Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Help spread the word and share this message with your friends

The Causes of Chronic Spiritual Failure and the Cure 1

The Causes of Chronic Spiritual Failure and the Cure 1

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 10, 1957

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Help spread the word and share this message with your friends

“Holiness and God’s Will for His People”

Holiness and God’s Will for His People

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 26, 1958

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Help spread the word and share this message with your friends

“The Tabernacle of God is with Men”

The Tabernacle of God Is with Men

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 24, 1954

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Help spread the word and share this message with your friends

“A Proper Concept of God”

A Proper Concept of God 

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer 

July 24, 1955 

If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also. And from henceforth ye know Him and have seen Him. Phillip saith unto Him, Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. How saith thee then, show us the Father. Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me. The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the very work’s sake. I will stop with verse 11 for tonight. Let us pray again.  

Now, Lord, we pray in the name of our Lord Jesus for help tonight. Lord, we know that the world, the flesh, and the devil conspire to grab away every seed that is sown, every holy impulse, every high intention, every holy vow. O Lord we pray, undo the work of the devil and work Thou savingly in the hearts of the people, cleansing and purifying, sanctifying and delivering and setting free. Great God, we need help out of heaven tonight. Human brains can’t do it. Human personality can’t do it. Human training can’t do it. Human learning can’t do it. Even if we had any of these things, they cannot do it. O Lord, it is Thee and Thee alone, that can break the power of canceled sin and set the prisoner free. Only Thou can open blind eyes. Only Thou canst move the will to obedience. O Lord, help us tonight. By the Holy Ghost, help us tonight. Help us not because we’re good, but because Thou art God. Help us not because we amount to anything, but because Thou dost love us. Help us out of grace tonight and out of mercy, graciously do with us. And let Thy light shine over us as it shown over Israel in ancient days. This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.  

Now, let me begin by saying that no nation has ever risen above its religion. I don’t think it would be very difficult to prove this statement, that no nation has ever risen above its religion. Whether that nation is pure or impure, high or low, depends upon what kind of religion it has. That is, in the qualities that belong to our humanity, our best humanity. A nation might, like Hitler’s Germany, or a few hectic, brief, unnatural years, have a degraded, pagan religion, and yet ride high in things commercial and industrial and military. But you see how it was top heavy and tumbled over of its own weight. It had to do it. Russia today apparently is greater than its religion because it has no religion, or at least the official Russian line is that it has no religion. So that for a time, a nation can seem to be greater than its religion. It can have a low religion and yet to rise to high peaks seeming to be so. But in the qualities that belong to our best humanity, no nation ever yet rose above it religion. And no nation today is above its religion. And I think it is safe to predict that no nation can ever rise above its religion.  

I might say that that ought to be be a matter of grave concern for the United States of America. If our religion rusts, our nation will rust. And there is no law that can be passed, no political party that can come to power; nothing that men can do by way of assuring itself of the nation for the future that can save us. The nation will only be as great as it religion, no greater.  

Now a nation can go below its religion. It can nominally have a high religion and yet sink below it, just as a man can live at the foot of a mountain and never rise higher than the top of the mountain but can all his lifetime live below the top of that mountain. Yet, if he should climb the mountain, he can get above the top of it. So that no nation ever got above its religion, but a nation can live below its religion.  

And then the second thing is that no religion ever rose any higher than its concept of God. No religion ever rose any higher than its concept of God. That is the most vital thing that can be known about any church or any man or any nation. And every religion, whether it is high or low, whether it is pure or impure, noble or base, depends altogether upon what it thinks of God.  

Now, there have been pagan religions in the past, that while they were pagan and they weren’t saved and they weren’t Christian and they weren’t redeemed, yet, they managed to have a stable society and had some kind of stable pagan worship, because they had a lofty concept of God; the Greeks, for instance. But no religion can ever go higher than its concept of God. If they have a base God, they’ll have a base religion. If they have a higher God, they’ll have a higher religion. I’m talking about the religions out of Christ and religions that are not Christian. And there have been some great religions. But they have been all dependent upon their concept of God. But a higher concept of God means that men will strive to higher things and do the best they can even though they’re out of Christ, and even though they are not born anew. Even though they’re not redeemed, they will attempt something better if their concept of God is higher. Now, those are philosophical considerations which are lay down rather for you and say simply this, that the most vital fact about any nation is what it thinks of God.  

Now, I’m not a historian, neither by profession or by any great amount of study of history; average, I would say. But I do believe this, that I could predict the future of any nation if I could discover exactly what that nation’s concept of God is. Now, if I could learn exactly what America thinks of God, if I could discover exactly what the the rank and file, the masses and the lower echelon leadership in America thinks about God. If I could send out a questionnaire, God forbid that I should do it. Too much of its being done.  

But if I could send out a questionnaire and ask the question, what do you think of God? When you think of God, what do you think of? Well, how does it strike you? What concept enters your mind when you think about God? And if I could find a pattern that would tell me what the majority of the people thought about God, I could predict the future of the nation, barring of course, the possibility of revival that would change all that. But even a revival cannot come where a concept of God is low. The missionary cannot go to a heathen land and preach the gospel. One of the first things they’ve got to do, is to to talk about the High God and purge the minds of the people from low and unworthy and ignoble and base concepts of God. We cannot rise higher than our concept of God. Your faith cannot rise higher than your concept of God.  

And that is why, I, for one am indignantly crusading against this concept of God as the “man upstairs,” the nice, lovely, patable God that you can slap on the back and laugh and tell Him a joke. The God that will condescend to anything and pal along with anybody. That kind of God is not the God of the Bible, either Old Testament or New. It’s not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not the God that gave the Law of Moses. Not the God that led the children of Israel out of Egypt. Not the God of Isaiah nor David. Not the God of John or Paul. Not the God of Luther nor the God of Wesley. Not the God of the church. It is another kind of god. A pally, soft God that will condescend to anything and overlook anything with no spine and no character. That God is the divine teddy bear, the huge panda that everybody can cuddle to and coo about. But they have no respect for Him because they have no concept of Him. I say I’m crusading against that. I’ll probably talk myself hoarse and get to go to an old folk’s home and they’ll go right on doing it till the judgment day. But as long as I’m alive and able to talk, I’m going to keep talking about it. I don’t want to be a bore and I don’t want to get off on one string. But if I get on one string, I’m gonna to make it a good string.  

Now, I say that not only a nation, but a church. You say, oh well, every church has the same concept of God. Every church knows about God. They read their Bible. It’s a Christian concept of God. Now, not by a longshot. God has been watered down and modified and edited and qualified and changed until a lot of churches, many churches have no high concept of God at all. I’m not in any ways inclined to think that the rank and file of this church really believes in God as God is or thinks about God as God is. I don’t think that. I know your lovely people. I don’t want to get mad at me, but if you do, you’ll only have to pray and repent and get right with God about it anyhow, so don’t do it. But even though you’re nice people, I don’t think for a minute that all of you have a high, biblical concept of God.  

Our concept of God if it could be thought of as a river, we have received tributaries from everywhere, tributaries from books and from unworthy songs and from fiction and religious literature of various kind, until even a church like this that ought to be a sound, Biblical church, our concept of God is is likely to be down. So that instead of thinking of God as He is, high and lofty, inhabiting eternity, Whose train fills the temple and who walks on the wings of the wind and maketh the clouds His chariot. Instead of our thinking about that High God, the God we know about or think about and conceive is a smaller God, very much smaller God.  

I’ve been accused of being against evangelism. I’m not against evangelism. I’m for God’s evangelism and Holy Ghost evangelism. I’ll be an evangelist for two weeks now over in Beulah Beach. I believe in evangelism. But I have listened to evangelistic sermons that set forth a God that I couldn’t respect and wouldn’t want to go to heaven and have to live with for another few million eternities. I wouldn’t want to live with a God like that. The kind of God that I’ve heard set forth in pitiful nose ringing, eye-drenching stories as though God were like one of us.  

A poor, little undersized, small-minded brother gets up and begins to chatter about a God that he’s made in His own image. And then I’m supposed to want to go to heaven and sit beside the throne of God I couldn’t respect on earth. No, I want the God of the Old Testament and the God and Father of the New, or else I can’t, I don’t want to go to heaven. I’d rather go somewhere, in some neutral place. I haven’t courage enough to say I’d rather go to hell. But I’d at least hope there’s a limbo in between where I can stay as far as possible from these teddy bear gods that are being preached now and again.  

A lot of people have a lot against old John Calvin, I know. I don’t go along with everything John Calvin believed, but one thing he did believe I go along with, he had a high concept of God. He believed in God’s sovereignty, God, high and lifted up and so do I. So did John Wesley for that matter. You don’t have to be a Calvinist to believe in a high and holy God. But, in these days it helps. Now, incidentally, don’t get me wrong. Some of you here Arminians, you’ll be praying for me now with groanings that can’t be uttered. Just save your wind Brother because I know what I am.  

Now, I say this, that if we can find out exactly what this church thinks about God, we’d know our future. We’d know where we’re going for the next year. If we could find out exactly what all of us think about God. When you think about God, what do you think about? When the idea of God comes into your mind, what’s your concept of God? What do you picture? What is God like? You can discover that in the church, the average, and the level of the church, all of us together, if we get a concept of what God is like, I can tell you where we’re going in the days to come.  

Same with a man, an individual Christian. Christians go to revival meetings and they get on their knees and beat the bench and pray and imagine they can at an altar get an experience that will guarantee them for all the time to come and give them a kind of spiritual security. All will be well, thank you, for this world and the world to come. No, my brother. A man can have an emotional experience at an altar and yet never have any satisfying knowledge of God at all, never any high concept of God. Jesus Christ our Lord taught us who God was.  

Now, this longing after God that Philip revealed here, this longing after God. Philip said, show us the Father, show us the Father. I’m sure he wasn’t a heckler. I’m sure this was not a critic. I’m sure this honest Philip, He must have been a good honest man. I believe at that stage in the game, he was even a converted man. And Philip was a good, honest-hearted man, and he honestly wanted to see the Father. The invisibility of the Father had been one of the heavy things, the heavy things they couldn’t understand. O God, show us the Father, he said.  

The old rabbi back in the ancient days, I told you about it here a few weeks ago. He was a great old man and fine old believer, a religious man. He was taken in before a king. The king said to him, now you’ve been talking all around over my kingdom about your God, Jehovah, your God, Jehovah. Now he said, I want to have a showdown here with you. Either you’ll produce Him or shutup. You’ll let me look at Him and see Him. Then if you can produce your God, I’ll let you preach. But if you can’t produce Him, you’ll have to keep quiet and never mentioned Him again under pain of death.  

The old rabbi said, Sire, let us walk in the garden. And they walked in the garden. It was blazing noonday, and the sun was hanging there, hot and bright and heavy. And he said, Sire, behold, the sun. The old king looked at the sun, and then jerked and sneezed a couple of times. And he said, Sire, look at the sun and he looked again. But did the same thing, and finally unable to see he said, Rabbi, I can’t look at the sun. He said, you just said in here, produce God and let me look at Him and you can preach, and you can’t even look at one of the smallest lights that He created. How then can you look at God? The old king said, you win and walked back into the palace a wiser man.  

Let us see the Father, the invisibility of God, has been the string upon which has harped the atheist. We don’t have any professional atheists preaching nowadays. We used to have them a few years back. Such men as Ingersoll that went up and down the country preaching. And one of his favorite tricks was to say that nobody could see God, and they couldn’t produce God, and that God was all just an idea in people’s minds. Clarence Darrow was the last nationally known man that argued that way.  

Show us the Father they say. And I don’t think that this man Philip, when he said that, was in anywise a critic. I don’t think that he was using petulant speech at all. I think that Philip when he said show us the Father was giving vent to a yearning in his heart. He wanted to to get through to God, the invisibility of God, the fact that God can’t be seen. You close your eyes and pray a while open them and see the wall. Your God isn’t there visible.  

Well, the effort to know God and find Him and reach Him has been one of the nobler activities of the human race. It has given to the world many great religions. Now, when I say many great religions, don’t any of you, good solid fellow fundamentalists sit there and sweat, because I’m not saying that religions are all alike and that we’re all bound to that same heavenly mansion. I know better than that. I know that no man cometh unto the Father, but by our Lord Jesus. I know that there is no forgiveness of sin except through the blood of Jesus. I also know that man unaided by inspiration and unassisted by the Light of God, have strained and reached out their hand, as Paul said, seeking if perhaps they might find God.   

And I have never been able to find it in my heart to sneer at the honest pagan who stretches his hungry hands toward God and prays to a god he doesn’t know. And when Paul came to the streets of Athens and found an altar to the unknown God, Paul did not sneer neither did he deliver them a scolding lecture. He said, the God you’re reaching after and can’t find, is the God I preach. And he began there and took it as a point of departure. And there have been many of the religions.  

I heard a young Hindu once to tell how he was converted by reading John 1:1, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And that very language was cast, or the very thoughts were cast in the language with which he was familiar. And pretty soon, the Lord led him to those verses, on to believe in Christ as his Savior.  

There have been great religions, I say. And they’ve all been the effort to discover God. And in addition to great religions, there have been great philosophies, and there are, and great systems of metaphysics. But God has never been discovered that way. Because the highest religion there is outside of Christ is but a man’s religion. And the highest philosophy, the highest any man ever climbed on the ladder of philosophy, was a man-made letter. And no man ever got above his own temple, above his own brains. No man could ever rise above his own brains. But if God could be discovered that way, either by fastings, or by visions, or by journeys, and pilgrimages to Mecca, or to some river, or to Palestine, if God could be gotten to that way, and that in us which corresponds to our eyes and our ears and our hands, could get ahold of God that way.  

And I want to point out something to you, Brethren. That only the finest minds could know God. If God could be known only by philosophy, then only the finest minds could know God. I wouldn’t want to ask you. You’re an average well-educated congregation here, even above the average. But I wouldn’t want to ask you tonight to pass an examination on Plato’s Republic. I don’t know how many of you could pass an examination on Plato’s Republic. Plato’s Republic is considered to be, I suppose, the Bible of philosophy. And yet they’re not very many Christians, not even, I don’t know, listen, don’t be fooled. Not very many liberals could either. They say we fundamentalists couldn’t. And they say we’re dumb. They can’t either. Only they just pretend they can. Their preacher can. They think they can. They can’t. They know lots more about the TV program than they do about Plato’s Republic.  

You couldn’t tell me what Spinoza teaches. I’m quite sure you couldn’t. And Pythagoras and Aristotle, and what was the difference between Aristotle and Plato’s concepts? The average person is too busy to find all that out. And only the finest minds can take it in. And therefore, if God was discovered by the intellection, by the activities of the human brain, only the finest minds could know God and the rest of us would have to be satisfied not to know God.  

When Lord Bacon wrote Novum Organum, the new organ of learning, he sent a copy of it to King Henry the Eighth. King Henry the Eighth, tried to read it, sent it back and said, this book is like the peace of God that passeth all understanding. He said, here’s your book.  

Now, if it required a mind that can understand Novum Organum to get converted and to know God, then that would rule out probably about 75% of human beings. A man would have to be, have a very fine mind. And not only that, he’d have to have great learning. That is, he would have had to use that mind properly. In addition to that, he would have had to have unlimited leisure before he could know God. It takes a lot of leisure to get to study and get learning. It takes a lot. You’ve got to do a lot of things. Some of the old thinkers did very little else with that. Old Socrates did very little else; only run around barefoot in the streets of Athens and talk and think. If you’re going to be learned, you’ve got to have a lot of time to put in on it, Brother. And if you have to work for your living or raise babies, you might just as well say, well, I’ll do the best I can. But it’s, goodbye learning. I never can be one of the superior, half dozen minds of the world. I can’t be.  

But you think that God the Eternal Father, would give redemption to the world, and then give it only to a few great minds? You think that He would send redemption to the world and make it available only to the great scholars? You think that He would send redemption to the world and let it be available only to those who had unlimited leisure?  

We American people have more leisure, probably, than anybody else in the world because we have so many gadgets to do our work for us. You women don’t do very much because you have push buttons. Now, don’t come around and sass me after church, because that’s true and you know it’s true. Your mother did five times as much and your grandmother did four times as much as she did. Because we’re now in the age when we have leisure, leisure, always leisure. Some of you dear sisters wouldn’t know so much about the TV shows, if you didn’t have a lot of leisure. You have more time. If you had to work as your grandfather worked and as your father worked, you wouldn’t have time to sit around and weep over synthetic trained seals who perform for your TV screen. If you spent half as many tears over the lost as you do over John’s other wife, we’d have twice as big a church and you’d be twice as good a Christian. Amen. 

We have more leisure, I say, than anybody else in the world. But not even Americans have enough leisure to really be learned in that high lofty sense of the word. God knew better than that. God was all-wise. And so He brought salvation down. And the message of Christ is not directed to the learned particularly. They can come in if they want to come in by the door. A man with fifteen degrees can lay his degrees aside and get on his knees and come like the rest of us. The man of profound learning can come like the rest of us. The man of such leisure that he can travel in Europe and spend the winters in Florida and his summers in Canada fishing, he can come the humble way as the rest of us. God sent His message down to the plain people. And that’s why I love plain people. I’m at home among them. I am one. And I love to be among the plain people.  

Now God had to demonstrate Himself some way. He had to satisfy that craving that made Philip say, show us the Father. And then He had to demonstrate that Himself to satisfy that cry that David gave, I shall be satisfied when I look upon Him. I long to see Him. My heart and my flesh cried out after God. So what He did was that He walked down into man’s level, down on the earth. Listen, if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also. From henceforth, you know Him and have seen Him. Philip saith unto Him, Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us. Jesus said, have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me Philip. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. How do you say, show us the Father? Believe thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself, but the Father dwelling in me doeth the work. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me? Here was a man standing and saying, if you have got acquainted with Me, you already know the Father. Then you already know what the Father is like.  

Oh Brethren, this is the most wonderful thing of all wonders. This is one of the purposes of redemption. And I think that theologians, or at least the preachers of theology, are not bearing down hard enough right here. We ought to remember, Brethren, that there is not one purpose in incarnation, not two purposes in incarnation, but multiple purposes in incarnation; a manifold purpose, many purposes. And one of the purposes in the incarnation was that the heart-hungry men and women of the world, the ones that are heart-hungry and want to know what God is like, could know what God is like without studying Plato. And they can know what God is like without getting degrees. They can know what God is like and not have the leisure to read all the learned books of the world. They can know God because God demonstrated Himself here. Christ is the manifestation of God to men. Christ is God walking among men.  

Some of the borderline liberals say that God revealed Himself in Christ. Let’s correct their preposition. He did not reveal Himself in Christ, He revealed Himself as Christ. There’s a change of preposition on you there, Sir. Take that in out of there. He did not reveal Himself in Christ. Oh, He did that too. But, we have not said enough when we say that God revealed Himself in Christ. We must go on to say He revealed Himself as Christ.  

So, it can be said with certainty that he who knows Christ, knows God. And whoever knows our Lord Jesus, knows the Father. And whose eyes look upon Jesus, look upon the Father. It may be said that whoever knows God can know God through Christ and must know God through Christ. And it can be said that God does always act like Christ and Christ always acts like God, because Christ is God walking among men. It may also be said with certainty that increasing knowledge of Christ, means increasing knowledge of God.  

If God will let me, and there are a lot of people throughout the country praying that he will, If God will let me, I’m going to write at least one more book. It’s to be called, The Knowledge of the Holy and it will be on the attributes of God devotionally considered. And I will consider the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in their biblical and lofty glory, and show what it means when we say God is sovereign. What it means when we say He’s immutable. What it means when we say He’s omniscient, and so on. Clear down the line until I have had twenty chapters and twenty attributes. But, Brethren, that will be a help to the heart, perhaps, and a help to the mind. And I trust that God will use it to help elevate the concept of the whole evangelical church from our present teddy bear God to the high and lofty God that inhabited eternity.  

But I would say it is, the simplest little old lady in her black bonnet and her wire-rimmed glasses and her big print Bible, can know God and never know what an attribute is, Brother. She can know God and never have heard of the word. She can know God if she meets Christ. For ye that hath seen me hath seen the Father. I, in the Father and the Father in Me. How saith thou, tell us about God when God’s been walking among you telling you about God? Jesus is God. And you don’t have to be a theologian to know it my brethren. You can know God through Christ. If you will know Christ, how then can you know Christ? A little later I’ll tell you.  

Now, put this down in your Bible or down in your head or somewhere, that Christ is God acting like Himself. That’s all. God never strains. There’s never any play acting with God. God never puts on a face. He never comes out and takes some character. God always acts like Himself. The most relaxed man that ever walked the streets of any city was Jesus Christ our Lord, perfectly relaxed. He could turn calmly, look at a man, cut him to bits or draw him near and forgive his sins and heal his disease depending upon the attitude he came in. He was always relaxed. When they came to get Him, there He was. They found Him. But when He, it was too early yet and He didn’t want to die yet for a few days, He passed quietly through their mitts. That doesn’t say how He did it, but He did it, perfectly relaxed. God is always relaxed. Remember that. Some of you go to God praying as though God was about excited as you are. There are Christians that mistake hysterics for spirituality.  

There’s a magazine that comes to my desk and it’s a good magazine all right. And I read it and I get some help out of it. But I only have one criticism of it and that is, its hysterical. It wants revival. It wants a blessing. It wants God down. It wants the Holy Ghost down, but it wants it so bad that it never can use just ordinary English. Everything is, what do you call it, souped up. Everything is souped up, you know, and a new punch put in everything. And ethel is put in all their gasoline, and an extra kick in everything. You never can relax.  

If God’s people could only know who God is and then relax and believe Him, we would get somewhere. But as it stands now, we’re either lazy and don’t care anything about God or we get hysterical. Christ never was hysterical. Never. The only time that He was ever, for even one little moment out of control, was that awful, unspeakable holy moment in the Garden of Gethsemane when He said, Father, Father, take this cup away. But yet not My will but Thine be done. That was as near as He ever came in the awful article and agony of His death. The only time that He was ever not for a moment, that He wasn’t in perfect control. So don’t mistake hysteria for spirituality, Brother.  The two ain’t the same, if you’ll excuse my good German. 

Now, Christ is God acting like Himself. I just want you to get that idea and take it out with you. That when Jesus walked the earth, He was just God walking around acting like Himself. And when He went to the right hand of the Father, He was still God acting like Himself. When He sent the Holy Ghost down, the Holy Ghost is God acting like God. Always God acts like Himself. You never can get God out of character. He always acts the same. He’ll be the same, always the same, forever the same, because that’s His immutability, you see. That’s what that word means, it means He’s unchanging. And He’ll never be any different from what He is now.  

People change, but God never changes. People’s moods change. Some people cultivate it because they read in a magazine one time about some movie actress that has moods, and so they go around, moody as can be. God bless you honey. Don’t you wish you had some sense? Wouldn’t it be nice if you’d wake up sometime and really rub your head until the circulation is started. The day will come when you will be bald and have nine chins. God help you young fellow. Think for tomorrow. Think for the future. Think about the day after tomorrow and next year and next eternity. That’s why I talk mean and rough to you because I love you and because I don’t want to handle your soft.  

Jesus was God walking around showing His power. Jesus was God walking around showing His holiness. The horrible travesty that we have in America today is Christianity without holiness, Christianity without holiness. I accept Jesus and then go raise hell. I accept Jesus. You don’t accept Jesus at all mister. You are a deceived man. You’re no better off than if you’d never heard of God. Because one of the very first qualities of Christianity is holiness, purity, right living, right thinking, right longing. But we have a Christianity today that has no holiness in it.  

The Son of God was a Holy Son. The Holy Father is the Holy Father in heaven, not in Rome. And the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost in our Bibles, the Holy Bible. And the church is called the holy church throughout all the world. Heaven is a holy heaven and the angels are holy angels. And therefore, we ought to take seriously the biblical doctrine and spirituality and holiness. The evangelical church has fallen so far into the gutter in the day in which we live that we preach a salvation without holiness, which of course is a travesty on Christianity. And Dr. Torrey would have said so. James M. Gray would have said so. And Moody would have said so. But I don’t know why we’re not hearing it now.  

Christ was God walking around acting like Himself in love. Jesus loved everybody. And He loved them in an easy, relaxed, wonderful way. He love the people. People came to Him and it made those mean, old theological Pharisees made as the devil. They said, why don’t they come to us? They didn’t come to them because they found no warmth there.  

You know that a bird will always go to the warm side of the hill on early spring day. The flocks or bevies I think they call them of Bob Whites used to fly around out home on the farm. And when the snow was almost gone, as the poet said, the snowed up fereal on the top of the bare hilt, and it was faring so well that there was only a patch here and there but was still cold. And the bevvies of Bob Whites would come to the sunny side of the hill and settled down there. You could walk around on the dark side of the hill and where the snow was and you wouldn’t find one. But go on over the hill and down where the sun was shining, you’d find bevies, cuvees of these little Bob Whites waiting in the warmth. Everybody likes the warm sun when it’s cold.  

And Jesus drew people because He was God walking around acting like God in love. The reason they didn’t come to the Pharisees was, the Pharisees had no love. They were, the fire had gone out in the stove. Nobody ever wants to stand around the stove when the fire had gone out. Some of you city hicks don’t know the joy that we farmers used to have, a little pot-bellied stove and heat the thing, you know, until it was shining like a cherry. You’d come in half-frozen and come in and they had, I don’t know why they put it there, but they had a kind of a fender all the way around the pot belly part of the stove and lean back in the chair and put your feet up on that fender. It wasn’t so hot. It didn’t burn your shoes. Oh, brother. They’ve never had any modern conveniences that can beat that for sheer downright pleasure. I look back on that as real pleasure.  

Nowadays, they squirt your heat through little holes in the wall and do all sorts of things, and it’s more convenient. I’ll admit that. But it lacks character somehow or another. You just can’t fall in love with a grill. I used to love the little pot-bellied stove. I used to love it. Father would get up ahead of the rest of us, and we slept in rooms upstairs that were completely cold, you know. If it got down to zero, the room got down to zero. When we got into our clothes and got downstairs and came out of that awful, the frigid country up there, and here was this nice cherry-colored stove. That was a wonderful thing. We brought our clothes down and dressed around the stove.  

Well, all I say is, nobody ever comes around a stove when the fire has gone out in it. And Jesus had love in his heart and love is always warm. And love is always attractive. And the people come to churches where there’s warmth. They come to Christian that are warm.  

Old D.Y. Schultz wrote a great book on the Holy Ghost years ago. One of the sentences that jarred me was this. He said the absence of inquirers among people claiming to be filled with the Holy Ghost is a serious question whether or not they are filled with the Holy Ghost. I don’t think you’ve got that so I’ll repeat it and around to it another way. The absence of inquirers, a man says I’m filled with the Holy Ghost but he never draws anybody to him. Nobody ever comes and says, will you help me? Will you pray for me? Will you tell me about the Lord? Will you lift my burden? Will you do something for me? He’s filled with the Spirit but nobody comes to him. And wise old Dr. Schulz said, the absence of inquirers among those claiming to be filled with the Holy Ghost raises a serious question whether or not they have been. If there’s fire in the stove, you will always find a wayfarer with chilled feet and frost on his whiskers coming up near the stove.  

And that’s why they loved Jesus Christ our Lord and that’s why people love Him today. They always find Him sympathetic, understanding, and never sarcastic. If God would just get sarcastic once, I’d die of grief, you know it. And I’m sarcastic every once in a while. But God never gets sarcastic. His prophets used to, but He was always timid. He could cut the head off of an old hypocrite, but He never turned on anybody that was poor and helpless and in need. He never turned on a woman taken in adultery. He said, well, I told you so. Remember when you were sixteen, how you used to act? Never. He said, nobody else? Nobody else? And then you. She said no. He said, you go on, you’re forgiven. You’re clean for now. Be a good girl for now on. Go on, you’re forgiven. She went out with tears streaming down her cheeks. Couldn’t He have cut her to bits and then gone on to the next town and told it as an illustration. No. That was love walking around, God’s own love walking around acting like love acts.  

And those babies. Did you see that little shaver we dedicated this morning? That long name of his, that long Dutch name. God bless him. He took those little fellas up in His arms and held them and loved them. He was just acting like God. That’s all. That’s what God thinks of babies. That’s what God thinks of poor women. That’s what God thinks of everybody, everybody that’s in need, a fellow who is full of the devil. If a fellow come around here full of the devil, everybody would say, well, he’s a queer one isn’t he, and we’d isolate him. He’d walke around all by himself. But Jesus went and cast the devil out of him.  

Christ, I say, is God acting like God in loyalty. Think of the loyalty of Jesus. If ever there would have been a time. Ever there would have been a time when justice would have allowed Jesus to turn His back on His disciples it was at the cross. For they all are forsook Him and fled. And He could have said, here I’ve spent three years. Here I spent three years teaching my disciples, healing the sick, raising the dead, stilling the waters, feeding the multitude, talking of the Father’s house. Here I’ve spent three years and I haven’t one man that will stand with me. I scraped the dust off my shoes. I turn away from you. He could have done it. But do you know what He did? He was loyal to that bunch of renegades and cowards who forsook Him and fled. Loyal to the people who hadn’t the courage to come to His rescue. Loyal to those who would not even come out and stand and be counted. Loyal to the end and died loyally for those who had no loyalty for Him.  

Why did He have that loyalty? Was that human loyalty? Yes, but it was more than human. It was God’s loyalty. God has been loyal to the human race even though way back there thousands of years ago, we turned our back on God in the person of Adam. Walked out and in Adam’s fall, we sinned and all and we all walked out on God. But God remembered us and an altar smoked and a lamb bled and God kept saying down the years and down the years, here, here, we’ll have a Redeemer. And then a mother growned and a babe cried and the angels sang. And God had come to earth, loyal to His renegade race. And when they took Him out to crucify Him–loyal still. And He’s loyal at the right hand of God tonight. You’ll go home from here and sit up to one o’clock in the morning watching half-dressed movie actors play on your TV screen, and you claim to be converted. And God loves you and will be loyal to you still. And that’s why we can grieve Him, because He’s love, and loyalty only can be griefed with tenderness, and suffering devotion.  

Now, I must close and point out that Jesus Christ will show Himself to you through faith and confession and humility. It’s awfully hard to get people to repent because that means humility. We build up a saga about ourselves. That’s why it’s dangerous to be a Christian leader. It’s dangerous to be a Christian leader. Brethren, says James, be careful. Don’t everybody want to be teachers because it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to get a saga built up about yourself and get a reputation for being godly. And then when the Holy Ghost comes and begins to lacerate your heart, you’re ashamed to go to an altar. Ashamed to confess because people will think you’re a hypocrite. 

Dear old brother, Peter Robinson. Ah, Peter Robinson knew God. Peter Robinson was a cook, a chef in one of the finest hotels in this country. And a little boy of theirs was born crippled. Peter Robinson believed the Lord would heal him, but He didn’t. And one day he said to God, God, I’m not going to eat again until my boys healed. He couldn’t walk. He was 2 or 3 or 4 years old but couldn’t walk. And his wife said, do you think that’s wise Peter? He said, you can leave that to God and me. That’s all right. So, he went down and he said, the first day or so it wasn’t so bad. But the second and third day, it was getting terrible.  

And in this fine high-class restaurant, he was dishing up food that was just utterly out of this world, you know, for these high-class patrons. And he said, he baked pancakes in the morning that would melt in your mouth. And he said, Here I was waiting on God between times and at night and cooking pancakes that just made your mouth water. And I had said to God, no, I’ll not eat until the boys healed. He said the third or fourth day, he came home and they were talking it over and he said, all right, he said to his wife, until he’s healed, I’m fasting. I’m waiting on God. He said he turned away and started for his bedroom and he heard his wife give a scream. She let out a yell, He said that literally filled the room. He turns and said, what’s the matter? She said, look, look! And the little guy was down and running around all over the floor. From that time on, he was all around on the floor, perfectly delivered, perfectly delivered. And I don’t say that’s for everybody. I wouldn’t go that far. And I couldn’t go along with the healing evangelists. I will only say God did that for a simple-hearted man who knew enough to trust Him.  

Now, I started to tell you about Peter. Peter was up in the balcony one time in a meeting way back. And somebody gave an altar call. And Peter not only came to the altar, and he was a Christian worker, well and widely known. He not only came to the alter, but he ran all the way down there. He dropped to his knees at the altar and somebody said to him, Peter, why did you run to the altar? Well, he said, when I heard the invitation given, I knew there was something wrong here that I ought to go down there and get straightened out. And he said, I heard a voice say Peter go down to that altar. And he said, another voice said, Peter, don’t go, and he said, I recognized that second voice. He said I knew it was the devil. And he said I not only wanted to go, but I ran to spite him. He got down there in a hurry to show the devil I was going to go to that altar.  

Brethren, humility is a beautiful thing, but not very many people have it. If I were to say, let all who want to know the Lord a little better come down to the altar, this altar would be filled and the front row was filled. If I would say all that are not perfect who would like to have the Lord bless you a little, we’d have it again, filled and up on the platform. But if I say has God spoken to you, sir, alone? And is he calling you to confession and humility, humbleness, an   admission of wrongdoing, you’ll hardly get a one, because people don’t want to humble themselves. They want to humble themselves as provided they can do it en mass. But they don’t want to do it in the singular. This pluralizing our humility. Brother, it won’t work. This pluralizing our confession, no, it won’t work. Make it singular.  

David had got on his knees and had prayed a long, beautiful prayer for Israel. The 51st Psalm never would have been written and David never would have gotten back to God. David said, I did it God. I did it. Have mercy on me. God I did it. He singularized it. And if you will singularize your confession and singularize your humility and say God, it is I. It is I. Christ will reveal Himself to you. And as you know Christ, you will know God, and the longing to see the Father will be satisfied. And your heart will know what God is like. And you will have a lifetime and eternities to come to build up and increase the knowledge of the infinite, incomprehensible God. Oh, my friends, singularize this spiritual experience tonight. Don’t hide behind the plural. Let’s say “I.” I, Lord, I.  

Now, some of you can’t testify. You’re just haven’t the courage to testify, unless you’re with a group that testifies and then you’re very vocal. But you’re silent as a mouse when you’re out with people, you’re afraid to testify. Do you think that’s good Christianity? I don’t. Some of you don’t tithe. You say you can’t. You’re raising your family and you can’t. You’ll have a better success raising your family if you do. But you say you can’t and you have not, so you have cheated God. Some of you are just plain worldly. If you’re here tonight and I’m glad you are but you’re worldly. So, you’re far from God. Some have been angry today, bitterly angry about something, maybe you know. In addition, you spouted off and then you got calmed down and got your Bible and came to church. You didn’t fool God. I don’t know what, but I’m guessing all those things must be confessed out. And we must humble ourselves and get them out of our system. We must admit these things to God. And then as we do, O Christ, manifest Himself in light to our heart. And as we know Him, we know God 

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Help spread the word and share this message with your friends

“Commentary on the Nature of the Triune Godhead”

Commentary on the Nature of the Triune Godhead

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 6, 1954

Tonight, I picked for myself a very difficult section of Scripture. It was Gypsy Smith, I think, or Sam Jones maybe, Sam Jones, the eccentric American evangelist of a couple of generations ago that said that when the average preacher took a text, it reminded him of an insect trying to carry a bale of cotton. And if ever I felt like an insect it’s tonight and if ever I felt I was trying to lift a bale of cotton, it’s tonight. But let me read the passage here in John 5. Jesus answered them, My Father worketh, hitherto, and I work. Therefore, the Jews up the more to kill Him, because He not only had broken the Sabbath, but had said also that God was His Father making Himself equal with God. Then answered Jesus, and said unto them, Verily, verily I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of Himself. But what he seeth the Father do, for what things soever He do it, that is the Father, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son and showeth Him all things that Himself doeth and will show Him greater works than these that ye may marvel. For as the Father raises up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will, for the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father which has sent Him. Verily, verily I say unto you, he that heareth My word and believeth on Him that sent Me hath everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God. And they that hear, shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.

Now, the first part of this section of Scripture I preached on two weeks ago, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. And now in the passage before us, the opening part of it, our Lord explains how He works with the Father. The Son can do nothing of Himself but what He seeth the Father do. For what things soever He the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. Now, I spoke of the unceasing activity of God the Father, the unwearied, restless and yet ever restful, omnipotent, creative work of the Father, working toward a predetermined end, a purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began.

Now here, our Lord tells us that His working is in line with the Father’s working and all together dependent upon it. The Son can do nothing of Himself. I want you to notice, and I think this is a bit of theology that we can well take with us into every corridor and passage of the whole Word of God, that the Son can do nothing of Himself. But the Son can do everything in Himself. I quoted the old middle age, Middle Ages, medieval theological concept, that the Son is not God of Himself, but He is God in Himself. Or correctly wording it, the Son is not God of Himself, but of the Father. But He is God in Himself. And here we have it that Son works Himself, but He does not work of Himself, for He can do nothing of Himself.

Now there are four wonderful doctrines that are taught here. One of them is the harmony in the blessed Godhead. There is a harmony in the blessed Godhead. I think it would be impossible to overemphasize this doctrine, that there is a perfect harmony between the persons of the Godhead and that we must never allow ourselves, ever once, to think there is any conflict or to think any conflict into the persons of the Godhead. The Father planned it, but He planned it in His Son. And He wrought it out through His Son by the power of the Holy Spirit so that there has never been anything but harmony in the blessed Godhead. And whatever the Father does, the Son sees Him do and works in harmony with what the Father is doing. And the Holy Ghost is the perfect bond between the Father and the Son, energizing the Eternal Son with the energies of the Father, and so working harmoniously to a preordained end. This is taught in this passage and is also taught throughout the entire Bible.

But also, there is taught this, the subordinate position of the Son of Man. This has bothered some people very much, that the Son is equal to the Father, and yet is subordinate to the Father. For our Lord Jesus Christ teaches both. He says that the Son can do nothing of Himself. And He says, the Father is greater than I. And so He takes a subordinate position and prays to His Father. And naturally, an equal does not pray to an equal. An equal prays to one who is above him and to whom he can address his prayers. And when the Son prays to the Father, it is a tacit confession of subordination. He is not equal to the Father. So He prays to One who is above Him. And yet He can say, my Father and I are one. And He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.

Now, what do we mean, and how do we get this way? And is there contradiction there? No. There’s no contradiction there, my brethren, because the old Athanasian Creed has it, that, as pertaining to His Godhead, He is equal to the Father. As pertaining to His manhood, He is less than the Father. And in this ancient and Holy Trinity, there was nothing before and nothing after, nothing higher and nothing lower, but all three persons together, co-eternal and equal, so that Jesus Christ has the two natures, the nature of man and the nature of God, harmonized into one perfect personality. Let us not imagine Jesus as a schizophrenic, one with a split personality, having two personalities, lets us know that He has one personality, but He has two natures harmonized into one personality. And when He speaks about Himself as the son of Mary, He says that I can do nothing of myself. I see the Father do it and I do it and says that the Father is greater than I. When He speaks about Himself as God, He says, I and My Father are one. So, there is no contradiction here. There is only an understanding.

When I was a very young preacher I got among the Jesus-only people. Now, in case you don’t know what the Jesus-only people are. Now, sometimes you will see a button on their lapel, big around as a school boys cap, and it’ll say Jesus only on it. Now that isn’t what I’m mean, they may be just Moody students, you know, or Nyack students or somebody out trying to tell the world they belong to the Lord. I don’t mean that. But there is a group that called themselves the “Jesus Only” group. I don’t know that they ever were lapel buttons. But they say that the name of the Godhead is Jesus. That the Scripture says, ye shall baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. But it doesn’t give us the name, but that Jesus is the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. And they get all mixed up in their mathematics. They say how can three be one, and how can one be three. And they get all mixed up in their mathematics. Their arithmetic gets them into confusion. So, they say there is but one person of the Godhead and that He is named Jesus and that Jesus is the Father and He is the Son and He is the Holy Ghost.

How one can be the father of another has never been explained to me by these friends. And I might add also that these persons believe that everyone who is truly saved and ready for the coming of the Lord has spoken in tongues, and they put you in a tub of water till you do. They say there’s a blessing in the tub, Brother, and they will baptize you till you do come through to their satisfaction, I do not mean to reflect upon them. I think that they are well-intentioned and many times, good people. But of course, you can be good in your heart and be badly mixed up in your head. And they certainly are badly mixed up in their theology. For they teach that there is only one person of the Godhead and He is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. I can’t see how it could possibly be. And that the name of these three, or the name of this One is Jesus.

But anyway, it’s true of a school of modern theologians that there is one person of the Godhead, but he has three masks. That is, He has three faces. The old god of ancient Roman days named Janus, or Janus, had two faces. He looked in two directions. But they’ve gone one further, and they’ve given the Godhead three faces. And when this one Person of the Godhead wants to be the Father, He puts on the Father’s face and turns that to you. When He wants to be the Son, He turns the Son’s face. When He wants to be the Spirit, He turns the Spirit’s face to you.

I find it much easier to believe in an ancient, incorruptible, uncreated Godhead, a fountain of ancient Godhead, and then, the three Persons leaping up out of that Godhead. I have thought of God the Godhead as a great sea, because you know that the mystic theologians taught that the Godhead goes back above and beneath any of the three Persons of the Trinity. That there is the underlying Godhead, and then that the God had expressed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in three personalities. That is what I believe. I believe that the Father is the Ancient Godhead expressing Himself as the Father. And the Son is the Ancient Godhead in expression as the Son. And the Holy Ghost is the Ancient Godhead, all of one substance of one eternity. One, without beginning and without creation. And so, we have the Triune God.

And when Jesus says, I am less than the Father, He’s speaking of His manhood. When He says, I am equal to the Father, He is speaking of His Godhood. And when He speaks of his Godhead, He does not take any low place beneath the Father, neither does the Holy Spirit, but these three are One. It’s a wonderful mystery and I don’t claim to be able to understand it. But I confess I delight to tremble before the throne and say, Holy three times repeated, holy, holy, holy. So, there is a harmony in the blessed Godhead, but there is a subordination of the Son to the Father for the purposes of creation and redemption.

The third thing this text teaches is, the unaffected relation between the Father and the Son in the incarnation. I’m saying so many things these days that I don’t hear anybody else say, that I wonder if it is that I just don’t get around or, is nobody saying it. I preached over in Keswick last week, over the weekend, Saturday, Sunday and Monday in New Jersey. And a lot of Alliance people were there and people who had been in this church, people had come here in days gone by as students and so on. But I had four sermons to preached so I preached on four of the attributes of God. And you know, that the people gave me to understand that they had never heard any sermons on the attributes of God in their life.

I preached on the selfhood of God, and well, three other attributes of God. And they said, they’d never heard any sermons on the attributes of God. And it isn’t that I don’t get around, because when I preach, I have to listen to other preachers. That is, I preach in the morning, say, and he preached in the afternoon. I preach at night and then reverse it. And so as to get a right share, each one taking his turn at bat. And of course, I have to be courteous enough to sit back there and write editorials while the other fellow is preaching. But I never hear this business. I don’t hear anybody preach about the everlasting Godhead and the Eternal Three. I just hear other things and that’s not to reflect on any man who’s preaching the Truth, but it is only to say that there certainly is truth that is being tragically neglected in the day in which we live.

And there’s a whole world of golden truth that we can mine out with a pickaxe of prayer from the Bible that will be meat and drink and food and wonderful help to our Christian people. I’m mixing my metaphors there too brother, mining out gold to eat it for food. You preachers just overlook that because I feel the way that the brother, what was his name? In, that great Brooklyn preacher? Beecher, he said, that when a metaphor gets in my way, God help it. He wasn’t concerned very much with it. Anyway, there was an unaffected relationship between the Father and the Son in the incarnation.

Now, we generally say that Jesus Christ left His home far above yonder and that He came down, and cut Himself off from the Father and left the delights of the Father’s bosom and the Father’s heart and walked in exile among men. But that’s only partly true. It is true as we seeing He left His Father’s home above and emptied Himself of all but love. He did do that, but he never emptied Himself of His deity. Never. When it says that He considered not an equality with God something to be held on to but emptied Himself, remember one thing. He never emptied Himself of His deity. He couldn’t do it. It would be metaphysically impossible even to think such a thought as that the Eternal Son should be anything less than God. But he never emptied Himself of one of the attributes of Deity. But He emptied Himself of the accoutrements of deity. He emptied Himself of the evidences of deity and covered the Deity in a cloak of opaque flesh and walked among us as though He were a man. He was God in overalls. God living on the earth and wearing the common denim of mankind and covering over His deity.

But as somebody has pointed out when occasion required, He could let His deity shine through, as once when He prayed to the Heavenly Father and His face became shining white and His garments whiter than any before on Earth. And they shone like the sun as He knelt there. It was only His deity showing itself through the previously opaque veil of His manhood. But even while He walked on the earth, He was within an unbroken fellowship with His Father. For it’s impossible that the Father and the Son should ever cease in the ancient sea of the Godhead to be joined together as One. But the man Christ Jesus cried, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me? And as pertaining to His manhood, He was forsaken of the Father. As pertaining to His deity, forsaking would be impossible. For we cannot divide the Deity or separate the Persons of the Holy Trinity.

So, Jesus when He walked on earth, saw the Father and that gives us our fourth thought, the perfect clairvoyance of the Son. Now, I use that word clairvoyance without apology, though it needs an explanation. What a beautiful word it is, the word clairvoyance. I like it. It means clear seeing, clear sight, perfect visibility, perfect, unending ceiling, no clouds between. But the spooks have taken it and the wizards and witches and spiritualists and what have you. They’ve taken it and now we have clairvoyance used by the spiritists. They have no more right to it than I have the right to the title of being called the King of England. They have no right to it. For the spiritist doesn’t see clearly.

And no one sees clearly but the Son. And what He seeth the Father do, that He doeth. For the Father shows the Son what He sees Him do so that the Father and the Son are working harmoniously within sight of each other. Not all the clouds that ever came over Palestine prevented the clairvoyance of the Son, the clear sight of Jesus Christ. And not all of the shadows that gathered around Calvary prevented the Eternal Son from gazing full into the face of the Eternal Father. As pertaining to His man, He cried in agony of sacrifice and offering, my God, my God, and bled and died as God turned away from the sacrifice.

But the Eternal Godhood was unaffected and undivided. And the Son looked into the clear face of the Father without a shadow between. It had to be like that, my Brethren, it had to be like that. What a terrible mixed up and imperfect redemption it would have been if Jesus Christ had had to fight His way through. If He, the Eternal Son, had been rejected from the presence of the Father, we would not have had Christianity then. We would have had Roman mythology. We were down calling, Mr. McAfee and I, in the neighborhood of the University of Chicago this last week. And we dropped into a little bookstore there with a red door, bookstore, mostly foreign books, that is foreign language, and classics. And I picked up The Aeneid of Virgil, translated into English, and while my friend was driving along, watching the stoplights, I was reading Him about the gods and goddesses of Egypt, or of Rome. And we saw there, I’d read it of course, as he had and you have before, but it was a new translation I enjoyed reading as we went along.

And here were the gods and the goddesses marrying and giving in marriage, and fighting and being jealous and having rivals and laying for each other and pushing each other around and trying to murder each other. Those were the gods of Rome. One God would sneak in behind another god’s back and grab a hammer, or sneak something out and disappear into the bushes while another god would chase him. And that was as high as the Romans ever got in their concept of God. And if we listen to poor, uneducated, I mean spiritually uneducated, preaching, we will imagine that there exists in the Godhead some kind of such conflict. And that the Son of God, like some demigod of Rome, slipped in and rescued mankind, like Prometheus brought down fire from heaven, and was punished for her robbery.

But nothing like that exists. The perfect clairvoyance, the perfect sight of the Son, the clear seeing of Jesus as He walked among men and gazed into the face of the Father, for the Father was there and is here. For He says, The Father loves the Son. And this love of course, is not simply the love of God for a good man. It is the Ancient Unity of love among the Holy Three, the Ancient Unity of love. So, that’s what it means in the Bible when it says God is love, and he that loveth, knoweth God. And he that loveth not, knoweth not God.

The next time we build a church, will you remind me to get out of the air lanes, a little off to one side, south, north, east or west, so these blessed, DC-6s don’t go overhead? Do they bother you? Just when I’m saying something I consider important, why there’s eight engines roaring up there. But we’ll try to keep sweet. Someday, we’ll fly without wings, free.

Now it says here, the Father raises the dead and quickens them. And even so, the Son quickens whom He will. Now, if this means anything at all my listening friends, it means that the working of the Son in regeneration is as radical and miraculous as the working of the Father in raising the dead. If it means anything, it means that. That the Father raises the dead and quickens them, and even so the Son quickens whom He will. And that’s in the present tense, and He’s not talking about the resurrection. He’s talking about the present time. The time now is He says, the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and those who harken will live. So, he’s not talking about future resurrection. He’s talking about the present time.

And He says here, that as the Father has ability to raise the dead and give them life, so He has given to the Son also power to raise the dead and give them life. Only the Father raises the dead in the future resurrection, the Son raises the dead right now. They hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hearken will, shall live.

Now, the work of the Holy Ghost and the work of Christ in making a Christian, is as radical a thing as raising Lazarus from the dead. When Lazarus came out of the tomb a live man where a dead man had been, he stood everlastingly as a figure of a Christian who stands up a live man where a dead man has been. Who stands up a clean man where a filthy man has been.

Over in Keswick, they have what they call the colony of mercy. It’s a whole colony, as the name implies, a lot of buildings given over entirely to men who have gone down through drink or dope or both, or other vices that have dragged them down. And out of my two trips there, and I’ve talked to these men last year when I was there. There was a very brilliant man running around there who had been a professor in the university using, I knew he was because he was using long words. And he could talk books by the hour. And he was nice enough to run around carrying the little Pursuit of God. He told me how much he thought of it.

And I went back and I said, what’s happened to so and so? They said, you mean the fellow that was always talking books and running around here? I said, that’s the man. I mean. Well, you know, he had been a university professor and had gotten in either dope or drink or both, and had gone clear down to the gutter, and had gone over to Keswick to be rehabilitated. And over there, they believe in rehabilitation plus regeneration. So, they not only rehabilitated him by getting him off of this stuff. But they told him the Word of God, day and night and wherever they can get to him. Finally, he got converted, you know where he is now? He’s in a Bible school and he’s going to preach the rest of his days. He’s a middle-aged man already, on the happy underside of middle age, but approaching it, and won’t have a long ministry. But he has quit the university now and he’s in a Bible school in the east and is going to preach.

Now, that is a deliberate quickening by the Holy Ghost that is as radical and as miraculous as the raising of Lazarus from the dead. For here was a learned man whose learning broke down in the crisis. And he went down to the gutter and bounced back again by the grace of God and is now a thoroughly converted and blessed man.

Now, he says here, that all men should honor the Son as they honor the Father. Because there is a harmony in the blessed Godhead. Because there is an unaffected relation between the Father and the Son because of the perfect clairvoyance of the Son, wherein He sees as He has from eternity, the Father at work. And because the Father loves the Son and because the Father has given into the hands of the Son power to raise the dead even as He raises the dead, all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. And He says that if we withhold honor from the Son, we would hold honor from the Father also. That’s here. That’s the plain teaching of the Scriptures.

Now, there are those who do not honor the Son. They honor Him only as a good teacher, perhaps the best, but only a good preacher or teacher, and preacher of the Word. And the Scripture says that all men should honor the Son as they honor the Father. So, you need to have no hesitation in attributing all of the worship and glory to the Son that you would attribute to the Father. You need to have no fear, because the Father lives for the glory of the Son and the Son lives for the glory of the Father. And the Spirit of God lives for the glory of the Father and the Son.

So, we honor the Son of God. We have no hesitation whatsoever in praying to the Son, as we pray also to the Father. And while it is not usually done, we also have no hesitation in addressing the Holy Ghost. Somebody was asking me today what I thought about praying to the Spirit. Is it ever the right thing to do? Should we ever pray to the Spirit? And my answer is that normally we pray to the Father in the name of the Son and in the Spirit. But also, Jesus Christ had no hesitation in receiving prayers and granting them when He walked among men.

So obviously, there is no formula. If there had been an unbroken and unbreakable formula, that the only way to pray would be to pray to the Father in the name of the Son, then why should Jesus have broken that order and allowed prayer to be made to Himself?

Plainly, then, the Persons of the Godhead are equally God. And the Persons of the Godhead are equally present before our minds when we pray. And when we sing, Holy Spirit, faithful guide ever near the Christian side, we’re praying to the Spirit. And when we pray, Holy Ghost with light divine, fall upon this heart of mine, were praying to the Spirit. And I think if you will read your Bible, you will find instances where a man apostrophies the Holy Ghost. Come thou north wind and blow thou south wind and blow upon this garden that the sweet spices may flow out, apostrophe to the Holy Ghost. And prayers are to be made to the persons of the Trinity. Normally to the Father in the name of the Son, but also without harm and without any transgression of the Scriptures, to the Son when you want to pray to the Son. And if in prayer or song to the Holy Ghost, then also to the Holy Ghost.

Always remember friends, that God is never jealous for a formula. Religious people are. They’re jealous for a formula. They put it 1-2-3-4. And if you say 1-2-4-3, they leap all over you. And white-faced with anger, they prove they love the truth because they’re so mad. And they love the order, the beautiful order of the truth. And if you say four before you’ve said three, they hate you for your heresy. They love the truth so much.

Always remember friends, one time more let me say it. God is easy to get along with. And if your heart is right, He is not so concerned about the formula. No, no. God is kind and good and gracious. God has to be. He has to be because there are some of us that are just too hard to get along with. And if God was as hard to get along with as we are, there would be one perpetual quarrel between our souls and God. So, God has to be easy to live with, and He is. And if He knows you mean right, He’ll let you make all sorts of mistakes and He won’t care. But just as soon as self gets in, and you mean wrong, the holiest thing you do is unholy. As soon as you curse your conduct with self or sin, everything you do becomes wrong. But as long as you love God and people, He’ll let you tumble around a lot and won’t mind it a bit, and sit and watch you as a mother fox will lie in the sunshine with her chin on her paws with a smile on her face and watch her little, little foxes. I don’t know what a little fox is called. Let’s call them puppies.

But anyway, everybody that has ever hunted foxes knows how sometimes they’ll come upon that beautiful, idyllic picture. Picture the old mother watching her little foxes. And I have seen mother cats and watching their kittens. And I have seen mothers watching their babies the same way. And God knows that the most mature of us, we still toddle sometimes. And so, He’s quick to overlook our ignorance, but He’s never quick to overlook our sin. If sin is in it, that’s injury, that’s disease, that’s threatening death. And so, God’s quick to leap on the sin and deal with it. But He never rides us because of formulas that we’ve broken.

So, I don’t care what anybody says. If I want to pray to the Spirit, I’m going to pray to the Spirit. Normally we don’t, but if we want to, let’s do it, and smile and say, if I’m making a mistake, God understands. He knows I mean the whole Godhead. When I say Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, I mean all the persons of the Trinity.

Now, verse 24, we close with that. And how important it is, how important in the pale light of sin and of death and judgment. How important it is that we hear these simple words. Have you noticed friends, that when our Lord Jesus is talking to the believer and attempting to teach and instruct the believer’s heart, He gets so profound sometimes that you have to keep your chin up to keep from drowning under the glory of it. But when He tells us how to get saved, He makes it so simple, so very simple. And here it is, He that heareth my words and believeth on Him that sent me hath everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death unto life. Now that is so simple, so simple. He that heareth my Word.

Now, does that describe you? Have you heard the words of Jesus? I believe you have. I believe every one of you has heard the word of Jesus. There isn’t one that hasn’t heard the words of Jesus. If you haven’t heard them all, you’ve heard some of them. And the words of Jesus usually, any words of Jesus are like samples of seawater. They all say about the same thing. And if you’ve heard the words of Jesus, then the next thing is, believeth on Him that sent Me.

Now, does that describe you? He hath everlasting life. If you can say it does describe you then, he has everlasting life and he shall not come in to condemnation, but has already passed from death to life. That’s so simple that nobody will believe it. It’s as though somebody would find an elixir of life or a universal panacea for the cure of all diseases. You know, nobody would believe it, first. Everybody would say it can’t be so. Jesus Christ our Lord has laid down here a universal panacea. He has given us the true elixir. He has told us where the fountain of youth is. And He has said simply, it consists of hearing the words of Jesus and through those words, believing on the Father who sent Jesus. And if we do that, then we have everlasting life and we shall not come into condemnation. But has passed from death, have passed from death unto life.

And somebody says in that case then, what happens to the Christian who breaks down, who has lapsed, who sins? The answer is, there is a difference between coming into discipline and coming into condemnation. The believer who fails his God and sins, comes into discipline, but not into condemnation. But the sinner, is already under condemnation. The Christian, who was believed on the Son.

Could I give you an example? There were two men, Peter and Judas Iscariot. Peter had believed, had heard Jesus Christ and believed on the Father, and had passed out of death into life and was out of condemnation. And he got in a tight spot and failed God. Another one of the apostles also got in a tight spot and failed God. One was Peter, the other was Judas. Christ looked on Peter and brought him under discipline. And Peter repented and wept copiously. As it says in the original, tears and floods of tears, he wept copiously. And in his repentance was restored to favor and blessing. He did not come into condemnation, but he did come under discipline.

But Judas Iscariot went out and it was night. And he went to his own place and he was the son of perdition. Judas Iscariot, who never believed on the Father nor on the Son, and who never was regenerated, went out to night and condemnation. Peter who believed, but failed, went out to discipline and forgiveness. There’s the difference, my brethren. You come to Jesus Christ as you are, weary and worn and sad. Come to Jesus Christ as you are, sinful and tired and without self-confidence, knowing you can’t live it and knowing it, come anyway. Hear the words of Jesus and believe on the Father and the Son. Trust the words of Jesus; that’s believing on him. And God will give you eternal life. God will promise you that you will never come into judgment, for that is condemnation.

God has given me a passage of Scripture to which I am clinging and holding tight. And I don’t understand it, why it’s like this. I don’t understand why it’s like this. But I am telling God about this every once in a while. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me. For as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountain shall depart and the hills be removed, that My kindness shall not depart from thee. Neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on me. And I tell God about this every once in a while, and I put my name in here so He’ll be sure that I know what he’s talking about. And says, I’ll never be angry again. And I’ll never rebuke you again.

Discipline? Yes. I expect discipline. But I don’t expect ever to see an angry face in God Almighty’s heaven again. That’s not because I’m good, but that’s because He has sent a Redeemer. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. And because the Lord is our Redeemer, we never need to worry after we have trust, if we do trust and walk on with Him. Now, that’s in the Book.

Well, there’s a little running commentary on what our Lord said. It certainly isn’t all, but it’s something. And I pray that God may give every one of you courage to go on believing. And then I trust that you who may not believe, might this very night pass over the narrow little line that separates between believing and not believing, having life and not having life. You have heard His words? Do you believe on Him? Do you believe on the Father who sent Him? Do you believe? Then, will you believe? Will you believe now? Right now, will you believe in the name of the Son of God? As the Father quickens the dead from the graves, so the Son quickeneth whom He will. And whoever hears His voice and harkens, he shall be quickened into eternal life by the Son who takes His honor from the Father and receives this authority from the Father. Will you now, believe?

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Help spread the word and share this message with your friends

“An Easter Message”

Three Great Days: An Easter Message

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 6, 1958

I announced last Sunday that I would break into my series of expositions of the book of Titus and would bring something more nearly related to the Easter day. And today I want to read a bit of Scripture and let it be part of the sermon, by far and away the best part, where a man with anointed vision looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven. And the first voice he heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me which said, come up hither and I will show thee things which it must be hereafter. And then immediately I was in the Spirit, the whole the 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. 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 head, crowns of gold. And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal. In the midst of the throne, round about the throne, there were four beasts full of eyes, before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, second beast like a calf, the third beast had the face as a man and the fourth was like a flag 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.  When God speaks of himself, he says, I am. When his creatures speak of him, they say he 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 there’s a picture of heaven, and God the Father and the throne and the strange beasts, living creatures, redeemed elders. Then I saw in the right hand of Him that sat on the throne, a book. Written within and on the back side, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals there of? They must have searched and searched a long time because no man in heaven or in earth, neither under the earth was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. One of the elders saith unto me, weep not. Behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book and to loose the seven seals there of.

And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne. And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.  The Lamb Exalted and I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever.

And no man could preach a sermon on that text without suffering a brain hemorrhage. It is too vast, too emotional, too noble, too elevated, too full, too musical, too poetic, too wonderful to do anything, but read, so that’s all I’m going to do with it. Just read it before you. For it is the story of the Lamb who died a Lamb and rose a Lion. But I have three little words to speak to you today about three great days: the day He came which we call Christmas; the day He died which we call Good Friday; and the day He rose which we call Easter. If we had never invented the names, Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, which are words borrowed and put together. If we had never invented names, still, those three great days stand; the greatest days in the history of the world.

And God said, let there be light and there was light. And God separated the light from the darkness. And the darkness He called night and the light He called day and the evening and the morning, the first day. So reads the story of God’s creation. So, it was a great day.

It was a great day when the ark of God floated the high above the waters, cleared the hill where it had been built and floated high and all-around devastation and watery death. And Noah and the eighth person floated free and safe in the ark of God. It was a great day when Abraham heard the voice of Jehovah saying get thee up out of thy country to a land that I will show thee. And God began the redemption and restoration of the race. It’s a great day when Moses put blood on all the door posts but really it was night, and put blood on all the doorposts and lentils. And the million slaves who were the seed of that same Abraham rose and walked out on their feet, out over the sandy wastes and across where the river, or the Red Sea used to be, but was no more for the river part of the sea part didn’t let them through.

Those were days, great days, but nothing to be compared with the three that I’ve named. The day He came and the day He died and the day He arose. The day He came, there was joy. It was the joy of hope. It was the joy of sentiment. For God was now a Babe in a manger. And a bright-eyed mother looked upon Him, a little red-faced Fellow making funny little animal noises, feeling around for His mother’s breasts. And all the ages have surrounded this day with sentiment and beauty and flowers and music, and well they may have. How could we escape it? What else could you do? We, being human and being sons and daughters of the sun and the moon and the rolling heavens, time and anniversaries and years and day. You can’t escape them no matter how hard we try if we wanted to.

So, we have made Christmas a great day. It is a day of joy because it’s a day of hope. But that’s all it was. You can’t carry it too far. That’s all it was. It was a day of joy. But it was the day of the joy of anticipation, not the day of the joy of realization. For very few knew the Babe had been born. And those that didn’t know, didn’t know who He was for certain, maybe half a dozen, maybe two or three–no more. It was the joy of anticipation.

But I can think of how that joy might have been dashed like a beautiful vase and destroyed. I can think of a hundred ways. I can think when Herod said go out and kill all the babies under two years. Go out and kill them. I can understand how they might have caught that Babe, caught that mother and father unaware and plunged the sword through the innocent bosom of that little Baby along with all the others in that neighborhood of Bethlehem. That would have been the end of all that joy. That would have mocked the angels as they sang over the Judean hills. And that would have mocked the shining eyes of Mary, and would have made the very Word of God of none effect.

I can think how when Satan came to Him when He had grown to be a tall man, thirty years of age now, strong and vigorous and at the peak of His physical powers, when the devil came to Him and said, turn this stone into bread. Fall down and worship me. Leap off this pinnacle. For it is written, it is written He might have there, at least we can think it. We can imagine it. He might have there given Himself over, surrendered under pressure, and put a vial of poison where the oil of joy had been.

But He said, it’s written and Satan turned his back away and you remained holy as He’d been born. God had called Him, that holy thing, that holy thing. And He stayed that same Holy Thing through His development and boyhood and youth and now a strong grown man. He was still that Holy Thing and was as pure as the waters that flow from under the throne of God. It was the joy of anticipation and a hundred possibilities I say, except He were God, might have intervened there.

You’ve had many a joyful anticipation that blew up in your face and left you more grief stricken than if you had never expected the joy. The day He died was not a day of joy. It was a great day, but it was not a great day of joy. It was a day of dejection and despondency. It was the grief of uncertainty, just as they didn’t know who He was. And the simple little negro spiritual says so plaintively, and it must have been beautiful when it was first written before it was commercialized. But back there, the first simple-hearted black man who sang it maybe to his own homemade banjo somewhere. We didn’t know who He was, said the song. With Jesus, we didn’t know who you was. What beauty is there, we didn’t know who He was.

And when He died, we didn’t know what He’d done. They stood around Him and tradition has it, Mary fainted and was carried away, leaning heavily on the arm of John, into whose care Jesus had given her for the rest of her life. But they didn’t know what He’d done. He had told them, but their eyes were holden and their ears stopped. They didn’t know what He’d done. And it was a time of dejection and of the grief of uncertainty. He went out there and died, and they didn’t know what He was doing when He was dying.

Every one of them had seen people die. They knew everybody died. But when this man was dying, they didn’t know why. And all the joy of hope and anticipation that any of them had had back there 33 years before and were still alive, Mary was among them and there were some others. All that joy suddenly turned to bitterness. For He was dying now. He was dying now. And His disciples thought maybe there would be a dramatic rescue. They thought it out, a dramatic rescue. But there was no dramatic rescue. They said, the God who delivered the three Hebrew children from the fiery furnace, the God who delivered Daniel; that God will deliver Him as He delivered them. But there was no deliverance. And after six hours, He groaned and gave up the ghost, and died in the darkness and they all turned away.

But that day was just as important as that first day of joy. That day that they took down a dead Man, partly stiff already from rigor mortis and stained with blood, flies buzzing around Him. That day was as important in the mind of God as that day Mary held the baby in her heart, the tender, pink-skin, baby, sweet to touch. Now, the cold, gray body, unpleasant to touch. But one was as important as the other. For if there had not been the day that He died, the day that He came would have been a mockery to the human race. But if that had been the last day, those other two days would have been dreams and no more.

But the day that He arose set a crown upon the others. And just as the day He came was a day of the joy of hope and the day He died the day of the grief of uncertainty, the day He rose was the day of the joy of triumph. For now, it was finished. It’s finished. Nothing could be interposed now. When the boy Jesus played with His father’s tools and got in the way and helped a little as He was able, and sometimes didn’t help, but tried to help as a little growing boy. There were a lot of things that could have intervened, I say, possibly at least they were technically possible that could have intervened. But they didn’t, but at least we can think them. But now we can’t even think anything there.

When He rose from the dead, He rose absolutely triumphant. And when the old Latin writer, we sang it this morning, an English translation. When the old Latin writer said, He opened heaven and He closed hell. That’s correct for all that believe. For all that believe. There isn’t a crevice or crack anywhere in the walls of the hell where a saint can get in. And there isn’t a door in the walls of heaven that a saint can’t get in. By saint I don’t mean a saint on a pedestal. I mean any redeemed man. For the day He arose was the day of the joy of triumph. Somebody read here or a choir sang or something, I don’t know, but I caught this phrase this morning. He is not here. He is risen. And I jotted the word “not” down there so I’d remember to tell you “not.” If it had said, if the angel had left that one little word of three letters out, we would have been and be now of all men most miserable–following a dead man.

But that little word “not” there, only three letters. A tiny, monosyllabic word, not. You can say it, you can time it it is so brief and yet upon it hung the whole hope of all the world for all the time to come. He is not here. The angel had folded his wings and bowed his head and said, we’re all mistaken. He is here. Come in, look, He is here. If he’d been there, the bottom would have fallen out of redemption for all time to come. He is not here. And in one simple word, God Almighty set all the bells in the universe to ring. He is not here. He was there. He died. But He’s not dead. He’s alive again.

So, these are the three great days. The day He came was called Christmas, the joy of hope. And there we had the weak babe in the manger. And the day He died, there was the cross and we had death. And I regret that some cannot see beyond that.

We had a long-distance Easter call last night from our girl out in New York. She said that she and her boyfriend from the church here had been in a great cathedral in New York. And she said what do you suppose? They’ve covered all the statues of Jesus. They have draped them all. He’s dead. All draped. They had draped all the statues and pictures of Jesus. Death was in that cathedral.

And that’s all there is at the cross–death. That’s all there was in the manger, weakness and hope. And all there was at the cross was death and despair. But when He walked out of the grave, then there was triumph forever and ever and ever. I have no statues of Jesus, and I don’t even like pictures of Jesus, though I don’t condemn those who do. But I don’t even like pictures. But pictures of Jesus all ought to have gold frames and never be shrouded and never draped. For Jesus doesn’t die once a year, just as He doesn’t get born once a year. And He doesn’t rise once a year. There was one great day, the day He was born. A great day, the day that He died. And a great day, the day that He arose.

Now, there are just some other days I’ll mention and say no more. The day He finds you. That would be a great day, for you. But it never could have been it, except for these other great days. And the day you find Him. For remember, He finds you before you find Him. It’s got to be so. And the day He comes again and the day He’s crowned. And all His sheep and all His lambs and all His children and all those who make up the royal train, joggle with him to His coronation. Beautiful. We’re not a ritualistic church here. And the result is at Easter time we have very few more people to church than we do all the other, year around because we’re always talking about the Lord rising here and singing about it.

But I want to say to you this one word. I want to tell you what I told my friends up in Milwaukee last week, Friday night, no Friday afternoon. We had a good Friday meeting, six churches met and I preached to them. And there popped into my head an illustration as I was closing. I think God gave it to me. I had never thought of it before that I remember in my life. But it fit the situation, I’m afraid, for some people’s lives and possibly in yours.

I said, and I say now, look, there’s excitement down the street, cars pulling up quick, putting on the brakes. People getting out and dashing up steps. People hurrying away. Others hurrying up, what’s going on? What’s going on? There too, we learn a baby was born down there a day before yesterday. A new baby, Jr. A new baby, their first. Junior’s been born. There he is. They’ve named him after his Dad. I know now why all that excitement. Then the excitement levels off and tapers down and disappears, and the cooing and gurgling is over and they settle down to living with the baby. But they’ve got the baby every day, every night, every hour, all the time. Sleeping and waking, he’s still there. If it’s asleep, they can peek out of it. If it’s awake, they can pick it out. They still have it. A year goes around and they have a celebration. The table is set up now. So, they bake a little cake and put one candle. That’s his little first birthday, another celebration. Cards come and gifts, and neighbors drop in, another celebration. Second year, two candles appear, another celebration. And they celebrate every year that exciting time when the little new fellow arrived out of the anywhere and came into the here and became their boy.

But I said, have you ever thought of this? The age of six months or eight months or nine months, a sudden stroke of disease falls upon little Junior and he dies. And with broken hearts they lay the little quiet white alabaster statue in silk, white silk and put it away and buried with his ancestors down in the earth. And when the first birthday rolls around, the father sits sober and dejected and trying to be strong and the mother openly weeps. But they bake a little cake. And they turn out the electric light and they light the candles. And they have a little candle there and they light it and they try to think they’ve got him with them. But he’s not there. Finally, in despair, the mother turns her back, throws herself across the bed and sobs. And father comes and stands around awkwardly and doesn’t know what to say. He feels it too. All they’ve got now is a celebration. The babe has died.

And I told those Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians, watch that you don’t lose out of your heart the life of Christ, the life of God, and have nothing left but of celebration. Nothing left but Good Friday and Maundy Thursday and Easter and all the rest. Look out that you don’t lose it all and have nothing but empty arms and empty hearts and a celebration that has no meaning. And I wouldn’t have said it to them if I couldn’t have said it to you.

So, I say to you today, let’s watch it. They were great days, those days, the day He was born, and the day He died and the day He rose and triumphed the Lamb, risen to be a Lion. Those are great days. And we have the marked on the calendar and we celebrate them. But let’s look out. They are not just candles on the cake of a religion that’s dead, for it can happen. The world can be too much with you. And you can sell out your spirituality and be nothing but a hollow shell. And yet you can celebrate and buy flowers and go through the motions and have a celebration and light the candle, but there’s nothing living in it.

But we can have all of these. We can have them both. Mama and Papa can have both. They can have the celebration and the boy, by the grace of God, if he lives–they can have both. So, you and I can have both. We can meet and sing such brilliant and beautiful songs as we’ve been singing this morning about His rising again and opening heaven and closing hell and triumphing over the grave. We can sing them and celebrate, but we can celebrate a living Christ in our midst. We don’t have to have one or the other. We can have both.

So, we today celebrate. We celebrate the Easter of His rising and triumph. But it’s not a hollow empty thing for those who believe and follow Him into reality. He’s still here. He’s with us. He’s with us this morning. And at the Lord’s Supper, we will have what our Episcopal friends call the Real Presence. He’s here, living, a real presence. We do show forth His death. Yes. Till He comes. Yes. In the meantime, His real presence is with us.

We will now go on into the celebration of the Lord’s Supper this Easter morning. And it is for all of God’s children. It’s not for the members of this church only. You may feel free if your heart sings this morning with us that Jesus is risen and He’s yours. May you feel free to share with us and thus make our community complete.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Help spread the word and share this message with your friends

“The Great Double-Cross”

The Great Double Cross

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 25, 1956

And when they had bound him and led Him away and delivered into Pontius Pilate the governor. Then Judas, which had betrayed Him, when he saw that He was condemned, that is the Jesus was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood. And they said, what is that to us? See thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces and said, It is not lawful to put them into the treasury because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel and bought with them the potter’s field to bury strangers in. For that field was called the Field of Blood unto this day.

Now, in this text, we have described one of the most deeply emotional and significant moments in the history of the world. The most important nation in the world, for many reasons, was Israel. And if you would challenge that, then I would read to you these words of Paul, what advantage then hath the Jew or what profit is there in circumcision much every way? Chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. And then he also says over here, that who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law and the service of God and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

Paul believed as all the Old Testament indicates and his Bible teachers admit that the most important nation in the world was Israel. And now at this moment of her greatest trial, when the one for whom she had been called into existence, was standing on trial. And now this great and important nation, blind to the presence of the Messiah, alienated from her God by sin and unbelief, and allied with the greatest pagan empire in the world, allied for a purpose. She hated that empire. But she was allied with that empire for a purpose to destroy a man. A man who had done no evil, no harm, and had done only good all the days of his life.

Now this quiet, meek, harmless Man, this pure, clean, harmless Man stands before them, and they join dirty hands with the pagan empire to destroy this Man. And back of it all now, inciting and arousing and inflaming and provoking and instigating and urging on, there was the cunning, sinister and incredibly wicked being we call the devil. Unbelievably cruel, I say he is, and with restrained cold ferocity. He played nation against nation and man against man as a master on the chessboard, that old serpent, the devil, with his unbelievable cruelty, that one we call a serpent and the dragon. He was out to destroy this Man, but he was unseen and unsuspected and he was working to destroy the Man, but along with the Man, the very nation who was also trying to destroy the Man and unknown to them, the very empire itself. That was the work of the devil. And in order to do it, he had to have a man that he could use. His cruel work of destruction required that he had a man.

And so, he searched for a tool, a vehicle, a victim that he could use and he usually manages to find one. There is the frightening thing about human history, when this wicked one, this shrewd, cunning and all but infinitely wise and infinitely wicked being, sets out to destroy something or someone good. He can’t come directly to it. So, he has to work through a tool and he usually finds a tool.

If Judas had only known that his treachery against Jesus was the suggestion of the devil, he would have recoil in horror. He had been brought up in the church. He had been brought up among the Jews, He had heard the Torah read from his youth. And they had sung, he had heard the songs of David sung as they mounted and sung the songs of ascent on Passover days. Judas was a religious man. But he had no idea that his treachery was not his own suggestion, but was by the instigation of the devil, and that he was being used as a utensil by that devil to do something else, and then that he would be thrown cynically aside, when his usefulness was ended. I say if he had known that, the history of Judas and part of the New Testament might have been different, but he didn’t know that. That was part of the deception and the treachery that he never found it out. It is part of the shrewd wisdom of that sinister, dark spirit, that while we’re being betrayed, we don’t know we’re being betrayed. So, Judas betrays Christ with a kiss.

Now here, it seems to me adds something to all this, that Judas didn’t hate Jesus. Nobody could have lived with Jesus three years and hated Jesus. And something of the way they lived in those days was indicated by the fact that when he told this empire with whom he was allied in black conspiracy to destroy Jesus, when he told them about the sign, he said, the one whom I shall kiss.

Now kissing Jesus certainly was not an unpleasant thing. Nor do I think it was an unusual thing. Jesus was 33 years old. He was the most perfect example of manhood since Adam. His lips were clean. There was no smell of a foul habit upon him. And he never had uttered an unclean word in his life. And his beautiful lips had spoken only kind words of forgiveness and healing and pardon and deliverance. And there he stood in his beautiful manhood. I do not think that kissing Jesus would have been unpleasant. Rather, I think that it would have been a most pleasant thing. And surely it was not unusual because John, many times rested his head affectionately on Jesus’ bosom. And there was nothing especially unusual about this kiss of Judas. He simply said, the one I shall go up and kiss. Obviously, it was not an unusual thing, I repeat.

So, Judas was not mad at our Lord and he didn’t hate him. He betrayed him for two ulterior reasons. He did not betray Him because he said to himself, I want this Jesus to get what’s coming to Him. No, he betrayed him because he wanted to get financial gain and he wanted to secure public favor. And my friends, those who betray Jesus today, I don’t think there are many of them in civilized society that betray Jesus because they hate him. I do not think that. I think they betray Him because there is an ulterior motive. They want something that the treacherous betrayal will bring them. That’s all Judas wants. If Judas could have gotten the public favor of the Empire and the money, he never would have betrayed Jesus. He probably would have run. He was a coward. He would have slunk away like the rest of them did. But he had nothing against Jesus, that proved by his subsequent conduct.

When after he had seen them lead Jesus away, the wave of self-condemnation and warm affection for Jesus came over him and he rushed boldly into the presence of the Pharisees and scribes and priests and said, here take this money back. I’ve been a fool. I’ve been a wicked man. I’ve betrayed this innocent blood. That’s the way it says, this innocent blood. I’ve betrayed this innocent man. Why, there came over him in a wave of memory, all the healings that he’d seen and the deliverances and all the kind, pure words and the deep friendly smiles and the pleasantnesses that they’d had together and the moments that they had stopped to eat some simple meal beneath a tree, or laying down on the moss to sleep, and wait the morning when they could go on their journey. So that Judas had nothing against Jesus. He wasn’t betraying Him for that reason. He had two ulterior reasons, I repeat, he wanted money and he wanted to be popular, and it is so today.

People are betraying Jesus who have nothing against Jesus, who even will speak kindly about Jesus. There are people singing about Jesus on the radio now who have sold out and walked out at church choirs. Walked out of church choirs, who have been leading sopranos or tenor solos or basses. And they’ve walked out of church choirs and sold themselves to the beer interests and are singing beer anthems now to sell beer to the public. They have nothing against Jesus. And in tender moments, they speak and think kindly of Jesus. And their reason for betraying Him is not that they hated him. They wanted money. And there are people who have betrayed Jesus because they wanted to be popular with their high school crowd. And they have nothing against him. And if anybody said anything against Jesus, they’d fight for him, they’d stand up and say, well, now, I’m not a Christian. I’m not very good. But I know better than that. They defend Jesus, if it ever came to that. They have a kindly feeling toward Him. But they want to be popular with their crowd. They want to stand well with the kids, or they want to stand well with the business people with whom they work or in the office force where they work or the little group in their social circle.

So they betray Jesus for popularity and to keep friends and keep from making enemies. It looks like a pretty good motive. It looked like a pretty good motive to please the priests and the elders and the rest of them. It looked like a pretty good thing for Judas to be tolerant and want to get on the side of the religious people. But it led Judas to betray Jesus with a treacherous kiss, an evil kiss, the evilest kiss that ever was given or received from the day that Cain kissed his brother and murdered him, it was the kiss Judas gave to Jesus. And yet it was not because he hated Jesus. It was because there was something he wanted that was ulterior and not directly related, something outside of Jesus that betraying Jesus would get him.

And there is our problem in the world today, and that’s what’s wrong today. People who become Christians and then slip away and go back to the world don’t do it because they hate Jesus or found in Him He wasn’t what they thought He was. They apologize to their own hearts and pray and say these who go on to the air and sing for the devil. They want the money and they want the popularity. But they’re very happy if somebody, knowing the weakness of Christians and the weakness of the religious public generally, will sing a song about Jesus. They’re glad to do it. And they solve their own conscience a little bit and say, well, I’m getting a little chance to witness. Witnessing nothing. They’re getting a chance to throw a little kiss to Jesus, while they sell Him out and treacherously betray Him. If they had followed Him and wanted to continue to follow Him, they’d be back singing in that church choir and teaching a Sunday school class and attending missionary conventions, or they would be out on the field or they’d be in school or they’d be supporting somebody that is. But they couldn’t stand it. And so they’re out there and they’ve betrayed Jesus with a kiss

My brother and sister, this is the cruel double-cross. For when the man Judas had been overcome with self-accusation and felt so deeply condemned, he raced back with that money and said, here, take it. I’ve betrayed innocent blood. And they said to him, what is that to us? See thou to that. And they tempted Judas to betray Christ and then they turned around and betrayed Judas. I say there was the cruelest double-cross in history.

Out in the state of Ohio many years ago, I guess twenty-five. I haven’t seen anything like it traveling through there since. But a few years back when automobiles were not as plentiful and the problems not as great as they are now, they had a practice there. Obviously, the Ohio Highway Commission had arranged it, that when anyone was killed on the highway at a crossing or on a curve or at a crossroads, they would put up a white cross to mark, no markings, just a white cross. And everybody knew I have to slow down here. There’s a cross. A man was killed here.

I once saw a place where five crosses stood beside the highway. Five people had died there. I guess they gave it up later as a bad job and quit. But the theory was that if a man driving along a little too fast, or a little carelessly, saw a white cross, or two white crosses, or three white crosses on the highway, he would say to himself suddenly, oh, this is terrible. This is placed where men die and he would take his foot off the accelerator and would slow down and thus save lives. I suppose it did work for I know it always sobered me when I saw white crosses on the way

Well, I tell you that on the high road of history, my brethren, there stand two black crosses where an apostle fell to mark the place where an apostle in a weak hour sold and betrayed his own highest interests and betrayed His Savior with a kiss. It is the double cross, the two black crosses. And you can come down history from the day Cain murdered Abel, I say, to this present our and you will not find anything as cynically, cruelly frighteningly terrible as the double-cross that the Jews pulled on poor, dumb Judas, who had listened to his heart which had listened to the devil. And he had made himself a utensil, a vehicle; a cheap, weak agent for stronger ones. And he had pulled their chestnuts out of the fire, and then when they no longer could use him, they said, what is that to us? See thou to that, and turn their backs upon him.

And I tell you, I have read considerable in my time, considerable amounts of literature. I think I’m fairly familiar with the writings of Geake and Schiller in German. And I have read Escola and Sophocles in Greek, and I have read all of it. And I have read Plutarch and I have read Dickens and I have read Dostoevsky the Russian and Zola and Victor Hugo the Frenchman, and I have read Shakespeare and the rest of the English, those dramatists and novelists who know how to make things wonderful and terrible and present dramatically and colorfully the deeds of man on earth. But I think I can say without any fear that I shall be successfully contradicted, that nowhere in all the literature of all the geniuses of the world, is there anything so drably unqualifiedly, frighteningly terrible as these words, what is that to us? See thou to that.

And we have the picture here of a little frightened man who for love of money and popularity, had betrayed his Savior and treacherously sold his Redeemer to the murderers. Now this little frightened man, fated to exist forever, and can never cease to be, will always have a memory and always will be able to recall his deed of shame. And always, always he’ll remember the double-cross, always and yet this little man can’t escape. Earth and heaven are against him, and even his friends with whom he had whispered and laughed before time. For don’t think they managed to get Judas just by walking up in the business like proposition and asking him. They cultivated him. They cultivated him behind Jesus’ back.

And these Jews, they stroked their silky beard and flung their phylacteries out to show how religious they were. And they cultivated Judas behind the back of the Savior. And they laughed with him and no doubt invited him to lunch and we’re kind to him and patted his back and whispered to him and they were friends, this little frightened man. And now they turned against him and say, what is that to us? Who are you anyhow? See thou to that. And the stars in their courses, he cursed upon his frightened head. And he rushes out, puts a rope around his neck and hangs himself.

And the Scripture tells us, that poor, foolish, fool that he was, he couldn’t even commit suicide with dignity. His rope broke and he fell on the rocks on the precipice below and tore open abdomen and disemboweled himself. As though the grade wide to heaven above were to say, the blackest double-cross in history has got to have the messiest, most undignified, cheapest death in history. So, there was a man who couldn’t even commit suicide and make it stick. And there was a vehicle, a utensil, a tool, an agent and didn’t know it till the last minute. He didn’t know it, my brother.

And so, he went out, this man Judas, used by that, that incredibly wicked devil, that unbelievably, cynical, cruel dragon. In order to destroy a man would ruin another man. And that picture of a little dark man; why doesn’t some artists paint it? I don’t believe in painting pictures of Jesus. For nobody knows what Jesus looked like. But I could see how a man could paint a picture, and if I had the skill in my right hand to do it, I’d paint the picture of a little, frightened man with the stars above looking down darkly upon him and with the earth frightened as he ran. And with the very rope, refusing to cooperate and the sharp, jagged rock below, telling the story on the highway of the black double-cross, where he betrayed his Savior and was betrayed in turn, a fool of his own lusts and a victim of his own desires. That was Judas and I think I could make a picture out of it.

Now, my friend, Judas has long gone to his own place which is perdition, but the world and sin and the devil are still today betraying men. That was not once for all, that was but a sample dramatized for us, so to speak. But it’s going on all the time. And the world will take a Christian, remember, egged on, instigated by that, that cunning devil, incited and inflamed by the devil, the world will treat a Christian. They will use him. They will stand in his way. They will tear him down. They’ll lead him astray with the professions of friendship and laughter and bravado and hospitality and back-slapping in jokes and flattery. They’ll tear the young Christian down. They’ll steer him away. They’ll shut up his testimony. They will make him ashamed to pray when they eat in the restaurant. They will make him ashamed to carry his New Testament.

And he sneaks to church Sundays and hopes nobody will know that all week he was a coward who was betraying Jesus because he wanted to stand well with the people in the school. The businessman will come to church and try to look pious on Sunday morning. He’ll try to forget that all week long he kept as quiet as a mouse lest his testimony offend somebody. Or that he went along with a shady deal, because he was a member of a partnership that was busy doing shady deals within the law. And so, he kept his mouth shut and said it wasn’t his fault and tried to soothe his conscience. But he’s a vehicle. He’s being used as a utensil. And when he’s old and arrested and battered, and the devil can’t use him anymore, he’ll throw him cynically aside and say, what’s that to me? You see to that. And in that black and awful hour when there appears the black double-cross over the man’s life who said he was a Christian, who gave to missions and gave to the church and brought his family to Sunday school. But he’s a coward and fearful in his daily living.

A young fellow who on the high school football team is ashamed not to do what the rest of them do. And ashamed to let them know that he’s a clean man. The girl with her crowd, shamed to testify and witness, betraying Jesus to stay popular with the crowd.

Oh, W.H. Meyer, that great English poet, in his great piece called St. Paul, he prays, God forbid that I should fall into the treason, the seeking and honor which they gave not Thee. And yet there are those who today, even in Alliance churches, seek honor from the world that they never gave Jesus. And so they betray him and the devil has the black double-cross over their heads waiting for the end. And after they fall into a pit, the world turns its back and says what do we got to do with that? See thou to that.

I say that not in all the literature. Shakespeare never thought of anything as tragic, as terrible, as cynically, bestially cruel as this, that after they’d pulled a man into a pit they could walk away rubbing their hands and say we’ll take this money and buy a potter’s field. We’ll give it to the poor. We’ll cut the corners on this deal and cheat a little, but we’ll give two tenths of it to the Lord. The Lord doesn’t want your dirty two tenths. The Lord will take a whole lot less and bless you for it. But He doesn’t want a dirty two tenths. And he doesn’t want anything that comes anyway but a clean and a holy way. And yet businessmen and professional men and even preachers are willing to be used by Satan. What is that to us? See thou to that.

Let may say to you and particularly you young people. No one is ever your friend who speaks lightly of your Savior. Nobody is ever your friend, no matter how warm and flattering and affectionately that he or she may seem to be. They’re not your friend if they speak lightly of your Savior. They got their attitude and philosophy somewhere else. They got it from this cynically cruel old dragon who with his restrained, cold hatred, he’s out to destroy you and everyone that follows Jesus. No one is ever your friend who criticizes your church. No one is ever your friend who invites you to sin. No one is ever your friend who laughs when you pray. Nobody is your friend who tells you off-colored jokes. No buddy is your friend. No one is your friend, they’re utensils, they’re tools, they’re vehicles, they’re instruments of Satan for your destruction.

And the same Satan that used a weak Judas and then betrayed him and left him to suicide and hell, that same Satan is out to get you. He knows your name and your number. He knows more about you than you know about yourself. He knows where we live. He knows you and he’s going to destroy you as he tried to destroy that good Man, Whose kind, kind words had raised the dead and healed the sick and forgiven harlots. He was out to destroy Him and he did, and he did.

But I see another cross. And over the highway where Judas traveled and where Judas died, I see standing the great double-cross. But I see another cross, not black, not white, but red. And on that cross, I see your Friend, your real Friend. Judas was nobody’s friend. And the world was not Judas’ friend. And Rome was not Israel’s friend. And Israel was not Judas’ friend. But the Friend was the One who was betrayed, the Man, the kind Man that would be so easy to kiss. That kind Man, 33 years old in perfect health. No anemia, no hardening of the arteries, no prostate difficulties, no fallen arches, no baldness, nothing that men get, even good men get. For He was in perfect health. He was God’s Lamb. And according to the Old Testament, the lamb had to be examined four days for defects, and if there were any defects found in it, it wasn’t used. A perfectly healthy lamb, so He was a perfectly healthy Lamb. And they took that healthy, robust Lamb to the cross and nail Him up there. Not an anemic, bloodless creature to die easily, but a full-blooded Man in the fullness of His young manhood whose veins ran hot and full with purest blood.

There is a fountain wrote Cooper, filled with blood drawn from Emanuel’s veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. I say, beside the black crosses that marked the infamy of history I see the red cross and the Lamb dying. A Lamb who isn’t there on that cross now, but who did His work and said, it’s finished and went to the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. And Who when He had by Himself purged our sin, sat down at the right hand of God, from hence waiting till His enemies be made His footstool, there is your Friend.

And there’s the only real friend. The person who tempts you to sin is your enemy, a tool of the devil and not your friend. Your friend is yonder in the glory. Will you turn to your Friend this morning? The only real friend. I’ll be your friend, but I can’t help you see. McAfee would be your friend. We have board members. We have godly people, women and men, they’d help you, but they can’t help, you see. What you need is a Friend that goes beyond, and we can’t go beyond with you. We can only sing when you die and follow you out/ And the undertaker can take three flowers and I can stand with my little book and say, to earth we drop. That’s all we can do with you friend. We’ll be your friend, but we can’t really be your friend because we haven’t the power. But there is a friend. And there He was on that red cross. The black crosses stood alongside of the red cross. One marked the tragic eternal downfall of an apostle, and the other marked the glorious propitiation for the world. Turn to Jesus while you may.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Help spread the word and share this message with your friends

“All Things are Possible With God”

All Things Are Possible With God
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
September 2, 1956

There are two verses, two parts of verses, just words, the words of Jesus. One is found in Mark 10:27, these words, six of them. With God, all things are possible. With God, all things are possible. And then in the ninth chapter, the 23rd verse, all things are possible to him that believeth.

Now, there is the same thing said about God and about the believing man: all things are possible. I see no poetry here, no figure here. This is not figurative language. It is blunt statement of truth. The whole passage is without figure or metaphor. We need not discount this in any wise. It stands just as it is bluntly, all things are possible to him that believeth, and all things are possible with God.

Now, the text, all things are possible with God, is one that we can take standing up and without a problem, as I have pointed out on a previous occasion some, I think, years back now, that nobody ever feels when he hears the text, with God all things are possible, that he’s been jarred in it. He does not stagger at that statement through unbelief. With God all things are possible. The eternal God, the omnipotent God, the God who is plenipotent, who has all the potency that there is, all the power that exists is in God. And nobody feels jarred or disturbed. Nobody runs to a pastor and says, what does this mean? Nobody writes to an editor and says, will you please give your opinion of verse so and so, all things are possible with God? Everybody knows that’s true, and nobody questions it. That is, anybody who’s ever read the Bible at all or been brought up in the Christian tradition.

But the other verse, all things are possible to him that hath faith. Now, we might just as well say that we’re in trouble here. There isn’t any use to look pious and impassive and pretend that this also is easy for us and it’s old stuff. It’s nothing of the sort. It is very difficult for the human mind to grasp, even the Christian, human mind, because it says the same thing about a believing man that it says about God. It states that the God of heaven can do everything. And then it states that the man who believes can do everything.

Now, God declares His total ability to do, His total ability to do. I’ve been praying over and wondering what I should be talking to the people in Canada about as they’re gathered, will be gathered there from all over. And there will be men there, very greatly my superior in every possible way that I know. Such men as Dr. Jones and this Hashi, a very famous theologian from Switzerland. And I can’t go there and hope to be able to stand up along with those very great and learned and gifted men. And I have wondered whether maybe I shouldn’t just go there and talk about God. I wonder if that might not be, just go there and talk about God. Because they usually don’t do that. They find God in everything, but they don’t talk about God too much. Maybe that will be my contribution, just go there and talk about the Triune God. And among the things that I want to say, will be that God declares His total ability to do. God can do every thing. That is, He can do everything that He desires to do.

Believing in the omnipotence of Deity does not require us to believe that God can do what He does not will to do. God cannot, for instance, tell a lie. God cannot, for instance, break a promise. But anything God wills to do, God has total ability to do. And no thing and no matter and no body and no circumstance or no law and no enemy and no opposition from anywhere can stop God from doing exactly what He wills to do. Now, we want to get that settled. The great God whose we are and whom we call Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, can do whatever He wills to do and all that He wills to do.

But now the same thing is true of him that believeth. God shares His omnipotence with that person He calls, him that believeth. With whom does God share His omnipotence with? About whom does God say, he’s equal to me, in a relative way and by My grace and permission and promise, he can do what I can do. Or because I do what I do through him, about whom does He thus speak? Is it a genius? Is it some religious genius more brilliant? No, he could be a genius, but it’s not with geniuses that God shares his total ability to do. Not with some powerful personality.

I’ve said I suppose too often already here, that the cult of personality has become a deadly and dangerous thing in our time. That this cult of personality that magnifies Apollos and puts a leay around his neck, of the fragrant flowers and offers sacrifice to him, this has become a dangerous thing. And God did not say that man of powerful personality can do whatsoever he wills. He said, that the man who believeth has the power to do whatsoever he will.

Now, this person may not be a superior one. And he may be no wiser and no more influential and no more powerful than the rank and file, because the power is not his. The power belongs to God. You see, if I know that the power belongs to God, this takes all the strain off so there isn’t any effort A man walks in with a subconscious feeling, partly conscious that he’s got to do it, he attempts to do it either by forcing his voice or by gesticulations or by some other method. He tries to do, by his own power, that which only God can do.

Now, gestures and gesticulations are normal. You and I have that much Jew in us that when we make a point we like to do it with our hands. And we talk with our hands and that’s perfectly normal and all right. But there is such a thing as going into a pulpit or before a class or wherever, and trying by putting what they call, body english into it. Do you know what body english is? It’s to hit it and then turn and hope and help the thing to go where it ought to go by sheer physical, by overpowering the thing. But after it’s left the club, you can’t do a thing with it then. But people try that, as I try on an airplane to keep the thing balanced. I always lean the other way from the way it turns. If they bank to the left, I lean hard to the right so it won’t turn over. But that’s strictly and purely a fallacy of the mind.

And we can try in our prayers to strain and wrestle with God and get things done by our power. My brethren, the Bible didn’t say, all things are possible with God, and all things are possible with the man or woman who can wrestle enough. He said, All things are possible to him that believeth. We ought again to release wonderful, marvelous faith into the church of Christ and see what faith can do. That is, not the faith you hear about over the radio: somebody upstairs likes me. Not that kind of pagan faith, but the faith in God. Now, this takes, I say, all the strain off so that you’re not trying to do it. And it takes all the glory away from you. I wonder how many people there are who serve God sheerly for God Almighty’s own glory without wanting a little cut on their own. Now, I seriously do.

I wonder how many men write a Christian book and commit it to God so completely that they’re willing for it to fail? I wonder how many people teach and commit it to God so completing that they’re willing to fail if God orders it. Mostly we want to serve God by winning and keeping up a good front ourselves. But it should not be because the power belongs to God and to Him alone, and all the glory must be taken away from you or me. Remember this, I am Jehovah and there is no other and My glory will I not share with another. And the work that is being done in the world, the truly eternal work that is being done, is being done only by those who don’t want any share in God’s glory, but give all the glory to the Godhead, to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Now, our Lord Jesus Christ is absolute Master. I wish you’d read your Bible with that in mind. I wish you’d read your New Testament more. Read Acts and read Colossians and learn how God has elevated His Son to the right hand of power. And even while He walked on the earth, He manifested His absolute mastery over everything. Over the realm of nature, the wind and the sea obeyed Him. And over human flesh, He healed the sick. And over the soul, He forgave sins. And over the spirit, He cast out devils. And in the realm of the dead, for He spoke and the dead walked out of their graves alive. So, our Lord had all power. He manifested it while he walked on Earth. And when He went to the right hand of God, if there was such a thing as any realm where God had for the moment in His plan, restrained Him, He took those restraints off. Then Jesus said, all authority is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. And then He said, as my Father sent me, so send I you. And in Mark 16:20, these disciples believed this and they went forth, says the Scripture, and preached everywhere. And the Lord went with them, confirming the word with signs following.

Now, it says that in the Book of Mark, but somebody would want to tell us that that was for the Apostles and belonged to another day. Isn’t it strange? I pointed out one time, just at the conclusion of a sermon, how unbelief works. Unbelief says somewhere else, but not here. Some other time, but not now. Some other people but not us. And I had the pleasure of hearing that sermon preached back to me by a young preacher who’d heard that and develop them into a beautiful sermon. I heard it. He had to point. And it was a good sermon, all right, because that’s the way unbelief does. Unbelief is willing to believe anything provided it isn’t now. Anything, provided it isn’t here. Anything, provided it isn’t us.

And there are those of you listening to me right now that pray for the Danis and the unpronounceables up there in the Philippines. And you wouldn’t be even a little surprised if the message came that God had done wonders there. But you can’t bring yourself to believe God will do wonders here. Do you know that? If it’s far enough away, you’ll believe it. But if it comes close enough, you begin to stagger. No doubt if Abraham had heard a story back in antediluvian days, an old man, 100, with a wife, 90, had had a child. He’d have taken it in stride. But it was something else when God said to the old man, your wife, Sarah shall have a son.

Now brethren, let’s get away from this thing. And let’s remember that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God of the Reformers and the God of the Revivalists and the God of the great pioneer missionaries. That is our God. He is our God. But you say, yes, but they deserve it. You see, brethren, we still have the Roman Catholic idea that the saints are much more beloved than we are. That if you were virtuous enough to be a saint, God loved you more and would do more for you. But that is a subtle suggestion that God gives us things because we’re saintly.

But the Bible doesn’t teach that. The Bible teaches that God gives us things because God is good and we’re in need and grace operates. And Saint Augustine, could not get a thing that you can get from God. St. Augustine never had one-inch closer entrée to God Almighty than you have right now. The well need not a physician. The healthy man doesn’t need a doctor. It’s the sick man. And I believe we have a right, and I have written it into my little prayer book, and I take it before God. I believe we have a right to believe that God will bless us in inverse proportion to how bad we’ve been. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

What do I mean by that strange expression, in inverse proportion? I mean that I have a right to go to God and say, O God, You boasted about your grace and your mercy and your willingness out of your own good heart to bless people that didn’t deserve it. Well, I’m a candidate. I’m the worst and therefore God give me the most. I believe we have a right to go, and I think God would smile and listen if we went to Him and say I’m bringing Thee no soft odors. I’m bringing Thee no garments redolent of sainthood. I am bringing Thee no past that can be written in a book. I am bringing Thee a past that I don’t want written in a book. And I am bringing Thee not the smell of heaven but the savor of earth. I’m bringing Thee raggedness and scattered, staggered and unworthiness. And now God, make good on your promise and bless me most because I’m worse. And give me greater help because I need it the most.

I believe that God smiles at that kind of praying to go slithering into the presence of God with a waxy smile and say, God, I’m not as other men. This harlot over here, this publican over there, that politician over yonder, I’ve always been a good boy and stayed in church. And I have five Bibles at home that I earned in Sunday school. And you know, Father, that I never did anything worse than drink a bottle of Coke. And I’m a pretty good boy, Lord, I think God will turn His back on that kind of self-righteousness, but knowing what I am and knowing what we are. But because Jesus Christ’s blood is of infinite capacity to purchase merits for us, we go straight into the presence of God paying no attention to the merits of the saints.

Don’t allow yourself to be hooked by that old error that the saints piled up merits. If the saints got their merits, they would all be in hell now, every last one of them. If they got only what they deserved from Augustine and St. Teresa, and all down to this present hour, they’d all be in hell and they all knew it and all said so. And they were the first ones to say so. I’ve got their lives and devotional works and I read them. I know what they believed. And this idea that there is a what they call it, a superarrogationist idea that you pile up merits.

But I and Brother Thomas and Brother Chase and Brother McAfee were four good boys and when we die, we’ll leave behind us a little merit. Which if you can get it, it will help you. Paganism, my brethren. There’s not a line in the Scripture about it. Its paganism. I will not leave any merits behind me. I’ll leave demerits, 100% solid. But I have all the merits of a risen Jesus, all the merits of a risen Jesus. Not superarrogation, but vicarious death and resurrection. It gives me everything that I need, everything, everything.

Jesus Christ is made to me all I need. All I need, He alone is all my plea. Here’s all I need, wisdom, righteousness and power, holiness forevermore. My redemption, full and sure, He is all I need. And the only plea we have and the only one we need before our Father’s face, because I was a guilty sinner, but Jesus died for me. And the Father hears my prayer and answers it as if I had been an unfallen angel in heaven above and had never known the pollution of iniquity. He restores moral innocency through His forgiving love and establishes us so that we can talk to Him. And we can get things from Him if you want to put it on that low level.

Well, he says, they went everywhere and the Lord went with them. And the Lord confirmed everything and proved to them that He meant what He said when He said that everything they needed they could have just as He could do anything He wanted to do. Now where may we expect that power in the next seven minutes? Where may we expect it in personal salvation and life? No sin, no habit, no weakness, nothing, can stop the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing can stop the Lord Jesus Christ.

Can you imagine a gnat flying around trying to escape a nighthawk? A nighthawk sails and bank and turn and curve and make their beeping sound all over Chicago. You’re not naturalist enough to know when a nighthawk is flying. He’s hunting gnats. He eats them, lives off of them. That’s where he gets his food. He doesn’t sit down on the dirty earth and pecks. He goes up there and flies around takes it on the wing.

Well suppose that this gnat has escaped a night hawk and he sees a DC-7 roaring in and says I’m going to bring that one down and he flies into the propeller. You know what happens to him. He’s history from that moment on. And when anything says, well God Almighty, He can’t do it. You say, God can’t do it brother. God in His pity may close His eyes and wait so as not to crush you, but God can do anything He wants to do. Don’t think he can’t. And there isn’t an enemy anywhere that can stop Him.

Have you notice the communists have begun to talk like the Nazis now, boastfully, boasting. Hitler used to say I’m about run out of patience now. You, your country over there, I’m about run out of patience. He ran out of patience and then he ran out of time. And the day that he said, we know how to deal with you Bible-carrying Christians. I said, God thank you. He said it. He said it God. I knew he was finished. I knew he was done the day that he said, we know how to deal with you Bible-carrying Christians. And they’re still carrying Bibles in Germany. Hitler has been in hell, oh, these twelve years, eleven.

Brethren, there isn’t anything that can stop God. And don’t you ever for a moment think a thing is too big for God to do–nothing. All things are possible to him that believeth. And in our common needs, do you believe God is willing to help you in your common needs? I don’t want to stir you up to start praying about your little household affairs all the time. Put those in the hands of God and trust His providence. That’s the best way to handle that. But when the crisis comes, God is just as willing to help you with your household work as He is to help a missionary on the field or an angel at His right hand. I believe that God is perfectly willing to help.

We had a red-headed treasurer in this church in Indianapolis many years ago. I don’t know whether brother Thomas would know him. What was his name? I could think of it, Mr. Keller. And he was a Christian, a happy Christian brother. And you know how he got converted? He went to an Alliance meeting. And there was testimony meeting, and a dear old housewife, dear old lady got up and gave a testimony. And she said, I’d like to say to the glory of God, that I put my wash on my front porch for the laundry man and somebody stole it. And she said, I got on my knees and I said, God, I can’t afford to lose that. Please return it to me. And she said it was returned and placed back on my porch. Thank God, and she sat down. And this redhead sat there saying to himself, what infinite crust this is that God Almighty, the great God Almighty should be interested in a bag of wet wash. What does God care about that? But it got ahold of his hide nevertheless and it wasn’t very long until he gave himself to the Lord and was converted. I believe in these things, brethren, with all of my heart.

Why, don’t you remember that passage in the 12th of Acts when the Lord said to the angel, my boy Peter is in prison. Go down. And the angel started off, and just a minute He said, take a cloak with you. He said, take a cloak. So he took a cloak down. And he waked Peter and said, here, put this cloak on you. And then let him out through the gates. Who thought about the cloak? The angel? No. God thought about it.

And then think of that poor old prophet out there. Forty days journey from nowhere, in the woods. He had said he had run out of food and ran so far there wasn’t no food, and he’d been driven to dig for roots. But God said to an angel, here, go down and bake some pancakes for my boy Elijah. And down came the angel on broad white wings. And what did it do? Play a pipe organ or paint a picture or write a poem? No, it baked cakes for a prophet. There isn’t anything too small for God to be concerned with.

Dear old little old Julian; Ray calls her, my girlfriend. She’s been dead 600 years and I carry her little book around with me and read what she said about the Lord. She said, O Lord, Thou wilt never refuse to humble Thyself and serve in the least particular of our humble nature. And there isn’t anything in our poor nature, that the Lord won’t serve us in. She said, though He be so high, yet does He meek Himself to be so homely with poor sinners like us. Homely of course means familiar at home life. Well, she’s right. And there isn’t a thing, there isn’t a thing that God isn’t interested in, your common needs.

Now, I don’t mean that I want you to get your eyes on this world’s goods and begin to belabor God with requests for all things. The time was when a man came to Jesus and said, will you tell my brother that he divide? And the Lord knew He had a bad man on His hands. So, He said, who made me a divider over you and he turned His back and walked away, perfectly willing to help a woman find her wet wash. Perfectly willing to humble Himself to the lowest needs of our human nature, but unwilling to divide with a covetous man, and unwilling to become a lawyer to try to get a man, a wicked man who wanted money. No, God isn’t interested in that.

So don’t take advantage of what I’ve said and start any of this asking God to get your hair back. I know there’s one cult that promises that if you write them, I mean it. They say, write in and send us something and we’ll send you something and then you can get your hair back. And thank God, he counts every hair when it falls. He knows where they are, doesn’t he? I’m not worried about that. And I don’t want my hair back. I’ll go redhead one of these days.

And then in our services, our services. I think I ought to repent of something. Brother McAfee ribs me about it, and kids me. When I have a very important, what I consider to be a very important engagement coming up like the one in Canada soon, I sweat under it. And I say, oh, why did I promised to go. Brother McAfee said, now it’s starting. He knows that I have a little worrying to do. But I think that’s sinful. I think I ought to ask God to forgive me and I have for that matter. And I think I ought to quit it, because why should I worry when the Lord is going with me? And if I’ve got to do it, I’ll buy a ticket to San Francisco. But if I don’t have to do it, why should I worry? It just goes to prove Adam isn’t as dead as I wish he was. But I pray that God will give me faith to know that in my God-appointed work, I don’t have to do it. God does it. And when God does it why should I worry?

I preached before a bishop one time. That is, I thought I was going to preach before him, but he couldn’t make it. And I tell you, I sweat under that. And I have preached a few times in my life before some people so important that I felt that I couldn’t make it. But all that’s flesh. Who are they anyhow? No matter how many miters they have on their heads, they have still got breath in their nostrils. And no matter how many grandiose titles they’ve earned for themselves, they still have breath in their nostrils. And why should one man with breath in his nostrils be afraid of another man with breath in his nostril?

So, when your God-appointed task, remember with me, nothing is impossible to him that believeth. Nothing is impossible. But why do so few take advantage of it? In our church, God, let me live as I trust you will. I have no plans otherwise for the next while. When I come back, I want to preach some sermons. And I believe we’ve got a future. And I believe we’re going to see a great Fall and Winter. But if we do, it won’t be because anybody winds himself up tight. It’ll be because we learned that with God all things are possible and all things are possible to them that believe. Whether we’re known abroad or whether we’re not known round the corner of our own street, God isn’t worrying about popularity or fame. Any of His children can go to Him for anything and He will answer in his will.

So, we serve God, and while God owes us nothing yet God in His kind grace puts Himself under obligation to us where he has to listen. He in His infinite grace puts Himself under obligation so that He must hear us. Shall we not then pray these days just ahead of us? And let’s believe God all up and down these streets. They’ve come in over the last year, hundreds and hundreds of them. Children half-grown, little ones, hundreds, and they swarmed the streets. And there’s nobody reaching them and nobody helping them.

Why can this church take it on ourselves instead of our looking like a bird about to fly and say, we’ve got to go south. Why can’t we rather say, God sent them for us to evangelize? I believe, if we’ll believe, we’d see God do wonders yet in this church. I have that confidence that God will do wonders. I do not expect God, I do not expect God, ever expect that this shall be a popular church where the multitudes will flock. I’m no Johnny Ray nor Elvis Presley. Neither is McAfee. And so they’re not going to come in and faint and scream. We don’t carry on like that. I’m not thinking about size. I’m thinking about depth and intensity and permanence of service at home and unto the ends of the world. And all things are possible to God. And everything is possible to what? Him that believeth. Let’s do some believing and release the infinite powers of God into our life and into our church.

Now, Father, we pray thy blessing upon us. Oh, we scatter from this little building to so many places, so many responsibilities, obligations, and callings. Back to school for many. Oh, we pray that we’ll go with confidence that we’re not orphans of the storm. That we’re not bits of matter animated for a period, floating in space. That we’re sons and daughters of a God who has got His eye on every one of us and knows our name and number and face. And our High Priest carries our name on His shoulder and on His breast and on His forehead before the presence of God. Before the face of the Father stands our great High Priest, and we need no merit of saints. We need nothing but the merit of the great High Priest.

We thank Thee we can enter boldly into the throne of grace and receive mercy and grace to help in time of need. For He knoweth our infirmities, feels all the pinch and pressure of our weaknesses, for He is Himself, man and walked among us. Send us out with great hope and encouragement. Send these young people back to school, chins up and knees bent and eyes bright, knowing that the Lord is on their side and grace, infinite matchless grace, is greater than all their sins. And send us back to service and out to our labors confidently expecting we shall see the gifts of the Spirit restored to this church and that we shall see the mighty power of a risen Christ operating in this church. We ask these things in His name. Let us stand please.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Help spread the word and share this message with your friends

“The Sense of the Presence of God”

The Sense of the Presence of God

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 4, 1956

In Matthew, the 18th chapter, verses 19 and 20, again, I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.

And in John 14:9, these words, Philip saith unto Him, Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, have I been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. And how saith thou then show us the Father. Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in Me. The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works. And then, in the eleventh chapter of 1 Corinthians, he that eateth and drinketh, unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world.

Now there has been, I suppose, since Adam fled to the trees of the garden, an age-old longing to find God. Philip expressed it when he said, Lord, show us the Father. And this longing seems to be universal. Though, along with it, there is also a sin-born fear of God so that the fallen race of men is caught between fascination and fear. Fascination, I wonder if it does not root back into the Biblical doctrine of the Divine Image, that we were made in the image of God. And that which was made in the image of another, has a desire to look in on and see that Other in whose image he was made. It is the desire of the flowing river to look back into the fountain from which it came. This is the fascination, the longing to find God. But because man has sinned, he is also afraid of God, and so like Adam flees among the trees of the garden.

Now, some particularly, the Greeks, thought of God as dwelling in the local habitation. And so, they had their sacred mount, or they had their grove or rocky peak. And they thought of God as dwelling there. And they came betimes to worship God who dwelt in the mount or in the grove or on that rocky peak. And as they approached it, the thought that God was actually there, transported them. And history tells us of some of their ecstatic songs and dances as they approached the holy place as they considered it. And they brought along with them heifers with garlands of flowers around their necks as the poet says, lowing to the skies. And they’re in front of that mount or grove or peak, they sacrificed reverently, these heifers. And the poets of the day wrote verse to their deities, and sang them and the people saying them. This was the effort of men who are lost and away from God, but who are caught in the strange fascination that God exerts over the minds of men, and long to find Him and could not.

And then God brought the Truth to the world. And He swept away errors and fancies and shadows. And He showed what the Old Testament had hinted at, what it had pointed to and what it had prepared us for. That God should appear, not on a mount or in a grove, but that He should appear in the form of a man. And His name shall be called Emmanuel. And He could say, he that have seen Me hath seen the Father.

And so now, instead of there being a holy mount where they lead the lowing heifers, instead of there being a holy grove where the poets compose their hymns to the deities, God now dwells in a man, and that Man is the focal point of manifestation. As man, He is I say, that focal point of manifestation, and as God, that point may be anywhere. So, that where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them.

Now, this is the truth as over against all of the dim ideas that were wrought out of the darkness and confusion of unregenerate minds. That God has given us a focal point where He dwells. That God is everywhere, I think, is believed by Jew and Christian, but that there is a point of Manifestation, is believed also by Christians. And that point, that focal point of manifestation is Jesus Christ our Lord. And as God. I repeat, that point may be anywhere. He that seeks the throne of grace findeth that throne in every place. And so, He says, if you’re gathered in my name, I am with you. And if ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it.

Now, the practice of the first Christians was very simple. They met in the name of a Man who they conceived and believed to be the focal point of God’s manifest presence. They met in His name. That was their mount and their grove and their bush and their mercy seat and their Sanctum Sanctorum, their holy place. That Man was all that the Greeks had looked after and wanted and all that the Jews had sought after if happily they might find Him. He was all that. And so, when they met together, they met in His name. And that Man, they said, had died to take away the separating wall of sin, and so removed the fear, but still preserved the fascination.

So those early Christians were not afraid of God. They did not bring blood, for that blood, they said, was already shed by the man who was also God and the God who was also man. And therefore, they were not afraid of God, but they still had that reverent fascination that brought them as a magnetic attraction. As by a magnetic attraction, it brought them to God. And they could not find this God by going into the mount, for He was not in the mount. They could not find Him and satisfy their desire for His presence by going into a grove somewhere, for He did not dwell in groves. They could not satisfy themselves by going into a building, because Paul plainly said, God dwelleth not in temples made by hands. But they satisfied that by coming together in His name. And wherever they came together in His name, He was there, so that their holy place was wherever a group of Christians were. Their sacred mount was wherever Christians came up together in the name of the Lord.

And now they said, this Man is back from death. And though He died, He’s dead no longer. And though He was in the grave, He’s out now. And He’s in full life and power forevermore. And so, they gathered to Him knowing that He was there. Not trying to persuade Him to come, but knowing that He was there, and knowing that all Deity was present. Hidden from sight, as He was hidden once in the pillar of cloud and fire that hovered over Israel. Hidden from sight, but all Deity there. He that has seen Me hath seen the Father. And they were all with one accord in one place.

And while they thus were gathered together unto Him, the focal point of the manifested Diety, suddenly, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. And in the 13th of Acts, they ministered to the Lord and prayed, and the Spirit said, separate me, Barnabas and Saul. Remember that in gathering together, they had no other purpose. It is wrong for Christians to meet with any other purpose, than to minister to the Lord. To recognize that here is their Holy Mount. Here is their Sacred Grove. Here is their Promontory Peak sticking up against the sky where the ancient Greeks used to feign that the deities dwelt and look down. And now, this is all swept away, I repeat, and this assembly, this gathering together is the Holy Mount. This is the Holy Grove. This is the Sacred Hill, and they ministered to the Lord. It might have been hidden away somewhere for fear of the Romans or the Jews. It may have been in somebody’s house. It may have been in a synagogue. It may have been in a building, rented or borrowed or bought. Wherever it was, it was not the building. For being God, He could be anywhere. But they ministered to the Lord and they prayed.

Now, I read the passage from the book of First Corinthians that says that there was trouble in the Corinthian church, because they met without recognizing that Presence, not discerning the Lord’s body. I was afraid that I could be wrong on this, so I looked it up very carefully, to see whether I was right or whether this was simply speculation on my part. And I find that the Ellicott Commentary says almost the same thing, that they met without recognizing the Presence. They did not, were not required to believe that the bread and wine were God. But they were required to believe that God was present where Christians met to serve the bread and wine.

And because they did not recognize this and would not, therefore, they were in trouble. And they met together for other purposes than that of finding God at that focal point of manifestation in the person of His Son. He that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation, judgment is the word, to himself, not discerning the presence of the Lord. Not knowing that this is the Lord’s body, of which He is the Head. And he said, the result of this unworthy gathering together was that some of those Christians were weak and sickly, and some actually died. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world.

Paul, in another place said that he turned a certain man who was a Christian, over to the devil for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. I am not of those who believe that all sickness is of the devil, but I am of those who believe that God sometimes chastens and causes His people, actually, to be sick and to die, perhaps before their time as a judgment upon them lest they should go on to be condemned with the world. And in this instance, the judgment was upon them because they were too carnal, too worldly, too social-minded, too unspiritual, to recognize that when Christians met, they ought to at least have the reverence that a Greek had when he led a heifer to the sacred grove. They ought to at least have the reverence that a Greek poet had when he lay irreverently under the trees and compose sonnets to His deity. That when they came together, they ought to have at least the reverence that a high priest of the Old Testament had when he approached the sacred holy place, and with blood, put blood upon the mercy seat. And they didn’t. They came in another way. This sense of the Presence wasn’t in them. And so, the purpose and meaning of the communion dimmed down.

And it was not only true there, but in other churches as set forth in Revelation one, and two and three, it really is, Revelation two and three, the letters to the seven churches. He said that their love cooled. You’ve left your first love. And he said that their moral lives had degenerated. And he said their doctrines had wavered, so that they suffered that woman Jezebel to teach them to commit spiritual fornication and eat things offered to idols. And he said that they had the name that they lived, but they were dead, because they recognized not the Presence and the gathering together as believers to the holy mount, the coming up to Zion’s Hill, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. This had passed away from them, and this was why Christ appeared with eyes of the flame of fire and feet like unto fine brass to trample, and with a two-edged sword in his mouth to slay. Where just before the opening of those condemnatory letters, in which he praised and blamed and pleaded for them to get right, he revealed Himself as a judge and showed the two-edged sword and the feet like unto burnished brass.

And I tell you, my brethren, that there must be judgment before there can be blessing. And I pray that we may be wise enough to escape the sharp edge of that sword. I pray that we may be wise enough to avoid the frightful crushing of those trampling feet. I pray that when the eyes of the Flame of Fire look into our hearts and question why we’re here, that our motive will be found pure and holy.

Now, if this church is a real church, it is a communion, not an institution. Not an institution set up merely organized and established. Anybody can organize a church–anybody. Anybody can set up a church, get a pastor, elect a board. Anybody can organize by getting a group together, voting in a constitution and getting thus established. Anybody can set up a church. And anybody can give the offices, the body can give to the officers certain authority. The offices of authority may be set up, pastors, deacons, elders, and so on. Anybody can thus organize an institution. But unless that institution is also a communion, it is not a New Testament church.

Now, a New Testament church must be, and if this church is to be a New Testament Church, it must be a company drawn together with a fascination, the magnetic fascination of the desire to see God, to feel God, to hear God, to be where God is, as the Greeks in reverence approached their sacred place. As the Jews in reverence approached their holy place, their Sanctorum.

So, a church is a company of people who have been drawn together by the age-old and ever-new desire to be where God is. A company drawn together, I say, to see and hear and feel God appearing in the Man. Not in the preacher, not in the deacon nor elder, but God appearing in that Man, back from the dead, eternally alive.

That is the Bush before which we kneel. That is the Mercy Seat to which we approach. That is the Presence. And remember that He is literally present, though not physically present. It is a mistake to imagine that He is physically present. Some people approach the communion with great awe because they think they’re approaching the physical presence of God. But the Bible teaches us, not that He’s physically present, but that He is literally present, and this then is the Bush. God was not physically present in the burning bush. He was not physically present between the wings of the cherubim. He was not physically present in the cloud and fire. But in all three, He was literally present.

And so, our Lord is literally present. This Man who is the focal point of divine manifestation, is here. And if we are here for any other reason, there may be two kinds of reasons that could bring us here. If the reason is humanly worldly, but not spiritual, then, we may not be judged or punished. That is, if we come to hear a man, or if we come to hear music, or if we come for social fellowship, that is a humanly worthy reason, though it is not a spiritual reason. And therefore, we may not be judged, but we will miss the glory. That is all. We will miss the glory. And if our coming together is an unworthy reason, then we had better heed Paul’s warning. If there’s anybody present, I don’t think it’s true of this fellowship. I want to be fair and say that. But if, and those times when women go to church to show their garments, they had better look out for the warning of Paul when he says, for this cause, many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep. If they’re truly Christians, they will be judged severely lest they perish with the world. And if there are other reasons. If there should be those who attend a church because it affords them a group that they may exploit to sell life insurance or real estate, or books. If that’s the purpose, if that’s it, then, my brethren, I say that we had better look out. For those reasons are unworthy reasons. And the warning of Paul is for you and me.

So, I ask you this morning before communion, let us try to confront the Presence. Let us try to, by faith, not bring Him here. For we don’t have to do that. He is here. He is here in the presence of that divine Man who is the point of manifestation. But that we might have faith to know and discern that He is here. I think “discern” is the word Paul used and discern is the word I want. Let us have faith to discern the Presence and that this is the body of which He is the Head. And that this is a holy place after the manner of the holy place of the Old Testament temple. And let us forgive each other as God hath, for Christ’s sake, forgiven us.

Will you look in your own heart and see? Is there a grudge which you hold against anyone? You say yes, there is, but that person has never repented. You must not wait to let a person repent. But you must, you must forgive, waiting for that person to repent. And then we must vow obedience before our God. We must put away this scattering of our attention, this scattering of our attention.

Last Sunday night I preached with a young man and a young woman on the back seat over on this side, near what we call the booth, who smiled at each other and passed hands back and forth all during my most serious sermon. I don’t know who they were. I don’t see as well as some people. That is, as far as some people, so I could only see them. I could not make out their faces. I know this happened.

Now, I’m not saying this churlishly, because I suppose there isn’t an old staid deacon anywhere in the world that at some time in his life maybe didn’t steal a hand over, to hold the hand of his girl or his young wife while the service went on. So, I’m not condemning too severely. I’m only saying, brethren, that those are not good reasons for going to church.

This old man who used to be pastor of the little church that met in the building next door, his name was Joseph Hogue, a sharp-tongued old Irishman. And during the sermon, he suddenly stopped and said, young man, if you want to hold that girl’s hand, take her out back to the tabernacle. And I can see what he meant. If this was their reason for being in church, then they had no ancient tradition behind them at all. They were poor mavericks, poor, spiritual mavericks, unbranded and unowned and unclaimed. They had no tradition behind them. They had no Scripture behind them. They had no, they had nothing behind them or underneath them. They were simply there for another purpose, a purpose incidentally, which certainly isn’t evil. But a purpose which has nothing whatsoever to do with this fascination that brings men to the holy place, and that made the man of God say, show us the Father and we’ll be satisfied. And the answer was, have you been so long with me and you’ve not yet discovered the Father? Don’t you know that I am the answer to all the longings of Greeks and Hindus and Egyptians and Persians, and Jews? Don’t you know that I am the Holy Place after which they longed?

Don’t you know, that they sought the Father with fascination? Don’t you know you found Him? Don’t you know that He’s here, and that, I, the Son of the Eternal Father, that I am the Holy Place? Haven’t you found that out, Philip? Well, Philip hadn’t and I don’t think they did until the Holy Spirit had come. But when the Holy Spirit came, they certainly knew it immediately, then. And after that, they only met in that sacred Name. My brethren, shall we not this morning try not to bring, but to have a sense of the loving nearness of the Savior instantaneously bestowed.

Now, I say this to you, that if you could have a baptism of a sense of the presence of the ancient God who made the heaven and the earth and holds the world in His hands, the Ancient of Days, Jehovah. If you could have a sense of His presence, it would change your life from this moment on as long as you live. It would be like giving a weak, tired, sick man an injection of the elixir of life. It would change you so completely. It would elevate you and purify you and deliver you from the primals of carnal flesh to a point where your life would be one, radiant fascination from this hour on. May God grant this to us. Not His presence, but a sense of His presence.

We’re met here as Christians. We’re met here. The Communion will be celebrated. Somebody would say, but that isn’t the way they celebrated communion in my church, and I don’t quite think that the way you do it is the way it was done in the New Testament.

Well, my frank answer to you is, dear brethren, I don’t know. I know that the Bible tells us that we’re to drink of the cup and break the bread, but it doesn’t tell us how. And it’s very careful not to lay down a rigid, how to do it rule. For if the Bible had laid down that rigid, how to do it rule with all the ingredients carefully present, we would have worshipped it as the Jews worshipped the old brazen serpent. But he left it to the sanctified wisdom of any local assembly that ever met.

I remember when dear old Mrs. Jefferson was still alive. That I think brother McAfee and I went out to serve her communion. She was an old Lutheran, And the sense of the presence being in the communion was strong in her mind. And when, though she was a quiet little woman, when we unwrapped what we call the elements and knelt before her, something came over that little woman that was awe-inspiring. She felt God was there. God was there.

I know of a Roman Catholic, who still lives down here, who went by this church one day when the prayer band was meeting, and heard them sing and came in and came to a service and was converted, and still lives down there. That little old woman who until recently was sending her money to missions through the church and does write to my wife occasionally, happy, joyful, Christian letters.  We took communion down there to that little old lady. And she said, oh, oh, I didn’t bathe this morning. She said, I should have bathed this morning if I’m going to have the communion. And she’s so tired and little and old, and her poor messed up house is such a mess, that we assured her, oh, you don’t have to worry about that. The Lord doesn’t look on the body. The Lord looks on the heart. But imagine will you, the reverence that that little woman had, that she didn’t want even to take communion without first she had done all she could do to put away any soil that might be on her.

Well, it’s not the body, but it’s the spirit, it’s the soul. And so, here we’re gathered. And I pray, I pray that this sense of a loving nearness of the Savior may be instantaneously bestowed upon some of you. And we’ll do the way we know, the best way we know. There might be four or five other possible ways. Some places, everybody comes to the front. Some places, they have one cup. Some places, they come down in sections and groups. There are different ways of doing it. Some places they sit up and sit around and there’s no nothing like this physically. But that isn’t important.

What is important is that a company of believers, drawn by the fascination of the person of God to the focal point where that Presence is manifested, even Jesus Christ our Lord, that we gather here. And the best we know how, that we celebrate His death, till He come. And that we say, O Sacred Head, once wounded. By sin and grief bowed down so scornfully surrounded by thorns thine only crown. O sacred Head, what glory, what bliss till now was Thine! Yet, though despised and gory, I joy to call Thee mine. If there’s an irreverent thought. If there is an unforgiving thought. If there’s a disobedient heart, I can only pray, God have mercy on them for they know not what they do. Shall we discern the body and acknowledge the Bush this morning.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

Help spread the word and share this message with your friends

“The Knowledge of God 2”

The Knowledge of God 2

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

July 1, 1956

This is the second in a series of four talks on the three degrees of divine knowledge. I spoke last week, in a preliminary sermon of what I mean by the knowledge of God. And then, today and next Sunday and the next, I want to deal with these three degrees of divine knowledge.

Now, briefly I’ll sketch that there are three degrees of knowledge possible to a Christian, that gain by reason. And I will use as a general text, Romans 1:19, 20, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.

Now, this is tight writing, there’s no poetry here. This is the philosophy of theology. This is theological philosophy. This is a Christian philosopher thinking tightly about truth and revealing it. And he says in effect that reason can know through what it sees in nature, the invisible God, and His eternal power and Godhead. The second degree of knowledge is that which is revealed through faith. And in Hebrews 11:3, we have one text out of very, very many. So many that we’re embarrassed to select one and leave a whole book full of them not read. This is Hebrews 11:3; through faith we understand that the world was framed by the word of God. So, the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. There’s an invisible source back of the visible creation that is revealed through faith.

And then, the third is, that which is revealed to our spirits by the Holy Spirit in spiritual experience. 1 Corinthians 2:9-14, but as it is written, eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

Obviously, here, it takes the Holy Spirit to lead us into this third, and furthering degree of knowledge, further on than reason, even further than faith. It is the Holy Ghost Himself. Which thing also we speak not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches. Comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man, receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. The natural man can know God’s eternal power, the Godhead through reason. But the natural man, that is the unregenerate man, cannot know the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them because they’re spiritually discerned.

I pointed out that these three degrees of knowledge corresponded to the outer court of the temple, which was open to the sky and enjoyed the light of the sun by day and the moon and stars by night; that is, natural light. The second degree, corresponded to the holy place–faith–where there was light from the candlesticks, but no light from the stars nor sun nor moon. No natural light came there. We have to believe whatever reason says. And then, the Holy of Holies, the Sanctum, where there was no light from the sun or moon and no light from the candlestick made by man, but the light came alone from the Divine Presence, even the Shekinah which dwelt between the cherubim. And that corresponds to the third and last degree of knowledge, which is the immediate, unmediated knowledge the spirit can have of God through the Holy Spirit.

Now, nature is a teacher of theology, and I want to talk about that this morning. Next Sunday, I’ll talk about that knowledge which is revealed to us by faith, in which reason can neither support nor deny. The third Sunday, I’ll talk about that knowledge which is given to us by the Holy Spirit.

Now, the knowledge of God by reason. And I say again, that nature is a teacher of theology. It was Dante that said that nature is the art of God Eternal. And if nature is the art of God, then we can learn much about the Artist from the art. That is so well known that I hardly need to repeat it. Pascal, the greatest mind probably that France ever produced, certainly the greatest French theologian that ever lived and Christian, said that nature is an image of God; so is near perfect because it is an image of God, but not all together perfect because it is only an image of God. I’ll repeat that another way. That nature being the setting forth of God, the garment of God, is near to being perfect, because it is God’s image. But it is not absolutely perfect, because it is not God, but only the image of God. And you remember that Milton when he was blind in that magnificent Paradise Lost, bemoaned the fact that he was blind and said something to this effect that, from the book of knowledge, the fair book of knowledge presented a universal blank to him now of nature’s works. And wisdom at one entrance was quite shut out because he could not see. Therefore he said, this universal Book of Wisdom has been shut, one page has been shut to me because I can’t see.

Now my brethren, I do not quote these men only to say what I want to say better than I can say it. And in speaking of the knowledge of God in nature, I would have it understood that I am not trying to show off any learning or am I trying to go exhibit any particular penetration, but rather I would approach it on my knees. And I would approach it in the spirit of Sir John Bowring who wrote this great, these great words. Almighty One, I had bend in dust before Thee, even so veiled cherubim, in calm and still devotion, I adore Thee, all wise, and all present Friend. Thou to the earth it’s emerald robe hast given or curtained it in snow, and the bright sun and the soft moon in heaven before Thy presence bow. Thou Power Sublime, Thy throne is firmly seated on stars and glowing sun. Oh, could I praise Thee; could my soul elated waft Thee seraphic tones. Had I the lyre of angels, could I bring Thee an offering worthy Thee, in what bright notes of glory would I sing Thee blessed notes of ecstasy. And I only want it understood that I bend in dust before Him as veiled cherubim and in common still devotion I adore Him. All-wise, all-present Friend.

So, nature teaches us certain things about God. And reason can understand them. And this is one of the reasons why man is guilty before he ever hears the gospel at all. Some people say, why send missionaries to the heathen when they even are in innocence. And if they don’t hear the gospel and don’t hear about Jesus, they will not be able to reject Jesus and thus bring guilt upon themselves.

Now, this saying comes from a misunderstanding of the whole thing. The heathen are not lost because they reject Jesus. They are lost because they have known from the beginning that God is, and certain things about God. And yet have loved darkness more than light and have continued in their darkness and have loved sin and iniquity and have exalted their own ego above the throne of God and have lived wicked, opinionated, self-contained, godless, unbelieving, and obscene lives. And when they hear of Jesus, if they reject Him, they will add one more final sin to their terrible list, but it will only be one. The heathen are already lost, because that which can be known of God is revealed in them so that they clearly understand it, even His eternal power and Godhead.

Now, I will point out some of the things that nature teaches. One is, that God is. By looking around on the world, every people and tongue and tribe has concluded that God is. And there is not a language among the thousands of languages spoken by man in all history and in all the world today that does not have a name for God. Reasonable beings gazed down or up or out or around and whispered God. They knew that God was. Only the fool says in his heart there is no God. And there are not many of such fools. There are many sinners, certainly, and there are many millions who will have their own way whether God is or is not. But there is scarcely one in a million, that will say, there is no God. Mostly God is found in the language of mankind, whether it be the language of a forgotten tribe, or whether it be some great language, such as Latin or English. And thus, the nations of the earth, and all times and places and under all circumstances, have looked out and up and around and down, and have exclaimed–God is. But it teaches us more than that God is. It teaches us that God is eternal.

Now we are soul constructors that we must ask, where did this come from? You know, my brethren, we think what we think and are as we are because of the way we’re constructed. Any anatomist will tell you that you walk the way you walk because of your body structure. I couldn’t, for instance, walk like the big tall usher here for the simple reason I don’t have his body structure. And he wouldn’t want to walk like me, because he doesn’t have mine. We walk the way we walk because of our anatomical structure. And so, we think the way we think because of our mental structure. God has made us a certain way. And one thing that God made us to ask is, where did this come from?

When we look at a thing, or discover or run upon it, our minds make us say, where did this come from? How did it get here? And experience teaches the antecedent. Always remember that. That experience, even from the newborn babe to the ancient sage, always teaches the antecedent. The Explorer goes far into the hidden jungles of South America, and there he finds a building. And long, long it’s been forgotten and gone and it’s almost rotten down. But he says, where did it come from? How did it get here. And into his mind comes the thought of antecedent intelligence. And he says, this didn’t make itself. It didn’t pile itself up here and make its windows and doors and its roof and it’s entablature and its arches. It was built by somebody. So, the idea of antecedent comes into their minds.

A man is traveling where he believes no man has ever been, and he sees a track and he knows it to be a human footprint. And he says, who put it here? Somebody was here before that track was made. So, he goes back to antecedent again, and says, before the track was the foot, and before the track was made, the foot was here. Or he looks about him at the fauna of the earth, anywhere from the great mastodon or the whale that swims in the sea or the tiny mouse that runs under the rock, and says, how did it get here? And you can trace it back and back and back and back and back through generation and generation and generation. And through the simple knowledge of biology and the facts of life, he knows how that mouse got here, by its father before it and its father before it.

And so, he goes back to the first mouse and says, antecedent again, and puts a capital letter there. He says before the first mouse was a God who made mice. Before the first elephant, was a God who made elephants. Before the first bird spread its wings, was a God who made birds. For he gazes up into the heavens above and sees the stars and says, who put that there? Where did that come from? It’s as natural for him to ask that question as it is for a lame man to limp. It’s in his structure. He can’t help it. It’s in his mind. Who put that star there? Where did that sun come from? And then again, the word antecedent leaps into his mind. Something was before that star was there. He looks out at mankind, and sees men running up and down in the earth, and says, where did we come from?

We all know we can trace our genealogy back. We can know where our father was, our grandfather, our great-grandfather. Most of us Americans are lost after we get back about three generations. But we know that whether we can identify our ancestors or not, we had ancestors back to the first one who stood up on the earth. And before that first one, was a God who made men. So we have the word antecedent. Always, always we look in any direction and say that He did it, He did it, He did it. And we may have different names for Him and different conceptions of Him, but always reason cries, He did it. He was there first. He created the world, so He must have been before the world. He created time, so He must have been before time. And if He was before time, then He is eternal.

So, His eternal power and Godhead are revealed simply by looking around about us. We don’t have to hear the gospel or know the Bible, we only have to see around about us a bit, and we know this, and all our excuses are taken away. And there we stand with the veil pulled aside and in the presence of the great and Almighty God, all-wise, all-present Friend.

And then also, that the theology of nature teaches us that God is omnipotent. Now, reason says so. Reason cries out that God, who must contain all things, and who must bring into being such awful forces as these. Imagine the force of the wind. The poets write of the breezes, of the zephyrs as they like to call them. They kiss the cheek of the child as he plays in the meadow or makes daisy chains beside the brook. Poets have always loved the breeze and the zephyr. But when the breeze and the zephyr rise in a wild, mad fury and hurl themselves upon a town in Kansas or Missouri; In one minute in what was a smiling little helpless, sleepy village, lies a wrecked rubble and the dead are dug out for days out of the rubble. No sun is smiling down. Now, the wind is gone, but still the stretchers carry out the dead. And the wind did it and did it in one minute. Did it in forty seconds, sometimes it will do it.

And the great God who made those mighty winds to roar out of the deep and hurl great chunks of the ocean up onto the seashore. That God must be an omnipotent God. And the lightning that flashes down out of the dark cloud and rends the oak that has stood for 100 years against the storms. That God must be a mighty God. And that God who put gravity in everything and holds the suns and stars together, and holds the pebbles down on the beach and holds the great mountain there on the plain and holds the building down in the city. That great God who made gravity must be a great God.

Think about life itself. Think what power it must take to perpetuate life and carry it on and carry it on. Only rarely, rarely in the course of history has there ever been an extinct creature. Mostly they perpetuate themselves on and on and on. The tiniest little insect that may crawl on your book as you read in the park. And you reach over and carelessly touch it. And then getting rid of it, you crush it unintentionally. And it’s crushed away until it doesn’t even make a mark on the book. A little insect it was. It had a life there, a real life. But before you crushed it carelessly on the corner of your book, it had laid an egg somewhere; begotten itself again. And so, its species goes on and on and on. And think of the power that carries on all grain and all fruits and all life and all birds and fishes and people, and carries it on and on. This great God must be an omnipotent God. But my brethren, it means more than omnipotence. It means that God must be also omniscient. That is that He must have all knowledge.

Have you ever stopped to think that if a man put a machine together and missed on one point, left out one wheel or left out one shaft or one cam or one anything, the machine would probably rip itself apart or at least it wouldn’t work. It’s got to be all there. And the man who puts it together has to know all about that particular machine. And so, the God who put this machine we call the universe together, He had to know all about it. Ignorance of even one thing would ruin everything and bring the universe down in chaos. So that God had to know at once and perfectly all that could be known or can be known about spirit and matter and mind and life and feeling and sensation and space and time and relation and directions and events and deeds and words and thoughts and all the doesn’t fall in those categories. He must know everything absolutely perfectly. For ignorance of any one thing or at least division of one thing somewhere, the wheels of the universe would have ground on and then ground themselves apart.

But the God who made this universe and made it all, from the galaxies to the cutworm. That great God knew all that was. And so the invisible is revealed in the visible, and we and they who know not God, and we who do know God by faith know this at least, that God is an eternal God and that He’s an omnipotent God, and that he’s an omniscient God and knows it all or else his own world would fall apart. But it means more that He’s omniscient. It means that He’s all-wise. They’re not the same. Omniscient means that He has all knowledge. And all-wise means that He has all wisdom to know what to do with the knowledge.

Have you ever run across a well-educated college fellow who couldn’t make a living and his wife had to support him. And he couldn’t get along in society. He wasn’t adjusted. He didn’t know how to say good morning, hid behind a post and slunk down the street. He was completely unadjusted. He couldn’t do anything. And yet, he might have been a PhD. He knew all about Aristotle and Plato and Homer and all about mathematics, but he simply was a learned fool, if I might be so brash. He had a head full of bookish knowledge, but he was ignorantly read and had loads of learning lumber in his head. And he knew nothing really as he ought to know, because he didn’t have wisdom, which told him what to do with the knowledge.

So, God might have been all-knowing and have all the knowledge there is, but lacked the wise skill to make it work. But the great God who had all knowledge, also has all wisdom to know what to do with that knowledge as you know. Observation discovers design. Those who dig in the bowels of the earth for the old races that have passed away and dig up civilizations that are long, long been extinct, they find machinery or hunks of machinery or bits of machinery or flecks of stone chipped out. Or they find funny, little old-fashioned things that they can figure out what they were for. They say design, design, design. They made it. They made this. They find two rocks standing up like this and another rock laying across the top. That’s the first art, and they say design, design.

And the greatest and most beautiful cathedral on the North American continent or in Europe, had to begin with a little rock standing up and another little rock standing up and another little rock laying across. That was design. That was the arch, and from that, all the grandeur of architecture grew; design they say. And if 10,000 years from now, if things should continue as they are, 10,000 years from now, some strange race which you and I can’t figure out, should come upon our Chicago, now covered with the dust blown from the dust bowl of the West, and should go down and down and down, and at last find Chicago and find a kitchen and find the can opener and find a can of salmon still lying there after the passing of the centuries. And the wise diggers into the past would pick up the can opener and brush it off, and say, I wonder what that’s for. There’s design there. And a bright young student would come forward and say, Professor, I see, give it to me. Around and around he’d go and open the can of salmon. Design is the word and everywhere, everywhere from the microbe on up, everywhere design, design.

As a boy I used to see the design. As a boy we used to knock down, or the frost would do it for us, the great chestnut, from the great chestnut trees that used to make beautiful Pennsylvania green, but were later destroyed almost completely by the blight. You used to see those burrs. Some of you have never had in your hand a chestnut burr. Smaller than my fist and almost completely round. And it’s spiked like a porcupine all the way around, as if Mother Nature were saying, let my babies alone. Don’t you bother my babies. And many and many a boy has given up the battle. He’s not able to open that chestnut burr because there were just too many spikes. And so, Mother Nature protected the seed there. And it fell finally and nature opened that burr and the seed fell into the ground and pretty soon a chestnut tree came up. Mother Nature was protecting her seed that she might make another chestnut tree and another one, on down the years.

Well my brethren, all throughout nature I see that design. But you know something else? You know that when you once have broken through the burr and gone past the spikes and have gotten inside that burr and break it open on the great rock and falls apart, you know what you find in there? You find two beautiful chestnuts if they’re ripe. They’re beautiful brown from which we get our word chestnut. You’ve heard of chestnut furniture and chestnut horses and chestnut colors, this and that. Well, that’s where they get the word. It’s a brown that I do not think any artists could quite imitate; so beautiful and rich it is. And it has been all this time held and protected by the softest velvet.

That burr that comes down there, cut down by the squirrel or knocked down by the frost or knocked down by a boy. That burr is a spike on the outside to protect it from its enemies, but a soft velvet on the inside to protect itself from the burr, kept there in perfection. Never was there a baby, what do they call it, lined more beautifully and soft than Mother Nature lines the inside of a burr where she keeps her chestnut. She must love chestnut trees. And I’m glad they’re finding their way back again; and small chestnut saplings are found again all throughout Pennsylvania. She’s coming back. In another generation the boys will be back again knocking chestnut trees down as I did 40 years ago.

Now, what does that mean? It means design. It means that in details we see design. And reason cries, if there is design in the details, then there must be a grand design in the whole of nature. The grand total must add up to design. And the great God Almighty in his balance of nature, must be a God All-wise.

And then there’s the God who cares. And this is the last I’ll speak of this morning. I could go on for five hours, but I’ll stop off here. That God cares for His world. God cares for His world, and He put care in the bosoms. He put care in the bosoms of everything. The old cow out in the field with her mellow breath, and her long, mellow, trombone that she blows at milking time. That cow is only a common beast, but she cares for her babies. And when they’re taken away, she’ll bawl for two or three days; literally bawl for two or three days and run up and down and try to get through the fence. She cares. Everywhere in nature, there’s care.

And if I might not be accused of being senile, I might point out that we had four kittens at our house. Three of them are pretty things. And one of them Mother Nature was, I guess, careless or angry, so she put together the homeliest little mutt of a kitten you ever saw in your life. It was supposed to be black, but didn’t quite make it. It looks as if it was streaked with ugly mud. It looks as if it had been born to ride the rumble seat of a broom with a witch on in front on Halloween. That’s what it looks like. But you know what? Last evening, we were sitting out taking a little air. The old momma cat, we had gotten rid of all the other ones. People wanted them but they didn’t want the ugly one. And the old mama cat came with a piece of liver and deposited it down for her little ugly baby. She didn’t think it was ugly, she liked it. She still likes it. And when it goes, finally, if anybody would be foolish enough to take it, she would weep in her poor cat way. Care is found everywhere.

How oft did Jesus say, would I have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathers her chicks. You that never lived in the country, you don’t even know what that means. But I know what it means. And those that have visited or lived even a short time in the country know. Why, there’s a dozen maybe, little furry fellows with their little, round beady black eyes pecking away for whatever they can pick up. And there’s the old hen carelessly scratching and going about with a restful cluck, cluck, cluck. I don’t know what she’s saying to them.  Just sort of reminding them that she’s around.

And then the farmer boy, hears something that the average person wouldn’t hear it all. He hears a high whistle out of sight, way out of sight, but a high, piercing exciting whistle. He knows what it is. He knows it is the hawk. And that old hen knows what it is. She changes from the restful cluck, cluck, cluck, to a high, rapid cluck, and every little chick dashes for her wings. She spreads those wings out and fluffs out all her feathers and they all gather in there. And I have watched with amusement to see, out between the feathers, out in front of the wing, out behind the wing, out in front of the breast, out in all angles, little, white beaks and little, beady eyes. They’re wondering what it’s all about and what’s all the concern about. They know that the mother has gathered them in.

And that’s what Jesus meant. He would have gathered them in. But I mean to give at this application, that that hen has a care there. And so, you’ll find it everywhere. The bees bring in the nectar that the future generation of bees might have honey to eat. And the egg contains not only the germ that will be the bird, but also the food that will feed the bird till it hatches. So, through all nature, there’s care, care. He is the God who cares. He looked at His world and said, behold, it is very good.

And sin came in, and now we have that strange admixture of sin and nature, and sin in nature. But nevertheless, our Heavenly Father cares. I grumble a little because it was going to be so hot today, but I checked myself and apologized to God.

God made his sun and made it to shine down on the earth. And He made moisture. We call it humidity. But if it wasn’t here, we’d all dry up and die, and future ages would find the dried, blackened bodies. But God has given us the sun and the moon, and He’s given us all His beautiful trees. And He’s taught the birds to migrate and the beast to hibernate, and He’s taught man to build and dress against the cold. God cares. He’s the God who cares. I say nature teaches us theology, and that’s taught in the outer court. That’s taught out there where the light of nature beams down. And reason cries and says the Hand that made us is divine.

Now I close with these testimonies. For I’ve only given you an imperfect sketch. It was Pope, Alexander Pope said, all are but parts of one stupendous whole, whose body nature is, in God, the soul. There he had the thought that God was the Soul of the world as you have a soul in your body. The world would be dead, except that God lives in it and makes it live. I think that’s a lovely thought and a true one. And Solomon said, go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise. And Christ said, behold the birds of the air. And He said, consider the lilies, how they grow. And the seraphim that Isaiah saw and heard, chanted, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. And in our famous hymn that we sing, holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabbath, heaven and earth are full of the majesty of Thy glory.

Oh, brethren, nature is a great teacher. And life is a great instructor. And all around about us, whether it’s the bird that flies to our window, or the leaf that flutters outside, or whether it be the great desert of Arizona, or the rocky peaks of Switzerland, or the great broad, undulating ocean. Whether it be farm or city, village, or desert, the invisible God is crying out to us His eternal power and Godhead. There’s something better, and there’s no salvation there. And no one in a million years could be saved by knowing this. We are saved by the next degree of knowledge, that which is revealed to us by faith, and of that we’ll speak next Lord’s day. But today, let us say together Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty of who is God.