There will be more here, and there will be more local people present I think tool. And I want to talk about why the children of God have failed to be filled with the Holy Spirit, the power the Spirit, and why we don’t have it. But tonight, I want to address the preachers mainly. And I want to take a text, four chapters from the book of Judges; four whole chapters, but I am not going to read them. I’m going to assume that you have recently. I did recently and had refreshed my mind on some truth I gave years ago about a man by the name of Samson.
Let me read just these verses. The thirteenth chapter of Judges, verses 24 and 25. And the woman bare a son and called his name Samson: and the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. And the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol.
There are parts of the Scriptures that I don’t understand, but the very sound of them, the reading of them, blesses me. This is one of them. The Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan. I would have traveled 90 miles to get to the camp of Dan, walking, if I had thought that there was a man there that the Spirit of the Lord was moving at times. Anyway, this man Samson, I just want to give a little survey of his life and apply it to us preachers.
You know, the beautiful thing about the Scriptures, one beautiful thing, they’re up to date. They are just as fresh and as new as the latest issue of any daily newspaper. You turn over these old, brown pages that have been printed many years ago, and the stories they tell go back hundreds of years. This particular one goes back, how far, 3000 years.
And yet, you see when you see the characters walking around. You see them on the streets of Chicago. You’ll meet them in conferences. You see them at Councils. You see them in Sunday schools. You meet them in churches. You meet these people, they’re here. The Spirit of the Lord picked out certain men and gave little vignettes, little thumbnail sketches of their lives, as much as to say, now, get acquainted with these men and you will know everybody else. Get acquainted with these and you’ll know yourself.
So, here is a man, and I just want to talk about him, giving a crayon sketch of the man, and see if you can find yourself here, or maybe somebody you know. Or, if you can’t find yourself here, you can find a warning here at least so you can escape the trap into which the man fell.
Now this man, Samson, had an origin. He wasn’t just an accident. He was born in answer to the prayers of godly parents. And I think of it, it is not an original thing to say that the children of godly parents have a running start on all other children. Children of godly parents may go astray. Samuel’s children did. Joshua’s children did. They may go astray, but they’re not as likely to. And the children of godly parents have opportunities to be right. And the likelihood that they will be right far surpasses that of any other children born into ungodly homes.
Now, God had a mighty task that he wanted done. And of course, he had to get a mighty man did do it. The man had to be as big as the task or just a little bit bigger than the task. If the task is 10, God doesn’t give him a man as much strength as would be 10 and say, here, 10 equals 10, and the job I want done is 10. And now, I’ll make the man just that strong. He gives him an over plus. If the power that’s needed is 10, God gives him 12. If it’s 20, God is likely to give him 25. You have got to have an over, a plus of power.
You remember that when David went to slay Goliath, he took five stones from the brook. And when he had killed Goliath, he still had four left. He could have killed four more giants if they’d have been around. Most of us merely hang on, saved by the bell. We merely have power enough to get us through the last meeting Sunday night, then we go panting off home. But the Word of God shows that God gives man more than he needs.
So, God had to have a man bigger than the job. And so to get him, He went back a generation. And usually, God does go back a generation if he wants a man to do a great job. And that generation, back to which God went, consisted of a good, wise, prayerful and practical mother, and a good, but dull and inferior father.
Now, the lesson we learn from biography, and you’ll learn it all the way along, really. You go into the Old Testament where men beget so and so, and so and so beget so and so, and died and slept with his fathers and all the rest. And his mother’s name was so and so. Well, you will find almost always, and I don’t know that almost needs to be there, that every great man had a great mother. I don’t know whether that is 100% true, but it’s so near to 100%, that for all practical purposes we may say, that when God wants a great man, he gets a great woman to have that great man and to bring him into the world. You will notice one thing, that no superior person was ever ashamed of his mother. Many a superior person has been ashamed of his father.
But nobody that has been great in the world has ever had a mother he needed to be ashamed of, because mothers you need to be ashamed of don’t have sons who would be ashamed of them. That’s a terrible thing. You see, you can’t decide who your parents will be. And you can’t decide what kind of parents you will have. But all you can decide is what kind of a son your parents will have. And that’s the part that you need to do. But nevertheless, it is true that the lessons of biography teach us science and history and experience, and the Bible agree to teach that the hope of the world lies with its women.
Now, I want to look a little bit at the greatness of this man and show you that he was a greater man than we imagined that he was. He was a great man, and he wasn’t a libertine. Some people put Samson down as a libertine; he was a wicked, vile, sex pervert. He was nothing of the sort. There has never been one time recorded anywhere in the Scriptures, that he did anything off color and that was one time when he went to Gaza and stayed all night when he should have been at home, but he did do that one wicked thing. But apart from that, there is nothing in the Scriptures that shows anything wrong with the man Samson.
Samson never took a wife when he had wife living. She died and then he took on another wife. But outside of the one break, we don’t read of anything wrong. He was not a libertine. And then the man judged Israel 20 years. And you can’t tell me that a common man could have done that. Israel was too difficult. Israel was an unbroken, wild colt of the desert. And nobody could possibly judge Israel 20 years and be an ordinary man. He had to be a big man. And the man had great faith in God, great faith in God.
And he finally gave all that he had in one last act of heroic devotion to Israel, and prayed, O God, avenge me of my two eyes and deliver Israel, and God delivered Israel. And God put him in the Hall of Fame, the 11th chapter of Hebrews. If you will read the 11th chapter of Hebrews, you’ll find Samson alongside of David and Jephthae and many another of the great. God didn’t bury ordinary people in His Hall of Fame. And he did put Samson there.
But Samson was not only great, but he was also a great failure. Look at some of the failures of the man. He failed to reach the expectation that his parents had for him. He failed to reach the expectation that God had for him. And he failed to realize the possibility of his own great nature. This is what bothers me, my friends. I see a young man today; I take a walk with Him. As a rule, I don’t run around with old men. I don’t know why. I go around with young fellows. When I hit a conference or a Council or anywhere, two or three young fellows will be with me. But you’ll never see an old man with me. They just don’t hang around me. I don’t know why exactly, but the young fellows do.
And I will see a young fellow today and five years later, I’ll see that young fellow. And I had hope for him. I saw a light in his eyes and a warmth in his smile, and I had expectation for him. And then later when I meet him, I find that he has settled down and gotten married and has two babies and an automobile and television set and a lawn and the lake where he goes to fish and a cabin. And he has made a compromise with the possibilities that lay in his great nature.
There is a man. I’m not going to tell you what part of the world he’s in, but he was a friend of mine many years ago. He’s about seven years younger than I. We were great friends. He was a great reader and we used to write letters and correspond a lot. I used to get encouraging letters from him and send them to him again; and we were great friends. I saw him come up and up and up and up. And I thought this is going to be an outstanding man. This will be one of our great preachers in this generation. Well, his wife died, and he married a blonde. Now, that was perfectly all right for him to marry again after his wife died. I’m sure that was all right. But he’s never amounted to anything since then. I don’t know why. Not because she was blonde. I don’t mean that. But he was just under her blessed little thumb. And he goes all around under her blessed little thumb. You can’t get anywhere but what she tags along. And the fellow, he just ran up against a snag. Now, she’s a good woman. She’s a pure woman. She’s a nice woman. She’s a useful woman, but she wasn’t any good for him.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s possible to fail to realize the possibilities that lie in your nature. Now we’re not all the same size. Don’t let’s imagine that. They tell us if you get filled with the Holy Ghost you’ll be like Spurgeon. Don’t you let anybody tell you that at all. God made one Spurgeon. And being filled with the Holy Ghost may mean that you will simply be a very godly bookkeeper, that’s all. It just may mean that you will be a wonderful, godly streetcar conductor like our good Brother Eckvol who has now gone to Florida.
It may just mean that you will be a godly person, but not known. You see, God gives to some people five acres, and He gives to some people 500 acres. And for me to tell a man who has five acres built into him, now, if you’ll get filled with the Holy Ghost, you’ll be as big as the man who has 500 acres is ridiculous. You can’t make a Packard or a Cadillac or a Rolls Royce out of a Volkswagen by by filling it with gasoline. And you can’t make a Spurgeon out of me by filling me with the Spirit.
So don’t let us all get all mixed up on this. We ought to be filled with the Spirit if we’re never heard of across the street. But this man Sampson had great possibilities. He was a vast man in many ways, but he never realized the possibilities that lay in his vast nature. He failed to live in character with his exalted birth. He was born in answer to prayer. His coming was announced by an angel that leapt on the flaming altar and vanished into fire. That was the way he was announced. But he didn’t come up to it. He failed. And he failed to finish his job, to finish his life’s work.
You know, Keats, in one of his wonderful little sonnets, talks about when I was going, I had fears that I may cease to be before my pen has gleaned my teaming brain. He had so much in him that he was afraid he would die before he could get it written. Well, he did. He died at 24. They say if he had lived to be 50, he would have been equal to Shakespeare or greater. But he died at 24. His fears came true. He never finished his life’s work. Samson never finished his. Samson was the unfinished symphony.
Compare him, if you will, with David, who served his generation by the will of God and then fell on sleep. And as I’ve said many times, nobody has any right to die until he has served his generation, nobody. And look at our Lord Who said, I finished the work which Thou hast given me to do; and Simeon that said, now Lord, let thy servant depart in peace, mine eyes have seen Thy salvation. And Paul who said, I am now ready to be offered. I have finished my course. I have fought the fight. I’ve kept the faith.
Those men finished their work before the whistle blew. But God blew the whistle on Samson long before it was time to quit. Samson never did his day’s work. And what I’m afraid of is that some listening to me right now, members of this conference, who had a good running start, brought up in a good home, prayed into the world, and then prayed up and then prayed into the Kingdom and then prayed off to school and prayed into the ministry. That like this man, Samson, you will fail to live up to the possibilities that lie in your own nature.
Well, now, this man failed, and I am going to talk a little bit about why he failed. And I’m going to assume that he wouldn’t need to have failed. There was no fate that said he should fail. He failed because his failure lay in himself. And I assume that if he had corrected himself, in time, he wouldn’t need to fail. Consider some character weaknesses that caused the failure of this man Samson, and then instead of snapping your suspenders and saying, that man Samson, he was a flop, say to God Almighty, O God, do I see in Samson my own picture.
The first thing about the man Samson that I noticed, was that he lacked maturity. He never became an adult. He was a juvenile all of his life. He was as big as a horse and as powerful as 10 horses or 20. But he never quite grew up. Do you remember his silly riddle? Here was a man anointed with the Holy Ghost, and yet he was so silly that he went among the Philistines saying, out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. You know, a riddle maker. And notice how he lied to Delilah. He lay his head on Delilah’s lap lying to her. She’d wake him up and say, the Philistines be upon thee and he’d shake it off. That’s in the 16th chapter.
Notice when he got mad at the Philistines at one time. He went out like a pouty, little boy and set fire to the foxes’ tails and turned them loose into the standing corn of the Philistines. Notice that. And notice how he had an unnatural attachment to his parents. He had a Oedipus complex before the term was invented, because when his wife insisted, tell me the secret Samson. Why, he said, I haven’t even told my mother. Should I tell you?
He didn’t remember that it says a man shall leave his parents and cleave unto his wife. He had forgotten that. And so he was a mama’s boy, a great big hulk. And he never quite grew up. And you know what makes the trouble in districts and in churches, it’s people that never grow up. You know, people that weigh 200; they’re overweight and all that. They’re big enough all right. If you judge them by the suit they wear, you would think they were mature. But judge them by the way they act and you know they’re not. This man wasn’t. He never was a mature man. I wonder if we can check ourselves against that. What kind of man am I anyhow?
Well, second, he lacked integration. He lacked integrated personality. He had great power, and he had great faith, and he had great loyalty to Israel. And he had a lot of great qualities, but they never hung together. The iron wouldn’t mix with the clay. He built with untempered mortar. And he never quite got, if you cut through Samson, you didn’t find him the same thing all the way through.
I like people that you can slice them four ways and find them all the same, all the way through. But I find so many of God’s people, that if you slice beneath the surface, you’ll find something else. If you scratch them even, you’ll find something else. They’re not what they seem to be. God’s people, we should be able to lay them out on the block and cut them four ways and find everything just as it seems to be.
Samson wasn’t like that. There was no integration there you see. He was a great man. But he wasn’t mixed right. He was lumpy. And His grace wasn’t sufficient to support his gifts. I have found men like that considered to be great leaders in the church, and they have big names, but if you get to know them, you’ll find that their gifts are far beyond their graces.
There was once a man named Holmes. He was a bishop in India, and he wrote a great book years ago that I got a hold of and got a lot of help from. And he taught this. I don’t know where he got his Scripture, but he taught this, and being a bishop, I suppose it’s partly true anyhow. He said, the grace of God operates two ways. It operates in a man, and it operates through a man. And he said, the grace of God can operate through a man to bless people and not operate in the man very much at all. Or it can operate in the man and not operate through the man very much.
Here’s an illustration of what I mean. Back in the hills of West Virginia where I preached when I was a boy, there had preceded me there, that is, he had come and left his mark and gone and I think had died. But it was fresh in everybody’s memory, and they were talking about him. His last name was Smith, and his first name was Syndicate, Syndicate Smith. I don’t know where mama got that name, but his name was Syndicate Smith.
Now, here’s what he used to do. He used to go into a town, put on a meeting, have an old-fashioned, knockdown and drag out revival meeting, get a lot of people converted, take an offering, and then go get drunk and stay drunk as long as the offering held out. Then when he needed some more money, he’d go to another town and repeat the process. And an old fella who had been converted in his meetings told me about it. I said, did anybody ever stick that got converted? He said, Brother Tozer, I’m one. He said, I went to his meeting prejudiced, determined that I would not have any part of that man. But he said when he gave the invitation something grabbed me and took me to the front, and I got down and repented and got converted and I’ve been walking with God ever since. He had converts, and those converts stuck.
Paul said, I thank God the gospel is preached no matter how it’s preached. Do you remember that? Now the grace of God didn’t work in Syndicate Smith. There was too much of a high alcohol content. It couldn’t work in him, but it worked through him. You say, you never heard before of God working through a man like that? Well, God worked through Samson, but he couldn’t work in Samson. He just worked through Him. And you will find lots of people. When you hear of men that have been used of God and yet you know something is wrong with him, remember that.
The grace of God works in a man or through a man. But it can work in a man and through the man, but it can work through the man without working in the man. And that’s why some people came to Jesus and said, Lord, Lord, did not we cast out devils in Thy name. Did not we in Thy name do many miracles? And He would say, I never knew you. Depart from me.
We preachers ought to spend a lot of time disillusioning our parishioners about how holy we are. We ought not to allow them to continue to have the mistaken impression that the average preacher is better than the average layman. It just isn’t so.
Father, we pray, that Thou wilt bless us through the Word. We thank Thee for this picture gallery which stood in front of this great big man, Samson. We love him and we pity him. What he might have been and what he was, are such sharp contradictions, and the warning to the centuries. O Lord, if we could never be as strong as he was, let us not be as weak as he was. If we never could be great, we pray Thee, help us that we might reverently cultivate the little plant that we do have. We ask it, in Christ’s name. Amen.
Everybody, The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; The LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: The world also is stablished, That it cannot be moved. Thy throne is established of old: Thou art from everlasting. He floods have lifted up, O LORD, the floods have lifted up their voice; The floods lift up their waves. The LORD on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, Yea, than the mighty waves of the sea. Thy testimonies are very sure: Holiness becometh thine house, O LORD, forever. Let us pray.
We would this morning, Father, join the psalmist and with 10,000 and thousands of thousands who worship Thee this morning, and with the spirits of just men made perfect, and with the General Assembly in the Church of the Firstborn, whose names are in heaven, we would unite and add our tiny little sound to the sound that’s like the sound of many waters, praising and worshipping, Thee, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who made us and who pitied us and Who sent Thy Son to redeem us, and who waits to receive us in the day when we shall have redemption completed in us and Thy work of glorification shall make us worthy to gaze upon Thy face.
Now our Father, we join to ask Thy mercy upon our world. We join to ask Thee, O God, to spare us, to spare the reckless, to spare the worldly and the careless, to spare those who today will not darken the door of any church, who have not thought one holy thought today, and will not, during the whole day. But who will indulge in everything the flesh can offer them and will have no thought of death or judgment or the world to come. We do not scold them, nor do we come before Thee and say we’re not as other men. We are just as other men, and we’re all like, O God. But Thou hast in great mercy found some of us and made us want to love Thee and made us want to be right and made us want to serve Thee in a world where the service costs us something.
Father, we pray that Thou wilt bless our country. Bless the land that Thou gavest to our fathers, who came from bondage beyond the sea to establish a church here that would be free. Father, we thank Thee for our land. We thank thee for our country and pray that Thou wilt bless it and bless those who are in authority in it.
We pray for the health of the people, the leaders of the church. We pray God for Bible schools and for seminaries and Christian colleges and missions and church schools and great churches and small churches, and celebrated pastors and evangelists and men who are obscure and little heard of, but who love Thee as sincerely and as truly as those whose names are on everybody’s lips. Bless Thou all over to Thee, Our Father. Breathe Thy breath of life-giving power and animating grace upon a church that’s fighting and struggling and having a hard time, but still is going on.
Bless behind the Iron Curtain. Bless behind bamboo curtains and all curtains where it’s difficult to pray. God bless Thou our Christian brethren who are caught in the terrible grind of communism. We pray, bless the church, Thy church and hasten the hour when Thy Holy Son shall return to glorify the living and raise the dead and make us like unto Himself. This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I ask you to notice a verse in the Ephesians epistle, chapter four, verse thirty-two: Be ye kind, one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. Be ye, even as God. Now without anywise doing violence to the syntax, we hear a man say to Christians not too long converted out of paganism, be ye even as God. God was tender-hearted, kind, forgiving. And be ye as God.
Then of course, there’s that well-known verse in the Sermon on the Mount: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. I know how we try to get around that one. We say that means mature. Be therefore mature, even as God is mature, which is nonsense. Maturity means the arrival at the full possibilities of a growing organism.
And you can apply thought like that to God. You’re thinking of some other god, but the God of the Scriptures. God just is. I Am that I Am. God never matures. His Son, the Man, grew up from birth to manhood, increased in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man; with maturity in Jesus, but that was the manhood.
The Godhead does not mature, as He does not grow. He is. I Am that I Am. Can you imagine how the steel beam would go out of the universe if God had said, I will soon be what I hope to become? That’s maturity, that’s maturing. No, no, that is simply a Greek teacher’s way of getting out of the point. Be perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. God calls us to perfection, and we enter perfection, if we ever do, kicking and squalling and begging and saying it’s not so. I don’t mean to claim perfection, but I mean to claim that God says we are to seek to be perfect as our Father is perfect.
Now, this word, this verse, declares an most astounding fact, that we have as our example none other than God Himself. He says that we are to take the prophets, for an example, who suffered. He also tells us that we are to keep our eyes on good men and try to be like them. Paul, the man of God, would quote one, something good about one church in order to excite another church to seek to be good also like that church. That is all relative. The absolute and final model for men is God. God made us in His image first. We sinned and spoiled that image. He redeemed us in order that that image might be restored. Conversion does not restore it 100%
It gives us what all Dr. Bach used to call the root of the matter. It puts the seed at the beginning of things in us. And then the work of the Holy Ghost is to mold and fashion and shape us until the image of God is restored to us again. And Paul says, be imitators of God.
If I might quote again what I heard William Jennings Bryan said, you know the size of a man may be known upon him by the impression he makes upon you, having heard him only once. I can easily repeat a sermon I preached two months ago and most of you would not remember it, because I don’t impress you.
But this great man impressed me. And I heard him say that the difference between a born again Christian and an evolutionist was this. All the evolutionist had to do on Sunday morning was to go out to the zoo, stand in front of the baboon cage, and congratulate himself upon how far he had evolved upward from his fathers. But he said, the born gain Christian goes to church and sits and listens to the preacher tell him how far he has to go yet before he is perfect as his Heavenly Father is perfect. There’s the difference. Take your choice.
We are comforted when we look at the cage of monkeys, but we’re a long way from being comforted when we look at what we might become. And yet, I think I quoted this on the air yesterday and I’ll quote it again now. Browning’s words: What I aspire to be and am not, comforts me. A beast I might have been, but I would not sink in the scale. Thank God, you’re as far along as you are. And where unto thou hast attained, there abide and cast not away thy confidence which has great recompense of reward. But never mark a marker there nor drive in a stake nor stake a claim and say, this is where I live. There’s perfection yet before you, even as God is the astonishing thing here. We Christians have God as our example.
Now, godliness is attained by first having life. You might just as well try to be, say, Chinese without being born of Chinese parents, as to be a Christian without being born of God. A man may imitate a Chinese, but let’s suppose that he’s a Spaniard born in Chile, or let’s suppose he’s a Swede born in Stockholm. And he determines he wants to be a Chinese. And he learns the Chinese language. He shades his eyes to make them slant a little differently or seem to. And he slides around on slippers with no tops to them. And he does everything he can do to be Chinese. But the trouble is, he will live and die a Swede, because he was born one. And so, a sinner may try to imitate God, seek to be God’s child, try to be like God, but he’ll never be God’s child without being born of God any more than a man can be Chinese without being born of Chinese parents.
So, there must be life there. There must be a deposit of life there, given to us by faith at the time of our conversion to and trusting Jesus Christ our Lord. Then we have this deposit of life which Peter calls the divine nature. Then after that, there can be growth unto perfection, just as the Chinese baby born into the Chinese home, that’s granted, the culture in Chinese and educated in a Chinese home. By the time that baby is 20, 24 or five, he probably will have absorbed, that is, in the Old China it would have. I don’t know too much about this terrible modern China. But he would have learned the classics. He could quote Confucius and the rest of them, and would have learned all the niceties, social amenities, would be worthy of his parents. So, you and I are God’s children, born as God’s children if we are Christian, but not fully grown yet. And it is the work of God to make us like God.
Now, there are so many things that could be said about God; and I’m in the process of writing a book about God. But I shall say nothing here today that’s going to be in that book. You could pick out, I suppose, 100 qualities in God that you would want to imitate and try to be like and seek to be like, but I want to speak about one, and that is persistence.
Did you ever think about how impossible it is to discourage God? God goes right on persisting. He lays His plans and then He continues right on. So many of us don’t know where we’re going and if we got there, we wouldn’t know we were there because we didn’t know where we were headed for when we started. And when we left there, we wouldn’t know where we have been. But the great God who made the heaven and the earth moves according to preordained plans which He purposed in Himself before the world began.
Therefore, revolutions and earthquakes and tidal waves and floods and wars and intellectual and theological rebellion, don’t mean anything to God. He’s undisturbed in these affairs, as a poet said, and cares not what men do. The latest bit of mischief that we’ve gotten into, we young children of the house, this world we call this playhouse, we call Adam’s world, is to throw rocks up toward heaven. And we have gotten an affair that we can shoot them higher. We used to be satisfied just to shoot slingshots at birds, but now man is able to shoot rockets way up into the air.
I heard last night on the news broadcast that they’re going to have two or three monkeys now, I think, and one of them larger than the monkey. And they’re going to put them into a space capsule and shoot them up into the air. Really up there, not just 300 miles up and come back, but way out into orbit to see whether they can’t recover them. And then the next thing would be a man. Well, this has frightened some people tremendously and they’re worrying about it, but it never bothers me at all. If you were to see, if you were to be able to understand or comprehend, even slightly, how vast space is, though the little Sputniks and explorers and monkey capsules that we’re sending up on the earth, looked to God like dust.
There’s nothing, nothing. God is moving on. His plans are unchanging. His purposes are not in anywise modified. And there’s never an instance where an angel rushes into the Holy Presence and salutes and says, O God, you know what’s going on? You know what’s going on? They’re going to be able to go to Venus and Mars. God’s eyelids never flicker. The great God who keepeth Israel never slumbers nor sleeps nor does he worry about anything. He came down as a Man and suffered once. But He is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him. He persists. He goes right on. And I believe that you and I ought to catch this from God.
The reason God can be so nonchalant is that He has eternity to work in. There will never be any whistle blowing nor any sundown. And God will never get old and never retire. And they’ll never be any stopping because there’s no reason to stop. My father worketh hitherto, and I work. And that’s how you and I ought to keep that in mind, that we have eternity to work in too.
I said to my friend, Paris Reidhead when he was here the last time. I said, Brother Reidhead, I don’t read as much as I used to read, that is, philosophy and all that. I said, you know, when you get along older, I wouldn’t have any use for it. Man, he said, how foolish. He said, you’re learning for eternity. This is only the kindergarten, and what I learn now, if it’s true, I’ll have it for eternity. I took the rebuke with a smile and was glad.
Then, the second thing is, well, I think I’d better bear down there a bit and say, that if you’re inclined to give up or be discouraged or quit or say, well, what’s the use? Remember that we are to be like God, in that, we have our plans before us, divine plans and were to persist in the carrying out of those plans. So, keep on believing,
Then there’s magnanimity. That means size. The world is filled with trifles, just filled with trifles. I said to somebody recently, that during the Great War they closed back there in the 40s, one of the things that used to discourage me, would be to ride on a train with soldiers. Now, I often did. In those days you were glad if you could get on at all. And sometimes you got on and stood the entire way halfway across the state, or all the way across the state.
And here were these fine-looking young fellas in their uniforms, the various uniforms of the services. And uniforms always make a fellow look better. I can understand why girls go wild over uniforms. They do improve a man’s looks. And here, there were fine looking fellows. But do you know what they were reading? Almost every one of them had a bunch of crumply, limp, wrinkled, badly beaten comic books. And they were young fellas anywhere from 18 to 25 or 30.
Think of the trifle. Think of a man who makes his living sitting down and making up nonsense and building that nonsense into fictitious characters and putting it in a comic book and then selling it to people. And they read it and soldiers read it, maybe on their way to die, but reading comic books. Now, I read Lil’ Abner sometimes. I’m not saying that I object if they’re decent, you know. I’m not that rough. But I only say that some never get any higher than that, never go beyond it. They live in trifle. Never get out of it. Never have a thought above it.
Dr. Wilbur Smith, one the greatest scholars and bibliophiles in evangelical circles conceived the idea of editing a library of books to be called the Wycliffe series. Moody Press published it. They brought out some of the finest books of the Puritans, the great books. Great masterworks. Do you know what happened? They sat on the shelf and gathered dust. And the last report I heard, it’s not the latest, but the last report I heard was that they discontinued them because they couldn’t move the books.
God’s people made for eternity, with eternity in their hearts, created to be like God, to move from galaxy to galaxy, to walk with broad-winged angels and stand in the burning presence of Seraphim, are satisfied with comic books and religious fiction, and the great books stand on the shelf and gather dust. We’re little, so little. Church quarrels are almost always over little things. I’ve never known a church division yet, ever, to be over anything big.
Years ago, several years before I came to Chicago, this congregation had divided. There wasn’t anger, but there was division. Part of them went one place and parted. And do you know what the difference of opinion was? It was where they should build the building. So, they divided. Part of them went one place and part of them stayed here, and I came to what stayed here.
I remember hearing of a young man. He was a very healthy young man. You can be religious and be healthy, you know. He was a very healthy young man, a young pastor. He went to a new charge, and he just felt so good, you know, that it wasn’t lawful. He would get up in the morning and eat and pray and chuck the baby under the chin and then start out for his study. And they had a low white fence in front of the parsonage.
And he felt so good that he had the habit of when he came to the fence, he never stopped to open the gate. He just jumped over the fence and went on whistling. And it wasn’t long until he was waited upon by the deacons and elders of the church. They wanted to know how it was, they said, now, Reverend and pastor, we love you and you’re doing good work, but we feel that we owe it to you to bring you this word of reproof for you’re young. Well, he said, what have I been doing? Well, they said, you have been jumping over your gate instead of opening it. Well, he said, I just feel good and it’s a low gate and I’ve been athletic.
And so, I just jump over the gate. He said, I haven’t thought anything of it. Well, they said, Reverend, we’re sorry, but we’d like just to ask you kindly to desist. And so, after that, even though he felt so good, he had to walk out there solemnly looking down at his feet, open the gate, walk out, turn around, shut it and go solemnly on to the study. They wanted that kind of fellow.
Well now, if he’d jumped that gate a few times after that, he’d lost his pastorate. Over what? Over jumping a gate. Now, he was a nicer man than I at his age. Do you know what I would have told those elders? I’d have told them to go climb a gate. And I’d have jumped what I wanted to jump, if I had the strength to do it. I don’t jump gates now. But it’s not religion that keeps me from jumping gates. I was 40 years old before I ever took all the steps on a pair of stairs. I always went up two at a time. They say that a man reaches middle age when what he takes two at a time is not steps, but pills.
Now, what I’m trying to tell you is that church quarrels come over trifles. I’ve known of churches that divided and had an ugly time of it, over whether they should take communion out of one cup or have several cups, so it go, whether they should paint a certain room blue or green–trivialities.
God is magnanimous. God is big. And the saints were big and understanding and raw, and you couldn’t lead them into quarrels over things that didn’t matter. The great souls knew what mattered and they were willing to fight to the death for what mattered. But there are only a few things matter after all really, only a few things. And if we find those few things that matter and major on them, we’ll get large inside. Everybody ought to be bigger on the inside than he is on the outside. Everybody ought to have space and time and eternity in his heart, even while he’s limited to a little body that’s running around down here on the earth.
Well then, there’s what is found in the text, forgiveness. Life is filled with mysteries, but the most astonishing mystery of all is, how can God forgive us? To hear a friend talk to the children this morning made me again take notice of sin–that everlasting, ubiquitous, persistent, perpetual devil that tags the heels of men. How can God forgive us? I don’t know. I only know that amazing grace, how sweet the sound.
Did you read that pathetic thing of the boy who had failed in school and was ill, shot himself and asked them, please sing Amazing Grace at my funeral. I only know that I don’t feel good about such things. My heart hurts; sympathy and pity there, the poor kid. I don’t know. God knows. Let’s leave him as the poet said, his frailties and his sins. Who is God? But let us forgive as God forgave. You know, a moral therapeutic that would do you more good than a Turkish bath and a Swedish massage this morning, just forgive everybody, if you just forgive everybody. If you could just start right now. Bow your head while we’re singing the closing hymn and say, O God, I hear by now and herewith forgive everybody in the world and set my heart to love them. You know, it would be like a new birth to you if you’ve got a little malice, a little grudge, a little hard feeling, a little edginess, it keeps you little. It keeps you morally sick. The moral therapeutic of forgiveness; I recommend it to you. Forgive everybody as God has for Christ’s sake forgiven you.
Then there’s pity. It is vicarious sorrow. In one sense, Jesus died of pity. He died of pity. It was pity that brought Him. It was love that brought Him. It was not only love, but it was love plus compassion. It was loving compassion; compassion and love that brought Him, and He died of pity. I don’t want ever to go through the world hard and not pity people. I pity people. I am sorry for how things are going in the world and sorry for those that suffer. When I hear of a little girl who was hit with a car, I’m sorry. You would go crazy if you went to every home and tried to follow it up all over the United States or wrote to everybody. You can’t do it. The world’s too big, and there are too many people in it. But nobody can keep you from grieving.
I’m sorry for lots of young people who jump over the traces and run away and die on the highway. Or go to the dog some other way. I can’t keep them from it. But they can’t keep me from grieving. Pity and sorrow of heart for others, God has it. God has it. I don’t know how God has it. God is perfect, and yet has pity. Philosophy would say that if God is perfect. He couldn’t have pity. I think Spinoza makes that claim. But I know two things: I know God is perfect and I know God has pity. I know two things, not just one. So, we will accept both and if one seems to be contrary to the other, we’ll wait until we know as we are known. And then we will understand how the great God can pity us and at the same time be the perfect God that He is.
Then there’s tranquility. That’s the last word. How we need tranquility in this terrible day. The world is like a spinning top. One out of every four hospital beds are occupied by somebody who is in the hospital for mental trouble. We have invented a juggernaut, a Frankenstein, modern civilization, commercial, materialistic, scientific civilization. And it’s busy pulling us, body and mind.
I read the other day there are several kinds of heart trouble and I don’t have any, but I wasn’t being morbid, but I just haven’t read about it. One of them was a strange kind of heart trouble, that you die suddenly, instantaneously, without anything being wrong with your heart. A pile up of electricity, they say. And there’s a sudden jump and you’re dead. And you are perfectly healthy, nothing wrong with your heart. But they said it was like sticking a needle into your heart, the job of electricity and you’re finished.
Well, the world is worried, sick, troubled, even American people. They don’t look happy. Go out on the street and see. People don’t look happy. You see people driving by in big cars and apparently, they’re well off and have comforts, physical comforts with it with a strained look on their face. But there remaineth a rest for the people of God.
See my attorney, you know, that’s the expression used by men who can afford lawyers. If anybody comes to them, they don’t even answer. They say, see my lawyer. There seateth at the right hand of God, One who has stooped to call Himself our Lawyer and our Advocate. And if you have learned to turn your problems over to Him, all those problems between you and God and those problems between you and men. Jesus Christ is your advocate above, your Savior by the throne of love and He takes care of all that. I suppose that if there were truth, I don’t know if things will never work out to the way I plan it, but I’d like to go all over the United States of America and tear down all the grave stones that have lies on them and put the truth there. I would, I’d like to do that just to startle the world and maybe bring them to their knees.
Here’s one with a little text on, and if I knew the truth, I would have it chisel on; here lies Henry Jones, died from being henpecked. And then over on across would be another and it would be Mrs. Mary Smith. Here lies Mrs. Smith, died of being brutalized by her gorilla husband. And here lies so and so, died at 32 from her burnt-out fuse. She drove too fast, traveled too fast, stayed up too late, got up at the wrong hours, ate the wrong things, tried to keep up with the Joneses and died of a burnt-out fuse.
I tell you, if all the gravestones of the world told the truth there would be a different face on history, but we don’t. We lie when we ask the man with the chisel and the hammer to go to work on the tombstones of our dead. They tell another story, not always, not always. Among the saints it’s not so. But out in the world it is.
Well, my friends, I’m telling you, so few things really matter. But I think we ought to get tranquil really, and without any tranquilizers, too, without any tranquilizers. Tomorrow is just a certain and safe as heaven is safe. We sang the church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord. She is His new creation by water and the blood.
And if He is our foundation, then He’s all we’ve got to think about if we’ve settled it that He’s made good and He’s what He claims to be. And He is victorious. You and I can’t help but be. We’re bound to be. So, let’s relax and be tranquil and rest. Let’s not get disturbed too much about what’s going to happen. Because we know finally from prophecy what’s going to happen. We know far, far beyond the scientific predictions. We know. He told us. Let’s rest in God and wait patiently for Him.
Now, I’ll read you this passage of Scripture from Isaiah 32, and that will be the close. Until the spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance forever. And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings. And in quiet resting places. Peace, I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, and that peace nobody can take away.
In the Apostle Paul’s declaration in Titus 2:11, of God’s love for the world, there is an organic part of that, grace as an in-working power to save us from the bondage of our sins. I hope that you’ve gotten that. I’d like to have you students and those of you are wanting Bible teaching, actually put that down. Don’t be afraid of that. And don’t say, Tozer said that, but I don’t think he quite meant that. I meant that exactly and I’ll stand for that before all theologians in the world, that no man is teaching truly who teaches the grace of God as a method of escape from our past, who does not add that the grace of God is also a power to escape from sin, our present bondage. The Bible teaches both.
And in the text, I read, the grace of God that brings salvation; there is the technical, the judicial method of escaping from the sins of our past. But it teaches us, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world.
Now, it teaches inwardly, that is, there is a moral impulse. I do not think there’s any other religion; I don’t know of any other religion that teaches this moral impulse. There are some good religions. That is, there are some religions, which if they could be kept, would make very good people. I think if everybody in the world was a Buddhist after the doctrines that Buddha taught, it would be a vastly better world than it is now. I think that while Confucius was not a religious teacher, but a moralist and a philosopher; he has been made into a religious teacher in China. And if everybody in the world would bring his moral standards to the level of Confucius, the world would be a pleasant place in which to live. You could throw all your keys away. You would never need to lock up anything. And so it is with a number of other religions.
But the difficulty lies in the “if.” The human race cannot do this. It’s like saying to, say a man in the last stages of consumption. Now, if you would go out and hit a home run, you would be alright. And he whispers, with his last, thin voice that I couldn’t lift a bat. He’s dying. The human race cannot rise to the teachings of the great teachers. They cannot rise to it. Because human nature is bad and there’s no inner power to enable it.
But the grace of God which brings salvation also brings the moral impulse within the heart. It is God that worketh in you to will and to do of His own good pleasure. So that the Christian faith provides that which none of the great religions of the world even thought about, and that is, an inward power to enable.
Now, John mentions this. Let me read it. John in his epistle says in the second chapter and the 24th verse and following. Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that He has promised us, even eternal life. These things have I written, but the anointing which ye have received of Him remains in you. And ye need not that any man teach you; but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him. And now, little children, abide in Him.
Now, that’s what John said, that there was an anointing and an aflatus. I do not know where this has been better said than by Isaac Watts in that line where he says the Lord pours eyesight on the blind. Incidentally, that was not Watts’ line. That was Wesley’s line. Wesley put that in. The Lord pours eyesight on the blind.
Now what does that mean, pouring eyesight on the blind? Here stands a poor man groping. And suddenly the Lord pours on oil on him that makes him see. The Lord pours eyesight on the blind and he sees by an outward enabling now in him; an oil is poured on him, a seeing oil. And I believe this is what’s taught here; that the grace of God is a kind of an anointing, a moral anointing that comes into a man who has received the grace of God in truth. And it teaches him inwardly.
The inward teaching of the moral impulse of Christianity is one of the greatest things about Christianity. But we have degraded it into an escape from hell in our day. Evangelists have degraded it into an escape from hell. We paint a terrible picture of hell and say, do you want to escape that? And of course everybody does. And I do. And I believe in hell. And Christianity, the gospel of Christ, is an escape from hell. That’s only the negative part. The other part is the positive, affirmative, dynamic part, is that it is an oil poured into the heart; the grace of God teaches us. Now, what does it teach us? If you’re following me closely, you’re gonna be shocked. It says, teaching us that denying. Imagine that, Paul? Teaching us that–denying.
Now, why is that word here at the head of the list of things that the grace of God teaches us. The grace of God is conceived as a beautiful, warm, angelic thing, floating down from the throne of God with a smile sweetly coming to the heart. But the Holy Ghost says the grace of God teaches us that denying. Why is that there? For that word denying means to contradict, to disavow, to renounce. Every student of the Greek knows that. And I search into these things and don’t stand in ignorance. I’m ignorant, but I know where to look up some things and so I look them up. And this word denying means, deny means, to contradict, disavow, and renounce. And why are these three negative words, disavow, contradict, renounce, deny; why are such words as that at the top of the list here? How is it explained?
Now, if I had said this in the day of Finney, nobody would have batted an eye. But saying it now, I expect repercussions. Let me say to you, my friends, that the word grace stands as an everlasting condemnation of the human race. The word grace, the grace of God hath appeared.
And the first thing the grace of God does when it appears to a man is to condemn him. Why should it be necessary that there should be something which should be good to the undeserving, except the undeserving were there? Why should it be necessary that God should send something that could give everything to the pauper, unless the pauper were present? Why should grace appear, which gives goodness to the bad man, unless the bad man were here? The very fact you use the word grace implies and takes for granted that there is evil present, that there is badness there, that there is people deserving of death. And the very word grace comes.
There comes a pulmotor down the street. The whistle is blowing, the siren blowing. What’s that pulmotor doing? There is somebody sick down there. Somebody’s about to die. And they have got an oxygen tent there. Why is that oxygen tent and pulmotor there? Somebody’s about to die of a heart attack or drowning. And though that pulmotor and oxygen tent are positive things, they’re good things. They’re excellent things worked out by fine minds and administered by dedicated doctors and nurses. Yet, the very fact they are there indicates somebody is about to die.
Another word that’s beautiful is pardon. And I suppose the average Governor of the average state is a decent fellow, be he a Democrat or Republican. He’s a decent fellow. And I suppose there wouldn’t be a word he would like better than the word pardon. I suppose if I were Governor or you were Governor of one of the states and somebody came to me and said, we want to appeal on the part of so and so for a pardon for this man condemned to die. I suppose that the sweetest word imaginable would be the word pardon. But the very word pardon itself would stand as a condemnation. Why? Because it would be useless and meaningless unless somebody were condemned. You can’t pardon a man who has no sentence against it.
And so the grace of God cannot forgive a man who needs no forgiveness. The very word grace itself stands as an instant and eternal and everlasting condemnation. But it also carries with it deliverance and cleansing and forgiveness and resurrection into a new life. But unless I am prepared to admit that I am a condemned sinner unworthy of God’s smile and that hell is the place where I belong, grace can never reach me.
But that word grace itself, somebody says grace, what does grace mean? It means everything for nothing. It means being good to the worthless. It means forgiving the condemned. It means pardoning those who want to die. Well, who are these? Ah, my brother, it’s you and me, you and me. The very fact the word grace had to be here, and that grace had to appear, indicates to all immoral intelligences that the human race is bad, condemned; and apart from the grace of God will perish.
Human beings in their present situation, only evil continually and the world consisting of human beings as they are, can be saved from this situation, only by disavowal and renouncing it. The drowning man who won’t renounce the water, will die in that water. And the man who swallowed a lethal dose of poison and who refuses to have his stomach pumped and will not accept the ministrations of the physician, will die by his refusal.
And so, the Scriptures say, the grace of God brought salvation, teaching us that we must renounce our own sins and renounce organized sin, which is the world, and to disavow and contradict and stand as a judgment against it. As soon as I see the grace of God appearing to save me, I admit I’m lost. I admit I deserve to die. I admit hell is my portion. And then I rush to the grace of God, condemned, but delivered because I’m condemned. Ready to perish but saved because I admit I’m ready to perish. Do you get that friends? Do you see that? And this is where we’re failing. And I want you, my brethren, I am persuaded better things of you and things that accompany good Bible teaching.
Now, the cross of Christ, how beautiful it is. What it stands for is a judgment upon this moral order. The very fact that cross had to appear, is all angels need to know, to know how bad we are. It’s a judgment, I say, upon the world’s moral order. And it expresses God’s rejection of man’s sin and God’s rejection of man apart from grace and the cross. And the cross of Jesus is the place where every redeemed man must die.
Jesus said, if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself. And so, take up His cross. I looked at that very carefully to be sure I was right yesterday, because I thought I had remembered that’s what He had said, and I checked it and found out actually that’s what He said and there is no twisting out of it by any translation. That’s what He said, his cross, not my cross. You can’t carry Jesus’ cross. He carried it. Joseph of Arimathea helped him a little. But He carried His cross. He carried it. You can’t carry His cross, but His cross becomes your cross. And then you carry your cross.
And so, the cross of Christ stands as a judgment upon the world’s moral order. And the only way I can be benefited by that cross and have all of the advantages it provides is by renouncing that which it has renounced. And the only way I can be saved by the grace of God is by repudiating that which it repudiates and disavowing that which it disavows.
Salvation then, according to this, begins with an outright renouncement, a renouncement of my sin, of myself with my ungodliness, of my worldly lusts. This is repentance. Failure to see this is responsible for thousands of deluded Christians, thousands of deluded Christians; responsible for the low moral standards among Christians; responsible for the effort everywhere to make the cross of Christ acceptable to society. For the cross of Christ can never be acceptable to society and still remain the cross of Christ. It becomes something else. The cross of Christ stands for the condemnation of society. And just as the Ark floated above the waters and stood as a condemnation of the human race, and only those who entered it could be saved. So, the cross of Christ, towering over the wrecks of time, stands for the condemnation of the human race. And only those who enter it, so to speak, who enter the heart of Jesus, by means of it, can be saved.
So, how can the cross be acceptable to society when it stands as a judgment of that society, when there’s a contradiction between the two? This is the reason, I say, the failure to see this is the reason for the strange popularity of Jesus today. Jesus is very popular. But the Jesus of the New Testament, who bore a cross that condemned the world while it condemned Him, never, never was popular and never will be, except in that hour when He comes down with that sword upon His thigh riding that white horse. And all moral intelligence that’s in heaven and on earth and under the earth are forced; some happily and joyously and voluntarily; others solemnly, are compelled to kneel and say He is Lord of all to the glory of God the Father.
How can Christ be popular among persons who don’t intend to obey Him? And yet He is. How can He be popular among those who don’t intend to acknowledge His Lordship nor carry a cross nor quit their ungodliness nor cease from their indulging their worldly lusts? Yet, tens of thousands and multiplied tens of thousands are in and out of our evangelical churches. And Jesus is very popular. But because we misunderstand that the grace of God condemns us and saves us. The cross of Christ slays us and raises us.
And the very fact that Jesus had to come is the last final, terrible proof of the world’s guilt. There’s a close connection between Christ and the Ark of Noah. And the fact that the Ark of Noah had to be there was proof enough of the world’s depravity. The fact that the cross of Jesus had to be raised on the hillside is proof enough of the world’s depravity.
My friends, if we could only believe how bad we are, and then in a burst of faith, believe how good God is, what a happy bunch we would be. But we walk halfway in between trying to keep on God’s good side and at the same time, preserve our morality and our goodness and half obey Him and be half Christians. So, what does the grace of God tell us, the grace of God?
We had a distinguished preacher here last week. Here comes another one, distinguished looking brother, thin, lean, old, and I ask, who are you? And he says, I am Simon Peter, a servant. Oh, you’re Saint Peter. Oh no, not Saint Peter. I denied my Lord. I am Simon Peter an apostle and servant of Jesus Christ, through like precious faith with us, to the righteousness of God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Well then, I get a little frightened, because I don’t know. I’m afraid of an apostle, I’m afraid I’m not doing this thing right. And I say, well, would you say a word, and he says, grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ our Lord. According as His divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that has called us up to glory and virtue.
And I say to him, Brother Peter, we’ve been talking about the grace of God, and you lived near Jesus Christ’s heart, and you wrote two epistles. And you lived with the other apostles and with our Lord. Tell us, what does the grace of God do for people? And what should people do seeing that they have obtained like precious faith and the grace of God?
Peter says, well, do this, brethren, and you’ll be all right. Give all diligence and add to your faith virtue. But Brother Peter, if we seek to be virtuous, they say we’re legalistic. A dry smile comes on his face. And he says, they talked that way about me too. But add to your faith, virtue and to virtue knowledge. Yes. And to knowledge, temperance. Excuse me, what does temperance mean Peter? It means being able to control your own body. Don’t eat too much. Don’t drink. Don’t abuse your own body by the way you live. And to temperance, add patience, and to patience, add godliness, and to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love.
Well, now, Peter, doesn’t the grace of God prepare me with nothing further? Doesn’t it prepare me to meet the Lord? Well, he says, if it had then, I wouldn’t tell you this. Here’s what I want to tell you. If these things be in you and abound, they make that ye shall be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacks these things is blind and can’t see a far off. He’s forgotten that he was purged from his own old sins. Wherefore says Peter, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure. But Peter, I accepted Jesus when I was eleven. And as Peter knew today’s as he knew his day, he’d say, maybe the Jesus you accepted was the popular Jesus, without a cross and without a code and without any commandments and without any demand. Maybe it was merely an imaginary Jesus. Make your calling and election sure.
And if you do these things, ye shall never fall. For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That’s Peters exhortation. That’s what he says, and he doesn’t contradict Paul. He and Paul were brethren. They had one little argument, and Paul won. But later on, Peter humbly wrote about our beloved brother Paul and some of these deep stuff that they were agreed.
So, Paul says, the grace of God teaches us, and Peter says here’s what it teaches us. Let your life grow constantly in morality and righteousness, in charity and virtue and goodness, and then brotherly kindness. That’s what the grace of God teaches. I don’t want to disturb anybody that’s actually believing. But I want to make it awfully sure that you don’t think you’re believing when you’re not. For the grace of God that brings salvation also teaches us inwardly a high moral standard, and then enables us to live it.
I spent the week before last from Monday-to-Monday night in New York City preaching at the Gospel Tabernacle Church founded many years ago by Dr. A.B. Simpson. And I stayed over Monday and preached for the 149th anniversary of the New York Bible Society and 19 Jewish missions, their delegates. I wanted to tell you a little about it. Brother McAfee was there up until after Friday night, and he flew home and was here for Sunday.
But on the last Sunday the place was crowded out upstairs and downstairs and then the choir loft, out in the side and in the fellowship hall upstairs. And Brother Reidhead the pastor said this to me on Monday when he took me to the train and came clear up and sat until we almost pulled out of the station. He said now, I am taking Dr. Simpson’s picture and name off of the masthead. He said, I said I would allow Dr. Simpson, I’d be co-pastor with Dr. Simpson though he’s been dead since 1919, until we got as many people in here as he got. And then when we did, I’d become pastor. So, he is reverently taking the name of the founder off and he’s going to be pastor in his own right.
Something happened there that I think that I’d like to tell you about. Last Sunday, a week, that would be two weeks, they baptized an officer in the Turkish army, a Turkish air force officer. Well, this young fellow, quite a wonderful looking young chap with big soulful, dark eyes and I rather loved him to look at him. Somebody won him to the Lord in a hospital. And he came and wanted to be baptized. So, they baptized him. Then came word the United States government was sending him home. They said that Friday morning is the last day you can stay. You must take a boat or plane or something and get out of here Friday morning.
Turkey being the kind of country it is, Christian’s lives are just worth about that much in Turkey. A missionary to Turkey who interpreted for a lot of us, Brother McAfee, myself and the pastor and some others, gathered around this young man and we prayed. And it looked as if he was going back to his death. We prayed that God would do something and I felt my little part I had, I felt like praying that God would make the darkness light and break and cut asunder the bars of iron.
Well, he was to leave Friday morning for Turkey. Friday morning, he got a cable from his government saying, your orders have changed. You are now an attaché in the Turkish delegation in Washington, DC. So, our young officer is now in Washington DC serving there and will not have to go back to die or be persecuted to death. God answered prayer. I think that was evidence of the answer of God. It isn’t often you see it happen so fast, but it had to happen fast there. God only answers prayer fast when it has to happen fast. If there’s time, He waits and lets you wait. Well, I thought you’d like to know God’s working here and there over the earth.
And then, I want to fulfill a promise I made here when I said that I would finish talking about this thing here in the sixth of Acts. In those days when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there rose a murmuring of the Grecian Jews against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Then the twelve called a multitude of the disciples unto them and said, it is not reason that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables.
Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. The saying pleased the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas:a proselyte of Antioch, the seven of them whom they set before the apostles. And when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them, and the Word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly. And a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.
Now, I talked about this, how the multiplying of numbers brought a multiplying of problems. And then I said that I would finish talking about this little thing the next time I preached, which is now.
Now I want you to note here how the apostles met the situation. There was trouble in that early church. You know, we as a rule seem to be very romantic. We’re an incurably romantic people, and I wouldn’t want God’s people to be any other way. I don’t like these metallic adding machine Christians, whose theology is based upon mathematics, and they’re just as cold and lifeless. I like God’s people to be romantic and emotional because that’s what makes you love them. Their good, righteous lives make you respect them. But their emotional, happy, joyous love makes you love them.
And these people, were not what our romantic outlook make them out to be. We draw an unpleasant comparison between, say, the sixth of Acts and now. And we say we have not a saint left in all the earth. The prophets occasionally fell into that trap as the Psalmist did and Elijah himself certainly did on one occasion. Elijah even went so far as to say, I’m the only saint left. The Lord reminded him he had a few others.
But always remember, the grass is greener on the field a few generations ago. I smile when I hear people and when I hear myself romantically talking about the early Methodists, those early Methodist had their troubles, brother. If you read the story of the early Methodist, you’ll find they had their problems. Wesley and his own brother didn’t get on always. When Charlie wrote a hymn, John said, Charlie, you never should have sung that hymn in the public assembly. It’s no good.
Now, they were saints, but they weren’t wax saints. They were just saints. They were just plain human beings who loved God and were redeemed, plucked out of the burning. But they hadn’t got yet all the glory that will be theirs when the Lord returns. So, let’s remember that. Let’s not think down our present generation too much. And specially, let’s not think up another generation. Politicians are always talking about Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, and everybody knows George Washington would drink whiskey. And everybody knows those men were just like other men.
So, let’s remember that when you read the book of Acts, you read it on a slant. You see the green, but you don’t see it straight down; you don’t see the weeds. There were some weeds in the book of Acts too. The Holy Ghost admits that. And here we have one of them. We have a little problem here. There was a sort of an old folk’s home where the widows were taken care of by the church. And the church mainly was made up of Jews. But there were two kinds of Jews. There were the Grecian Jews and the Hellenists there, otherwise called. They were the Jews who spoke other languages than Hebrew or Aramaic. Then there were the Palestinian Jews who were Hebrews of the Hebrews as they thought. And of course, they looked and raised their eyebrows at each other. The race problem is not a new thing. Don’t forget that my brother. Don’t forget it. The race problem is not a new thing.
And then they find a bit of difficulty integrating here, these Grecian Jews with the Hebrew Jews. And they said, some old Hebrew lady, Rebecca or Sarah. She looked at her plate, and then she looked across at the plate of a Grecian lady and she said, why, you got a bigger helping than I got. You know, that’s the second time that’s happened, and then the trouble was on, and they had no superintendent to send for, so they had to do the best they could. And perhaps they had to look to God about it.
And they went to the apostles, and the apostles said, men and brethren, don’t come bothering us about serving tables and dividing portions between two kinds of widows, because we have to preach the Word of God. But I’ll tell you what you do. And this was the beautiful thing that I love to hear about these apostles. They knew how to meet this situation. They knew how to meet it.
Now we have no such problem in our church, so don’t think that I’m slyly trying to cure a breach someplace. There’s no breach I know about. Either there isn’t any or I’m blissfully naive. I don’t know that there is, anybody. Somebody might criticize, but human beings do that, and it gets healed over in 24 hours. But there’s no problem, so I’m not preaching to a problem. I’m preaching to a principle that can happen anywhere in any church at any time. It can happen in a Sunday school or even in a choir or in a lady’s prayer band or anyplace as long as human beings are human beings.
Well, here’s how the apostles met the crisis. They knew two things. You got to know certain things if you’re going to carry on the work of God. They knew this. They knew that sin can always find a religious heart in which to lodge. Sin goes about, a kind of disembodied malignancy, looking for a place to light. And we think that this sin, this disembodied iniquity goes about and hovers over halfway houses and saloons. Well, I suppose it does. But there’s one little thing we forget. And that is, it also hovers over churches, waiting for somebody, a soul to get into, even the twelve that Jesus had around Him.
So, Satan entered in. There was a disembodied malignancy, waiting for a soul that was open that they could crawl into. So, he crawled into Judas, and he became the son of perdition. So, sin will always find a heart somewhere to lodge in. If it was in the Kremlin, we’d expect it. If it was at the racetrack or the den of iniquity, we’d say, well, that’s to be expected. But I say sin can always find a religious heart to get into. This deadly malignancy that floats about can find a religious heart.
And the second thing they knew was, that such a heart will mingle with the true Christian in churches. Did you ever think sometimes when you read a piece in the newspaper, did you ever stop to think maybe you rode on the bus beside a gangster? Do you ever think about that? Maybe the man on the subway next to you reading the paper had a gun under his arm out to kill somebody? I don’t know. I’ve never seen a gangster that I recognized as such. But I suppose, riding around as much as I have in public transportation in the last 30 years, I have ridden alongside of the gangster very likely, a man whose hands were crimson red with the blood of his fellow man. Did you ever think that it’s possible for us to be sitting beside someone into whom Satan may enter, even among the children of God?
When Jesus said, one of you will betray me, there wasn’t one of the eleven that knew who it was. Each one said, Lord is it I? And I have always been glad they didn’t say, Lord, it must be Peter, or Lord, it must be Andrew. They said, Lord, is it I? They were humble enough and self-effacing enough and lacked confidence in themselves enough that they said, Lord, is it I? You never know who you may be riding with, and you never know who you may be sitting beside. On the other hand, you may be sitting beside a saint, somebody who is marked high up on the Book of God, someone who, when rewards are passed out, will receive citation after citation for faithfulness beyond the call of duty. Don’t forget it. And don’t look at their clothing because sometimes those who will receive the highest citations may be dressed in very common clothes. So, they knew these things. And they knew there wouldn’t be any use looking for a church.
Now, they could have gone to these people and had an evangelistic campaign and brought in a real stinger of a preacher who could to have skinned then alive and said, you’re a lot of carnal people who are not worthy to be called by the name of Christ. What do you mean here with your divisions? They knew they would have only fanned the fire, so they did this. They went to the root of their problem and took away the occasion.
And I am just asking you, if you’re looking for a church with no murmurers in it. If you are, I can recommend one. I know where there’s a church with no murmurers in it. It is the Church of the Firstborn. It is over yonder, and they have already washed their robes and made them clean. And they have passed through death and are over there waiting. But as long as they’re down here, there will be a murmurer some time. And we might expect it. You are just like you are looking for a country without any crime. It’s like looking for a city without any disease to look for the perfect church. They don’t exist. All you can hope for is to keep it to a minimum and pray and trust God to be merciful to our faults.
So, here’s what they did. They went the second mile. You remember, Jesus had said, if anybody takes away your coat, give him your vest too. And they remembered that. So, they went the second mile and turned the other cheek and showed themselves to be men of peace and goodwill. And so, they said to the Christian assembly, well, now here, look, it isn’t right that you Christians should be fussing. It isn’t right. And furthermore, we apostles don’t know whether there’s anything to your charges are not. If we ask the Hebrew Christians, they would say, no. And if we asked the Grecian Christians, they’d say, yes. And so, we’d have one person’s word against another, and it wouldn’t be good. So here, here’s what we’ll do. You’ll get together, all of you and vote and pick some men and bring them to us and we will lay our hands on them and make deacons out of them and let them administer that work.
Well, you know what they did. They chose seven men. The apostles didn’t choose them. If the apostles had chosen them, they would have been charged with partiality. But the apostles didn’t choose them, they throw it back in their lap and said, choose you some umpires, somebody that you can trust. And you know what those Hebrew Christians did? They were so spiritual and kind and charitable, that they allowed the Grecians to choose all seven of them. And there wasn’t a single Hebrew Christian among the seven. There was Philip and Prochorus and Nicanor and Timon and Parmenas and Nicolas of Antioch. And they were all of the Hellenists, that is the Grecian Jews. They were not Palestinian Jews.
Now, I think that was just delightful myself, because you see it cut the ground out from under these complainers. I suppose that some of those complainers suffered over that, because when you take the occasion for complaining away from a man who has given the complaints, it’s like taking away a rattle from a baby. They don’t know what to do with themselves for a while till they get accustomed to not having anything to complain about. So, they had nothing to complain about here, because they took away the complaint. They said, every man chosen, bring him here. And when they looked at them, they smiled and said, well, there’s not a single Palestinian Jew and the Palestinian Jews said that okay, we’re satisfied.
So, they couldn’t get rid of their complaints, but they got rid of the occasion that had roused their complaints. Now here isn’t perfection, but here is spirituality, brethren. Here isn’t perfection. Here’s spirituality; and it’s the kind of spirituality that I believe God loves. It’s trying to see things from God’s standpoint. But I’d like to have you see the kind of men they chose.
Now, if I was looking for a fellow to ladle out soup for an old folk’s home. If I were looking for somebody to act as a waiter, it seems to me that in thinking the way I do, I wouldn’t give too much attention to it. I’d say, can you be here and are loyal to the church? And that would be about the end of it. And I think most people would. But you know, when they picked these men, they said, they’ve got to have three qualifications, to have a good reputation, to be full of the Holy Ghost, and full of wisdom.
It’s a strange thing, my brethren, that we ordain men now to the ministry, and make them evangelists and pastors of churches, when we’re not even sure that they’re full of the Holy Ghost. They wouldn’t even put men to serving tables until they knew that they were full of the Holy Ghost. There’s quite a difference in their way of looking at things. They had to be full of the Holy Ghost. And then they had to have a good reputation. That didn’t mean that these men were perfect and there were no flaws in them. But it did mean they weren’t religious racketeers. Nobody had any axe to grind. There was no ulterior motive here. They were men of good reputation.
One of the hardest things I have to bear as a Christian is having to inquire about a man to see if he’s all right. When somebody comes and wants to speak at the church or wants me to do something for him or wants me to write a little recommendation for a book he is writing or something, you have to check on the man to see whether you dare recommend him. That’s terribly bad. They wouldn’t have men of uncertain reputation. They said they have got to be men of good report. Men that are known to be completely candid and frank and honest, nobody hiding anything, and full of the Holy Ghost.
And then the third thing was, they had to have a baptism of wisdom. They didn’t dare simply be reckless fellows. I have from here and there throughout my travels, I have met Christians who are all ablaze, all ablaze, but after you got to know them for three months, your confidence in them diminished more and more and more and more, to finally it was burning down to there was barely a tiny little flicker because they proved by their lives that all they had was zeal. They had no wisdom at all. They never knew how to approach a situation, but always ready to rush out in all directions.
Well, it says you can’t use men like that. I’ve often said in private conversation with men; I’ve said how sad it is to know that there’s much talent being wasted in the churches. Some men who are talented men and brilliant men without doubt, but some character trait prevents them from being used in the church. They just can’t be used, not only in any organized church but in God’s church, because they haven’t got the wisdom here. In all thy getting, get wisdom. If ever there was anything we need to pray for it is a baptism of discernment in an hour like this.
You don’t know when a man comes down the street carrying a five-pound Bible, whether he’s up to help here or out to rook, you. You don’t know, so we need wisdom. We need to be wise in God to be able to look quite through the deeds of men as Cassius said. They said about Cassius, looks quite through the deeds of men. And we need to have this. We need to have it in our pulpits. We need to have it everywhere. Superintendents of Sunday school need it to see quite through the deeds of men.
Now, it’s a dangerous thing. And if you have perception enough to see quite through the deeds of men, you’ll be tempted immediately to become a self-appointed critic of other men’s deeds. It is dangerous. But you’ve got to have it or else you’re in worse danger. It’s a question of being blind. And of course, that’s dangerous to walk down the street blind. It’s also dangerous to be able to have an x-ray vision so that you’re not taken in, because he’s likely to make a critic out of you, and you’ll be worse than if you had no eyes. So we’re caught in the middle. We’ve got to watch it.
Now. I just like to end by pointing out that these murmurers, I said the last time I talked in the early part of this chapter, I said that these murmurers were actually doing good. They actually were. They didn’t know it, but they were doing good. Just as Satan who tempted Christ was doing good. He was doing good, devilishly bad, but he was doing good, nevertheless. And just as the three men who rode poor, old, suffering Job, and skinned him with sarcasm and bitterness, just as those three men were doing good. At the same time, they were doing evil, God was using their evil for Job’s good. Just as the eleven sons of Jacob when they sold Joseph into Egypt, did good while they were trying to do evil. Joseph said, God meant it for good unto me, and He used it for good.
So, it’s possible to do good and at the same time be trying to do evil. And God will use your evil to bless His people. But he will judge you for the evil, nevertheless. He judged the three comforters of Job severely. And He judged Israel and He judged every time God’s people were punished. God used the punishment to bless them, but He judged those who punished. So, remember, as I have said before, God uses the rejected to perfect the accepted. And when a man has been the rejected of God, he may yet remain in the circle of fellowship and God uses him there as an abrasive to perfect and polish the saints, to polish the saints.
I am a weakling by nature, and I am really not a fighter. And I never like to meet a man that’s against me on anything. I would much rather be somewhere else. But you have to do it, because you see, the Lord has to polish off some things off of you. So, He lets the rejected hang around to perfect the accepted. Even Jesus Christ had to learn obedience by the things that He suffered. And when the Pharisees and the rest of them were chewing Him to pieces with words and threatening His life, He was learning obedience. Even the Son of God had to learn obedience by the things that He suffered. So, you and I too must.
What do we do in the meantime? What should men and women of goodwill do? What should they do? Well, quietly prepare and brace yourself and expect to suffer, because you will, either of two ways. There are two ways to take a blow. One is to brace yourself and catch it. And the other is to take it when it’s not expected. So, you will have your detractors of course and there will be difficulties. But the man of goodwill, and you know, we should never be any other way but of goodwill. We should always want things to be right and good. And we should have goodwill toward men.
That passage where the angels sang, peace on earth goodwill to men. Every version that I know of corrects that and says it’s peace on earth to men of goodwill. The man that has not goodwill, God cannot save him. The lowest, deepest, darkest sinner, if he turns to be a man of goodwill, good intention, God will save him out of his wallow. But the most righteous Pharisee, if he’s not a man of goodwill, God can’t help him.
So, men and women of goodwill, and there are a lot of them in the churches, a lot of them everywhere, a lot of good people yet, they’re here and there and they have goodwill. They only want to help people, that’s all. They want to be true to the Lord and help people. Sometimes I think they’re a little timid. But they are there, men and women of goodwill. What should we do? Well, we should keep our hearts tender and charitable, because you’re going to have yourself tender. One of these days you’re going to need tenderness and charity for yourself.
So keep your heart tender and charitable. You say, you are tender and charitable toward so and so because he’s such a dear man. He’s not the man that needs your tenderness and your charity, my dear friends. He’s not the man at all. It’s that old complaining Grecian widow that needs your tenderness and your charity. It’s that lady who says I didn’t get as big a helping as the other lady did. It’s that person that’s complaining. They need our charity. And just as a sick person needs our tender understanding, so a person who is carnal does.
And then be peacemakers wherever you can. My experience with being a peacemaker has never been too happy. Usually, I get caught in the middle. I told you here some weeks ago, that I had tried a couple of times to be a marriage counselor on two different occasions. Some couples came to see me. And when they left, the woman roared mad at me, and they never did get together. I don’t know why. But I am not too much of a peacemaker like that. Because I tried to stop a man from fighting with his wife and then they both get after me. But if you can, try to be peacemaker and keep out of trouble all you can and leave the judgment to God.
A man wrote me as I told you, and he said, leave the judgment to God. And I wrote him and said, thank you, my brother, I needed that. I needed it. I’m not that humble. But then when it comes from Vietnam, and takes two weeks to get here, and then I keep it around two weeks before I answer it. In four weeks, I’m able to say that. So, I said, thank you for that letter, brother. It did me good because it came when I needed it.
So, let’s leave judgment to God. I wouldn’t know whom to reward and I wouldn’t know whom to punish. But our Heavenly Father does. In the meantime, we can learn from these disciples. We can learn from the apostles. Go the second mile, turn the other cheek, show yourself a man of goodwill, qnd give the advantage to the other person. Give the advantage to the other person. Always, God will bless the man who is ready to give the other fellow the advantage. If you seek advantage, God will frown. If you give the advantage to the other man, God will smile. For that was the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. That we always ought to put the advantage in the other man’s hand. But you say if I don’t defend myself, who will? I’ll give you three guesses.
If you’re God’s child and you don’t defend yourself, who will? Answer me, who will? God will. And I’d rather be defended by God than all the lawyers in Washington. I’d rather have God come over on my side and take my part against the enemy than all the lawyers in the world. Because God can make what He says stick, and lawyers can’t always do it. The best defense is God. I’ve always had a little speech I have wanted to make if anybody ever attacked me in public, but nobody ever did.
And I have had this around with me for quite a while. It’s a little speech I was going to make. But it’s like the stuttering fellow that learned to say, Swedish people like pumpernickel, but he said he couldn’t find the place to use. And I can’t find any place to use my speech. I always wanted to be able to get up when I was under attack someplace and say, the Lord is my defense. Mr. Chairman, the defense rests. I thought that would be a good speech, but I have never been able to use it, because up to now it’s just lying around, because nobody’s attacked me. But if anybody ever does, that will be my speech. Instead of getting up and fighting, I’m going to say, God in my defense, the defense rests and sit down. I think that will confuse the enemy. But I don’t know yet because I haven’t had opportunity to find out.
But anyhow, let’s leave our defense with God. God will take care of you, my dear sister and my dear brother. God will take care of you, well, provided you give the other fellow the advantage and leave your defense to God. But if you insist on taking the advantage and defending yourself, God will quietly lift His hand and let you take a few blows for your own instruction.
Humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of God and He will exalt you in due time. Very soon, Sunday mornings, I’m going to begin a book of the Bible and preach sermons on a book. Perhaps by next Sunday, I may be able to announce it. But anyhow, this finishes up the little word I wanted to bring about the way the apostles got out of a tight squeak by doing the humble thing.
Because I Live, Ye Shall Live Also Pastor and author A.W. Tozer March 29, 1959
I have a text for the morning sermon. I turn to John 14. Our Lord spoke of His going away and said, yet a little while and the world seeth Me no more but ye see Me. Then follows a sentence which is complete in itself. You could put a period after me and make it a capital B and you’d have a sentence standing alone, one of the greatest utterances in the entire Bible: because I live, ye shall live also.
Now centuries ago, many centuries ago, possibly as long ago as before Moses’ time, there had lived a fine old man. He hadn’t always been old. He had grown up as all do. But now he’s in perhaps late middle life and he is a man deeply troubled and in great physical pain. And with a shadow of impending death hanging over him, as he thought then, he was giving to the world’s oldest and toughest question, a lot of earnest thought. And he asked a question. This question was serious and utterly sincere. Nothing academic here, because upon the answer to this question, rests, not this or that school of thought. But upon the answer to this question rests all the values of light. If it is answered, yes, it changes the whole complexion of our lives. If it is answered, no, it throws a gloomy shadow that can only deepen across our life. The question he asked was, if a man die, shall he live again? And the man who asked the question was the celebrated citizen of Ur, the man named Job.
Now, this old man of God was in trouble, I say, and deeply worried and physically in pain. And he pondered this question and ask it out loud. If a man die, shall he live again? And there was no answer given except more talk which contained no answer.
Now, there is another question which has never been asked for very obvious reasons. It is the exact opposite of the one Job asked. It is, if a man lives, shall he die. Now, nobody’s ever asked that question seriously. If a man lives, shall he die? Nobody’s ever asked that. From Adam, if Adam asked it, it’s not recorded, but nobody ever could have asked it seriously. He would have had to be insincere ever to ask the question, the opposite of, if a man dies shall he live? If a man lives, shall he die? And why was this latter question never asked? Because we do not in sincerity ask the obvious. We know the answer to the question, if a man lives, shall he die? We know the answer to that question in long, sad experience.
There lived in the United States a couple of centuries ago an amazing young man. He was 18 years old when he pondered on the same question that Job had pondered on, and he wrote what was called, A View of Death. And in that he says these words to comfort those who may be expecting to go the way of all the earth. He said in effect, don’t worry too much about it, because when you go, thou shalt lie down with patriarchs of the infant world with kings and the powerful of the earth, the wise and the good, fair forms and whori fears of ages passed, all in one mighty sepulcher.
The golden sun, said this amazing young teenager, the golden sun, the planets and all the infinite host of heaven are shining on the sad abodes of death through the still lapse of ages. All that tread the globe are about a handful to the tribes that slumber in its bosom. And millions in these solitude since first the flight of years began, have laid them down in their last sleep, the dead rein there alone. That was written out of experience, an experience over thousands of years which has never varied. Nobody asked if the sun rises, will it set because of centuries of observation, unvaried and always, always alike. The sun rises and sets and rises and sets. We can count on it. Nobody questions this.
So, a man may ask, if a man die shall he live again, but nobody asks if a man lives, shall he die, because I say the experience has proved and accords with what the Bible teaches, that it’s appointed unto man once to die. Shall he live again?
Now we know that he will die, because that’s demonstrated hourly. But on the other side, there is no answer. The dead do not come back to say, yes, we live again. They have not come back. They do not come back. They maintain a long, unbroken silence. And not all the pleading and coaxing can get one word out of those who are gone. But because we want to believe, because men want to believe they will live after they die, we have invented every kind of reasoning.
Oh, 399 years before the birth of Christ, there lay on a cot in an Athenian prison, a fine old Greek philosopher by the name of Socrates. He had been condemned to death by the Athenian court because of his teachings, and there were gathered around him in his last hour, his friends. There was Fado and Simmias and Cebes and Apollodorus and Crito and a number of others coming and going. And they were asking the old man questions, for he was one of the profoundness thinkers the world ever knew. And they said, Socrates, you’re going to leave us. Where are you going? Or, are you going anyplace? Are you just closing your eyes and going back to the dust to be born round in earth’s diurnal motion with rocks and trees and stones, or what are you going thing to do?
Well, Socrates began to talk, and as he did, he talked long-windingly and gave his reasons for believing that he was going to live again. And one of his chief arguments was what they call recollection. He said, the reason I know I’m going to live again is that I have lived before. He said, I lived before, and everything that I have learned now during this present lifetime is simply a recollection of what I learned before. Reincarnation, they call that in the Far East, but the Greeks called it recollection. He said, learning is recollecting.
And he said, don’t you remember, notice that when something is told you that you hadn’t heard before, how instead of sounding strange to you, it sounds strangely familiar? He said, it’s because you have a deep racial memory. You knew that before; you’re finding it out again. He didn’t tell us what kind of God it would be who would put a man in the world to reincarnate him and teach him over and over and over and over again, the same thing.
But that he went out and into the next world, believing that he was going to live again. But philosophers have been wrong so often, that I, for my part, can’t possibly accept Socrates’ argument. There was no proof, no demonstration. Nobody came back and entered the dark place and said, I am here to tell you they do come back. Men do live again. Nobody was answering the old, old question that Job has asked, if a man die, shall he live again, but we can all submit our reasons. We all submit them you know. But they don’t come back to confirm them.
If I were pressed, if I were being pressed by some studious young man who would come to my study and urge upon me and say, would you give me your reasons for believing in immortality in the future life? I could think of reasons. I have dreamed out the reasons many long years I’ve spent, and I would give reasons. But not one of those reasons would be valid, and not one of them could be proved and not one of them could have any demonstrated proof offered for them.
When I listen to a great something, say, like the Messiah. When I hear a performance of that, and I stand along with the others, all struck while they sing the Hallelujah Chorus, something in my heart says and cries out that says God is the man that can do that. A man that could compose, couldn’t go out like a candle. He couldn’t snuff out like a falling star. He must exist on. He must live on. And then my reason would carry me on to say we who stand breathless to listen to this thing being sung and can appreciate and enjoy it, we can’t die either. That’s what reason would tell me. But reason is wrong so often, I don’t dare trust it.
So, I say this to you, don’t count on anything if you have no better proof than the philosophers. Socrates could be wrong. Don’t count on anything if you have no better proof for it than that of the poets. Poets can be wrong and very often are.
But within the last 100 years or so in the Western world, there has arisen a weird group of dark ladies, with a few gentlemen thrown in, who undertake to get us in touch with the other world. They call them spiritists. And something will happen like this, a businessman, a fine, intelligent, jovial man; a good sense of humor and well educated and prosperous, successful, suddenly slumps over his desk and dies of a heart attack. His wife is heartbroken. She has no hope. He had none. So she goes off to the witch of Endor and pays $50 to some weird sister to get her in touch with her husband. And the weird sister goes into some kind of trance and foams at the mouth and turns pale and pretty soon, the grief-stricken and now delighted widow hears her husband speaking back from the other world.
But you know, here’s the strange thing. I’ve read a lot of those reports of those seances. That’s what the plural is, that where they talk back from the other world. And they always make a man sound like an idiot. Have you ever noticed that? He may have been a perfectly intelligent man. He may have had a good education, loved good music, loved good literature, had a good library and been literate and able to make himself understood in the best circles, but as soon as he dies and his wife goes to a spiritist, he talks like a mumbling, jumbling idiot. Always, it’s the same. That in itself would cancel it out for me. I don’t think a man would be dumber after he’s dead than he was before he died. I can’t see how he’d get that way.
I remember one time in a bookstore seeing a book that was supposed to have been written by the spirit of Shakespeare. One of these weird sisters got in tune with Shakespeare’ spirit. But Shakespeare wrote himself some more sonnets. And he wrote them through the mouth or through the pen of this weird sister and she wrote them down and published them. I saw the book.
Well now, I happen to have read Shakespeare a little now and again and have read and mulled over and memorized his sonnets, a good many of them, so when I came to this, you could only smile. And out of the weeds of her own subconscious, she had raked the old dead leaves, the tattered bits of what she’d remembered and wrote them down as sonnets and said Shakespeare was talking back from the other world. Shakespeare would have been ashamed of it. He would never have allowed it to be printed. She was a victim of her own subconscious.
So, if you don’t count on anything, I say don’t count on anything the spiritists say. Don’t count on anything anybody says unless they can offer proof. If a man die, shall he live? I don’t know, but if a man live, I know he will die. But if he dies, is he going to live? No proof. Nobody’s ever come back and said, here I am. Yes, it’s so.
But listen now. We go back to our text. There lived a Man. That Man was born as no other man was ever born. That Man was born by what the theologians call the Virgin birth. The shadow of the Holy Spirit shall be, of the Holy One, shall be upon thee and the Spirit shall overshadow thee, and that Holy Thing which is born of thee shall be called the Son of God, born without human father of a virgin mother. Born in Bethlehem of Judea in those days of Herod the king.
And when He was born, they came from heaven above to celebrate. They came from the Far East riding their camels to celebrate. The shepherds came in off the fields to celebrate. Something had happened in history, something different from anything that had ever happened before. And they called his name Jesus. And that Man grew to manhood and began to do a work such as none other had ever done. He did a work of healing and opening eyes of the blind, unstopping deaf ears, stilling waves, rebuking winds, walked a complete Victor and Master in the world. And He spake as no other man spake.
So, even after the passing of nearly 2000 years, His teachings rate higher than the teachings of any other religionist that has ever lived. This Man was different from any other man. And when He died, He died as no other Man died. For every man has died for his own sin, but He says, which of you convicteth Me of sin? And his whole life showed that there was no sin there.
This Lord Jesus was different from other men. After He had died and been completely and clear dead, and it was known that He was dead. And He was taken stiff down from the cross, rigor mortis in every cell of that sacred body. They wrapped Him up and laid Him in a tomb, and there He stayed three days. And then He appeared after His decease and His resurrection and revealed Himself to Mary and Peter and the 500 brethren and to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. In other words, God took out of the hands of reason the question of whether if a man died, he shall live again.
He knew that if you can give a reason in favor of something, somebody else can give her a reason against it. He knew that if this school of thought says yes, this school of thought can cancel it out by saying no. He knew that. So, He took the matter of a future life out of the hands of human reason. He canceled out the human brain and said, you don’t have to cudgel your brain and ask yourself questions. You don’t have to invite the considered opinion of the wise and the great of the century. I will demonstrate it to you.
And so, this Man walked out of the grave alive. He had said, because I live ye shall also live. And if He had broken down in the first part of the sentence, we’d have broken down in the last part of it. He said, I’ll live and you’ll live. And because I live, you live. But if He hadn’t lived, we couldn’t live. But He did live and now we can live.
And so, our hope of immortality rests not upon reason. It rests not upon the gracious and kindly thinking of a Socrates. It rests not upon the weird efforts of a spirit that is to penetrate the veil and bring back messages from another world. It rests upon demonstration. He did rise. He did come out of the grave. He did stand up tall and strong and alive forevermore. He did speak to His disciples. He did send the Holy Ghost down in confirmation of His resurrection. He did. And that same Holy Spirit is alive in the world today. And red and yellow, black and white around the world this very hour when I’m talking are united in the Spirit of one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Father, one hope, one atonement, and one glorious future.
And before He died, He foretold His resurrection and did exactly what He had foretold. He did exactly what He had foretold. He also told and foretold that men should live again. The human mind is caught between hope and fear, hope that we may and fear that we will not. But Jesus Christ said, don’t worry your head about it. Let not your heart be troubled. He knew their troubled hearts and their worry about immortality in the future. Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God.
Why do we always go to take that text to a funeral? That text is like cut flowers always at a funeral. And so, we hesitate from using it because it’s attended all the funerals since Jesus said it. Let not your heart be troubled. Why was he saying that? Because he was going away from them and he was going the only way men can go. He was going by the way of death and the tomb. But He was coming back again, and said, do you believe in God, believe also in Me. And nineteen verses later said, because I live ye shall live also. And He foretold that His friends should rise again. He told them he’d meet them again. He said, I’ll see you. I’ll go before you and I’ll see you and I will prepare a place for you and kept throwing into their minds, as they were able to take it, little bits of glorious truth, telling them and foretelling and predicting. And then He died and rose and fulfilled His part of it. And don’t you think if He fulfilled His part of it, He’ll fulfill our part of it? I think so. And he said, because I live ye shall live also.
So, He is our demonstrated proof. My dear friend, your hope of immortality rests with Jesus Christ. It rests with Him, syncs with Him, rises with Him, lives with Him, or dies with Him. For nobody else has ever done what He did, no other teacher, no other teacher. Oh, I know, Zoroaster was a great teacher. Zoroaster died and nobody ever claimed he rose again. So, all that he taught never was demonstrated, and it can’t be demonstrated, because he never came back to demonstrate.
I talked, as I said last week, I talked in Toledo a week before last to an educated Hindu who came to see me. He heard me preach five times, he come to hear me. I took it as something that he would and he did and brought his prayer books with him with his gods, and explained to me with great tenderness, it was Krishna, his God. Where’s Krishna? Buddha, where’s Buddha? They all died and they all stayed there. Where’s Mrs. Eddie? Where’s Joseph Smith? Where are they. They’re all gone.
I remember back there years ago, that when the tribes of Israel were in the wilderness, and God was getting them sorted out and getting some order out of the chaos, that the Exodus, he said, now, the Levites, would be the priestly tribe. And he said the Aaronic tribe, the Aaronic family is going to be the high priestly family. And some of them got angry and said, why should ye sons of Aaron, why should you take so much upon you? Why should you make priests out of the Aaronic family and not out of the rest of us, of Judah and the rest, Dan and Gad.
So, God said, Moses, have every one of the tribes of Israel cut off a rod. Let them go to a tree and cut off a piece of the tree, a branch, a rod, trim it, trim it, trim it all off, and then put it here in the holy box. And then the next day, go get them. Mark them first so there’ll be identified and the one that blooms, that’s the high priestly tribe, the high priestly family. So, everybody cut himself a rod, and they took it and put it in that holy place. They waited with taught nerves to see what the morning would bring. And the next morning they went and reverently opened it and looked, and lo, eleven rods lay cold and lifeless. And one rod had burst into bloom with flowers and that settled it. The one that can die and live is the high priests.
Jesus Christ stood among men. There had been Moses and Isaiah and David and Jeremiah and Solomon and all the rest of them. Now He comes. And they say, who does He think He is? He talks bigger than Moses talks. He makes David sound small. He outtalks Isaiah. Who does he think He is? And God said, put them all in the grave together, put them all down in the grave and whoever comes out and blooms and blossoms and is fragrant in the morning, that will be my Christ. And on that morning, only one man came forth. Moses still lay in the dust. And Isaiah with all his silver tongue, still laying the dust. And David with his harp still lay in the dust. But the son of God walked in the garden and said, Mary, and she shouted back, Rabboni. She knew He had come out.
So, God Almighty has caused his high priests to bloom and bring forth fruit and fragrance and demonstrated who He is, and that the whole world can know that if a man die, he’ll live again. Live again not in theory. Live again not because it can be proved by science or by philosophy. We live again because a man did live again; because the rod of Aaron blossomed and brought forth through truth.
I live, ye shall live also. And He said, I ascend to my Father and your Father. And we are even as He. This verse, our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, our light affliction. Paul, what’s the matter, our light affliction? Don’t you know that some of the Christians you’re writing to have lost everything? Don’t you know they’ve lost property. They’ve lost their family ties. Their wives or husbands or children have walked out on them, these Christians. He said that it’s all right. It’s a light affliction. It’s nothing compared with what Jesus endured. Which is but for a moment.
But Paul, don’t you know, Bunyan was in jail 14 years. You yourself in jail many years all told. And look, He says, ah, but it’s but for a moment. It’s but for the moment. You see everything is relative. And when you sit 14 years in prison over it against eternity with God. Why, I think your memory would hold it. I don’t suppose John Bunyan even can remember Bedford Jail now. You know, little things that happen only last two or three minutes, you tend to forget them. And what’s 14 years in Bedford Jail along with an eternity at the right hand of God?
And those light afflictions work for us far more in exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Because I live, ye shall live also.
Let me read to you a hymn as I close. Jesus lives and so shall I. Death thy sting is gone forever. Jesus lives and nothing now from my Savior’s love can sever. Jesus lives no longer now can thy terror death appall me. Jesus lives and well I know from the dead He will recall me. Jesus lives to Him the throne over all the world is given. I shall go where he is gone, live and reign with Him in Heaven. Jesus lives my heart knows well, not from me His love can sever. Life nor death nor powers of hell. tear me from His keeping ever. Jesus is my confidence. Because I live, ye shall live also.
In the third chapter of John, just four lines. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night. Since that is all I intend to talk about tonight, that’s all I’m going to read. I’m to speak tonight of the man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus. Out of the thousands of millions of people who have lived in the world, and out of the hundreds of thousands of Jews who’ve lived in the world, even hundreds of millions of them, and out of the tens of thousands of Pharisees, the Holy Spirit, let’s say, a pencil of light falls upon the head of one man, Nicodemus, the Pharisee of Israel. And the Holy Spirit who wrote the book and who is rigidly economical in his use of words, nevertheless, devotes twenty-one verses to this story of Nicodemus who visited Jesus, what he said to Christ and what Christ replied to him.
Now this if nothing else would lead us to believe that this is an important story. We’re not done with it tonight. It is vastly important that God ever put it in the Scriptures at all. And therefore, we want to approach it respectfully, reverently and with an inquiring mind. It says that this man Nicodemus was a Pharisee. I think the man Paul, later best described the Pharisees in a phrase that is almost comical. He says these people all know if they would tell, how I lived all my life in the most strictest sense of our religion. The most strictest sect was the Pharisees, the most strictest of all. That double negative doesn’t bother God at all and I’m not going to let it bother me. It means that a Pharisee followed the strictest, straightest letter of Judaism. In addition to being a Pharisee, a fundamentalist par excellence, he was also a ruler. That is, he was a member of the Sanhedrin.
Now, it’s well known, but I’ll throw it in for the sake of those who might not know, that the Sanhedrin was the supreme governing body in Israel, not quite equivalent to our Supreme Court, but very much like it. Because the Sanhedrin had some executive as well as judicial doings. There were seventy of them, and they were composed of the high priest, who was the president, and all the ex-high priests that might be living, and the elders and the legal assessors, and all these, says the books, all these were drawn from the privileged families, whatever that might mean.
The point is, that not every Tom, Dick and Jerry got into the Sanhedrin. He had to be a VIP, which I understand in our day is a very important person, and he had to be in order to get in. He had to be a high priest or an ex-high priest, or an elder or a scribe, or somebody at least from the privileged families. And these members could be either Pharisees or Sadducees just as we can have on our Supreme Court in Washington, men who are either Republicans or Democrats. We can have in our Congress, Republicans or Democrats, and the way we have it, they’re usually fairly well-balanced. Sometimes, only one or two will turn the balance between one and the other, Pharisees and Sadducees there in Washington. But we’re getting a parallel there anyhow.
Now, the Scripture says that Nicodemus came to Jesus; there were seventy of them. And Nicodemus came to Jesus out of seventy, one came. Why? He was separated from Christ by all the wide gulf, that separated all the other sixty-nine, high position, and Jesus was a common carpenter; religious bigotry, and Jesus was anything but a straight-laced bigot. His religious philosophy was as broad as all of Palestine, and you could take in the Mediterranean too. And then pride of his higher position for remember, he belongs to the privileged family, and so did they all. And then, remember the prejudice, the sharp prejudice that an educated Jewish member of the Sanhedrin had against an uneducated fisherman, or an uneducated carpenter who lived among the fishermen, and who had in his little group, some fishermen without any education.
Now, why did Nicodemus cross that gulf? What mysterious power laid hold on the man Nicodemus and not on the other sixty-nine? And why he and not they, or why he and not somebody else? Is the answer simply that he was more sensitive to God’s voice than the rest? Could I repeat again, what I said only a few weeks ago about the prevenient grace of God. The mysterious secret working of God in the souls of men, turning them toward Himself, influencing them toward Himself, and magnetically attracting them toward Himself. That’s the prevenient work of God in the human breast, without which there never could be a conversion.
And I wonder if this man Nicodemus was simply more sensitive to this operation of God than the other sixty-nine, because nobody in a thousand years of jumping up and down on the family Bible could ever make me believe that God showed anything like partiality, that he picked out Nicodemus, and let the other sixty-nine go. The heart of God that yearned over Nicodemus, yearned over the other sixty-nine too, but only Nicodemus came. Why? I think that it was because he was more sensitive to God’s voice.
I am talking to some people right now. You’ve been reared in Christian homes. You’ve been brought up in this Sunday school. You’ve cut your first baby tooth on the back of a hymn book when your mother wasn’t watching you. And still, you’re not right with God or you make some kind of a halfway profession, but you’ll never be much of a Christian if you’re a Christian at all. And the reason is, you lack sensitivity to the in workings of God. It wasn’t because this man was more receptive to spiritual impulses.
Now, some people are more receptive than others to spiritual impulses. Some people are simply extroverts, and you can’t reach them. They’re not sensitive to anything. They live more or less on the level of the stomach. But this man though, he was a Pharisee. And though he was a member of the Sanhedrin and though he had all the high pride with the rest and position and prejudice and bigotry and all that cursed the rest of them too. There must have been a receptivity here to spiritual impulses. I want to keep that alive inside of my soul, brethren. I’d rather lose a leg and hobble along the rest of my life than to lose my spiritual sensitivity. I want to keep it within me.
And then he must have had a humility that the other ones didn’t have. You know, some people are not ever going to get right with God. And the reason is, they don’t have humility. They simply will not humble themselves. Some of us go to this church and not much of anyplace else. And we shuffle in and out of here and we forget that the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, this particular church, it pays its bills, and it’s honored that way. And its people behave themselves fairly well. And not many go to jail from this church. But nevertheless, in spite of all that, we’re considered to be just a little bit cross-eyed and just a little bit off center. We’re eccentrics. It takes humility to cast in your lot with people who are possibly considered as being necessary that that they see a psychiatrist, or that they do something to balance themselves. We’re off balance.
Now, Jesus had that kind of crowd all around Him. He Himself was considered to be a man, a very strange kind of man. And the people that followed Him were considered, of course, also to be very strange. Now, here was a member of the High Court, and He had to have a lot of humility to humble Himself and cast in His lot with the plain people.
I got a bit of amusement out of a news report that came in over the wires here not so very long ago. That one of the high officials in India was apologizing because he said the news had gone out all over the world that Christian missionaries were being hindered in India. Now, he said, I want you to know that is not true. He said, we are not hindering the propagation of the Christian doctrines in India. And we understand that a few low caste people have believed. I could just hear the pride in that fellow’s voice as this brahman spoke patronizingly, the condescension, about those low castes, that he understood a few had believed in Jesus Christ and he wasn’t going to get in their way. Oh, the bigotry and the pride there. You don’t have to go to Chicago’s Gold Coast or to the Midway. You can go to India or Africa or anywhere, and you will find that there is human pride, and it feasts on almost anything that will make it fat.
Now he crossed over this gulf. And the Scripture says that he came by night, evidently feeling his way. Because you see, Nicodemus well knew what it would cost him. He knew that to follow Christ would cost him something.
I know my friend Reiny Barth too well to believe that he would ever go to Germany and tell the people there, just come, just come, just come as you are, just come and it will cost you nothing. The price has all been paid, just come. Brethren, there is always a price connected with salvation. And our missionaries, I know too well, to believe that they would ever go to any part of the world and simply say, you don’t have to do a thing.
There is a program on the air, and I get the magazine also; somebody sends it to me. Brother, if it’s you, quit sending it. It doesn’t mean a thing to me. They send it in plain paper without a return address. And this fellow has a philosophy of faith. He says everybody has faith. Everybody has faith. Now, that’s point number one. Build on that. Everybody has faith. Everybody in the wide world has faith. And all you have to do is turn your faith in the right direction, toward Christ, and it’s all fixed up. Now, his basic premise is as false as the devil, because Paul says not all men have faith. Faith is not a plant that grows by the way, that everybody has. Faith is a rare plant that grows in a penitent soul only.
And so, the basic teaching that everybody has faith, and all you have to do is use the faith you have is simply humanism in the guise of Christianity. For the faith everybody has is a humanistic faith and it is not the faith that saves. And it is not that faith which is a gift of God to an open heart. This man had a faith that cost him something and he was feeling his way. They say that the man, now, this has a question mark after it, but some scholars believe that this Nicodemus was Nicodemus Ben Gurion, and Nicodemus Ben Gurion was a brother to Flavius Josephus who was of course, as you know, one of the great Jewish historians of the time, who perhaps is the most famous of all the Jewish historians.
And this Nicodemus was one of the three richest men in all Jerusalem. And yet history tells us that later on, the daughter of Nicodemus, they’re one of the three richest men in Jerusalem, and brother to Flavius Josephus possibly, was found picking up corn off of the street where the horses had thrown it out of their feedbags as they traveled down the street. And picking it up and roasting it in order to get something to eat. Why, because when Nicodemus finally threw in his lot with Jesus Christ, they took everything he had, confiscated his property and turned him out as if he were the scum of the earth. And his daughter had to pick up corn on the street to get anything for her stomach. That’s why he came by night. There’s been a tremendous lot of wind wasted on this man, and a great deal of abuse hurled upon him, abuse that he never deserved at all because he came to Jesus by night.
He came feeling his way. He came inquiring. He came asking questions. He wasn’t sure. He only knew that he was spiritually sensitive, and he wanted help. And he also knew the reputation this man had, and he knew what would happen to him and his family and his position and his money and his reputation if he cast his lot with this man.
Now his coming then suggests only one thing. His coming suggests that the soul of man is too nobly conceived and too high born ever to be satisfied with anything less than Jesus Christ. His coming suggests that only Jesus Christ is enough. And I can stand without any embarrassment and say to you that you will find either now or later in your life or at death or in the world to come, that only Jesus Christ is enough.
Now, out of all the rulers, one ruler came. Out of all the Jews, this Jew came. And I want to point out that those who came to Jesus Christ our Lord, came of the various levels of life, and their reason for coming was always about the same.
Let me mention some others that came to Jesus. Here was the rich young ruler that everybody knows about. Now, here, this rich young ruler was an example of a model man because he had four things or three things anyway that everybody might want to emulate. He had wealth and morality and position.
And I can hear a mother when her little boy got out of line, holding up this rich young ruler that lived around the corner, and say, now, why don’t you try to be like that man. Now, there is a successful Jew. There is a moral man. Nobody’s ever found him doing anything wrong. There is a man of high position which he earned by virtue of study and hard work. And there is a wealthy man, and his wealth has come also from shrewdness and hard bargaining. And here is a young man. If you want to be like anybody, choose this young fellow as your example. I can just hear the mothers in Israel in that day holding up this young fellow.
And yet one word tells the secret of his great disappointment. For notice he had the four things that everybody wants, he had youth. Everybody wants youth and mourn when they begin to lose it. Everybody wants wealth although almost everybody modestly says they only just want enough to get along with. And everybody wants morality. Nobody wants really to be bad. Everybody wants morality, or at least admires it. And everybody would like to have a high position.
Now this young fellow had the four things that are supposed to be desirable, which, if you attain to or obtain, will give you peace of mind. And yet this young ruler came to Jesus, and the language of his question, tipped us off, as they say, gave away what was the matter with the young man. He said, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? There was the answer. That’s what brought the young man, youth. He looked forward to the time when youth would be no more and withered and palsied and shaken with age, he would brush back his few remaining gray hairs and lie down stiffly on the bed from which he should never rise again. He had to have something with eternity in it. And he knew also that his wealth could not help him then, and his morality could not help him then. And he knew that his position would have to be given up and his place filled by another.
So he came saying, What shall I do for eternity? What shall I do that I might have that eternal life, that eternal quality, which I don’t now have. Oh, my friends, the world is filled with liars. And David didn’t need to apologize when he said, every man is a liar. Because until we are really converted to Christ and the holiness of Christ enters our heart, we are part and parcel of a mighty deception. And that deception is, that you can have peace of mind and be relatively happy and get along fine and make a big success of your human life if you have wealth and morality in high position.
But it’s all false, as the rich young ruler shows us, because there’s one word missing from it all and that is, eternal. If it could be said of him, he had eternal youth. If it could be said of him that his wealth was eternal wealth, if it could be said of him that his position was everlasting, then we might say that wealth and youth and morality and position might be enough for a man. But the word eternal is not there. You have to read it in. The man knew that God had set eternity in his heart. That man knew that his soul was too nobly conceived and too highly born and too much of a universe within itself ever to be satisfied with anything that didn’t have eternity in the middle of it.
Let’s look at another character that came, and that was the Ethiopian chancellor found in the eighth chapter of Acts. Now, he had something else. He had authority, prestige and religion. Read that story sometime and think about what I have said. He had authority, for he was a man of great authority under Queen Candace, who was queen of Ethiopia. And of course, he had the prestige that went with it. And then in addition to that, he was a Jewish proselyte. He was as black as could be, for he was an Ethiopian. He wasn’t a Jew, but he had joined the Jewish religion. And no doubt had undergone the rites that had made him a Jew.
And there was some feast or other going on up in Jerusalem, so he went up there to pray, being a chancellor of the exchequer and the big shot in Ethiopia, of course, he could get permission from Queen Candace. And she said, why certainly go. So, he went and took in the religious festival in Jerusalem among the Jews. And they admired him and admitted him in and took him in among them as a proselyte Jew. And still, not all of this newfound religion, and not all of the swinging of the censors in Jerusalem, and not all of the chanting of the priests and not all of the beauty of the form of their religion could make his heart sing. He couldn’t rejoice. His heart was too discriminating, that man, but when he had met Jesus through faith and the man Philip had preached Jesus unto him, then he immediately says the Scripture went on his way rejoicing.
Now what was it that gave rejoicing to the heart of the Ethiopian chancellor, the eunuch, who served under Queen Candace, and he couldn’t get it anyplace else? It was nothing else then that he found the one of whom Moses and the prophets did write. The Ethiopian eunuch also confirms this, that Nicodemus suggests only Jesus is enough. Religion won’t do. It’s amazing how many things religious people want to do to you. Thank God I’ve never had but two things done to me yet. One, I was baptized, and the other, I had men lay their hands on my empty head and ordained me. And that’s the only two things they’ve ever done to me.
But you know, it’s astonishing how many things they can do to you in churches. They can start when you’re eight days old with circumcision and end up with last rites when you’re 108 years old. And all the time, there’ll be shooting something into you or rubbing something on you or putting something around your neck or making you eat something, or lay off of eating it, or something else. Manipulate you and Swedish massage your soul all the time. And when it’s all done, you’re just what you were, you’re just a massaged sinner, that’s all
When you’re finished, you’re simply a sinner, that didn’t eat, fish, and if you ate fish, then you’re a sinner the did eat fish. And if you made the long journey to the temple, and you’re a sinner that went to the temple. And if you didn’t, then you’re a sinner that didn’t go to the temple. And if you attended the church, then you’re a sinner that went to the church. If your name is on the roll book, then you’re a sinner whose name is on the roll book. And if it isn’t, then you’re a sinner whose name isn’t on the roll book.
Measure it any direction and approach it from anywhere, and we’re sinners, still, after religion has done all, it can do to us. They put us on the roll and educate us and train us and teach us and instruct us and discipline us and when it’s all over, there is still something that says, eternity is in my heart, and I don’t find anything to satisfy us. So you will be searching and searching forever until you find Christ, for only Christ is enough.
Then I think now, I’ll bring this to a close. Don’t get too optimistic, though, for it may be some little time, but I will take as long as you need.
For this woman, Lydia, I’m interested in Lydia. Now Lydia was a career woman. And she was born out of due time. We have our businesswomen now, businesswomen, this and that. Scripture made women to have homes and bear children and keep their husbands happy. But we have now career women and businesswomen, and I suppose it’s all right. And God knows I can’t do anything about it. They just look at me and shrug, push past me and take my seat in the bus. So, I can’t do anything about it.
But I can only say that the businesswomen, they told us back there a few years back those poor women had been trodden down, they said. They said, we’ve trampled the poor ladies under our feet and their faces show the marks of hobnails where we men trampled them down into the ground. And so, they passed an amendment. What was it, the seventh amendment, and it emancipated the ladies and set them free. And now they can go vote and not know what they’re voting for just like the men. And we set the women free to be just as bad as a man and just as miserable. We’ve set the women free to curse and swear and tell dirty stories and smoke filthy cigarettes and run around and come in when they please. We’ve set women free to make nasty political speeches and vote blind. They say they’re free, but they’re not free. They’re simply free to be bad and miserable. of course, they’re free to be good too, if they come to God in Christ.
But the so-called freedom of the modern career woman needs to be reexamined in the light of history and in the light of the female heart. But anyway, apart from that, Lydia came. Now, Lydia had what every woman is supposed to have when she’s perfectly satisfied to have. She’s free now. No more of this being an appendage to a man. No more of this simply being a help meet, strung on as an afterthought. She now takes her place along with bearded men.
All right, Lydia, you were born out of new time. You were a seller of purple; and she traveled. She lived in one town and Paul found her in another, and she was converted, and she came to Jesus too. I wonder why? Ladies, really now, if you were to tell me the truth about this and and not put on that front, and just break right down, is your newfound freedom enough? Is your freedom to yawn and stretch and and be a man if you want to, is it enough? No, you know it isn’t. Lydia found it wasn’t. And every woman if when she finally wakes up, she’ll find it isn’t. Only Jesus Christ is enough.
Now, Lydia found that out. And she came and gave her heart to Jesus Christ, and she was so delighted with what she found that she said to Paul, she had a big house, and she said, Paul, if you think I’m really a convert now. She was used to the Jewish way of looking at women. And they didn’t count women, they only counted men, you know. They belonged to the patriarchal way of looking at things. But she’d broken over the fence. She was one philly that had jumped over the corral. And she should have been the happiest Jewess in all Asian Minor. But in place of that she came humbly to Paul and said, would you tell me about this One. And he told her, and she said, now do you think I’m a believer, come to my house and make it your headquarters. There was Lydia.
And I think of another man as the last, and that is Nathaniel, the plain man. Now I’ve searched about this fellow Nathaniel, and I don’t know who he is. There’s not much said about him and the only thing I know about him is that he was a fellow full of prejudice like any man on the street. He thought nobody could come out of Nazareth. And yet he was a man completely simple. Now, psychology tells us that if we would be simple and sincere and put away strain and pretense and just relax and cast out fear, we will be real persons. If any of you have read widely enough in liberal religious literature to catch on to that real person? Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote a book called, How to be a Real Person.
And being a real person is to be a great, big, glory, Adam of a man or a evil woman, and be all you are; not have any little corners that aren’t developed, not have any inhibitions. But get out in the moonlight and bay the moon and show that you’re a man. Stand up on your hind legs and beat your hairy chest and tell the world today I am a man. Well, that’s what they tell us. Just be a man, be a plain man. Be a real person, simple and sincere and honest and direct and fearless.
And the high priest of that kind of goo was none other than Walt Whitman, that dirty, unkempt, smelly poet of the eastern seaboard. And in his Leaves of Grass, which is the Bible of a great many fellows now, in his Leaves of Grass, he celebrates himself. He says and writes long poems addressed to himself. If this wasn’t a church, I would just bellow and show you how it sounds. But he was a man if you please. And he-man if you please, a Tarzan of America.
Well, Nathaniel was a simpler man, but he was what the psychologists say we ought to be, unafraid, simple, direct, not covering anything, inhibited, humble and plain. And yet, the sun wouldn’t come out for Nathaniel. He lived under a shadow and just couldn’t get the sun to come out. And then somebody came and said, come and see what we’ve seen and find what we found. And they came and found Jesus, and then the sun came out and a new life dawned. And Nathaniel became, according to the scholars, Bartholomew. And he became a follower of Jesus and lives today in the memories of thousands. But it started when he cried, my Lord and my God, and when he turned from his simplicity and his relaxed position.
Now, I got another book last week telling me to relax. And I get letters telling me, now, Brother Tozer, you must relax. If I was as relaxed as all of my friends want me to be, you’d have to sop me up with a sponge. You couldn’t get a hold of me. I’d just be too slippery. But they say, relax and you will be alright.
Now, brethren, Nathaniel was relaxed man. But the sun wouldn’t come out and the joy wouldn’t come. Why? Because man sinned and broke his fellowship with God, lost the gold from his spirit and wandered away like a sheep from the fold, like a son from the household, pulled himself free like a limb from a tree to wither on the ground. And we simply don’t have in us what we need. The way of man is not in himself says the Holy Ghost. Only Jesus Christ is enough, in all of these men’s sake.
Now, there were many rulers in Israel. Why do we find old Nicodemus and the rich young ruler came? There were many women, no doubt, who were sellers of purple and career woman even in that day. Why did only Lydia attach herself to Paul? There were many plain men who walked the streets of Jerusalem and other towns in the Holy Land. Why was it Nathaniel whose name is put here? Was it, I repeat, some secret working of God in the human breast?
Oh, friends, I believe in that secret working. I believe in the secret working of God in the human breast. If I might be allowed a minute of testimony. There is something in the line from which I come that is not religious; moral, on a certain level, but not religious, cold, earthly, profane. And it runs down both lines of my father and my mother. Moral high standards, but completely without a thought of God. God might as well not exist; profane, secular, without a spark of desire after God. Will you tell me why, at 17, I surrounded by unbelief 100%, should find my way to my mother’s attic and kneel on my knees and give my heart to Jesus Christ and be converted. without anybody’s help? Without a human being, without anybody with a marked New Testament, showing me how easy it is. And without any friends to place an arm over my shoulder and pray beside me. That conversion was as real as any man’s conversion has ever been. You tell me why? I don’t know why.
My little mother, cold as stone. My high-strung English father, utterly without regard to God. And none of the members of my family cared for God. I found Christ Jesus my Lord. Why? There is such a thing as the secret working of God in the human breast. There is such a thing as the prevenient workings of the Holy Ghost within the human personality. If you feel the tug of God in your breast, what a happy man you could be. What riches are yours.
If you could be given Fort Knox and the government would supply the trucks to haul all the buried gold to your door. You couldn’t be as rich as you are. If you feel the inner tug of God in your bosom and hear the secret whisper that not very many men hear, to be on God’s prospect list. To be on God’s active list, that God is working, in whose breast God is working is a marvelous thing.
And if you You’ve got a trace of it left, in God’s name, get up tonight and do something about it. If you feel a pull in your bosom this night, do something about. Remember, a thousand men may work where you work and only you feel that tug. God yearns over them all, but they won’ listen. They won’t hear and they kill it within them. If it’s still alive in you, thank God and follow the light. Chicagoans around us by the thousands and even millions, and how few are they who feel the pull and hear the voice and realize that God is speaking. And you don’t have to have a course in theology or know a thousand things about the Bible. You only have to know that you’re a sinner and Christ is a Savior. But those two things together and you have met God’s condition. You’re a sinner and He’s the Savior.
I say the secret working of God; remember one thing. It’s possible to feel that secret working and ruin the whole business. Look at the rich young ruler. He came. He felt it, pulled by his longing for eternity. Young? Yes. But not eternally young. Rich? Yes, but not eternally rich. Moral? Yes, but how could he be sure that his morality was eternal morality? High position? Yes, but not eternal high position. And his soul says, O God, why did you put eternity in my heart and then give me time? I must have eternity. He went looking for a man that could teach him how his eternity might be safe. And he found that Man in Christ Jesus the Lord.
And Jesus stopped and turned from everybody else and talked to this shiny-eyed inquirer. But the last Jesus saw of him was when he was looking sadly at the back of His neck as He walked away. It isn’t enough to be a recipient of the yearnings of God. It isn’t enough to feel the tug of the Spirit. It isn’t enough to feel a longing for heaven and God. It isn’t enough. The rich young ruler proved that. He had all, but he went away. He loved the world.
If you feel that tug within you tonight, cherish it and then follow it. Follow it immediately. Come every soul by sin oppressed. There’s mercy with the Lord. Come every soul by sin oppressed. The Lord will give you rest and give you peace. I want tonight to put out this invitation. If the Holy Spirit has spoken to your heart, come. Come any way you can come. Nicodemus came by night. Someone else came another way. But they came. Come, Will you? For, remember, only Jesus Christ is enough. Have the sensitivity to hear it. Have the humility to obey it.
The Brevity of this Life and the Vanity of This World
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
September 26, 1953
Tonight, I choose a psalm, a familiar and favorite Psalm of mine, the 39th. When David established worship many years before, it tells us in 1 Chronicles that they cried and said, blessed be the Lord God of Israel forever; and all the people said, amen and praise the Lord. So he left there before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, Asaph and his brethren to minister before the Ark continually as every day’s work required.
And then he says that Zadok the priest and his brethren priests before the tabernacle of the Lord, the high place that was at Gibeon to offer burnt offerings unto the Lord upon the altar of the burnt offering continually, morning and evening. To do according to all that is written in the law of the Lord, which commanded Israel. And with them Heman and Jeduthun, and the rest that were chosen, who were expressed by name, to give thanks to the Lord, because his mercy endureth for ever; And with them Heman and Jeduthun with trumpets and cymbals for those that should make a sound, and with musical instruments of God. And the sons of Jeduthun were porters. And all the people departed every man to his house: and David returned to bless his house. And here was a man by the name of Jeduthun with his trumpet. And his business was, to stand by when the priest offered a sacrifice, Jeduthun raised the trumpet and led the brethren in singing the praises of God because His mercy endureth forever.
Now, David was not unappreciative of this singing brother, his trumpet playing brother. So when he wrote the 39th Psalm, He dedicated it to Jeduthun. And it says to the chief musician, even to Jeduthun, a psalm of David. David wrote it when he was old.
Now, let’s read it. I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked is before me. I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred. My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue, Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is: that I may know how frail I am. Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah. Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them. And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in thee. Deliver me from all my transgressions: make me not the reproach of the foolish. I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it. Remove thy stroke away from me: I am consumed by the blow of thine hand. When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more.
Now, there is a little heavy note here, and it would be relatively easy to bog down in this psalm, for the man who wrote it was not in a jovial mood. This is the prayer of a man of wide experience and great intelligence. This man had obviously lived a long time. He was not a novice. He was not a new fellow lately come up, but he had lived a long time. And there were many things, no doubt, that he used to think he knew, that he wasn’t so sure about now. That the mellowing influences of time had gone over his mind, like the sun over the fields and forests in the fall of the year. And David knew there were some things that he didn’t know. Blessed was David when he found that out.
In Rochester last week, in my closing morning message, the chairman got up and said, now, we have a few minutes before closing time. And if any of you would like to ask Mr. Tozer a question, be brief with your questions. He hadn’t told me that, so I got up and I said, Mr. Chairman, you’re 25 years too late to turn the meeting over to me like this. Twenty-five years ago, I could have answered any question anybody here could have asked, but now I beg to be excused. So they dismissed the meeting.
It’s a blessed thing to find out that you don’t know something, and to be joyful about it and buoyant, cheerful, and know that you don’t know it, and be perfectly willing to wait until that day when with a touch of His tender fingers, God steps your IQ up 3,000,000%. And then you will be so blessed and so intelligent, that looking back upon your earthly sojourn, you will think you were a moron for sure. For just one touch of the wonderful fingers of the Holy Ghost, and you will know as you are known.
Now, David knew that. And so he didn’t presume to all knowledge. He was a very humble man. And he said in this 39th Psalm that he kept his mouth shut. He kept it, he used the word dumb here. We use it, not in the sense David did. He meant silent. He said I was dumb with silence. And yet, when he tried to keep still, he couldn’t keep still, because the fervor in his heart made him talk. He said, when I was musing the fire burned and then I spake with my tongue. If we could have it a rule of our lives, that we never talked on spiritual subjects until the fire has burned. And then out of the burning fire of inward experience, we spake with our tongues.
They say there’s an old saying that some preachers preach because they have to say something. And some preachers preach because they have something to say. There’s only a matter of juggling words around and you have the same words. But the difference is as wide as the ocean between the man who talks because he has to say something.
It’s Saturday night again, so help me, and I’ve got to get ready for tomorrow because they expect me to say something. But this man of God said, I tried to keep from talking. And I was done with silence, and I held my peace even from good. I wouldn’t talk at all, and my heart got hot in me. And while I was musing, the fire burned, and then spake I with my tongue. Now, that was the man of God. He was talking out of a vast experience and a broad knowledge of life.
And now David, when he wrote this Psalm, not only knew certain things, but he had lived certain things. And I want to say to you younger people, that is, younger in years, that there are two kinds of knowledge. There is the knowledge of information and the knowledge of experience. You can go to an encyclopedia and get knowledge. But it takes life to give you experience. You will never know anything really until you’ve lived it.
You can know about a thing by being told about it. You can read about it, but you can’t know it until you have lived through it. That’s why I always insist that it is more important to know less and to live through it than it is to know a great deal more, and never get to it. That’s why we turn out such wooden preachers from a lot of our schools. We take them in, isolate them and cram them, and then ordain them, and put them in a pulpit. And they are like a beetle carrying a bale of cotton. They take a text and it’s just too big for them. They know it. And they’ve got their well-marked Bible there. And they can tell you where it’s found, and maybe give you the Greek or the Hebrew root. But before the people they flounder helplessly because they know so much that they don’t know. They have so much information that they never lived through. Better to be a living dog than a dead lion said the Holy Ghost back in the Old Testament. Better know as much as a little poodle and be alive than to have all your head filled with information and yet be a stuffed lion. It’s better to know a little and know it well.
Well, that’s why a lot of these little old saints that run around are such a blessing to everybody because they don’t know very much. But what they know they know with intensity. It’s the difference between a pile of junk iron in the backyard and a razor blade. A razor blade doesn’t know so much, but it’s mighty sharp and keen and what it does know it knows sharply. But there’s a whole truckload of junk metal in the backyard. But you couldn’t shave with it in thousand years. You couldn’t cut bread with it nor meat. It just lives up there. But the razor is smaller, but it has lived. It has been in the fire and in the heat and under the hammer’s steady beat. I think that’s in a hymn somewhere. And it has lived.
Now, David was a man that had lived. You meet them. We talked so much about Brother Hare. The only thing about Brother Hare is he just lives what he knows, that’s all. So, he lives it. He sat up here in my office and I told him I was going to interview him. I said, I think that some of the things God has been showing you ought to get into print; and I’d like to write it up for you and get the people to reading it. He broke down and began to cry and he said I’m afraid of losing my power with God. He says, I don’t want to lose my power. He said they wanted to send a reporter out to talk to me, but I wouldn’t talk to him. I don’t want to lose my powers he said.
Well, he’s lived it, brother. Now, he hasn’t got a head full of it, but he’s got a heart full and he’s lived it. David lived this. And when you talk to this man or when he talks to you, you don’t need to discount him. He’s been in there. He’s seen it. And now he’s calmly speaking out of a vast background of experience. And here’s what he said. He said I am a stranger and a sojourner as my fathers were.
An intelligent young man or woman usually goes through several stages of development with regard to the past. There is that bright-face, adolescent, early youth experience. When everything more than 10 years old, is old and bearded and passe. Then, as he goes on, he begins to appreciate the things that were. And then he gets if he lives it, gets geared into yesterday.
So to Him there is no yesterday nor tomorrow and a today but an everlasting now and He sees how wondrous it is to be geared up and back into the eternal yesterdays. And He goes marching through time, like a fish through the ocean with time and eternity all around about Him. And His appreciation for our yesterdays as one man call it called it grows upon him as gets older. You can always tell a novice in the things of God by His attitude toward the past.
And you can tell a rich, ripe saint by his attitude toward the past. It is not that the rich, right saint believes it because they wore their coats up like this back in 1904, that we ought to wear them that way now. It isn’t that He glorifies the incidentals of the past. That’s not it. He doesn’t glorify the buggy and then the spinning wheel and the incidentals of yesterday. But He glorifies the residium of gold and goodness and intelligence and piety and spirituality that has piled up like a great mound of rich minerals. And he lives in that and by that and out from that, and his tomorrows are grounded in his yesterday’s, and he rests down on his todays knowing that he’s got the backing of his yesterdays. That is experience, spiritual experience and it’s good to have that.
If I were a layman, you know what I’d like to have for a pastor? I’d like to have a young man with the experience of an old man, and then I’d be all set. Wouldn’t I? But you know, you can’t get them that way. You have to take a young man and then pray for him and live along with him till you break him in. And the young pastor is usually like a new shoe, all right with a lot of potentialities and a good future, but a little painful because he knows more than he’s lived through.
And then the old fellow when he gets too old and begins to die down from the top. Then he becomes a problem maybe. But it would be wonderful, wouldn’t it, if you could have a young man with a young man’s bright-eyed enthusiasm with the experience and mellowness of the older man. There have been a few. I believe Murray McCheyne was a man like that. David Brainard was a man like that. But usually, it takes the average one of us with limited intelligence, it takes us half a lifetime to learn to live and then another half to get ready to die.
So, the world doesn’t really get much good out of us. We serve an apprenticeship and about the time that we’re to be declared ready to go to work, why, they send the wagon around for us. But this man, David, had lived a long time. He’d suffered a lot and he’d wept a lot. Now, I suppose that there isn’t a man in Scripture, that bawled more than David did. Read the book of Psalms and see they’re salty with human tears.
And yet, there wasn’t a bolder, braver man than David. He never ran from anybody. He ran at them. And he was a soldier, a strong soldier. But he was a sensitive man, a man of great inward conflict and fiery zeal and faith that geared into heaven. So, he was a mystical man with heaven very near to his fingertips. You only had to raise his head a little to see over in and the contrast between what he felt he wanted to be and what he was, was always deviling David. Many a night David got a little sleep, but his pillow in the morning was damp with salty tears. He was a man who lived and yet there wasn’t a happier man in the entire Bible as David. The book of Psalms leaps with delight. It leaps with the joyous abandon of a young child picking flowers on a June morning. The Book of Psalms is the happiest book in the entire Bible unless it is Philippians and Philippians, written by Paul, another old man who lived in jail.
Nowadays, you don’t dare talk about death nor jail nor hell nor dying nor old age nor anything serious. People want to be entertained and they want to give back and forth their quips and the, I know the French word but can’t pronounce it. That’s the day we want that, and we say, I liked that fella. He’s a card because he’s a scream. He’s got a wit there. He just tosses the ball of wit around back and forth.
And we want that now but Paul and David and Abraham and the rest of them, the one about whom we preach all the time. They didn’t care so much for the cute saying as they did for the eternal truth. We’re living in the age of the smart aleck now. And it doesn’t make any difference if it’s true, if you can say it in a cute way. Give it a backlash and make it click, why, it’s all well, David said, my days are as a handbreadth.
Now here was David’s estimate of his own life. And I should very much like to cheer you younger people and console you older ones. But I’m preaching the Bible, and the Bible says that the days of a man are as a handbreadth, the breadth of your hand, that’s the days of a man. Now, that is the wise man’s measure of his life. He says it’s just a handbreadth. Yes, I’d be saying, my hand is pretty big. I got big hands from working on a farm until I was 15. So, I take it that that would be five inches across. Let’s call it five inches. Some of you ladies of course, would have a much smaller handbreadth. But David said that the life of a man is but a handbreadth.
We hear the baby has been born. The Robinsons or the Smiths have a little baby, and the news goes around. And we say, what did they call him? Well, they said they called him John. They called him John after an old uncle. So, his name was John, Anderson or Robertson, whichever it was I said.
And so, we have John Robinson. Pretty soon he toddles and after that he talks and then after that he walks right and gets out and plays in the backyard and then goes to school and then gets into high school and then gets into young manhood. And we think it’s been a long time. But it isn’t very long. From the time the announcement goes out, the Robinsons have a new baby. They called him John, God winks His eye once and we read in the newspaper obituary, John Robinson died last night at his home in such and such. The same man and how long has it been? It’s been the wink of God’s eye. It’s been an handbreadth. That’s all.
That’s how long you’re around here. And that’s why I’m a serious preacher. Even though occasionally I spoil it by, what my boys would say is a half witticism. But I’m serious because this is a serious business, my friends. And you and I ought to be serious-minded people. David was, for David said, my life is about a handbreadth. And then he said, I’m a stranger and I’m a sojourner as my fathers were. He’s just here for a little while. David never accepted this world as being his home.
There’s a difference as wide as heaven between the man who is here and accepted as his home and the man who is only sojourning here. In the old country part of the United States where they meet in tents or in camp meetings and have straw. You sometimes hear some marvelous theology packed into some of the old prayers they make. I like to sit and listen. I think God forgives me. I’m not praying. I’m listening.
And I believe that’s all right occasionally. And I like to hear some of those old prayers and some of the dear old sisters who pray, O God, help us to wear this world like a loose garment. I like that very well because that’s it, brother. You can’t get out of the world. Even Jesus said they are in the world. But they wear it as a light garment. It is something that can be zipped down and tossed off when you hear the trumpet. It isn’t something you’re all bound up in. Lazarus in the grave was all bound.
And the Archangel Gabriel couldn’t have taken him away. He had to be unbound. But God never means His revived and redeemed people thus to be bound. He means that we should live here and, in the world, wearing the world like a loose garment, ready to throw it off and go heavenward at the slightest impulse of the Holy Ghost. And he said I am a stranger here. I just came for a little while. I think about people and how much like children we are.
The Bible often likens this to children and uses a child as an example of the profoundest spiritual truth. We’re like a child. We come into the world. We have our little playground, and we have our little front yard. And usually there’s a fence around it, and everybody wishes he was on the other side. And some migrate and get over there. But they find it’s the same as it was on this side of the gate. But there’s a little child. He’s pushed around and disciplined and fed, and he grows some and gets hurt a lot and cries some and laughs some.
And then the evening time comes around, and the little fellow, they tell him now you got to go to bed. But no matter how long they’ve been up, they never want to go to bed. I never saw one yet that ever did. I have seen them little ones fall asleep on their highchair. But that was sheer necessity. That wasn’t the volitional. But little children, they don’t want to go to bed. You always have to shoo them off and run them off to bed. And then tell them stories until you wear them out. To get a child to go to bed; they just don’t want to go to bed.
And God looks down at this little tribe of flesh and blood with all its cares and fears. And he finds that we don’t want to go to bed. We just don’t want to. God says it’s appointed unto man once to die and after that good judgment. God says you have got to go to bed, son. You’re only here for a little while, that’s all. Your life is like a handbreadth, and one of these days you’re going to lie down and sleep, sleep till the morning, sleep till you’re awake. But nobody wants to sleep.
Once in a while, some poor, reckless fellow, mad and filled with conflicts that are like storms at sea will kill himself, but it’s not many. Mostly we don’t want to go to bed. We get diseases and we run to doctors and divine healers, and we send off for pills and we hope for the best. We don’t want to sleep, nobody wants to. I have looked at people so old, you wonder why they didn’t just reach down and loose their strings and go off to heaven, but they don’t want to. They still want to stay around, this veil of tears, they still want to be here, but God has to sometimes tell us, now, go on to bed.
He had to tell Moses that. Moses was 120 years old, and he was overdue. So, God called Moses and He said, Moses go on up on Mount Moriah and go to bed. And Moses went up on Mount Moriah and he said, Father, I’m not sick and I’m not blind and I can hear as well as I ever could. And I have as much strength as Iever had and the sun shining bright, and I don’t want to die. And God said, Moses, lie down and die. He’s the only man I’ve found in the Bible that died completely well because God told him to.
And I have often wondered how he accomplished it. Did you ever stop to think, how if the Lord told you to die, how you’d work it. I wouldn’t know how to work it, would you? Now, He didn’t say commit suicide. He didn’t say that. You know, the only thing I could think of to do would be to stop breathing. But then you’d feel that sense of suffocation and you’d be breathing first thing you know.
But Moses simply laid down at the command of God and stopped breathing. And there laid his body, and his soul was with the God who gave it. And the devil came for his body and the archangel Michael rebuked him and God took the body and buried it. And no man knows his grave until this hour. Moses even didn’t want to go to bed. And Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the rest waited as long as they could. There’s something to me very tender about that.
Our life is a handbreadth, and we are as sojourners here and as strangers on the earth. And he says, man, at his best state, is all together vanity. Now, man at his worst state may be less than vanity, but at his best state he is no more than vanity. He equates with vanity, as they say. He is vain. And of course, vanity in the Old Testament means emptiness. it means unsubstantiality. It means the condition of being delusive and disappointing.
I remember in classical literature only one example that comes to my mind now that illustrates vanity. Vanity was down in the realms of the blessed or the realm of the dead. And he saw an old girlfriend that had been his sweetheart by the name of Beatrice. And she died before they could marry on Earth. and she had died, and he had never forgotten her and had waited to see her in the next world and, you know, it’s all that kind of stuff, more or less goofy, but anyhow it illustrates something.
And this, this donkey was looking around and suddenly before his wandering, and delighted mind, Beatrice appeared. And he forgot his etiquette and raced up to her and threw his arms around her to pull her to his bosom, but his fingers came back empty to his breasts. It was not Beatrice, but a phantom. It was only a phantom. And he was hugging to his breast a vain delusion and vanity. Now, that at least illustrates out of classical literature that which the Holy Ghost said, that man at his best stages is all together vanity.
That’s why you never can go along with the world and be a very good Christian. And that’s why the better Christian you are, the more you’ll see through the world. I say frequently that the world had better stop lying to me, because I can see through them long ago. They don’t have it. They patronize us and look down on us and leave the impression by the fling of the head and a shrug of the shoulder and raising the eyebrows. They leave the impression that they’ve got it. And we poor Christians don’t know what we’re talking about.
Don’t you be taken in by the world. The world doesn’t have a thing that will last. Man at his best stage is all together vanity. And we have our ambitions and our plans. Some would like to be the richest person in the world, I suppose, in order that they might be the richest person in the graveyard at last. And some would like to be the best-looking woman in America so she could be Miss America. And some would like to be the best singer in the world, so they get the top billing. We have our ambitions. And there is a delusive and deceptive philosophy abroad.
That that is sound, that that sound, that if we get adjusted to that way of looking at things, we will be normal. But that if we don’t get adjusted to that there’s something wrong with our head. They can’t talk that way to me. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion, somebody’s head has got a bat in it, but I don’t believe it’s the Christian. I believe it’s the man who accepts without challenge the values of the world. The young woman who dreams on her bed at night and rises in the morning and thinks of nothing else would sell her soul in order that she might be a movie queen or that you might have some high position and get her picture on the front of magazines.
And then they tell me that’s normal. That’s life. That’s it. And get adjusted to that and yield to it and let that become a part of your makeup. And you’ll never have a nervous breakdown or blow a fuse. You’ll be alright if you get adjusted. You mean to tell me that Dante would have been sane if he had gotten adjusted to a phantom and that made love to spook?
Then he would tell me that he would be wise. He would have been a fool, ten times over a fool. The world doesn’t have it. Tomorrow morning, there’ll be a newspaper on your porch. And if you’re as silly as I’m afraid you are, some of you will be reading it while you squirt your grapefruit. And you’ll get the philosophy out of it and you’ll get its values. And now let’s see this is the 27th. All the magazines are out now they are out over these last few weeks. The monthlies and the weeklies will be out in the middle of the week.
And we read them, and we allow that spirit to enter into us, Time and Life and all the rest. Pretty soon, we’ve got the cheap little worldly, carnal philosophy that’s founded upon delusion and that glorifies phantom. Into the middle of all this comes the great, tall figure who brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, who went down into death and pulled its ugly teeth and broke its damnable jaws and came out of the grave the third day and stands with a world on His shoulders and says, come unto me and I will give you a rest. We Christians are not to be pitied, and we certainly ought not to envy those who make love to phantoms and glorify spooks. We thank God we have sound things and reality and truth. But the world hasn’t it.
What does the poet say, lasting joys and solid pleasures only Zion’s children know. Solid joys and lasting pleasures only Zion’s children know. The rest of them have nothing. You could go with me tonight. I got a letter from her just this last week.
If you could go with me tonight, and cared to, I could take you in a 40-minute drive from here, 30-minute drive into the ghetto section, one of the ghetto sections of this city in where murder, rape and brutality and drunkenness and every kind of vice is rampant. And I can take you upstairs and down a hall where a rattail light let down on a wire burns without shade to light the way through the ratty, spooky hall. And I can take you into a room, a room where a woman sleeps on a dirty or at least an unkempt bed with old clippings piled from the floor as high as you can reach. But strange as wonderful she’s a Christian. She’s an old actress and trooper who traveled all over the country with her husband as a theatrical feature until he died, and she got old and crippled and arthritic.
And there she is waiting for the Lord for she became a Christian in her old age. I’ve been down to see her, and Chase and I went down one time. I frankly admit I was scared. He acted normal. But I was afraid. It was after night. And I didn’t know when one of those shadows would suddenly materialize into a man with a club, but it didn’t. God protected us and we went up there, gave communion to the older lady. Now, she’s an old actress.
And she has her old clippings there, yet I guess She knows a good many of the old troopers. She told us that she had just received a basket of fruit, or box of food and fruit from Jim Jordan and Molly Jordan. I forget now what they call them. McGee. Fibber McGee. She said, we just received a box of fruit from them, in memory of the old days when they played the circuits together. Now there she is. Now they send her a box of fruit occasionally. But what’s the world done for her? The world laughs and claps. And as she did her dance in the days when she had a beautiful figure to look at, they drool at the mouth and their eyes got unnaturally bright, and they watched her and made perhaps obscene comments as she danced.
And then they forgot her and picked up somebody younger that they would rather hear or see and she faded away. And now, if the Lord hadn’t found her and she hadn’t been converted, she’d have been one more forgotten old human wreck. And they’re all around, all around.
I went down here in my favorite drugstore the other day and I saw a magazine, and on the cover of that magazine was a famous actress, getting along little now. But she’s one of the most famous of the actresses. You would know her name in a second if I mentioned even the first name, because you couldn’t get away from it even though you were as chaste as snow and as pure as ice water, you ought to run into this old lady somewhere. You can see it all. Do you know what, I’ve seen better looking things in my dreams riding on brooms.
Now, I tell you seriously, I tell you seriously, she is a high concentration of brass and burnt-out sex and homeliness. And a voice like our rusty buzzsaw and a vocabulary like a drunk sailor. And I’m not telling you who she is, but her father was a senator. And I pray that God Almighty will keep contempt out of my heart because contempt is not a good Christian emotion.
Contempt means there’s pride present. But it’s awfully hard for me to keep from shuttering and turning my back on that degenerate, leftover, dragged in, pulled in as a rat pulled in by a collie dog. And there she is, the stringy, sexy, crude remnant of a human being. She’s now in early 50s, I think. Give her a few more years and she’ll go down the sink. And her memory won’t even be in the minds of the generation. What has life done for her. All life has done for her, is cynically etch, sin and hell on her painted countenance. That’s all.
Life at its best is vanity. And the best the world has to offer anybody is vanity. And I’ve picked out of course, I admit, I have picked out a very low case there. But the Bible says that man at his best, he’s vanity. The statesman that would sell his mother-in-law to get an extra vote; that would sell his honor to get a vote. That statesman, he comes in when the band plays and he’s forgotten and dies and is no more. He’s a vain thought and a vain show. A landowner buys his land, gets rich and dies, and it’s all a vain show.
The famous author, he autographs his book. Every once in a while, they’ll say such and such will be at the book store or somewhere else, and he’ll be autographing books and you go in and there he sits looking like the high concentration of all intelligence and sophistication. God says he’s a vain show. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power and all the beauty, all that wealth there gave, await alike the inevitable hour and the path of glory leads up to the grave. There’s nothing anybody can do brethren.
Shakespeare’s bust, is somewhere with copies over all around in the libraries of the world, but unless Shakespeare found God through Jesus Christ and changed mortality for immortality, and change the earthly life for eternal life, he’s a flop and the failure. And not all of his fine sayings of rounded periods and brilliance for he was one of the world’s most brilliant men. Not all of his human brilliance can do anything for him now.
Now he’s gone. His life is a handbreadth and he’s gone. What’s does the world got to offer me? And I answer, nothing at all. But God had called this man. And so, he was saying, now, what have I got? What is there now? The Mercy of God is like a ocean. The mercy of God is all around about us. And God is calling us vain creatures’ home, calling us home from vanity to the Rock of Ages, calling us home to the handbreadth life of ours, from that to that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us, calling us from the cheap and tawdry values that the world offers to the things that can never perish nor pass away.
That’s the ground we rest upon my listening friends. It’s this that leads us to believe in Christ and in God. Not a desire to get our way, not a desire to have our prayers answered, but a desire to escape the clinging folds of mortality; the desire to escape the emptiness and the cheat and the delusion that is human life and enter into the life that is God. That’s what the church is for, not to entertain morons, but to save hungry-hearted men and women that are sick of being cheated all the time and deceived.
The world is a cheat and a lie, and the whole Bible says it is. But Jesus came to it nevertheless and took upon Him the form of a man and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, so that there isn’t a dark cave in the world that hasn’t a little light in it now. There isn’t a human heart, however dark, but what can have the light of God’s love flash into it? For the light of the world is Jesus. What wait I for said David, and I asked you what you’re waiting for?
What are you waiting for? Some of you Christians, you are believers after a fashion, but you don’t live for God. You know you don’t live for God. As soon as you get out of here you go clunking downstairs and out onto the sidewalk, and you forget in no time everything you ever heard here. You don’t live it. What are you waiting for? Waiting until a better time comes? There will never be a better time. Waiting till you get better? You’ll never get better. You might as well wait to get younger as to wait to get better. Waiting till you’ll live a better life? You might as well wait for a dirty room to get clean.
No, you’ll never get better, you’ll never get younger, you’ll never get pure. There is only one thing to do and that is while the gates are still open, to come where the fountain flows for sin and uncleanness. Come and bring your empty earthen vessels clean through Jesus precious blood. Come bring your dirty vessels. Bring your life as it is, not waiting to clean yourself up and to educate your soul. But coming just as a you are without one plea coming to the foot of the cross. There never was anybody so far away, but the Lord could find them in the flash of an eye. There was never anybody so far down, but Jesus Christ had gone down further. There never was anybody so foul, but the blood of Jesus Christ could cleanse it from sin.
In some of the old tracts that they used to circulate years ago, there was the story of the Christian worker that went into the saloon, the old saloon, before the day of Roosevelt’s tavern. An indoor saloon, the old saw dust saloon, tobacco spit and sawdust and cigar ashes trampled on to the floor, soured and rancid from days and days of it. And a Christian worker went in, went up to the bar, began to talk to a sinner, a man who was completely down and out, and he said, the Lord can save you. And he said, you go talk to people other than I. Go talk to other people. I’m past it. He said, I left my home years ago. I’ve forsaken my family. I’m a liar and a thief and a drinker. I am everything, he said. I am so dirty; nothing can ever cleanse me. There was a glass of water on the bar. He looked down and here was a rose laying that had been tossed into the saw dust and had been kicked around, covered now with dirt and tobacco juice and cigar ashes.
And he picked it up; it was still relatively fresh. He picked it up and dipped it in this glass of water and then held it up. It was as clean as when it came off of the bush. And he said, you see what can happen to something that’s been trampled and kicked around in the dirt. And he said I know somebody that washes quieter and cleaner than all the waters of the world. It is the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son. And this poor bum bowed his head and tears came down his poor, unshaven cheeks. And he was led to the Lord Jesus Christ by the simple illustration of a cleansed rose. No, no, that is not even a good illustration. For the Lord doesn’t take a poor battered rose and cleanse it. That helped of course and it pointed the way, but that’s not enough. He does more than that. If he could have created a new rose where the old Rose was. And then if he could have dipped in the waters of immortality, that rose and said you’ll never be dirty again, then you’ll be getting near to it. For that’s what redemption does.
What are we waiting for? What are you waiting for? You that have been hanging around the edge so long. You’ll never get younger. You’ll never get better. You’ll never get pure. The grace of God will never get freer. The blood of Christ will never get richer. The call of God will never get tender or more persuasive. The gospel is for you, Sir, and for me. Men and women born for a handbreadth. Men and women who are at our best state, are all together, emptiness and vanity. God gave the gospel to such people as we. God wrought the gospel, man didn’t.
The Gospel never was concocted by a committee. Never an archangel had a hand in compounding the gospel of Jesus. And when God wanted His detergent to cleanse the souls of men, He never called in the scientists of the world, nor the angels of heaven. But he made His own gospel, and he gave it to the world. And you could not add anything to it. Not all the wisdom could add anything to it. And not all power for it’s all man needs. It’s all a guilty sinner needs, is Jesus, only Jesus.
So, you that are not saved, why aren’t you? What are you waiting for? What wait I for, my hope is in thee. You’ll never get help anywhere else. And you’ll never get better. So, take Him and seek Him and find Him and it’ll be your precious treasure forever.
O Lord, save some, I don’t know why. And it’s that strange confusion within the heart. Why I don’t come, I don’t know. I don’t either. Except the devil has charmed us and hypnotized us. And the Lord waits. And you Christians, you Christians that know you’re not living as you should live.
You know you’re not living right? Why don’t you do something about it now? Why don’t you start now? You’ll never get any better and you’ll never get any younger. Start now. O Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in thee. Let’s pray. Let’s talk to the Lord about it.
Dear Lord Jesus, we say with thy servant David, our hope is in Thee. We say with Peter, Lord, to whom shall we go? Where Lord, can we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. Lord Jesus, there’s science and psychology and learning and religion and preoccupation, but not one of them afford a hiding place against the storm. Not one of them has a fountain where we can clean our souls, not one. Lord, Thou alone is our hope. Thou alone is our hope. We bless Thee. We worship Thee. We praise Thee. We magnify Thee for Thy precious blood, the blood that cleansed Paul a murderer and John Newton, the slave of slaves.
Mel Trotter, Jerry McCauley, Billy Sunday, and 10,000 times 10,000, whose names are never known in public, but who were sinners deep died and lost, but were washed by Holy Blood, cleansed, renewed and are now happy in Jesus. O Lord, the many who have gone on and the many who are still here.
How we thank Thee for that perfect gospel. We don’t apologize for it. We don’t even try to understand it. We only know that simple trust in the Precious Blood makes the soul clean and brings us into knowledge of eternal life through Jesus Christ the Savior. We pray thee for these friends who are here tonight. O God, let them not go out untouched with thoughts of holy things. Let them not go out and influenced by impulses of the Spirit.
Let them not go out as they came in, but sobered and thoughtful. We don’t want them to go out heavy hearted nor gloomy. For there’s no gloom, no heaviness in the cheerful call of the Holy Ghost. But we pray Thee they go out serious and sober and thoughtful and saying to themselves, I’m here for a little time and then I’ll go. What am I waiting around for? Why all this postponement? Why this loitering? Why this tarrying?
O Lord Jesus, some of us were never saved in church at all. Some of his haunted a attic room or a basement room or a park or somewhere there and loneliness he poured out our wreath and raised our Bethel and met the Lord we pray there be some here tonight, that before the midnight bells toll that they might have found Thee, that they might find the Savior. Bless Thou the saved tonight, Lord Jesus. These who are unsaved to bring them in.
For the young folks that are friendly, nice kids, but O God, so far from Thee and their feelings and emotions and impulses and ambitions, so horribly carnal. Yet they say they’re saved. We pray for them. O Christ, may they go on unto perfection. May they leave the first beginnings of the things of the Lord and put behind them the world and under their feet, the carnal things of flesh, and rise on Jacob’s Ladder and seek the high lands and the pure, sun kissed hilltops where the air is rare and sweet embracing, where they can see over Jordan and behold the bright tops of the City of God. Grant this we pray, for Jesus’ holy sake. Amen.
Let me read a very unpleasant and very wonderful passage of Scripture, and take one verse, the ninth, as a sort of start for our talk tonight. The eighth chapter of John, the opening verses. Jesus went out onto the Mount of Olives. And early in the morning, he came again into the temple. And all the people came on to Him and sat down and He taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto Him a woman taken in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they say unto Him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now, Moses in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. What saith Thou? This, they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So, when they continued asking him, He lifted up Himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
And again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground. And to they which heard it being convicted, by their own conscience went out one by one beginning at the eldest even under the last. And Jesus was left alone. I’d like to have seen that parade wouldn’t you? Dignified old boys with gray beards, clear down to the youngest kid. And Jesus was left alone with a woman standing in the midst.
When Jesus had lifted up Himself and saw no one but the woman, He said unto her: woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? And she said, no man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. Verse nine, and they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the youngest. Now, tonight I am to speak on the voice of the human conscience.
Now, hell, hell by means of pseudo, learned propaganda, has brought into disrepute many of life’s verities; and among these is conscience. When conscience is mentioned now in learned circles, it is mentioned only with a smirk; and where it is used seriously, it is necessary that we must defend the whole concept of human conscience. That seems almost unbelievable, but it is true.
But tonight, I will not defend and I will not ignore. I cannot ignore that which the universal wisdom of the race has approved. The universal wisdom of the human race has approved the idea of there being a conscience within the heart of a man and I will not ignore that which the universal testimony of all peoples in all ages have agreed to a lot. Neither will I defend that which the Christian Scriptures take for granted mostly, and in some instances teach flatly. If you will go through your concordance you will find that conscience is mentioned very many places. And the idea which the word conscience embodies, is mentioned throughout the entire Bible not once or 10 times or 100 times but underlies the whole structure and is part woven into the entire Bible.
Now I want to tell you what we mean by conscious, as I am able; and then point to this Bible example of its operation, and then show that it is a voice which is calling and then show what it’s done to people. It sounds like a big order, but it won’t take too long. Now, what we mean by conscience is that which always refers to right and wrong. Conscience never deals with theories about anything. Conscience always deals with right and wrong, and the relation of the individual to right and wrong. You will notice a strange thing here, that conscience never deals in plurals. It always deals in singulars.
There is only one place in the entire Bible where conscience is used in the plural. That is when Paul is talking and says that He commends himself to their consciences. Everywhere else, it is made to be singular as when it says, they, being convicted by their conscience, not consciences, but conscience. They been convicted by their conscience went out. And always it is so that conscience in the Bible refers to right and wrong and is individual and personal and singular.
Now, it is individual, and it is exclusive. I say that it never permits plurals. It excludes everybody else. If those dozen or two dozen, however many there were, that had ganged up there. If they could have thought of themselves as a group, they could have drawn courage from the idea, and they might have been able to brazen it out. But conscience never let you lean on anybody else. Conscience singles you out as though nobody else existed. The Bible doesn’t say that when they went out, they went out in a mass. They went out one by one. Each one went out driven by his own conscience.
Now, the word conscience here, means, a moral sight. It means to see completely. It means an inward awareness. It means to be secretly aware of. Now that’s the psychological definition for it. But there is a ground of conscience. And that’s what we’re concerned with here tonight, not its psychological definition, but with the ground of human conscience. And that ground of human conscience is the secret presence of Christ in the world. Christ is in the world. And the secret presence of Christ in the world is the ground of human conscience. It is a moral awareness. A verse that I very often quote for it is a verse very basic in my theology, is John 1:9, that says that that is the light, Jesus, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. And that Light in the world, that Secret Presence in the world, which lights every man that comes into the world, that is the ground of moral conscience. However, it operates, that is its ground. That’s why it’s here. That’s what put it here, that the living, eternal Word, is present in the world, present in human society, present here, secretly present here and giving to humanity a secret awareness of moral values. A secret awareness
Now I know there are some who tell us that when the Bible says that we are dead in trespasses and sins, that it means that we are dead in a very literal sense of the word. And being dead therefore we have no moral awareness. But I think that kind of exegesis is so bad and so confused and so confusing, that it should be ridden out of town on the first rail that could be commandeered from a farmer. It just has no place at all in the Scripture, it has no place there, because the Bible says that I am dead in sin, therefore, that I am like a dead man. I can’t be talked to nor persuaded nor argued with nor convicted nor convinced nor pleaded with nor frightened nor appeal to. I’m just a dead lump.
Now, here we have a Bible example. In John 1:8-11. They were very strict moralists, those Jews. That is, they were when nobody was looking. There were, when they could get away with it. And they found a poor, wretch of a woman. And they didn’t give any care whatsoever about the woman. Neither did they care anything about the broken law. Neither did they care anything for the Jewish church, or as men say, the Society of Israel. They only had one thing in mind. They were going to take this religious teacher that was embarrassing them, and they were going to silence Him for good. They were going to get Him to commit Himself to a statement that they could use against Him and take the hide off of Him and drive Him out with loss of face, discredited forever. That was their business. The woman was a pawn, a cat’s paw, no more. They had no love for her. They had no hatred of her sin. They hated Jesus and they would do anything to get at Jesus. So they dragged this poor, miserable woman into His presence. And they said, here a harlot. Here she is.
And God in His sovereign mercy raises me from the dead, gives me the new birth, regenerates me, and then I am prepared to listen. It’s all wrong brethren. When the Bible says we are dead in trespasses and sins, it means that we are cut off from the life of God. And that’s all that it means. But that in itself, I suppose is so bad, that it’s impossible to think of anything worse. But that same man that is cut off from the life of God, and so dead in sin, that same man has a moral awareness. That same man has a secret inner voice that is always talking to him. It’s the Light, that lightet every man that cometh into the world. It’s a singular voice in the bosom of every human being, accusing or else excusing him, as Paul put it. Now, that’s what I mean by conscience.
Now the law of Moses said we are to stone her to death. What do you say? And if he had said stone her to death, and they had stone her to death, the Romans would have put Jesus in prison and that would have been the end of him. If Jesus had said, let her go, they’d have said, we always knew you’re against the law of Moses. And that would have been the end of Him. They would have discredited Him before the law. But I admit, ladies and gentlemen, that I get considerable personal, private, highly individualistic delight out of the way He handled that bunch. He knew them. He knew them. He knew that bunch of hypocrites. He knew they didn’t have any love for that women. He knew they didn’t have any love for the law. He knew they only hated Him. And he knew this whole thing was a frameup.
Not only that he knew those old boys, their phylacteries, their long robes, their sanctimonious look, their pious, nasal breathing and all that pseudo spirituality and artificial godliness, He knew the whole business and He knew what they had done down the years. And they said, alright, we’re supposed to stone her. What do you say? And I think there was a twinkle in the heart if not in the eye of Jesus. He looked those old boys over and He said, fellows, let the one of you that never sinned, get the first rock. And immediately being smitten by that inner voice, they sneaked out. One went out and he was ashamed to say anything to the other one.
And each one slipped out quietly by himself, all alone, because it is in the power of conscience to isolate the human soul and take away all of its hopes and helps and encouragement; isolate it and hold it alone in the universe before the bar of God. Each one of them sneaked out. Some of those pious old boys thought because they were old, and they had forgotten their early sins that God had forgotten them. But as soon as the voice of Jesus aroused them within, they remembered, and they sneaked out. And they sneaked out afraid to look up for a fear that God would start throwing stones at them. For they knew they were just as guilty as she was.
That law that thou shalt stone the wicked woman was meant for holy people who weren’t wicked. It was not meant that a wicked man could stone a wicked woman. It was never meant that one sinner could put another sinner to death. It was never thus meant, and Jesus knew it. And these old hypocrites, when they ran into Jesus, brother, it was like a cat running into a mowing machine. And they came away each one of them licking his wounds. I don’t know whether they went straight home, or just how. They didn’t dare look at each other. Because each one was ashamed. Now, that’s how this conscience business works.
It smites the inner life. It touches the heart. It isolates it. It sets us off all by ourselves. You know, to my mind, I don’t want to anticipate next Sunday night’s sermon. But to my mind, that is going to put the hell in judgment; that each one of us must go alone. If twelve men are led away to be shot, they can get some moral support from each other. And the very fact there’s another fellow one on each side of you that’s sharing your tragedy, gives your moral support. But isolate them and lead them one at a time not knowing that there is another, and that moral support is all taken away. It will be the cosmic loneliness of judgment that will put hell in it.
Gangsters can meet together after dark, a dozen of them and take courage from each other. And wicked classes everywhere can meet and shout and work up steam and take courage from each other, but the lonely soul, lonely in a universe with only that soul and an angry God. That’s the terror of a conscience. And that’s exactly what the conscience does. It singles the man out. So God has then given us a faithful witness inside of our own hearts.
Now, I believe that. I preached one time up in Minnesota on the conscience. I don’t remember what I said exactly. Maybe it was pretty bad. But one old fella said he got a great burden, a great burden. He said he had the Holy Ghost burden because of my sermon, it was so terrible and unscriptural. He didn’t believe in conscience obviously. And the Bible School bigwig was there. He called me aside and told me he didn’t believe in it either, or words to that effect.
What has happened when we no longer believe in the human conscience? That the conscience is pushed aside. I say that hell has done that by her propaganda. She has used the bubble-headed dreamy-eyed boys with pseudo learning who know just enough to be pitifully ignorant. And just learn long sesquipedalian words in order to cover up their own pitiful lack of knowledge. And they have laughed conscience out of court. And the church is afraid to admit the conscience. The Bible isn’t afraid to admit it. It says bluntly, being convicted by their own conscience they went out one by one; conscience stricken, smitten inside, struck by a stroke from heaven, they walked out of there, each one of them, down the steps and out onto the sidewalk and sneaked away. That’s what conscience does. It’s that inner voice that talks inside of you?
Now, one way the devil has of getting rid of things is to make jokes about them. I want to warn you brother, look out for the corruption of your mind by the papers and magazines and radio jokes; watch out for the corruption of your mind. There’s legitimate humor and we all admit that. And I think it’s in us by the gift of God. But whenever that humor takes holy things for it’s object, that humor is devilish at once. One of the slick jokes you hear is the conscience is set in you which makes you sorry when you get caught. Now, that’s supposed to be funny. I tell you that it is not funny. It’s tragic that anybody can yield so to the propaganda of hell as to joke about that which is no joke. There are some things ladies and gentlemen that are just not joke-worthy. They just don’t belong in the field where you can joke about it.
I respect that old New Englander who would never allow anybody to joke about love or death in his presence–Emerson. Anybody that started to crack a joke about love, and he saw that love was going to be the object of a joke, any kind of love, he frowned them down to shut them up. And if they joked about death, he frowned them down and refused to allow them to joke about. There are some things that are not the proper objects of humor, and one of them is conscience. That power that God has set in the human breasts, suddenly to isolate a soul and hang it between heaven and hell; lonely as if God had never created but one soul. That’s not a joking matter. The Light that lighteth have every man that comes into the world is not a joking matter. The eternal universal presence of the luminous Christ is not a joking matter. That’s too serious to be dealt with lightly. Joke about politics if you must joke. They’re usually funny anyway, but don’t joke about God. And don’t joke about conscience nor death nor life nor our love for the cross nor prayer.
We have become in our day the greatest bunch of sacrilegious jokesters in the world. I’ve even seen pictures in magazines and newspapers of people who had taught their dog to pray. They thought it was a very humorous thing to show a little spotted dog with his paws crossed and his eyes shut bowing in a bed. The Bible says beware of dogs. And I might add beware of the fools who teach dogs to pray. Beware of any who take lightly that which God takes seriously. God will give you a whole world of pleasant things. The birds will sing in your backyard and the kids will romp over your lawn if you have a lawn. And a thousand things will happen in the day that can be dismissed with a pleasantry. So, your sense of humor won’t die. There’s plenty to laugh at in the world. Be sure you don’t laugh at something that God takes seriously. Conscience is one of those things. And remember that the conscience is always on God’s side. Always on God’s side, and He judges conduct in the light of the moral law. And as the Scripture says, excuses or accuses.
Now, this is one voice that we’ve all heard. There’s a little song that says, I think when I read the sweet story of old when Jesus was here among men, how he took little children as lambs to His fold, I should like to have been with Him them. And I understand that, I think it’s a very pleasant little song. But oh, it couldn’t be further from the truth. For you wouldn’t have been better off if you had been here when Jesus was on earth. Not a bit better off. You’re better off now. It’s expedient for you that I go away, He said. So, you’re better off now than if you had been here when Jesus was on the earth. And that same little fallacy would say, if I had heard Jesus; if I had just heard Jesus, do you know that there were thousands who heard Jesus that had no idea what he was talking about. You know that some of His own disciples had to wait for the Holy Ghost at Pentecost to know what Jesus was talking about. If I had only heard Jesus, we say. No, no, my brother, you would have heard a voice, as far as you’re now personally concerned, equal to that voice of Jesus, and that’s the voice of the inner conscience. For it is the voice, It is the Light, that lighteth every man, changed from light; for that’s what it means–moral illumination. It’s there. Some say, if I could have heard Paul. Others will say, if we could only have heard so and so.
They’re now doing this little thing. One more thing I’m against. They’re taking the big preachers and putting them on tapes and taking them to churches where they haven’t got anything, only little preachers, so that the congregations won’t have to be starved, they say by listening to little preacher. They can hear the big preacher. They take somebody like Graham or some other of the big preachers of the day. And they will put him on a tape and bring him to church. And then the little preacher can sit around twiddling his thumbs while the big preacher preaches to the congregation.
Fallacy, brethren, fallacy, thousand times a fallacy. If we could have Paul on tape recording and let him stand here and preach, he could do no more for you than the Holy Ghost can do with the Book and the human conscience. If I had only heard Simpson. You’ve heard a truer voice than Simpson and a more wonderful voice. You’ve heard the first voice and the last voice. You’ve heard the voice of the Light within the heart. You’ve heard that which the accusers of the woman heard. You’ve heard that inner voice always preaches to each man singly.
That which follows and goes on and tracks and traces it through, and there’s a nemesis on our trail. You’ve heard that voice. And it’s sheer hypocrisy to say, If I only could have heard Moody or some great preacher. A congregation of half-saved Christians will sit and pay no attention to the Light that lighteth of everyman and ignore the voice that sounds within them. And then say, now, we’ll have a tape recording of Paul Reese or Billy Graham. Sure, we’ll get somewhere. Oh, my bethren, not to detract from those great men; only to say, that’s not what that church needs. That church needs to listen to the inner voice and do something about it.
Don’t forget Paul had his hypocrites, Peter had his Ananias and Sapphira. Jesus had His very Judas. And the history of the great preachers and great evangelists has not been 100% history. All always they had men who heard their voices and didn’t know what they were hearing. You’re hearing a more eloquent voice than mine, my brethren/ You’re hearing tonight a voice that’s more serious than any preacher you’ve ever listened to.
I once entered a little gathering in New York City. It’s a small group and I heard a minister there talking to a noonday crowd and he said something I’ll not soon forget. He said, we assume that if a man has heard the gospel, he’s been enlightened. But it’s a false assumption. Just to have heard a man preach the Scripture doesn’t mean necessarily that you have been enlightened. No. It’s the voice that enlightens, brethren. It’s the Holy Ghost, the point of contact. The Spirit of God speaking soundlessly within. That’s what illuminates a man. That’s what brings him, makes him accountable to God. Just the falling of the words of a text on the human ear may not mean anything. But that inner voice means everything. And a man has not been illuminated until that Voice begins to sound within him. And that Voice is the voice of conscience, the voice of conviction, the Holy Ghost talking inside of a man.
Now, I want you to notice what men do to their consciences sometimes. 1 Timothy 1:5, it tells us here, now, the end of the commandment is love out of the pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned, from which some having swerved, have turned aside unto vain jangling. Now, here we have it, some people have had a good conscience or have turned away from a good conscience like a stubborn horse, they have turned aside and wouldn’t listen to it. And they will religion has become mere, vain jangling.
They are the careless living Christians. There is a penalty for careless living, ladies and gentlemen, whether we know it or not. There is a penalty for careless living. And we see these victims who are now vain janglers. They talk just as loudly as ever about religion, but it’s empty jangling, because they have put away a good conscience. All the sermons in the world will be wasted if there is not a conscience, a clean void conscience to receive the truth. 1 Timothy 4:1, 2, we read there, the Holy Ghost tells us about certain ones who speak lies and hypocrisy having their conscience seared with a hot iron. Now there, we have this seared conscience. Before, we have the conscience that’s been turned aside here we have the seared conscience. And I want you to know brethren that these who had this seared conscience went into false doctrine.
We wonder how it is that it’s possible for a man who wants was brought up in the word of truth, suddenly to turn away from it into some false religion. To say his mind got confused. No, no, let’s be honest about this. False doctrine can have no power upon the good conscience. A false doctrine falls harmlessly on a good conscience. But when a conscience has become seared, when a man has played with the fire and burned his conscience and seared it and callused it until you could handle a hot iron and sin without shrinking.
Then there’s no longer any safety for the man. He can go off into Christian Science. He can go off into Unity. Go off into Jehovah’s Witnesses. He can go off into any one of 50 varieties of false religion. Kenneth Banghard who was one of the leading newscasters of the day, I heard him say the other night in a newscast that Buddhism is growing in America, and that there are more than 100,000 Buddhists in the state of California alone. Why are there 100,000 Buddhists in the state of California? Because there were at least that many people whose consciences went hard under the preaching of the Truth. And because their consciences were seared and they could no longer hear the voice of the Spirit, God let them believe a lie that they might be damned. If there are 100,000 in California, it must run into the millions when you take in the rest of the 47 states.
They’re not Arabs. They’re Americans. Some few, of course, may be Orientals But they are converts being made by the hundreds and even thousands, for the Swamis and Yogi’s had come to this country. Why will a man who went to a Methodist or Baptist Sunday school when he was a boy, learn the 10 commandments and part of the Sermon on the Mount and the story of Christ’s birth and death and crucifixion and death and resurrection from the dead? Why should he turn to Buddha or Mohammed? The answer is, he fooled with the inner voice and he wouldn’t listen to the sound of the preacher within him and God turned from him and let him go. And with a seared conscience, he wandered into the arms of Buddha, or the arms of Mohamed. Titus 11:15,16 says that even their conscience is defiled, you see there. We have a seared conscience and a defiled conscience. Now, these are the ones who are corrupt inwardly. Their thoughts are impure. And their language is often soiled. I am just as afraid of people with soiled tongues as I am of a man with a communicable disease. For a soiled tongue is evidence of a deeper disease.
When we were bringing up our boys, they were always, of course, anxious as all parents are about the various diseases. And one of them got something or other and I dashed off to the library and went to the medical section. And I was afraid it was scarlet fever. I don’t know why I didn’t call a doctor. Anyway, I went to the library. And it said scarlet fever has one invariable symptom. Many of the other symptoms can be duplicated and overlap other diseases, but there’s one invariable symptom that you can always tell it’s scarlet fever. There’s the strawberry tongue. So, I went back home and examined the boys tongue and found it wasn’t strawberry. And he didn’t have scarlet fever. But I was frightened. And there was the symptom. And that strawberry tongue is evidence of the presence of a million destructive microbes within the system. And when I find the defiled tongue in a human head, I don’t care if he’s just finished a sermon. I don’t care if he’s prayed a half an hour on his knees. If he can go around the corner, to the drugstore and over a soda can utter defiled language; I’m afraid of him. He’s got a disease. Even their consciences are defiled.
Now, these end up reprobates says the Holy Ghost. I’m afraid of that word reprobate, terribly afraid of it. Something that’s been washed up, a moral shipwreck. Something that has been washed up on the beach and beaten with the sand and baked with the sun and whipped to the winds until nobody wants it anymore. It is no good anymore, a derelict or reprobate. And I’m afraid of it. And even Paul said, let men think of us what they will and explain it as they may. Paul said, I watch my Christian life, lest when I preach to others I myself should be reprobate. Paul said it.
Now, I only close by saying that it is or may be fatal to silence the Inner Voice, the voice of the human conscience and to silence it. For instance, when that voice is protesting outrage protests at the plain habit of lying. When it is eloquently pleading against the habit of dishonesty. When that inner conscience is taking us to task for our jealousies or some other sins, it’s always perilous to resist that conscience and to pay no attention to that Inner Voice. It’s a perilous thing to do.
So, I want to ask you tonight friends, I’m deliberately letting God do the talking. I want him to talk to your spirit, your inner deep heart. Even in this small congregation tonight there’s a conscience here. That strange conscience that can’t lean on anybody. It can’t share the blame with anybody. That conscience that singles us out and isolates us and makes us stand alone, and says, thou art the man and makes us lower our heads and sneak out one at a time. That he’s here and I’m grateful for it. You see, if there wasn’t anything like that here, or in the world, we would all become beasts in very short order. We would all degenerate morally. And in hell, where that Voice is not and where the conscience no longer exists; it is written, he that is filthy, let him be getting filthier still. That’s the Holy Spirit talking to you. That voice is there. That inner preacher, that preacher that won’t preach to a crowd, but only the single individual soul is there.
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Do to an unforseen illness, we are going to have repeat some earlier Tozer Talks messages. I hope this will be completely argreeable with you. Phil Shappard, administratorl.
In the first chapter of 1 Peter, beginning with verse nine and reading to verse 12: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ, which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.
Now, it so happens that there seems to be three major truths here which will divide themselves up nicely. There is a curious truth, or a singular truth, and a rather rare truth and a remarkably reassuring truth. The singular truth, singular because it is not much mentioned in the Bible, that salvation is such a heavenly and mysterious thing. That the very prophets who foretold it, didn’t understand it and actually, searched and inquired diligently concerning this salvation about which they were writing. They knew only that they wrote of some favored people who were to come. Who were to receive remarkable, fabulous wealth at the hand of a kind, gracious God. But they didn’t understand it much.
And then there is the rare truth that the Old Testament prophets had the Spirit of Christ. I want to mention that later.
And then this reassuring truth that our salvation is known and talked about in heaven and is admired by the unfallen angels. That it is not a recent thing, not even relatively recent, but very, very old, and that it is the theme of all the inspired prophets since the world began.
Now, let us look at this singular truth about the prophets. And it says here that the prophets who prophesied unto us of the grace that should come, they searched what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify; when it testified beforehand, the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. And that it was revealed unto them that not unto themselves, but unto us, they did minister the things which that we now hear preached.
Now, a lot may be learned about Biblical inspiration here. There are many theories of inspiration. And I suppose that I might as well say that I do not believe that evangelical truth necessarily must accept any one theory of inspiration so long as we believe that the holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and that not one jot or tittle of the Scripture shall fail until all be fulfilled. I believe that that fulfills the requirements for belief concerning inspiration. But some persons believe that the inspired writers wrote only what they knew. They were simply religious reporters, reporting intelligently and spiritually on what they knew about them. And then that they exhorted and consoled and rebuked, giving application to what they knew to the hearts of the people.
Now, that doesn’t go far enough. For the fact is, that sometimes the prophets were moved to speak of things that they themselves did not understand. They heard the Spirit’s voice witnessing within them about wondrous things and they spoke what they heard; but they did not know of what they spoke.
Now, it was a relatively easy matter for a prophet to understand, say, when God revealed that Babylon should fall or that Israel should be taken captive or that Ahab should die and the dogs should lick his blood, or any of the scores of prophecies concerning historic events. That was a relatively easy thing, and I suppose that every prophet understood it.
If I had a prophetic foresight that New York was to be destroyed by an atom bomb and I were to write it down, I could understand my own writing. It could be simply a question of visualizing the destruction of that vast city. So that a great many of the prophecies of the Old Testament were, we’ll say, are on the rational level. They could be understood easily by the prophets who prophesied. But when they entered the wondrous, golden world of grace and mercy and salvation and incarnation and resurrection and atonement and ascension and the sending of the Holy Ghost and the new birth and the bringing to being of a people made again in the image of God, all this staggered the prophets.
They couldn’t get it. It wasn’t simply a question of historic fact. It was the question of marvelous, spiritual understanding, and they didn’t have it. So, they prophesied about others, and they were included of course, but that wasn’t what was in their mind at the moment. They were prophesying for the future. Then they died not having received the promise. But the prophecies were perpetuated by divine inspiration and by translation as we have them today in our Bible.
Now, they heard the Spirit’s voice speaking within them and they uttered forth what they heard. But as prophets they were able to prophesy, but as individual men, they had to examine and search. And I wondered as I read it, what did they search? Did they search some other prophet’s writing, or did they search their own heart? Or did they seek in the sense that the Scripture says, seek and you shall find. He doesn’t say seek what.
And every preacher has his own interpretation, and I suppose they’re all right because that’s actually, usually the case with the Word of God. It is, what should we say; it has a multitude of applications, so that if one man says it means this and another says it means that and three others say it means three other things, they are not contradicting each other. They may easily be complementing each other. I have no objection to various interpretations, provided, the brother doesn’t say, now, accept my interpretation or I rule you out. Then I’m sorry for a mind as razor narrow as that. Narrow as the razor’s edge. But these prophets prophesied of things to come. And that was a wonderful truth and a curious one, that prophets reported on things they did not themselves understand.
And then here is a rare truth in that there isn’t much about it in either Old Testament or New, directly. But it is here, bluntly stated, in unmistakable language. It is that the Old Testament prophets had the Spirit of Christ. But the word had is not good enough here; for it says the Spirit of Christ which was in them. The preposition is “in.”
Now, this destroys that what some people have called the geographical interpretation of the Holy Ghost. I would call it the prepositional interpretation of the Holy Ghost. You know, there are those who bear down very, very heavily on the “on” and the width and the end. They say about the Holy Spirit, that He was on the Old Testament saints, but not in them. That he was with the apostles before the Pentecost, but not in nor on; that after Pentecost, got in the people. That makes preaching easy because all you have to do is look for prepositions, and that’s a relatively easy way to handle the Word of God. Just watch the prepositions and hook your little comment on the preposition. But I’ve never been able to believe that God was such that He played in the marketplace and that He built His truth out of curious, little blocks. No, the Bible doesn’t tell us only that the Holy Ghost was on, but it says here that He was in.
Now, that ruins some people’s theology. That little preposition “in” here in Peter ruins it, because they say, the Old Testament prophets and saints never had the Holy Ghost. He was only on them. He came and rested upon them. The dove lighted on the roof, but never came inside the dwelling place. And you’ve got to believe that or else they won’t admit you into their little narrow field of thought. But they say in the New Testament, He came with them. And they quote Jesus as saying, He is now with you, but shall be in you, meaning Himself as the with. And then when the Spirit came at Pentecost, He filled them and so the Spirit was in them.
Now, I believe the Holy Ghost was on the Old Testament prophets. I also believe the Holy Ghost comes on New Testament Christians. I believe that the Holy Ghost was in the Old Testament prophets, for Peter says so and I must take Peter’s word for it in spite of the commentators.
Now, there’s all this confusion here, and I do not want to get ironical about this though I fear an ironical quality has crept into my voice. But here seems to be the fact that there’s all this confusion on this subject for a number of reasons. One, it results from letting the element of curiosity crowd out of the element of practicality. If Bible teachers could only remember that the men, holy men who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost and gave us divinely inspired truth, never for one remote moment, ever meant to give us anything to satisfy our intellectual curiosity. They meant to give us truth to transform us, spirit and soul, and bring us into holy living and holy believing. They never intended that we should have rattles to play with.
I have been to Bible conferences, and I have heard teachers of not only one, but many schools of Christian interpretation, that gave me the impression that they were proud of their ability to bring things out, both old and new, and particularly new. And when after they had settled the hash of the ordinary, simple interpretation of a thing, they gave you some curious interpretation. They had enjoyed the theology from a curious standpoint. And I believe that this will lead us astray just as sure as you live. Just as soon as I accept the doctrine, or the idea, that the Bible is a book of theological toys to be played with by tender seedlings, I have missed the purpose of the Scripture and I have no proof that I won’t be in false doctrine before very long. For the Bible was given us not to satisfy our curiosity, but to sanctify our personality.
Now, another thing that has resulted in this confusion about the Holy Spirit being on, and in, with, and so on; is the carnal urge to rightly divide. Rightly dividing the Word of Truth turns out to be vivisecting it; it usually bleeds to death in the hands of the man who holds it. And then he carries a dead, pale text around with him and rams it down everybody’s throat. The carnal urge to rightly divide; I think it arises from intellectual pride.
And then there is what we call trying too hard. I think I might lay this Bible down a minute and make an inane comment or two on that subject. That in trying to understand the Scripture, we are in grave danger of trying too hard. It is very rarely that we can screw up our belt tight to the last notch, grit our teeth, and say, I’m going to get this. God never has very much place for old Adam. He bid old Adam goodbye and said that the end of all flesh should come before Him. And God has never put any confidence in the flesh from that hour down to this hour.
Now remember that when the Old Testament priests went into offer their sacrifices, they did not dare wear wool clothing, because wool made them perspire. And I suppose that God was saying to the Jewish priesthood, now, don’t mistake perspiration for inspiration. And your human perspiration will not glorify Me. Therefore, wear linen clothing so you can keep cool and serve me scripturally and spiritually, but calmly and coolly. And don’t imagine that by trying hard you will get anywhere. Climbing Jacob’s ladder with white knuckles and tired muscles; there’s a lot of paganism in that. And the Lord wants to kill all that and let the Holy Ghost take over.
Now, when Jesus sweat blood in the garden that was quite another matter. That was not old Adam trying too hard, that was the Holy Ghost coming upon a man till he nearly burned him up. That was the prayer spirit laboring on the man until he nearly killed a man. And I believe in that. But I also believe that theologians who push too hard, usually fail to see the point because they’re not relaxed.
Now, Paul used the illustration taken from the arena and boxing and wrestling; and I suppose I can without being unspiritual. And if we might take baseball, which I never see. I’ve seen one game in 17-18 years and probably won’t see another one for another 18; maybe never till the Cubs win the pennant again. But we would like to say this about baseball. They say that a young man who stays a .300 or .325 hitter, suddenly goes into a slump and he couldn’t hit a pumpkin when it comes up to the plate. They say often it’s because he has gotten tense and is pushing too hard; that he goes all tense into the batter’s box. But when he gives up and says, what’s the use, I couldn’t hit a basketball. Then he starts to hit again. Because he gets off the tension. He isn’t trying too hard. And I have met many saints that are trying too hard.
I remember one time, I think I told you this before, but it’ll bear repeating; and a man who has been here as long as I have, has to do some repeating. But I remember at a watch night meeting 20-30 years ago, that we were all around there praying. They were testifying, and one very godly man; now, he was all that. He was a very godly man. And I was sitting beside another godly man, a missionary under the Africa Inland Mission, Reverend Mr. Solunca, who had just lately gone to heaven. They found him beside his motorcycle out in the bush where he had given his life to the Lord Jesus. But anyway, this Solunca was sitting beside me. And this friend of mine, Everet, he jumped to his feet and he gripped his knuckles together, hands together, and in a spasm of Adamic determination, he told us his plans for the new year, how he was going to serve God. And my quiet, saintly friend beside me, touched my arm. He whispered; Brother Everet is screwing his violin string to tight. He said, he won’t be able to keep it up there for the year. And I was a young fellow then and I remember it, and I think he did. He screwed it too tight.
You can throw your flesh in. And with strong religious determination, grit your teeth and batter your own head black and blue and never get anywhere. We can do that in theology too. The simplest explanation of any text is just what it says there. Just read it; get on your knees. And as Mark Twain said, the passages he couldn’t understand never bothered him. But the ones he could understand made him sweat. And you will have time enough following the text that you understand without seeking to pry curiously underneath the surface and bring up some esoteric meaning that God never found there.
I spent from Wednesday to Sunday night, last week in Dr. Simpson’s old church in New York City down off Times Square. And I preached one night, and I said merely as a matter of passing, you don’t have to believe it. Nor, it doesn’t mean much. It was just a passing thought. I said, you know, the angels are pure spirit, and the animals are flesh, but man, this wondrous being, is both spirit and flesh. And I went on to something else. That was just a little bracketed saying I gave and it’s true.
Afterwards a man with a face like a mask, thin and cold, thin eyes and completely expressionless face, said, what did you say about the beasts not having a spirit? And he looked down. I could just see him. He had taken that argument to all the preachers that visit New York and made it #97 now. And he said, did God not make His covenant with all flesh? And then, he looked down, as if just say I won’t hit him again. He’s wounded. And I saw what I was into at first; I treated him as a brother and tried to reason; and then suddenly I saw there was no use. And I said, I perceive, sir, that you are a theological mechanic and more concerned with the letter than with the spirit. I worship the Most High God. Goodbye, and I left him. He came back to all the meetings, but he never bothered me anymore.
Now this fellow had gotten from somewhere, I don’t know where, the idea that a dog has a spirit, and that when God made a covenant with Adam, he included the dog and the dog knew it, I guess, and probably signed the covenant. But it’s all very silly, and if it’s true, it doesn’t mean anything. What do I care about horses and sheep and dogs and mountain lions? God never said, go into all the world and preach the gospel to my horses. He died for people. He came to seek that which was lost, and we’re the last ones.
Lo and behold, when He came and considered being with God not to be hung on to, but lowered Himself and took on flesh, it was not the flesh of the beasts, but the flesh of the man. And it was a man that went out to Calvary, not a dog or a bear. So, if there is some hope for the beast, let there be hopes. I think John Wesley thought there was. But if there is, that’s not within my field of interest at all. I can’t know everything. I can only know a fraction of anything.
So why not stay by the Truth as it affects me. I could spend my life attacking creatures on whether an animal has a spirit or not and never read the Sermon on the Mount once. But it’s infinitely more important that I read the Sermon on the Mount and yield my heart to obey it than it is that I settle curious things concerning prophecy or concerning any other phase of Christian truth.
Now, the simple truth is that the Old Testament prophets had the spirit of Jesus and that’s here as a very rare truth. The Spirit of Christ which was in them is here in the Bible. And they prepared the world for the advent of the Savior, because it was the Savior, Himself, in them; the Spirit of the Savior in them prophesying. And they witnessed the Christ in type and symbol and historic situation and in the writings of the prophets.
And this explains why Christians love the Old Testament. That’s why you may have wondered why you like the Old Testament so and you can read it and mark it and love it, and yet, you know, it belonged to an ancient dispensation, and the New Testament is your book, no. The New Testament isn’t your book any more than the old was. You cannot separate the one from the other. They are an organic whole. And the Spirit of Christ was in the Old Testament and Christ is in the New Testament; and you have one and the same thing.
There are passages that don’t refer to you, and yet you feel an affinity for them. You read the book of Deuteronomy, which has to do almost wholly with Israel. And yet your heart warms and leaps and rejoices in your marked passages and you say, I wonder why. Why do I love the Old Testament? Ah, it’s because the Spirit of Christ which is in them did testify. And you who are born again, recognize the same Spirit that dwells in your breasts in some major at least, and there’s an affinity there. And that’s why the Old Testament should be read. And that’s why we should preach from the Old Testament.
Now the reassuring truth, that redemption is famous in heaven and was famous in ancient times; and that the plan of God to redeem the fallen race excited wonder and admiration among the very angels; which things angels desire to look into. I don’t know how much they ever found out. But the angels were stirred to desire to know this wondrous redemption.
Now, why were the angels admiring so greatly this truth? I believe it’s for three reasons. Because of the being that is to be redeemed. If we could ever make people see three things about themselves. One is, what wonderful creatures they are; and the second is, what hopelessly sinful creatures they are. And the third is, what great hope there is in Christ.
I think we could settle a lot of our problems, but we either take the attitude that we’re sinful and then begin to tramp ourselves down to the level of the gopher and the rat, or else, we take the idea that we’re not sinful and deny that we’ve sinned and push ourselves up. Both are true, brethren.
We were made in the image of God. And we’re made only a little lower than the angels and are to be higher than the angels. That’s what we were. That’s what we potentially are. But without the new birth and redemption and forgiveness and cleansing, we’ll find our place to that hell that’s reserved for the devil and his fallen angels. Those two truths are not self-contradictory. They are two sides of the same truth. But man was made in God’s image; and God for that reason sent his Son to die for them. Therefore, nobody ever ought to think low of himself, though he ought to remember how humble and little and sinful and hopeless and broken he’s been before his God.
So, we keep these two thoughts in suspension; that though we were originally in the image of God, we stained our souls and ruined us and brought judgment in hell and death upon us. But then, that God for Christ’s sake, saves us, redeems us for another’s worth and merit, and restores us again to the image of God.
We shall someday stand a little higher than we anciently stood in the lines of our forefather Adam. Those are wonderful truths and they’re reassuring truths. It’s wonderful being man. Angels are interested in it.
And then, the second reason is the astonishing mercy of God. If God gave us our desserts, brethren, there wouldn’t be one of us here this morning. Not one. Not one. You, kind-faced old lady that has spent your lifetime looking after children and then looking after grandchildren, and living the best you’ll know how. You wouldn’t be here. You would be in hell too. And you, honest businessman that never cheated in your life and that are upright and good and honest and a worthy, exemplary citizen, you’d be in hell too. And everybody that is above the age of responsibility belongs there. And whoever denies that he does, will go there. And oh, the astonishing mercy of God that He should come to us, who? Because of what we were in Adam, made in the image of God. We went down lower and further than we would have gone.
In the Henry plays by Shakespeare there was a prince called Prince Hal. I think it was Prince Henry the fourth if I remember correctly. But Prince Hal, Harry, they call him, was of course a noble prince, a son of the king and heir apparent to the throne. He must live like the noble man that he was. But instead of that, he forgot his noble standing and went and frequented the pubs and drank sack, whatever that is, I suppose English beer, along with Falstaff and the other bloated, big-bellied, beer drinking, liquor consuming crowd.
Nobody minded to see fat old Falstaff there. He had not come down to go to the saloon. But the royal prince had come down. Therefore, he was infinitely more to blame because he had come down so far. And so, if we had never been anything, our sin might be forgiven or overlooked or excused. But as men made in the image of God with moral perception and conscience and ability to grasp spiritual truths, for us to go down where we’ve gone.
Oh, the grace and mercy of God that we should be saved. And that’s why the angels stood with open eyes and said, how can it be that such creatures as they, should be treated as they are by the great God who loves us?
And the third is, and this is most important, because of the one who would rescue us, the One, Christ Jesus our Lord. Now, as we see these angels looking with reverent wonder and these prophets who prophesied since the world began, wondering what it was all about and dreaming and hoping they might know. We can only say that our foundations stand sure. It’s not a new religion. Not Mrs. Eddy in a fit. Not Father Divine with his old bald head and his angels, concubines. Not Joseph Smith, in his curious plates dug up under an apple tree. But before the world began, this was in the mind of God, ancient as the sun. And before the sun burned in the heavens to redeem you and me, it was in the mind of God. Angels desired to look into it.
You know, I heard about an old gentleman, a dear old saint of God. He was realistic, and he didn’t say as lots of Christian do, they never have a doubt. No, I never have a doubt–hypocrites. They do have a doubt, but they won’t admit it. But this old fella was a realist. And he justified, he said, I admit I have doubts sometimes. He said, I’ll hear an argument, or somebody would advance an idea and it’ll stun me for a little. And he said, when I have such doubts, I always dive down to the bottom and examine the foundations of my faith. And he said, every time I have done it yet, I have always come to the surface singing how firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in His excellent word. So, that’s all I meant to do this morning was to remind you and examine the foundations a little. And now let’s sing, How Firm a Foundation. All right.
The Glory of That Which Cannot Be Seen with the Mortal Eye
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
October 13, 1957
A very familiar and often used passage of Scripture, 2 Corinthians 4:14-18: Knowing that He which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
Now, I think it doesn’t take a great deal of intelligence to know that the man of God, who spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost, is contrasting two kinds of seeing here. He was not advising us to try to see the invisible with our naked eye. He said that there were two kinds of seeing, the external eye that saw the visible and the internal eye that sees the invisible. And while we cannot go through life and not see the visible unless we should be among the unseeing persons whose eyesight has failed them. They’re not many, thank God, but a few of our friends are like that. And others of us get along by means of lenses out in front. But for the average human being manages to see things as he goes about, and Paul is not telling us not to. But he is saying that there is a gazing, a looking, and that it is to be done with the inward eye and not with the external.
Now life, all about us, is charged with mystery. I’ve said this so many times that you must be weary of my saying it, but it is this that gives a quality, all the quality, all the value there is to life, is that mysterious part of it. The part that can be explained does not explain the value of the life. We can study anatomy and biology, and know all about children, babies. But that doesn’t explain why people love babies. There isn’t any explaining. You can paint and write poetry and orate until we’re blue in the face, and yet, there is an overtone, a rainbow color of emotional color about it all that makes babies precious to us.
And so, with almost everything, we can explain it and look and see physically, but that doesn’t explain it. That is the basis of it. That’s the foundation upon which it may rest. But there is a glory in the imponderable things, the instinctive things; the things that are unlearned. That is, they’ve not been learned. They are just there. They give the meaning to life, the glory of our lives, the value of them; that by which and for which we live, lies in the intangibles, the imponderables, the things that we can’t get at, but we can see with the inward eye.
For instance, it is not what’s before us. It’s who sees it that matters. It’s two men, a farmer and an artist who take a walk out, they’re friends. And temporarily, they’re together and they take a walk out of an October afternoon. And the farmer sees the corn and the fat cattle, and he’ll talk and talk well and pleasantly about having to bring in this machine and it’s about time to take those 100 off of that particular field and bring them in or shift them to another field. And what he sees there is what you can buy and sell and put in the boxcar, and weigh and measure and evaluate in terms of dollars and cents. He sees the soil and the cow and the steer and the corn shock.
But all the time, the artist is all thrilled. He sees the cattle, but he doesn’t know how much they cost. He sees the corn shock but has no idea of its value. What he sees is that which can’t be weighed nor measured nor bought nor sold, but nevertheless gives value to living in the world.
The other man is fixing it so we can physically live in the world by having milk and meat and vegetables. But the other man says, all right, you’ve made it possible for us to live in the world, but why live in the world? Why? Why? Well, when he sees the blue skies and the fleecy clouds and the colored leaves, he knows why. You can’t explain it. You can’t write a book on, “Is Life Worth Living.” It either is or it isn’t. Everybody knows that it is, that has felt the thrill of a love and known the glory that belongs to God. And everybody knows. You can’t prove it. You just know it.
Or you take a dog who may be running out the night and may for a moment take a quick, casual glance at the starry sky. Well now, dogs have eyes, and they have pretty keen eyes. They go on their sense of smell more than eyesight, but they still have good eyes, and they see it. The dog, he sees the moon hanging there and he sees the stars. He sees them. But what does he do about it? Nothing at all. He’s looking for a coon or for some other animal that he may pull down and eat. But he sees the stars.
But David goes out and the dog runs alongside of David. And David sees the stars. And so, David writes the eighth Psalm. My God, how wonderful thou art. Thy Majesty, how great; and talks about the stars by night and the moon and the heavens above and what they tell about God. Forever singing as they shine, the Hand that made us is divine.
Now, both eyes saw the heavens, but the eyes of the dog saw nothing. The eyes of the spiritually inspired poet, David, saw the wonder and the glory of it all. It’s the intangible thing, the thing you don’t learn, the thing that’s there because you’re human; because God made you and stamped you with the royal imagery of Himself.
Now, religion has tried, always tried, any religion, all religions, with possibly except Buddhists, have tried to show the glory that belongs to that which can’t be seen as over against that which can. And I suppose it’s an open question whether it’s better to have no religion or to have a wrong one. I suppose it’s an open question. But I would say that religion may have done the world some good, even the poor, pagan, animistic religions may have done the world some good in that they did do this. They did and they have taught the world, did teach and have taught the world that there is something; there’s another world than this. That this isn’t it. That you can have all of this and lose your own soul and be nobody. The Parsis know that and the Mohammedins know that. They all know that. And certainly, it is the very essence of the Old and the New Testament.
And the busy men have not taken this very seriously. They have reversed the apostle’s text which says the things that are eternal, that are seen, are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal. And they’ve reversed it and edited it a bit. And while they would agree that this is true in their living, they prove that when they quote it, they mean it like this: for the things that are invisible and unseen are rather shaky and unreal, but the things you see they are the real thing.
Give me, said the communists in early days and the socialists and the agitators, give us something here. Don’t put it off until the world over yonder. And they parodied our songs and said you will have pie in the sky by and by. And thus, they turn the attention of people from God to earth, and from heaven above to this veil of suffering and woe. And they put their emphasis upon the things that can be seen. And they said, don’t talk to us about invisible things. Talk to us about things we can get our teeth in. We want to have more. We want to have bigger cars and bigger farms and better cattle. And we want our women to dress better and we want to dress better. We want to be paid more and we want to work shorter hours. Don’t talk to us about heaven. We want to know about earth.
Well, this reminds me of what the man Paul said a little further back in his Corinthian epistles. He said, howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor one of the princes of this world that come to not. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery. Even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew. For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. Then he goes on to say, eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of a man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
And here, we break away from the, give us more of this, now. Give us what we can see and weigh and measure and feel and touch. And we rise to the wisdom that says I must have something to see and hear and touch. I’m a human being. God has given me a body. And it’s got to be stoked occasionally like a furnace. It’s got to be gassed up occasionally like a car. I have to recharge it sometimes, and so I will not despise God’s humble gift of pumpkins and corn and fat cattle. I won’t despise it. But I will only say these are temporal.
And the things that are seen are temporal, whereas the things that are not seen are eternal. The woe of the world has been its bondage to visible things, reflecting men in all parts of the world at all times, not only religions, but philosophers themselves were not particularly religious, that held this to be the prime curse of the world. That we are victims to the things that we can see. That we’ve allowed ourselves to be chained down to visible things. And it’s a great error to hold that the things visible are ultimate reality. They are not ultimate reality. They are evanescent. They’re passing. They’re like a shadow across the meadow on a cloudy day. But the things that are not seen are the eternal things.
The things that are seen are the balls and chains that are on the ankles of the race and hold us back so we can’t fly. Our feeble wings will not lift us because we’ve got a ball and chain. The farmer has his acres and his fat cattle, and the worldling has her jewelry.
I thought if you were to offer a woman a hangman’s noose, she would scream, turn pale and perhaps faint. But offer her a $10,000 necklace and she’ll strut around even though she’s in danger of her life. She’ll strut around with that thing. And I wonder which is the more dangerous, the hangman’s noose, which with a quick snap ends at all, or the $10,000 or $20,000 necklace that binds the spirit of the woman, binds the spirit of the woman and holds her down, holds her down. She’s got her head in a noose and doesn’t know it.
Or the businessman with his profits and his interest and his bonds. I wonder if any of you have ever happened to notice the word bonds. I wonder if the bonds issued by great companies or by a government, which we so eagerly buy and put away, may not be bonds in more ways than one. I think it is entirely possible that it should be so.
Somebody sent me a book recently, a republished, written by an old man of God who lived in England a couple of hundred years ago. It deals with the whole question of laying up treasures on earth. Now, I think he carries it further than I would carry it. But I think we Christians need to rethink this whole business of profits and bonds and treasures laid up. They may be bonds; indeed, to bind us and hold us to the earth.
The man of God talks about the evidence of things not seen. Remember my brethren, when I preach what some enemies call mysticism, which is only the Word of God, that I am not asking anybody to look at a dream world. No, no. I don’t believe in dream worlds. I don’t believe in imaginary worlds. I don’t believe in anything imaginary. I don’t like imaginary stories. That’s why I don’t like fiction, particularly. I don’t particularly like Christian fiction at all. Because it’s imaginary. There’s nothing there. I want to be able when I talk about a thing, to be able to go and say, look, there it is. That’s what I’m talking about. There it is.
I can’t go along with the fairy tale tellers who have the woods populated with little dancing girls, little waspies or whispies that come crystallized out of the sky. It’s pleasant I suppose to talk about it, and there have been operas written about it. And there have been plays such as Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s pleasant, you know, to listen to it, like listening for 20 minutes to, say, one of these little music boxes. But after that, I want to get away from it and get down to something solid. Is there any anything there that it is talking about?
And when Scripture says that faith is the evidence of things not seen. Faith is not a place where you go and hide. It’s not a retreat from reality. It’s a gateway to reality where we see the real things. We’re not asking anybody to accept imaginative things or imaginary things. We are asking them to build their faith on that which is.
Abraham saw a city that had a foundation whose Builder and Maker was God, but Abraham never saw it with these external eyes. He saw it with his inner eyes. And that was not an imaginary thing. We’re not asking him to become dreamy and write silly poetry about it. We ask him, Abraham, look, look, there’s a city, a city. Look quick, you won’t see it long. There it is. You’re a busy man. And you’ll only get a glimpse, but there it is. And Abraham looked quick and saw it with his inner eyes. Somebody said after that he never would live in a city. He lived in a tent. He couldn’t stand any city after he’d seen that one, by comparison.
So, instead of ghosts and fairies, we believe in reality. God reveals the real world, having substance. And it can’t be seen with the outward eye, but it can be experienced with the inward eye. And it is, I repeat, the only ultimate reality.
You know, I am made to wonder at the wisdom of the Christian. And I repeat that we ought not to be apologetic the way we are. We ought not to gaze with awe and wonder at great minds, great minds. Paul called them the princes of this world, and the mighty and the wise. The man who said it was not a poor little fellow saying sour grapes, I don’t want greatness. He was great. Six they say, six great minds have been in the world and Paul’s was one. Of all the millions, six great minds. And so, this man Paul was not, sometimes we evangelicals don’t have any education, so we preach a whole sermon to prove it’s no good anyhow. Like the fox that leaped with a great myth and said I don’t like them anymore.
So, this sour grape business, we’re not talking about sour grapes. They don’t have anything we want. The mighty, the great’s of the world. The Christian has a wisdom that’s not of this world. A Christian penetrates, passes through, sees, touches, and handles things unseen. He’s learned to distinguish that which has value from that which has no value. He’s learned the correct table by which he judges things. And so, he no longer wastes his money.
I read; in the rare times I pick up the Reader’s Digest. Every article is written by the same fellow, obviously, they all in the same way, anyhow. But I got ahold of it. And I read an article in there about a man and his wife who are psychologists and who had degrees in education and psychology. Their whole life is given over to training animals: turkeys, chickens, pigs, ducks, dogs, cats and other animals. And they spend their lifetime learning the psychology of a duck and learning how to bridge across from the duck’s low-grade mentality or a turkey’s low-grade mind to their human minds.
Well now, if a fellow had a good, honest job, and was doing mankind some good and he did that in the evenings to get his mind off of his troubles, I’d say maybe that would be all right. But my God in heaven, to spend your lifetime learning the psychology of a turkey.
Well, Christians have risen above it, beloved. They’ve risen above it. I can understand how a fellow might want to see a ballgame sometime. But to give the best years of your life throwing a hunk of matter around covered with a skin of a horse and worrying about it. I just don’t see it. How can you give yourself to it.
I know one fellow, and if you’ll excuse me and not think I’m boasting about it. I know one fellow that had a letter from the Boston Red Sox asking him to come. And he said, I’ll keep the letter, but I won’t waste my time amusing people. And that was one of my sons. I’m glad he learned that much. I won’t waste my time amusing people. There’s too much reality in the world to spend your time amusing people.
The Christian has learned what’s real and what isn’t real. The worldling doesn’t know shadow from substance. And sometimes he’ll give his life to a shadow and find in the end that he’s missed the substance. But a Christian knows where substance is. God has given him x-ray eyes that he can see through shadows. And he won’t waste his time on shadows. He won’t waste his talents nor his money nor his efforts; and the Christian has found the everlasting reality.
I tell you; I don’t know what it is in my heart, but I assume it’s in everybody’s. But I could never, never, never, let myself rest unless I knew eternity was in this thing. I am not going to be around here long, and neither are you. For us to give our time to that which we can’t keep.
So, somebody said to you, let’s put it like this by way of a rather awkward illustration. Suppose somebody said to you, I have a beautiful house which I have built, but for reasons I’m not going to occupy it. It’s a split level. It’s a $72,000 house; it’s got all the trimmings. And I’m going to give it to you on the condition that you give up your friends. And you give up prayer and you give up church and you give up prayer meeting and you give up your Bible. I’m going to give it to you. How long can I keep it? Five years, just five years. I’ll give it to you in ’57 and in ’62, it comes back to me again. Now, those are the terms. You can just have this beautiful, gorgeous home for five years, and then it comes back to me again and you’re out on the sidewalk.
Is there a man with soul so dead that he would accept a fool thing like that? Is there a man with soul so dead and a heart so leaden that if he would accept a house, however costly and beautiful, and however well-appointed and charmingly situated, if it meant that he was to give up friends on earth and friends in heaven, and have it only five years and then be kicked out on the sidewalk?
Well, that’s an illustration only which I combed out of the air just now. Here is the application of it. And it is this, that the world says to you, now here, I’ll give you this. It’s not real and won’t last. And after a certain time, you’ll have to give it up. You’ll be out on the sidewalk with no friend in heaven or earth. But for a little while, I want to give it to you, the terms and conditions being, that you should cut down on this religious business. Oh, we’ll let you believe in God and all that, but cut down on this religious business and neglect your soul and you can have all this.
Well, we don’t have to make illustrations. Did not the devil say to Jesus, all this I will give thee and the glory of it, for it is mine and I can give it to whom I will. And Jesus, with not one penny in his pocket, no, not one dime in the bank said, get thee behind me Satan. For the Lord Jehovah thy God shalt thou serve. And Him only shalt thou worship.
Well, the unseen. We live for the unseen. We live for God and for Christ and for the Holy Ghost. We live for the new generation. The new age they call it. Back in the 30s, communists were crawling like maggots in and out of Washington and in and out of the State Department; in and out of the White House, all over the world and into our cities. Nobody had risen to do anything about it. Nobody dared to point and say that’s a snake going there, nobody. And they were writing their poetry, and you could buy it anywhere. And I got three volumes of their poems, three volumes. I read them and they deal about the new age and the glory of the new world that is being born. But what kind of a new world is it? It is a world where you make more money and eat better, but die, nevertheless.
Lenin lies dead. Stalin lies beside him. And old bald Khrushchev will lie there soon, all together apart from the fact they can come through on their extravagant promises, which they can’t. All aside from that still, if they could bring Utopia to the world, and every man could be rich and every woman beautiful and all humanity healthy, they still can’t make good on their new age because they’ll die. And whatever doesn’t take that awesome, awful, startling, terrifying fact into account is no good at all. No good at all. Socialism, Communism, any other the isms, or all the good that men have done to make it easier for people to live, I’m grateful. I’m grateful for unions and I’m grateful for agitators and radicals that got the five-year-old kid out of the textile factory. I’m glad for all that that’s been done over the years, inspired by Christians, incidentally. I’m glad for it. I’m glad for the agitation that got the slave free. I’m glad for anything that makes it easier to live. But I deplore when that becomes an end in itself.
And they tell us now, now we’ve got liberty and freedom and prosperity and everything. I’ve got so I don’t like to hear any talks from Washington anymore. It’s ominous. They’re all telling us how well off we are– watch it my brethren–how well off we are. There’s nothing like it since the world began. No. But every man must die and come to judgment. And if there’s nothing beyond that, then I refuse to be concerned with it. I absolutely refuse.
Jesus Christ came to Judaism, and he found a religion that stood in meats and drinks and carnal ordinances, that had a heart and a soul and a spirit, but it also had much external. Examples and shadows of heavenly things, but not those heavenly things. And Jesus Christ our Lord swept all the shadows away and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel and projected the eternal into the temporal, and the everlasting into the passing and said, I go to prepare a place for you. That where I am, there you’ll come. And he talked about it as a man talks about the house that he’s bought or the farm that he owned. It was real. But he said, It’s spiritual. This is a spiritual thing. He swept away the shadows and said God is Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
But He left two symbols. Before coming down here I read some lines by Martin Luther. Martin Luther said, gentlemen, there are only two sacraments, not seven. The Lord’s supper and baptism. He said, I want you to know that all these offices and days and forms and feasts are all wrong. The Word of God and the Holy Ghost, that’s all we need. Luther said it. You wouldn’t think so now, but Luther said it. I’ve got it up here. Luther knew that all days and all of this we go through is just an external thing. The reality is God. Jesus Christ came to Judaism, locked in those things and swept them all away. He said, the kingdom of heaven is within you. And if you worship God, you must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And where two or three are gathered in My name, I’m there in the midst; and there is your church.
But he allowed us two visible symbols that we might not be cast wholly out on the invisible. We might at least be anchored enough so that while we have a body and an eye and a tongue, that there might be something physical that would be a symbol. And He gave it to us as a man gives a ring to his bride. Not as a substitute for Him. But as a poor little reminder of Him when He’s away. Just a symbol, a little sign. And He said, now, there are two visible symbols, bread and wine. The bread to tell of my broken body and wine to tell of my shed blood. As often as ye meet together. The world wonders what you’re doing and peeks into see, and they see you eating the bread and drinking the wine and, oh, you’re thinking of Me.
And so, the weak that can’t quite get things by faith, but demand a little prop from the outside. He said, all right, bread and wine. I give you this. I’ll give you this now. And as often as you do it, you do it in remembrance of me. But in itself, it’s nothing. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it symbolizes. It’s the ring on the finger of the bride to remind her that her bridegroom is in the glory waiting for her. And they tell of the realities that are eternal.
We’re going to have communion right away. And it’s not for members of this members of this church only, but the members of the Body of Christ. Here is a little prayer I want to read to you before we gather at the front. O Bread, of Life from heaven, to weary pilgrims given. O Manna from above. The souls that hungry feed Thou. The hearts that seek Thee. Lead Thou with Thy sweet, tender love. O Fount of Grace redeeming, O River ever streaming from Jesus’ holy side. Come Thou Thyself bestowing on thirsting souls and flowing till all are satisfied. Jesu, this feast receiving Thy Word of Truth believing, we the unseeing adore. Grant, when the veil is rended, that we to heaven have ascended may see Thee ever more. Take those four words. We the unseeing adore. So, we’ll have the communion service now and adore the unseen Presence. And then we’ll gather while we sing.
