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“The Kind of Christians we are or Should Be“

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The Kind of Christians we are or Should Be

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

February 14, 1954

Summary

A.W. Tozer emphasizes the importance of recognizing one’s identity as a Christian, as revealed in 1 Peter 2:9. Tozer warns against letting the world define who Christians are and encourages them to embrace their true identity as God’s chosen people. Tozer also discusses the identity and purpose of the royal priesthood as revealed in the Bible, highlighting that Christians are not just individuals but a new order of humans with a dual nature as both priests and a holy nation. Understanding one’s identity and purpose as a believer is crucial for resisting the devil and the world’s interest in self-discovery.

Message

In 1 Peter, second chapter, verses eight, nine and ten, Peter had been talking about certain ones to whom Jesus Christ was a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, who stumbled at the Word in their disobedience. Then he used that small but highly meaningful word, but, ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, and a holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

One of the ancient moral teachers of the past, one who was very dear to the Christians of the first centuries owing to the fact that truth is all one piece, and if a thing is true, it is true anyway, so that, as the brother once told me, a bee can gather honey, not only from a flower but from a weed. So, the early Christian church by a kind of affinity, accepted one of those moral teachers not on the level of inspired truth, but sort of as a helpful side message. I refer to Epictetus.

And one of his doctrines was this. I give it to you as an illustration of what I’m to say to follow. And I give you only a running translation of it rather than an exact verbatim declaration. He said that the first thing about a man was that he was a human being, that that was first, that he was a man. And he said that you could discover what a man ought to be by discovering what the nature of the man is.

Just as you can pick up a hammer and, if you’re reasonably intelligent, and all my audience is, you could deduct what the hammer was for by holding it in your hand. You would know that that thing wasn’t shaped to saw a board off with or open a can of salmon. You would deduce from that that it was to be used to pound in nails. Or if you pick up a saw, and you would deduce from the shape of the saw that the nature of the saw, that it was not made to pound in nails, but to saw lumber.

So said the old man, we deduce from the nature of man, what kind of person or what kind of being he ought to be. And to be a man is the first responsibility of a human being. Then he said, having settled that, then we can know our duties. Now, that’s as far as he went. The Bible has little to say about duties, privileges in the Bible, but he said duty. And he said, we can know our duties by figuring what we are and what facets of our humanhood, our manhood, which way they turn. For instance, he said now, settling that you’re a human being, a man, and that your highest privilege and responsibility is to develop yourself as a human being.

Now again, following that, you can know what that development is by figuring your relationships. He said, first, you’re a son or a daughter. And the fact of sonship implies certain obligations and duties and responsibilities toward your parents. Then he said again, you’re a husband or a wife. And the fact of wifehood or husbandhood implies certain responsibility toward them. And the fact then that you’re a citizen implies certain responsibility toward the state; that you’re a father, certain responsibility toward your children and so on.

Now, that is not highly inspired. You can find that out if you just churn up a little of the gray matter that’s in your head. And somehow or other the church liked that and use to read that. Now, not I say on the level with inspired truth, but as a helpful thing as we read Benjamin Franklin or something. They liked it. Now with that as a little backdrop of illustration, let me point out to you here what Peter said. He said, you’re a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people.

Now, just as Epictetus says that the first thing is, you’re a man, and after that you figure out your responsibilities as a man. Peter says the first thing about you is you’re a Christian. He takes the manhood for granted, he begins where Epictetus ended and says, being born again, that we are born again or begotten again, he calls it, unto a living hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That’s in the opening part of the chapter. And in the latter part of the first chapter, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever.

He begins not with our basic humanhood. He begins with our basic Christianity, that we are born another time; that we’re now Christians. And he says now, we’ll take that for granted. Then he goes on to show that as Christians there are at least four, he certainly doesn’t give us all here, but he says, there are at least four facets to your nature and four relationships. There are four things that you are, just as Epictetus is man, is a husband, or a citizen, or both, or a father. Just as he has these various relationships, so as a Christian, you have various relationships; you are as a Christian, a number of things. And you can figure out your duty and your privileges by seeing what you are.

Let’s notice here, he said, now, as a Christian, you belong to a company which God calls a chosen generation. He applied all the terms of the Old Testament Israel to the New Testament Church, only he raised them up onto another level, and made them spiritual. Israel was called a chosen seed, and we even sing now, you chosen seed of Israel’s race, ye ransom from the fall. And Peter says, now you Christians have various facets to your nature. There are various things you are and one of them is you’re a chosen generation.

Now, that word generation there doesn’t mean descent in the sense that we mean it nor does it mean a time such as we say, this generation. But it means a breed, if you’ll allow that rather ugly word for such a wonderful thing as being born of God. It means a breed, a species. He says that you Christians are a chosen species. You are a new breed of human. We start with your humanity, but we go on to your new birth. And that constitutes you a new breed of humans, as completely different from the fallen race of Adam, as though you belonged on another world.

You are a chosen breed, a chosen generation of people. Now that’s what we are. And just as Epictetus’ man could figure out his responsibilities to the state by remembering that he’s a citizen, so we Christians can figure out our responsibilities somewhat, and privileges by remembering that we are a new breed of human. I know the world will laugh at that and they have good reason to laugh the way some of us act. We act very much like the old barnyard scrubs that we used to be. But God says that we are nevertheless a new, a chosen generation, a select generation.

Just as men select breeds and produce the finest, God has, not by building on Adam, but by rebirth from above, created a new generation of humans. And He said, now there’s your responsibility and there’s your privilege. That’s how you can figure out how you are to be; and what kind of person you are to be by remembering who you are. If God’s people only could remember who they were. We let the world tell us what we are. We let our government tell us what we are. To the world, we’re simply religious people. To our government, we’re taxpayers and voters. But God says that we’re more than that. We’re that, certainly, certainly we are.

We’re citizens. And as citizens, we vote. We pay taxes. We pay taxes anyway, whether we vote or not. But we are more than that we are a chosen generation; the real born-again Christian is. He belongs to a new school of humanity, a new level of humanity, a new breed of humanity, having been born from above and still being human. A twice-born human generation is what the Christians are. That ought to give us pause and ought to give us, as they say, food for thought, what kind of people we ought to be.

The priests of the Old Testament were not royal priests. The royal line was the Judah line, and the priestly line was the Levitical line. But the New Testament Christian is neither of Judah or Levi or Dan or any of the rest. He is of a new order of human, twice-born human, and one of his functions is to act as a priest. And because he’s born of royal seed, he’s a royal priest.

So now, if you will think of yourself like that and not let the world tell you what you are; not let the books on psychology tell you what you are but go to God’s word and find out what you are as a believing man and a Christian, a follower of Christ. You belong to a royal priesthood. And the priesthood now lies in the hands of the individual Christians. It is not an order of people apart. The church is the priesthood, and every Christian is his own priest. That’s very hard for some people to understand, that every Christian is a priest and not only a priest, but a royal priest. But he says more. He says, you’re also a royal priesthood.

Now, that was familiar to the Old Testament. They had a priesthood. Those who could, approached God, officially approached God for the people. They were the priests, and they came out of only one line. Not all could be priests, so even Jesus could not have been an Old Testament priest because He belonged to the line of Judah. And not only that, but they knew what a priesthood was. It consisted of certain orders of men, or an order of men, who offered sacrifices and made prayers and stood between God and the people as a priesthood.

But now he says, you are a priesthood; you Christians now are a priesthood. That’s the other facet of your nature. The other direction your life moves, you are priests, and not only priests, but you are royal priests. For that reason, we do not need the priests of the Old Testament temple. We do not need the priests of Buddhism nor the priests of the Catholic Church. We need no priests because we are ourselves priests. Priests don’t go to priests for help. We are our own priests. And we are constituted so by virtue of the fact that we belong to a new order of humans, a new breed of the human race. The old humans we are, but new humans we are also.

And the day will be when the old humanity shall pass away as the cocoon from the butterfly. And all that you are and that you spend so much money and time on and boast so about, all your old Adamic generation will pass off from you as a cocoon, and you will spring up into a new life with only the new part of you alive forevermore. And the old shall die and pass away. So, we are a new generation and a chosen one, but we are also a royal priesthood.

And then says the Scripture you’re a holy nation. The church is here thought of as a nation. That Jesus Christ as our Lord and King, and as Israel was a holy nation in the midst of the nations but not part of the nation. So, the church, the true Church of Christ is a holy nation, dwelling in the midst of the nations, but not part of the nation.

Now, if we think of ourselves like that, I recommend that you sit down sometime and think about what you are, just think about it. You say you don’t want to get interested in yourself. You’d better, because the devil is and the world is, so you’d better. And if you’re a believer in Christ, you’d better sit down and in the presence of God quietly think with the Scriptures open before you what you are. As a born-again man, what the different relationships are that you hold and what facets of your nature there are.

One of them is that you belong to a separated nation. Holy here has to do with ceremonially separated as well as morally pure. Just as Israel dwelt in the middle of the nations, part of the world, but not a part of the nations, so we now as a new priesthood, a royal priesthood, compose a nation, a new nation, a spiritual nation within the world.

They say that if you take a globe of the world and turn it so the most land area is visible, and the least water area so as the most land visible to you from where you sit. Right in the geographic center of that vast land area will be Palestine. God said in the midst of the earth, and He meant what He said.

And Israel was a nation apart, cut off to the south and to the north and to the east and to the west by carefully defined boundaries. And she lived a people apart in the midst of the nation; and her curse came when she forgot her holy, national status and began to intermarry and intermingle with the world around about her. Then God turned that same world loose on her, and her armies came in and destroyed her, so that Jerusalem alone, they say, was destroyed 70 times in history.

Now my friend, if you will think of, as a Christian, what you are, you belong to a holy nation. And you can’t afford to fuss with any of the nationals in this new race, this new priesthood, this new nation, you can’t afford to have anything at odds if you can get out of it with anybody. But love everybody and live in harmony so far as you’re able to do it with everybody, because we’re part of the nation and a holy nation, separated from the world. Christianity in our day doesn’t see this. We try to dovetail in and gear in and blend in; the sharp outlines are gone and there’s a cowardly blending.

God has stood the light on one side and said, let be light and on the other He said, let there be darkness. And he called the one day and the other night, and God has meant that division to be down the years. But we’re living now in an unholy twilight where there can be discovered very little from that wholly light and not too much that’s wholly dark. For even sin has taken some of the shining robes of Christianity and disguised its filthiness. But God’s people ought to see to it that they are what God says they are. We are what He says we are, a holy nation, a separated nation, living in the midst of the world, but absolutely apart from it.

And the fourth thing, Peter said was, a peculiar people. And of course, a peculiar people was the–peculiar was the old word 350 some years ago that was translated; peculiar meant queer. It means queer now, but then it meant a people for a position; they bought people, a purchased people. And that’s what it meant then. It doesn’t mean that now. Peculiar now, if a fellow does strange things they say he is peculiar. If he has, idiosyncrasies, I think is the word they use now, personality problems.

A queer man is a man with a personality problem. But that’s not what the Bible means. The Bible means by peculiar, a purchased people, and it was the term God used of Israel back in Deuteronomy 7. They were purchased by the blood of the sacrificial lamb and brought out a peculiar people taken unto God Himself. And that’s what Christians are.

The world says you bigoted people full of pride. Who do you think you are that you should claim to be the people of God in any particular sense? Isn’t God the Father of all men? The answer is no. Don’t try to apologize. Just say no. Don’t quote four or five authorities and soften it down. Just say no, because you know that God is not the Father of all people. He’s the Father of such as believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And He takes this new breed of people, this born from above breed that constitutes a royal priesthood and a chosen generation and a peculiar people; He takes them unto Himself in a way that the peoples of the world are never taken.

You have a perfect right to stand on God’s truth on that. And if they say, who do you think you are? Why you say, I know who I am by the mercy of God, because He says, that which in time past were not a people, but now are the people of God, which had not obtained mercy but now have attained mercy. Verse ten, you can write in the back of your wallet or engrave it on the tablets of your heart, because this is yours if you’re a true Christian. In time past you were not a royal, a chosen, a holy people, but now are the people of God, which had not attained mercy, but now have attained mercy.

So, we Christians, this Communion Sunday morning, ought to think of ourselves as being what God says we are. We ought not to let false modesty or doubts, or unbelief prevent us from accepting God’s appraisal of us and putting ourselves in faith and humility where God puts us. And if we’re not there we can get there. For the door of mercy stands wide open for all that will come.

A people for His own possession, a peculiar, a marked-off people, constituting a nation apart of priests, royal priests, rising out of this new thing which is born in the midst of the earth, the church. Father, we pray Thy blessing upon this Word.

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“Let There Be No Apology for Choosing Christ“

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Let There Be No Apology for Choosing Christ

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 16, 1956

Summary

A.W. Tozer emphasizes the transformative power of God’s love, citing Paul’s intense affection for God as an example. He argues that Christianity is not just about personal salvation or ethical teachings, but about bringing God into human life. Mr. Tozer says we need to prioritize eternal life over temporal pleasures, emphasizing the importance of making the right choice in life and standing firm in one’s beliefs without apology. He encourages listeners to embrace their faith and spread the gospel, rather than feeling sorry for those who are not saved.

Message

In the Book of Romans, the first chapter, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God; the Gospel which He had promised before by His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations, for His name. Fourteen, I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. So as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.

Then, linking that with a very famous testimony, or statement, the man made in the sixth chapter of Galatians where he says, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world. And verse 17: From henceforth, let no man trouble me. For I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.

Now hear these latter words particularly, and in all that I have read is the testimony of a transformed man. Here is not the weak alibi of a failure, but the bold assertion of a triumphant spirit. He felt and he knew the power of the Christian message. And so, he taught and testified out of his own victorious heart. It was this probably more than any other thing except the power of the Spirit within him which made his words so heavy, so freighted as they have come down to us through the years. He felt and he knew the power of the Christian message and he taught out of his own victorious heart.

Now, he said in that first chapter, that he was separated unto the gospel of God. And here, he didn’t bother to mention what he was separated from. And in this, he stood on firmer ground than many do today who talk about nothing but what they’re separated from. Now to him, what he was separated from was incidental. And what he was separated unto is fundamental. Though he did when occasion called and two or three times tell the other side of the story when it became necessary, that he was separated from Pharisaism and sin. But he said in his famous treatise that he was separated unto the gospel of God.

Now what was it that captivated this man, almost transported him? For he was a transformed man. Well, at bottom, it wasn’t a thing at all. It wasn’t even an idea. I run into people that are very much lifted up by ideas; a great idea strikes them, and they’ll come all brimming over with an idea. They will write me. They have gotten a new idea. They say, I saw in verse so and so in the Greek, such and such, and it’s just transformed me. It’s a wonderful idea. Well, Paul was there ahead of them. For every idea that any man has today, Paul had twelve. But nevertheless, it was not an idea that transported and captivated the man Paul, it was a Person, concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

And here we find in the man Paul, a man permanently in love. This man was a big man with titanic powers of soul, all set and fixed upon God and His Son; inveterately fixed so that there was no changing it, no backing out from him. He was an inveterate lover of God. He was fixed in his great mighty affection for God, for the Son of God, for the gospel of God. And he knew what he liked bordering on entrancement. He said, the love of Christ constraineth me. And every translator has trouble with the word, constraineth me. It seems he had in mind that he had within him a volcanic heat and that he was swept away like a forest fire or forest before a tempest. He was unable to control himself because of the entrancement of his soul. There’s no question about it, my friends, this man was an intense man. He was not only transformed morally, but he was transported. He was captivated. He was swept along emotionally.

And to break it down now a little, he stood, this man, at the focal point of all prophetic light, and this prophetic light converged upon Jesus Christ our Lord. And all the prophets in the Holy Scriptures looked down. And it was the Eternal Son here, the seed of David by natural descent certainly, but the Son of God proved triumphant by the Holy Spirit who raised Him from the dead. And so here we have revealed in this first of Romans, in glowing incandescence, all the wrath of God. For the gospel reveals the wrath of God and all the righteousness of God. For the gospel reveals the method by which man is made righteous again in the sight of God and the grace of God and the salvation of God and the forgiveness of God.

So Christianity has to do with God. That’s what we learn from the man, Paul. We learn it from Abraham and David and then the rest, but we learn it more particularly from the man, Paul, that Christianity has to do with God. Christianity engages to bring God into human life. That’s what the church is about. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what all those steeples are about and all those cathedrals and all those temples and all those chapels and all those tabernacles. That’s what it’s all about. That’s why there are translations of Scripture. That’s why we have hymn books. And that’s why we have Christian literature. That’s why we have Bible schools.

Christianity has to do with God. It engages to bring God, I repeat, into human life. To make men right with God and to give them a knowledge of God and to bring them to love and obey God, and to perfect in them finally, the image of God. That’s what Christianity is about and that’s what it’s for. And so, after having said all this, in that first chapter of Romans. I think actually, that chronologically, Romans comes after Galatians. But as the Holy Ghost put it down here, we have it in Romans 1.

And then in Galatians, Paul said, from henceforth, let no man bother me. I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Here was a man, either a man who had seen God and was speaking out of what he had seen, or here was one of the most arrogant and bigoted men that ever lived. You can always tell the nature of a fountain by the character of the stream that flows out of it. And if you’re not able to go to the fountain, you only have to look at the stream. We cannot go back to Paul’s time and decide whether this expression, this bold expression, from henceforth, let no man bother me. I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Either I say, written by an arrogant bigot, or an insighted mystic. Either a man who saw the vision glorious, or a man who simply was churlish and said, let me all alone.

Well, that was the founder now to which this expression flowed. And I say we can’t go back to Paul now. But all we have to do is to look at the nature of the stream that flowed out of that fountain down the years. It has been the 13 epistles of Paul and the influence of the man on the world. It has been like the river that flowed out from under the throne in the book of Ezekiel, every word went, things lived. And wherever that water of the influence of the man Paul went, heathen threw their idols away and dying men smiled and whispered a prayer, and poor widows managed to sing over their toils. And those who once lived in the depths of vicious and vileness now become saintly men and women who live pure lives and walk with God.

Therefore, I conclude as any sane man must conclude, that when Paul said, from henceforth, let no man bother me. I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus, here was not the churlish word of a man who was tired of life, but here was the bold word of a transformed man, a man who had seen the Vision Glorious. He said in Galatians, elsewhere, I am crucified with Christ, and here in this chapter he said, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ, by which I’m crucified unto the world and the world unto me.

And this man then, with the crucified marks of the cross upon him said, don’t bother me anymore. It’s all settled with me. This man had no fears and no inhibitions and no regrets and no apology, nothing to offer. No, crawling under a seat and wrote no letters of apology for his Christian faith. He said, I have no fears and I have no inhibitions. I’m a free man. I’m a called apostle, called unto the gospel which has to do with His Son, who was made of the seed of David and declared to be the Son of God. And who sends out a message which is the power of God unto salvation, and I want to come to Rome to preach to you.

And he said to the Galatians now, let me alone, let me alone. Judaizers have tried to get me down and the Manakeons have tried to get me down, and the rest of them have tried it, but let me alone. I’ve made up my mind. The business of the church is God and I’m in that business. That’s why I’m here on the earth said the man of God in effect. The business of the church is God, and the business of this church is God. This church and any church is purest when it’s most engaged with God, and it’s astray just as it’s engaged with lesser things.

Remember, there are less lesser things which are perhaps legitimate things, in that they are not sins. But just as the emphasis falls upon them, the power of the church diminishes and just as the emphasis falls upon God and His Son and the gospel of His Son and upon the Holy Ghost and grace and forgiveness and apostleship, the power of God rises in that church. Upon social activities divorced from God, I say, she’s astray when she engages in these things. She’s astray when she engages in philosophical pursuits. She’s astray when she’s engaged in any good for its own sake, however good it may be for its own sake. You know the difference that has been pointed out.

I don’t know really whether I pointed it out for myself or whether I read it, but I’ve noticed it, that there were two great men who wrote great poetry. One of them was called William Woodsworth. One of them was called King David. And the difference was marked, but the similarities were many. Both of them loved the snow on top of the mountain. Both of them loved the green of the evergreen trees there on the mountain and on the hill. Both of them loved the song of the bird in the bushes. Both of them looked at the clouds and the blue sky and watched the stars at night. Both of them listened to the waterfall blowing their trumpet in the tempest. Both of them watched nature and wrote about it. But Woodsworth went to nature and then tried to go to God through nature. But David went straight to God and then looked down. There was a difference. And that’s why we never sing Woodsworth on a Sunday morning.

And Woodsworth was an enraptured mystic, a lover of the world, that is, of the good world; a lover of mountains and hills and buttercups and butterflies and daffodils and all that’s lovely and beautiful. And I don’t mind telling you that I read Woodsworth probably as much as any other writer except the sacred Scriptures. So, I know what I’m talking about, and I love to hear him. My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky, so was it when my life began. So is it now that I’m a man. So may it ever be or let me die. Well, all that you can quote. Up with me, up with me into the clouds for thy song Lark is strong. It’s all beautiful. But he began on the earth and looked up, David went up and looked down. And there’s the difference, my brethren.

And so the business of the church is God. The business of the church; we begin with God through His Son, Jesus Christ, of whom all the prophets did write. And then, when we’re in God and for the sake of God, then we can look out and see all the lovely things, and we can enjoy them. But art for its own sake, divorced from God, is as dangerous as dynamite. And music for its own sake, divorced from God, can make the most selfish breed of people in all the wide world. And culture for its own sake, divorced from God can make a breed of snobs whose nose are permanently elevated.

And so with every other good things: ports and travels and all the rest that humanity engages in which are certainly far from being sinful, they can nevertheless become harmful if God is not first. The business of the church is God. And whatever art and whatever music and whatever culture and whatever beauty there may be, is only offered on the altar as a sacrifice to God. That’s why we sing David instead of Woodsworth. That’s why when men die, they whisper, The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. They do not whisper, it is a beauteous evening, calm and free, the holy time is quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration, the broad sun is sinking in its tranquility. That’s lovely, too, but we don’t sing that while we’re dying. We don’t whisper that when death comes to our throats. We whisper rather: Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name. David began with God and looked down. Woodsworth began with man and looked up, and there is the difference.

And so, there’s the difference out there in the world, that cultured world, that that good world, that world that’s good and strong and fine. And don’t imagine, please, that the whole world is rotten cores. I suppose in the eyes of God, it may be, but there’s a lot that’s fine in the world, a lot that’s good in the world. There are groups of honest people trying to be good. Busy women who never have met God, but who spend their afternoons rolling bandages and PTA meetings and its civic meetings, trying to better the neighborhood, and it’s all good. But my brethren, the business of the church is way above all that. The business of the church is God. And if we have first met God and have settled everything with God and we live for God, then of course we can do these other things. Paul said, from henceforth, let no man trouble me. And I wonder if we Christians have got to apologize.

This is the most apologetic time in the history of the world I suppose the time when Christians are trying to please everybody. Do you know what my business is? My business is to walk with those who walk with God. And that’s your business to walk with those who walk with God. And that is the business of Christianity and the business of the church and the business of all churches, to walk with those who walk with God. Do we Christians have to apologize that we’ve chosen our field of interest? I’ve chosen mine. David chose his. Paul chose his. And lesser likes, like you and me down the years, have chosen our field of interest.

And must we now apologize to the world for having chosen it? The world has chosen theirs, each one in his own way. And these interests all perish and crumble like snow before a blazing sun. But we have chosen that which cannot perish. Must we, I say, apologize that we’ve chosen eternity instead of time? For I deliberately and purposefully have. The clock on the wall is no master of mine. And the sun as it rises in the east and hurryeth away as David said it did to set in the West, is no Lord of my life nor boss of me. And the calendars as we pull the sheets off month after month and watch it get smaller, and though a year, yes, less to live. And yet, we’ve chosen eternity.

And I wonder whether we’ve got to apologize. The man Paul didn’t. He had no fears, no inhibitions, no apologies and no regrets. And he stood out boldly, this enraptured man, this entranced man, who was swept before the love of God in Christ, until it was like a cyclone roaring through a forest, bending him as the wind; the strong wind bends a great tree. Not breaking him but bending him in the direction of heaven.

I have seen on the shores of the ocean, the great trees that have grown there. I’ve seen them even inland. I’ve seen trees that have stood maybe for half a century or longer. And you know the prevailing wind, whether it’s north, south, east or west. And you know how you know it? Look at the trees. The trees have, if it’s in a wind-swept area where the wind can get to it, you’ve seen it down here in the dunes, off the lake, you’ve seen the trees all bent in one direction. They’re deformed we say, but they have bent to the wind.

And the man of God bent to the tempestuous love of God; and it bends him in that direction. And instead of being symmetrical and well-balanced as men say and taking a little of this world and a little of that world and a little of God and a little of the earth, instead of trying to balance himself up after the Greek stoic order, the man Paul said, I bend only before one breeze and that is the tempestuous love of God that sweeps me. And when Paul lived, he lived bent in the direction of heaven. And when he died, he didn’t have far to fall. For he was on his way by the love of God that constrained him.

And I want to know if we have to apologize because we’ve chosen heaven instead of earth. There are many men who have chosen earth, many men. I have known men who when they’re very old, still we’re eager for more property, eager to get their hands on another dollar, eager that they might get by inheritance or by hook or crook, this piece of property.

Ah, my friends, as Emerson said, men can steer their plow down the farrow, but they can’t steer their feet wide of the grave. The same man who in his 60s or 70s, or his 80s, will still with knarled, but eager hands grasp property that he should throw to the wind and get free. That man may still love the earth, and he’s chosen it; he’s chosen the red clays, he’s chosen it. And he lets it filter through his fingers like gold. It his. His sit-fast acres as the poet called them. They’re there when he returns from his trips abroad. Ah, you and I have chosen heaven instead of earth and they don’t like it. They say we’re not properly educated, or we’d be more balanced, and I wonder.

If we’re going to have to apologize that we’ve chosen to follow Christ. We’ve chosen to follow Jesus. Like the man of God we say, let me alone. I’ve chosen to follow Jesus, neighbor. You won’t come my way and you won’t believe in my Savior, and you won’t give an hour of your time Sunday morning to my church, and you won’t give a dime of your money to my Missionary Society, and you won’t attend my prayer meeting and you won’t walk with me to the house of God, neighbor.

Well, what right have you to complain? Have I injured you? Have I taken a thing that belongs to you because I’m a Christian. Have I taken anything that yours? Have I pushed you out and taking your property? I have chosen to follow Jesus, but whom have I injured? Who, I want to ask you is it that can rise and say, you’re a Christian and he has injured me? No man who follows Jesus injures another. Who was it that could rise and say, Peter injured me. John harmed me. Luke did me wrong and Paul wronged me, because his Christianity, his religion, his so called cross and his Jesus caused him to harm me. No, my brother, let no man bother me.

I have chosen to follow Jesus and my choice to follow Jesus never robbed my brothers. I had two, and I took nothing from my brothers. I had three sisters, and I followed Jesus, and I took not a dime from my sisters. I followed Jesus as a lad, and I took not a cent from my mother and father. But later in life, I did help to support them a little. And I followed Jesus and I’ve not robbed my family. And we’ve had seven children, and not one of them can get up and say, Dad’s Christianity has made him hard to live with and has made him tight and it’s been all bad in our home because of His Christ. If there’s been anything hard in the home it’s been because of an unsanctified nature, maybe. It’s because of the grave clothes yet that weren’t stripped away from this man who’s alive in God who heard the voice say, Lazarus come forth and I came. But it’s not my Savior that made me hard to live with. The only reason as I’ve said before anybody can live with me is my Savior.

Are we to apologize and I say that we’ve chosen to see good and not evil all the days of our lives. We have chosen to hate the evil and love the good. All the days of our lives? Must we stand before the world to learn it well, the philosophic world, the aesthetic world, the art world? Must we stand and apologize that we’ve chosen to live so that we dare die? And men are living so they don’t dare die.

I take advantage of every opportunity I can take. I have a little radio I bought for my wife and wore it out and she bought me another one. But I listen to the to the FM from the colleges; listen to the debates and the interviews and the talks. I listen to learned men, an invitation to learning and all that stuff. And I listen to these great men talk. Men who know more than I’ll ever know; were more learned than I’ll ever be. But when they’re through, I flip the switch and turn over in bed and say thank God, I have made my choice. I’ve made my choice to seek good and not evil, to do good and not bad all the days of my life. I’ve made my choice to live so I dare die. And these men can talk about Russian writers and French writers and Spanish writers. They can talk about Dali’s art and somebody else’s philosophy, but they don’t dare die.

Voltaire, the great French rationalist, that great mind, for he had a great mind. When he was born, he was a seven-month skinny baby with a great skull and a frail body. And when he was delivered, they tossed him out on the table and said he’ll die and took care of the mother. But he fooled them. Voltaire, with his long French name, but he’s known as Voltaire. Voltaire was a mighty mind, one of the dozen mightiest minds that ever lived in all the wide world. How I managed to read him as I did as a lad and still not turn atheist, I don’t know but I came through, that I got the benefit of what he had to teach. And God Almighty saved me from the evil that’s contained in his books.

But anyway, when he was dying, he asked to be baptized into this church that he had poked fun at for a lifetime. So, they sprinkled some water on him. This man who wrote his philosophical dictionary, and beginning with A went to Z and laughed uproariously. And the whole civilized world laughed with him at religion and philosophy. But when he came to die, he said, I want to be baptized in the Catholic Church. So, they baptized him in the Catholic Church. Then, lest they think that he did really become a Christian, he winked and said, if I were a Hindu, I’d want to die ahold of a cow’s tail. So, he said, I might as well to get baptized into the Catholic Church and so they’ll bury me on holy grounds than throw me out in the bushes. But he didn’t dare die. All of his wisdom and brains couldn’t fit him for that last and dreadful hour. And for that great and terrible day when God shall shake all things, the Christian has chosen to live so he can die; and die so we can live again.

Go on world, don’t bother us. Go on, sin lovers, don’t bother us. We know where we came from. We know where we’re going. We know Who’s with us. We know Who redeemed us. Millions have chosen the opposite. They’ve chosen earth instead of heaven. They’ve chosen bad instead of good. They’ve chosen to live like fools. You’re sick sometimes, sick.

Did you read, and if anyone is connected with that or related to it even remotely should be here, you’ll pardon this for I don’t know anybody connected with it. Down Union Avenue only a few blocks the other night in a thickly populated area, a 21-year-old young fellow driving an automobile with eight others with him. There had been nine, but they had let one girl off. He was taking them home. Seventy miles an hour on Union Avenue. Can you imagine? Chicken, they say, chicken? Are you afraid of it–chicken HA HA HA, and then, bang, and death. And they carried the young lad away, a young lad with an Irish name. Perhaps his old Irish parents may have told beads for him from the time he was born. No doubt now are saying mass. But he died as a fool. Man, you can’t afford to die as a fool dies. You only die one time, unless you miss the glory and then you die again out yonder in the tomorrow. For this said the Holy Ghost is the second death.

Now, we of this Christian company say to the world, don’t bother us. We don’t have the crowds. We don’t have the prestige of some places. We say to the devil, let us alone. We don’t have what they have in some places, but we know what we believe, and we know Whom we have trusted and we’re going our way. And we’ve seen heaven open, and our eyes have had visions of God. And though like Ezekiel, we’ve got to sit and watch our people melt away from us. And though like Elijah, we’ve got to stand by the book and watch it dry up. And though like Jeremiah, we’ve got to be put down in the muddy pit for our testimony’s sake. Don’t pity us.

Pity the blind who’ve never seen heaven open. Pity the deaf who’ve never heard the sweet voice of Jesus call them home. Pity the imprisoned who were born in jail and live in jail and die in jail and go to a worse one and an eternally permanent. Pity them if you will. As Jesus walked toward the cross, the bloody, fly-infested cross, a woman shouted out something of pity, pity. And He said in effect, don’t pity me. But pity these around about me. Pity yourself, pity. He said, if you want to pity people, pity those who aren’t going out to die. Don’t pity the ones who are going out to die.

And so, pity the blind if you will; pity the deaf. Pity those whose souls are weighed down with the cares of this world, but don’t pity the Christian. We walk with those who walk with God. We’ve read the book. We know what we’ve done. Separated under the gospel of God, the gospel which concerns His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David by the flesh, but declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, and we’re not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.

You young people, you have reason to be ashamed of nothing but your shame. You have no apologies to make. You ought to be free, free as a bird to sing and soar. Free inside your hearts. For if you could say, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of Christ, then you can say, let nobody bother me. Don’t try to influence me. Don’t try to get in my way. Get out of my way as the old hymn says, ye fearful saints for I am going home. Get out of the way.

I’ve seen a few times in my life conviction for sin and a desire for God to be on people so strong, they never waited to push through into the aisles at all they came right over the seats. I’ve seen that happen. And the child of God, he has to walk over the shoulders of mankind if he has to. If he has to break his way through and like Bartimaeus, cry all the louder, God have mercy on me. Let him do it. It’s well worth his trouble, well worth his time. But we have chosen the way. We’ve got the marks of Jesus upon us. God bless you.

I’m going to let you go a little early tonight and have deliberately shortened my sermon, but I think I’ve said as much as if I had leaned back and talked 20 minutes longer. God bless you. Go out into the hard, busy world tomorrow. Go back to school, back to the shop, back to the factory and back to the office. And around you, it’ll be real reek with tobacco smoke, and they will be whispering dirty stories two desks down. But you know where you’re going and you know Who you’re following and you know Whose name you’ve written across your heart in blood.

And when they try to win you to their way, to their Christmas parties or to some other fool thing, you say, let from henceforth, let nobody bother me. I know where I’m going. I bear in my heart the brand marks of the man Christ Jesus and I don’t want your pity. I know where I will be Christmas Eve, and I’ll know where I’ll be the Sunday before Christmas Eve. Thank you, but I know where I’ll be. And if in pursuance of your honest toil or your occupation or profession, you must sometimes sit where liquor is served, drink your water and let them smile. They’ll turn to you in that day when the dark shadows fall and the gurgle comes into their throats and they’ll whisper hoarsely, send for so and so to pray for me. But the name they name will not be the man who drank liquor by their side, but the man who refused.

So take your stand; and we’re Christians here and this church is and we know where we’re going and we know Whom we believe and we know where we stand. And though the whole thing crumbles around us and the world goes to pieces, we still have our eyes on Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God who beareth our sins and frees us from the accursed load. Amen and amen.

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“Seven Miracles of Israel“

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Seven Miracles of Israel

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 27, 1958

Summary

A.W. Tozer explores the seven miracles of Israel and their significance for the church and nations. He emphasizes God’s power and sovereignty, and highlights the supernatural nature of these events and their far-reaching consequences. Mr. Tozer also discusses the miraculous preservation of Israel as a nation, despite being scattered among the nations for nearly 2000 years, and the future of Israel in God’s plan. He emphasizes God’s unwavering promises to restore Israel to world primacy, and highlights the gathering of the Jewish people, their repentance, and the eternal plans of God to save and restore both Israel and the church.

Message

The incurable propensity to change which is found in society everywhere, is also found, I regret to say in the churches, and even among gospel churches. Twenty-five years ago, you couldn’t have attended a gospel church one month without hearing at least three or four sermons on prophecy, but you can attend a gospel church now for a year, or two years, and not hear a sermon on prophecy. I felt that I wanted to talk to you tonight on a prophetic theme. I gave this talk one time to the congregation, what did they call it, the World Conference of Jewish Christians, and I never preached it here, never gave it. I might have referred to it but I never gave it. So, I thought that I would give this word to you tonight, the Seven Miracles of Israel and fulfill my duty and take the privilege of preaching prophecy tonight.

In the first of Luke, 30th, and following, the angel said unto Mary, fear not Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom, there shall be no end. I want to explain what I mean by the seven miracles of Israel.

First, what I mean by a miracle. I mean, an effect without an adequate natural cause. Whatever is an effect, is caused by something. And if the cause is not natural, then it’s supernatural. And if it’s supernatural, we usually say it is a miracle. A miracle is something which would not occur in the course of natural events. And though this miracle is projected into nature, it is not a product of nature. It is not part of it.

A flower growing on a bush, a fruit on a tree. Those are not miracles unless you want to be very poetic about it. They come in the course of nature. It is God working through His natural laws and you can trace those natural laws and predict what will happen by those laws. But a miracle is an act of God wrought in creation, independent of nature, not always apart from it, but certainly independent of it. Not contrary to the laws of nature, but certainly superior to them.

Now that’s what I mean by a miracle. And what I mean by seven miracles of Israel is, not miracles wrought by Israel. For Israel never wrought any miracles and neither did anybody else, but miracles wrought by God for Israel. And certainly, the miracles which God wrought for Israel could not be limited to seven at all, because the Old Testament tells us of many, many more. But I select seven major ones which were critically significant for the human race. And now I want to give them to you and in the doing of it, we will raise our telescope down the centuries somewhat and remind you that know, and teach you that do not know, what the plan of God is for the future for Israel, but certainly also for the church and for the nations.

Now, the first great and notable miracle that God wrought was the birth of Isaac. Now God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees and said, get thee out unto a land which I will show thee. But he didn’t say, I’m going to do anything miraculous. I’m simply going to lead you and you won’t know the way and I’ll do the leading. There’s no miracle there. And God gave him the promise that he should have a son, and that through that son, there should come the Messiah who should redeem the world. In thee, all nations shall be blessed. And there was not necessarily a miracle there.

But in the fulfillment of that promise to Abraham, God lifted it out of the natural and made a miracle out of it. Because you see, Sarah was 90 years old, and Abraham was 100, about 100. And it says, Sarah received strength to conceive when she was past age. And out of Abraham’s sprang of one, and him as good as dead, as many as the stars of the the heavens or the sands by the seashore in multitude. This was a miracle.

Isaac was an effect without a natural cause. That is, it couldn’t have happened, but it did. And there wasn’t any way to explain it in nature. It had to be the intervention, an act of God. And though that intervention did not make it unnatural, it made it supernatural, which is quite another thing. And thus, all that followed, sprang out of this one notable miracle: Isaac born of this old couple. Now there’s the basic miracle, which was wrought by God for the nation we call Israel.

The second great miracle of Israel was the deliverance from Egypt. Now, you know the story, but we’ll sketch it; that Israel had been in Egypt for 400 long years and all the high purposes of God for her apparently were shipwrecked. It looked as if there was nothing that could be done. For 400 years, she had been down there in Egypt; slavery, she was in deep slavery and not in chains, but worse than in chains, there was no place to escape to. And slave drivers drove her men day and night, the old and the young, to make bricks without straw.

Then God sent a man, Moses, and the saving of Moses from the destructive tyranny of Pharaoh. While it was a most wonderful and notable thing, it was not a miracle. You see, it wasn’t a miracle, it was a providential arrangement of God, that the mother took her little boy, Moses, when she couldn’t keep him any longer. And she put him in a basket and calked up the basket with some kind of gum so it wouldn’t sink and put him in the river.

And the daughter of Pharaoh came along, going down to swim in the river. And just as she arrived, the little baby cried. He hadn’t evidently been crying before, it might not have been, but he cried just on time. And she took him and took him to her mother, back to the home. And she said, I found this little fellow in the river, and I would like to keep him and you can’t deny anything to a princess. So, they said, all right, you keep him. But how will we feed him? And about that time the mother of the baby appears and modestly suggests that she would like to nurse him, and she could. She was the mother, and she only had the baby away from her a day or two or less than that.

So, that wonderful set of circumstances, little Moses got his mother back, and mother got Moses back. And that was worked out beautifully, but there was no miracle there, because it was not above nature. It was not a supernatural. It was a natural set of circumstances, providentially worked out by the omniscient and omnipotent God.

Now, God sent his man when this little boy, but had such an inauspicious beginning. This little boy, when he grew to be a man, he was brought up in Pharaoh’s house and was educated as a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, which made him of course, I suppose, grandson of the Pharaoh. And then this man, Moses turned on that idolatrous nation, even turned on the nation that had been good to him. But he wasn’t willing to be selfish about it.

And though the nation had been good to him, he was a Jew, and he knew it all. I think his mother whispered it in his little pink ear long, long before he’d ever come up to the age of the teens; while he was still a lad, she whispered, Moses, I have something to tell you, something that will be so wonderful, you won’t believe it. But you are a descendant of the fathers: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And in you and in all of us, in the Jew, God is going to bless the whole world. Well, Moses remembered that, and then he noticed that Pharaoh and his people, Egyptians, or his people as it looked, he noticed that they were terribly oppressing the Jews. And he turned on that idolatrous nation.

And God revealed His choice of and His love for Israel, and He revealed His name Jehovah. He said, I have appeared unto Abraham, not by my name, Jehovah, but I now appear unto you by My name, Jehovah. And so, God met and defeated the gods of Egypt. And this deliverance was a wonder and a sign. It was done in such a manner that it could not have been done by merely a slick arrangement. It was beyond the possibility of mere providential arrangement of circumstance, it took a miracle indeed.

And this deliverance was so wonderful, that afterward, through all the rest of the Bible, God kept saying, I’m Jehovah which gathered Israel out of Egypt and took them into the Promised Land. And through this, God got fame in all the world to this day. And to this day, Jehovah, who brought the children of Israel by a kind of miracle, out of Egypt, bear them on eagle’s wings and brought them unto Himself. To this day, God gets glory from that great event. And it was so and such that it could not have been done. An unarmed nation of about a million people, could not by any stretch of the imagination have arisen against a solid nation such as Egypt, a kind of Russia of its day, and have thrown off the yoke and walked out free, and yet they did it. That was the second great miracle of Israel.

The third one was the giving of the law. I sometimes go back to the 19th and 20th chapter of Exodus just for what it will do for me, for my own soul. Now, there were law givers, you know, and many of them, but this giving of the law to Moses, it was not properly the law of Moses. It was the law given to Moses. But with our usual way of associating names, we call it the law of Moses. It was the law of God given to Moses. There on the mountain, that awesome, terrible, glorious scene that is pictured there, the tall mountain, the cloud and the fire and the smoke and the blackness and the darkness and the tempest and the sound of trumpets and the voice of words and the mediation of angels, and Moses cowering among the rock saying, I exceeding fear and tremble. And there came the law.

Now, I have read the law of Lycurgus. And we know in some degree, the laws of Solon. We know something of our laws of our own land, British laws and Roman laws. And this is not to talk down any of the great works of the legal works, the great works of law that had been given to nations. But I think it could be said, and no one would argue otherwise, that there on that mountain, that trembling mountain with that trembling man on it, there in the fiery, lurid darkness, there was given the loftiest instrument that ever has been read by mankind, the most perfect moral code ever known in all the world.

And God said, hear O Israel, the Lord God is One Lord. And thus, a law was given a law and a law of love, and this was a miracle. Now, there was something supernatural about all this. For God to come down and take His finger and write it on the rocks. That was a miracle. And so the giving of the Law was the third of the great miracles which God wrought for Israel.

Well, you know the long, sad, checkered winding history of the nation we call Israel. You know how tragically they broke their own law which God had given to them in such dramatic and marvelous manner. But in all during the writings of the Prophets and Moses himself indeed, and the other prophets, there was the story told that there would be a Coming One who would redeem Israel from the broken law and then restore her again. And Isaiah, the man of God, called Him when He was to come, a root out of the dry ground.

Now, everybody knows that you can’t make a root or a seed grow in a dry ground. They will grow a little bit in a ground that is not very moist. But if it’s entirely dry, they won’t grow at all. It takes moisture to create and start the process of germination that makes a root grow. Now, in Israel for more than 400 years, there had been no prophet. There had been no oracle. There had been no king. And the 10 tribes were lost to history and Israel was under occupation.

And here was Israel in Palestine under occupation of the Romans, and her religion had degenerated and sunk to such a terrible low that it could only be said to be morally and spiritually, dry ground. If you had been looking for the Messiah to appear, if somebody in the Far East had known that there was a king to be born, they would not have hunted up Israel. Indeed, they did not come to Israel, because these wise men had picked Israel out as the place where our Messiah should be born. They came to Israel because they had seen a star in the east and had followed that star, something of a miracle itself.

Israel was the last nation. If you had said, is it possible that Greece might produce a savior? Why, the worldly-wise man would have said, well, they certainly have the civilization to do it, and they have the size. If you had asked, will Rome produce a savior? You might have said, well, I could see where Rome with all her learning and her arch might have done it. If you had said, could Assyria, could China, or named any of the great nations of the world, you might have looked there for the Messiah.

But you wouldn’t have looked at a little nation. With only a few million people in it, and they under occupation with no king and with no prophet and with no real leaders of any kind; their religion hardened up and dried so, that it was like powdered ground, powdered earth. You would have said, no, it’s impossible; 200 300 500 years ago, we might have said the Messiah will be born to Israel, but no more. Israel is like Sarah. She is long, long past the time when she might bring forth a Messiah.

And then suddenly, like spring coming in mid-January, there was the miracle which Paul called the mystery of godliness. That star which Balaam had seen shine on Israel, and that savior which David had seen, and that Isaiah had prophesied about, suddenly He appeared. He shouldn’t have, but he did. He couldn’t have. but he did. Born of a virgin, without human father, this was the fourth of the great miracles which God did for the nation of Israel.

And then the fifth one that I want to mention, is the preservation of Israel among the nations. Now, in Deuteronomy, it tells us how God is going to scatter them. He says, And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from one end of the earth even unto the other. And there thou shalt serve other gods which neither thou nor thy fathers knew. And this 28th of Deuteronomy, tells the long, detailed, gloomy, bitter story of the dispersion, the scattering among all the nations of the world. And God did exactly what He said He would do, and history records its sad fulfillment. And you would expect that Israel would have been swallowed up in the years; it would be natural.

You let an Italian family come to the United States and wait 50 years, and they will have been dissolved into the great stream of life. Let an Irishman, come here, and in four or five or two generations even, or three, his grandchildren will remind their friends about their grandfather who was an Irishman who came from County Cork, but they’ll be so mixed up that they will no longer be Irish, and so with all the rest.

I have written to our good friend, Aaron Judah Cougerman and asked him whether he won’t write for us an article showing the relation between the present nation of Israel with God’s nation of Israel, which He is to restore again to the Promised Land. How much that’s a fulfillment and how much that is not a fulfillment, but simply an incident in history, I don’t yet know.

And yet here is a nation which has existed for nearly 2000 years since 70. AD. And long before that, most of them. But the nation of Israel we know today as the nation of Israel has existed among the nations and yet has not been swallowed up by the nations. Now there was a miracle my brother. The Scripture says the iron did swim. And just as Jonah was swallowed by the great fish, but was not digested, so Israel has been swallowed by the nations, but not digested. But I know there must be a relation because about the time the prophetic teachers were saying that Israel was going to go back to the land, a great World War blew the nations apart. And when the dust finally settled, there was a little nation called Israel. It is now 10 years old.

Well, now, for all these 2000s of years, Jonah has been in the belly of the whale, but he’s not been digested. The nations of the world have found that you can persecute the Jew. You can burn him. You can throw him to lions. You can put him in gas chambers. You can make him wear a badge with an evil word on it. You can turn on him and persecute him, and when it’s all over, he’ll come crawling up out of the ashes and live on.

God has said to Israel, I will keep you; He kept him. And just as He kept Daniel in the lion’s den in Israel, three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, and Jonah in the belly of the whale, so He has kept the nation of Israel down the years. Right now, fundamentalism has swung away almost completely from the pre millenarian position that we believe and that our fathers knew and taught. And we don’t hear much about it anymore. But my brother, I believe that God is preserving Israel still. You know, she’s surrounded by the Arabs. And Nasser would love to go up and pulverize that nation. So, God’s preserving Israel.

And now the next great miracle, preservation. I’ve said is the fifth and the next great miracle is the regathering of Israel. Let me read to you from the book of Jeremiah: I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them. And I will bring them again to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and increase. Behold, the days comes saith the Lord that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and the king shall reign and prosper; and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. And this is his name whereby he shall be called, the Lord, our righteousness. And the Lord liveth, it shall be said which brought up the children of Israel and lead them out of the north country and from all countries whither I have driven them, and they shall dwell in their own land. Somebody says that was fulfilled when His children of Israel went back from Babylon. But they were in Babylon. long country. But this passage in the 23rd of Isaiah says, from the north country and from all countries whither I have driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land,

Ezekiel 39 says, therefore, thus saith the Lord God, now, will I bring again the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel. And I have brought them again from the people and gathered them out of their enemy’s lands, and then sanctified in them in the sight of many nations. When I have gathered them unto their own land and have left none of them anymore there. Where? In the nations where they have been scattered. I have left none and none is singular, not one is what none means.

I have occasion to notice that in editing that everybody wants to put a plural verb after none. But none is singular, no one, not one, is what none means. I have left not one single Jew any place, anymore where they have been driven. Now that’s what God says. In Romans 11, he says, I say then, hath God cast away His people? God forbid. God hath not cast away His people whom He foreknew. And so the gathering of Israel is the sixth great miracle of Israel.

Now, whether Israel has been gathered, and that nation over there called Israel or the Israelis; whether that’s the true nation or not, we’re going to have to wait and see. Personally, I don’t think so. But listen to this, therefore, thus prophesy Jeremiah, and say, thus says the Lord God, because they have made you desolate and swallowed you up on every side that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen, and you’re taken up in the lips of talkers and are an infamy of the people. Therefore ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God. Thus, saith the Lord God to the mountains and to the hills and to the rivers and to the valleys, to the desolate waste and to the cities that are forsaken. which have become a prey and derision to the residue of the nations that around about. Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen, and against all Idumea, which have appointed my land into their possession with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds, to cast it out for a prey. Prophesy therefore concerning the land of Israel, and say unto the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys, thus saith the Lord, I’ve spoken in my jealousy and in my fury, because ye have born the shame of the heathen.

Don’t forget that even today, as I talk tonight, there stands on the site where Jesus used to worship in Jerusalem, the great temple of the false prophet Mohammed. Ye have born the shame of the heathen, therefore thus saith the Lord God, I’ve lifted up mine hand, surely the heathen that are around about you shall bear their shame, but you, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to my people of Israel, for they are at hand to come, Behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown: And I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it: and the cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be builded: And I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and bring fruit: and I will settle you after your old estates, and will do better unto you than at your beginnings: and ye shall know that I am Jehovah.  Now, that’s the regathering of Israel. And that’s what it says.

Now, the seventh and last that I want to mention tonight is the restoration of Israel to world primacy. I was asked, you know, one time to speak on this subject, “is there a future for Israel in the plan of God,” and I refused to do it. I won’t discuss the obvious. Is there a future for Israel in the plan of God? Why should anybody waste a half an hour talking about something that everybody knows. I might as well, I might as well preach a sermon called, will the sun rise tomorrow morning. Of course, it will rise. One of the prophets suggested a way to destroy Israel and cut off their future. God Almighty Himself through the prophet said it. Do you and you destroy Israel, he said, when you pull the stars down from the sky and put out the light of the sun? Then may you prevent my people from going back to their land, and then may you turn me against Israel for good. That’s paraphrasing a passage, but it’s close to it. So, the restoration of Israel to world primacy is another miracle which God has wrought or will work for Israel.

Now, Jehovah is sovereign. Don’t forget it. And let me urge you, don’t let Edward R. Murrow bother you. And don’t let the rest of these excited news commentators bother you. Don’t listen. I always listen to them, Face the Nation and Meet the Press and all the rest and get all the education I can about world events. But I’m not bothered about them at all. It wouldn’t bother me one bit. That is, I wouldn’t want to see it. And I would sympathize and feel deeply sympathetic and sorrowful if it should happen. But if the Arabic nations should turn on Israel and dissolve her and tear her apart and to make her to be no nation, it wouldn’t bother me, because I very well know that the God of Israel is a sovereign God. And if this present nation called Israel over there should be scattered to the ends of the earth, God still will fulfill His Scripture which says, I will bring you back from all the nations. I don’t like the palsy-walsying around with communism, that I’m afraid may be present a little over there. But I know that God by one dramatic wave of His hand can change that whole thing. I know it. I don’t know how He’ll do it, but I know He can do it. And He will do it.

And not only that, He will bring Israel to her knees and Israel will repent in the last chapter of the prophetic book of Zechariah. And in the 13th, and along there, we learn in the 13th and 14th, we learn how Israel will repent, and all her families will go apart and weep deeply in grave sorrow over her sins. And she will look on Him whom she has pierced, and she will recognize Him as her Messiah. Jesus Christ our Lord who was born of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh, and who came in the line of Isaac and Jacob and David and on down to the little Virgin Mary, and became flesh to dwelt among us, He will be true to His people, and will restore them again as He promised to do.

Now I look at my text a minute, and I’m done. Notice what it says here. He said to Mary, thou hast found favor with God, and behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb. Count these prophecies. That’s number what? Thou shalt conceive in your womb, one, and bring forth a son, two and thou shalt call his name Jesus, three. He shall be great, four. And he shall be called the Son of the Highest, five. Has this been fulfilled, yes or no? Yes. This has been fulfilled to the letter. Mary, who had no husband, brought forth a son. And He was called great. And He was called the Son of the Highest, even by the devils who fled before His face.

And He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, six. Has that been fulfilled? And of His kingdom there shall be no end. The Lord shall give unto him the throne of his father David. Has that been fulfilled? That’s the seventh one. He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. Neither of these had been fulfilled. He has never sat on the throne of his father David. There was no throne of David when Jesus walked the earth. And Jesus has never for one remote hour ever reigned over the house of Jacob. For the house of Jacob refuses to believe that Jesus is their Messiah. And they said, we will not have this man to reign over us. Therefore, the God who gave seven prophecies, and fulfilled five of them, has got to fulfill the other two. Do you think He will? I believe He will. But we swing back and forth and back and forth.

The day was when men ran everywhere with charts painted in red and blue and green and purple; arrows running this way and mountains erupting this way and big queer beasts over here, and goggle-eyed congregations heard them teach prophecy. And then, wars and tribulations and depressions and Sputnik’s and all the rest upset their little detailed plan. And they got red faced and quit it. So now you’re hardly hear anything about prophecy. But I want you to know, I still believe that Jesus Christ is coming back to the world. And I believe that though Israel deeply deserves punishment and is going to get it, she is yet going to be restored according to the ancient prophecies that went forth on her even before Christ was born of a virgin in Bethlehem’s manger.

So, cheer up, cheer up. Don’t let Sputniks get you down. That old bald-headed guy. He can’t even raise hair, and still, he sits over there and rumbles and rumbles. I’ve been around awhile, and I remember when another old bald-headed fellow with a jaw on him like Dick Tracy. Bigger still, how we used to get up in the little bird’s nest, you know, above the street. And up there, he’d raised his hand dramatically and in beautiful sonores Italian, he promised them the world wrapped in cellophane. The last picture I saw of him. He was hanging upside down on a beam and his girlfriend hanging alongside of him.

Then this other fellow, this other angry little man used to say to the nations of the world he would want to come in and take them over. Most of them just folded up and said, come and get us. But a few would stand up and say no. And he’d make another speech, louder and more guttural than the one before. And in it, he would say, I’m about to lose my patience. He not only lost his patience, he lost everything. Where is the guy anyway? I don’t know where he is. Somebody said one time, I’m going to vote for Hitler, just being funny. Somebody else said Hitler isn’t running. Somebody else said if he’s alive he is. And I still believe it. If he’s alive, he’s still running. And now he disappeared, and I don’t scare easy.

And so, when this fellow says, we’ll bury you. I remember the man with no hair and the man with a little mustache. They’re both gone. They were going to bury us, but they didn’t. So that’s why I’m not too much worried. God Almighty has His eternal plans laid just like an architect and he will fulfill them all. And they include the saving of a church, the restoration of His people and their restoration to primacy among the nations of the earth.

Then God will raise Abraham from the dead. His old dusty bones will come out of the Cave of Machpelah where he has slept now these 1000s of years alongside of Sarah his old wife. God will say, Abraham, you remember way back down the years when I told you, in you and your seed should the world be blessed. And Abraham will say in great reverence, yes, My God, I remember.

And God will say, Abraham, I’ve made good. I’ve made good. You see the spiritual seed? That’s the church. You see the physical seed? That’s Israel. And they’re both redeemed. And instead of fighting, they love each other. And the church is my bride and Israel my people, and I am King of the earth. Even so, come Lord Jesus is my prayer and my cry. So don’t you get discouraged and don’t let anybody frighten you, and don’t let anybody threaten you.

A little boy one time was down on his back, fighting, but licked. He wouldn’t give up. And the boy that was bending over him was just a couple of years older. And he was saying, are you going to say, uncle? Are you going to say uncle? And the little guy kept saying, no, no. And here, the big boy couldn’t understand it. Then he looked over his shoulder and saw another boy a couple years older than he was, who was a brother to the little boy. And he understood why. The little boy wasn’t going to give up because he had taken a little peek there as they struggled and fought, and he’d seen his big brother with the bulging muscles on his way.

Well, that’s the way I want you to feel about it my dear people. Don’t get discouraged about anything. Don’t let the devil get you down, because we’re not going to say uncle, no sir. The word doesn’t appear in our language, and we’re not going to say “enough” to the devil, because we look upward and we see our brother whose name is Jesus, and the Scripture says it.

One man wrote me and told me we never ought to call Jesus our brother. But He said He was going to be the firstborn among many brethren. And if He calls me, my brother, I can call Him my brother, can’t I? So, our brother is coming, and when He comes, He’ll straighten all this mess out. Nobody can do it in Washington or anywhere else, but He’ll straighten it out. Amen.

Those are the seven miracles of Israel. Some of them have been done. Some of them wait to be done. And the fact that most of them have been fulfilled encourages me to believe that the rest will be fulfilled. For God who cannot lie, promised before the world began. Let us pray.

O Father, we thank thee. We’re living in an awful world as Thou dost know, a Vanity Fair, a Sodom and Gomorrah. Evil and wickedness flow around us like sloshing waves of a vile sea. Threats and dangers are on every hand. Planes plunging out of the sky and ships going down and accidents and death and disease around about us. But Thou hast told us we were not to be afraid. Thou hast overcome the world. So, help us, we pray thee, to relax and trust Thee and not to be afraid of anything or anybody, but to know that Thou, which has begun a good work, will fulfill it unto the day of Jesus Christ. This we asked in Thy name. Amen.

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“Following Jesus“

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Following Jesus

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

May 13, 1956

Summary

A.W. Tozer emphasizes the transformative power of answering God’s call, highlighting the redemption from sin and the importance of personal response. He encourages listeners to leave their old selves behind and attach themselves to Jesus, emphasizing the significance of identifying with Jesus for true fulfillment and satisfaction. Mr. Tozer also contrasts the fleeting nature of life with the eternal nature of God, encouraging prioritization of time and resources on things that will last, such as sharing in God’s eternity and immortality through faith in Jesus Christ.

Message

I want to talk a minute or two. We’ve had a good full day with outgoing missionaries and singing and baptismal service and some preaching from the Psalms. And tonight, I want to talk a little about following Jesus, which seemed to be the normal thing in a service like this. And in the fourth chapter of Matthew, Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee saw two brethren, Simon called Peter and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishers. And He said unto them, follow Me and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets and followed Him. And going on from thence He saw other two brethren, James, the son of Zebedee and John, his brother, in a ship, with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets, and He called them. And they immediately left the ship and their father and followed Him.

Our Lord Jesus here, called them and they followed Him. And here He began to do what He had never ceased to do, He began to call men to come after Him; to save them by changing their direction. And I want to explain here, I regret that sometimes it’s necessary to put in a footnote because somebody has spoiled a lovely truth for you. And when I say that Jesus saves men by changing their direction, if it were not for liberals and modernists, and cults generally, I could go on to something else. But I have to stop here and put in a footnote and explain what I mean, because we hear these days a great many people talking about redirecting their lives. They take a man no matter how bad the man may be, or how perfectly putrid in his heart, and they do what they call redirecting. He goes to a psychiatrist or to a counselor, and they redirect him.

Well, I don’t mean that because a redirected sinner is just a sinner traveling in another direction. He’s still a sinner. An unredeemed son of Adam that hasn’t been renewed by the Holy Ghost, though you redirect him, he’s still traveling in another way. The boy in the death cell waiting to die, may pace from east to west in his cell, and then somebody come in, redirect him and having him pace from north to south. But he’s still in the cell, and he’s still going to die for his crimes. So, behind all this that I’m giving you tonight, is blood atonement, the necessity that a life be redeemed before it can be redirected. That is what is overlooked by a great many people in our day.

Now, the truth is, that if first there’s an objective fact, and then there’s a subjective response. The objective fact is that we have redemption in His blood. That’s the objective fact. And we have that redemption in His blood, whether we do anything about it or not. We still have that redemption in His blood. Christ Jesus died, the just for the unjust, and He who was rich became poor for our sakes. And the Son of Man came to seek and save that which was lost. And He said, it is finished, on the cross of Calvary. All that’s true whether we make any response or not; it is an objective fact.

We might walk into a dining hall and there, all placed and ready to go, would be a feast fit for a king. And yet we could stand and look at it and go away starving, making no response. For the second thing is the subjective response. The objective, that outside of you, and the subjective is that inside of you. And the objective fact is, we have redemption in His blood, prepared for us. The subjective response must be, that I, in faith, go and avail myself of that which He provided for me. I hear a Voice and turn and trust and follow, and thus, that which is objective becomes subjective. That which is external becomes internal. That which is true on the outside, now becomes true on the inside.

But Christianity is not a subjective religion of imagination. Neither is it an objective religion of things done on the outside. It is both. It is change within as a result of something God has done outside. God, on the cross of Calvary gave His Son to die, and He died that we might be redeemed sinners, or sinners redeemed. And then we follow and respond subjectively and personally to the call of Christ and the work is done inside. Then we say, tis done the great transactions done. I am my Lord’s, and He is mine.

I want you to notice what kind of people there were. I remember once hearing Dr. Mason, who will preach here next Sunday, give a great message. You know, Dr. Mason doesn’t always preach equally. That is, sometimes he can be as ordinary as I am. Again, he’ll rise to magnificent heights. And I heard him rise once to one of those magnificent sermons, an epochal sermon, when he talked about the kind of people that followed Christ. This is not his sermon, incidentally. But at least he did; he went over, and I have only about eight or nine kind of people that followed Jesus.

But he took a whole sermon to show from the Gospels and The Acts that a cross section of all humanity followed Jesus. Well, they do and did and are still following Him. There were Peter and Andrew who were fishermen. There was Levi who was a publican and Luke who was a physician and Paul, who was a scholar and the woman at the well, who was a fallen woman and Lydia, who was a businesswoman before her time, and Sergius Paulus, who was a statesman, and the servants of Caesar’s household, who were servants in the royal palace. Then there were the old and the young and the rich and the poor.

And then there was that group, which the Bible calls the common people, the people that Lincoln said, God must love, because He made so many of them, common people. I don’t have any aspiration to be anything else but a common person. I don’t want to be known as anything but a common person. Well, the common people follow Jesus gladly. Now, He calls us. He calls you and me. And He called them and immediately they followed Him.

Now, what does He call us to? I’ll only mention two things, because I have a full-length sermon on what the Lord calls us to, but I’ll talk to you tonight about two things which I don’t particularly develop in the sermon on the call of Christ and what He calls us to. But I’m thinking of two things here tonight. He calls us to the good and away from the bad. I wish that we’d get a hold of that. I really do. He calls us to the good, away from the bad, two simple words, I think they’re both Anglo Saxon words, I haven’t bothered to look it up, but I think both those words would be Anglo Saxon, good and bad. We’ve invented such long sesquipedalian terms now. And people don’t believe much anymore in goodness and badness.

My mother, God bless her memory, was a dear little pagan lady who had high morals. She wasn’t converted until she was an older lady, and then was converted, thank God, and went to heaven. But as a young woman who wasn’t converted, she had high moral ideals. Not only sex morals, but all morals having to do with lying and stealing and all the rest. Her morals were very high. And she used the words good and bad. And there were only two kinds of people to my mother, good and bad. There were good people and bad people. And I think, after all, she was more Scriptural than she knew, and more Scriptural than some of us evangelicals will admit that she was. The Lord talks about the good and He talks about the evil.

Now, God calls us to the good, away from the bad. You know, we like to think that there’s a kind of trick by which we can get converted and be what we still are or still be what we were. But the Bible calls us away from the bad to the good. And I’ll say this for you, we Christians get a lot of lambasting and a lot of criticism; and we have some of it coming without any doubt. There are a lot of weaknesses and inconsistencies among us.

But no man was ever the worst for following Jesus. I want you to write that down in your memory forever. That nobody was ever the worse for following Jesus. No honest man in his right mind ever rose in a public assembly and said I want to testify that once I was an honest man, but I heard the call of Jesus Christ and I left all to follow Him and now I’m the thief. I was once a man who held truth in high honor, but I followed Jesus Christ. And now I’m a confirmed liar.

I once was a man who held myself in good control and now, I’m a drunkard and a libertine. There never was a man who would rise and say, once, I was a good, honest husband and a good father, but I followed Jesus Christ and now I beat my wife and kick my children around and drink up my pay. Nobody ever talked like that in his right mind. Nobody ever came and stood up in a meeting and said once I was a humble, meek man, and I follow Jesus, and now I’m an arrogant, proud fellow, proud as the devil. Nobody ever said that.

He calls us from the bad to the good. And when He said follow me, He called them away from the bad to the good, away from the old life to a new life. No matter where you are, how much you know, or where you’ve been, or how cultured you are, you always improve when you meet Jesus Christ. Keep that in mind. He always improves you. Jesus Christ improves a man always. It depends upon how bad the man is, how far God has to break him down and tear him down. If the building is too old to use, he has to be torn clear down, shoveled off and hauled away.

But if a man is living a reasonably moral life and he becomes converted, then God shifts the grounds of his morality from himself to the blood of Christ and from his own ego to the cross on which Jesus died. And his righteousness then ceases to be his own and becomes the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. But the external life of the man won’t have to be so changed.

I am sure that some of these who were baptized tonight, and who thus in public declares that they’re going to from now on follow Christ before the world. I am sure that the same thing wouldn’t happen and didn’t happen to them, the same that what happened to Mel Trotter or John Newton or Billy Sunday. Or some of those who were worldlings, and some of them not Billy Sunday, but some of them were immoral and low and evil to the point of being unspeakably so. And the Lord had to change them around completely and upset their whole life. But a person who was honest and who loves truth and who is obedient, if he’s a child at home and is moral and decent, there won’t be such a radical external change, but there’ll be just as real an internal change, just as real an internal change.

The man is traveling 20 miles an hour in the wrong direction, and he suddenly stops and turns around. It’ll be a change. But if he’s traveling 125 miles an hour in the wrong direction, and makes a sudden, screaming, skimming, spark flying stop and turns around, everybody will write a tract about that. They would say boy wasn’t that something. He was going 125 miles an hour in the wrong direction, and he suddenly turned around and started the other way around. It was something to see. So, we write books about that. But the man who was only doing 20 miles an hour and turned around was just as certainly converted as the other man.

So, Jesus called men from the bad life to the good life. And while nobody can say, I came to Jesus as I was, pure and clean and true and honest, and I trusted in Him and now I’m impure and unclean, and dishonest. Nobody can say that, but there are hundreds of thousands who could rise today and say, once I was a liar, but God made my mouth clean by a touch of fire. Once I was a wife beater, but today I live in peace with my family. Once my children hated to see me come home, but now they run down the walk to meet me. Once they wouldn’t trust me at my work, but now everybody knows I’m an honest man. Once I had debts all over that I didn’t try to pay, but now, I’ve either paid them or I’m paying on them. Once I was an unclean man, now by the grace of God, I live the kind of life a man should live.

Thousands and hundreds of thousands can say that, but not one lone man can say Jesus Christ called me from good to bad. He called me for my high to low. He called me down from high moral heights into the gutter, never. Never, never, never, Jesus does not act like that. He calls us from the bad and calls us over to the good.

Then I point out also that He calls us to the permanent away from the transient. I don’t know whether it’s temperament with me, but this bothers me more than almost anything else in religion, the impermanence of everything. Every earthly thing is changing. And Henry Francis Lyte said, change and decay and all around I see, the changes in people. You see a fellow and see him 20 years later, and he comes up to you and looks you straight in the eyes and says you haven’t changed a bit. God bless his honest heart. He meant to tell the truth, but he lied. We have changed, and you know we’ve changed. And he was trying to ease the shock. But then on the other hand, you looked at him and what did you see? You saw change there too. That boy’s countenance was gone. That round red face that used to grin at you, has begun to be lean and scaly now or at least dry. the old time is working on him. Change and decay in all around I see.

Some of you people that have been born in other countries. You’d like to go back home. My advice is, don’t do it. You will be disappointed too much to death. I left my home in Pennsylvania when I was 15 years old, and it was 20 years before I went back. I never saw it for 20 years. But oh, man, was I disappointed when I went back. The children that I grew up with were all gone, married and gone, and the old folks were all dead and the middle aged were all old. And the trees that stood around in front of the house were all down, and even the hill that I thought was a big hill, it looked as if it is shrunk. It probably hadn’t, but it looked to me as if it had shrunk. And the distances that I thought were interminable had just become little jumps for an automobile. So, my advice is, don’t go back home because you’ll just come away miserable. Change and decay in all around I see. And there’ll be change everywhere. And that’s one of the hardest things I know is change, always change.

One of my boys came home yesterday and brought home a Saturday Evening Post, 47 years old, I think. 1909, what would that be? My mathematics is just awful. 1909, how long ago is 1909. All right. I’m never sure. I know how old I am. But that’s about all I do know. But there was magazine over 45 years old, and brethren, it’s not only comical, but it’s sad. It’s just sad. Fairy soap and keen cutter razors, Colt revolvers and great big blouses for ladies with huge billowing sleeves. And the hair, great billows of hair up here. And the senator, Senator this and Senator that, and Roosevelt President, I think if I remember. That is, the first Roosevelt, president. And now they’re all gone.

And I flipped over the magazine, and I read about Senator so and so said and I said, dear God, where’s this Senator? He’s dead and gone. And the senators now that we’re hearing on the air and seeing them in articles in the magazines, give them 47 years and where will they be? They will be gone too. Everything has change and decay at the heart of it. And a man can be in the headlines today and forgotten tomorrow. And that’s one of the saddest things that I know in life.

You can’t get anything permanent. Nothing is permanent. Diamonds they say are permanent. But the wearers aren’t. That diamond you’re wearing now that you proudly say to yourself, that thing that shines bright 1000 years from now. Yeah, but who will have it on? And who had it on before you got it? You say, my husband, my boyfriend bought that for me? Yes. But then, he didn’t make it. God made that millions of years ago. And they dug that out and it’s been floating around now a long, long time; cut and re-cut and chipped and chopped and chiseled and polished. And it abides, but the people that wear it don’t abide.

He calls us to the permanent. If there’s anything, if God were to say to me, son, I like to have you tell me, what are the two things you’re most pleased with that I’ve done for you? I’d say Father, two things I’m most pleased with is, that you took sin away and enabled me to have fellowship with Thee. And the second one is that you let me do something that will last. Let me have a part in something that won’t perish, that time can’t gnaw it away and the rust of the centuries can’t rust it away. There it is, permanent.

Moody had as his life text, he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. There you have it. In the will of God, we abide forever. Jesus Christ says, come on, follow me. And we come and follow Him and He lets us share in His eternity and have a part of His immortality. Pray a prayer that changes something while the ages roll. Give $100 to the Lord’s work and somebody gets it and uses it in God’s work, and he changes the face of the world, somewhere in some mission field or in some Bible school or evangelistic meeting or prayer group. Just a little money, but God has allowed us to take that dirty thing the smells of tobacco and sanctify it and give it permanence. Lay up your treasures above where thieves don’t break through and steal, the way Jesus said.

Well, the moment a man touches Christ, that sense of impermanence, that sense of floating goes out of it. And you know that you’ve got hold of eternity and immortality and the absolute. You’re no longer dealing with fragments. The world is dealing with fragments. Everybody’s found a little piece like a monkey in a China store after a windstorm. And there, every monkey finds himself a little piece, and he chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, he says and runs with his pretty little shiny piece. Every little monkey has a piece.

And out there in the world they have it. This is the businessman, and this is the actor and this is the writer and this is the poet and this is the artist and this is the laboring man and this is the truck driver and this is the airplane pilot and this is the housewife, and each of us has a little piece. And we run, chat, chat, chat, and it shines and we say we’ve got it. No, we’ve got a broken fragment of it out of a China shop after the windstorm we call the fall of man. And each of us has his little piece. And we are little philosophies.

Everybody has his own little philosophy. Plato has his, Aristotle his, and the cynic his and the stoic his and John Dewey his and Bertrand Russell his. We each have our little hunk of the China that’s been a smashed vase that we’ve picked off the floor and dug out of the debris. And we write books about it and give it a name and make disciples to our little chunk of pottery. And we think we got the whole world in our grasp and all we’ve got is one little piece that fits into the world.

But Jesus Christ is the all-encompassing One. He was before the world was. He will be when the worlds have burnt themselves out. He’s underneath all and above all and around all in all. He’s above, but not pushed up and beneath, but not pressed down and outside, but not excluded and inside, but not confined. He’s above, presiding and beneath, upholding and outside, embracing and inside filling. I’ve quoted that before from some French archbishop. He certainly said it and Jesus Christ is all that. And He’s all that to you and me. And when I come and touch Jesus and I’m touched with the finger of Jesus, something flows into me that’s immortal and eternal and absolute. And I’m done dealing with fragments; not little pieces anymore.

I heard a rabbi on the air the other night give a marvelous talk, a Jewish rabbi, a marvelous talk. He quoted the New Testament like a New Testament preacher. Later on, he was interviewed, and they said to him, Rabbi, what’s the difference between religion and philosophy? Well, he said, philosophy is a bigger term. They always disappoint you somewhere down the line unless they know God. This philosophy, a bigger term than religion. Why, by religion, you mean faith in Jesus Christ? Faith in Jesus Christ embraces all the philosophies that there are in the world, all science, all learning, all art, all beauty, all everything, are gathered up in the spacious bosom of Jesus Christ. Nothing is bigger than Jesus Christ, nothing is bigger than religion, if by religion, you mean faith in Christ.

So, to follow Jesus, those first disciples left the old life. Now notice it, they left the old life. They attached themselves to Jesus Christ. They joined His band of followers. They began to listen to His words and then they started obeying His teachings and they call themselves by His name.

Now, it’s no different today. We hear the same call today. For He began to do then what He has never ceased to do, and say, follow Me. And today we hear the same Voice. And when we hear the Voice and whoever hears it, follow me, we leave the old life, and we begin the new life. And we attach ourselves to Jesus Christ, and then we identify ourselves with Him. I am proud to be identified with Jesus. Ralph Rader used to sing, I’m satisfied with Jesus Christ, but often I wonder, is Jesus satisfied with me? I am proud to be identified with Him. I hope he’s not ashamed to be identified with me, seeing that His blood and His grace and His Spirit and His forgiving mercy has worked on my heart.

I have heard of foreign people coming to the United States and working like absolute dogs, both men and women, both the husband and wife, and rearing a family. And that family grew up in the luxuries of America, luxuries provided by the hard, rough, permanently dirty hands that never do quite come clean, of the working man, the working woman.

And they went to school and went through college, learned perfect, flawless, idiomatic American English. And when they got old enough to notice that Dad said “vy” when he meant why, “wineger” when he meant vinegar, and “dat” when he meant that, and that they weren’t cultured. I have heard how these children got ashamed of them and wouldn’t invite their young folks home. They wouldn’t invite their friends home because smiling old mama would come out looking like a bit of middle Europe. Speaking poor wretched English, a hairdo that just isn’t hip.

And these rascally, ungrateful, young scoundrels, steered their boy and girlfriends away and wouldn’t bring them home. Shame, shame, shame, Judas Iscariot. But another time I heard this that happened, and father died but the mother still lived. She was apologetic and smiling and always using terrible English. If you understood it, all right, but never matched and never tracked. Never a verb ever followed a noun or whichever way it’s supposed to. And she reared a boy. And that boy finally was graduated from, I think, from medical school to summa cum laude, which is a Latin way of saying he was really on top. And he won some sort of a citation.

And they asked him to stand and receive it and he stood to receive it, and his little all half scared to death, timid mother, a little blob of motherhood, done in a dress that just wasn’t in style, was sitting there two or three rows back, and he stood, and the mother came waddling out. And he turned before all the hundreds, and pinned the citation on her old blouse, and said, if I amount to anything, here’s the reason. And if I have any brains, here’s where I got them. And if I got through school, these hands put me through. See them. She deserves it, not I, and they applauded to the echo and wept with a sheer delight of seeing something good in a bad world. He wasn’t ashamed of an old lady who talked poor English and had rough hands.

O Sacred Head, now wounded by sin and grief bowed down. So scornfully surrounded with thorns thine only crown; O Sacred Head, what glory, what bliss till now is dying. Though despised and gory I joy to call thee mine. He doesn’t stand very well, the real Jesus, the Jesus of the cross. He doesn’t stand very well. The Jesus of the Christmas cards and the Easter cards, he stands all right. Everybody’s ready to say a nice thing about that Jesus. But the true Christ of the cross doesn’t stand very high with people. They don’t want to be bothered with it. They don’t want Him to dictate their lives. They don’t like to think that you got to die before you can live. And He’s going to change your whole life. But He condemns you before He can convert you. That He slays you before He can raise you from the dead. They don’t want to know that. So, our Lord Jesus doesn’t stand very high in public esteem. But I feel it so keenly, I wish I could do it over again.

I was brought up in a family where nobody was converted at that time. I became converted; joined myself to Jesus Christ. Joined the church and was baptized, began to go to church and I was the only Christian in that whole large family that was. And I stood there and was happy to do it. It was not always easy. I admit it was not always easy. And sometimes I slurred things over a little bit, maybe as a young fellow and wasn’t quite as bold as I might have been, but they knew where I stood.

And Father was converted, mother was converted, two sisters converted, brother-in-law converted. And a new dynasty began, a new reign began in the kingdom of God among the Tozers. And there are now Christians scattered all around. Not all of them as good as I want them to be, either uncles, aunts, and cousins and nephews and nieces and all the rest. We’ve got them from Japan to San Diego. But every trace of Christianity that I can find my, two brothers and three sisters, my own, and relatives, every one of them dates back to my conversion, all over the country.

I had a fellow write to me the other day and signed himself Gilbert Tozer. He said, I’m about a third or fourth cousin, five or six times removed. I want you to know that I am converted. And he said, now, I want to throw my house open to you whenever you come into my neighborhood. You come and see me. Well, I haven’t seen him.

You know what you can do, man. You can change not only your own life by the grace of God, but you can change a whole section and block of your  family. You can turn not only one, but you can turn companies and regiments of men and women in the right direction. If you follow Christ and leave the old life and begin the new and identify yourself in Jesus, you can join His people. Don’t be ashamed of His people.

Sometimes, I get cross, I hope it’s in a nice, sanctified way, but I wouldn’t always guarantee it. But I get a bit disturbed because God’s people do such dumb things and seem to be so lacking in a lot of things that I’d like to see them have and have myself. But I’d rather belong to the church of God than any group of people in all the wide world. If I were to be made a 33rd or 39th degree Mason the day after tomorrow, I would turn my back and scorn it and walk to the cross and say, lead on O King Eternal, the day of march is coming. Pick the way of the cross and the thorns and the misunderstandings and the raised eyebrows and the lonesomeness and loneliness. Take it. Take it. Identify yourself with these people. Go along with His people.

Sure, we’ve got hypocrites. Sure, we’ve got people that we think are all right, but don’t live it. Sure, we’ve got young people that attend our young people’s society and sneak off to a dirty movie Friday night or Saturday night. Sure, we have. I don’t know who they are, now, I’m guessing. But I think we have. Sure, always it’s that way. Sure, we have people that we think are great praying saints and if you knew them at home, you’d be shocked. Sure, we have. I suppose. I don’t know which ones, thank God. If I knew which ones, I’d go straight to them. But I never don’t know. God didn’t tell me because He knew what I would do.

So, He keeps it from me. I don’t know who they are, but I’m sure no fellowship ever existed; Jesus had his Judas and Paul had his Dimas and Peter had his Ananias and Sapphira. How can you and I have anything less than a few people that aren’t what they should be?

Nevertheless, I’m not leaving the children of God. If they’ll have me, I’ll have them. Lincoln said he was never going to get married because anybody who would have had him, he wouldn’t have. And that’s one way of looking at it. But any group that would put up with me, I would feel as if I didn’t want to put up with them. But we can’t let logic dictate. We’re going to have to say Lord Jesus, I joined Thy people. I identify myself, and then let the world know. Let the world know you’re a Christian. Don’t make a goose of yourself and go around with big buttons, big enough to stop a handcar, saying Jesus only. Don’t do that. Don’t carry a Bible so big it takes you and your wife to lug it down the sidewalk. Do you think that’s witnessing? No, don’t do that.

Don’t think you’ve got to sing, nearer my God to thee and give you a witness, as we say. Don’t make a fool of yourself under any circumstance. Live your life and where ever opportunity offers, slip a word in for your Savior, in a nice way when you can do it. And above all things, live the Christian life. Live it, live it, live it, brethren, live it. And when you live it, they’ll see it. A candle doesn’t have to shout, everybody, eyes front and center, look this way. Everybody sees a candle once you light it. If you’re a lighted candle, the world will know, and they will look in your direction.

Some of them will be pensive and homesick and go home and cry and wish they could be like you. And some of them will hate you and some of them will scorn you and cut you to pieces. But some of them after thinking it over for a few weeks or a few months or a few years, will surrender and say, I’ve fought this long enough. This man’s life proves to me Jesus Christ is real. So, I’m going to come and follow Him and identify myself with these people and join myself to Him; call myself by His name. Believe on Him and trust Him to save me from the bad and make me good and save me from the transient and give me that which is permanent. Save me from this world and give me a home above.

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“The Throne of Revelation“

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The Throne of Revelation

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

February 15, 1959

Open to Revelation and turn to the fourth chapter. We’ll read responsively fourth chapter revelation. After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.  And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.

And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

Now, we have here between what was and what was to come. After this, I looked and behold, a door was opened after this. I looked, after this, these things which had just closed, which were the seven letters to the churches. I preached on one of them, and I’m skipping the other six, because they get so much attention from the teachers. After this I looked and then a voice said, I will show thee things which must be here after.

And here stood the man John, between what had been and what was to come. And John saw a door opened in heaven and he heard a voice as it were the voice of a trumpet and he saw a throne and he saw one on the throne and he heard the sound of the chanting of these creatures, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.

Now, John had suffered through the seven churches, those seven churches. John had suffered through them. John is here between what was and what was to come. And what was and what was to come, that is, the two chapters, chapters two and three and chapters on from six on to twenty, are anything but good, anything. John had suffered through his seven churches. Look, look what John had had to hear, what he had to hear, what he had to tell the people. He’d had to talk about works and labors and patience and service and poverty and tribulation and suffering and prison and the sword and death and stumbling blocks and idolatry and backsliding and false apostles and religious liars and external riches and internal poverty, blindness of heart and nakedness and danger to life and the loss of crowns and the failure of rewards and the need to overcome. All of this he had heard, and it wasn’t a pleasant thing to hear.

And yet this was for the moment passed now, and before him in his prophetic mind, he saw four horsemen ride out. He saw the opening of the seals and heard the sounding of the trumpets. He saw the opening of the bottomless pit and he saw the great smoke arise and the scourge of the scorpions. He saw the Antichrist come up out of the earth. He saw the mark of the beast and the great red dragon. And he saw finally, Armageddon and the last judgement. Now, he saw all this and there he was caught between his poor backslidden churches that so desperately needed help, that were in danger of great loss to themselves. And these things, and I’ve only mentioned a few that lay out there, what we call the Great Tribulation.

Now, with all these present woes approaching, I want to ask you, how could John stay sane? There’s one way for you to stay sane and restful and enjoy yourself and have your food digest and enjoy your TV programs and your your nice home and your family, and not have too much worry. It is not to care a hoot about the world and about God and about the things of the Spirit and hell and heaven and judgment and losses and gains and rewards and punishment. That’s one way. But it’s a mighty poor way. And John didn’t belong to the crowd who could know these things and be restful about them.

So, how could John keep sane? How could he keep poised and optimistic in an hour like that? And I asked you how can you and how can I at a time like this, knowing what’s out there, even apart from the Bible? Close that Bible. Shut it. Put a rubber band about it. Put it to the bottom of the drawer and shut the door and lock it. And push the desk into a corner of the attic and determine to forget there is any Bible. All you have to do is listen to the radio now, and if you’re at all sensitive, or if you love the human race, you will find it hard to keep poised or balanced or at peace because of what’s facing the human race, all together apart from what the Bible says. Now, how are we going to live in this day? How are you and I going to live, are we going to make it? Well, John said, behold a door standing open in heaven.

Now, there my friends, there’s the direction you’ve got to look. And there is the solution. The only solution is from above. The only solution for earth is something from above. There’s nothing that comes out of the earth that can cure the earth. Nothing that spawns or hatches or is born in the earth can do the earth any good. All that fails, rulers and diplomats and agreements and pacts as the newspaper calls them, a man laws and soldiers and weapons and talks and summit conferences and science and culture and all the influence of learning. These are all good and I’m not knocking them. Certainly, it’s better for two diplomats to meet and talk than it is for them to fight. But they haven’t got the solution.

That kindly and well intentioned and much respected gentleman that lies so ill today in the hospital in Washington, not all that he could do with all his good intentions, some love him, some hate him, some wish that he was in orbit, and others think that he’s one of the greatest man that ever lived. Whatever you think of him, remember, he just couldn’t, he just didn’t have either the wisdom nor the power nor the strength to be able to save us. There has got to be help from somewhere else.

Heaven alone can cure. Heaven alone can heal. Earth has no sorrows that heaven cannot heal. But heaven can heal all earth sorrows. Heaven alone, I say, can heal. When He came the first time, you remember, and there were in a certain country, shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And suddenly an angel appeared on to them, and they were so afraid. The angel said, fear not, behold, we bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And immediately there was with the heavenly host, with the angels, a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest, peace on earth to men of goodwill.

Now that was when He first came. When he went away, he said, my peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. And just as He went away, when He had spoken these things, He was taken up from them and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And as they stood gazing toward heaven, lo, two men in white said to them, appeared and said, why gaze ye up into heaven? This same Jesus which ye saw go, shall come again in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.

Now the world has forgotten this, and the church has forgotten this. All you have to do to find out how unspiritual we are is to get into a tight spot. And then you find how we haven’t been trusting God too much at all. We have been looking to other things rather than to God. But I warn you against looking to anything that doesn’t show through the open door. I warn you against trusting to anything that begins lower down than the throne which John saw. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have Him incarnated here, but not His origin here. He came out out of heaven’s open door and through the womb of the Virgin In order that He might redeem mankind.

Now, the church, I say, has forgotten it. And we must take one more gaze into heaven. We must look once more. We must see an open door once again. We must realize that earth’s salvation comes through the open door and that it does not, it is not, it cannot ever possibly originate down here. It cannot be. But you say, did not Jesus originate here? Was He not born here. He got his body here, but He originated nowhere. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

And the Scripture says, behold, a set throne. Now, where it says here a throne was set, I have examined this very carefully. And I know I found out that it does not mean I saw the setting of a throne. You know how you set a table? There’s nothing there and then a woman gets busy and pretty soon she’s got a fine table set, all dolled up and food on it. Well, now that isn’t what it means here. It does not mean I saw a throne being set. That throne was never set. That throne had never been set. He had been with that throne. He the One who had no origin, sat on a throne. And that throne was not a throne being set, that was the set throne. Behold, a set throne. What does a throne proclaim.

When you see a throne, what does it proclaim? Well, it proclaims certainty. And all I pray that you will hear me tonight as I say to you, that in the ups and the downs of the world, that you will look to the throne. There’s no certainty anywhere else, remember it. You know, when we get to the brink of war and then pull back from it, we breathe once more and say, perhaps we will have another breathing spell. But with that breathing spell, we soon catch our breath again as we get to the brink of war once more. No, there is no certainty anywhere but at that throne. John saw it and you and I can see it for it’s set there, and there is certainty.

Now, there isn’t any certainty anyplace else and don’t let anybody tell you that there is. Don’t let them tell you there’s anybody that you can elect that can give you certainty or anybody you can defeat that will bring you certainty or any system or ideology that you can take up that will bring you certainty. There is no certainty in a rotting world, a world of decay.

Then the throne proclaims authority. Authority has got to be somewhere. There isn’t too much authority now. It is broken down everywhere, and broken down in the home, broken down in the schools, broken down in nations. So, there’s hardly a place of authority. But John said I saw a throne set. And that throne symbolizes and proclaims authority.

More than authority, it proclaims sovereignty. There never has been a throne, thank God, there never has been a throne set up in this world that was a sovereign throne. You know, the English refer to their queen as a sovereign, and many other nations have had queens or kings that they called sovereign, but I quarrel with their use of the word sovereign. For the word sovereign is an absolute, universal word. And it cannot possibly be used to designate any queen or anything that ever sat or does now sit or ever will sit on any throne of this world, until the Son of God the Messiah returns. And then there will be a sovereign throne, for sovereignty, of course means absolute freedom, absolute rule over all things without anybody anywhere or any power, any law, anything anywhere daring to challenge it. And there never has been a king like that since the beginning of the world. There isn’t now and there never will be until He comes back.

But this throne that John saw is a sovereign throne. That’s the kingdom of God, the center of the kingdom of God. And it means universal dominion, of course, and it means this other thing that I shall name and that is perpetuity. Oh, my brother, to be able to find something that will last. Did you ever, did you ever get to thinking, now this only applies to people over 35. People under 35, they have no idea in all the wide world but that they live forever. That is, they know better but they don’t feel it. But after you get to 35, which is halfway to 70. And incidentally, any of you thirty-fivers that imagine you’re spring chickens, you’re halfway to 70, just keep on.

But did you ever stop to grieve over the lack of permanence and perpetuity? Things just can’t last. Why, they bring them down and have him dedicated on Thursday and what seems only the next month, they’re married. And in a short while, they begin to get gray and then laugh at their gray hairs, and before very long they slow down and they’re gone. Generation follows generation. Moses prayed that famous prayer, O God, establish the work of my hands. He wanted something that would last.

Well, John here, saw a throne and he saw a throne that was sovereign, authoritative, certain, universal and perpetual. There is one thing that will last; Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Thy kingdom. And when God folds up the heavens as a garment and rolls back the stars as a mantle to change, His throne will still stand. I want to testify while I preach and say to you that the older, I get the more I live for that throne. The more I live for that throne, that permanent throne, that which cannot perish nor pass away. There is the throne, that blissful center about which was sing. There’s that blissful center.

And here, my friend, is our sanity. And here’s our certainty and here’s our assurance and here is our cheer. Here’s what gives us cheer. God’s children should be a cheerful people. St. Francis of Assisi believed that a man ought to be a cheerful, and he was a cheerful, happy man.

My wife and I are reading at our morning prayers, we are reading through Thomas Traherne’s great book called “The Centuries of Meditation.” It means meditations done in hundreds Well, he was the happiest man in all the wide world. He thought that when you get up in the morning that you ought to get up like a bird and sing and never be anything but happy. He was an Episcopalian preacher and wrote a couple of great books which went into obscurity and only have been lately resurrected, and I happen to have one of them. But don’t try to borrow it yet for a while. But it’s a great book and hard to get published by Dobell in London.

But this man was delighted man, he was a happy man. And you know that when the old Catholic Church used to canonize people, well, you know that they have to prove that they had a sense of humor; they were happy people. They won’t canonize a gloomy saint. I’m sorry I’d ever be on their side on anything, but I’m on their side on that, because a gloomy saint is more of a problem for the kingdom of God than a modernist. Here is the blissful center. Here’s sanity and here’s assurance and here’s cheer.

Well, One sat on the throne, One sat on the throne. Do you notice, One sat on the throne. And that word “one” there is a kind of “you” general pronoun. It doesn’t say who it is that sat on the throne. A throne was set. There was a set throne in heaven, and One sat on the throne, and it doesn’t say who sat on the throne. But is identification necessary, my friends? Is it necessary that you and I identify why we’re in the last book of the Bible?

Do we have to identify the One that sat on the throne? For here is the center of all worlds, and here is a throne that never was created. Here was the throne that God has sat on from the dim dawn of far beginning. Before there was anything, as the colored brother said the other day, way back on the other side of nothing. There’s going back. And back on the other side of nothing, God had to work. Back on the other side of nothing and this One that sat on the throne. He is not identified here, but must we identify Him? Does He need a name? Don’t we know who it is? Let’s call up a few men and ask them.

There lived a man with a name hard to pronounce, and he was found in the fourth chapter of the book of Genesis and never so far as I remember, mentioned again until the book of Hebrews thousands of years later. He had the long, difficult name of Melchizedek, and he was king of Salem which is king of peace. And he lived before there was any Hebrew race and he lived before there was any Old Testament and of course, before there was any New Testament. He lived before any church spire ever pointed to the sky or any choir ever chanted the praises of God. But somehow or other, he had become high priest of the Most High God.

And if we call up old Melchizedek and say to him, sorry to bother you, you’ve been sleeping so comfortably so long, but we’d like to know. John saw heaven opened and saw a throne and saw one on a throne, but he didn’t name him. Who is this that sits on the throne at the center of the universe. And Melchizedek would say, why, it’s the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth. Don’t you love that old expression? They say, you know, there’s a progressive development of doctrine in the Bible. But I like to go back to some of those old grassroot beginnings of things. And in the light of what we know now in the New Testament, those old grassroot expressions have tremendous meaning. Melchizedek knelt before the One he called the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth. And he was the high priest of that God. And so, Melchizedek might answer and say, why don’t you know who He was? This one that sat on the throne was the Most High God.

Let us skip on a little and ask Abraham, to whom he paid tithes. And let’s say, Abraham, who’s meant here? You’re a man of faith. You’ve marched down from Ur of the Chaldees. You’ve come a long way down, and what about it, Abraham? We’re not such good theologians and we see a door open in heaven and a throne there surrounded by creatures of all kinds and seven spirits with eyes and all this wonderful strange, yet there’s a throne and there’s is a, the only one that’s on it is called One and he’s left without a name. Who is it?

And Abraham would say, I’ll give you two names. I’ll give you. I’ll tell you who He is El Shaddai, El Shaddai. What does that mean Abraham? And he would say, why, that’s an old Hebraic word meaning God Almighty, God Almighty, the Almighty God, El Shaddai. It’s He that sits on that throne, the Most High God, El Shaddai.

But Abraham that isn’t enough. Name Him again. Identify Him. Who sits on that throne? And he would say I’ll give you another name, Jehovah Jireh. But what does Jehovah Jireh mean Abraham? And Abraham would answer Jehovah Jireh means the LORD will provide. Don’t worry. The Lord will provide. Do you believe it, my friends? The LORD will provide. El Shaddai, the the Mighty God, the Almighty God, the one that has all the might there is. He says, I’ll provide for you.

And later when He came down in the form of a man and stood among us or sat among us and preached his great sermon on the mount. Me said, why are you people so scared and worried? Why are you bothered, and you get premature wrinkles from worrying? Why, he said, your Father knows what things you have need of before ye ask Him. About whom was He speaking? He was speaking of the one who was El Shaddai, the Almighty God who owned everything, and Jehovah Jireh, who would provide everything.

But if we want still more, we come down the years and say, Moses, we’ve got an odd theological question back here in the book of Revelation. We’ve been preaching on it here and we’re sorry to bother you. We know that you’ve been sleeping well, too. But who is this that sits on the throne? We’ve had a little testimony, but we’d like yours. Moses would bow his head. And in a reverent voice he’e say one time, I, one time I now, by a bush and there was fire in that bush, and I turned aside to see. And when I turned aside, I heard golden voice say, Abraham, Abraham, draw not nigh. I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Go down and deliver Israel. Go down Moses.

And I said, O God, excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me and pardon me, but O God, I’ll go if you want me to go, but they’ll say, who sent you? What do I tell them, God? What is the name? They’ll demand a name. And God said in that same, wondrous, healing voice that filled heaven and earth, this is what you’ll say; say, I am that I am. That is my name forever and that’s my memorials above all generations. I am that I am. I am the Almighty. I am Jehovah Jireh, I am Jehovah Tsidkenu. I am.

All right. We ask another man who happens to be one of my favorites, and that is Isaiah. Isaiah wrote his 66 chapters, and they were filled, filled with great music, filled with music. A great musician could take the book of Isaiah and he could write an oratorio on the Book of Isaiah, at least the score, I mean not the score, but the libretto would be there, the words would be there. And he could write an oratorio that it would take a week to sing and would require the voices of angels to do it justice. For Isaiah was a man with an organ in his soul.

Isaiah, you’re a cousin to the King, and you’re a gifted poet. But where did you get your power? Where did you get jirtle lasting quality? What was it? What is this that Jew and Gentile and church of God have loved all down the centuries? And Isaiah would say, the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. Oh, Isaiah, excuse us. That’s what we wanted to know. Who was that sitting on the throne? And Isaiah would say, why, it was Jehovah sitting on the throne, Jehovah, the God of our fathers, Jehovah, the Most High God of Melchizedek, possessor of heaven and earth, the El Shaddai of Abraham and the I am of Moses, sitting upon the throne.

Ask our fathers, any of our fathers, back to Paul. Ask them with their long Latin musical, Latin names. Tertullian, Polycarp and Chrysostom and the rest of them whose very names are music. Ask and say, who, who is it? We’re just dumb Gentiles and we don’t know much and we’re busy. Who was that sitting on the throne Tertullian? Who was that, Origin? Who, who was that Anselm? Who sat on that throne? And they would say, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. That was He that sat on that throne, God, our Father. So, when we pray, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. We harmonize with all saints down the years who have said I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

Now, my Brother, you know what our trouble is, that we look around us and we have figured too much. Old Dr. Brown used to when missionary time would come, in his inimitable fashion, he’d get out a pen and sarcastically say, now, you’re going to give to the Lord’s work. You’re going to give. How much can I give? Then, he would stand up here and figure it out, oh yeah, 225.

Well, that’s not it, Brethren. That’s not the place to look. That’s not the place to look for us. That’s not the place to look for you. And you that are young and rearing families, that’s not the place to look for your hope. And you that are worried about your jobs. You’re not supposed to look to the auditor. You’re supposed to look through the open door at the fixed throne and see the one that’s on that throne. And this is our home, my Brethren. God is our home said Moses, a dwelling place for all generations.

And Simpson wrote a hymn by that name, God is my Home. So, this is our home. Your life is hid with Christ in God. And from there my Brethren, we look down. Now you say, how can I do it? You do it by faith. You do it by faith. A young fellow wrote me from, I forget what university. I can’t recall. It was one I was not familiar with the name, but he said, I want to ask you a question. He said, I learned that Jesus Christ is everything to me. But now, he said, how do I get hold of that? He said, do I believe and have faith and believe that it’s true for me or what do I do? And I wrote back and said, my dear young friend, you have asked a question and given your own answer. And I cannot, though I am much older give you any answer, but the one you’ve given. I read, he said, in the New Testament that Jesus Christ is everything to me now. How do I get ahold of it? I said, you’ve answered. Then I quoted him. I said, believe that He means you and dare to rise into it and take it for yours and say it’s not a theory, but it’s a fact. It’s not a doctrine, but it’s a reality, as well as a doctrine.

So, our life is hid with Christ in God. We are God’s. We belong to Him. And from there, my Brethren, we look down. From there we look down, and we look down on everything. We look down on the risen Christ. We look down from the throne where sits the risen Christ. We look down.

Oh, I get accused for being pessimistic because I won’t run around with a daisy in my boutonniere singing all the little songs about toothpaste, because I don’t like that stuff. Because I don’t like it. I don’t like the foolish way people are going. I don’t like what they are making me put up with. I don’t like their opinion of my mentality. They think it’s 12 years old and it isn’t. It’s a little older. I don’t like it. And Brethren, I’m a roaring optimist when I go to the book. When I look out on the world, the Democrats and Republicans and socialists and stragglers, I’m a pessimist out and out where they don’t have the answer. But when I look through the open door at the throne that is set, nobody can be more of an optimist than I am.

So, from up there, we look down. Now, we’re looking down on a problem. A lost sheep has wandered in. Brother bird, he got lost up there in cloud nine. But, let me tell you this. Let me tell you this, anything, anything He is going to say to you has got to be seen from the throne down. We don’t dare see it from our bank account out and from our little place out. We’ve got to see it from the throne down.

And the problem of racism, the problem of modernism and the new ecumenical council called by the Holy Father to woo us back into the fold and squirt stuff on us and make us good Catholics, we’ve got to settle that all from the throne down. If you try to get a lot of angry fundamentalists together down here sending telegrams to the President and to the State Department, all you’ve got is a bunch of people mad. But if you face all these problems from the throne down, you’re on top of it brother, just as sure as you live. No matter what happens to it, you’re still on top of it. Amen.

If I had just been having a good time up there but there’s somebody listening. I don’t know. I lost contact with you 10 minutes ago. So, I don’t know whether you still heard me. But as for me, don’t pity me and say poor man, he must carry a burden. I’m one of the happiest men in the world; by nature, one of the most miserable and by grace, one of the most delighted, because long ago I saw a throne and One sitting on a throne. And though imperfectly, I’ve tried to see everything else from the throne down. Well, everybody said, amen. Amen.

And so, we’ve got to see that throne, that set throne, that fixed throne and that One that we’ve now identified, sitting on that throne, receiving the adulation of all the heavenly host. And from that throne we view the Cold War and from that throne we view any possible hot war and from there we view the missiles and crime and corruption and race trouble and accidents and woes and diseases and death. From there, we look down. So instead of being under the circumstances, we’re on top of the circumstances. Amen.

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“Gifts“

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Gifts

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 22, 1957

There are three texts which I would ask you to note. The one is the familiar, John 3:16. Suppose that we just repeat it together. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. The next is a less familiar, Matthew 20:28. As many as know it, repeat it with me. Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. Then, Acts 20:35: We ought to remember the words of the Lord Jesus when He said, it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Now in these three texts, there of course, is hidden or lying, a world of diversified truths. But there are four truths which I would ask you to note. One is that the Father, out of His love gave His Son. And the second is that the Son in humility gave His life. And the third, that the Father and the Son, in their kindness, gave, but gave to supply an existing need. They gave not promiscuously, carelessly, lightly, but the Father gave His Son in order that men might not perish. The Son gave His life in order that we might be ransomed. And the fourth thing is, that it is more blessed to give than it is to receive.

Now, from our Lord Jesus Christ we have received much. The older I get and the more I know the Lord and the more I appreciate what He is doing and has done and is promising to do, the more I see that words won’t express what we’re trying to say. God has to add something to words or else they fall down. Can you imagine this statement? From our Lord we have received much, much, unmodified and yet, what could you say? How can I express what we have received from Him? But I want to think this morning about what we can offer Him and show you from the New Testament, specially gathered round the birth scene, what they gave Him and then ask, what can we give Him?

Well, we’ll begin where the New Testament begins with those wise men. We don’t know how many they were, probably three. Traditions says that they were representatives of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. That sounds too neat to be true, although, it could be true. But they came from afar; they were the Magi. Milton called them the star-led wizards and said they came with odor sweet. But they brought to Him three things symbolic of about all that anybody can bring Him. They brought Him gold; obviously, they had gold to bring.

They were of the upper class. They were learned and they may even have been kings. We sing, We Three Kings of Orient Are and we’re speaking for these three men. That’s tradition, but it could also be true. They brought Him gold, and gold of course stood for a lasting treasure. There is one thing about gold and that is this, you can’t destroy it. I do not think or do not believe that there’s any way known that gold can be destroyed. You can burn it. You can melt it down. You can mix it with other metals, but the gold always remains the gold because it is one of the basic elements in nature. And this is a lasting treasure, this gold and they brought it to Jesus.

Then they also brought frankincense, and this frankincense stood for worship. It always has in Old Testament times, and where it is used in the New, it stands for worship. It stands for the sweet fragrance of prayer that goes up from the heart that is offering something, however little, to the Lord Jesus Christ. But then also, they must have had some kind of Biblical teaching. They must have gotten some light other than we believe the heathen then had because they brought also myrrh. And myrrh was an ingredient of the Old Testament sacrifices. When they came with their incense, part of it was myrrh. And myrrh always stood for the bitter element. It stood for the suffering. And thus, they brought the gold, the lasting treasure and the frankincense of worship with a little remembrance that they were in a world of darkness and sin, and that there must be myrrh there also.

Then there was Mary. Now what can I say about the one they call the blessed Virgin Mary? Too much is said by some people and not enough is said by others, and I would try to be in the middle, where I could say enough without saying too much. But it would take ten sermons, a series of at least ten to say what ought to be said about Mary and to unsay what has been said too much about her, that Mary didn’t have any gold. And I think she also didn’t have any frankincense.

Mary came from the plain people. And we know little about her except we know her lineage and that it went back to David by way of Nathan not through Solomon, but by way of Nathan. If she had been a descendant of Solomon, she could not have been the mother of our Lord, because God said to a descendant of Solomon who was a king, Coniah, cursed be this man, He said. Not one of his descendants shall ever sit upon the throne of David. And yet the lineage that we trace right on back through to David and on back to Abraham goes through the line of Solomon, but not Mary. Mary goes through Nathan, another son of David, so that the curse does not apply to Mary. And Christ could be king, because the curse did not prohibit it. If she had been a descendant, I repeat, of any of Coniah who was a descendant of Solomon, she could not have been the mother of the King.

Well, she had no gold, and she had no frankincense. So, she gave Him all that she had or could give that He wanted. She gave her mortal body to be the cradle where in the mystery of gestation, Jesus Christ was made flesh to dwelt among us. All this is so holy and so chastely wonderful, that I think it had not never to be made the subject of theological controversy. I would never raise my voice to debate with any man about the virgin birth of Jesus.

This, if it’s true, and my heart knows it’s true, this is as richly beautiful as the stones of fire over which once the seraph stretched his golden wings. This is too beautiful to be debated before the public. Mary knew not the man. Mary was the virgin mother and Jesus Christ was born of the Father who is God and of the mother who is Mary, that He might be to us God and man. That He might be human and divine joined in one, indivisible, an everlastingly permanent and fixed union, Christ, was born into the world in time. And Christ, never born, never created, but begotten of the Father before all ages, joined forever in one Man. This is our Christ. And Mary, Mary gave him all she had. She gave Him her mortal body.

Then Mary was married and had this Joseph as her husband. Now Joseph had no gold. He was a carpenter, and he was a peasant, we would say, he belonged to the working class. In that time, they did not drive big automobiles and have country homes as they do now. But he belonged to this simple people. And he had no gold and no frankincense, which was very expensive. But you know, Joseph gave something. It took a man like Joseph to give. Joseph gave faith.

And he gave faith where it was needed. When he was talking to his espoused wife, she had to admit her condition. And Joseph got up quietly and walked away, hoping that he could somehow release himself from her, and yet save her from disgrace. And then an angel spoke to him in a dream and said, don’t be afraid to take to yourself the woman Mary, for that which is begotten is of the Holy Ghost. And Joseph believed it. And Joseph went right back and said, I’m sorry, Mary, I’m sorry, God has revealed the truth.

And so, Joseph gave faith at a time when faith wasn’t a very proper thing and when there was no precedent for it. There was nobody else whom had ever had this situation happened to them. He couldn’t open the Book and say, well, saint so and so had a situation like this, or the apostle had it or some reformer or evangelist had a situation like this, some missionary. Nobody ever had had a situation like this. Joseph had to have faith in God and in his betrothed wife when nobody else in the world would have believed that story. And he did. And he is today called by the world St. Joseph.

So, he had faith in understanding, and he gave them, and he gave them. I said on the radio yesterday that I think he was not a brilliant man, but he had a certain, salty understanding and he did give that, and he gave protection. Now think of it my friends. Joseph gave protection, for remember, that the Son of the world once lay in the manger. Not in the stable as they say, but in a manger, which is something altogether different. The sweet, fragrant hay was in that manger? The cattle were not tramping there. They were eating out of that. It was up at head level, and it was clean and smelled pure and sweet. I’ve put hay into mangers, and I know how beautifully fragrant it smells.

And that Jesus was laid in that manger. And there lay all the hope of the world in that manger. Can you imagine it? Man doesn’t put all his hopes in one tiny, tiny place like that. We protect ourselves. We have our SAC, Strategic Air Command all over the world. Did I read that we had 65? Is that the right number. Is that an understatement? We have at least that many great bases from which we can go if they destroy one to 10, 20, 30, we still have more. And rich men put their money not in one bank or not in one place, but they distributed it around. They buy stock here and stock there and stock at the other place, so if the bottom drops out in one place, they’ll still have plenty.

But God put all in one manger. And when He lay there, He, a tiny baby, you could have taken your thumb and pressed real hard on the top of His head and He would have been gone. You could have neglected him for a day or two, and the infection would have come, and He would have been gone. He needed protection. And Joseph gave it. Of course, Mary gave the loving, motherly care, but Joseph gave the protection. He was a rough carpenter, and his hands were rough. But he would look in with a smile and fatherly protection. And he gave patience, and he gave care, and he gave all this and he gave hard work.

We’ll have Joseph to thank for this, my friends, give him the world to come. We can hunt people out and say, I want to thank you. If we can, we’ll have Joseph to hunt up before we’ve done our duty and done what our hearts require. And we’ll say Joseph, thank you for taking care of Mary, and thank you for believing in her when nobody else would have accepted her story. Thank you for the patience and protection and care you gave to her and gave to the little boy. Thank you, Joseph. We’ll say that. Joseph gave that.

Then there were the shepherds. Now the shepherds couldn’t give what the others had given. They couldn’t give gold or frankincense or myrrh. They weren’t in a position where they could give care nor protection. And only one was in a position where she could give her mortal body.

But the shepherds were the first to come in fear and wonder and praise. They were the first ones to come. Scripture says that they came in fear, but it wasn’t the fear that men felt when the satellite was thrown into its orbit; it wasn’t the fear of impending destruction. It wasn’t the fear that the superstitious people feel for black cats on Friday. It was the godly fear, the fear that heals your heart. It was a wholesome, healing, reverential fear, and wonder. And these shepherds when they came, set the mood for all that will come and see, all the world, all the years. They came in wonder.

And the Christ at whose feet I could not kneel, and wonder is a Christ I would not worship; I could not worship Him. I might pay some dutiful tribute to Him, in keeping with the way the church does, but I could not worship if I could not wonder.

But the shepherds wondered. They said, this is beyond us. We’ve been out under these stars until we’ve counted every visible star. We know the constellations. We know all of these various forms that are etched against the blue green sky of the night sky. We know all that. And we’ve heard all the strange stories and tales that are told; we know it. The long, long night watches as we kept our sheep and talked together. We’ve heard many wonders, many strange things, but nothing like this we have ever heard before. We’ve never heard angels. We’ve never heard a multitude of the heavenly host saying, glory to God in the highest. They wondered and they brought Jesus what is more precious to Him than any talent you might bring.

The man can sing, or a woman, we say, oh, she ought to give her voice, he ought to give his voice to the Lord. If the man has ability to stand up and talk, we say oh, that man ought to give his oratorical ability to the Lord. The man is making great money, we pray, convert Mr. So and so. He has $2 million. Think of what he could do for missions. Let me say to you, that more precious to God than all the money in the world, more precious than all our gifts and talents and abilities is wonder. Bring wonder to Him. And in your wonder, you come to Him and say, O my God, my Lord, my Lord, I know not. I only know, here I am Lord and there Thou art. O Lord, receive me. He’ll receive it with greater joy than if you could bring $1 million and lay it at his feet.

Well, then there was Lazarus later on and his sisters Mary and Martha. They gave Him something too. They gave him this; they gave Him a welcome. There were a lot of places Jesus wasn’t welcome in those days because they were afraid of Him. Lots of Pharisees would never have taken Him into their homes. They said, well, this man’s a fanatic, and we can’t take Him in. We’ve got to keep our doctrine clean and clear. And we don’t dare compromise the synagogue. They wouldn’t have taken Him in.

But Jesus had a welcome at the home of Lazarus and his two sisters, and He had what they now say, a home away from home. And wherever Jesus was, and he got around anywhere near to Bethany, why, He always knew the latch string was out. He didn’t have to write ahead and say, I will be coming, would there be a place for Me? They saw to it that that one place never was taken by anybody else. That was His place. They didn’t quite know why. And you know, sometimes I think that some of our religious acts that are performed for reasons that we can’t quite fathom are more valid and more precious than the ones we can figure out.

When I studied the life of Jesus, the Savior, and the people that were all around Him, I saw them doing things and heard them saying things that they didn’t quite know what they were saying or doing. But they did it out of a not to clearly defined impulse of the heart. And God made human hearts, my brethren. And He loves the human heart more than He loves the human intellect, though the human intellect, when it becomes fused with the human heart, and we think with our heart, as the old Greek fathers used to say. When we think with our heart, then the human intellect can rise to be that of a Luther or an Augustine.

But when the intellect is separated from the heart, God hasn’t much good to say about it. But He lives for our hearts. Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and He didn’t say what door, but the whole church has believed that it’s the door of the heart. So, the home away from home was the heart of Lazarus and his sisters and the home there. They entered Him into their hearts; they gave him their hearts. And this is more desirable than anything else.

And then there were the women, and we don’t quite know who they were either, these women. They gave one thing to Jesus; they gave him a robe. And it was an unusual robe, in that robes have seams, even the garment you’re wearing now and that I’m wearing, you could take it apart at this at the seams and lay it out again, as it once was cut to a pattern. But this seamless robe had no pattern. And they must have, these women, looked at Jesus with a very critical and appraising eye. And they must have met and whispered and put their heads together and said, now, he’s about, I think, five foot 10, wouldn’t you say, 10, maybe 11? And what would you say, He takes middle size or larger, we just went with you. They figured it all out. And then when they had gotten him down so that they had His size and they knew that he would be able to wear it, why, they wove Him a seamless robe, a robe without seam. And they gave that to Jesus.

And that seamless robe was considered to be of such value that the soldiers cast dice to see who would get it when they nailed Him on the cross. And don’t forget, that just as when Jesus came into the world, Mary and Joseph had a layette ready for Him. Don’t forget that when He went out of the world, the women had a seamless robe that they took from Him when He died. He had his friends.

And we’ll have to hunt up Joseph to and Mary and those shepherds, and there’ll be identified no doubt. And we’ll find Lazarus because Lazarus had an experience nobody else had to have much, not many at least. He had died and been raised from the dead and had eaten with Jesus after his resurrection and had died again and he’s still sleeping, waiting for another resurrection. And of course, everybody will gather around Lazarus and say, tell us about that Lazarus. I only got raised once and you got raised twice. And Lazarus will say, don’t feel bad about that because my first resurrection that I got was only temporary. And this last one that I got along with you, it’s permanent–immortality. But he didn’t get immortality when Lazarus came forth, but he got raised from the dead simply for a time.

And these women, if we ever find who they are, I don’t know whether we’ll ever know who they are or not. A great preacher one time preached a sermon on the unknown saints, who they were, I think it was T. Dewitt Talmage, the great Brooklyn orator of a past generation. He said that Paul was let down in a basket with a rope fastened to the basket and was let down over the wall. And he said, now who made that basket? And he said, If the fellow that made that basket had been a shoddy workman, the apostle might easily have been killed. And he said, who made that rope? Nobody knows who made that rope. But whoever made that rope made a good rope. And if he had been careless and left a weak place in it, the apostle weight might easily have broken that and dashed him on to the rocks below and killed him. But somebody had done good work.

And again, I say, though this I suppose is Thanksgiving material, really, but I don’t know why we should wait till November to be thankful. I think we just owe so much to everybody. And I think we owe a lot to these women.

And then there was that other Joseph Arimathea. And I might also add, before I leave those women, that the church owes an awful lot to the women today. There are some people who don’t like the idea of women having any part in religion. A man they believe there, can save their souls, you know. They think they’re at least above the animals. You can save their soul, believe in Christ and be saved and then keep their mouths shut. And one time a man came to this church and a woman testified and he stalked out and said, they’re blaspheming God in this church, letting a woman talk.

Well, I was reading the gospels the other day. And I heard of some women that went to the tomb and saw that Jesus wasn’t there. And the angel said to the women, He’s not here, He’s risen. And they raced away to tell everybody. Did you know that the first persons who told of the resurrection of Christ were women? Did you know it? We owe the women a lot. I think it’s entirely possible to get all sentimental and dewy-eyed about this. But I also so think that it’s possible to get wrong about it.

I’m not dewy-eyed about the women. I know that usually, they give their husband’s money and spend it. I realize that. But we owe the women an awful lot, an awful lot. We ought to thank God for the women, the Christian women, the simple women, the plain women, the women who serve God, and who manage somehow out of their household budget to lay enough aside, they can make a missionary pledge. And they can give where needs are, as well as to say nothing about persuading the old gentleman, that he can afford to give that extra $100 this year to the Lord’s work. Well, that’s assuming that the old gentleman isn’t very zealous. I know that some of you men are equally zealous with your wives. But I thought I wanted to say that about the women because it’s true and this is the opportunity.

And then there was Joseph, that other Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea.  I don’t know much to say about Joseph, only that he went and claimed the body of Jesus. That body wasn’t dirty to him. There was nothing repulsive about that to him. That was a dead body and it was the body of an executed criminal. Don’t forget it, we might as well face up to it and call it by its right name. This was the body of a man who had been executed by the Roman state.

Once I went through Sing Sing prison, and I sat in the chair in Sing Sing, and had a young man strap me in the way they strap in the criminals. He didn’t put the electrical thing on my head, but it was there. And I sat there in the chair. And I said to him, a handsome young, blonde, good looking blue eyed fellow. And I said to him, are you one of the, are you, and I couldn’t get it out. And he said, yes, I’m one of these legalized killers. Well, I said, what do you do? What’s your job? He said, my job is to wheel them away and put them in the ice box. He said, this is the ice box out here, and we went out and saw a whole list of places where they were put, just big enough for a human body. They were put in there and kept on ice until they were either claimed by their relatives or buried in a potter’s field.

And don’t forget that that’s exactly what Joseph of Arimathea did. Jesus had died as men die in Sing Sing. They die because they’ve committed crimes against the world. He died, because we had committed crimes against the world and against God, and He had never committed any. He became sin for us, but the world didn’t know that. And Peter said, if the world had known it they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of Glory. They thought they were lugging out a criminal. They thought when they took Him down, one more criminal is dead. They put thousands of them to death over the years. But Joseph didn’t feel that way. He knew. He knew. He knew that sacred body, that sacred body was not going to decay. He knew Mother Earth could never claim it.

So, Joseph said, would you mind if I claimed it? They said, you’re not next of kin. Well, he said, would you just miss a point there and jump a point and let me have Him anyhow. They said, oh, sure, take him. You’re saving us burying him. So, Joseph took His body reverently away, and laid it in his own, new grave that he himself had had just as people now buy cemetery lots. Joseph had bought himself a place where he might be buried. Well, I don’t know too much about Joseph. But I wonder where they buried him, finally? In that same grave where Jesus had lain? I’d hate to think that. And I don’t suppose that our Christian sentiment would allow us to think that. But anyway, Joseph gave what he had. It was rather grim. But it was what Jesus needed just at that time.

Well, that’s what they gave Him. That’s what they gave Him. And we ransomed sinners, should we let anybody else outdo us in giving? Is there anything anybody gave that we shouldn’t try to give if we can. If we have gold, we can give it. If we have not frankincense, we can give worship. And we can as Mary, give our mortal bodies unto the Lord. And we can as Joseph, give patient, tender care and faith and understanding to His church, if not to the Savior, then to the ones the Savior came to save.

We can with the shepherds stand in fear and wonder and awe and sing praises on the plains at night to the Lord. We can with Lazarus and the sisters, give a welcome to the people of God and particularly, open our hearts. We can with the women provide Him with what He needs. I can’t give a garment to Jesus, but I can give a garment to some poor orphans somewhere. And Joseph of Arimathea, ah, there is one, there is one gift we can’t match. There’s a gift nobody else ever matched. There’s a gift He doesn’t need anymore. Nobody can give Jesus a grave, for death hath no more dominion over Him.

So we won’t offer him a grave, but we’ll just offer Him the equivalent of it, whatever it might be, we ransom sinners. I say, we should let nobody outdo us in our giving. And yet, when we’ve gone over our poor treasures, when we’ve counted them and weighed them and placed what value we can upon them, what can we give Him? What can we give Him who owns every star? What can we give Him who owns the pearls of all the oceans and the diamonds of all the mines? What can we give Him who holds all the treasures of a vast universe in His right hand? What can we give Him?

Well, we can’t give Him anything really, but we can do what they did. Could the wise men give Him anything, this baby? No, He owned the wise man and all their gold and frankincense, but he lay still and quiet and didn’t let on. Could Joseph give him anything? No. Joseph really couldn’t because He created the very stuff out of which Joseph’s body was made. He was the Word and by him all all things were made, and nothing was made except by Him. Could the shepherds bring Him anything or Lazarus or the women or Joseph of Arimathea? Really, no, because He owned it already.

It’s like a three-year-old boy giving his father a present which he first had to, he bought by first getting the money from his father. So actually, there isn’t much that we can give Him. And yet we can only satisfy our hearts by giving Him all. So, we bring Him our little human toys such as they may be. We think they’re so weighty and so valuable, but actually, they’re not much and we got them from Him, or we wouldn’t have had them. And then when we do come and bring Him everything, we go away laden with His gifts for He won’t be outdone. Bring Him what you will, and He’ll send a bigger, bigger basket away with you.

Come with this great a treasure as you have, and you will take a greater treasure away. Come with your heart and you go away with forgiveness. Come with your faith and you go away with eternal life. Come with your trembling fears and you go away with reinstatement in God’s grace. Come with your timidity and you go away with assurance and safety. Come with your dying and your sickness and your weariness and you go away with peace in death and immortality and heaven at last.

Say, wrote the Poet, say, shall we yield him, in costly devotion, Odors of Edom and offerings divine? Gems from the mountain and pearls from the ocean, myrrh from the forest or gold from the mine?  No, vainly we offer earth’s richest oblation, vainly with gold would his favor secure, Richer by far is the heart’s adoration, Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor. And this, we can give Him.

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“Blind Bartimaeus-Seeking and Receiving Help“

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Blind Bartimaeus-Seeking and Receiving Help

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 17, 1956

Tonight, I want to talk to you about blind Bartimaeus. And I’ll read a passage from 10th of Mark: When they came to Jericho, and as He went out of Jericho with His disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging. And when He heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.

Now, verse 46, says they came to Jericho. And if you will remember, Jericho was the city of the curse. It was so known as the city of the curse; Joshua had declared it to be so. That if ever rebuilt by the firstborn of the man who had built it. And it so came to pass and became the city of the curse. And yet here was the great God Almighty, that had formed the earth in the hollow of His hand. That had, as the poet said, flung the stars to the most far corners of the night. And here was this great God Almighty, and he was walking into the city of Jericho, the city of the curse.

And I don’t know, but it would be the last place you’d expect God to be. You know, brothers and sisters, we sissified Christians imagine that God only goes to church. There isn’t a harlot house in this town, that God isn’t present at tonight. There isn’t a smelly, smoke-filled saloon in Chicago, that God Almighty isn’t there. And there isn’t a jail in this whole city, where the Lord God isn’t. Because it says in verse 45, the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.

Now, that was why the great God Almighty was in the city of the curse, because He was the Son of Man, part and parcel of the human race, for better or for worse, and it turned out of course, to be for better. And He came to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. And there wasn’t any depth He wouldn’t go to. There wasn’t anywhere that He wouldn’t be found.

So, this great God Almighty, comes into this city of the curse. And as He traveled along and went out of Jericho with His disciples and the great number of a hangers-on following along behind them, why, we come to blind Bartimaeus, junior, he was, because to me, this was his father’s name and Bar means he was the son of. So he was to me his junior and he had been born blind. Poor Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus.

Now I don’t want to press this, my friends at all. But I wonder whether there isn’t something subtly suggestive about this fact that this man was the son of somebody and was found in the city of a curse and was found blind and was named after his father. That’s sort of indicating a hereditary descent. I don’t know that the old gentleman was blind, but I know that his great great great grandfather Adam was. I know that Adams eyes were put out in that hour.

When he looked upon the fruit and found it very desirable and did take and did eat and knew that he was naked. In the hour that he saw that he was naked, he ceased to see God and eternal things. And here all down the centuries later, there was one of his poor, blind descendants still blind and this one physically blind, and he was sitting by the highway side begging. Now not everybody in Palestine was a beggar, though there were many of them. And not everybody in Chicago is a beggar when it comes to the the economic or social side of it. But everybody is a beggar. After all, when you go really back to the root of things, I wonder where we get our pride. Human pride grows like dandelions or ragweed. It doesn’t have to have any reason for growing.

Moody told about the little girl who took chips and strung them on a string and put them around her neck in the slums and strutted around among the other little girls who didn’t have any little string of chips around her neck. And Moody illustrated the fact that human pride doesn’t have to have an origin or a source nor a reason, it just grows there indigenously. It doesn’t come from anywhere. It’s simply there.

And there isn’t a one of us, not a one of us from President Eisenhower down to the poorest tramp that’s sitting tonight with his feet hanging over the curb, half-drunk down on Skid Row, not one, but is a supplant at the gate of God Almighty. He sits a beggar on the highway of life. He sits in this great city of the curse, a blind man begging. There isn’t a one I tell you, the prince of Monaco or the Queen of England, or any of the great and mighty whose names are on the front of Time Magazine and in all the newspapers, not a one of them, but dwells in the city of the curse and is blind, and begging. Because they beg every breath of air from God and there isn’t a breath of air that God doesn’t give them.

And God says their breath is in their nostrils. That Old Testament passage was always to me, the most, most significant and meaningful passage. He told the man of God, he said, don’t be afraid of that fellow. His breath is in his nostrils. Take his breath out of his nostrils for a minute and a half and he’s finished. That’s all there is to him, His breath in his nostrils. And where does he get it? He borrows it from God Almighty, begs it from God. And the water that composes his body, 70% of it he gets and begs from God Almighty. And the food that he takes in to nourish his tissues, he begs from God Almighty.

And the light of reason that blazes in his brain is borrowed or begged from God Almighty. And everything that he has he got from God. That’s why, it seems to me that pride is a cancer on the human soul. Because it is a wild indigenous growth that doesn’t belong there and shouldn’t be there. Because there’s nobody that has anything to be proud of. Why should the spirit of a mortal be proud? Like a fast flying meteor, a fast flying cloud, flash of the lightning or breaking the wave and he goes from his home to his rest in the grave. That was one of Lincoln’s favorite poems. And it’s still true. So, what have we to be proud of? And isn’t that the way all of us are?

Now we’re living in high times, and everybody’s making more money than he should. And we’re spending it faster than we should and we’re living, we call it the American way of life and a high standard of living. Our fathers would have called it extravagance carried to the point of sin. But be that as it may, we’re very likely to get the idea that we amount to something. And one of the sweetest and most wonderful things that can happen to you and me is to find out we’re not. That we dwell in a world that lies under the shadow of a curse.

It’s hard to believe that this beautiful land of ours with its broad highways and its flowing rivers and it’s smoking factory chimneys and it’s millions of automobiles running into billions of dollars and it’s great halls of learning, ivy clad and it’s great newspapers and it’s music and it’s radio and television and all the rest. It’s hard to believe that this lovely, great world of ours lies under the shadow of a curse, but it does. For God’s said to man that the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die and said to man afterwards, with the sweat of your face you shall earn your daily bread.

So, we live under the shadow of a curse. We ought to live our lives remembering that. Don’t let anybody kid you out of it. Don’t let any positive thinkers or any of these pepper uppers and cheerer uppers think you out of it. We live in a country and in a land and in a race that’s under the shadow of a curse and a threat of judgment to come. Well, that was Bartimaeus. That isn’t the type and I don’t claim it is a type. It’s merely an illustration and that’s all I’m doing with it tonight. But here was the man Bartimaeus. And he heard it was Jesus of Nazareth. When he heard it was Jesus, I tried to think tonight about this and how many there were that heard it was Jesus of Nazareth?

I remember a passage that moved me very greatly. I can get blessed. The old brother said, God blesses me on slight provocation. And I can get blessed on some of the most unlikely passages. There is one in the fifth chapter of Acts that said that when He had seated Himself, He opened His mouth. And I thank God for the last, I guess, 25 years that Jesus Christ ever opened his mouth? What would it have been like if Jesus kept His mouth shut? If He had never opened His mouth. If He being God Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible, had been incarnated in the form of a man, who had grown to manhood, and then looked the human race over and been shocked into silence. What a tragic, terrible, irreparable loss to the human race. But He opened his mouth.

Thank God, He opened his mouth. And He opened His mouth, and He taught people and He said things. He opened His mouth, and He corrected the errors. He opened His mouth, and He spiked lies. He opened His mouth and He let in life. He opened His mouth, and He informed us. He opened His mouth, and He instructed us. He opened His mouth. Now, I’m blessed on that passage that Jesus Christ came to the world and opened his mouth.

But why wouldn’t He? He was called the Word. And the Word was made flesh to dwell among us, and why wouldn’t the word open His mouth? There is no such thing as a silent word. How could there be, since that word means an uttered thought, not a word printed, but an uttered thought? Then he had to open His mouth. And when He opened His mouth, you know, the first word He uttered? Tell me. In that fifth chapter, blessed, blessed, blessed. The first word He uttered was blessed. Of course it would be blessed. Here was the Blessed One come from the realm of the blessed to bless mankind. So, His first word He uttered when He opened his mouth was blessed.

Well, now I see another passage here that he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth. And I have been wondering how many there were that heard about that, that Jesus was in that city of the curse. He would have been morally justified if He had withdrawn from the city of the curse and gone to the temple and gone to the holy place and sat down between the wings of the cherubim. The Ark of the Covenant was not there at the moment. But He could have gone into that holy place, and there dwelt the only clean and living place there was, but He didn’t. He was seen walking around among people seeing where the people were.

One of the tricks of the devil is to frighten us by self-accusation. We always think other people are better than we are. And that if everybody was like us there wouldn’t be any Christians. And we know ourselves so well and we know our faults and flaws as sinners. And then we say, well, surely God wouldn’t be interested in you and me. But the simple fact is that is exactly what Jesus Christ came to get interested in. He was interested and that’s what brought Him to the world in the first place because we were sinners. For He said in verse 45, again, I repeat, the Son of Man didn’t come to be ministered unto and be carried around on a golden chair. He came to minister and give His life a ransom for many and naturally He went wherever they were.

Hospitals, nobody wants to go to a hospital. I don’t like the smell of a hospital. It’s a clean smell but it’s suggestive of pains and nausea and troubles. And I don’t like jails, but I’m sure the Lord Jesus Christ mingled there. I’m sure He’s there. A lot of people don’t hear that he’s there. But this fellow heard this, Junior here, this Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus. He heard about it. And he heard the Jesus of Nazareth passed by.

I wondered what the history of the world would have been like if nobody had ever heard that Jesus was passing by at all? I’ve never heard if Washington hadn’t heard and Lincoln hadn’t heard and Franklin hadn’t heard, although Franklin never became a Christian. He was yet very far over on the side of God, because he’d heard that Jesus Christ passed by. Emerson never was a Christian, in the sense of being a born-again Christian. But somebody had said that if Emerson went to hell, the migration was set in that direction. He was such a wonderful man because he’d had all the influence of Jesus who passed by.

And so, we have Jesus of Nazareth. Up in heaven, I’m sure somebody’s going to compose a song if they haven’t done it already. And I’m sure that among the ransomed up there, the name Jesus of Nazareth is going to be the theme of some great, great oratorial–Jesus of Nazareth. And this man heard about it, and so he began to cry out. He began to cry out and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.

Now, here was a blind man and yet he was crying for mercy. He had theological and spiritual insight enough to know that no matter what he wanted from God, it had to come by mercy. David said, have mercy upon me, O Lord, and hear my prayer. Why did he say, have mercy upon me and hear my prayer? My brother, it’s the mercy of God that every inclines His ear unto you. You’ve never earned it. And even as a Christian, if you are a Christian, even as a Christian, you have not lived so as to put God under obligation to hear you. If God hears you at all, it will be because He’s a merciful God.

My old friend Tom Hare said, I don’t believe in merit praying. I don’t believe that anything comes because we have meritorious prayer. And he said, I don’t believe in meritorious faith. He said, everything flows out of the goodness of God. And if we would see that our prayers would be stepped up in quality and quantity vary greatly, if we would only realize that everything flows out of the goodness of God. You don’t have too beg a fountain to flow. The fountain flows because it wants to flow, and God gives because He wants to give an answer because He wants to answer. And it’s all of His mercy that all these things are done. Jesus of Nazareth had come, and He cried, Son of David, have mercy on me.

And here was a poor blind man trying to get delivered. A poor blind man wanting help from God and not knowing how. He had never seen a sunset. He had heard the song of a bird and only had to imagine what it looked like. He’d heard the voices of his friends and had to imagine what they looked like. His was a world of the imagination, and he had never seen the sun rise nor go down. He’d never seen the waves lap and play on the lake or flow on the Jordan. He had never seen anything, and he was blind. He knew that he didn’t have anything to offer God and he didn’t come and whimper to God and complain. And he didn’t come and say, Lord, why did you treat me like this? And he didn’t come and say, Lord, I’m not such a bad fellow.

You know, lots of people go to hell because they say they’re not so bad. They’re not so bad. And if anybody starts to pray and make a sinner out of them, they bristle up and their hackles rise up their back. And they say, now, wait a minute here. Don’t condemn me. I’m not a bum. No, but here was a man who wasn’t a bum either, but when he came to God, he said, have mercy upon me, O God, have mercy upon me. He asked the Lord’s mercy. He didn’t bring a thing.

The Lord had received you if you come bringing nothing. You go and pick up some scraps and try to bring God a present, the Lord will rejected you just as He rejected Cain. He received an Abel because Abel brought a lamb, but the Lamb has been brought once for all and you don’t have to even bring a lamb. You only come because the Lamb was there. He died and rose and lives again.

Well, notice again now that many charged him that he should hold his peace and I’ve wondered about this. Here was a poor blind fellow. He wanted to see more than he wanted anything else in the wide world just then. And here was Jesus surrounded by elders and deacons, potential elders and deacons and secretaries and big shots and people that more or less fronted for Him, self-appointed fellows, officious Peter, and officious John. They were fronting for the Lord, you know, like a small-town policeman when the big, important person arrives. And they were running ahead for Jesus.

And here through all the noise and the excitement, there went the high, thin voice of a blind man, Son of David, have mercy on me. And of course, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t the way it said in the books of discipline. And it wasn’t the way our dear beloved Brother so and so used to do it. And so they said, hush, hush, hush, and Peter ran over and they ran over and said, quiet there boy, quiet there down, down, don’t you know Who this is? Now, why is it that society will stand by and let you go to hell and oppose you as soon as you start to cry out, God have mercy on me. I want to ask you why that is? Anybody here knows that.

A family rearing a young fellow, they let him go out and play pool and never put a block in his way. They let him go out and bowl and run around nights and come in three in the morning and never say no. And they let him go down and stand on the corner and smoke and run with a gang he shouldn’t run with and never say no.

But if it gets converted from listening to the Salvation Army and comes home with a New Testament and says I’ve been saved, they look at each other shake their heads and say, what’s happened to our boy? I know because that happened in my house. My dear old Presbyterian Mother, God bless her memory. She’s in heaven now. She got converted later. But she was horrified beyond all measure when I started seek God and testify on the street and preach the gospel.

And here we have it. He was lying there. He’s lying there blind. They never looked in his direction, never once looked in his direction. There he was blind, and nobody said, poor, blind fellow. Peter didn’t say to John, isn’t that too bad, that fine looking boy there blind. Not a one of them, not one of them. And nobody cared that he was blind. Nobody cared that he was blind. They only cared when he started to ask God to deliver him from his blindness. Nobody cares that a man sins provided he doesn’t sin by taking something away from them, or endangering them. But as soon as he starts to talk about mercy and grace in the blood of the Lamb, everybody raises his eyebrows and says, something wrong there. What’s the matter? Let him alone. Let Jesus alone.

Jesus didn’t come into the world to be let alone. He came into the world to be surrounded by blind men, and touched by blind men. And touched by women with issues of blood. He came into the world to touch the dead and make them live and touch the deaf and make them hear. That’s what He came into the world for. He’s not as touchy as church deacons, Brother, and he’s not as hard to get to as pastors are. He came in to the world; He was here. The Son of man, He didn’t come to be ministered unto. He came to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.

Well, there we have the picture. Many charging that he should hold his peace. And you know, that’s the end of it for some people. They hear a gospel sermon. They hear something on the radio. They read a tract, or they hear the testimony of a friend and they get concerned. They go home and mention it to their parents, or a man hears it mentioned to to his wife, or a wife hears it mentioned that to her husband, or a brother mentions it to his sister, a sister to her brother and a frozen countenance results. And immediately they draw in and say, well, I’m not going to cause trouble in my home. That’s the end. That’s the last you hear of him, but little old Junior, thank God, you couldn’t stop him. Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, named after his dad. You couldn’t stop him. So, it says here and I’m glad this is here.

I think God had a smile on his face when he told Mark to write this. But Bartimaeus cried the more, a great deal. All you had to do to get him to yell louder than ever was try to silence him. All he knew was nobody had been interested in him before. But now that he was asking for help from God, everybody suddenly got interested.

They say if you give the devil enough rope, he’ll hang himself and he sure hung and swung high and dry with Bartimaeus because it was the devil that inspired these poor, misguided people to try to silence this man, and he cried out the great deal the more, Son of David have mercy on me. And works like that with some people, oppose him and you’ve helped them very greatly. They thrive on opposition, Bartimaeus did. So, when they said, shush, be quiet Bartimaeus, don’t bother this great man. He said, if he’s a great man that’s just why I ought to bother him, and he shouted the louder.

What about you, Sir? Ah, you will live in a home where there’s not much religion and what it is, it’s very formal and seasonal and very proper. But you know, you’re blind and you need the mercy of God. You know there are vistas of truth you have not seen. You know your sins are still on you as a great burden. You know you’re still carrying the weight of woe of a ancestral grief upon your heart down the centuries that has come rolling like a great juggernaut, rolling down the years, crushing generation after generation. And you felt the squeeze and pressure of it, enough to kill you.

And you would like to know for yourself that God saved you; you’d like to have help from the Lord yourself. And you start to cry out, O God, please. Is there a God somewhere? If there is, maybe is that what I heard on the air there from Moodys, WMBI, about the Lord coming to save people; that book I read, that tract I picked up, that testimony from that fellow where I work. Lord, is this true? Then immediately your friends, so called, are on your neck.

Let me tell you something, Junior, young fellow, let me tell you something. Anybody that gets in your way and stands between you and Jesus Christ, isn’t your friend. Do you hear me? She, He isn’t your friend. You say, but she’s pretty. So was Eve. Did you ever think what a beautiful woman Eve was? Fresh from the hand of God and God never made an ugly thing. She must have been a wonderful looking lady. Grandma Eve, must have been beautiful when she stood up and shook her long hair, looked up at the sun in the first brightness of her lovely, female beauty. She was pretty too, but she wrecked Adam, and the big stoop was weak enough to let her do it. Weak enough to let a pretty wife ruin him. All he had to say was, woman, get away with that.

Job later had more sense that Adam had. When Job’s wife tried to get him to curse God and die, he said, you speak like a fool woman. Why should I curse God? God’s been good to me and all I have or got from God, I came into the world naked, and I will go out naked and blessed be the name of the Lord. And she walked off and left him and that’s the last she appears in the picture. All Adam would have had to do would be to assert his manhood and the Fall wouldn’t have taken place. But she was pretty and that pretty thing stands between you and Jesus Christ is one of your worst enemies.

You say, I’m a woman. I’m a girl. Oh, how I thrill and get duck bumps on my forearms when I look at him, handsome, tall, wonderful, deep bass voice, wonderful. But if he’s standing between you and Jesus Christ. Woman, he’s not your friend. He’s your enemy. Don’t call him boyfriend anymore. Call him by his right name. He’s your enemy. And everybody that gets in the way of a blind man and a Savior, is an enemy of the blind man. But Jesus stood still, and he commanded him and called, they call the blind man, commanded him to be called, and they called the blind man and then everybody got over on the other side.

Peter ran and said, all right, come on, come on. He wanted to be in it, you know, and said get up. He comes. Come on. Be of good comfort. He’s calling thee, and he jumped up, cast away His garments, symbolic, maybe of the robe of filthy rags that all sinners wear by nature, and he came to Jesus. You notice he didn’t enter Bible school. You notice that he didn’t join the church. You notice that he didn’t study theology. I think it only took three words to say it, and yet it was all he needed at the moment. He came to Jesus.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, what did Jesus answer there? He answered that prayer. He answered that cry. Well, He said, Bartimaeus, what do you want? He didn’t just want a vague prayer. Bless the missionary’s father and remember all the interest in our prayers, none of that vague woozy praying. He said, what do you want Bartimaeus? And Bartimaeus prayed about the only thing he knew about. He said, Lord, I’ve been blind and I’m sick of not seeing, that I might receive my sight.

Now, there might have been things Bartimaeus wanted or needed worse, but he didn’t know it. And the Lord took him where He found him. So, he said, I want to receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way, thy faith has made thee whole.

Now, here was a transaction; it would have taken three tons of printed matter and three or four advance man and newspaper advertisements and radio announcements and four or five typewriters and three or four mimeograph machines and three or four sounds scribers to get that fellow converted. But Jesus just did with the simplest, most effortless way in the wide world. Here was the perfect setup. God couldn’t have done any better. Here was a sinner and the Savior. One came to the other and that was that. It didn’t cost anybody. He had died. No offering had to be taken. Nobody had to get up and say, dear friends, it’s very expensive. This is very expensive,

There used to be a preacher where I was preaching. He’d get up every night and told the audience, he said, advertising, et cetera, and I always felt, I was young, and he was old, so I didn’t, but I always felt like saying, Brother Patterson, why do you use so much et cetera around here if it’s such expensive stuff? But he was always taking an offering to make up for the et cetera. Well, pay for the stuff. Jesus didn’t have any, you notice. He didn’t have any et cetera here at all. Just a blind man and a Savior, a sinner and the Man who’d come to save him; a dying man and the Man who’d come to die, to give him life, that’s all there was to it, and you know, that’s all there is to it here tonight. That’s how simple it is. No handsome fellow to beg like a salesman. We don’t need that. We don’t need it, the Holy Ghost is here. Jesus came, this Jesus of Nazareth is passing by and here He is. And He’s listening in. His ear is all cocked ready to hear that voice, have mercy on me.

He won’t ask your theology. He won’t say, are you an Arminian, or do you favor the Calvinistic way. He won’t ask that. I don’t think God ever took those two words into his mouth. I think He would scorn to take them in his mouth. He just wants to know, are you blind and is there something in your heart that wants to see so that you can taste it? Well, that’s all you need, Sir. That’s all you need. You’re a sinner. You’re bound by habit. You’re beaten and cuffed and kicked around by iniquity. And Somebody’s here Who came for that very, very thing to help you. And all He has to know is what you want. A lot of vague praying won’t help you a bit. Get down on your knees and go launch into long prayer you heard a Baptist Deacon years ago deliver. That won’t help be a bit.

What do you want? Well, Lord God, I want to be delivered from drink. Lord God, I want to be delivered from habits. Lord, I want to be delivered from sin. Lord, I want to be saved. That’s all you have to say. Just say. Jesus said unto him, go thy way. Thy faith has made them whole. And immediately, immediately one of Mark’s favorite words, immediately he received his sight.

And then, do you know what followed? Do you know what happened? He followed Jesus in the way. He did it. It was a perfectly natural thing to do, that if you were blind a lifetime and somebody came along and met all your hopes and gave you eyesight and you had known after a life of blindness and nobody caring and you begging on, sitting on a mat begging and you know you had no friends, where would you go? Who would you go to? Wouldn’t it be perfectly natural to identify yourself with the one that had set you free and given you sight? Sure, it would.

There’s the psychology of Christian discipleship. We find we got no friends. I know better than that kind of English, but it just came out. We have no friends. There just aren’t any. Brother, there’s One. And when He sets you free, it’s perfectly natural to identify yourself with Him. Well, there’s one Friend. So, the Scripture says, he followed Jesus in the way.

So, I’m going to close my Bible and ask you to look at that pretty picture. Jesus walking down the street, and his puzzled disciples, off a bit from Him. And right behind Him as close as he could get, a blind man. The handsomest, most attractive and most beautiful thing he ever saw was Jesus’ back. He didn’t look up and see the blue sky and write a sonnet. He didn’t gaze at the mountains there in the distance. He looked at the back of the One he loved. Just the profile of Jesus, as he walked away was more wonderful to him than all the cedars of Lebanon, or the flowing waters of the Jordan. Nothing, nothing was as dear as Jesus. Why? Because he had been blind, and Jesus had made him see. That’s the simplicity of it.

Isn’t it a shame we get so involved and complicated and all complex and mixed up? When the simplest thing in the wide world is, I am a blind sinner in need of mercy, and Jesus Christ is a Savior come to give me that mercy, and we meet. And I follow Him because He’s delivered me. The old bishop said, as I get older, my theology gets simpler. It’s this. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. That’s all. Will you bow your heads with me.

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“The Saints Must Walk Alone“

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The Saints Must Walk Alone

Pastor and author

April 29, 1956

Summary

A.W.Tozer explores the idea that many great souls have been lonely, citing examples from the Old Testament. He argues that this loneliness may be necessary for saintliness, as God speaks more deeply and intimately to those who are alone with Him. Tozer emphasizes the significance of solitude for spiritual growth, highlighting biblical examples of figures like Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus Christ who experienced aloneness in their ministries. He notes that solitude can bring healing and restoration, but also lead to loneliness and isolation.

Message

Now, I want to talk today on this topic: The Saint Must Walk Alone. And in this verse of Scripture, you will find two things mentioned that are, both of which were characteristic of Jesus. The phrase, the multitudes went right along with our Lord Jesus, because He ministered to the multitudes, because He did miracles and cast out their devils and gave sight to their blind and because He spoke simply to the plain people. He had around Him many who wanted to listen to Him, which the Bible calls the multitudes, we call today, crowds.

Now, that was characteristic of our Lord Jesus Christ. But strangely enough, and contradictory as it may seem–there alone–is also characteristic of Jesus, from the time that His parents thought He was with them and found He was not and went back to look for Him and found Him away from them talking to the doctors. On down through His ministry, He was there alone, describes Jesus, about as well as, He was surrounded by the multitudes. I suppose that He was the world’s loneliest man though He was surrounded by these very crowds.

Now, what I want to develop today is that most of the world’s great souls, if not all of them, have been lonely. Loneliness would seem to be the price that the saint must pay for His saintliness. And in order to back up that statement, I want to take you on a little trip through the Old Testament, starting back there with Enoch.

That pious soul, Enoch, who in the morning of the world, walked with God, or perhaps I should say, not in the morning of the world, but in the time of the strange darkness that settled upon the world shortly after the dawn of man’s creation. Enoch walked with God. And while it does not say so in so many words, the inference is very plain, that he walked apart from his contemporaries. That the path he took was a path quite alone and separated from those who lived at the time he lived. He walked to his God. If everybody had been walking with God, then why should the Bible have mentioned that he walked with God? The fact that it was mentioned at all would seem to indicate, and I think we can safely infer that it is implied there, that Enoch walked a path apart from his contemporaries.

And then there was Noah. And all the evidence shows that Noah was a lonely man, that while he had his family, and while he was surrounded, we would suppose by workmen. Well, the ark was a building, yet Noah stood so apart from the multitudes that God picked him out and he found grace in God’s sight. And Noah must have been a man apart, a lonely man. Then come on down the years to the man, Abraham. Abraham had Sarah. He had Lot. He had his herdsman, and he had his servants. All that is very true. But I think it is very plain that his soul was like a star and dwelt apart, as words were said of Milton.

Apparently, God never spoke to the man Abraham in company. Now that’s quite a significant thought that God never spoke to him in company. Apparently, there were those things which God wanted to say to the man Abraham which He could not say with anybody listening. And Abraham evidently had a habit of praying face down, lying in delighted ecstasy in the presence of the great God of his fathers and of the world. And there Abraham prayed and called on God, and he was calling on God face down. Now the innate dignity of the man Abraham, for had that he should have assumed that posture in the presence of others. He would certainly not have lain on his stomach in prayer if there were people around him. So, we suppose that Abraham must have been, very often at least, a lonely man.

I believe that there are things that God wants to say to us which He cannot say in the presence of other people, just as there are things you say to your family or to your wife which you cannot say with others around. I believe that God wants to speak to us, and that He speaks more deeply and intimately and wonderfully when he can get our ear all by ourselves.

Now there is a community of Christian worship, and it is taught throughout the Bible. The very word church means an assembly of persons call out. But notice that it has two meanings, called out and assemble. And the fact that the people that make up the church are called out, speaks of loneliness. But the fact that they are called together, speaks also that there is in some measure an anodyne of medicine for that loneliness found in the fellowship of other Christians. But they are called out. And the man who is called out from his family as I was as a young fellow, called out when I was 17 years of age, to leave my family. And the worst part about it was, not called to leave them in body, but called to leave them in heart and live with Him and walk among them, and still be an alien to them.

And I know the language of the old man of God who said, I am become a stranger to my brethren and an alien to my mother’s children. That while you’re with them in presence, you are not with them in a heart, because your heart has been given to another, even the great God, and they don’t understand it, and so you’re called out. And there is the loneliness.

And then the other side of the picture is when you’re called together with persons of like mind, and for the time you’re with them. There is some healing medicine for your sorrow, but you’re lonely nevertheless. Abraham was and God gave Abraham the knowledge again that he was a man marked out, a man to receive divine grace, when Abraham was alone with his God.

Then there was Moses/ Something in the heart of the man Moses couldn’t stand the court of Pharaoh. It was the Vanity Fair. It was the Mome Cove. It was the Chez Paree, the Broadway, the Hollywood of the time. And the man Moses was there, and there by the providence of God for the time. He saved his life and took him there. And he was brought up and educated for a great job.

And God used Egypt, but Egypt had no affinity for the man Moses and nor he for it. For Moses was a Jew and his people were Jews, and the covenant belonged to him. And Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were his ancestors, not the Egyptians. And the temple of God was to be, and the tabernacle was to be the center of his thought and life that was to come, not the pyramids and not the Sphinx and not the great buildings of Egypt.

There was a loneliness in the heart of the man Moses, even as a young man. There must have been, because he took long walks, and on one of those long walks, far out from any town, he saw an Egyptian and a Hebrew fighting together and came to the rescue of the Hebrew. And then of course, he had to leave Egypt and flee, and he did.

And for long years, he was alone in the desert. And it was in the loneliness of the nighttime when the birds were out. The day birds were going to rest, and the night birds were beginning to croak, that he saw all by himself that burning bush. If Moses had been at a party, if he’d had friends, if there had been people gathered around him or if he’d been running with a multitude, God never could have showed him the wonder of the burning bush. One of the most solemn and awful and glorious things that ever took place in Old Testament times was that burning bush experience. And Moses never would have seen it if it had not been that he was alone.

And then that scene on Sinai. He left the multitudes far below and took with him only one man, Joshua. And then left him a little behind as Jesus later did, leave his three close friends to pray. And Moses went on into the fire. And there he watched in fascinated awe, that Presence, partly revealed and partly concealed in the fire and in the cloud and came down with his face shining. But he came down because he had been alone. And he went to the multitude and could talk to them with authority, because he had been to the Source of Authority. He did not poll them to find out what he should say. He went to the mountain to learn what he should say, and then told them what they should hear. And that is always the spirit of the true man of God, the prophet of God. He does not send out questionnaires to poll the multitude to find out what they want. He goes to God to find out what they need, and then gives it to them whether he talks to 10 or 5000.

Now, there was Elijah in later years, and all the prophets, these men were alone. Elijah was alone, as much alone on that mountain, more alone on that mountain, as if everybody else in the world had died. For there he was, surrounded by his enemies and with the prophets of Baal ready to slay him. And yet, there he stood a lonely man, absolutely alone in the midst of a crowd of hate-filled opposers. And God spoke to him there and later in the cave and later as he stood outside the cave and watched the mountains rock and saw the trees shake and go down under the roar of the whirlwind. God spoke in a still small voice to his heart and told him in the aloneness of his inner life that which he never could have said or told him if he had not been alone.

Well, carry on over to the New Testament, and there we find Jesus Christ our Lord, I repeat, probably the world’s loneliest man. A little hymn says about him, ’Tis midnight, and on Olive’s brow the star is dimmed that lately shone; ’tis midnight; in the garden now the suff’ring Savior prays alone.  ’Tis midnight, and, from all removed, the Savior wrestles lone with fears: e’en the disciple that He loved heeds not his Master’s grief and tears.

Now that was Jesus, not only in the garden, but very many other places. Forty days alone in the desert and on the mountain alone many times and on the shore alone after His resurrection, Jesus Christ died alone and rose alone. I repeat, there are some things too sacred for the eye of any but God to see. And when our Lord died, God pulled the curtain of the night down around the cross in order that He might die alone.

And when He rose again, He rose unseen by the eye of mortal man. I don’t know whether angels saw Him rise, but I know men did not, as though God were saying, His birth and His death and His rising again are secret, and only My eye can look upon these awesome and awful and glorious scenes. So, God brought Him from the dead unseen by the eye of mortal man, though afterward, He was seen of James and Cephus and Paul and 500 brethren at once, and they told abroad what they had seen. But at the moment of His rising, only the eye of God saw. My dear people, there are experiences with God that you can only have by yourself.

You say you have family prayer with your wife. All right, very good. But there are things God can’t say to you in the presence of your wife. And there are things God can’t say to you in the presence of the dearest and sweetest Christian brother or sister that you know. There are secret communications which God can only tell us when we’re alone. It was the old Meister Eckhart who said that when God gets the temple all to Himself, He whispers what He is to the human heart. Brother McAfee sings a song about in thy secret inner chamber, thou wilt whisper what thou art. God can tell me some things in the crowds, but He can only tell me what He is when my heart is alone.

Now, that’s the price most people will not pay. And I suppose I might as well make the sermon short, but there’s a long line of noble pilgrims. They didn’t march abreast and certainly they didn’t march as armies do, four to eight abreast. They marched alone, and the march was alone, and the gaps were wide between them. But you will find if you know church history and the biographies of the saints, you will know that there is a long parade of holy men and women who lived and loved and labored and worked and made the world a better place and won many, established hospitals and colleges, and built churches and orphan asylums, and left behind them a trail of goodness and mercy wherever they went. And yet they belong to the lonely parade. Their day didn’t recognize them. Or if they did, they didn’t know them well enough to know who they were.

Well, the conventional reaction to what I’m saying now, I suppose I will have to take note of, though I don’t like ever to introduce such matters in a sermon, but there’s a conventional reaction to this, and I hear it in the little chirpy songs. And I hear it in the little chirpy articles that I get. And in the little chirpy testimonies I hear from time to time. And it will all sound the same. And they’re obviously conventional. They are not the true expression of what somebody feels, but the expression of how some people think they ought to feel. And so, their response to a sermon on the lonely soul, is to say, why I’m never lonely for Jesus is my Savior divine. And He said, I will never leave you, and how can I be lonely? How can I be lonely when I have Jesus only to be my companion and my constant friend. So, I’m never lonely.

Now, brother, I don’t want to reflect on the sincerity of any man, but I’d just like to tentatively state here, that it’s my conviction, that that’s too neat to be sincere. That we’re saying what we think ought to be said, rather than what we ever feel in our hearts. Because the people who are always chirping about the fact they’re never lonely, mean that they have never let themselves get to a place where God could separate them from the crowd and talk to them alone. They have had to have companionship and the psychological lift of other people around them in order to keep out of the doldrums.

So, they deliberately forsook the cave and the mountain peak and the sands of the seashore and the holy places and have gone with the multitudes in order to be able to live with themselves. Then because they think it’s proper, why they testify cheerfully, I’m not lonely, Jesus is with me, but what they feel is not the awful, awe-inspiring presence of God in the burning bush. It’s the psychological, social help that they get from the people.

Well, the pain of loneliness results from the constitution of our nature, because God made us for each other whether we know it or like it or not. God made us for each other. And He meant that we should have fellowship with each other, that He meant that we should complement each other, that each could complete the other and that He meant us to be a people together. But sin came in and made God’s children, people apart.

The world isn’t lonely, because the world runs together. They have invented all sorts of inventions in order to keep themselves from being lonely. If the public was not lonely and didn’t have to run together to cure its loneliness, Bob Hope would be probably collecting garbage out here and driving one of the big yellow trucks. And these other entertainers who make more than the President of the United States, would be doing some honest job somewhere.

But because people must have each other in their sinful Vanity Fair, we give to our entertainers pay that we don’t give to our educators nor to our leaders and politicians and statesmen who carry on their shoulders the weight of government. So, people are lonely, but they cure it by running together. But when a man gets converted, where can he run? He sees through all of that, and he knows why they’re like that. And he therefore must be to some degree at least a lonely man. And his desire for human fellowship which God put in him and which is good and holy and right, that companionship, that desire for companionship, creates a pain within his own heart. Though he’s got to walk alone, because there are so few in any given area that walk with God.

You people who work in offices, now, if you work in Deerfield or Moody, or Scripture Press or somewhere where they’re Christians, that’s another matter. But you people who work in offices or factories or shops or go to schools where there’s nobody that knows your language, aren’t you forced to be somewhat lonely? I think so. You try to get along with people the best you can, but always you speak a language they don’t understand.

And always they’re thrilled about something that leaves you bored. And always you’re concerned with something that they don’t even understand. And there must be that loneliness and there is, the saint must walk alone. For loneliness is the price the saint must pay for his saintliness. But the man that knows God and knows himself, certainly is not going to find very many people that understand him.

Now, you’ll find a lot of companionship in religious circles without a doubt. There isn’t a place anywhere, I suppose, between here and the the Bahamas, where there hasn’t been least 1512 get togethers and rib roasts and ham consumptions over the last week, and all done in the name of the Lord. I was to one last night.

So, we do that and it’s all right, and I have no objection. But I am saying, my brethren, that there is beyond that thing, further in than that will take you, further on in behind the scenes than your kind fellowship that we have together, and I love it and don’t think I don’t, and I do. But I’m talking about the beyond, the going on in. I’m talking about going on in past where the commonalities, the simple expressions and the chit chat and the shop talk and the friendly banter is all left behind you and there you are.

The old world looks like an ash pile to you and heaven shines there and you look up and talk about it, and they claim you’re absent minded. Or they claim you’re anti-social or unsocial, or that you’re arrogant, that you are holier than thou. But my brethren, the man who knows himself can have the fellowship that comes, I suppose to a certain degree with religious activities. But as a man goes on with God, the hopes and the longings and the disappointments and the aspirations and the radiance that comes from the heart of Christ, all these things will not be understood. And a man will have to walk by himself. But I’m not complaining about it.

And I don’t want you to. For I know that this very loneliness throws us back upon God. God has to do this to bring us back on Himself. We would never, never seek Him if it were not that we see through the emptiness of man’s social fellowships. And to a large degree we see through the emptiness of man’s religious fellowships, and we don’t want to die like that. I don’t want to have to die in a crowd. Or if I do die in a crowd, I don’t want to have to have the crowd in order to die in comfort.

I don’t want to have to have anybody in order to die in comfort. I know how they do when you die, they surround your bed if you’re lucky enough to last long enough for them to get there, and some weep and some hope and some stand around. And we die in a crowd usually, at least a few people around. But God help the man that has to have help when he is dying. God help the man that has to be surrounded and cheered up and his hand held, and his brow patted in order to keep him from terror in the hour of his demise. God pity that man.

For just as you were born alone, you will die alone. And though you were surrounded by friends and helpers and doctors and nurses, and your mother was there and all the rest, you were born alone. And when you die, you will die alone. So, we’d better get used to a loneliness that isn’t a loneliness. Saint Paul said it back here in this last great book that he wrote. He’s said at my first answer, that is before Nero, his first trial, not his second, the second condemned Him. But the first trial, at my first answer, no man stood with me. But all men forsook me and I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Now here he was, he had just testified a few chapters on before that he had finished his course. He had kept the faith. He fought a good fight. He had won a crown. And now henceforth it was laid up for him the treasures of righteousness in the world to come.

That was the happy spiritual Paul, but the hungry-hearted human Paul, couldn’t even in his old age, and when he knew it was his last thing he would ever write, he couldn’t help but say, I can’t get over thinking about it, in that my first answer, no man stood with me. I had taught them to believe in Jesus. I had brought them out of darkness and showed them the Light. I had preached the gospel to them. I had hazarded my life for them. I’d gone hungry for them. I’d been poor and ragged for them. And I stitched tents way into the night that I might be free to preach to them.

But when I was before Nero, no man stood with me, but all men forsook me. I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. But he said cheerfully enough, notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me. He was lonely, but he wasn’t alone. He was lonely because he wanted his friends around him there. But he was not alone, because the Lord stood with him and strengthened. So the lonely man is not alone. He’s just lonely. The lonely Christian is not one who is alone. A hermit could be alone and not feel lonely. But the Christian’s loneliness springs from his inability to find very many people who speak his spiritual language or have ever been where he’s been.

And then, his loneliness throws him back upon God. David said, when my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up. Now, being forsaken by your father and mother is about as neat and as vivid a way of saying that you’re by yourself as it’s possible; when they lead you to the door and turn you out, why, you’re alone. But David said, when they do for Christ’s sake, then the Lord takes me up.

Now, the lonely soul ought not to be surprised, because he is a rather odd individual. He lives a strange life, this lonely Christian, man or woman, lives strange life. The things that make some people laugh; he doesn’t think are funny. And the things that some people will give their soul for he considers absolute refuse. And the desire for gain that some people have, he’s strangely unmoved by it.

My old dad, he said about two of his sons. He said, I have two sons. He had three. I don’t know why he didn’t count the younger one. He was still at home a boy. But he said, I have two sons, one of them makes all he can and keeps all he gets. The other won’t take anything and what you give him he gives away. And I’ve always rather cherished that as a rather disgusted but remarkable testimony to my brother and me. That my brother made all he could get and kept all he made. And I wouldn’t take anything and when I got it I gave it away. I hope that’s true in some measure yet, but it was when he uttered that testimony surely.

You’re an odd person when you’re like that, brother. There’s no question about it. The Christian is an oddity because he talks to somebody he can’t see and professors a loyalty to a kingdom that his eyes have never looked upon and seeks the praise and exultation of another and doesn’t seek anything for himself. That makes the Christian an odd being. And of course, being odd, he’s a speckled bird and being a speckled bird, he has shied away from by the rest.

But I’d like to add this before I close that the soul apart is not a holier than thou individual, satirized so bitterly by popular literature, because the soul apart, his very loneliness stirs him to pity for others. And do you know who it has been that has built all the hospitals or the Christian hospitals? Do you know who it’s been that’s founded the missionary societies? Do you know who they have been that have gone to heathen lands and like our good Dr. Crowell and built a little tiny hospital there. Do you know who they’ve been? They’ve always been the souls that have been rejected, and their father and their mother forsook them, so to speak.

And the Lord found them and their very yearning after humankind. And the fellowship with a world that rejected them and that they couldn’t fellowship because it was sinful; that very pain has very often driven them to poured out devotion and sacrifice. What was it that drove Livingstone way up into the heart of Africa? What was it that drove a sick and delicate Dr. Jaffrey all over the Far East? What was it that drove Simpson to walk up and down on the shores of the ocean out in New England and saying every pebble on the shore was a lost man to my praying heart?

What was it? What was it that caused men and women every place down the centuries to found the hospitals and to look after the old folks and take care of the children and have places for the insane to go where they could be cared for? Ah, it was always the separated man, the lonely soul, the soul that just couldn’t find what he wanted in the world. It just didn’t offer it. It wasn’t there. This odd number, this strange fellow, because he couldn’t laugh at their jokes. Why, they say he’s a sourpuss. And because he wasn’t interested in all of their silly chatter, they said that he was party killer and that he was dull and not interesting. But he walked with his God, and he left betrayal of luminous blessing behind him. And they’re all over the world. No, no, not holier than thou, not the arrogant, proud souls that walked with his chin up and tramps the people he considers to be beneath him.

Jesus Christ, the loneliest man in all the world, put His hands on the head of babies and smiled and blessed them and talked to their mothers and cast out devils and healed the sick and chattered with the poor and went away, leaving the eyes of the poor shining.

The priests and the rabbi walked in their robes with their phylacteries dangling, and in their pride called the multitude, these, this multitude that’s cursed, knowing not the law. But the lonely Jesus walked among them and was lonely while he healed them and blessed them and forgave them and turned their eyes upward and talked to them about the mansions above in the Father’s house. So don’t let anybody tell you that I’m preaching a withdrawn, monkish type of Christianity. I am not. I am saying that the very longing after human fellowship and the inability to find it much in the Earth makes men and women good workers and hard workers.

Well, because the lonely man is detached from the world, he’s able to help it. And because others are attached to the world, they’re unable to help it. The weakness of so many modern Christians is that they feel too much at home in the world. The simple little song people sing, that I don’t feel at home in the world anymore, the modern can’t sing except to smile and think it’s cute, because they do feel at home in the world. They avoid loneliness by adjusting and integrating and becoming a part of the very system they’re sent to protest against. And the world recognizes them for what they are and accepts them. And that’s the saddest thing that can be said about them. No, they’re not lonely, but neither are they saints. And they profess a name that they don’t know. They claim to follow a Savior that’s so far out ahead of them, they cannot even see the shadow of His holy back as he walks away.

My brethren, seek God in the loneliness of your own soul and see what happens to you. See, if all the truth you know won’t begin to glow. And the doctrines that have lain in your heart bedridden in the dormitory of your soul, Skullridge said, won’t take fire and begin to burn with a strange, luminous fire. And heaven will open, and you’ll see visions of God. Then like Moses and Ezra and the rest, you can come back to be a blessing to the very world you had to desert. But if you don’t desert it, you can’t help it. For the saint must walk alone.

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“The Word of God is Quick, Powerful and Sharp“

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The Word of God is Quick, Powerful and Sharp

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 26, 1959

Summary

In this message, Pastor A.W. Tozer emphasizes the transformative power of God’s Word in exposing and convicting individuals of their sinful nature, and the omniscience and omnipotence of God. Mr. Tozer shares personal experiences and biblical references to illustrate how God has protected and cared for him and his family, encouraging us to trust in God’s sovereignty and believe that He is always working for their good. Throughout the sermon, Mr. Tozer emphasizes the significance of God’s care and protection in our lives.

Message

Now, in the fourth chapter of Hebrews, verses twelve and thirteen: For the word of God is quick, that is, living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. It takes the Holy Ghost to pack powerful words into short sentences. Notice, quick, that is, living, powerful, sharp, piercing, dividing asunder discerner, naked and open unto God’s eyes. These are the words of the text, and I want to talk a little bit about the Word.

Now one of the great realities, there aren’t very many, but one of the great realities with Whom and with which we have to do is God’s Word. I have been a great advocate of realities. I suppose I have kept myself back a little, in some ways before the eyes of men, by my stubborn refusal to fool with things that are not real, or to spend any time with them before a congregation. I have asked my congregations to confront reality. And I asked you this morning to confront one of the great realities, the living Word of God.

Now, the word of God is real. It doesn’t seem to be. There are lots of things that seem real, but actually they are not real at all. And there are things that are relatively important. They are important all right, but they’re not so important that if you lose them, the world will cave in on you. They’re relatively important. But the Word of God is a thing that is, and when I say the word of God, of course I mean the Scriptures, but I mean that which is a little more than the Scriptures. I mean the breath of God in the Scriptures. And when we read of the Word, we’re reading not only a written text, we’re reading of written texts, pulsating and vibrating with the life of God in them.

And here is a reality that we can’t escape. Men run away from things that they should take care of; and they run away for a lifetime, but there’s no escaping here, there’s no evading here. There is no possibility of compromise and there’s no bargaining, but God will reckon with this. The Word of God is. And we’ve got to reckon with this either now or later or at last.

Always, there are those three tenses for anyone who faces up to and confronts reality, or who is confronted by reality. They’ve got to reckon with it either now, not yesterday, that’s impossible, you can’t go back. They’ve got to reckon with it now or a little later, or at last. God in His patience allows us to insult Him and reckon later instead of now. But there will be a time when later will be last. And then we’ll find that it’s too late.

Now, the reality of which I speak, I repeat, is the Word of God plus the Living Word of God, the One who is called the Word in capital letters and that which is called the word in lowercase letters. Not a black book or a red book, not letters, not texts, not ink and paper, but the expression of the mind of God in revelation, the breath of God, the mighty breath of God, filling the world and taking shape in the sacred Scriptures, written by men who were moved by the Holy Ghost. Now, that’s the sacred Scriptures, and it’s God’s living thoughts.

Jesus Christ is God’s Living Word, but the Scriptures are God’s living voice. John 6:63, Jesus said, the words I speak unto you they are Spirit, and they are life. And they are addressed to fallen man for a judgment or salvation, or judgment and salvation, I’d better say, because there can be no salvation until there has been judgment. We stand before the bar of God.

I tremble when I read books written by men who have brought the Word of God before them for judgment. They bring what they call historical, critical techniques to the Word of God. And thus, they sit on the Word of God as though the sacred scriptures were judged by them. No, they are judged by the sacred Scriptures. And God brings every man, all men, fallen men, before the Word for judgment and or for salvation.

There is in the old apocryphal books that some people never read but that I get a lot of blessing out of, it’s called, the Wisdom of Solomon. When Solomon was there, or whoever wrote that book, I presume Solomon, was describing the children of Israel in Egypt and God Almighty leading them through, you come to these two verses. And I think they’re so beautiful and so wonderful, that I want to read them to you, though I do not claim them to be inspired in the sense that the Scriptures are inspired. Here’s what the old man said in telling another generation the story of Israel in Egypt. He said, while things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her swift course, thine almighty Word leaped down from heaven out of the royal throne as a fierce man of war into the midst of the land of destruction. Thine almighty Word leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne as a fierce man of war.

This is the power of the Word of God. The most powerful force in nature, without any doubt, is the Word of God. If you will look back through the Scriptures, the Old and the New Testament, you will see how God had but to speak and things came to pass. He spoke to nothing and there came something. For it’s written in Hebrews 11 that the things that we are made, were brought out by the Word of God and were not made by the things which do appear. The things didn’t come from themselves, but they came from a living Voice.

And in Genesis one and two, God spoke to this order, and order came into darkness and the light came. He said, let there be light and there was light. He said, let the waters be gathered into one place, and it was so, and the dry land appeared. He spoke to the barren earth and fields became fruitful. In Exodus 14, He spoke to the sea, and it opened. And He spoke in Joshua to the river, and it opened, and to dry bones in Ezekiel and they lived, and then to death and Lazarus came forth bound hand and foot.

God has but to speak the living Word. I wish that you might see that you never ought to pick the Bible up without realizing, that while it’s only paper and ink, that God Almighty has breathed into the words there His own living breath. And those words can become like the release of atomic particles, tremendous either for destruction or for construction, either for judgment or salvation. And God has spoken and is speaking.

I could not, I couldn’t bring myself mentally to think of the Bible as God’s last letter to mankind; to think that God wrote the book and then died, or at least went away beyond into some far imperium, and now we have God’s letter. God did write the Book. He did breathe into man, and they did write the book. And He did end the Canon. And He did say that nobody add anything to this Book. But what I mean is that God did not only speak in the Bible, He is speaking in the Bible. It is a now voice. It is a present voice. It is as real as the voice that you might hear over the radio that you are tuned in now.

God spoke and is speaking and He’s speaking to human life. And when He speaks to human life, we know our mortality. We know that we’ve got to die. The living man knows he’s got to die. The voice of God there speaks to him and speaks to human conscience, and the conscience starts awaking. And the blind, insensible death conscience that lay for half a lifetime, full of self-pride and confidence and assurance, now suddenly sees and hears and feels and knows, because the living voice of God has waked that conscience up. And the voice of God is speaking to human sin, and it knows itself and it is naked.

You only have to listen to people praying at an altar and you will know that they have not been reasoned into their sin, you know that. You know that a Word has been spoken, that they’ve been confronted by the mighty Word of God, and that the Living Word has stripped their conscience bare, and they know that they are sinners, and they know that they are personally, individually guilty before God.

Now, I want you to notice that God’s Word in judgment brings not a charge; it brings a demonstration. The man is charged with a crime and taken up before a court that charge, that indictment they call it, is not synonymous with a guilty verdict. It’s only a charge. You are charged with .  .  . How do you plead? So, a man stands charged, but the Word of God is not a charge; Paul said, we have before proved both Jew and Gentile to be under condemnation. The Word of the living God is not a charge, it’s a verdict and a demonstration on lust and hate and lies and greed and pride and envy, and all other sins. And it distills like a living mist of vital essence wherever the Word of God is heard, wherever the human conscience confronts the Living Word. And the Living Word brings the human conscience before it as though suddenly there had come upon the man a living mist, a vital essence had descended, and the heart knows its own guilt.

Now, men may deny, because we’re very smooth reasoners, and they may cover, and they may resist. They may resent that the Word of God has given the mortal wound. And until the end, there will never be any deliverance, completely. There might be a temporary healing over and hiding, but there will never be full deliverance until He who is the Living Word pulls out the sword. Because the Word of God is quick and powerful, piercing even to the dividing asunder. And when the heart has been pierced by the Word of God, not the cold steel mind you, but the Living Blade alive and terrible.

And I, for my part, don’t want it any other way. I want the living Word of God to be just what it is. I want it to confront me, and I want to face up to it and I want it to do to me what has to be done. And I want to do what It has ordered me to do and believe what It charges me to believe in order that there may be no resistance and no struggle there but complete rest in God. The Word of God reveals, I say, it’s a great revealer. It strips the life bare before the eyes of God, this wonderful, this terrible thought. Man always thinks he can hide.

There are those Bible teachers who believe that the words of God to Cain, thy brother’s blood cries from the ground, indicated that Abel had been buried after he was murdered. At least the earth had been thrown over him hoping against hope this mad murderer Cain, this jealous man, that his guilt would not find him out. But God said that the blood of Abel cried out of the ground. And they found him and pinned it on him and marked him with a mark of the murderer.

So, the eyes of God see everything. You and I can hide from each other. We can do a lot of little tricks. Men who have only a little hair can let it grow long on one side and smooth it across. They imagine that that tells people that they are not bald, but it doesn’t. Everybody knows they’re bald, but they’ve got to try to cover it up. And women have a way of covering up. Drugstores prosper on women’s duplicity and man’s pride. We try to cover up. But we’re open before the eyes of God. God sees and there’s no fooling at all. There’s no secrecy. There’s no dissembling and there’s no distance that can make any difference for the man David said, if we should go to the uttermost parts of the sea, wherever that is, God would still see us there. And there isn’t any deed that isn’t known.

And that Word persists, persists. The words of God do not relax at death, but they are persistent out there where the dead live again and where heaven and hell waits. The words that I speak unto you, they shall judge you in the last day. We read in Revelation where the books are opened and the book of words and the book of deeds and the book of life, all these are open. And God’s Living Word is there. But that is only the negative side of it, my friends, only the negative side.

There’s no door that is closed. All doors stand ajar before the Word of God. All hearts are wide open before the Word of God and there isn’t a closed book anywhere. But all books are open, all before the eyes of God. And not a thought, not a thought that wears a garment, but all our thoughts are naked, naked and open before the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do. When men invented clothing he invented secrecy. And it’s right and proper up to a measure that he should, but he’s carried that secrecy to his thoughts, to his heart, to his mind, to his plans, to his intentions, to his guilt. The Scripture says no human thought wears a garment. Nobody can cloth his thoughts so God can’t see them.

There’s another side and I want briefly now to mention that and that is the Saving Word. I say that the sacred Scriptures, God’s living Voice are addressed to fallen men for judgment or for salvation, for judgment and for salvation. They must judge you first before they can save you. God never saved a man nor pronounced him innocent who came with a not guilty plea before the bar of the Scriptures. It’s only when we bring our, guilty, Your Honor, before the great God and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court for Jesus’ sake, that the Advocate above, the Savior by the throne of love rises and speaks for us and says, Jesus paid it all, all the debt I owe. Sin had left a guilty stain, but He washed it white as snow.

Here’s the saving Word, Psalm 71 says, thou has given commandment to save me. I’m glad that I get in trouble. That is, my heart gets in trouble. I am never really very much trouble. God knew that I being a sensitive person, am inclined to be more vulnerable than the average person. But I could get my troubles mainly from the inside. So, he didn’t send me all the miseries that he sent some people on the outside. Some fellows are always in trouble for getting kicked out of one place and into another. But I have never had that experience up to now.

But the Lord knew I didn’t need it from the outside, because I was so sensitive and vulnerable that He could trust me to get in lots of trouble inside my own heart and I have. And some of the times that I’ve been in trouble, God said to me, or I found these words, thou has given commandment to save me. And I like to think that the mighty Living Word of God has gone forth.

And the Christian man, the born man, the man who’s born of the Living Word, for it’s written that the Word of God is the seed out of which men are born. And that Word can never die, that it’s jot or tittle can never pass away, that the living man, the living woman who’s been born out of the life of God and is called a Christian, that person has been marked out by God. Just as God sent His fear into all the land of Canaan, and His fear went ahead and He marked out these strange people of another tongue coming out of Egypt, the Israelites, and the fear fell on them wherever they went. Some allowed the fear to make them arm and fight Israel and some surrendered. And some let them respectfully pass. But God said these are my peculiar, special people. Everybody that’s been born of the Living Word of the Spirit is a special object of God’s care.

And God tells all of His world, I’m saving this man. You keep your hands off of him. Do my prophet no harm. Lay not your hand on my child. Don’t imagine you can harm any child of mine. Old Job back there in the Old Testament, he didn’t know it, but he’d been living behind an iron curtain. God Almighty’s curtain had been all the way around him. A hedge is a better word, for that’s the word the Bible used. He was hedged in, and God Almighty had that hedge electrified and the devil couldn’t pass over until God allowed him, for a little while, to bless and benefit his man, Job. Then he sent him away again. Thou has given commandment to save me.

I haven’t a doubt in all the world but that there isn’t an atom of matter in this world, but what has been charged by great God Almighty to look after me and you and all of his children. We lay them away. We bury them out of our sight with grief and tears. But the Earth can no more hold them than the earth could hold the body of Jesus or of Lazarus. Thou has given commandment to save me. If you knew all that disease germs around you. And if you knew all the demons that were set to destroy you. But they can’t get to you. Because God has given commandment to save me. And He’s charged everything. He has charged the stars in their courses.

That’s why I smile at the Space Age and laugh at their Sputniks and their Explorers. Long before man invented the thrust that would cause a missile to escape the gravitational pull and fall into free space, long centuries before that, God Almighty had spoken to every star that shines and every planet that revolves, every angel before the throne, save these people. These are my people. My people marked by the blood of My Son, saved by my life, redeemed by the death of My Son. Save these people.

Physically I don’t like floating around in space. I flew out to Vancouver and down to Portland and back to Chicago, and you can have it. You can have it. I don’t like it. I never did like it. I thought maybe if it took that long, roundabout flight, I’d get to liking it. And I liked it less when I landed here in the airport than I did when I started. I don’t like it, but I do know this, that all space and all creation and the stars in their courses and the moon in its phases and the sun in its strength and the lovely earth and all the rivers and seas our mine. Thou has given commandment to save me. God’s Word, like a mighty armed man leaped out from the royal throne and commanded, no man can pluck you out of My hand.

I grieve that men have turned this doctrine into a hard-case, hardened shell of doctrine that divides the church. Do you believe in eternal security? Do you not believe in eternal security? All that believe, get over here and all that don’t believe get over there and glare at each other. I grieve at this because it’s making a doctrine out of what is a wonderful truth and not a doctrine at all. But God has spoken for His children, all of His children, my children, and they are dear to Him. They’re dear to Him because they belong to His Son because His Son gave His life.

In the war, the boys say, at least one of my boys told me, the hardest thing they had to do in the Navy Air Wing where he was for three years, a flyer. He said, the hardest thing we have to do is to come back home after when one of the boys have been killed and gather up his things and send them to his widow or to his mother. He said, they die, they die all around us, but it isn’t so bad until you have to gather up their things, an old wristwatch and a picture and extra clothing and an old watch chain, maybe that belonged to his dad and an old penknife with one blade broken. The few things that he couldn’t take with him out there but headed back and go get that and wrap it all up. Send it and then write a letter. He said, that’s hard. Don’t you think that when that package arrived. Thank God, this church, though we had during the Second World War about 75 of our boys in uniform, not one of them was killed, not one.

We had, my wife and I, five, and not one of them was killed. So, we never had to do, but don’t you think that when that package came back, that that would have been laid aside and cherished as long as memory kept verdant. I sometimes look up on, my wife has pictures everywhere, she doesn’t have flowers. And here, pictures all around there and I sometimes look at the picture of our boy Bud who was a Marine. All but lost his life. He’s still hobbling around, but he is able to make it alright. In the picture, a good-looking young fellow in his early 20s, grinning with that uniform, that marine uniform. And I said, if he died over there instead of coming home, wouldn’t this be a sacred thing? A sacred thing, for the sake of another, for the love of another, some things become infinitely precious.

And God looked down and saw the children that God had given to Jesus, saw that for the Christ’s blood had run, Christ had died. Christ had cried, Father, forgive them. Christ had said, why hast Thou forsaken me? And God said, whatever He sends Me. Whatever He sends Me will be dearer to Me than the apple of mine eye, dearer than the jewels that are on my throne, dearer than the unredeemed seraphim and cherubim, the burners that cry, holy, holy, holy before the Majesty on High. You are a blood-bought treasure, bought by the blood of Jesus Christ, and the Father loved His Son in death and loved Him in life. And for His sake, He loves you beyond all the Scripture.

Nobody knows how intensely, how deeply, how persistently, how perpetually, how everlastingly, God loves you. He loves you with an angry love. A love that’s angry with anything that would hurt you. He loves you with a tender love, if you belong to Him. The Living Word leaps down, leaped out of the throne of God like a man armed for a war, and God says, I will be with you, and I will go before you and I will keep you, and fear thou not, I am with thee. And no man can pluck thee out of my hand, and the foundation of God standeth sure. Ye are My sheep and know my voice. Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The Word of God is quick and powerful, quick for judgment and salvation, judgment first, salvation second. Judgment for all those whose conscience start awaking before the Living Voice and who cry, my God, my God, I have sinned. Have mercy upon me. And for salvation for all such, the Voice goes forth. Save these people. They’re My people, precious to Me more precious than the apple of my eye.

Ah, yes, the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sin. The Son of Man has power on earth to bestow life. The Son of Man has power on earth to raise the dead. The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and they that hear shall come forth.

Well, I want you to hear the Word. I want you to go to this Book reverently. Open its pages and read it and remember that while you’re not a bibliolater and you’re not worshiping a text, you recognize here, not the last words of a dead man, but the living voice of the Living God; the persistent, vibrant sounding Voice that’s still alive. And everything that God says, He is still saying.

You know, when you go anyplace to speak, they come and want your autograph. Now, not because it’s me, but just because it’s anybody. No matter who you are if you’re the speaker, they think that they’d like to have your autograph. So, I don’t know how many I signed while I was at Canby Camp, and I, just to save myself I think a little bit of mental exercise as much as anything else, I signed one Scripture verse on practically all of them I hope they didn’t compare notes. The same Scripture verse nearly on all I signed, a few I have varied to Galatians 2:20. But most all of them I signed, Jeremiah 29:11, God’s speaking. And God says, I know the thoughts that I think toward you says the Lord. Thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an end and an expectation. I know the thoughts I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace.

God’s peaceful thoughts are coming down to us, peaceful thoughts. Not occultism, not spiritism, not Pealeism, but God speaking in the Word and in His Son, speaking thoughts of kindness and peace and good intention. And God is pleased when you are pleased, if you’re pleased with what He’s pleased with. Why can’t we be better Christians? Why must we drag on and drag on in an old bumpy wagon when God Almighty has the angels and spirits at our disposal and the Holy Ghost within us and the Word of God before our eyes.

Yes, the Word is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. Let us believe it. Let us love it. Let us read it. Let us trust it. Let us live by it and let us die by it and all will be well. Amen.

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“God’s Hidden Ones“

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God’s Hidden Ones

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 14, 1958

Summary

In “God’s Hidden Ones,” Mr. Tozer emphasizes the importance of being a hidden people in God’s eyes, citing examples from Psalm 27 and Psalm 83. He highlights the significance of dissent in society and the importance of being a hidden people, even in times of great turmoil and destruction. Tozer also discusses the concept of God’s hiddenness and how it relates to believers living in a secular world. He concludes that God will reveal hidden believers in the time of trouble and will protect them from harm and encourages believers to remain hidden in God’s pavilion during times of trouble, trusting in His love and support.

Message

The New York office of the Alliance Witness sent out this telegram to Miss Betty Brown. Congratulations on again leading the Alliance Witness campaign in all our churches. The sustained record of the Chicago Alliance is remarkable. Your faithful work is deeply appreciated. Church, this the eighth leading churches throughout the country, and Canada that where our own church, Toledo, where William Bryan is pastor; New York where Paris Reidhead is pastor, Ottawa; Reverend Anderson; Vancouver with Irvin Brooks; Louisville with Reverend Epperson; Pittsburgh with Doctor Fraser, and Akron with Paul Kenyon. These are the eight leading churches. And this year we’re going to put some pictures in, and we’re going to have Miss Brown’s picture along with the lady who beat us out in New York, in percentages, but not in actual numbers.

Now, I want to talk a little while, not too long on, something that’s very wonderful and yet very, should I say, well known. But let me sum it up here as we gather near the close of the year. Psalm 27:5, in the time of trouble, He shall hide me in His pavilion. In the secret of His tabernacle, shall He hide me. He shall set me up upon a rock. And in Psalm 83:3, they have taken crafty counsel against thy people and consulted against thy hidden ones, thy hidden ones, Thou shalt hide me.

Now, the Scripture here sets forth the truth which is well known and yet is not too much appreciated. It is that in the midst of the earth, God has a people. In the midst of the earth, God has a people. At any given time, God has had a people, and God does have a people. God will have a people and they are never very large in numbers. In the time of the flood you remember, there were eight persons. In the time of Israel there was a remnant. When Christ was on earth, they could almost count them, at first at least.

And the Scripture says, few there be that shall be saved. And in the book of Revelation, there’s that troublesome passage, which is interpreted variously, but stands there bothering us. It is the saying that there are 144,000 who shall be saved. Various interpretations are made of this, but there it is out of the world’s masses. And then, these hidden ones know they are God’s and God knows they are His, but the world doesn’t usually know that they are God’s. These that are hidden in God’s holy place, in His pavilion, in the secret of His tabernacle, were called his hidden ones, are usually dissenters and non-conformists. You know, it’s possible to be a dissenter and a non-conformist just out of meanness. That’s entirely possible.

My brother, very much like me in personality is gone now from the earth. I went home many years ago. I went home, and about election time, that is, to the old home and I said, well, who did you vote for? He said, I voted for the socialists. You voted for the Socialists? Yeah. But why? He said, a protest vote. He said, I didn’t want him to be elected particularly, but I just wanted to protest. Well, it’s possible just to be a protester and vote for somebody you don’t want to elect just because you don’t want to vote for somebody, you’ll pray will get elected. I know that thing. God knows it. You know it. We see them everywhere.

So, it’s possible to dissent just out of sheer contrariness. But on the other hand, if 99% of everything is wrong and there’s one fellow that says he knows what’s right, he’s got to be a dissenter. He’s got to be a non-conformist. And if ever there was a time when we need non-conformism it is now. There are these people of God, these hidden ones of God, they’re non-conformist, and they’re usually unsympathetic toward the things the world loves. And they’re at odds with the world’s ideals and philosophies.

I listened to a little program last night. I usually listen at nine o’clock to the singing they have. There was a song, Jews, Catholics, Protestants on various nights, every Saturday nights have that on. So last night it was, I think, Protestant, but in it somewhere mixed up there was the United Nations. And they were reading the tenets of the United Nations with a ministerial solemnity and then singing in between the hymns and giving the impression that somehow God had taken up Alger Hiss and Stettinius and Truman, and a few more to the holy mount and given them the 10 words which eventuated in the United Nations. And I laid there, resting and listening. I wanted to hear the music, but I wasn’t ready to hear that.

So, I was lying there dissenting. And after it ended, I thought now, here you are, you don’t go along with this. What kind of fellow Are you? Isn’t it better to believe in human rights and better to believe in there being no war? Isn’t it better than not to believe in human rights, and I know that it’s true, but still am a non-conformist and a dissenter as far as any hope or possibility of saving the world through its own united efforts. It just can’t do it. We can’t do it and there isn’t any use to try. I honor a man, I honor that indestructible gentleman who got out of a hospital and got into an airplane and lit out for some part unknown, Mr. Dulles. I honor these men. I honestly do.

And I honor our very sincere and kindly President. And I honor those Englishmen and other men who are honestly, sincerely trying to bring peace on earth and goodwill to men. But when it comes down to accepting their methods, I have to be a non-conformist. They’ll never get it done. It’ll never happen that way. For the Bible tells us that until the end, there shall be wars and rumors of wars. A nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. And when our Lord shall come, He shall come as a rock cut out of the mountain, hurled down onto the image, to destroy it.

So, I can’t go along with it and I shake it off. It’s soothing and soft and gentle and all the rest, but it’s false. It’s false. It’s based upon false premises. It assumes the validity of things that are not valid. It assumes the truth of things that are not true. And you can’t condemn individuals. You can’t be unkind, and you must speak with great charity as I’m trying to do. But you’ve got to be a dissenter. You can’t go along. It just doesn’t come that way. Democrats can’t bring us hope and Republicans can’t bring us hope. Nobody can.

Well, for the reason that we are dissenters, that God’s hidden people are dissenters, they usually draw the world’s fire; almost always draw the world’s fire. But they are secretly hidden and protected by none other than God Himself. He shall hide me in His pavilion. He shall hide me in His tabernacle. And they’re protected by the Lord Himself, not by withdrawing them from society. Withdrawing God’s hidden people from society would be the equivalent to drawing off all the salt from the carcass. There would be putrefaction and decay and a stench that would reach to the farthest space.

So, God allows His people to be scattered all around over the world, here and there. He doesn’t let them all be of one color. He doesn’t let them all be of one religious group, but they’re scattered every place. And they’re hidden, not by withdrawing, but by the protective providences of God. Notice how Moses was hidden in the cleft of the rock. Now, this hiding of Moses in the cleft of the rock wasn’t a type and isn’t a type, but it is a symbol that sings the song of the hidden life. The life is hidden with Christ in God. And though these hidden ones are visible and physical, yet there is something about them. They’re hidden because you don’t know they’re there.

The Ku Klux Klan tried to put on something like that a few years back. You know, I lived through the time when the Ku Klux Klan was riding so high that if you didn’t join them, you were condemned as not being a Christian at all. There are the days of the KKK. And I publicly, in the downtown where I was, they would come down the aisle with the bed sheet wrapped around them and a pillow slip over their heads with two peep holes. That was their garment. And they would come down the aisle and lay $500 on the table down in front of the pulpit. And of course, that bought the Preacher right there. They could have had him for $498, but they paid $500 for him. And after that he was on their side.

Well, I was right in the area where they were doing that. So, I got up one day and I said, now, the KKK may be walking in here some day and laying some money down here. But I said I have instructed the ushers to hand them their money back, lead them to the door, and physically expel them. We’re not for sale here. But you know, it wasn’t very long until the KKK had gone into a tailspin. But I didn’t know, why, if a preacher opposed them, they were bombing the preacher’s house or beating him up and I didn’t know what would happen. But I was a dissenter.

Well, what they tried to do is this, their power lay in their anonymity. Nobody knew who they were. They never published their lists. And when they appeared, they all appeared with their pillow slip over their head. Nobody knew who they were. They were supposed to be God’s hidden ones. Well, they weren’t God’s hidden ones. They were hidden all right but hidden I had thought rather flimsily behind a bedsheet.

But the power of God’s hidden ones lies right in this, that the world doesn’t know always who they are. Incidentally, the KKK has gone the way of all the earth. They said in that day, you can’t be a Christian and not be a member, and now the people say you can’t be a Christian and be a member. And I didn’t move either direction. I just stuck my ugly chin out and walked down the way. You’ve got a little of that to do, you know. Don’t carry it too far, you’ll get mean. But keep being non-conformist and God will help you if you’re charitable and loving.

Well, there was Moses and then there was Job. Job was hidden by a hedge, a hedge of God’s protective commandment, and Satan had to get special permission. And there again, it wasn’t a type, but it was an example of how things are. Satan had to get special permission to attack Job, and he has to get special permission to attack any of God’s hidden people.

Then when Jesus came to the world, He was hidden by the sovereign will of God. He was born in the manger and how many knew that he was born there. One of the greatest events, the greatest event in the history of the world up to that time, took place right there. And outside of the shepherds, the simple shepherds on the hills, the three wise men, who knew that he was born? Nobody knew it. Mary hid these things in her heart and Joseph just puttered around. So, nobody knew as much that He had come. He was hidden among them.

And when he grew up and ran around with them and played over the back lot with them, they didn’t know who they were bumping elbows with. They didn’t dream, they didn’t dream those boys of Bethlehem that played and raised about and played hide and seek, they didn’t know. Little Jesus taking his place along with the rest, the time he could spare away from helping his supposed father, sweeping up around the carpenter’s shop. Nobody knew who this was. He was hidden there; hidden right in plain sight. And that’s the way God hides things, always. He hides them right in plain sight.

And here was the Lord of glory walking around right in plain sight, and they didn’t know who He was. And they didn’t know, and they kept on not knowing until even when one of them would betray Him. He had to kiss Him in order to let them know who He was. And when He went to be baptized, that Dove had to descend on Him and rest before John the Baptist would know who he had been preaching about. He was preaching about an anonymous somebody that was coming, but he didn’t know who He was.

And when He finally came and was baptized, John looked at Jesus and said to himself, this, this is an amazing man here. Who is this? But he wasn’t sure. And he said, I don’t think that you ought to be baptized by me. Let’s reverse that. There’s something about you. Jesus said, suffer it to become all righteousness, so he baptized Him. And as he baptized Him, the Dove came down and John knew. John knew who he was, and John knew why that strange something had touched his heart.

But for the most part, nobody knew. He was hidden in plain sight. And it says, no man laid hands on Him, because His hour was not yet come. And they hated Him and didn’t know why. Because God had blinded them and confused them and frustrated them and made a fool of the whole world, because His hidden Messiah walked among men. He hid Him there in the womb of the Virgin. Hid him right in the crowds and among the multitudes. And hid him in Joseph’s new tomb, and now He’s hiding Him in the heavens. And when He comes back for His people, He will come back as a thief who always comes traveling incognito, always comes undercover and slips in and takes away treasures and goes again.

Well, now these are hints, I say, of a higher truth. And they hint at the truth that God has opened a way into His kingdom and into His heart. For the individual, that the individual may enter, we mustn’t forget that. And that while living right here below on this earth, people are in the heart of God hidden, in the midst of the heart of God even while they walk in the midst of life. And don’t you think we’re not in the midst of life, Brethren.

A man wrote a book called “In the Midst of Life.” Well, don’t think we’re not in the midst of life. You travel around a little and most of you do. You know we’re in the midst of life. Read your newspaper. Listen to your news broadcasts. And you know that the world is busy, very, very busy. And in the middle of this and walking up and down in the middle of it are people.

I went over to, after the board meeting in New York Thursday, I dictated some letters and then I went over and got my suitcases and went over to the Grand Central Station. And when I stepped into the Grand Central Station, I heard somebody singing, only believe, all things are possible, only believe. And I thought, I’m not hearing right. There’s something’s happened to my head, because they don’t sing like that in Grand Central Station. But I went on down and I searched around. Who is it? A high, thin, rather strident, but pleasant voice singing. And then I noticed up on the balcony here was a little boy about 11 years old and an old lady with a little organ. And she was sporting background music and he was standing.

He’d stop and turn the pages and then he’d step up to the microphone, raise his good-looking little face high and sing. And he sang, into my heart, into my heart, come into my heart Lord Jesus. And he sang, only believe and he sang some Christmas carols. And every time he’d sing, he would get applause from the great hundreds of people. You see, the airplanes, many of them being on strike and the weather being so bad and all the rest, the trains were loaded as I’ve never seen them since the last war. And of course, that meant masses of people milling everywhere waiting on their trains, just the time also when the suburbanites were going out, the commuters.

And they stopped. Everybody stopped and stood looking. I finally got their direction of sight and I saw the handsome little fella standing up there, stiff as a ramrod, about eleven singing in a voice that hadn’t changed yet, into my heart, into my heart, Lord Jesus.

Well, I didn’t ask what denomination he was. I didn’t find my way back up around there and say to the old lady of the organ, are you an Alliance woman? I knew she was one of God’s children. You don’t sing songs like that and not be one of the Gods hidden children. Not very hidden in that instance. But you know the Christmas spirit was on that dirty Vanity Fair we call New York, and so they applauded the little fellow loudly every time he sang,

Well, God has His people I don’t know where they came from. Maybe they were Pentecostal people. Maybe they were Southern Baptists. They could have been Alliance. Maybe they were from some mission and didn’t belong to any church. I don’t know. But I know a little boy there with his handsome little face up turned, singing in rapture and was telling the people of the great city of New York that the Lamb had come and He would come into the hearts of the people.

Well, God has His people, friends, and He has them everywhere. And they’re right down here in the midst of life. You may sit down beside one of them and they don’t all start talking religion to you. You know, some people tell you they all talk religion to everybody they sit down beside. Wilbur Smith told me one time he said, you know, I have an awful time with that. He said, I’m not friendly enough. He said, when I sit down in a train, I’m shy and I want to read. And he said, I don’t talk to people about their souls. I don’t do much of that either. So, lots of people have sat down alongside of me and didn’t know I belonged in heaven. And when you’re waiting around for the upward journey, maybe I should talk to everybody I meet, but I’d be a lovely nuisance if I tried it.

Well, while living right here below, you know, as I say, in the midst of life, you can belong to another kingdom, an eternal kingdom, and belong in another world. Maybe you may sit down somewhere in a public place alongside of a man and you don’t know who he is. Maybe you’re listening to a concert or something or riding on a train or in a subway, sitting alongside a man you don’t know. Maybe he’s an ambassador. Maybe he’s the big man in this country or from one of the one of the countries over there. They travel around like that.

So, we sit down beside a man, or a woman and we don’t know who they are. We know that if they use bad language, we know they don’t belong to God. But just generally we don’t know, because God has them hidden every place, belonging to another world and yet hidden in the midst of life.

Now, these same people have a secret covenant with God. You know, sometimes you sit down alongside of a communist and you don’t know it. That communist is a card-carrying communist. And he owns fearsome, furious, fevered allegiance to Moscow. And he’s sitting right there beside you and you don’t know it. He’s dressed like you. His suit is generally like yours and unpressed like mine. And he just generally looks like you, and you don’t know you’re sitting beside a man that only has the external shell of being an American. Inside of him, he hates every liberty we have and every decent thing that’s here.

He hates the sound of the church bell, the Christmas carol. He hates the name of Jesus. He is a dedicated, sold out, fanatic communist. I don’t know if you ever sat beside him, but you could because there are 1000s of them in this country. And you and he, why, Lazarus and others in the lower world couldn’t have been any different from each other than you and he. If you’re a Christian, a child of God, everything he’s dedicated to you hate, and everything you’re consecrated to, he hates. And yet, you ride together, pay your fares, get up and go up the same stairs out onto the street and go into the same store and shop. And yet, you’re both hidden.

You don’t know who he is, and he doesn’t know who you are. And it’s impossible that we should always tell them. Some people wear big badges in order to let everybody know. But I don’t know that always works. It may be all right, I’ve seen a few badges I’d like to wear, but for the most part I wouldn’t care for them.

Well, we belong to another kingdom, an eternal kingdom, a world that’s invisible, but real. We have a secret covenant, and our dedication is unto God above. And God says in the time of trouble, I’ll hide you, and we’re given over to the belief that we can know God. We can know Him in personal experience, beyond all logical conclusion and above all reason and reasoning. We can know Him through Jesus Christ the Lord who walked around on the earth. People say, I don’t see anything very saintly about you. Well, no, we eat like other people. We clean off the walk when it snows, and we do everything else just like other people.

But God has a people anyways. He has always had a hidden people, a people for His own possession, a peculiar people, Paul calls it; a royal priesthood, a holy nation composed of people. You say, who are they, Alliance people? Some of them are, thank God, some of them are. Some of them are. But not all of them are. They are scattered all around.

I may shock some of you terribly, but I think that there are Christians here and there, scattered in the Greek Orthodox and in the Roman Catholics. Ask me to explain it. I can’t explain it. I don’t know. As a Christian with the information and the light I have, I couldn’t possibly run around crossing myself and wearing chains and believing in the Virgin Mary. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t possibly do it. I couldn’t possibly believe in that jolly old gentleman that they crowned over there the other day in Rome. I couldn’t possibly do it. He’s a nice old fellow, there’s no doubt at all and very bright. But I don’t think he’s the Holy Father at all. He’s not married. But how could he be?

But I can’t believe in that, and I can’t take all that trash. But I am not going to say that nowhere in the midst of all this, that some of the old people didn’t find Jesus while they prayed. I believe they have. And I believe that some of us harsh, bigoted Protestants are going to find that out sometimes. Maybe the Lord will let us introduce one of them to us and let us blush just for our own sanctification in that great day. But I think the system is vicious and rotten. And I think the whole hierarchy from the kind old gentleman down is organically bad.

But I think that even in Sodom God had a few. And I believe that even in Rome, there may be a few. If they had the information, you have and the light you have, they’d come out. They don’t have it yet.

Well, the Lord has His people everywhere and they’re the hidden ones, God’s hidden ones. I was thinking this morning of the song, rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. But that’s a prayer to be hidden. But this is a promise that we shall be hidden. In the time of trouble, He shall hide me in His pavilion. Is it a prayer to be hidden? Well, that’s legitimate. It is a promise that we shall be hidden. We are hidden, hidden in the Rock of Ages, hidden.

He’s hiding us from what? Well, I want him to hide me from my past for one thing. I don’t want the incarnation of the Tozer that once was ever to follow me into the world to come. I want to be where, if there’s such a thing, the ghost of Christmas past can’t find you. And the ghost of my yesterdays can’t haunt me. I don’t think there would be any such ghost. That’s all imaginary. The Bible says He will remember it no more against us forever. And if God doesn’t remember your sins, I don’t care much who else does.

So, God hides us from our past and he hides us from our failures, and He hides us from our tragic weaknesses. And He hides us because of our vulnerability. We’re so vulnerable and so easily killed. On the farm, turkeys are the most vulnerable things that I ever knew. If there’s anything else more vulnerable, we didn’t have them around where I was. The hen will sit four weeks on a great big pile of Turkey eggs as patiently and nice and tenderly and hatch them all out, and then take them out and in 24 hours have nine out of the 12 dead. She doesn’t know how to take care of her own babies.

They’re vulnerable. They get so many diseases. They pick up so many germs from the ground and die of pip and worms and I don’t know how many other things. And the people of God are vulnerable, you know. They’re just really vulnerable, sensitive and easily killed. I mean to say, of course, humanly speaking, actually that Eternal Life which was with the Father and which was made real unto us and which is in our heart. You can’t kill that. I don’t mean that. But I mean, that we wilt quickly, and we’re easily knocked out. God always has them carry us out and bring us to. But we’re easily knocked out. We knock out easily.

Then He hides us in His pavilion. He hides us in His heart. With all my heart, I believe that God’s children are as safe now, as if they were in heaven. I believe that. Somebody quoted me, before a district superintendent and a board and said, Mr. Tozer said if you didn’t believe in election, you were crazy. And the superintendent said, he never said that. So, they had an argument. I don’t want people arguing over me. But what I said was, I suppose that I believe in election, but I don’t believe in election, period, I believe in election as understood and interpreted in the light of the rest of the Scripture.

But I believe that God’s hidden ones are God’s chosen ones. And they’re chosen according to His eternal purpose, and they’re chosen according to His foreknowledge. That doesn’t mean that you have to come whether you want to or not as some teach; and it doesn’t mean that only certain ones can come. Anybody can come that will come. But they’re chosen in Him before the foundation of the world by the foreknowledge of God. I believe that. And they’re protected and kept and held in His blessed hand. You know, that if your salvation had depended upon your faithfulness, you wouldn’t have followed Jesus Christ one month. He kept you. He held you. You were hidden, hidden.

The baby born into the world is a helpless, vulnerable little thing which soon will die. My fifteenth grandchild came here about, I don’t know, two months ago, a month ago, I don’t know. It’s all happening so fast. I can’t keep up. But they said, oh, he’s home. He’s awful. They said, he’s all nose. But the other day, yesterday, we got the report that he had developed a chin and forehead to go along with his nose and becoming quite handsome. But I do know one thing, that he was unutterably vulnerable when he came. And all that they would have had to do would be to turn their backs 20 minutes and he would have been dead, but now he’s growing by leaps and bounds because somebody hit him, took care of him, nourished him, protected him.

God keeps His people; God is keeping you friend. This is a cold weather we’re having now. And a vicious wicked world we’re in. You never know when you listen to the news broadcast whether they’re going to say, Berlin was bombed, Formosa was attacked. You never know. You never know where trouble is going to start. But you do know one thing, in the time of trouble, He shall hid me in His pavilion in the secret of His tabernacle shall He hide me. I know that. God will hide us in His tabernacle, in His pavilion, and we’ll be God’s hidden ones, thy hidden one. That’s a beautiful expression. You and I ought to believe in it.

We’re having a bit of difficulties; everybody knows in our local church here. I don’t mean trouble. There’s nobody fighting anybody. Nobody’s enthusiastic enough to fight anybody else. You know, that’s trouble with us. We haven’t gotten enough energy to get in trouble. We all love each other and hope for the best. But we will have difficulty and some things are going to have to be changed. But in the meantime, would you keep one thing in mind, God Almighty, that planted this plant back there years ago, hasn’t withdrawn His kindly, loving smile from it. He’ll keep us and He’ll lead us through.

And few years from now, we’ll look back and say weren’t we a bunch of weaklings to worry, when God had His plan, all laid out for us. You keep believing, Brother and Sister, you keep trusting and don’t pay much attention to Santa Claus and keep your eyes on Jesus Christ, the Lord of Christmas and the Lord of the new year and all yours in the coming years. And you will come out all right and so will I and so will we and so will this church and so will our fellowship in the days ahead. Amen.