cherubim nor seraphim nor creatures nor watchers nor holy ones nor any of these strange principalities and powers that walk so darkly and brightly through the passages of the Bible. We don’t believe in them as much as we should at any rate, and yet they’re there. And mankind is only one order of God’s creatures. And why God should favor one above the other? For it is written in the Book of Hebrews, that God took not upon Him the nature of angels, but He took upon Him the seed of Abraham. Abraham certainly was not equal to an angel. One would suppose that God in stepping down should step down as little as He dared or could. That He would stop with an angel or a seraphim, but instead He came down to the lowest order and took upon Himself the nature of Abraham, the seed of Abraham. Paul throws up his hands, even that man Paul who was declared to be one of the six greatest intellects of all time. That great man of God threw up his hands and said, great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh. And I don’t know but what this is the most becoming approach to the whole subject is, to throw up our hands and say, O Lord God, Thou knowest. For there are so many more things in heaven and earth that are unknown in our theology, so that it’s all a mystery.

And I would quote Wesley here, at least the gist of what he said, when I point out that it’s a dark mystery how God could stoop down and become man and bridge the yawning gulf, enjoying Himself and limit to flesh and limit the Limitless. Wesley said, distinguish the act from the method by which the act is performed. And do not reject a fact because you do not know how it was done. I think that’s very wise. And we would come, it would be very becoming to us if we should enter the presence of God, reverently bowing our heads, and singing these carols and saying that, it’s so God, but we don’t know how. We will not reject the fact because we do not know the operation by which it was brought to pass.

Now, this much we can know at least, we can know that the Incarnation required no compromise of Deity. Let us remember it, that when God became incarnate, there was no compromise there. The gods of the Roman Pantheon, the gods of Greece, and the gods of the Scandinavian regions, were gods that would compromise themselves. The old Valhalla was full of gods that were compromisers and the Elysian Fields and the Pantheon and all that. That wherever the gods were, they always were gods who had compromised themselves one way or another.

But the Holy God, who is God and all else, not God, that God, our Father who art in heaven could never compromise Himself, so that the Incarnation was wrought and accomplished, this deep, dark, yawning mystery of incarnation was accomplished without any compromise of the Deity. God did not degrade Himself by this condescension. He did not in any sense make Himself to be less than God. He remained God, and everything else remained not God. The Gulf still existed even after Jesus Christ had become man and had dwelt among us.

So that instead of God degrading Himself when He became man, He by the act of incarnation elevated mankind to Himself. He did not degrade Himself to mankind. That’s pointed out in one of the old creeds. The Athanasian Creed pointed out very carefully. The old church fathers were very cautious here and they would not allow us to believe that God, when He became flesh, became flesh by a coming down of the Deity in the flesh, but by a taking up of mankind into God. And thus, we do not degrade God, but we elevate man, that is the wonder of redemption.

Now we can know this again, that this unison or union with a man and God is affected under perpetuity. God can never back out of His bargain. God can never cease to be, in that sense, man. The second person of the Trinity can never, what should we say, un-incarnate Himself or deincarnate Himself. He became incarnated forever, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Now at first God dwells with men.

I like to dream over the past. There’s a book written called “Earth’s Earliest Ages.” I have never read that book. I have looked through it, and I have concluded that the man knows more about the antediluvian days than Moses did. And when I discover a man who knows more than Moses on a subject in which Moses is a specialist, then I shy away from his book. But I confess that those early ages have a great fascination for me. And one of the passages that greatly charms my heart is that one that says that God came and walked in the garden in the cool of the day, and looked for Adam and Adam wasn’t there. Without reading anything into it, I think it’s safe to assume that that had been a common custom there. That that wasn’t the first time that God came to take a walk with Adam. In the cool of the day in the midst of birdsong and the fading light, God and man walked together. That was common. It was to be because God made man in His image, and would not degrade Himself by communing with man. He found Adam gone.

But there was God with man. Originally God dwelt with man. And then when man sinned, God rejected Him, drove him out and set up His flaming sword that he might not return. He sent him away from His presence. And after that, you will find through the Bible that God never dwelt with man again quite the same. He dwelt in the Shekinah hidden in the fire and the cloud. Occasionally, He would appear in what theologians call a theophany, an appearance of the Deity. And God would walk with a man briefly, or speak with a man as He did with Abraham in the tent door, or at Gideon there in the threshing floor. But never did He stay long, and always was He veiled and cautious. And even when He showed Himself to Moses, it was in the fire of the bush, or it was while Moses was hidden in the cleft of the rock. And God allowed only the hind or trailing parts of His garments to be seen. For sin had unfitted the eyes of men to look upon the majesty of Deity, so that the God who once was with men dwelt only intermittently with men, and then suddenly He came. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us. Now, He is here again, to dwell with men in person, and they called His name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

So, I want you to take three prepositions here. I’m not a prepositional preacher I’ll have you know, but occasionally, a strong preposition will do for us, even when it’s the end of a sentence. What you can’t get any other way, notice, when He appeared as man, He appeared to dwell with men in person and to be united to men, and then ultimately, to dwell in men forever. So, it’s with men and to men and in men, that He came to dwell, to dwell among us. And says the Holy Ghost, we beheld His glory.

Now, it’s right that we should inquire what was this glory which the man John said, we beheld or they beheld? We beheld His glory. Was it the glory on His works? For Jesus was a worker. And He was not only a worker, He was a wonder-worker. Our Lord, from the first miracle at Cana of Galilee to that last miracle. Wasn’t that the last miracle? I was trying to recall tonight before I came downstairs. I said to myself first that I would say that last miracle was when He cursed the fig tree, but it struck He performed at least one after that. Maybe I’m wrong and I’ve forgotten a more recent one. But it seems to me the last miracle our Lord performed was when He undid that bit of impulsive ear cutting that Peter had done when he took that sword and wizzed it past the servant Malcus’ ear and cut it off. Jesus grabbed it and put it back on and said, that’s no way to act. Put up your sword.

But all the miracles that lie in between were dramatic miracles, colorful and significant, whirlwind miracles in some instances. For our Lord was a wonder-worker. Every part of nature had to yield to Him. He turned the water into wine. And men have been arguing ever since whether it was Welch’s grape juice or wine with alcohol in it. It mattered little. He turned water into wine. And the miracle was that He could do it. And when our Lord came to the sick, He healed them. When He came to the devil-possessed, He commanded the devil to go out. When our Lord stood upon the rocking deck, our tiny boat tossed by the buoyancy of the waves and blown by the fierceness of the winds, He spoke to the water and He rebuked the wind and there was a great calm.

Everything our Lord did was wonderful. The tenderness of a son, when He gave the widow back her boy when they were on the way to the graveyard. The tenderness of a brother, when He gave back Jairus his little 12-year-old daughter. Handed her with a smile back and said, here she is. Sit up daughter, it’s time to go to school. He used the language, the simple language they say, that they used in those days to call children. You’ve called your child when it’s school time. And Jesus used those words, and with the tenderness of a brother, He called his little sister up from her dead sleep, and all down through His ministry, what He did was wonderful. How tender and how kind when the woman who was bleeding over 12 years received a sudden deliverance, and with a word, He staunched the debilitating flow of blood. And she went away with shining face to tell everybody that the hem of His garment had healing power in it.

So, the works of our Lord were always dramatic works. Always, they were amazing works. I wonder if John had it in mind when he said, we beheld His glory. We beheld Him still the waves. We beheld Him cast out devils. We beheld Him give sight to eyes long blind. We beheld Him as He raised the dead. I wonder. I think not my friends. I’d like to agree with you. I hear sermons on the radio sometimes that make the physical body everything, and works of miracle everything. And I wish that I could go along with such interpretation and say, the glory of Jesus Christ lay in his ability to cast out devils, that the glory of Jesus Christ lay in his ability to heal the sick and raise the dead and still the waves. Now, undoubtedly, that was wonderful. And He did get some praise to Himself from these necessary acts of miracles.

But, ah, I believe that there was a greater glory than merely works of wonder which our Lord manifested there. For always remember this, friends, that what a man is, is always more important to God than what he does. Remember that if a man were able to stand up and create pine trees and lakes and hills, and were not a good man, he would still be of no value to God. And let us remember, that if a man were a good man through and through, a good man and had no power at all to do any miracle, he would still be one of the sweetest treasures of God, and God would write his name on His own hands. For it is goodness that God is looking for. It is being in character and personality that God is looking for, not our ability to do amazing things.

So, it was what Jesus was that was glorious, not only what he did. In fact, what He did was secondary. What He was primary. So, Jesus Christ’s glory lay in the fact that He was perfect love in a loveless world. That He was purity in an impure world. That He was meekness in a harsh and quarrelsome world. That He evinced humility in a world where every man was seeking his own place. That He showed boundless, fathomless mercy in a hard and cruel world. That He evinced selfless goodness in a world full of selfishness. It was the deathless devotion of Jesus and the patient suffering and the unquenchable life and the grace and the truth that were in Jesus, that they beheld. They beheld His glory, the glory as the only begotten Son from a Father, full of grace and truth.

And so it was this that made Jesus wonderful. As little as the world knows about it today in all their wild money-inspired and profit-inspired celebrations, as little as the world knows about it. Even the poor, blind world is not celebrating turning water into wine. They’re not celebrating healing the sick nor raising the dead. They’re not celebrating the cursing of fig trees or the sticking on of cut-off ears. The poor, blind world, with what little bit of religious instinct it has left in it yet, is this season, celebrating what He was. And as we sing our songs and we read the editorials and squibs about Him in the magazines and papers, little is said about what He did, but everything is said about what He was. For the amazing thing was that it was God walking among men.

And here was something other than man and yet man. Here was something that was not man and yet was man. Here was God among men. Here was a man acting like God in the midst of sinful men. And this was the wonder of it all. And this was the glory that Alexander never could hope to reach for Alexander. That wild boy, the son of Philip leaped as Daniel would call him, like a goat, and trample the civilized world under his feet and conquered it and wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. Alexander never conquered himself. Alexander died a profligate, a disappointed profligate and spoiled baby. A genius on the field, but a baby in his own house.

And all together apart from His miracles, the glory of Jesus Christ shines like the brightness of the sun. For what He was had astonished the world. What He said has been amazing. What He did was wonderful, but what He was, was the crown upon all the doing and the saying. So, that we celebrate today a man who was. We celebrate today a God who became flesh. We celebrate this season, the miracle, the deep, dark mystery of the miracle of that which was not God being taken up into God, and being in flesh, so that we now have Jesus Christ, who is God, and yet also who is man.

It says, the man of God here of His fullness, have all we received in grace for grace. Out of His fullness of all we received. Now, what does that mean? Does it mean that everybody’s received of all the fullness of Jesus Christ? No, it can’t mean that. It means that Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son, is the only medium through which God dispenses His benefits with creation. And because Jesus is the Eternal Son, because He is of the eternal generation and equal with the Father as pertaining to His substance, His eternity, His love, His power, His grace, His goodness, and all of the attributes of Deity, He is the channel, He is the medium through which God dispenses all His blessings. Of His fullness have all we received out of his fullness. Ask the roe that goes down to the edge of the lake and drinks, have you received of the fullness of the lake? And the roe might answer yes and no, I am full from the lake, but I have not received of the fullness of the lake. I did not drink the lake, I only drank what I could hold of the lake.

And so of His fullness, out of the fullness of God, He has given us through Jesus Christ, grace upon grace. So that the only Medium through which God does anything is His Son. Whether He created or whether He is creating, it’s all through Jesus Christ our Lord. If He speaks, it is through the Eternal Word. If He reveals Himself, it is because He who is in the bosom of the Father has revealed Him. If He provides it is through the medium of Jesus Christ, if He sustains, it is because it can be said that He upholds all things by the Word of His power and in Him all things consist.

Alexander Patterson wrote a great book that’s now I think out of print, unless Moodys have brought it out recently. I think I heard they did. It’s called “The Greater Life and Work of Christ.” Dear old brother Gillespie gave me a copy of it years ago and I still have it. And in it, this great Baptist preacher attempts to go back to the basic foundations of things and show just what I’m giving you now. That Jesus Christ is more than simply the Redeemer of man. He is the Sustainer, the Creator, the Upholder, the Holder-Together, the adhesive quality of the universe, the medium through which God dispenses grace to all His creatures, those that will be redeemed, and those who do not need to be redeemed. For there are orders upon orders and ranks upon ranks of creatures that do not need to be redeemed. And yet they live by grace as well as the lowest sinner who is converted.

Grace must operate wherever that which is not God appeals to that which is God. Wherever the voice of the creature crosses the vast gulf to the ears of the Creator, grace must operate. We have limited grace to John 3:16. We must forget that everything God does is out of grace of His fullness. How do the angels get their broad wings? Out of His grace. How did that covering cherub who had built into him pipe organs and who was wiser than the sons of men? How did he get his wisdom and his beauty? Grace out of grace. How do the principalities and powers and mights and dominions and the ranks and the files and the columns of shining creatures that remarks through the pages of the Bible? How did they get what they have? Grace upon grace. Everything God does is by grace, for no man, no creature, no being, deserves anything. Salvation is by grace. But creation is by grace. And all that God does is out of grace. let’s remember. Every human being has received of His fullness.

What have you received? Even though you may not be saved tonight, you have yet received out of the ocean of His fullness. What of life for instance? You’ve received the life that beats in your bosom. You have received the brilliant mind that lies inside your head under the protective covering of your skull. You have received a memory that strings the events that you love as a jeweler strings pearls around a necklace, and keeps them for you as long as you live and beyond. And all that you have is out of His grace, so that Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word, who became flesh and dwelt among us is the open channel through which God moves to give all of the benefits that He gives to saints and sinners and all the continued existence that may yet be yours. Don’t think you’ve earned it. Don’t imagine it’s because you’re good or not so bad. Remember, it’s out of grace. And the whole universe is God’s beneficiary. The whole universe joins to give praise to the Lamb who was slain. And under the earth and on the earth and above the earth, John heard creatures praising Jesus Christ. And all joined to say, worthy is the Lamb. For all things were made by Him and for Him, they are created and are made and were made, so that the whole universe is a beneficiary of Jesus Christ.

And when we present Christ to men as Lord and Savior, let us remember that they have already been beneficiaries and we’re only presenting Christ in a new office. When we go to a man and say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re only saying, believe on the One who sustains you and upholds you and has given you life and pities you and spares you and keeps you. Believe on the One out of whom you came. For apart from Jesus Christ, God never did anything. The stars in their courses, the frogs that croak beside the lake, angels in heaven above, man on earth below, all came out of the channel that we call the Eternal Word. All of His fullness we have received or, we have received out of His fulness. We only present Jesus as Lord and Savior.

I said some time ago, I don’t remember where, and then I wrote it into an editorial, that there was no Saviorhood without Lordship. Somebody in the East cut out a paragraph from Sunday School Times and sent it to me. He said, read this. And I read it and I had never seen it. It was written by the man who used to be pastor of the Wheaton Bible Church. I never can straighten that name out although I know the man quite well. McCauley, McCauley, or McCauley, and here condensed into a paragraph he said what I took an editorial to say exactly the same thing, which appeared in the Sunday School Times, that Jesus Christ is both Lord and Savior, and He is Lord before He is Savior. And that if He’s not Lord, He’s not Savior. And when we present this Word, this Eternal Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us, when we present Him to men as Lord and Savior, we present Him only in His other offices. Previously, He has been Creator and Sustainer and Benefactor. Now, we present Him and asked men to believe on Him as Lord and Savior. But it’s the same Lord Jesus.

And he says, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Now, this is not to contrast that as grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, the law was given by Moses. This is not a contrast between the Old and New Testament. The theory that pits one testament of the Bible against the other is a false theory. The idea that the Old Testament is a book of law and the New Testament a book of grace is a theory completely false. There is as much about grace and mercy and love in the Old Testament as there is in the New. There’s more about hell in the New Testament than there is in the Old. And when it comes to judgment and the fury of God burning with fire upon sinful men and sinful creatures, it’s found in the New Testament, not in the Old. And if you want excoriating, flagellating language that skins and blisters and burns, don’t go to Jeremiah, go to Jesus Christ. Don’t go to the book of Jeremiah. Don’t go to Elijah, go to the 23rd of Matthew.

Oh, how much often does it need to be said, the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New. And the Father of the Old Testament is the Father of the New Testament. And the Christ who was made flesh that dwelt among us is the Christ who walked through all the pages of the Old Testament. Was it law that forgave David when he had committed his great sin? No, it was grace. It was Old Testament. And was it grace that said, Babylon has fallen, the great harlot has fallen, Babylon has fallen? No, it was law.

So there is no contrast as we falsely assume. God never pits the Father against the Son. He never pits the Old Testament against the New. What He says here is, and the contrast is between all that Moses could do and all that Christ could do. The law was given by Moses. That was all that Moses could do, for Moses was not the channel through which God dispensed grace. Moses was the law-giver. And Moses did all Moses could do. For God did not choose Moses as the channel through which grace should flow to the world. He chose His only begotten Son. And so the contrast, the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ means only that all this could do would be to command righteousness, but Jesus Christ produces righteousness.

All that Moses could do would be to forbid us to sin. But Jesus Christ came to save us from sin. Not pit us against each other, but One doing what the other could not do, for Moses could not save, but Jesus could save. And the Holy Ghost in Romans says, the law that Moses gave was holy and just and good and must not be spoken against, but it could not save. But because Jesus Christ is the Eternal Son, the channel through which God dispenses grace to the world, grace came through Jesus Christ. And I ask you to notice, my brethren, that grace came through Jesus Christ before Mary wept in the manger. Grace came by Jesus Christ before He became flesh to dwell among us. For it was the grace of God in Christ that saved the human race from extinction when they sinned in the garden. It was the grace of God in Jesus Christ yet to be born that saved the eight persons when the flood covered the earth.

And it was the grace of God in Jesus Christ yet to be born, but existing in pre-incarnation glory that forgave David when he committed his sin, forgave Abraham when he lied, that enabled Abraham to pray God down to ten when He was threatening to destroy Sodom. He forgave Israel time and time again. It was the grace of God in Christ, yet before the Incarnation that made God say, I have risen early in the morning and stretched out My hand unto you. it made Him say, as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him. Jesus is the channel through which grace comes. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And He said, I am the Truth. It’s through Him that grace is released to the world, released through the wounded side, to sinners like you and me. And all the grace of God anywhere comes through Jesus Christ.

Then he says, no man hath seen God at any time. But the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father. He hath declared Him. I get quite amusement out of the problems of the translators, not being a translator or ever attempting it. I get a lot of, I don’t know whether it’s completely holy or not, but it’s fun. I enjoy the frustrations of the translators. God’s Word is just too big for them. They just can’t make it. When they come to this word here in the Greek, but the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him; in English in the King James, it’s declared. But in other versions, they, they skirt it, they go around it, they plunge through it. They use two or three words, and then they back down to one. And they do everything they can do to try to say what the Holy Ghost said. And then they give up. They can’t say. Our English just won’t say. We get to it and try to say it and we use a dozen synonyms.

And when we’ve used up our words, we still haven’t said all that God has said, when He said that nobody had ever looked at God. Nobody had ever seen God, but Jesus Christ when He came, showed us what He was like. And I guess that simple, primer language is as good as any. No man hath seen God at any time but the only begotten Son who was in the bosom of the Father. He hath shown us what He’s like. He has declared Him. He has set Him forth. He has revealed Him the translators say shifting their language to try to get at this wonderful miracle of meaning. The Man who walked in Galilee was God acting like God, with God limited deliberately, having crossed the mysterious, yawning gulf between God and not God, God and creature, taking upon Him the form of a man to become flesh to dwell among us.

No man hath seen God at any time, but it says, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father. I want you to notice it’s not who was in the bosom, who will be in the bosom, but is in the bosom. It’s in the present, perpetual tense, continuous tense I think the grammarians call it. It’s the language of continuous and even when He hung on the cross, He did not leave the bosom of the Father. You say, how then, Mr. Tozer? How could He cry, my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Was He frightened? Was He mistaken? Never, never. He was never mistaken about anything. Then what was it?

You say He never left the bosom of the Father. And He said, why hast Thou forsaken me? The answer is very plain. The answer is this, that even when Christ died on the unholy, fly-infested cross for mankind, He never divided the Godhead. You cannot, says the old theologians, divide the substance. Not all of the swords of Nero could ever cut down through the substance of the Godhead, to cut off the Father from the Son. But it was the Man who cried, why hath Thou forsaken me. It was Mary’s son who cried. It was the body which God gave Him. It was the Lamb about to die. It was the sacrifice that cried. It was the human Jesus. It was the Son of Man that cried. But the ancient and timeless Deity was never separated. And He was still in the bosom of the Father when He cried, into Thy hands I commend my spirit. For, Father, Son and the Holy Ghost are forever one, inseparable, indivisible and can never be anything else.

So, the Eternal Father never turned his back on the Eternal Word, for He was always in the bosom of the Father. But the Eternal Father turned His back on the Son, the Son of Man, the Sacrifice, the Lamb to be slain. And in the blind terror and pain of it all, the Sacrifice, the Lamb temporarily become sin for us, knew Himself forsaken. God dumped all that vast, bubbling, boiling, seething, dirty, slimy mess of human sin on the soul of His Son and then backed away. And in that moment of anguish, He cried, why have You forsaken me? But in the next breath, He could say, Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.

So, the Cross did not divide the Godhead. Nothing could ever do that. One forever, indivisible, the Substance undivided, the Persons unconfounded. Oh, the wonder of the ancient theology of the Christian church. How little we know of it in our day of likeminded shallowness, and how much we ought to know it. No man hath seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father. He hath shown Him fully.

Now, the mystery of atonement had to be performed. Why in the Old Testament, why in the Old Testament, did the priests go behind the veil, perform the ritual of atonement, and then come out from behind the veil. And priests specially prepared, rush to close that thick veil and hide the holy place. It was God saying in beautiful symbolism that there would be a day when another Priest with other blood should enter into a realm where the mind of man could never penetrate. And there in a mystery too deep and dark and wonderful for a man to understand, all alone with none to help him. Not David His lover, not Abraham his friend, not Paul, no one alone in the silence and the darkness should make atonement for sin. That’s what happened when God stepped back and allowed Him to die. But briefly and quickly, His heart was joined again to the love of God. And three days later, He was raised from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God the Father Almighty man from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

And now, the closing line, He has declared Him. What is it He declared about God? There are profundities that He could never declare. There are depths that He could never declare. But there are some things He could declare and did and does. He declared God’s holy being, and above all, for us for poor sinners, He declared His love and His mercy. So He set Him forth and Jesus Christ tells us in His tender, human being that God has a care for us.

I remember hearing years ago of some boys, at that time I didn’t understand it as I might understand it now. Four or five sons had been reared in a home. And the old folks were wordless. They didn’t say much. They didn’t show much affection. Nobody did. And the boys didn’t after they were babies. They quit kissing their parents and quit using words of affection and grew to be strong men and married and separated and got away. They seldom came home and seldom wrote. And then mother’s time had about come they thought, and they sent for the boys. And they said, if you want to see her, come. They came, all of them, big fine fellows now, each with his own home and his own business and job. And they stood around her bed and one of them said, Mother, we want you to know that you meant a lot to us boys. We haven’t been unappreciative. We’ve loved you, and we thank you. Then they separated. And when they were gone from her, she turned and said to someone by her side, oh, if they’d only told me before. These years, I wondered if I’d meant anything to them. These years, I thought I’d failed them, but now they tell me, we’re so thankful. If they’d only told me.

You know, it’s possible to feel a lot you don’t tell. It’s possible to have fine intentions you never make known. And how easy it might have been for God to have loved us and never told us. To have been merciful toward us and never revealed it. But the Scripture says, nobody ever saw God but the only begotten Son. Some translations say the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father. He has told us. He came to tell us what the silence never told us. He came to tell us what not even Moses could tell us. He came to tell us, God cares and God loves and God has a plan. And God is carrying out that plan. Before it’s all finished, there’ll be a multitude that no man can number redeemed out of every tongue and tribe and nation. That’s what He told us. He set Him forth. He revealed God’s being, God’s love, God’s grace, mercy, good intention, redemptive intention, saving intention. He set it forth. He bought. He gave it to us. Here it is. It’s ours. Now, we have only to turn and believe and accept and take and follow. It’s all ours.

Well, I think that’s what I want to say tonight. May God bless us. Our wings aren’t very broad, but by flapping them real fast we can at least get off the ground. Thank God for the Truth, for the Word, for the Eternal Son. For the One we present to you as Lord and Savior, is He your Lord and Savior tonight?

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During the week of December 4, we are going to present three messages related to the Incarnation. The first of which is “The Personal Application of Christ’s Coming into the World,” A complete transcript as well as the original message audio is at https://tozertalks.com/tozer-talks-21/

“All Life’s Problems are Basically Theological”

All Life’s Problems are Basically Theological

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 21, 1959

I have this morning, three texts in the book of Ephesians. Paul’s letter to the Ephesian Christians the fourth chapter, verses 21 to 24. If so be that you have heard Him, his Christ, and have been taught by Him as the truth is in Jesus, that you put off concerning the former conversation, conduct, the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. And Paul again, in Colossians, the third chapter, verses 9 and 10. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.

Then in the book of Hebrews, which I think also that Paul wrote that we’re not certain. It doesn’t matter. The words of the writer to the Hebrews 12:9 and following. Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily, for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, or as it seemed good to them. They didn’t enjoy it, but they felt they had it to do. They verily, for a few days chastened us as seemed right to them. But God for our profit chastens us that we might be partakers of His holiness.

And the longer I live, the more I’m convinced that all the problems of life are at the bottom, theological problems. That there aren’t any other kind, really. That all problems that psychology is trying to settle are at bottom, theological, really. And all the problems that industry, labor is trying to settle, could be settled if they were recognized as also being theological problems. Political problems and all social problems are at bottom, theological. I mean by that, this, that if you forget that God is and think of man just as being here, somehow, without any thought of his origin, then you have at least a dozen major problems on your hands. And the attempt to solve one upsets another. If you try to solve a social problem, you get yourself into a political problem and political problem upsets a labor problem, and labor problem creates an industrial problem.

And so we go mixing ourselves up because we’re thinking of ourselves apart from our origin. If we realize that God made us and made us in His image, and that our first responsibility is to Him. Then, if we went on through the truth revealed to us and settled that responsibility or met it, we’d settle our theological problems and automatically, the other problems would fall into place. It wouldn’t mean there wouldn’t be something to do, but it would mean that we had hold of the heart of it and that we could solve it without disrupting something else.

Out in nature it is the same. Down where we live in the poor section of Beverly Hills, we used to have birds. I remember even as much as last year, no longer ago than last year and the year before, we’d wake up in the morning or they would wake us up, but I never again have complained about being wakened up by birds, birds of all kinds singing. You never heard a choir sing as they sang. Now, we have two or three kinds. I heard a cuckoo this morning, and the ever-present jay, of course, and the robins. And of course, you can’t kill an English sparrow. But those are about the four that are left. What happened to the rest? What happened to the rest is this, that the elm blight came through the country, and the proper authorities decided to try to stay the elm blight and I am for them because I think that if we lost the elm tree from this section of the country, we would lose one of the most beautiful and ornamental trees that’s possible to imagine. So they sprayed the elm trees to get rid of the elm blight. Little worms ate the elm leaf or other things that were touched by this poison. It didn’t bother the worm, but the birds ate the worms and died. And they died by the hundreds of thousands.

Now, I use that as an illustration only. I don’t know who’s right nor who’s wrong. It’s very difficult because one thing upsets another and you get one thing straightened out and another one is on your hands. So it is in politics and society and in industry and everywhere. The attempt to settle one thing unsettles another, because we do not realize that God is and that God made us and that originally He made us in His image. Now that’s one of the great pillars of our faith, that God made us in His image.

A second great pillar of our faith, I’d scarcely call it a pillar of our faith, but it’s a fact necessary to the understanding of all other truths, that man fell. And that man who originally came from God’s hand, in God’s likeness, fell and lost that likeness, or at least had that likeness marred as a vandal might cut and smear and marr a great masterpiece in an art gallery. The artist, or the one who knows about such things might be able yet to find traces of the artistry of the master in that picture, but it’s yet ruined and nobody would buy it. So, it is with mankind. In mankind, there are traces of the image of God. Every mother that holds a baby to her in her arms and smiles down with love, is showing that there is yet remaining, there are yet remaining some traces of the image of God. But it’s a marred image. The vandal we call sin has slashed it and smeared it and ruined it.

Now, the third great truth that we must remember is that God sent His Son Jesus Christ to the world in order that He might undo the works of the devil and sin, and that He might bring back again the image of God to man. That’s what my text said first, that God meant to restore us again unto His image. God isn’t satisfied. If we could imagine a Rembrandt coming back from where we hope he is with God, and seeing where some vandal had used acid or some other thing to destroy one of his masterpieces, or had painted it over. And that artist, out of love and pride, should want to restore that picture until it was shining once more in all its early glory.

So, the great God who looks upon mankind and sees bits of His image there and knows it’s His handiwork, knows indeed that it’s His masterpiece. He sees also the filth and the slashing and the efforts of sin to destroy that masterpiece. And God, out of His own pride and for His own glory, sets out to restore that masterpiece again to His own image. And He does it through Jesus Christ our Lord. For the texts say that plainly here. We have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created Him. And if so be ye have heard and taught to put off concerning the form of conduct of the old man and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that you put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. This is the purpose of God.

And then in the Hebrew text it says that to do this, to restore this picture back to the image of God again, to make men like God, He has methods. And the first and primary one is of course, is redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ the Lord. But then granted that men are redeemed, Christians are His children. Then He works on those children as the eager, indignant Artist, loving Artist, loving because it’s His handiwork, indignant because it’s been marred, proud with His own reputation depending upon it, He goes to work to restore that masterpiece. So God goes to work to restore the masterpiece again. And the Spirit says that even as earthly fathers, in order that they might bring their children into some semblance of civilized decency and bring them up as they should, they chasten them. But God chastens us for His own profit that we might be partakers of His holiness. God is of course primarily holy, and the restoration of the soul to God is the restoration of that soul in holiness.

Now, I want to point out, if I were an old 17th century preacher, I’d probably have my point something like this: wherein we cannot be like God, wherein we can be like God, and the method by which God makes us like Himself. That sounds like least an hour and a half, but it will be shorter. Wherein we cannot be like God. I point out to you that though men are made in the image of God originally, and it is the purpose of God to restore us to that image, there are attributes which God cannot impart to a creature. Let me name some of them, self-existence for instance. No creature can say, I AM, and have a complete sentence. But God said, I AM, and put a period there. God is self-existent and self-sufficient. Only God can say I am, and make it stick forever without modifying it. God cannot give to His creatures self-existence or self-sufficiency, because His creatures depend every moment upon Him and He depends upon nothing and no one because He is God. Again, God cannot impart eternity to His children. There was a time when we were not and God’s spake and we came into existence. We can live forever, exist through all eternity, but we can’t turn the clock back and go back and start the beginning of eternity which has no beginning. Only God is eternal. And He gives eternal life, but eternal life that is, what would we say, unilateral, running one direction, only out into the eternal future, not into the eternal past. There was a time when man was not, but the eternal God was.

And God made man in His image and then man was. So man had a birthdate. Man had a time when he was created. God could mark it on a calendar of the eternal centuries and say, here is where man began. So, God can’t impart His eternity to us. He cannot impart His infinitude. Infinitude of course being limitlessness, boundlessness. We all have limits by virtue of the fact we’re creatures. The archangels around the throne have limits. The seraphim that burn beside the sea of fire have limits. The greatest geniuses that have ever graced our world in any field of human endeavor have all had limits. Any student of Shakespeare will run into passages that Shakespeare never should have written. And every critic, every man who studies a little will smile and shrug and say, well, that was Shakespeare at his worst. He had he limits.

I remember once being at a recital where they were singing the Messiah, and the song director we had here years ago, Mr. Marston Pierson, many of you remember, was with me. We had the score in front of us and were watching and looking on while the Apollo Club sang Messiah. And before we started, we were chatting and I said, Marston, I’d have one criticism of the Messiah. He said, What’s that? He smiled down with a big expansive smile of his and I said, it’s too long. Well, he said, I’ll tell you, Mr. Tozer, that would be a question of your judgment against Handel’s, and I’ll go along with Handel. And I smiled and admitted that he had a point. But after they began to sing, then I noticed that every once in a while they skipped a chorus. And they would skip another chorus. Then they would skip five or six pages. Then they would skip a solo. And they’d skip another chorus. And along toward the end I said, how’s this they’re skipping so much. Oh, he said, nobody ever does all of the Messiah. I felt better. I still think it’s too long. Even Handel had his imperfection.

And the finest composers that ever lived couldn’t escape themselves. I don’t promise always and I don’t want to be put to the test, but I think if you’ll put on a record, and if it’s Mozart, I’ll know it. He couldn’t escape himself. He had a happy, joyous disposition that wouldn’t go two bars until it started shouting, delighted to be alive, and it’s there and you can’t help it. Every man has his limitations. The angels of God have their limitations, but God has no limitations because God embraces in Himself in one effortless embrace all that there is. God can’t impart that to you. You’re limited. He is infinite. Again, God can’t impart His omnipotence. And he can’t impart His omniscience. You can know a great deal and you can know increasingly, but you never can know all. The only person that knows everything is a freshman in college. But as he goes on, he knows less and less until he gets his degree. And by the time he gets his PhD, he knows still less.

A man who just had his PhD degree, gotten it, wrestled it out of New York University, I was talking with him. And he said, you know what they did to me? And I said no, Harold, what did they do? He said, they examined me on things I hadn’t studied. And he said, when they had reduced me to blubbering incompetence where I didn’t know anything, they gave me the degree. They said that’s the way they did it. They gave a degree of Doctor of Philosophy to a man not because of what he knew, but because of what he knew he didn’t know. And I’ve said to many colleges where I’ve spoken, that if I was grading students, I would never grade them on what they know. I would grade them on what they knew they didn’t know. That would be far and away better because, if you’re graded on what you know, you never can pick up anything but a little sand by the seashore. But if you’re conscious of how much there is that you don’t know and that you’ll never know, you’ll have at least humility on your side. But if you’re graded by how much you know, you’re likely to have pride, and a pride that has no foundation. So you see, there are attributes of God that He cannot impart to us. What is it then that God would impart? In what does He mean when he says made in His image, restored to His image through redemption?

Well, there are attributes of character. These that I have named before, are attributes of being, and as attributes of being they belong to the uncreated God. But there are attributes of character that God can impart to His creature. What are they? Let me name seven of them briefly. First of them is love. Love is an attribute of character, not of being. An act of good will toward all creatures, not necessarily an emotional binge. We’ve degraded love in our day until we don’t know what it is. And the God who made Adam to love Eve, wouldn’t recognize this whimpering, psychotic stuff now that we call love. Love is active goodwill toward all creatures, the love that rejoices in the good of all. And God is love and supremely God has this quality of character and He would impart it to all of His children. That we also, I have no malice, no grudges, no hard feelings, no ill will, no evil wishes, but only a high goodwill toward all mankind with the wish and hope that everyone might prosper, forgive everyone and love everyone.

Then there’s righteousness. Righteousness is not an attribute of being but an attribute of character. And all the acts of God are in harmony with righteousness, and He would restore His people to righteousness. I have no confidence whatsoever as I said yesterday on the radio. I have no confidence whatsoever in any kind of Christianity that doesn’t make a man good. I know that a lot of us have a fear that we might emulate the Catholics and preach salvation by merit. We’ve gone so far the other way that the New Testament doesn’t recognize it. There’s a horrible incongruity in the universe. God redeems us unto righteousness. And the first way you should be able to tell a Christian is by the fact that he’s a good man.

Then there’s mercy. Mercy is an attribute of character, love operating toward all sinful creatures. Quality of mercy is not strange, it then falleth like the gentle rain from heaven upon the place below. And mercy of course we can all show. And there’s patience, long-suffering it’s called elsewhere in the Scriptures, long-suffering. I want to break down here and admit that all the years I’ve served Christ, this is my toughest one. I don’t know Brother whether you have any tough ones or not. But this is my toughest one. To be patient and to wait and to be long-suffering with people who ought to know better. That’s the hardest thing for me, and that’s temperamental. That isn’t because I’m good necessarily, that’s temperamental. I got that and I know where I got it. I can show you pictures of the man that passed that on to me. It was my English father.

But God is patient and long-suffering, and He waits and He waits and He waits. Think how long God waits? The ability to wait and keep sweet is a god-like virtue. And God would pass that on to us, but He can’t give that to us as you would give a man a dollar or ten dollars. That has to be wrought into the man, beaten into him as a woman beats flavoring into a cake batter, beaten in until it’s all thoroughly mixed, patience, long-suffering. And there’s gentleness, mercy operating toward the weak and the vulnerable. And there’s faithfulness, integrity toward every moral obligation, toward God, toward each other. And there is purity, holiness above all qualities. This is probably the one that takes the others all in, holiness of character, unmixed perfection. Now, all this is summed up in the phrase, of His holiness.

Redemption, I repeat, undertakes to restore the character of God to the character of a man. It undertakes through Jesus Christ, beginning with the new birth, to go on to perfect that man and make that man God-like in his character. I’m glad God is patient. If He were not patient, He would take His hand and wipe the church from the face of the earth, for we’re certainly a long way from being God-life. But, it’s the purpose of God in redemption to restore us unto His image. This is the ultimate purpose of God, conformed to the image of His Son it says in Romans 8:29. And the possession of this image is the bliss of heaven and the absence of this image is the grief of hell. And it’s imperfect possession in the church is the cause of all of our troubles. It produces discontent and unhappiness. It’s the cause of spiritual weakness. It’s the source of coldness. It’s the cause of quarrels and divisions among Christians.

So, the way of God in bringing to us His own image again, you can’t do it in an easy way. This is the time when everybody wants everything done in an easy way. They say now, no more mussy ice cubes. I can remember when ice cubes weren’t known. You had to saw your ice out of the nearby pond and put it in sawdust and keep it over winter. And we got refrigeration, and women thought they were in Utopia. Now, they’re calling it mussy. And they’re figuring on something else. I don’t know or remember what. I never listen to closely to the commercials. But I remember hearing that. The thing that ten years ago was the latest invention. Now it’s considered old-fashioned and you scorn it for something new. We want everything so that we put a nickel in the slot, pull the lever down and take it and go.

Religion has degenerated into that too. No, no, my friend. God doesn’t make things like that. God doesn’t put a few grains of dust on His hand and blow and there’s a flock of chickens. God has a hen lay an egg and then sit on that egg 21 days and then watch over what she’s hatched out for another month and a half. God doesn’t speak and the tree grows, but He lets a seedling get in there and swell with moisture until it suddenly burst. Then up comes the sprout. Winter follows Fall and Fall follows Summer and Summer follows Spring year in and year out until two or three generations of human beings have come and gone and then there stands a tall noble tree there. God works slowly and sometimes He works painfully.

And the more wonderful the object God is trying to bring into being, the more painful it’s likely to be, and the more trouble it’s likely to cause. Why doesn’t God whisper and have a baby born? Because He’s got something wonderful in mind. So, He takes it the slow, inconvenient, painful way. And after inconvenience and discomfort and trouble, comes what Jesus called the sorrows of a woman, then the baby. But is it all over? No, she spends the next fifteen years keeping him from committing suicide accidentally. Trouble, trouble, trouble all the time, because she’s rearing a man. She’s bringing up a man, a man-child, said Jesus, is born into the world.

And the more wonderful the creature is, the longer it takes God to bring it to maturity. So, it is with a Christian. He works on us and works in us and chastises us and corrects us and humbles us and encourages us and humbles us again. He chastises us once more and humbles us again and encourages us some more until we become a partaker of His Holiness. This is so vital, so vital, so critically important that He should restore the image of His Son again in us and we should be made back into the image of God from which we fell.

So vitally important it is that it should engage our painstaking attention, Bible searching, prayer, self-examination, cooperation with God, humbling of ourselves, self-sacrifice, meditation, every means of grace, the church, the sermon, the song. Every means of grace that God has placed before us we should use, that we might work with God and having His holy image restored again in our souls.

For remember, the imperfect image of God in the Christian soul is the cause of all of his troubles. And no image of God in the soul, is the terror of hell. And the image of God perfectly restored is the bliss of heaven. May God grant that we would be wise enough to work with Him in His slow and sometimes painful, but wondrous plan to restore again in the souls of His people, His own image that we might be like Him and someday might gaze without embarrassment on His holy face. Amen.

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“The Knowledge of God I”

The Knowledge of God I

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 24, 1956

This will be the first this morning of a series of four messages on the knowledge of God or religious knowledge. I want to talk about the knowledge of God and the three degrees of knowledge which it is possible for us to have. And I will talk generally this morning about this and give an illustration which I want you to keep in mind for the rest of the four sermons, or three sermons that follow. And then I will talk about the three degrees, the knowledge furnished by reason, the knowledge furnished by faith and the knowledge furnished by the Holy Spirit. Those will be the next three after today.

I want to read a number of Scriptures. John 17:3, you know what that is, this is eternal life, that they might know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. Philippians 3:10, Paul said that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering and be made conformable unto His death. We will simply take the line, that I might know Him. And life is that you might know God, and that I might know Christ.

Then there are some other texts which I want to read. One is in Romans 1:19, 20, Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Then in Hebrews 11, this passage, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it, the elders obtained a good report. Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made by things which do appear. Now, it’s through faith we understand this. And then 1 Corinthians 2:12,13. Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

Now, we read in the John quotation, that eternal life is not a thing. Eternal life is a knowledge. This is eternal life that they might know Thee, the only true God. And I hardly need to say to you that when the man of God wrote this word “know” in here, he didn’t mean that we should gain the meaning from it, of merely intellectual cognizance. As when I say, I know Hamlet, I read it. I know Mr. Jones; I have been introduced to him. I know the multiplication tables, something that we receive into our minds. John didn’t mean that when he said that this is eternal life. Of course, it was Jesus Himself that said it, as if there were any distinction between the words of our Lord and the words of an inspired apostle. But to be accurate, Jesus said in His prayer to His Father, this is eternal life, that they might know Thee. That knowledge is a deep inner thing. And we want to talk about that over these days ahead, these Sundays before us, that deep inner thing, not the grasp of the mind, not the intellectual cognizance, but something profounder than that. But that is here, that this is eternal life, to know God and know Jesus Christ.

Then Paul’s sentence in Philippians, the third, where he sums up his life motto, that I might know Him. Now this is, I think it might be said, I don’t like to speak for another man who can’t be here to defend himself, but I think I would be safe in saying that those words, that I might know Him, those five words, probably more than any other words, sum up that which made Paul run. That was the motivating power in the life of the man. What an ignoble and base conception of Christianity, to believe that Paul’s interest in Jesus Christ was to escape hell. What a tragic and terrible breakdown in our spiritual thinking that we should imagine that Paul’s interest in Jesus Christ was that he might sit in the New Jerusalem or that he might pick flowers on the hillsides of glory, as somebody inelegantly called it.

Now, the knowledge of Jesus Christ does deliver us from the results of our own sins, and it does make heaven our future home. But these are byproducts of Christianity and not the center and the core of it. The core of the Christian faith is that I might know God. This is eternal life that I might know God. And this is the destiny and destination, the full future for my life, that I might know Him better. And so the perpetually increasing and everlastingly growing knowledge of God will be our heaven.

Some people might wonder why I don’t preach more on heaven. I don’t preach very much on heaven. There are several reasons. I don’t know very much about heaven as a location. I believe in it as a location, but there’s not very much said about it. But there may be other reasons that I don’t know of unhidden to me why I don’t preach more on heaven. But I believe that heaven will take care of itself, if our relation to God is right. And if our relation to Christ is right, we will need to worry about the matter of heaven or hell. And incidentally, I don’t preach very much on hell either. Fortunately, there isn’t much known about hell. Only we know it’s there, and we know it’s the end of a Christless life and the bottom of a Christless grave. And we know heaven is there and is to be entered someday. I wouldn’t say the end of the Christian life, but it’s to be at least within the framework it’s received. It’s there. It belongs to us, heaven is ours.

But the main business for you and me in God and in religion now, is not to know all we can about heaven, though you may do that. That’s good too, or know all we can about hell. But our main occupation in which we should be constantly engrossed as well as engaged, is that we might know God and His Son Jesus Christ. That we might know God the Father and Jesus Christ to the point of having eternal life, before we even join any church or claim that we’re Christians at all, or take upon ourselves the name of Jesus, or call God our Father. And then, not stopping there where a great many Christians do, but going on to make a career out of knowing Jesus Christ better.

Now, this knowledge that I have been talking about, the knowledge of God and divine things, have three degrees. And there are three degrees distinguished. There is the knowledge furnished by reason in the Roman’s text, the knowledge furnished by faith in the Hebrew’s text, and the knowledge furnished by the Spirit in the Corinthian text. Now, these correspond to a very beautiful illustration, or a very beautiful order in the Old Testament. It is an illustration maybe, rather than a type. You will notice that I don’t talk very much about types. I broke a set of teeth on types when I was a young fellow. And I’ve reacted a bit from types. I believe there are some types in the Bible all right. I don’t doubt that at all. I believe that there are certain historic facts, while they are historic facts, nevertheless, have been so placed there, that they mean something else beside what they mean.

Could I illustrate an illustration, if you will forgive me by saying this, that a diamond in a wedding ring, or a wedding ring on the finger is a fact. It is a reality. It’s an entity in itself. It is not an imaginative thing nor a poetic thing, it is a reality. You can take it off and hold it and weigh it and measure it and evaluate it and lose it and find it, and it is a reality. It’s a testable reality. But to the woman that wears it, it’s something more than that. To the woman that wears it, it has a secondary meaning that someone not familiar with the circumstances would not realize at all. It speaks of something beyond itself.

Now, in the Old Testament, there are some historic happenings which speak of something beyond themselves. That does not mean as some of our Neo-orthodox brethren would have us believe that that never happened historically, but that it is a beautiful figure, a story told to illustrate. Now, that did happen, everything in the Bible did happen. It is an historic entity. It is a hard thing that you can check and say, now this happened within a given day or year, under the sun, a certain hour of the day, in a certain historic and national and ethnic setting, this is reality. But by the good grace of God and through the mystery of the Holy Ghost, it may mean something more than that. It may, as the ring does, have another meaning lying beyond it and above it, which the wise will understand, and that doesn’t cancel out the historicity of the happening. It did happen, but it’s in the will of God it happened that we might see beyond it.

Israel coming out of being in bondage in Egypt for 400 years. Now that was a historic fact. But it’s set forth to the church ever since Calvary, it has set forth the fact that man in his bondage is in Egypt, and he’s a sinner in Egypt. And when he was delivered by the blood of the Passover, that was a historic fact. But the church of Christ has seen down the centuries that that was more than a historic fact. That was a historic fact with a high symbolic and spiritual meaning. So that to this day, we celebrate the Lord’s Supper and it dates back to the Passover and the shedding of the blood and the dying lamb and the sprinkled blood and the deliverance and the distraught people being delivered at night.

Now that’s what I mean when I say an illustration that couldn’t be a type. I don’t believe everything is a type by a long way. And I don’t read the Bible with types in mind. But when something sets forth as beautifully and as clearly a truth as this I now shall mention, why, I am not going to be like the man of whom it was said, so much he scorned the throng, that if the crowd by chance went right, he purposely went wrong. I don’t want to do it that way.

So, let’s look for a little at the Old Testament tabernacle, the Levitical order. In Hebrews 9 & 10 it tells us, that these things were a pattern of the things in the heaven, and that they were a figure of the truth and a shadow of good things to come. God built, and caused to be built into the Old Testament tabernacle and Levitical system, God cause to be built into it, this secondary thing, this heavenly thing, this thing that is divine and eternal. And so affixed its so, that it would illustrate and reveal as by light shining in, a truth that is so heavenly, you couldn’t get hold of it if you didn’t have an earthly illustration.

Now let’s look at that tabernacle. For instance, you could imagine a building without any roof on it, but with sides, with walls, and that building, an enclosure rather than a building, is 150 feet long and 75 feet wide and open to the sky. And there is no door in this enclosure, anywhere around, until you come to the east, and face to East always. And on the east side, there was quite a wide opening, a door, or a gate, a portal. And across that gate, that portal, there was a vail. And then inside, inside of this enclosure, there were three things observable as soon as you went in. One was an altar and the other was a laver. And on that altar, the priests slew the lambs and the heifers. And in that laver, the priests washed themselves.

But now, within that enclosure, there was a smaller enclosure, a smaller building, called rightly, the tabernacle. The other was the outer court. And that tabernacle of course, was much smaller than this enclosure, and it was divided into two parts. And it was entered by a veil. There was a veil that allowed them to enter. The first enclosure you entered and you saw just two things, the laver and the altar, and you saw also this building. But it was shut out by a veil, and you entered through that veil, and then inside there you saw a table upon which was bread for the priests. And you saw seven candlesticks shining light there, because there was no light that could reach it from above. It was completely enclosed. And then of course, there was the table, the candlestick, and the altar of incense, meaning prayer of course. And then, there was another veil there that invited your attention. But nobody dare pass through that veil. That was the veil that shut off the priests from the Holy of Holies, where dwelt only God. And in there, there was only one piece of furniture. And that was the Ark of the Covenant, or the Holy Ark. And in that ark, there was the Law. And over that ark, there was a mercy seat. And above that mercy seat, there were the wings of the cherubim. Between the wings of the cherubim, there was a flaming fire which was the Shekinah.

Now descriptions are always a little bit boresome. And I know you were bored by that, but I think from here on, we’ll be all right. That these three divisions correspond to the three kinds of knowledge, we keep that in the back of our minds while we talk about those three kinds of knowledge for the days ahead. There was the first, the court of the priests, the outer court.  And they could worship there. and it was of God, all right, and God owned it. And God didn’t reject it. It was God’s doings. God put it there. And the sacrifice was made there. And the laver was there. But, it was the light of the sun by day and of the moon, by stars by night that lighted that enclosure. It was by the light of nature. And that corresponds to the first degree of divine knowledge, which is the knowledge that comes by reason.

Religion makes two mistakes. One of them, I think there are three mistakes maybe. One of them is, religion makes reason everything. The other is, that religion makes reason nothing. And the third is, that religion fails to understand what reason is. I think those are three mistakes. Fundamentalism tends to make reason nothing at all. It just isn’t anything. And all you have to do is to condemn a man to the seventh hell as to call him a brain, say, that man’s a brain. He’s a very intellectual man. And immediately the mark of Cain is on his noble, expansive brow, placed there by his brethren.

Brethren, that is a mistake, a great mistake. God Almighty made all the brains you have. And He is not apologizing for them. God isn’t going to any devil or any archangel and saying, I’m awfully sorry, I was busy with something else and I made a mistake. I put brains in a human head, and I’m awfully sorry. And if you’ll overlook this, I’ll try to be more careful. God never apologized to anybody for putting brains in a man’s head.

So that’s reason. Reason works on nature. Reason works through its senses, through the five senses, and through deductions drawn from the data of the five senses, so that we have this text, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Now, that’s pure reason. That’s the light of nature that comes down from above. There isn’t anything mysterious about that. It’s divine, but it’s not mysterious. You know certain things, and we do know certain things. There’s a Light that lighteth every man that comes into the world. And everybody knows something about God. And everybody knows something about divine things. Don’t think we don’t. We do. Everybody knows it. The heathen, the Danies in the Baliem Valley, know a little bit about God. They think they came up from the river and never were created. And at least they’ve gone that far. They know a little.

Everybody can know a little. We see the sun by day and the moon by night. We see the stars that twinkle in their far distance there. And we hear the roar of the wind, and we see the lightning strike the oak. And we see the mother kitten curl down and nestle up against her kittens. And we see the wonder and the beauty of nature all around about us. We know each other. And so we learn something. And we learn something of the God who made it all, as I learned something of Shakespeare from reading his play, or of Milton from reading Paradise Lost. I don’t see him but I learned something about him. Reason tells me something about the author when I see the book. Reason tells me something of the artist when I see the painting. So, when I look around on God’s world, I know something about God. That’s the light of nature. That’s reason. And you can know something about God through nature and through reason. Let’s not throw that out.

Back in earlier in more restful days, they talked about what they called natural theology, but you don’t hear anybody talking about natural theology anymore. Because if you do, they will think you’re a modernist. But I am not a modernist, nor am I a liberal. I am not now, neither have been a liberal. And I don’t have to hide behind any Fifth Amendment. I am frank to say that I am an evangelical, in that I believe all of the Bible, and I have only a friendly smile, and not too friendly a smile, for those who try to explain parts of it away. I know better. I know it’s all God’s word and it’s here. But I also know that God has given us His word and the things that are seen, the visible world tells us something about God’s eternal power and Godhead. We know at least one thing, that the God that made the world is a powerful God. We know that much.

And we know another thing about that God, He was free to make it. So, we know He is sovereign. And we know that it took a mighty wise mind to put this world of ours together. So, we know God has wisdom. We know God has knowledge. So, we can know quite a little bit about God by just looking around about you. Go on out. Come out our way and listen to the 17-year locusts. You will learn a little bit about God in a practical, salty, down to earth way, not in that dreamy, poetic way, that we hear about some times, but in a salty, down-to-earth way. You will know a good deal about God. Look up among the leaves and see the wonder of it all. On the one little branch, there’d be as many as 12 to 15 locusts.

And you say, I’m going to pick one off, and you pick him off and he’s not a locust at all. He just where the locust used to be. He’s been called out of It. And there, I don’t understand all that. Only I know that that didn’t happen like that brother. It just didn’t happen like that. There was a God who not only knows in a great broad, on a broad scale, but He knows all the details and He fixed it so every seven-year locust, 17-year locust will do exactly what he ought to do. And he fixed him so he didn’t even sing like the other locusts. You notice he’s got a different song if that is a song, whatever it is, he’s gotten different, it sounds different from the other locusts. God made him.

We talk about the integration and the difference of the races and we all ought to be one lovely brown crowd all mixed together in another generation or two. Have you ever stopped to think brothers and sisters that God made 125 species of warbler alone and put them on the North American continent. One hundred and twenty-five that can be identified, and not any two of them are alike. And they stay within their own bracket and breed within their own bracket and never fight and never fuss and never have racial difficulties. But they say, 125 different kinds of warbler, just warblers, to say nothing else of the other birds. And then they want me to believe that God wants the whole human race to be reduced to one brown human muddy looking and with no racial characteristics whatsoever. If he does, he went about it in a funny way. And it doesn’t seem to jive with everything else I can learn about God.

Well, now, that’s the outer court, the tabernacle, the knowledge by reason. You can draw your conclusions from reason. But you can’t get saved that way and you can’t get to heaven that way and you can’t get rid of your sins that way. You can’t know God that way to the point where you will be delivered and have eternal life, but you can still have a lot of knowledge about God. And the beautiful thing about it is, when you become a Christian and do come to know God indeed, you don’t have to murder this other part of your life. You can love it too.

We just sang a number here by Reginald Heber, The Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning. Well, Reginald Heber was a great soul, a bishop, a missionary to India and a great soul wrote, Holy, Holy, Holy and many other of the great songs. O Hosanna, Hosanna to the Living Lord, one of the most ecstatically spiritual songs ever written. And yet this man loved nature to a point where his hymns were all interwoven with the glories of nature. Take David, the man of God of whom Jesus said, God spake by the mouth of David, spake by the Holy Ghost. The mouths of David and the Holy Ghost were used interchangeably. The Holy Ghost speaking through the mouth of David. And yet you can read the Psalms of David and literally be lifted inside of you with the wonder and the glory of what David saw everywhere.

Well, now that’s, that’s one, that’s the outer tabernacle. And you leave that and you go through a veil and you come into the holy place. And there you have a candlestick and the bread and the altar of incense, but there’s no light from sun or stars. Reason comes in and kneels there. Reason says, thank you God, for there’s no roof on the outer court. And reason can look up and see the sun by day and the stars by night. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for what I see. Thank you for what I hear. Thank you for what my tongue can taste and my nose can smell and my fingers can feel. Thank Thee Heavenly Father for the outer court. Thank Thee for reason and thank Thee for deduction and logic and conclusions. Thank Thee Father for all that I’ve learned about Thee out in the outer court.

But reason kneels and worships inside because there’s no light of nature that can come there. There’s simply candlesticks and bread and an altar of incense, that is all. That is getting a little bit closer, because that is the knowledge furnished by faith. There, reason can’t check. Reason listens to the voice of God and looks at the symbolism there before him and believes. And so in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, we learn that we have to believe certain things and accept them by faith. So that faith is another manner of receiving information from God and knowing and having knowledge of divine and spiritual things. The knowledge of faith is a legitimate and proper way of finding out things. You’ll never be able to get at them with your reason. You will have to believe and that is equivalent to faith, to know Him, because by faith, we know. By faith we know.

And then there’s the third, there’s another veil. The priests enter every so often into that holy place. But nobody enters into the Holy of Holies, because it’s shut off from the holy place. There there’s only one piece of furniture, the Ark of the Covenant, the Mercy Seat, and the cherubim and the shekinah, the flame of fire from which God speaks. Once a year, the high priest goes in there. Some said he took a sensor with him and that’s why it is mentioned in Hebrews 9, he went in there with blood of atonement and with great reverence. No light shone from moon or stars for no light was needed. He carried no light of his own because no human reconstructed light, not even a candlestick was needed. But the light in that holy place, that Holy of Holies came from between the wings of the cherubim. There was the Shekinah, the Presence, the Presence shining out there and filling all the room with a soft, deep glow.

And the high priest looked down and crept forward in a rapture of delight and sprinkled the blood there and then backed away in deep reverence, and Israel had been atoned for another year. And Israel’s sins could be forgiven now for the high priest confessed there in that awful moment, the sins of Israel. And then, he backed out. And several priests came and helped for it was so heavy, it took seven priests they said, to shut that veil back up again. That beautiful veil so carefully woven by men who had to be filled with the Holy Ghost in order to know how to sew beautiful enough to make that veil. And for another year until the next day of atonement, nobody entered in there. There was God’s presence. There with gold, there was the shining light. There was the mercy seat. When Jesus our Lord died on a cross, that veil that took seven men to move, was ripped from the top to the bottom. And now the book of Hebrews says, we can enter ourselves where the high priest is. Every one of us can enter into that place. There is the knowledge that comes by spiritual experience.

There are three degrees of knowledge, my friends, there’s the knowledge that God gives us through nature, reason. There is the knowledge He gives us by faith. He tells us certain things, we accept them. That’s knowledge. But that’s not enough. To that knowledge, we enter on in a little further yet and that is into the very Presence where we can hardly speak, and we’re alone with God there, we’re touched and reverent and hushed with devotion. There is knowledge by spiritual experience.

Now what is the difference between the kind of teaching that I try to give and that many others also, some others try to give an ordinary orthodoxy, ordinary fundamentalism. Ordinary fundamentalism passes by reason and will hardly believe in it at all. It goes on into the holy place and accepts everything by faith, and that’s good. The first is not good. The second is, but never goes on into the Holy of Holies where they’re silent with breathless devotion. There we call the deeper life. Nothing, nothing of pride can enter there. Nothing human can enter there except the redeemed human spirit. And there, kneeling in awestruck devotion, the soul waits on God, and sees God and feels God and senses God, and knows with the knowledge that comes by the Spirit. The Holy Ghost reveals and we know nothing contrary to faith, nothing contrary to divine revelation, but only and not even anything beyond it, but only that we have in reality what otherwise we would only know to be true by faith.

Now the inner core is ours. The inner life is ours. That inner life bears the same relation to faith, as the spirit of a man bears to the man’s body. The man’s spirit fits his body, I suppose it does. It’s not contrary to it. Both are of God, but the body without the spirit is a corpse. So the knowledge that comes by faith, theology doctrine, without the Holy Ghost is a corpse too. And that’s what’s happened to us in the last years. We have rejected reason. We haven’t harmed ourselves too badly there I suppose.

But I like to go out sometimes and stand between the altar and the laver and know the Lamb dies from a sin on the altar, and on the laver, I can wash the sin away. I can stand between the altar and the laver and look up toward heaven and thank God for the stars that shine. But I don’t stop there. Emerson stopped there. He didn’t even go that far. Whittie I think stopped there too, and lots of others. Oliver Wendell Holmes stopped there. That’s the reason I don’t like his hymns. A lot of men stop in the outer court and they never went on. The Christian goes on and receives by faith everything that God has to say to Him. By faith he believes it. He can’t understand it. Reason is outside looking up at the stars, but faith is inside looking up for God. But he doesn’t stop there if he’s a real Christian. Paul said, that I might know Him I press off, I press on. Was he thinking about pressing on past the outer court, past the Holy Place, past the holy, into the Holy of Holies? Was he by any means, that I might know Him?

So, that increasing knowledge of God, that progressive knowledge of God, that is the career of the Christian. That he might know God and know divine things and heavenly things with increasing awareness, with increasing intensity of consciousness. With increasing breadth and depth and width and height, on and on, until he sees Him as He is.

Now for the next weeks. I’m going to talk about the knowledge of reason. How valid is it and how far can it take us. I am going to talk about the knowledge of faith. Where does it enter? And, I’m going to talk about what is the knowledge of experience. And if you miss the others, don’t miss the last one. The glory of the immediate knowledge of the Presence.

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“Getting Glory Out of Gray Days”

Getting Glory Out of Gray Days

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

January 8, 1956

Last Sunday, I began a message which I had preached more than 20 years ago to this church. And I would suppose only about a quarter or less than those who are present. It’s supposed to be a new year sermon on “The Glory in the Gray. But I found as I watched the clock and heard myself talk that I was only able to get halfway through it and said that I would conclude today, though of course, both sermons were units in themselves.

The text was, they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. And they shall walk and not faint. And I pointed out that these three methods of locomotion, mounting on wings, running, and walking, corresponded to three phases in our Christian life. And remember, this is not a sermon on how to become a Christian. This is assuming that you’re already a Christian. And if you’re not already a Christian, then what I say cannot possibly mean you.

When a lawyer calls a number of persons in to read a will to them, what he says only has significance for the persons who are included in the will. If four or five others should crash the gate and sit in and listen, it wouldn’t have any significance for them at all, because their names weren’t there. They weren’t included. So, the sinner will not apply to himself anything that I say nor try to make this a thin philosophy for unconverted men. This is for Christians only, that life presents three phases which I called, life’s highlights, mounting up, and life’s dark nights, running in terror and fear, and walking, life’s gray days. The days when there isn’t anything much going on, when you’re not afraid of anything and you’re not particularly elated about anything, but you’re doing what you know you should do and paying little attention to your feelings. Those are the gray days of life, the common humdrum of life.

Incidentally, when I preached this sermon twenty years ago, I remember there was present a missionary, an old missionary, Brother Andrews from India. And I used the word humdrum. And we had six sons in our home at that time, and the oldest one I imagine was around fifteen. And Brother Andrews came up and said, Brother Tozer, I understand what you mean by humdrum. He said, in your home, I imagine there’s a little of both, hum and drum. That just came to my mind as being at least something I remember from that previous sermon.

Now, I said that I wanted to talk about how we could beat this gray day phase of our lives, how we could get out of it what God has in it for us, how we could live our uneventful plain, pedestrian, simple life. There would be those high moments of flying with wings as eagles. And we thank God for them. And I’m afraid there will be also a few of those days that are dark or those nights that are dark, or days that are dark as night. I hope not many, but there may be some. But mostly, there will be gray days when the sun doesn’t shine and it doesn’t storm. it doesn’t stir you, frighten you, disturb you, nor thrill you. Then it’s hard to be good, and it’s hard to be spiritual, and it’s hard to keep up faith, and it’s hard to remember who you are and where you’re going and what your plans are, what God’s purposes for you are.

Now, for the remainder of the time, I want to give you some, some points as the preachers call it, about how you can get the glory from the gray, and manage to get out of that ugly, drab field, very great fruit and grain. How you can get out of the ugly mountain there, the plain drab mountain, real riches. So, I give you these nine points, and you can take them or try to remember them, or do what you will with.

The first is that every Christian must begin by, after he accepts Christ, and that’s taken for granted, that he must accept the universe. You know, that we live in a world we didn’t make and we’re not responsible for it. The only thing I’m responsible for, is what I’ve put here by my deeds, good or bad. But the universe is here and I didn’t make it. I didn’t make the weather nor I didn’t determine that it was to be cold in one place and warm in another. I can’t help it about floods and earthquakes and storms. I can’t help it because it gets too hot in some places and too cold in others and rarely anyplace just right. I can’t help it that we’re here on a moving conveyor belt traveling between the cradle and the grave. I didn’t ask God and He didn’t ask me.

So, here we are in the middle of the world. There are some things we don’t like in the world, and I think we are tempted sometimes to say that we could improve on it. The great thinker and writer who was an unbeliever, Voltaire, said often, or at least he left the impression that this wasn’t much of a world. And he wrote a whole book “Candide” in which he showed this wasn’t the best of all possible worlds. And somebody said to him, well, how would you improve it? Well, he said, I’d start by making good health catching. And of course, that was very funny and I suppose he got a guffaw from the crowd about it. I don’t know why sickness is catching and good health isn’t. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that a Christian, when he comes to the fountain and is washed, and to the throne and is accepted, he must begin by accepting God’s universe and not trying to edit God’s volume. Not trying to amend God’s constitution. Not trying to add any lean-tos on God’s palace, and not trying to fix up or change any of God’s blueprints. He must accept the universe in which he lives, and say, this is my Father’s world. And I am not going to irritate my own heart by kicking against the pricks, and wishing it was otherwise that it was. So, that’s one thing.

Now, Brother, that’s a philosophical approach, but I think also that it’s quite a spiritual one, that we must begin to be thankful, be thankful for God’s world. The Book of Psalms is one radiant, sunburst of thankfulness for God’s world. The old man of God who wrote the Psalms or the men of God, for David wrote most of them. There were a few others that added some Psalms. Moses, for instance, one and two Hezekiah, some perhaps, and Asap wrote a few. They were men of God and they were radiant with thankfulness. They were glad for the world in which they lived. They said God made the world and who am I to kick against the pricks? Who am I to reply to the potter and say, what makest Thou? Who am I to reply to the man and say, what begettest thou? I will accept this as the best world pro tem that I could live in. That this is it now with its stormy winds and its sleet and hail, and it’s earthquakes, and it’s accidents and death, and with its diseases and graveyards and prisons. I accept it.  I can’t help it.

There’s much that I don’t like. But apart from sin, I’m going to accept everything. And I’m going to thank God He made the world as he made it. And I’m going to believe, that in that day when it’s all over, I will look back and say, He has done all things well, and this is the best of all worlds possible. And that nobody could have thought any better way to do any thing. I believe that. I can’t prove that, but I believe that. This is God’s world and I accept it. And you will find there’s a lot of glory in it. And you will, if you trust God and believe and pray, you will find as you’re thankful for God’s world, that there will be a lot of glory come out of that world for you.

The second thing is, accept yourself. That is, you must not envy anybody, anything. Envy is a desire to be what somebody else is, or be somebody else, or have what somebody else has. That’s envy, generally. Now, let’s get rid of envy. Envy is a sin. And when God made you, he made someone different from everybody else in the world. Do you happen to think that there are 165 million people in the world and nobody else exactly like you? But you say, my son, why people say, you will never be dead as long as your son is alive. But you know, that’s idiomatic expression, don’t you? You know that that’s merely a way of talking. There are no two people alike, not even identical twins. So there’s nobody like you.

Now, I think it is an amazing and wonderful thought, that the great God Almighty is able to create new beings every day and continue to do it every day of every year, and every year of every decade and both decades and every score of years and all five score of years in every century, and keep on doing it for all the millennium and never make any two alike. So, I’m not going to wish that I was like somebody else. Now, you get that in your mind. You’re just what you and if God wanted you to be different, He would have made you different.

Now, of course I mean, when it comes to sin, that’s another matter. When it comes to sin, then I am not as I should be, and I must be different. And God has the remedy. It’s the Word and prayer and the blood and the fire of the Holy Ghost. But we’re not talking about sin now. We’re talking about who we are. You wish you were tall and blonde, and you’re little and dark. All right, thank God you’re a little, dark fellow. Or your little, or thin and tall and wish that you were short, where you wish you were heavy when you’re not, and you wish a dozen things. Stop wishing anything and thank God that you’re just exactly what you are. I think sometimes my friend McAfee wishes he was an Englishman. If you have a little English blood in you, he’d just run shaking your hand right away. He and I have a lot of fun about that. His wonderful love for the English.

Do you wish that you had the genius of a Beethoven or the brains of an Einstein? Do you wish you had the money of some great tycoon or the beauty of some great star? Stop that. Christians can’t afford to indulge in pensive wishing and dissatisfaction with themselves, murmuring about what they have in God or murmuring against what they have. No. Accept yourself, my friend. And be thankful for yourself. And that’s not egotism. That’s faith. Be thankful for yourself.

Well, I have little English blood in me, but I just have exactly the amount God wanted in me, no more, no less. There’s a lot of German blood and I don’t mind that at all. So, I’m just exactly what I think I wanted to be if I had had my own choice. Now, I believe in that. It’s possible that 10 million people in this country or 164,999,000, may be greater than I, but at the same time they’re not I. So, I’m not going to trade around with anybody. I wouldn’t change nor be anybody else than what I am. Now, I get a lot of glory out of living in a plain life in a plane drab world if I simply say, now this is God’s place for me, and I am just what God meant me to be apart from sin. I must be perfecting myself and cleansing myself always. But apart from sin, why, I haven’t a complaint to make in the wide world.

And then third, accept your times. And don’t bemoan your place or your times. This is the best time in the world if you know what to do it. These are wonderful times if you know how to handle them and how to approach them. We look back over the far points of yesterday, the far hilltops of yesterday and we say that must have been wonderful to live in a time of Finney. Or, it would have been a beautiful thing to live in the time of Augustine or of St. Francis. It would have been a wonderful thing to live when the Holy Ghost came at Pentecost, or when the church was starting her missionary work to the ends of the earth in those early days. Not one bit better than now. You would not have been any better a Christian then than you are now because times don’t make Christians. God makes Christians.

And some of the finest Christians have been brought into being at the times when they were the lowest. Look at St. Bernard for instance. St. Bernard was a Christian in an hour when the whole world was dark. And yet he was a great Christian. God makes Christians, not the times. If you can’t be a good Christian in 1956, you couldn’t be a good Christian in 35 A.D. If you can’t be a good Christian now, you couldn’t be a good Christian in the Millennium. So, the point isn’t what times I live in. The point is, do I live in faith? Do I live in Christ? Does the Holy Ghost live in me? And am I, an indwelt man. So, accept your times and stop bemoaning the good old days, some of you dear old people have that habit. You remember the good old days when you were young and everything looked wonderful to you.

I sometimes look back upon the little Alliance Church over in Akron, Ohio. And I am suspicious that I am overrating that church, because that was my first introduction to anything spiritual. That’s the first time that I ever knew spiritual singing and spiritual praying and the people knew God. That was the first time I’d ever come in contact with anything like that. And of course, I look back upon it now as being an oasis in the desert, a wonderful, little Millennium for me. But I have a suspicion now, that I know humanity better, that there was an awful lot of things wrong with that church that I in my young innocence didn’t know about. And you’ll find that there is a lot of things wrong back there in those good old days where you wish you were again. No, God will do anything for you now that he ever did for anybody, anytime, anywhere. Remember that. None of your father’s ever had anything you can’t have. God will fill you as full as He ever filled any man in the history of the world if you will meet His conditions. So, let’s not bemoan the times and grieve God by being sorry that we’re living in 1956. I’m not. I’m glad I’m living right now.

Well, accept your place in life. That’s point number four, if you please. Your place in life, God puts you in that particular place. You’re married to somebody or you’re not. Or you’re a certain age or you’re old, or you’re young, or you’re middle-aged, and you’re this kind of workman or that kind of professional man. And you wish you were something else. I think that humanity being what it is, there never was a man yet, whoever had a job or a profession or an occupation that somewhere he wasn’t tempted to wish that he was doing something else. Have you ever met a man that was absolutely convinced this was the only job for him? No. There never was a married woman yet, now don’t look at me, but there never was a married woman yet, that somewhere down the line, didn’t look pensively at the young single girl going on her way at the office and saying, boy, if I could quit at 4:30 and not have anything else to think about, I’d be a happy woman. But if you were the single girl going on your way to the office, she’d be looking in at you and saying, look at that lovely family there. Those pretty kids. I wish I had that. So, everybody wants what they don’t have.

I saw a cartoon one time that was supposed to represent humanity, or a picture that’s supposed to represent humanity. It showed an apple tree. And on the ground lying everywhere, obviously after a heavy wind, there lay great, juicy apples, almost piled on each other. And away at the top of the tree and off far to the left of the picture, hanging alone, was a little shriveled apple. And here stood a boy with a rock looking at that apple. And all around him were bushels of all luscious, juicy, sweet, succulent fruit. But that one lonely little shriveled apple was the one that boy wanted.  The artists that drew that had a sense of humor and a little knowledge of humanity, for that’s exactly the way we live. We want what we don’t have and what we have, were not inclined to want.

Now, that’s Adam’s way and a sinner’s way, but it oughtened to be a Christian’s way. A Christian ought to thank God for his place in life and stop complaining. And then again, remember this, that that place you’re in and all this that comes to you in these gray, plain days, that’s the lot of all saints. I’ve pointed out before here many times that it helps us when we’re undergoing hard times, if we remember that we’re not alone in it. Other people are undergoing hard times, too.

So, if you keep that in mind, it’s the lot of all the saints. But you say, I read the life of St. Augustine and I know that he had high times. Well, you will have high times too. But Augustine had a few of those high peaks, but he had more valleys than he did peaks and more level plateaus than he did mountain tops. So did Paul. We read about Paul’s shipwreck and Paul getting stoned at Lystra. We read about his being knocked down on the road to Damascus and being filled with the Spirit when Ananias came to Him. We read about his being thrown into prison and about his going out to die. We read about those things and we imagine that Paul’s life consisted in one unbroken sequence of thrillers. Oh, no.

Why, Paul had long days. For instance. and he dwelt two years in his own hired house. That’s all there is to that. There are two solid years telescoped into one sentence. What happened during those two years? No highlights, no dark nights, just gray days. Paul had to go on living, preach the gospel and go ahead and do the best he could. And take a few bumps and have a few victories and go right ahead now. And that’s exactly the way you should do. And it’s the lot of all the saints. Again, remember this, that the workshop of God is never very brightly-lighted. It’s usually dimly-lighted. It’s not dark, totally. And it is not bright. It’s rather gray. And in that workshop God hews and cuts and chisels and builds and refines. And you’re the one he’s working on. So when you look around and you’d like to do something dramatic.

Do you remember when you were saved just in your teens, how you wanted to do something dramatic? I always did. When I would hear the Star-Spangled Banner, I’d get goose pimples on my wrists. I wanted to go out and die for my country, but I wanted to come home and hear the people praise me for dying from a country. It was an odd situation that I created. But we’re like that, you know. We want to do the big, thrilling thing. But we don’t do it that way. We don’t marry the princess. We marry little Mary Smith down two blocks down there, plain looking little woman who manages to look pretty well with a little help. And they get along all right, thank God. That’s the way we live. And we don’t, we don’t always have the big thrills. Gods workshop is dimly-lighted and their God in the half shadows, in the gray, is working and working with His people, always working.

I’ve often quoted and we quote brother McAfee and I often quote to each other and in prayer, what Fenelon said about the coal mine, and the gold mine. He said deep in the bowels of the earth, God is working; deep in the heart of the man, God is working like a miner in the bowels of the earth. Digging and refining and working away there. Nobody knows it, but God and the man. The man’s likely to forget it, so keep it in mind, you’re in God’s workshop and God’s workshop is not always lighted with the finest lights. It’s a little dim there. But the great God knows what he’s doing. He seeth in the shadows and He’s working there.

And then keep in mind also that there are rich treasures. There are more treasures in the plateau then there are up on the mountain peak. More treasures for you in living straight along and walking by faith, then there is an mounting up with wings, although sometimes you will mount up with wings too.

Could I tell again an illustration which I gave some years ago, of an old gentleman who had several sons. He noticed that those boys of his, as I think most boys, even as you and I, wasn’t exactly what you’d call, wild about work. So, he came to die and he called his boys in and he said, boys that orchard down there, in that vineyard, I buried a treasure there. He said, it’s buried there and it’ll make you all rich. I’m got to go now, goodbye. And so, he pulled his feet into bed like Jacob and died. Soon as the funeral was over and they could get to it, why, they got their heads together and said, father said he had buried a treasure. There’s a treasure buried in the vineyard. Let’s dig it up. So, they digged up the vineyard. They didn’t find a thing. It took them about all summer. They didn’t find a thing. They went over every inch and didn’t find a thing. By that fall when it came grape-gathering time, they had so many grapes, the neighbors remarked about it. So they harvested the grapes. They said, well, we’ll harvest the grapes next spring, we’ll try it again.

So they harvested the grapes, and to everybody’s surprise, they had made more money that year than they ever thought possible. So the next spring they said, well, we’ll get going on digging for the treasure, so they dug a little deeper. And that year, they had more grapes than ever before. And they said, well, this is this wonderful. Let’s harvest these grapes. So they harvested the grapes and sold them and banked the money. And they did that for three or four years, and never found the treasure they’d been digging for. And then at last, they began to look at each other and said, I wonder if the old man wasn’t slipping something cross on us. Then they began to grin and said, now we know what it is. We know. The treasure that we were supposed to dig for was the cultivation of our vineyard, our orchard. And the digging around the roots and the constant digging and keeping the soil digged-up has given us so much fruit that we’re practically rich and if we keep this up a few years, we’ll be rich men. They stopped their effort to find gold and silver and went on digging around the roots of the tree and went on to be rich men.

So it is with our God. God has buried treasures, brothers and sisters, but they are not the treasures that are in bags or boxes. It’s another kind of treasure, so that when you go ahead now, quietly living your life for God this year, God will make you rich. Not the way you expected but the way God has in mind.

And I would say, point number eight is that God put you here, and that is by providence. Our fathers used the word we seldom use, it is the word providence. We don’t believe much in that now. But providence is the secret, silent working of God to an end, in which He plays us over the board, as a man plays chess pieces over a board to a predetermined end. And when we look back, we will see how He worked in our lives. Now that is what I mean by providence. And God is working providentially to bring things to pass for you. God put you here.

And last of all is that Christ is with you always. If you will remember that you won’t worry very much about the light nor the dark. And when the gray day comes, you will remember the Lord is with me all the time. Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world.

So now, remember this, you can fly, but you can’t fly always. You will be called upon to run in the dark sometimes, but not very often. Mostly you will walk by faith. And it is the walking by faith that pleases God the most. Anybody can be happy in the hour of great elevation of soul. Anybody can pray in the moment of great tragedy. But when neither one comes along and you’re forced every day to live just as if you’re anybody else. There’s nothing to thrill you and nothing to excite you, and just go right straight ahead with God in your mind and Christ before you walking by faith. That’s something else again, but that’s what you called to do. So walk by faith.

Here’s a stanza of a hymn. I don’t care much for the hymn I admit. But the man did get something into this last verse. It was James Russell Lowell’s hymn called, “Once to Every Man and Nation,” and this is the way he closed it. He says, though the cause of evil prosper, yet tis truth alone that strong. Thou her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong. Yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown, standeth God within the shadow keeping watch above his own.

So, during this year and during all the years we have yet before us, you will find that right will be on the scaffold and wrong will be on the throne. And yet it’s not the throne where wrong sits that will determine the future, but it’s the scaffold. For righteousness stands with a rope around her neck. She’ll sway the future. And in the shadows is God keeping watch above His own.

Now that’s my faith, ladies and gentleman, that I believe in. We walk by faith and not by sight. So, if God wants to during these days ahead, if God wants to take me in a high flight, I’ll be glad to go. I’ll be glad with Paul to go to that third heaven and come down and keep my mouth shut about what I saw. And if God in His tender mercy sees fit to let me plunge into a dark night where I can’t find my way through, I’ll try to be patient and walk with him until the light returns. But in the meantime, I don’t expect too much of either. I expect an awful lot of humdrum. An awful lot of just plain keeping on and serving God and keeping faithful when there’s nothing to be faithful apparently about, as far as your feelings are concerned.

So, I recommend that you learn that song, May Jesus Christ be Praised, and sing it every morning when you get out of bed while you’re groping blindly and more or less somnolently for the alarm clock and wishing you had five more hours to sleep. Why, began to sing, when morning gilds the skies, my heart awakening cries, may Jesus Christ be praised. And all through the day and night and darkness and light, praise Jesus Christ. You will find you will have the glory that you never dreamed was there. The rich gold of God’s sweet reward will be yours because you trusted and weren’t afraid and walked and believed and honored God when you couldn’t see nor feel. You honored God and God in return will honor you and lift and protect and bless and keep you through the years. Amen

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“The Believer’s Walk”

The Believer’s Walk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“Jesus Stood in the Midst of Them”

Jesus Stood in the Midst of Them

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

January 30, 1955

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“I Will Bless the Lord at all Times”

I Will Bless the Lord at All Times

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

March 25, 1956

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“The Things That Matter”

The Things That Matter

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

May 12, 1957

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“The Cruel, But Effectual Plow in Fallow Ground

The Cruel, But Effectual Plow in Fallow Ground

Pastor and author, A.W. Tozer

December 30, 1956

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pastor and author, Aiden Wilson Tozer

January 6, 1957

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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