Tag: Attibutes

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date March 7, 2021

“God’s Immanence and Immensity”

Sunday evening, September 21, 1958

Message #2 of #10 in Attributes of God Series

Colossians 3:1-3

Tonight I’m to give the second in a series which I have called “A Journey into the Heart of God.” I want to talk about God these nights. I want to first read a text or two. “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it. And whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Then there’s the text which I have chosen for my every night text, “your life is hide, with Christ, in God.” And then, this one in Philippians, “Yea doubtless I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”

Let us pray. Father, we’re unworthy. We’re unworthy to think these thoughts and our friends are unworthy to hear them expressed. But, while we are not worthy, we will try to do this in a worthy manner. Hear worthily and speak worthily though we know that we have looked upon evil sights, we have heard with our ears evil words, and we have walked in evil ways. But now, we trust that is behind us, and our eyes are upon Thee. Show thyself to us, O God. We’ve sung about Thee the Shepherd, the sweet wonder of Jesus. And we ask Thee now that this evening, we may again have a vision of the Triune God through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Now, faith is of two kinds: nominal and real. The nominal faith is faith that accepts what it is told and can quote text after text to prove it. That is nominal faith. And it’s amazing how nominal faith, nominal belief can weave these texts into garments, cloaks and curtains for the church.

And then there is another kind of faith. It is faith that depends upon the character of God. You remember that the Scripture does not say, Abraham believed the text and it was counted unto him for righteousness. It says, Abraham believed God. It was not what Abraham believed. It was who Abraham believed that counted. Abraham believed God. And the man of true faith, believes God and His faith rests on the character of God.

Now, the man who has real faith as over against nominal faith, has found a right answer to the question, what is God like? There is no question that is more important, none whatsoever until it’s answered. What is God like? And the man of true faith has found an answer to that question. And this is by revelation and illumination. You see, I would have to say again what I have said so often perhaps to the point of monotony, that the difficulty with the church now is, even the Bible-believing church, that we stop with revelation. But revelation is not enough. Revelation is God’s given word. It’s an objective thing, not subjective. It’s external, not internal. It is God’s revelation of truth. And a man may believe that, and believe it soundly, and hold it to be true. And yet have only an objective revelation, or truth, that has been objectively revealed.

There is another word, and that is the word illumination. The man of real faith believes the Word, but he has been illuminated so he knows what the word means. That doesn’t mean he’s a better Bible teacher, but it means that he has had what the Quakers called an opening. His heart has been opened to the Word.

Now, you can’t have too many texts. And this is not said to mean that texts are not valuable. They are. I’m using many of them tonight. But you see, texts are means toward an end and that end is God. The given revelation is a means toward an end, and God is the end. The text is never the end. That’s why I never fight over translation or get all worked up and steamed up over translations. A text is a means to an end. We are making the mistake now, since there’s plenty of money and the printers will print anything anybody will write. We’re making the mistake of thinking that if we get the word said in a different way, there’ll be some magic effect in that word. That if it is read in the King James Version, that’s okay. But, if we get a new version varying just a little, we have automatically received something new. It doesn’t follow my Brethren. It doesn’t follow. The illumination is what matters.

And the word of God is a means toward an end, just as roads are a means to our destinations. A road is nothing in itself. Nobody ever built a road and fenced it in at both ends, and planted posies along it and beautified it and said this is a road. They said this is a way, a way, a means toward somewhere. And so, the Bible is a whole series of highways; all leading toward God. And when the text has been illuminated and the believer of the text knows that God is the end toward which it’s moving, then that man has real faith.

Now, I told you that these nights, that I intended to use an occasional quotation from an old book. I never saw but one copy of it in my life. I wouldn’t know where to go to get it now. One time it was a very famous book, but it fell into desuetude and nobody knows anything about it much. I’ve quoted from it in the past. I preached a sermon until the sermon got so well known that I quit preaching it. On the “Three Wounds of a Friend.” And I spoke last week briefly about this little book. It’s called The Revelation of Divine Love,” written by a woman by the name of Julian, 600 years ago.

Now one day she said as she prayed, she had a little experience and here’s what it was. She said I saw a very small object as large as a hazelnut. Now when I was a boy on the farm, we had hazelnuts and hazelnuts as we knew them, was about the size of a large marble. No larger than that. It’s not even as large as the largest marbles, but just the size will say of a mib, I think they call it, a good size marble. You may have seen larger ones, but these were wild growing and those as I remember them. And she said, she saw this little tiny object. And she said, what might this be? And something in her heart said this is all that is made. This is all that is made. This little, tiny, hazelnut sized affair is all that is made. Now, I want you to think about this with me; all that is made.

Years ago, I remember reading the great French philosopher and mystic and mathematician, Pascal, sitting up on the hillside in the woods in West Virginia reading Pascal’s thoughts. Now, I remember that he said this, he said, we are halfway between immensity and that which is infinitesimally small. And he said, you will find worlds beyond worlds beyond worlds, our solar system, moves around another solar system, and that solar system with our solar system moves around another solar system, and that solar system with ours and so on, on and on and on, out infinitely into size and vastness. Then he said, if you turn the other way, you will find little worlds within little worlds going down and down to molecule, the atom and the electron and the proton and so on, down and down, down into an infinitesimal smallness.

Now he said, I believe that man, made in the image of God, is exactly halfway in between that which is infinitely large and that which is infinitesimally small. Now, there’s no way to prove that. But that’s a frightening place to be brother. To know that you’re half as big as the universe but also half as small, and that they can keep reducing you and reducing you and melting you down, reducing you. Pretty soon, you’re infinitesimally small. Or we can go out in increasing spirals until we’re so vast until the world is so vast that we cannot think it anymore. You know, we think that the sun is very large with its planets circling around it. But if you study astronomy, even elementary astronomy, you will learn that there are heavenly bodies so large, suns so large, that they could take our sun, and all of its planets, and all of the satellites that revolve around those planets, and could throw them into that sun, that other sun and never notice it. They say that there are suns that you could put millions of our suns in, they are so large. I give up. I don’t even try to understand it.

Then there is space. Of course, such vast worlds have to have distance between them. So, we have what we call space. I don’t think space is a thing. I think it’s just a way we have of accounting for different positions in the vast universe. But we call it distance. And you know, they don’t measure it. Oh, if it’s the moon they say 250,000 miles. If it’s the sun, they say 93 million miles, but after that, they start talking in light years.

Do you know what a light year is? Well, a light year is the time that it takes light traveling for one year. And light gets along at the rather amazing speed of 186,000 miles a second. That is, every minute light travels 11 million miles. And every hour it travels 669 million miles. And every day it travels 16,061,000,000 miles. And every year it travels 5,862,484,000,000 miles. And then they tell me that’s how far light travels in a year. And there are bodies so far away that to tell us how far they are, they can’t measure them in miles. They made them in light years. They say it’s as far away as it would take light so many years traveling at 186,000 miles a second. You know that’s quite a quite a rate of speed. And they say that there are bodies that are millions of light years away, say ten million just to get a start. So, if you want to know how far it is from Earth to that body I’m talking about, you multiply 5,862,484,000,000 by 10 million and you’re getting around somewhere where we’re the distant is. Doesn’t that stun you? It makes my head ache. There’s not too much to ache. And when you get that far up, Brother, you’re going.

Now, seen over against this, you and I are terribly small. Now we’re not the smallest thing there is. We’re not infinitesimally small, because you start dissolving us, melting us down and getting at the molecules and at the atoms and that the bits of disembodied matter or energy that we call by various manufactured names and you’ll find that we’re, according to Pascal, half as big as the universe which is a tremendous thought I’d say.

Now, over against that stands God. Over against it stands God. And there is an attribute of God, I talked about the attribute of God last week called infinitude. I want to talk about the attribute of God called imminence now, and immensity. You know, there’s such a thing as, as God’s imminence, that is, it’s an attribute of God, and it’s taught in Christian theology, that God is imminent. That is, that you don’t have to go distances to find God, that God is imminent, that He is in everything, that He’s right here.

I have a little, I borrowed a little formula. I’ve repeated it very often until some of you know it by heart. If you don’t, you should. And I want to repeat it now. I think I did last week. Let me give it to you. It is very brief. It is that God is above all things, and beneath all things, and outside of all things, and inside of all things. That God is above, but He’s not pushed up and He’s beneath, but He’s not pressed down. And He’s outside, but he’s not excluded. And He’s inside, but He’s not confined. That God is above all things presiding and beneath all things sustaining and outside of all things embracing and inside of all things filling. That is the imminence of God. That’s what that means. And that’s taught in Christian theology.

So that God doesn’t travel to get anywhere. We say, O God, come and help us. Well, that’s good to say that because we mean it in its psychological way. But actually, God doesn’t have to come to help us, because there isn’t any place where God is not. And I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea then there thy hand shall hold me. And if I go up to Heaven, even there God will be and if I make my bed in Hell, even there God will be.

So, it’s impossible to think of a place where God is not. After you have gone out into those millions of light years and found bodies so vast that you could throw all our solar system, and all of the galaxies to which this solar system belongs into it, and to be like throwing a shovel full of coal into a furnace; and it would simply swallow it up and go on. After you thought of all that, remember that God contains all that. That God is outside of all things, and inside of all things, and around all things, that are God made this. That is the immensity of God.

Now, the Scripture teaches the immensity of God. Let me give you a few verses. It says in Isaiah, “who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and made it out heaven with a span and comprehended the dust of the earth and the measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in the balance. The Holy Ghost is bigger than all the universe, this little hazelnut here, you know, that the woman saw, and then another. Behold, all the nations are as a drop of a bucket. It’s awfully hard to get a Christian scared. It’s hard to get him panicked if he really believes in God. If he’s just a church member, you can get him panicked, but if he really believes in God, it’s very difficult to do it. Very difficult for a great big mouth like Khrushchev to get anybody scared if he really believes in God. You know, Khrushchev is beginning to sound more and more like Hitler. By the way, where is Hitler? He’s beginning to sound more and more like him.

And the same God that disposed of Adolph will dispose of Nikita one of these days. Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and they are counted as the small dust of the balance and He takes up the islands as a very little thing. It is so small He doesn’t even notice that. All the nations before Him are as nothing, and they’re counted to Him as less than nothing and vanity. Old Dr. Neighbor used to say, the word vanity in the Hebrew meant a soap bubble, something that floated. It’s just a tiny, infinitesimally thin, iridescent skin. If you touched it and it was gone and nobody could find it again. And that’s what it means. All the worlds and nations are to Him as a soap bubble. And he says, “It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are but are as grasshoppers, that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in. To whom then will ye liken God, or to whom shall I be equal says the Holy One? Lift up your eyes on high and behold, who has created these things that bringeth out their host by number: He called them all by name by the greatness of His power or might. For that He is strong in power, not One to faileth.

Now there, as I pointed out in another set of circumstances, there is probably the most daring flight of imagination ever made by the human mind. I think we have here in Isaiah that which is vaster and more and more awesome than anything ever struck off of the mind of Shakespeare. Do you remember what Shakespeare said? That the lark at morn sings hymns at Heaven’s gate. And somebody pointed out that nobody else had ever a thought of that except Shakespeare. That the lark mounts on her quivering wings to the very gate of Heaven and there sings her hymns.

Milton wrote “Paradise Lost.” And a great critique, I think it was Macaulay who said that Milton could write “Paradise Lost” and get away with it. But that Shakespeare couldn’t have. Because, Shakespeare’s mind was so brilliant, that if he had ever tried to take in “Paradise Lost” and “Paradise Regained;” if his mind had ever gone out to try to take in Creation and the Fall and redemption of man, that he would die, he would have died of a rupture of the brain. That his imagination was so tremendous, it would have blown his head off in the language of the street. Milton, not being quite so great, not quite so imaginative, managed to toddle along and not die under it.

But so great was the imagination of Shakespeare that according to this critique, he would have died under it. It would have killed him if he had tried to think a thought that big, because his mind would have gone so vast. But here, I find something bigger yet than anything thought that Shakespeare even ever had. And it is the thought of the Great God, the Shepherd of the Universe, moving through His light years with its trillions, and billions and millions and 1000s, with its light traveling at 186,000 miles a second, with its world so big that our whole solar system would look like a grain of sugar or sand by comparison. And God stands out yonder and calls all of these millions of worlds as His sheep, and calls them all by name. He says, “Come on,” and leads them out across the vast sky.

I’d say this is the highest thought that anywhere that I know anything about in the Bible, or out of it. This vast, huge illimitable thought, and because of the greatness of His power, not one faileth. Just as a shepherd keeps all of his sheep and not one is lost, and so, God keeps all of His universe. Men point their tiny little glasses at the stars and talk learnedly, and when it’s all over, they’ve just been counting God’s sheep, nothing more. And God is running His universe.

And then in the Psalms, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, O Lord, my God, Thou art very great, Thou art clothed with honor and majesty, who covereth thyself with light as with a garment, who stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain, who layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters, who maketh the clouds His chariot, and who walketh upon the wings of the wind.

Well, there we have the greatness, the immensity of God, the imminence of God, set over against the vastness of the world and the littleness of the world. For as she said, I saw all of this vastness reduced and I saw how big it actually was set over against God Almighty. It was the size of a hazelnut. Then she said, I marvel at one thing, and I’ve thought of that myself. I marvel at what could hold it together? Did you ever wonder about what held things together? Do you ever wonder why things didn’t fall apart? I have.

I had a younger brother who used to lie on the floor and cry. And they’d say, what’s the matter Ully? He would say, I’m afraid I’ll fall up. And I’ve had my imaginations like that too. I wondered how things didn’t come apart; didn’t tear loose at the seams. Well, she said, I marveled how it might last. Now, since distance is all in God and since matter depends on God’s Word, and since life is a ray from God’s heart, then there isn’t too much to worry about. But she said, How can all this last? How can it hold together and then she said, it came to me and I saw that all things has it being in the love of God, and that God made it and God loves it. And God keeps it. I can’t think of a better formula my friend for you to take home with you. That’s why you don’t fall apart; because God made you. God loves you. And God keeps you. And what God made God loves because it’s inconceivable that God should make anything that he didn’t love.

A fellow recently brought a picture that he had painted. He’d been working on a picture he had worked, he said quite a while on that picture. He brought it and showed it to see if I liked it. Well, now it’s inconceivable that he didn’t like his own picture. I liked it too. But he liked it. That’s the reason he brought it to show it to me. We like that which we make. And God loves that which He made. And because He made it, He loves it. And because He loves it, He keeps it and nobody is going to lose anything that they love, if they can help it.

Now, a mother may lose her baby by death, but she won’t do it if she can help it. The man may lose his property or estate or his car or his job, but he won’t if he can help it. And so, God Almighty is in a position never to lose anything, because He’s able not to lose. He keeps it. He keeps it because He loves it, and He loves it because He made it, or did He make it because He loved it. I don’t know. But, He keeps it because He made it and loved it or loved it and made it. I heard an Episcopalian rector one time who preached a sermon on immortality. And he gave one of the finest arguments for immortality that I’ve ever heard. He said, The Bible says that Abraham was a friend of God. Now, said the Rector, how would it be he said, that a man should ever give up his friend. He said, if a man is your friend, you wouldn’t lose him if he could help it. And if he died, you’d bring him back if you could. You would keep your friend if he was your friend. Well, God Almighty is able to keep his friend. So that’s why we know that Abraham will rise again from the dead, because he’s God’s friend, and God isn’t going to allow His friend to lie around and rot forever. He’s going to bring him out of the grave again. And that’s why I believe in immortality. I believe that God made us and God loves what he made and is keeping what He loves.

So, all things have it’s being in God. And I want you to think of God the maker, God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. I want you to think of God the lover. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And I want you to think of God the keeper. And if you’re a real Christian, now if you’re not a real Christian, this doesn’t apply to you. It doesn’t apply to you if you’re not a real Christian; if you’ve not been born anew and washed in the blood of the Lamb. Then, this doesn’t apply to you and there isn’t any use of my trying to make it apply. But if you’re a true Christian, this applies to you.

And so, the little lady got another thought, and she said this, if this is all true, and it is all true, then why be we not all at great ease of heart and soul. She said, why aren’t Christians the happiest people in all the wide world? Why aren’t we Christians the most easeful people and the most restful people all the wide world? Well, I’ll tell you why. She said because we seek to have rest in things that are so little. This hazelnut you see brother. This little hazelnut into which is condensed all it is that we try to find our pleasure in those little things.

Now, I want to strip you down tonight a little bit and ask you a question or two. Think with me a little bit. What is it that makes you happy? What is it that keeps you feeling good? What cheers you up and tucks up your chin and gives your morale a lift? Is it your job? Is it the fact that you have good clothes? Is it that you’re well married or that you have a fine, fine position? Just what is it that keeps you, that you’re taking your joy in? Well, that’s our trouble and that’s why even though we know that the immensity of God is so vast, that seen over against God, everything, even out to the farthest interstellar space is just the size of a hazelnut. It’s nothing at all. It’s a grain of sand. And yet, we’re not a happy people. Because we multiply things. We got our mind set on things. We multiply things, and we increase things, and we perfect things, and we beautify things, and we put our confidence in things and God. We have our job and God. We have our husband and God. We have our strong body and God. We have our good job and God. We have our home and God. We have our ambition for the future and God.

And so, we put God as a plus sign after something else. Now my Brethren, all of the great souls of the world, from David and Paul, and Augustine, and all the rest down to this present hour; every responsible writer who has ever been illuminated from the Scriptures by the Holy Ghost has said the same thing. And whether he came from one school of Christian thought or another; as long as he was orthodox, he said the same thing. And particularly if he was spiritual, he said the same thing, that our problem is that we are putting our confidence in things and not in God. And this lady said, God showed me that all the things that are, are only the size of a hazelnut, why therefore should I put my confidence into things so little, that God has to hold it together? Why should I trust things?

We multiply, I say, and we increase and still we’re afraid and we are troubled. And we’re anxious and we’re unsatisfied. And you know why? I’ll tell you why. Because, all that is beneath God sufficeth not us. God made you in His image and you’re stuck with it. God did not make the chimpanzee in his image. He did not make that beautiful horse as he gallops across the field; he’s a symphony in motion. God did not make him in His image. God did not make that beautiful bird that the poet says “Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid Tunes her nocturnal Note. God made him beautiful, but He didn’t make him in His image.

So, God made only you in His image, and you’re stuck with it man, sinner man, lost man, Christian man, you’re stuck with it. You’re made in the image of God and because you’re made in the image of God, nothing short of God will satisfy you. And even if you happen to get saved on this nickel in the slot and you escape Hell and take Heaven modern idea of evangelism; that Jesus came in order that we would escape Hell and go to Heaven. That poor, little kindergarten view of Christianity, even if you’re that kind of believer, remember one thing my brother, that even you will find somewhere down the years, that you will not be content with things plus God. You will have to have God minus all things. You’ll have to come to a place in your life.

But you say, don’t you have things? You have a suit. What does it say here? Richmond Brothers. Sure, I have a suit. And I have some pens here that I get kidded for carrying around. And I have what else do I have? God knows I don’t have much, only a lot of books. But I do have books and a wife and some children and grandchildren and friend. I have all that. But brother, just as sure as I set my hopes and my comfort upon things and people, I lose something out of my heart. It dare not be things and God. It dare not be people and God. It must be God and nothing else. And then whatever else God gives, we hold an arm’s length and we hold it dear for Jesus’ sake. And we love it for His sake, but it is not necessary to our happiness. If there’s anything necessary to your eternal happiness but God, you’re not yet the kind of Christian that you ought to be. For only God is the very rest.

I like that old expression “very” as an adjective, “very” rest. Only God is the very rest. So says the book of Hebrews. And that word “very” there is another form of the word verily. When Jesus our Lord wanted to say something that was true, so true that He wanted to underscore it, He said, verily, verily, I say unto you. Truly, truly this I say. And only God is the true rest, the very rest. And you see, God takes great pleasure in having a helpless soul come to Him, simply and plainly and intimately. He takes pleasure in having us come to Him. You know, this kind of Christianity doesn’t draw big crowds. Nobody wants this except a few of those who have their heart set on God, and they want God more than they want anything else in the world. They want the spiritual experience that comes from knowing God for Himself; that they could have everything stripped away from them, and still have God. That kind of people listen, but they’re not vastly numerous in any given locality.

So, this kind of preaching doesn’t draw vast numbers of people. But I’ll tell you what it does do, it’s likely to draw the hungriest ones, and the thirstiest ones, and some of the best ones. And so, God takes great pleasure I say, in having helpless people come to Him, simply and plainly and intimately. He wants us to come without all that great overlarding of theology. He wants us to come as simply and as plainly as a little child. And if the Holy Ghost touches us, we’ll come like that.

Now my Brethren, I said last week that God had boundless enthusiasm. I repeat it now that God is boundlessly enthusiastic. I’m glad somebody is, because I don’t find very many Christians that are. Or if they are, they’re not enthusiastic for the things that matter. If they’re going to have a movie, they can get all steamed up about that. If they’re going to go on the moonlight cruise, they get all worked up over that. But if you just say, look, look, behold God, behold God, you can’t get much enthusiasm these days. So, I’m glad somebody is enthusiastic and brother, God’s enthusiastic. He’s enthusiastic for Himself in the persons of the Godhead. The persons of the Godhead are infinitely delighted with each other. The Father is infinitely delighted with the Son. And the Son is infinitely delighted with the other two persons of the Godhead. He is delighted with His whole creation I repeat, and especially for men made in His image. You see, unbelief comes and throws a cloud over us and shuts out the light of God. And we don’t believe what’s actually here, that God is delighted, infinitely delighted with us.

And here’s a little prayer that was made, “O God, of thy goodness, give me thy self, for Thou art enough to me, and I may ask nothing that is less and find any full honor to Thee. God give me thy self.” Do you know what a revival is Brother? We make out that a revival is everybody running around falling in everybody else’s neck and saying, forgive me for thinking a bad thought about you and me. And forgive me for that nickel that I forgot to pay back. Or, we say a revival consists of people getting very loud and noisy. Well, all that might happen in a revival. But let me tell you, the only kind of revival that would be here when the worlds are on fire, is the kind of revival that begins by saying, O God, give me thy self; for nothing less than Thee will do. For anything less than God, anything less than God, she says ever me wanteth. I like that little expression. She said, O God, I get all this hazelnut. Everything from the proton to the farthest, remotest heavenly body up and down the scale. All the beautiful things of earth and sky and sea, and all the diamonds of the mines and all timber of the forest and all the charm of the landscape and all the riches of the cities. If I have it all and have not thee, ever me wanted. Translated into modern English, O God, it won’t be enough, won’t be enough.

Do you know, deep down what’s the matter with everybody? Nobody would say it and the average person wouldn’t believe it; and if he heard me quote these three words, he would laugh in my face and say, “what are you doing teaching Chaucer? No, no, teaching theology. And I’m simply using some old phrases to get it home to him in a new way. Friends, the problem with the world is, everybody is saying and doesn’t know he’s saying it, “ever me wanted.” You know, there’s a little shrine inside of you. There’s a shrine so far in, that nobody can know that shrine but you. There is a penetralium, a deep, deep shrine far eastward in Eden. And it lies in that great soul of yours, that soul that is bigger than the starry universe; and there’s a shrine there and a garden and a throne. And no matter what you get, there’ll be a cry from that shrine, ever me wanted. O God, I’m still hungry. God, I’m still hungry. Who are they that commit suicide? They are not the poor. They’re the rich. Who are they did commit suicide? They’re not the simple, known fellow on the street. They’re movie actors and politicians and people that are widely known. Give men everything as the song had it, take the world, but give me Jesus. And we can, we can have all the world and have not Jesus, and still, there’s a cry from deep within, “ever me wanteth.

And do you know I think this would be the world’s greatest calamity. The greatest calamity for a human soul, to be made in the image of God, and to be made with a spirit so big, that it can contain the universe and cry for more; that it’s bigger than the heavens and the heaven of heavens, and be empty of God. And go through the eternity to come crying, “ever me wanteth.” O God, forever and forever; O God, I’m hungry. And I can’t eat and I’m thirsty and can’t drink. Send Lazarus that he might dip his finger in the water and put it on my forehead, for I suffer these flames.

And I wonder if the flames of Hell aren’t kindled from deep in the shrine where a dry and cracked and parched, the soul of men cries, O God, “ever me wanted.” I’ve had everything. I’ve had religion. I’ve had position. I’ve had money. I’ve had children. I’ve had a wife or husband. I’ve had clothes and had a good home. I’ve had, I’ve had, I’ve had, but O God, this is a little hazelnut. It’s nothing. And my heart cries, O God, I miss that which I wanted the most.

Do you know friends, really down at the bottom, that’s the problem. That’s the problem with Russia. That’s the problem in Washington. That’s the problem everywhere. Ever, ever, they want, because they can get everything. You know the old story of Alexander who conquered the world and wept because there was not more world to conquer. Man has gone to the North Pole and to the South Pole and now turns his greedy eyes on the moon and on the planets; have and get and get and have.

The richest nation in the world is America. We’ve got the most. We think we’re in a recession. And still, cars are coming out longer and bigger and looking more like jukeboxes than ever. And there’s still more money and more bank accounts. I heard of a fellow whose deductions began to catch up and did finally catch up with his salary, but mostly, it’s not so. After they’ve taken off everything they want to take off and can think of, still the average fella has more money than he used to. Back when I was young fellow, a man used to raise ten kids on a dollar a day and do a good job. Now we’ve got everything, absolutely everything. And yet what country in the world is the most troubled, have more breakdowns, more insanity, more murders, or triangles, or bug houses and more hospitals and more psychiatrists, and more couches, in America. It’s rather a cynical thought, an ironic thought that the richest nation in the world manages to have the most divorces, the most suicides, the most juvenile delinquency; proving again that no matter how much you give a man, if he misses God, he cries ever me wanteth and goes out to do some crime.

And if you give him everything and then add God to it, you have wronged him and he’s wronged his own soul, for God wants to be first and wants to be all. Money won’t do it. If you take the kingdom of God and His righteousness, God will add money to you, as much as you need. If you take the kingdom of God and His righteousness, God may send your way learning and art and music and legitimate earthly loves. God may send it all to you and let you have it. But always with the understanding that He can take it away again and you won’t grumble, you’ll still have God. God is all.

Now, I close. Isaiah wrote, thy sun no more going down neither shall thy moon withdraw itself. For the Lord shall be thine everlasting light. And the days of thy mourning shall be ended. And the silk weaver of Germany wrote a kind of wild paraphrase on this, running like this. “O my God, How great is God! how small am I! A mote in the illimitable sky, Amidst the glory deep, and wide, and high Of Heaven’s unclouded sun. There to forget myself for evermore; Lost, swallowed up in Love’s immensity, The sea that knows no sounding and no shore, God only there, not I. More near than I unto myself can be, Art Thou to me; So have I lost myself in finding Thee. The boundless Heaven of Thine eternal love Around me, and beneath me, and above; In glory of that golden day, The former things are passed away— I, past and gone. And then we’ve almost lost as Scofield says of the Song of Solomon; we’ve almost lost our ability to kneel, bare-footed before such a burning bush as this.

When the church has restored to her again, the kind of spirit that can understand what Isaiah meant, and Tersteegen meant when he paraphrased Isaiah, then we will have revival. Then we’ll have the kind of revival the Quakers had. Then we will have the kind of revival the Methodist had. Then we’ll have what they had at Pentecost. Then we’ll have what the Quakers had and then we’ll have what the saints had had down the centuries. Wherever the fire glowed until the ages turned, that’s what they had. So have I lost myself in finding thee; have lost myself forever, O Thou Son, the boundless heaven of thine eternal love around me and beneath me and above. This is God.

My Brethren, let’s remember the text again, “hid with Christ, in God. If you gain the whole world and find not God in your own soul, what have you found? It’s worth nothing to you. Friends, these days, let’s search. Let’s go home to pray. Let’s get still. Let’s get quiet. Let’s learn the wonder of silence. Let’s learn the beauty of the secret seeking after God. There the Bible before us opened and our knees bent, and all alone in humility and penitence, let us cry, “only God, only God and God alone. Take the world but Give me Jesus.” Will you do that? We need it in this church. You need it. We all need it. May God grant it through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now Father, wilt Thou bless all who listened tonight. Wilt Thou grant we pray, that we may forget the things that are behind and press forward toward the things that are ahead. And that we may see all that is as only the size of a hazelnut and ourselves in God as vast, so vast that we encompass the worlds and are utterly empty without Thee. Fill us O God. Fill us with thyself for without Thee, ever we’ll be wanting. Fill us with thyself, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

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“A Journey into the Heart of God”

Message #1 of #10 in “Attributes of God Series

Colossians 3:1-3

I want to take one text. And while I hope to preach the Word from all over, this one text is sorta going to be, is going to sound the note and set the key for this series which begins tonight. Colossians, the third chapter, the first three verses. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead and your life is hid, with Christ, in God. Those eight words, divided into twos, would make a good sermon for anybody. I give it to you free. Anybody that wants that can have that as a sermon. It’s the Lord’s Word, but I’ve just pointed out your life is hid, with Christ, in God. And I then want to limit that to this: with Christ, in God.

I’ll tell you what I want to do. Nobody hesitates to quote D.L. Moody. Nobody hesitates to quote Andrew Murray. Any preacher that can and wants to quote Spurgeon. With acceptance. Anyone can quote R.A. Torrey and quote Dr. Ironside and everybody says, That’s all right. Now what I want to do over these coming nights, is to go way back for help to a book written 600 years ago, and quote a few things from that book and weave it into the message that I am preaching about this journey into the heart of God; with Christ, in God.

This was written by a very saintly woman. I’m not much of believer in women preachers. I never heard one that helped me any. And this is not a plea. I like men preachers. And I even like books written by men. But a man ought not to be so stubborn, that he is his own worst enemy. And so if a woman writes a book, a little tiny book you can carry around your side pocket, and it lives 600 years, I conclude that, if it’s helpful, I ought to humble myself and read it. So, I want to quote what this little lady said about the Trinity. She said, Suddenly, the Trinity filled my heart with joy, and I understood that so it shall be in heaven without end.

Here you see my friends, is a step up from this utilitarian heaven that most people want to go to where they’ll have everything right. Split-level, two cars, and fountain and swimming pool and golden streets. She saw that heaven would be heaven because the Trinity will fill our hearts with joy without end in heaven. For the Trinity is God and God is the Trinity. And the Trinity is our maker and keeper; and the Trinity is our everlasting love and everlasting joy and bliss by our Lord Jesus Christ. And where Jesus appeareth, the Blessed Trinity is understood.

Here, my brethren, is what we must get into our heads and hearts, that Jesus Christ is the full, complete manifestation of the Trinity. And he that has seen the Father, he said, has seen me. And He has set forth the glory of the Triune God; all of God there is. So that where Jesus appeareth, God is. And where Jesus is glorified, God is. And where Jesus is love, God is.

Our scripture confirmation of this, I wouldn’t quote anybody unless there were scripture that would confirm it. No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us. And His love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit. There you have the Father and the Son, or the Father and the Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. There you have the Trinity. And whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God. That’s 1 John 4:12-16. John 17:20-23, Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word.

Do you believe on Jesus Christ through the word of the Apostles? Do you? Do you believe on Jesus Christ through the word of the apostles? If you do, then Jesus said distinctly here, I’m praying for you. That they all may be one as Thou Father art in Me and I in Thee that they may be one in us. I in them and Thou in Me.

Now, another man said, some of you heard my little book review on the radio yesterday; and that man prayed this prayer, he said, O God, who art the Truth, make me one with Thee in everlasting love. It wearieth me often to read and hear many things, but in Thee is all that I would have and can desire. Now, when the church will find that out, we will come out of our doldrums. As soon as the church finds out that salvation is not a lifeboat only; that it is not an insurance policy against Hell only, but that it is a gateway into God and that God is all that we would have and can desire. And to quote again, Julian, she said, I saw that God is to us everything that is good and comfortable. She said, He is our clothing that for love wrappeth us, and claspeth us and all encloseth us for tender Love that he may never leave us, being to us all that is good.

That is all I want to quote, but I start there and I point out to you, that Christianity is a gateway into God. And then when you get into God, with Christ, in God, then you’re on a journey into infinity, into infinitude. And that there is no limit, there is no place to stop. There isn’t one work and a second work or a third word, and that’s it. But there is numberless experiences and spiritual epochs and crises that can take place in your life; going on and journeying out into the heart of God in Christ.

Now, God is infinite. I’d like to talk a little about that. That’s the hardest thought that I will bring to you in any of this. In any of these sermons in this series, the hardest thought that I will ask you to grasp is that God is infinite. Now, you cannot understand what infinite means, but don’t let it bother you. I don’t understand it and I’m trying to preach about it.

Infinite means so much that nobody can grasp it. But reason nevertheless kneels and acknowledges that God is infinite. But as near as we can make out what we mean by infinite, we mean that God knows no limits and no bounds and no end; that what God is, He is without boundaries. And all that God is, He is without bound or limits.

Now we’ve got to eliminate all careless speech here. Because you know, you and I talk about unlimited wealth, and there’s no such thing as unlimited wealth. You can count it. We talk about boundless energy, which I don’t feel as if I have at the moment. But, there’s no such thing as boundless energy. You can measure a man’s energy. And we talk about somebody taking infinite pains. An artist takes infinite pains with his picture. But, he doesn’t take infinite pains. He just takes pretty good pains. He does the best he can and throws up his hands and says it isn’t right yet, but I’ll have to let it go.

That’s what we call infinite pains. But that’s a misuse of the word infinite. And misuse of the word boundless and unlimited, because the word boundless, unlimited and infinite, they all mean the same thing. And they describe God and they don’t describe anything but God. They do not describe space, nor time, nor matter, nor motion, or energy, nor creatures, nor sands, nor stars. All of that can be measured. Because you see, measurement is a way created things have of accounting for themselves.

Weight, for instance, that’s how things account for themselves to intelligence for the gravitational pull of the earth. You know how much you weigh and some of you wish you didn’t, but it’s the gravitational pull. We call that weight. And that’s how your body accounts to you for your condition. And then we have distance, space between heavenly bodies. That’s distance. Then we have length. The extension of a body into space. That’s length.

And we have various other ways of measuring things, because everything is relative you know and it’s just in part and it’s limited. You can always measure a thing. We know how big the sun is. We know how big the moon is. We know how much the earth weighs. We know how much the sun weighs. We know how much many other heavenly bodies weigh. We know how much approximately there is in the ocean. We know how deep it is, we can measure it because you know, even though it seems to be boundless, it really isn’t boundless at all. It always has a bound. You start in Liverpool and start traveling this direction on the Queen Mary or the United States, and when you get out of sight or land, you’d say, “why this ocean is boundless.” But, you wait a while and the happy old lady that stands out on Bedlow Island down in the southern part of Manhattan, you’ll see her and she’ll be a bound for you. That’s as far as the ocean goes. And so, you go up river and get off.

So there’s nothing boundless but God. There is nothing that it is infinite but God. Because you see, God is self-existent and absolute, and everything else is contingent and relative. Everything is relative. There’s nothing very big and nothing very wise and nothing very wonderful. It’s all relatively so. It is God that knows no degrees. The poet says one God, one Majesty, there is no God but Thee, unbounded, unextended unity.

For a long time, I wondered why he said, unbounded, unextended unity. That was the great hymn writer Faber. I wondered why he said it; unextended. God doesn’t extend into space. God contains space. It was CS Lewis who said, if you could think of a sheet of paper infinitely extended in all directions, and you were to take a pencil and make a line one inch long on it, that would be time. When you started to push your pencil, that’s the beginning of time. And when you lifted off the paper, that’s the end of time, and all around it, infinitely extended in all directions is God. That’s a good illustration.

Now, if there was a point where God stopped, then God wouldn’t be perfect. You see, for instance, if God knew almost everything, but not quite everything, then God wouldn’t be perfect in knowledge. Isn’t that right? His understanding wouldn’t be infinite as it says, in 147th Psalm. If God knew almost everything, let us take all it can be known, everything that can be known, past, present and future, spiritual, psychic, and physical everywhere throughout the universe. And let’s say God knows all about that except one percent. He knows 99% of all it can be known. Well, I’d be embarrassed to go to heaven and look into the face of a god that didn’t know everything. He has to know it all, or I can’t worship Him, because I can’t worship that, which is not perfect. And so God has to know all there is, or else, I can’t worship Him.

And then when it comes to say, power. If God had all the power there is except a little bit, and somebody else had a little bit of power hoarded that God couldn’t get to, then we couldn’t worship God. We couldn’t say that this God is an infinite power, because He wouldn’t be of infinite power. He’d just be close to it. But, falling short of it a little bit, He wouldn’t be quite God. He would be short of infinite. And while He would be more powerful than any other being, and perhaps even more powerful than all the beings in the universe lumped together. He still would have a defect and therefore, He couldn’t be God. For our God is perfect; and perfect in knowledge and perfect in power.

And if God had goodness, but there was one spot in God, that wasn’t good, then He wouldn’t be our God and Father. If God had love, but didn’t have all the love, just ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of the love, or even higher percentage of the love than that, God still wouldn’t be God. God to be God must be infinite in all that He is. He must have no bound, and no limit, no stopping place, no point beyond which you can’t go, but that when you think of God or anything about God, you have to think infinitely about God.

Some of you people have charley horses in your head for two weeks after trying to follow this, and I don’t know about what I’ll have myself. But brother, it’s a mighty good cure for this little cheap God that we’ve got around here now in modern fundamentalism. This little cheap God, that you can pal around with “the man upstairs” there and the fellow that helps you win baseball games and all that. That god, my brother, He isn’t the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He isn’t the God that laid the bound, that made the heaven and the earth. He’s some other god.

You know, we can create gods just the same as the heathen can. We educated Americans, imagine that it takes a heathen to make a god. You know, you can make a God out of silver or gold or wood or stone. Or, you can make it out of your own imagination. And the god that’s being worshipped in many places, is simply a god of imagination. He’s not the true God. He’s not the infinite, perfect, all-knowing, all-wise, all-loving, infinitely boundless, perfect God. He’s not that God, but he’s something short of that. And so, Christianity is decaying and going down into the gutter. Because the God of modern Christianity is not the God of the Bible all together. That is, we fall short of it. I don’t mean to say that we do not pray to God. I mean to say that we pray to a God short and what He ought to be. So, we’ve got to think of God as being the Perfect One.

Now, there’s a lot I’d like to say about God and a lot I want to say about Him, the Divine Godhead and the Trinity. And I want to give you a little shock here now by saying this: that God takes pleasure in Himself and rejoices in His own perfection . I want you to hear that, and don’t say, now Mr. Tozer didn’t mean that, or don’t come and argue, because it won’t do any good. I’ve prayed and thought and searched and read the Word too long to ever take this back. God takes pleasure in Himself; and He rejoices in His own perfection. The Divine Trinity is glad in Himself. God delights in His works.

You remember that when God created the heaven and the earth and all things that are therein and man upon the earth, that while God was busy creating things and creatures, it kept saying, and God saw it all and lo, it was good. Then when God created man in His own image, God looked and behold, and said, “it’s very good.” God rejoiced in His works. He was glad in what He had done. And when we come to redemption, my friends, redemption is not a heavy work for God. God didn’t find himself in a fix like John Foster Dulles and have to rush off somewhere and try to straighten himself out and get right with the angels and get His foreign policy straightened out with the archangels.

God did what He did joyfully, my brethren. He did what He did joyfully. He made the heaven and the earth joyfully. That’s why the flowers look up and smile, and the birds sing and the sun shines, and the sky is blue, and the rivers trickle down to the sea. God made the creation and it was, He loved what he did. He took pleasure in Himself and took pleasure in His own perfections and in the perfection of his work.

Then, when it comes to redemption I repeat, that this was not a heavy task laid upon God by moral necessity. God wanted to do this. There was no moral necessity on God to redeem mankind. He didn’t have to send His Son Jesus Christ to die for mankind. He sent Him, but at the same time, Jesus said He did it voluntarily. He said, I came of myself. He did it of Himself. God was willing. It was the happy willingness of God.

A mother doesn’t have to get up and feed her baby at two in the morning. There’s no law compelling her to do it. The law would probably would compel her to take some care a little tyke, but she doesn’t have to give him that loving care that she does. She wants to do it. She does it because she likes to do it. I used to do it for our little fellas, and I enjoyed doing it. I don’t think I would now, because I don’t get up with the alacrity that I used to when I was twenty, two or three, but a mother or a father, they do what they do, because they love to do it.

Now I’d like to have you know, that this awesome, eternal, invisible, infinite, all-wise, omniscient God, the God of our fathers, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the God we call, Our Father which art in heaven. While He is boundless and infinite, He can’t be weighed nor measured. You can’t apply distance to Him nor time nor space, for He made it all and contains it all in His own heart. And while He rises above it all, at the same time, this God is a friendly, congenial God, and He delights in Himself. The Father delights in the Son. This is my beloved Son, in whom my soul is well pleased. And the Son delighted in the Father and said, I thank Thee Father, Lord of heaven and earth. And certainly the Holy Ghost delights in the Father and the Son.

Then when it came to the Incarnation; the Incarnation wasn’t something that God, Jesus Christ did gritting His teeth and saying, I hate this thing. I wish I could get out of it. He came to the womb of the Virgin Mary and some of the dear old theologians, they said he abhorred. Notice that “he abhorred not the Virgin’s womb” Did you ever notice that expression, in one of our hymns? He abhored not the Virgin’s womb. The writer thought about this and said, Now, he was writing a beautiful hymn and said, wait a minute here. The word the womb of a creature? How can the everlasting, eternal, infinite God whom space cannot contain, wouldn’t it be a humiliation? Then he smiled and said, no, He abhorred not the Virgin’s womb. He wrote it and we’ve been singing it for centuries. That at the incarnation of Jesus Christ in mortal flesh, was not a heavy thing that Jesus had to do. The second person of the Trinity, the Everlasting Son, the Eternal Word made Himself flesh joyously, joyously. And so, when the angels sang about the Incarnation, they sang joyously about it.

And then salvation. Notice that in the 15th of Luke, that when Jesus Christ saves a man, He carries him on His shoulders and what’s the word there, the verb? Rejoicing, rejoicing, He does it rejoicing. He comes home rejoicing. And the same will be with the Consummation in that Great Day we’ll speak about a little later.

Now, God is not only pleased with Himself, and delighted with his own perfections, and happy in His work of creating and redeeming, but He is also enthusiastic. There’s an enthusiasm in the Godhead. And I want you to see my friends, that in creation, there is enthusiasm. If there wasn’t enthusiasm, it will run down shortly. Look at energy for instance. Why when you stop to think of, when you stop to think of what you are made out of, and what everything is made out of. Made out of atoms and atoms are made out of protons and neurons and electrons. And you can’t keep them still, not a second. They dash in all directions at tremendous speeds. And the heavenly bodies move the same way. The old Greeks called the movement that they made as they pass through space, the music of the spheres. I don’t think they missed it by very much at all.

And I’ve quoted before several years ago, but I hadn’t thought of it but that comes to my mind now. I think you ought to hear it again. And we ought to hear this every once in a while. The man who said from harmony, from heavenly harmony, this universal frame began, when nature underneath a heap of jarring atoms lay and could not heave her head. The tuneful voice was heard on high, arise you more than dead. And then cold and hot and moist and dry together to their stations leaked and music’s power obeyed. From harmony to harmony through all the compass of the notes it ran, the diapason closing full in man. I believe that, that God is saying when He created things, and that the motion and speed and the hurrying bodies as they move about, and the working of little creatures in the earth, the earth worms to make the soil soft and the working of the sun on the earth. All this is God joyously working in His creation. It’s seen in creation, it’s seen in light.

Did you ever stop to think of what it would be like if there was no light, if there wasn’t any light anywhere? If there wasn’t any light, nobody had any light. If God Almighty where to put a lead sack around all the heavenly bodies, and suddenly shut out all the light there is, I wouldn’t want to be alive. I’d want to turn myself off like a bulb and cease to be and ask God please to annihilate me, and I don’t believe in annihilation.

But, light and speed and color and sound. Some people are afraid of color. They think that spirituality consists in being, just being, just being drab. You know, drab like I’m dressed tonight. They think that spirituality, just being drab. My brother and sister, God made color. And He made all kinds of colors and He made all shades of colors. Look at the sunset. What is that? Just something scientific? You can’t fool me. You think that God made that lovely, beautiful thing out there and splash the sky with old rose and cerise and blue and white, and that God wasn’t smiling when He did that. You tell me that that’s just an accident of nature scientifically explained? Oh, you’re got too much learning for your own good. Go empty your head and get your heart filled and you’ll be better off, because I believe God made the sunset. How do I know? I know because the Holy Ghost wrote 150 Psalms. And in the 150 Psalms, He celebrates the wonders of God’s creation.

Some don’t believe that we ought to love God’s creation, they don’t. There’s a woman who wrote in England years ago and she says that soulish and if we love anything that God made, that soulish, and we lose it in the Great Day. That we ought to trim ourselves right down and walk around, I suppose looking like the inside of a black dog’s mouth, dark and gloomy and rather sinister. The fact is my friends, that God made the colors.

Now, the devil didn’t make the colors. The devil of course, gets people to use them, but he didn’t make them. God made the colors. He made the light and the light gave us the colors. Put the light of the sun through a prism and it will break up into its seven major or seven primary colors and then out of those primary colors, you get all colors you have. Now, I don’t believe that a woman ought to, a Christian woman, ought to try to look like a Christmas tree. I don’t think that. But I don’t think there’s any harm in wearing colors. Now, some of you dear old ladies won’t like me for this and you’ll want to paddle me good and say, what’s happening to the old man. Is he breaking up? No, I’m not breaking up. I always believed this. I always believe in colors. I like to see color. I’d like to see it everywhere. God made it all. And so, God’s enthusiastic about it.

I find enthusiasm in the Godhead. I see enthusiasm and energy. We used to say back there, I used to preach about this and us it for an illustration. I say, if you take a glass of water, there are atoms enough in a glass of water to blow up a whole city. And that sounded rather extreme. But, one day a little fellow, a little sawed off fellow with a sharp nose, gave the order and some men flew over Hiroshima and dropped a bomb about as big as a glass of water and blew the city to bits and killed 120,000 people. Just atoms. Just the little atoms. That’s all it was. It didn’t happen to be H2O or something else, but just atoms.

So, I tell you with so much energy in the world, and so much ability to come back and make good after you have killed a thing, out in my state of Pennsylvania, the money greedy dogs have gone out there and here’s what they’ve done. They have gone and bought up the coal rights in certain sections of the state. Beautiful hills that I grew up to see and love. Beautiful, sun-kissed hills, sometimes misty blue in the setting of the sun. And I would see them there, and I as a boy, loved them. And the creeks or cricks as we call them that ran below and the little runs and ran out to the rivers and down to the sea.

It was all very beautiful to me, that I went back to my old place here a few years ago and I found that these money hungry fellows had sold out the coal rights. And you know what they did? They didn’t dig a hole and go back after the coal. They took bulldozers and drag the top off of the earth; trees, grass everything to get down to the coal and lifted the coal out. And the result was, thousands and thousands of acres, whole hills that used to go up with their green to meet heaven’s blue, lay gashed like one vast grave that hadn’t been filled in. And the state of Pennsylvania said you got to fill it all in or we’ll fine you $300. And they looked at each other and grinned and said would cost us several thousand to fill it in. So, here’s your $300 and they left it as it was.

And I went away grief-stricken to see my beautiful hills, now great, ugly sandpits; and I went back in a few more years. You know what nature had done? Dear old, busy, enthusiastic and fun-loving joyous Mother Nature, did you know what she did? I don’t know where she got the seed, and I don’t know where she got anything, but I know she began to draw a green veil over that ugly gash. And now if you’d go back this summer, I think by this time or certainly by next summer, it will have cured itself. God Almighty put in nature the ability, when evil man, loving money would, would take bulldozers and steam shovels and gouge great ugly holes in God’s lovely creation, God gave Mother Nature ability to go right back and in a few years pull a curtain of green over it and start the trees again and now you can see nature.

You see, she’s busy, she’s enthusiastic, but there’s no she. It’s God my brethren. It’s God. We ought to stop thinking like a scientist and think like a psalmist. We’ll get right with God when we think like a psalmist and an apostle and stop thinking like a technician or mechanic. That’s our trouble, we think like mechanics. We say nature did this, and of course I’ve used the expression but I am explaining by nature, I mean God, enthusiastic over His work. So, there is God working with color and sound and bodies in space out there traveling around. Man can make them travel 25,000 miles an hour, but they’re poor, little old creeping oxcarts compared with the speed God gets out of them. Some of those heavenly bodies, the way they go.

And why did God say go out there and say, now get going fast. I don’t know, just God was just happy in His creation. That’s all. He looked, and lo, it was very good. This infinite God was enjoying Himself; somebody is having a good time in heaven and earth and sea and sky. Somebody is painting the sky, old rose and cerise and blue and pink and white. Somebody is making trees to grow where only gashes grew a year ago. Somebody is causing the ice to melt out of the river, and the fish to swim and the birds to sing and lay their blue eggs and build a nest and hatch their young. Somebody is running the universe. And I believe I know who it is. I believe it’s the Eternal Father, strong to save, whose power rules the restless wave. I believe that it’s the Trinity. That it is Our Father who art in heaven, Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. God is having a good time His world.

And so, let us not think anymore of God as being heavy browed and gloomy. I repeat, that when God made the heaven and earth, they sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. There wasn’t a funeral at the creation of the world, there was an anthem, and all the creations sang; and at the Incarnation they sang. I know some of these textualists, they shut you right up. They put a clammy, pasty, pall over your happy mouth and say, now the angels didn’t sing, “peace on earth, goodwill to men.” According to the Greek, it says they said, “Peace on earth, goodwill to men.” But all you have to do is read that brother. You can’t read that without getting happy. If something begins to move in you. You get a rhythm. You get music in your heart! Peace on earth, goodwill toward men, they said. That was singing. There was singing at the Incarnation.

And then, at the resurrection there was singing. I will sing among my brethren said Jesus in the Psalm, and when He rose from the dead, it doesn’t tell us in the New, but it foretells it in the Old, that one of the first things Jesus did was to sing. And one of the last things He did before He went up to die, was to sing a hymn along with his brethren. And I’d loved to have heard that hymn. And you know, you’ll indentify it. It is found in the Psalms. I don’t know which one.

And think about the Rapture. Did you ever stopped to think about the Rapture? Now, some of you have got so far from prophecy. You’ve been scared out and intimidated and chased down the alley until you don’t believe in the coming of the Lord anymore. The pre-tribulationist and the post-tribulationist and the amillennialist and what have you, have all scared a lot of you people and scared me. I still believe Jesus Christ is coming back to the world He made and died for. I still believe He’s coming back and His feet will stand on that day where they stood once on the Mount of Olives. Do you believe that. I believe He’s coming back.

Now I’ll admit that I don’t go with everything I see in the Scofield notes. And I’ll admit that I don’t go along with everything that everybody puts on a chart and stands up with a long stick and says, now, this is this and that’s that and the other thing is the other thing. That’s carrying it too far brother. I don’t want to know more than Isaiah. I’ll be satisfied if I’m just a shade under Isaiah. But not more than Isaiah. So I’m not going to, I’m not trying to know more than Daniel and Isaiah and John on the isle of Patmos. Yeah, well, I knew John was somewhere but I’m getting tired and forgot where he was.

Well brethren, I believe He’s coming back again. You know, everybody knows how to die, but have you ever stopped to think you’ll be all mixed up when you come to the Rapture. You know, it’s going to be something that has never happened before. And lots of people have died. Old Jacob pulled his feet into bed with him and leaned on his staff and gave up the ghost and slept with his fathers. That was a dear, quaint old way they had and doing in those days. They slept with their fathers. Everybody slept with Grandpa. And there they lay, all row on row, sleeping together. And that’s the way they died. They knew how to die. You know how to die. You just lie down and when it gets so that you can’t live, you die.

And so, we’re not too much worried about dying, but the Rapture. I tell you that that’s a hard one. What’s going to happen? Here you are sleeping out here Dear Mrs. Deet sleeping over here, Brother Wood and Brother Moore, all out here and Brother Gately and all of these that we’ve known during the years. They lie sleeping all around. And if the Lord tarry, why, you and I will join them. We’ll go. We can’t live forever, down here I mean. And you’ll die.

But then, coming up out of there; getting up out of there. And if you’re walking around on the street and the Lord; you hear the sound of a trumpet that’s louder than the horn of a diesel engine and you recognize the timber isn’t earthly at all. It’s heavenly, and it isn’t even the music of the spheres. It’s the music of the voice of Jesus, the Son of God. And suddenly you’re transformed. You won’t know what to do. You know, you won’t know how to act. You can’t find out anywhere. When they are going to be presented before the Queen, they know how to curtsey. You know that I couldn’t do it, I’d fall apart, but they do it. They curtsey and they know how to approach kings and queens and presidents and all other VIPs. But nobody’s told us what to do when we get over yonder.

And suddenly, you’re walking down the street and you’re somebody else, and you look at yourself, no more warts, no more wrinkles, and feel your face, no more hollow holes and feel head and hair. It didn’t used to be, and you’re glorified and you look away and see the Son of God and you’re like Him. And you won’t know what to do. The people lying in their graves, what will they do? Did you know that I know what they’ll do.

I mentioned this one time, and where did I mention this? The trouble of getting around so much is you forget where you have been. And I mentioned it somewhere and a man came up afterward and I said, we were going to sing, sing arise and sing ye that dwell in dust. That’s what it said, rise and sing ye the dwell in dust. For the earth shall cast forth her dead. And a man came to me and said I heard a sermon, a great sermon preached one time called, “Singing Dust, Singing Dust,” that the dead who sleep in the dust of the earth shall rise, and they’ll sing, and it will be singing dust.

Well, there’s going to be singing at the Rapture. And there’s going to be singing at the Consummation, and that Great Day, Thou art worthy to take the Book and to open the seals thereof for Thou was slain and hast redeemed us. That’s the theme of the new song. The theme of the new song isn’t, I am. The theme of the new song is “Thou art.” Do you notice the difference? When you leave the old hymnody of Wesley and Montgomery and Watts and the rest of them, it was Thou art, Thou art, Thou art O God, Thou art. Then when you get down to the modern hymns of the modern era, the modern fundamentalist it’s, I am, I am, I am, I am. It makes me sick to my stomach. All this, I “aming.”

Well, I know we can testify and we have a right to and occasionally a good hymn of testimony is all right too. But, we’ve overdone it as we have over done almost everything else we’ve ever done anything about, we’ve overdone it. So, we’ve overdone this I am, I am stuff.

My brethren, let me say to you that the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is a song of the ransomed is going to be, Thou art, Thou art worthy O God. They said to take the books. Thou hast redeemed us to God and has made us kings and priests and we shall reign on the earth. And I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000s and 1000s of 1000s. And you put on a blackboard how many that is and I will buy a dinner. I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the beasts and the elders and the number of them was 10,000. Isn’t it strange that men are made, actually made. They have got such timber and I when I say timber, I mean timber here. They’ve got such timber in their head, that instead of getting happy over this, they solemnly try to figure out who these deacons were and these elders and beasts and these creatures. And they write books on who they were and what they looked like. Isn’t that strange? How dumb can a scholar get? I don’t know about these creatures here. See me five minutes after the Rapture and I’ll tell you about it. But now, I just have to take it by faith. Thou hast made us kings and priests, and he said all these creatures saying, Worthy is the Lamb. Not, “look at me, I’m wonderful, I’m happy, happy, happy, happy!” No, the Lamb, the Lamb is worthy. So that’s the Consummation.

Well, my brethren, the infinite Godhead invites us into Himself to share in all the intimacies of the Trinity. And Christ is the way in. Did you know the moon is geared this way toward the earth; relative to the earth. It’s geared this way. It turns, and the Earth turns. But, they turn in such a way, that we only see one side of the moon, we never see the other They’re hoping to go around and see the other side. I’m not interested. It’s the dark side. But, we see only one side of the moon. And I thought, the Eternal God is so vast, so infinite, extends out so far into infinitude that I can’t hope to know all about God and all there is about God.

But God has a man-ward side just as the moon has an earth-ward side and always keeps that smiling, yellow face turned earth-ward. So God has a man-ward side and always keeps that turned man-ward; and that side is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God’s man-ward face, God’s man-ward side. Jesus is the way God sees us. He always looks down and sees us in Jesus Christ. And then, we go back to my quotation, where Jesus appeareth, the Blessed Trinity is understood.

Now, I close and I want to ask some questions. Are you contented with nominal Christianity? If you are, I have nothing for you. Are you contented with popular Christianity that runs on the authority and popularity of big shots? If you are, I have nothing for you. Are you content with elementary Christianity, with the beginnings, the elementary beginnings of things? If you are, all I’ve got for you, is to exhort you earnestly to press on toward perfection. But if you’re not satisfied with nominal Christianity and popular Christianity and the first beginnings of things, and you want to know God, the Triune God for yourself, why, pray for me and I’ll be preaching on these subjects.

Tags Attibutes, God's Love