Tag: Character

A.W. Tozer Talks

“Seven Roots of the Righteous Life”

Seven Roots of the Righteous Life Download

Seven Roots of the Righteous Life

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 12, 1955

The passage in the Song of Solomon, the fourth chapter, the last verse, three, 14, 15, and 16, three verses, and one in chapter five. Spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices, a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon. Awake, O north wind, and come thou south. Blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits. I am coming to my garden, my sister, my spouse. I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey. I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends, drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.

This passage likens the church to a garden, and the beloved, which is Jesus Christ our Lord, looks down on this garden and cares for it, and enters it, and lovingly goes over what is in it, pomegranates, camphor, spikenard, saffron, calamus, cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh, aloes, chief spices, and says that he has come into his garden and calls the church his sister, his spouse. I have gathered my myrrh and my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey.

Now, there is a most attractive picture of the spiritual life, and there is fruit and fragrance and beauty. And as you approach the garden, the fruit is seen, and the fragrance is smelled, and of course the beauty is seen.

Now, we Christians, for the most part, go in greatly for the fruit and the spice and the beauty of the garden. And in Proverbs there is another verse which says, the root of the righteous yieldeth fruit. And we, for the most part, go to church, I think, for the same reason that a child climbs into its mother’s arms after a long day’s play, with many falls and bumps and frights and disappointments. The child wants consolation, and most people go to church for consolation.

In fact, we have now fallen upon times when religion is mostly for consolation. We are now in the grip of the cult of peace, the cult of peace of mind, peace of heart, peace of soul. And we want to relax and have the great God Almighty pat our heads and comfort us. And this has become religion. This, along with one other thing, and that is, if you don’t be good, the atom bomb will get you. These are the only two motives that are left in the wide world for religion.

My brethren, there is something better than all this, and it is that there should be a people; they don’t have to all belong to one church, but that there should be a people called out by the Lord God and subjected to a spiritual experience given by God, and then should learn to walk in the way of the Truth and the way of the Scriptures until they produce in themselves, whether any atom bomb gets them or not doesn’t matter. They that destroy the body aren’t important, only they that destroy the soul.

And you can disintegrate a man, a saint of God, with an atom bomb, and he’s in heaven with his Lord. And whether communism comes in or doesn’t come in isn’t important in that man’s life because he is instantly with his Lord. And the communists have slain many a Christian and sent them off quickly to be with God, and they cast their bodies aside as an unclean thing, but the soul of the man or woman was immediately with the Lord.

And then the question of consolation and peace, always feeling relaxed and at rest and always enjoying ourselves inwardly. This, I say, has been held up as being quite the goal to be sought in the evil hour in which we live, and we forget that our Lord was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we forget the arrows and spear that went to the heart of Jesus’ mother Mary. We forget that every one of the disciples died or the apostles died a martyr’s death except John.

We forget that there were 13 million Christians slain in the first two generations. We forget that they languished in prison, they starved, they were thrown over cliffs, they were fed to the lions, they were drowned, sown in sacks and thrown over into the ocean. We forget that most of God’s wonderful people in the early days of the Church didn’t have peace of mind, they didn’t seek it. They knew that a soldier doesn’t go to the battlefield to relax, he goes to the battlefield to fight.

And they accepted their position in earth as soldiers in the army of God, fighting along with the Lord Jesus Christ in the terrible war against iniquity and sin. Not the war against people, but the war against sin and iniquity and the devil.

So, there was much distress, many heartaches, many tears, much loss, and many bruises, and many dead. There’s something better than being comfortable. The Church of Christ ought to find that out, and the poor, soft, over-swollen Christians of our time ought to find that out. There’s something better than being comfortable.

We Protestants have forgotten altogether that there’s such a thing as discipline and suffering. We live under an economy that enables us to have plenty. We live under a political system that enables us to believe anything we want or nothing at all and not get into trouble with the law. And the result is we have concocted a religion of sweet wine that we drink and hope that we can walk around in a state of pleasant intoxication.

Now what is the real thing God wants to do for a man? The real thing that God wants to do for an individual and for the Church is to bring in him the fruits of the Spirit—joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.

It is in the language of Paul in Ephesians to cause him to be so that he will love everybody and let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor, and evil speaking be put away from among you with all malice. Be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God hath for Christ’s sake forgiven you. Be therefore followers of God as dear children and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor.

To bring out the likeness of Christ in the heart and life of a man—that is the purpose of God. Not to make him happy, though he is likely to be happy. Not to make civilization safe, though if there are enough of people like that in the world, civilization would have a better chance to exist.

But now here is our difficulty, my brethren. We try to arrive at the fruits of Christianity by a shortcut. Everybody wants to have peace and joy and love and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness, and everybody wants to be able to endure and to sacrifice and to suffer.

Everybody wants to be known as being spiritual, close to God, obedient and walking in the truth. Everybody wants the fruit of the spiritual life. And it’s beautiful, and in heaven it will be paramount. Outside of, and next to the beauty of Jesus, will be the beauty of his people revealed.

But here’s what I want to get at this morning, that flowers do not grow in thin air. A beautiful, fragrant blossom does not grow in a vacuum. They do not come suddenly down from somewhere and hover over us like a hummingbird. They grow, and they come up out of a root, and the root of the righteous yieldeth fruit.

And all that beautiful garden that you see there, whose fragrance comes out to welcome you, all roots down into the hard earth. And all has stalks and strong roots, and the flowers grow on top of that. They are a part of it. But you take the roots away and you’ll have your flower about one day. Then the sun will scorch it, and it will be gone.

Now what I want to talk about today is the roots of spirituality. We all want the fruit and the blossom and the fragrance and the flower. But we have misunderstood about this, and we think that we get it by some kind of magic instead of by a cultivation. But I want to tell you that every flower has a stalk, and every stalk has a root. And long before there’s any flower, there is the careful tending of the stalk and the root.

Now, some of us wonder why we just can’t keep our spiritual lives right and why we can’t have patience. Some wonder why they can’t have the fruits of the Spirit and the flowers of the field in their lives. Because they’re trying to get to the fruit and the flower and ignoring the root and the stalk. I want to talk about seven of the roots or stalks of the spiritual life.

Now this will not tell you how to be saved. I want to be very careful here and tell you that this is not a sermon on how to be saved. This assumes that you are already a converted Christian and that the wonder of the new birth has already taken place in your life. If that is not true, then this will not help you much because this is for those who are already Christians.

But while it does not tell you how to be saved, and by deliberate design I do not this morning preach on how you can be saved, but while it does not tell you that, it does tell you what you must do and how you must live being already saved if you are going to have produced in you the beautiful fruits and fragrances of the Holy Ghost.

Now I want to talk to you about some of the roots and I will mention the first one as being the root of regularity in religious habits. All nature testifies of the value of regularity. The seasons are regular. If the weather is two weeks off, as it is now, people grumble a lot about it.

But in the main, the seasons are regular, and the heavenly bodies are regular, and the very fields are regular, and the birds are regular, and the animals are. There’s a regularity about life, a regularity about the rising and setting of the sun, a regularity about the phases of the moon, and that regularity keeps things going.

We forget all about that. We forget that back of the sunshine and the rain and the beauty of the stars at night and the loveliness of the forest and the green of the field and the sound of birdsong. We forget that back of all that is a good, sound, solid undergirding of regularity. God has built it into nature so that it does what it does regularly.

In the Old Testament, if you will read it, you will find that the Old Testament religion was built around a regularity. It said about the old man of God that it was in the order of his course that he went into the temple of God that time, and everything was laid out in order. There was an orderliness about this spiritual life.

And it is of immense value to the Christian life that you should learn to be regular in your prayer life, that you should learn to be regular in your giving, and that you should learn to be regular in your church attendance. But you see, we say, now I believe in Christ, and I’ve had a spiritual experience, and I have the right doctrine.

And then after that, we all go to pieces and become whimsical and pray according to the impulse and give according to the way we feel like it at the moment, attend church when the weather’s good, and do what we do with whimsical irregularity, and then wonder why we do not smell the sweet fragrance of aloes when we approach the church. It’s because people have neglected the root and the flowers have died. The root of regularity has been forgotten, and the result is, of course, that when the root is gone, the flowers die shortly afterward.

Now you say, I wanted to get into the spiritual, the Christian faith in order that I might get freed from the necessity of having to do things regularly. Well, you’ve missed it, my brother, and you might as well close your Bible and walk out, because you’re in the wrong church and the wrong pew and the wrong dispensation. God would have his people learn regular holy habits and follow them right along, not to become slaves to them, but to make them slaves to Him.

Now the second root is that of dependability. Let us notice that everything in nature is dependable. You sow corn or plant corn, and you get corn. You do not get wheat or barley. Plant and you get barley. You do not get wheat or corn. Set a hen on hen eggs and you get chickens. You do not get guinea hens. And so, with everything after its kind. Everything is dependable in nature except man.

And even in human society, there is a certain amount of dependability. That car of yours, you’ve got to depend on that. If you find it fails you a few times, you’ll get rid of it. You can’t have a machine that you can’t depend on when you’re hurrying off to work or to church or on a business engagement. You’ll have to be able to depend upon it.

You women know that your refrigerator must be dependable, or your food will spoil unknown to you. You’ll go out some evening and find you’ve been gone all day and come back and find everything warm and soggy and spoiled. We have to have dependability in machinery. And we have to have dependability in the monetary system.

Suppose for a minute that in Chicago a dollar was worth a dollar. In Milwaukee it was worth 75 cents; in Detroit they wouldn’t take a dollar at all. In St. Louis it was worth 32 cents. And in Seattle you couldn’t buy anything with a dollar.

Suppose that every state and city throughout the United States had a whimsical and undependable idea about money so that the currency was not stable. It would throw the whole economy into confusion in no time at all and would help to bring the nation down to the dust. One of the first things to go to pieces when a nation is falling is its economy and the soundness of its currency.

So, in society we have to have it. And so, with the mail, and so with the milkman, and so with the schools. There must be a dependability. You’ve got to be able to trust somebody.

And the sad thing about it all, my brethren, is that people as a rule are trusted because they get something out of it. The milkman doesn’t come around because he’s a good, faithful, dependable soul. He comes around because he gets paid for it. The mailman doesn’t deliver his mail to you because he’s a sweet fellow that hopes you get a postcard from Ann Mabel. He’s paid for doing it.

And so, with everybody else and everything else. Your car is dependable not because somebody said, oh, that fellow Ed Johnson, he’s such a wonderful fellow, I’ll make him a good, dependable car. No, no.

It’s dependable because the makers know that if they’re to sell two, the first one has to be dependable. And if they’re to sell ten, the first two have to be dependable. They know that they depend upon dependability being built into their car.

And it’s only at the altar of God that men can be depended upon. It’s only in the sanctuary that we can’t get but a few people that can be depended upon. The root of dependability is dead in most churches except for a faithful few that you can depend on. And then that faithful few get abused by the unfaithful ones and the undependable ones. The faithful few that can always be depended upon and are always in evidence, they get criticized for wanting to run the show.

Now I want to ask you a question this morning. I want to ask you this, and I don’t have any one person in mind, I’m just throwing this out into the anonymity, and asking you this. Think about your life over the last year. This is June 12, 1954; one full year. Now think about your life, your religious life, your church attendance, your giving, your praying, your dependability. Think about it since 1954, the same date.

Now be honest with yourself. Nobody will know anyhow. We all do, but I mean at that moment we won’t pay attention. Think now, how dependable have you been? And then ask yourself this question, if everybody in this church had been exactly as dependable as I am, where would our church be? That’s a question that we well ought to ask on our knees with tears and sorrow and pray that God will help us to be dependable. When you have something to do, do it, no matter how simple it is. But you know, in this day of Roy Rogers and drama, nobody wants to be known as dependable.

Oh, they say, a mule is dependable. Dependability, that’s for any moron. I want to do something dramatic. I want to do something with a flair to it. I want to do something big and grand.

Well, the chances are you never will, but if you do, it will simply be a flash in the pan, a rainbow without meaning, and will have no final stability. Who wants to be known as a dependable person? Somebody you can count on. If he says he’ll be there, he’ll be there. If he says he’ll do this, you won’t have to talk to him five weeks later and say, why didn’t you do it? If he makes an appointment, he’ll meet it. He’s a dependable Christian.

And brethren, remember that sweet flowers are beautiful to look at and very cheerful to smell. But somebody had to be out there on these knees poking around in the dirt long before there was any flower, and fertilizing, and digging up, and going back and doing it again, and then watching the weather and watering when it got too dry, and looking after that root.

And one of the roots is dependability. And you can’t have spirituality without dependability any more than you can have a begonia without a begonia stalk, or a lily without the stalk the lily grows on.

And then I mentioned a third root, and that is the root of loyalty. And by this I do not mean loyalty to your denomination, church loyalty. Loyalty to an effete or corrupt church or denomination is not a good thing. I mean identification of myself with a principle, a truth, or a cause, to the point of where I’ll sacrifice for it.

A great breakdown in modern times is lack of loyalty. Every church must have a few who are loyal and will die if they must for their loyalties. But everybody talks about that one, so I’ll pass on to the fourth one, and that is punctuality.

Isn’t it strange, my friends, that the fault that would wreck a business, sink a ship, ruin a railroad, is tolerated at the very altar of God? And in the very Church of Christ that can be carried on carelessly, loosely, which I say would sink a ship, wreck a business, ruin a railroad, or upset an economy, or even if done in our bodies would ruin our health. And yet in the church of God nobody thinks anything about it. The impunctual person wastes time, other people’s time.

John Wesley had a date to meet a young fellow at a certain hour, and John was there. Fifteen minutes later he came. John Wesley said with that usual sweet gravity that he always had. He said, young man, you have stolen fifteen minutes of the time God has given me. I can see the young fellow’s face red.

But anybody that’s impunctual is guilty of deception and falsehood. He says, I’ll be there, and if he isn’t there, now, of course it’s understood if there’s a traffic jam or a flat tire or illness or an accident, that’s another matter. But we’re talking about impunctuality that has become a habit in the life, and there isn’t anybody important enough to justify impunctuality.

If I had a date to talk to President Eisenhower and he stood me up, he’d never get another date with me till he apologized. There’s no man on earth important enough to stand me up fifteen minutes or twenty minutes unless there’s been an accident, or he’s been ill or there’s something wrong. That, of course, always is understood in this terrible, unpredictable world. But there is no man important enough to take another man’s time. Punctuality is a beautiful thing.

How about you Sunday school teachers? One of the woes of the Sunday school committee, one thing that puts gray hairs in every superintendent’s head, he doesn’t have any when he starts, he has them when he gets out of office, is how can I get my teachers to be there on time?

Now listen, fellow, you don’t fool me at all. An old fellow that’s been around as long as I am, I know you’re not spiritual if you’re not punctual. You have a sacred duty. You have in your hands the teaching of immortal souls. You have characters to mold and souls to win and the work of God to do.

And you’re so lacking in self-discipline, so selfish that you’ll keep the Sunday school in an uproar because you will not be punctual. And then you lead in prayer like a saint, and we look for the halo. You’re fooling nobody but yourself. If you’re not punctual, you’re not spiritual. You can’t have a rose without a rose bush and punctuality is the rose bush on which the rose grows. Not alone on that, but of many other things.

So, let’s keep this in mind, my friend. That’s why I like to see a church service start right on the head. Not two minutes, three minutes, five minutes late, but right on the head. And everything we do for God should be done with beautiful precision.

Now God understands if we can’t, if we can’t, God understands, something breaks down, God understands. But the point is, why should we keep God forever having to overlook it when we don’t have to be impunctual?

And the fifth is honesty. Just plain downright honesty is a very fragrant flower, but it never yet grew in a vacuum. It never yet came down like a flying saucer and hovered in front of anybody. It is a flower that grows on a stalk, and somebody has to take care of the stalk.

In our testimony, we ought to be perfectly honest, always, never overstate it. And we preachers should never overstate it. An evangelist that will say he preached to 5,000 when there were only 250 or 2,500 there is a liar, and he’s certainly as much of a liar as Ananias was.

But we joke about it and say it’s evangelistically speaking. Any lie is of the father the Devil, whether it’s told in a church service or somewhere else. So, let’s learn to be absolutely honest, and we’ll be perfectly safe.

God’s Word does not need pious lies to support it. Tell the truth, shame the devil. You’ve heard that old one? Tell the truth and shame the devil. And if you’ll tell the truth, there’s only be one person embarrassed, and that’ll be the devil, because the devil runs his business on lies and half-lies and half-truths.

So be perfectly frank and perfectly honest. Honesty is a good root, and out of it and from it there comes the fine virtues. Faith and love and peace and long-suffering and patience and goodness, these grow on the roots that I have mentioned. A very fragrant root is honesty.

The Quakers had a lot to tell us. We don’t go along with them in everything, but you couldn’t get a Quaker to lie. One old unbeliever who died of suicide later on, Haldeman Julius, who 25, 30, 35 years ago was flooding this country with every kind of unholy literature, but in his better moments he was capable of some pretty sound critical judgments, and he said this about the Quakers in a little sketch he was writing about religion. He said, then came the Quakers and astonished the Christian world by insisting upon acting like Christians.

That’s why the Quakers were considered to be such weird, impossible persons. They acted like Christians. They wouldn’t exaggerate, they wouldn’t lie, they wouldn’t steal, they wouldn’t be dishonest, they wouldn’t do anything wrong, they wouldn’t get down on their knees and flatter a big shot when they knew all the time how little he was.

And of course, they got thrown into jail and kicked around. It was quite a sport in England for quite a long while, kicking Quakers around. Because all the Quakers would do would be to honor God and honor the people who deserved it, call each other by their first name, put away all bombastic titles, and live like Christians. And the Christian church looked at them and said, what’s that breed of cat? And they put them in jail because they didn’t recognize them. Christians weren’t acting like Christians. They were acting like the world, and when people came acting like Christians, they were queer.

And then here is faithfulness as the sixth root that I would mention. Now God rewards us for our faithfulness, but most of us want to be dramatic. We desire to get into the public eye. Publicity is our God in the day in which we live, so we want to do something that will be recognized. But fail to remember that God said, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. Goodness and faithfulness are at the root of all the flowers that grow in the kingdom of God. Now let’s look at goodness for a little bit.

Will Durant, I think he’s not a Christian but he’s a great philosopher, and he said this, that a good man, everything else being equal, will be infinitely more precious than a great man. I think he said a hundred times or five hundred times or something more precious than a merely great man.

You see, in the Bible there were good men who were not particularly great, like Jabez, say, that got three verses. There were great men who weren’t good, like, say, Solomon or Ahab. There were great men who were good, and good men who were great, of course, but there were also good men who weren’t great. And which is the target at which we shoot? Which is it that we’d rather have? Do we want to be good, or do we want to be great?

Well, only God will know whether you’ll ever be great or not. Greatness is something that it takes several generations to produce. You have to breed the greatness. Say, Churchill. He didn’t come up by accident. It took several generations to produce a man of his size.

Now I’m not talking about his politics, I’m talking about his size. It took several generations to make a man like that. Nature had to be smiling on the genes and hormones and other strange mysteries down the years to produce a man of that vast size. Great indeed, but don’t you think he’d have been greater if he’d been known also as a good man, if he’d been known as a man who loved God and in humility prayed, sought the face of the Lord, as many another great Englishman has done; Gladstone and Gordon and many another.

Yes, goodness is always better than greatness, and anybody can become good because the gospel of Jesus Christ came that men might be good.

I was preaching over in Keswick, New Jersey, and the song leader there, who was head of music at the Philadelphia School of the Bible; I said something about goodness. God’s people ought to be good, and he came to me afterwards, and he said, Mr. Tozer, here’s something amusing. He said, some time ago I sang a solo called “There is a Green Hill Far Away.” Do you remember that one? He died to make us good, is one of the lines.

He said, after I had sung it, a man came down to the front and said, Mr. Curtis, why were you singing a modernistic song today? He said, modernistic song? Did I? He said, yes, you sang a modernistic song. You sang that Jesus died to make us good.

I don’t know what Curtis did. I suppose he shrugged his shoulders and walked away. That’s what I’d have done. Because what can you do with a man who believes that orthodoxy and nastiness go hand in hand, and modernism and goodness go hand in hand?

My brethren, it is a tragic misunderstanding of truth to teach that Jesus Christ did not die to make men good. He died to wipe away their past sins, to give them the new birth, to write their name in the Book of Life, to introduce them to the Father in eternal life. He died for all that. But the result of all that will be that they will be good men and women.

And when we say Christ died to make us good, we’re not being modernists, we’re being scriptural. He was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost. What more could you say about a man? To put it on his tombstone and put it there honestly, somebody said about the graveyard, you walked through a graveyard and looked at all the tombstones and came out and said, I wonder where they bury the sinners.

Everybody here is a saint, obviously. But you can’t make them saints by writing it on their tombstone. But if it can be honestly and without flattery written on a man’s tombstone, here lies a man who was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost. What can you say about a man more than that? That’s it.

Well, faithfulness, goodness and faithfulness, thou good and faithful servant. You can be sure there can be no goodness without faithfulness, and there’s not likely to be any faithfulness without goodness.

I thought this morning of the dear old men who were faithful, Noah faithful in his day. If Noah had been a baseball fan or had retired early and gone to Florida, if Noah had something else in mind beside God’s work, there’d have been no ark, and no seed preserved and no human race.

Abraham, if Abraham had on his wanderings downstruck uranium or gold and given up the idea of going down to Palestine and establishing a race there out of which Christ would come. If he had turned aside and built himself a little city and made himself mayor of it and lived on the fat of the land, where would we have been? Abraham was faithful and Moses. Scripture says about him, he was faithful to Him that called him and appointed him. How faithful Moses was.

Think of our Savior Jesus Christ. All the world was around him. The devil was there with his temptations, offering Him the world if He would not go to the cross. But Christ was faithful to us. Should we not be faithful to him?

A lot of you love this, church. You don’t agree with everything I say, and you don’t think I’m in any wise an angel with wings. You know better. But you do get help here. You do find the fellowship of truth here, and you do find spiritual life here.

But do you ever stop to think how many faithful people, some of them now dead, that helped to make this possible? Every stone in the wall was a tear, a faithful tear. And every cubic inch of air in this atmosphere felt the hot breath of somebody that was faithful. There must always be somebody faithful. Faithfulness is a wonderful root, and out of it there comes much good fruit.

I’m going to skip the last one and talk about, well, unselfishness. That’s really the last one, so we’ll mention that, not quite skip it. Unselfishness.

To live unselfishly, in service, in giving, in enduring, in loving, in working, in waiting. Faithful, useful, unselfish. Thinking first of God and then of myself.

Now, just in order that this might not be something floating around where you can’t get to it, I want to bring this down where you can reach up and touch it if you have the courage. Christians who go on vacation, have you ever noticed this about them? Most of them, I don’t say all, but I do say I’ve noticed it so often that I’ve almost given up looking for any change. They go away for a week or two weeks, God bless them, they’re welcome, and I’m glad they can.

Get out of Chicago, smell and noise and dirt for a while, get somewhere that’s good, if you can do it. But do you notice when God’s people come home? Late Sunday night so they’ll be ready for work Monday morning, not late Saturday night so they’ll be ready for church Sunday morning. What does that indicate? It indicates a selfishness that’s as big as a goat, and a carelessness about the work of God. It shows where the real interest lies. It lies in their job and not in their church.

Drive all day Sunday on crowded highways to get here late Sunday night to be able to go to work Monday morning so as to keep the job. But never drive all day Saturday to get here late Saturday night to be in the house of God Sunday morning so as to keep the confidence of God on me. And then we say we’re spiritual. I was born again; I do thank the Lord I was born again. Pray for me that I may hold out unto the end. You better do something about your root, brother. It’s drying up on you.

The root of the righteous bringeth forth fruit. And if you’re trying to get the fruit, frantically grasping after the fruit, neglecting the root, the fruit won’t have any root to grow on and you’ll find yourself without fruit or root before very long. Now if I’ve sounded harsh, I hope you won’t think I really have been.

But I recommend that we try, as Jesus did, to please not ourselves but Him that called us. And if we do, if we’re ready to be disciplined, that’s what’s wrong with us. We’re not disciplined. We’re not a disciplined people. Lent doesn’t mean anything to us. We eat what we please. No discipline there.

So, we don’t have the disciplines that are laid upon some churches, say the Roman Church. The disciplines are not on us. We have the Truth, and we have the experience, and then we go to pieces and live as we please, live on whimsical impulse. Nobody around to boss us.

We can’t frighten anybody with purgatory. We don’t believe in it. You can’t frighten anybody with Latin words or long robes. We’ve got to depend upon faithfulness to God.

And that’s why, for the most part, evangelical Christians are an undisciplined, careless lot of people, a disgrace to the name of Him who pleased not Himself but lived a life of careful discipline, imposed upon Himself by Himself, and finally went out to the cross and there in the last agony gave Himself to die for us unfaithful, undisciplined people.

Oh, my brethren, the fruit is sweet to the taste and the flowers are fragrant to the smell. Beautiful are the flowers and lovely is the garden. But somebody has to be in there on his knees digging at the roots with dirty hands and keeping the roots of his spiritual life right.

So lovely is faith and joy and peace in the heart of a Christian. Beautiful is Christian character and the sweet smile of the holy man or woman, beautiful indeed.

But that holy man or woman didn’t get there by accident and he didn’t get there by coddling himself. He got there by laying strong burdens on himself, by putting the yoke on his own neck and saying, for Christ’s sake who bore the cross I’ll bear the sweet self-imposed yoke.

So, let’s settle for being good spiritual people and let them be great who can. Let’s seek that we might be good and let’s remember that goodness grows from a root of obedience, prayer, Bible reading, and surrender. Amen.

Tags Character, Christian Growth, Sanctification

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Post author By pshappard
Post date December 19, 2021

“The Theology of Christmas“

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“The Theology of Christmas”

December 22, 1957

Now, I think it can be said without any successful contradiction that the holiday or event which has brought more song to the world than any other is Christmas. You have heard today, you’ve heard here tonight, you have been hearing over the years what we might call the melody of the Incarnation. But in this chapter, ten short verses, John gives us the theology of Christmas. And there is great danger that we build song on song, and song on song, and find that in the end that we have been singing about our singing. We must sing theology or be silent. And this is the theology of the Advent. I want to notice seven things and I’ll point them out to you. You may check them in your Bible if you wish or keep them in your head.

The first is the wonder of that Eternal Life: that which was from the beginning. I pointed out not too many Sunday nights ago that this does not begin with a personal pronoun at all. It begins with the word “that” because he’s not talking about a person first. He’s talking about Life. The Life was manifested. And that Eternal Life which was with the Father, was manifested unto us. We stand before this Wonder as before a great mountain. There it is. We can’t explain it. We can’t lift it. We can’t go under it. We can’t move it. There it stands the great mountain of facts, that Eternal Life. And this Life was in God, and this Life was God. And this Life is the first great wonder of this season. That there is somewhere something we call Life. We have a bit of it in our minds and a bit of it in our bodies, but somewhere there is a great mountain of Life from which the jewel of our lives was digged; somewhere, a great fountain of Life from which the tiny trickle of our life flows. That is the wonder, that Eternal Life.

Now, let’s pin that down. Let’s mark that. Let’s underscore that. And when the Christmas carols are laid aside for another year, and the tinsel is taken down, let’s stand and gaze with wandering eyes upon that Eternal Life which was with the Father and was manifest unto us. And that’s the second wonder, the wonder of Life manifested. For that is what Jesus did when He came to the world. He manifested That, not who, not a personal pronoun first, but an impersonal something that is beyond personality–That. That which is the key to all the world. That out of which all flowed. That out of which all has come, that Eternal Life. And that Eternal Life now manifests itself as a person. And that Life was manifested. And John said, John could say it, we have seen it he said, and we bear witness of it. And we show unto you that Eternal Life which was with the Father and which was manifest unto us. And our eyes have seen, and we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of that wonder called the Word of Life. Now the wonder is that Word of Life manifested.

Every time you think of the Incarnation you should bow your head for a moment. Every time it comes to your mind, you should utter a prayer. You should utter that inward prayer which the church has learned long, long ago. The old father named Molinas who went about in Spain saying that it’s all right to pray according to your beads; he was an old Catholic. He said, that’s all right, pray the way the church tells you to. But then in addition to that, I’ve got a better way to pray. He said, pray in your heart. They finally put him in prison for saying that. But I recommend it, prison or no prison, that you learn to pray out of your heart. And that you learn to remember that the best prayer is not the formal prayer somebody else’s has written. It is your prayer out of your heart.

If your child came to you and read the little word, Mama, I love you. I think you are very kind, and then you folded it back up and put it in her little coat pocket. And then the next day, came to you again and said, Mama, you are nice. I love you. That would get tiresome I think after a while, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t your heart hunger for a spontaneous grin that wasn’t in print? Wouldn’t it get hungry for a little pat that wasn’t in print that nobody else had thought out? Wouldn’t it get hungry for spontaneity? I think so. And so, while we pray prayers, I read an article just recently condemning printed prayers. How can you condemn printed prayers when the Psalms, 150 Psalms are their printed prayers? You can’t condemn them. But you can only say that they teach you how to pray, and you in the spirit of them you can have a spontaneous utterance of prayer.

Well, I got off on that when I said, every time you think about the wonder of the Incarnation, you ought to send up a little bit of prayer. You ought to wake in the night and pray. I suppose five out of seven mornings, I wake up and begin to talk to the Lord before I’m out of bed. The other two, I don’t feel well and I have to remind myself I ought to do it and do it. And maybe if I live a little longer, I’ll get all seven of them turned over to the Lord so that there’ll be seven times and I won’t have to remind myself.

Well now, the third thing is, and this mystery is here, this wonder. It is found in the fifth verse. This then is the message which we have heard of Him and declare unto you that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Here is the wonder of the nature of God. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Light, this is the wonder of light. And the Scriptures mix up and don’t try to keep separated, light and light. Light and life to all He brings, risen with healing in His wings. When that was written, theology was written. For Life and Life are one. This is that Eternal Life, and it is also the Light, that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

And I suppose that there’s something deeper than morals here. A great German theologian a generation ago wrote a book, has written a book which has become very famous in learned circles. And in that book, he declares that the idea of holiness goes back of personality. That you think of the holiness of God as a strange thing before you think of the person of God. I think he’s right; I think I’m quite sure he’s right. And he says, that the idea of purity is not the first idea of holiness. The first idea that comes to the mind or that came to the mind when the word “holy” was suggested, was not the word of being pure, not the thought of being pure, but the idea of being greater than, higher than, beyond, other than, different from, lonely in its self-sufficiency, uncreated substance of like “That” without a pronoun. That, without a personal pronoun, That.

And then later on we attribute purity and holiness to God. So, when God says, be holy for I am holy, He’s talking about moral purity. He’s talking about spiritual cleanness. But beyond that, in back of that, and prior to that, is the solemn, indescribable something, which cannot be put into words. That there exists a nature, a substance in the universe which is Life and Light, and it is a Thing, and it is That, but It also has personality. And that Personality is God. And the wonder of this, this chapter here, the third wonder is the nature of God. God is Light. God is Light and in Him is no darkness at all.

Now, church history shows us that nobody, this could be said of nobody, except that Eternal Life which was manifested and become flesh. But apart from Him, nobody from Adam on down, including David and Joseph and all the rest of the great Old Testament patriarchs and the New Testament saints. Of not one of them could it be said in him was light and no darkness was in him at all. But it can be said of God.

Does this mean anything to you that in this hour of espionage and of ambassadors going about hiding facts this day, of slanted news and hidden truths and top-secret conferences. In this day when you can scarcely trust anybody. Does it mean anything to you that somewhere, accessible to us now, there is That which never, never, never sinned? That which could not, cannot sin. That which is Light and in It there is no darkness at all.

I listen sometimes to a program called Night Desk. It’s just news, only its fresh news phoned in or talked in and on the radio. And the other night that is, I think Friday night, they had a story about a Goldblatts store in the city six stories high I think it was, or five. And that suddenly at 8:30 in the evening when the customers were all in, their lights went out. Went out clear from top to bottom. And it took them a long time to get the customers out. And the reporter said to one of the girls, a clerk there, tell us about it. Well, she excitedly told about it. And he said, was there anything stolen? She broke out laughing and she said they’re shopping bags started to get full as soon as the lights went out. She said that they tumbled this and they tumbled that, whatever they could get they tumbled into their shopping bags. And she said they all went out with their shopping bags full.

Now, those people aren’t low-down, the dregs of Chicago. They’re citizens of our fair city, an average cross-section. That’s the way people are. For that reason, I say you can scarcely trust anybody unless he is converted, and then you wait a while. But you can trust God. If that means anything to you, you can trust God. God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. God will never betray you. He’ll never let you down. He will never lie to you. He’ll never shade a meaning. You can begin with, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and end in Revelation with, even so come Lord Jesus, come quickly, amen. And you will not find one shaded sentence, not one covered paragraph, not one slanted word. Not one effort to deceive. Nothing in salesmanship. That’s why I can’t take this modern idea that we’re to go sell the gospel. Go sell the gospel. Get the convert’s name on the dotted line. Away with you, you children of the marketplace. If Jesus were to come, he’d take a rope and drive all such salesmen out of the church and start over.

No, no, there’s no salesmanship in the gospel, my brother, none in the Bible here. No effort to persuade. No hiding one fact in order to accent another one. Everything in this book is as open as the sky, as pure as the waters that flowed down from the melting snows yonder, by the waters that flow from the mountaintop, so that there is pure, clean light and no darkness at all. God, you have God, my friends. You have God. Somebody said, the Russians have the Sputnik and we have the Salk vaccine. Very, very, very good. But we Christians can add one more thing. We have God. And in God, there is no darkness at all.

Then the fourth wonder here is, the terrible mystery of sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth isn’t in us. If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar and His Word is not in us. This awful thing we call sin. Sin, this terrible thing that’s been renamed and reshuffled and is now understood otherwise. But it’s still sin. You can call cancer by a beautiful name, but it’s still sin. Maude Smith goes to Hollywood and they rename her Lamour something or other, but she is still Maude Smith. And you can’t make her any better by changing her name. They called, what was her name Smith, Mary Pickford, but she was still Miss Smith. Well, Mary Pickford and all that crowd, they are what they are, and a pretty name doesn’t make them any better.

And when you call sin by some other name, it’s still what it was before. Call a cancer something else and it kills its victim. Call infantile paralysis by the name of poliomyelitis and you have a big word but you still have a killer and a crippler. And call sin by some other name, a complex or something and it’s still sin. And if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And if we say we have not sinned, we’re calling God, in Whom is light and in Whom there is no darkness. We’re calling that holy Thing, that holy One, that world-filling mountain of eternal life and light and purity, we’re calling That a liar.

So, this terrible mystery of sin. It’s here. It’s all about us. It flows around us like the, like the bilge water, like an overflowing sewer, slimy and smelly and filled with silt. And it will leach in everywhere, and soaks through, and you scrub and come back the next day and it’s there again. Sin is everywhere about us. That awful mystery, the mystery of iniquity Jesus called it, or one of the apostles, the mystery of iniquity. That’s the fourth thing in this theology of Christmas.

All these things we have my friends. Don’t let’s get off on a tangent and be carried away with the sound of pretty bells. There’s theology here, something sound and hard. You can come up to it and pound it and it doesn’t ring hollow. The world will take any kind of a crazy thing and put a wreath in front of it and a ribbon around it and they turn it into a Christmas gift, but it’s all hollow. Everything the world has is hollow. But you can take this sound doctrine of that Eternal Life and the manifestation of that the Eternal Life, and the fact of God in His everlasting, impeccable purity and the awful fact of sin. These are hard, sound bullets, as hard as cannon balls. And you can’t beat them down. You can’t get rid of them if you tried. And you needn’t fear them. They’re there. They’re as solid as the Rock of Ages.

And then there’s the fifth one. And that follows normally the fourth. And that is the wonder of sin forgiven when confessed. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. There is the wonder of deliverance from sin. The church is not yet mature and so we’re sometimes shocked by seeing Christians lose their temper. Or, we’re shocked by seeing a Christian do something that we feel he shouldn’t have done, and that reflects on his Christian character. Well, that ought not to get us down brethren. You don’t expect of your children, your growing children, the same degree of maturity that you expect of them when they get into their mid-20s. And I think that God does possibly not expect of us quite the degree of perfection that he would expect of us later, so that we may forgive the church and certainly forgive each other. And Jesus said to do that, seventy times a day. And Paul said that if thy brother sins against you, forgive him. Forgive as God for Christ’s sake forgave us. So that there is, there’s a margin there.

But here we have it, If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive. Now there’s forgiveness with God that He may be feared, the Psalmist said, and there’s forgiveness. Now that’s a wonder. That’s a wonder that this Holy God, in Whom is life and light, and in Whom is no darkness, this One who is immaculate and impeccable, in Whom no shadow of darkness is found, this One can forgive sin in His own creatures. Yes, He can do that and He does do that. And don’t ask me to explain how or why. I don’t know. I know that He does.

The sixth is, the wonder of cleansing from unrighteousness. Now it isn’t enough to be forgiven. There must be cleansing, or the work God is not complete. There must be cleansing. Jesus Christ came not to forgive us only, but to cleanse us as well as forgive us. The best illustration I know is that of a man condemned to die. He has been condemned by society as unfit to live because he took a human life say, or betrayed his government say, and was guilty of treason. So, he is sentenced to die. And then some president or governor, or one able to do it, pardons him, pardons him.

And he goes out into society like these poor boys, brainwashed kids that came home from Korea. I haven’t a hard word to say about them. Mostly they were ignorant boys who have been brought up in poverty. They had no education. They’d never been taught what a wonderful country America was. They didn’t know what democracy was. They didn’t know the distinction between democracy and totalitarianism. And when they went over there as kids going out of the woods, they couldn’t take the pressure of the subtle damnably diabolical brainwashing techniques of these satanically clever communists. And so, they said we’ll stay will be communists. Now they’re filtering home one at a time. And apparently, the government is going to let them do it and say a little to them, and forgive them.

But oh, my friends, there’s one thing that no president, no judge, no governor can do. He can’t cleanse them. He can’t wash them from their brain washing. He can’t take out of their hearts the knowledge that they once did that terrible thing. Nobody can cleanse anybody else. You can’t reach in and sponge out of their poor minds the fact that once they sinned against that starry, spangled flag. These move around among us the poor follow that in a burst of boyish nonsense killed a Japanese woman over there. He’s back home they say. Nobody’s noticing him. We made a great international business out of it and now he’s home and scarcely anybody knows he’s around. They as good as exonerated him over there.

To save oriental face, they sentenced him and then suspended the sentence. That was to save face. But they let him go, and he’s gone. He’s home. And he’s either been or will be soon discharged from the Army. They can’t take that out of his heart. It’s still there. If he was guilty, even guilty of a foolish burst of boyish carelessness, he is still guilty. And he knows it. He will remember it when he sleeps at night. He will remember it when he stands by a graveside, every time he stands by one.

You can’t take out of a man what he’s done even though he’s pardoned for doing it. But the Scripture says, He’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us, and wonder of wonders, that cleansing takes out the psychology of having sinned. It changes the psychology of having sinned. Heaven will not be filled with a lot of ex-sinners who can’t get over it and who are still walking about looking down afraid to speak. He not only forgives the act, but he cleanses the mind so that there is not a psychology of sin anymore. If I had been ever guilty of treason against my country and had sold say, information to the enemy, and I’d been pardoned by a president, I still could not look at my fellow citizens, on you. We gathered together and people were gathered around and tried to act natural and relaxed and couldn’t. And they couldn’t look at me and I couldn’t look at them. I never could feel right, because I would have the psychology of a traitor. And I would feel that I wasn’t fit to be there and didn’t deserve to be among them. And when anybody mentioned Washington or Lincoln, I’d suffer inside.

But the wonder, the sixth wonder here, and mystery is how God can take a sinner who knows he’s a sinner and knows he’s sinned, and so cleanse him that he loses the sense of having sinned. And he can be as though he had not. I’ve often used another man’s phrase here that I borrowed somewhere from the Middle Ages. But they used to call it restored moral innocence. And that is what we have here, restored moral innocence. How is that?

Well, it is verse seven, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. Never forget it, my friend. The Babe in the manger never saved anybody. Let us not allow ourselves to be fooled by sentimentality and love a baby. Or even of appreciation to the Eternal Word made flesh. The Babe in the manger, cleansed nobody. But the Man on the cross did. And it was the blood of Jesus Christ.

One of the great cults, one of the major cults, I’ll tell you which one, Christian Science. One of the great cults. Now, if anybody here is in that church, don’t come to me and start arguing afterwards. There’s no use, I know about them. But they have said in one of their great teachers, that is, great to them has said, the blood of Jesus Christ has no more power to deliver from sin now than it had when it flowed in his veins, which is to say that the lamb of Abel had no more power to open heaven and bring the hand of God in benediction upon Abel’s head when it was shed than when the lamb gambled among the other lambs in meadow.

No, no, my brethren, the life is in the blood. And the mystery is, how that the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross can now come to the heart of a returning sinner and cleanse him so that he is freed from sin. Theologians sit down and try to figure how it cleanses. How do I care how he cleanses. If someone were to come with a bottle of something, or a ray or something else and say, here, I can cure your cancer and someone who withered away to 90 pounds and was ready to die, and take a spoonful of that and in five days be up and back at work. I wouldn’t protest that I didn’t know how it worked. I would say, I saw it work!

So, I don’t know how the blood can cleanse. I only know it cleanses. And I only know that it will populate heaven yet with a company of happy people who have forgot they sinned. And yet, in their memory they know they have and they will sing together about their worthy being the Lamb that was slain to redeem us and wash us, from all kindreds and tongues and tribes and they’ll remember it, but They won’t remember it with a sneaking feeling. They can look on the face of God, the Scriptures said. They shall look on His face and His name shall be on their forehead. The sinner can’t look on God’s face because he has the psychology of the traitor. He knows, he knows he can’t look on God. Adam couldn’t look and ran and hid among the trees of the garden. Peter couldn’t look and ran and cried, depart from me, O Lord. I’m an unclean man. Isaiah couldn’t look and fell and said I’m undone. But the ransom sinner can look, for there’s a wonder of cleansing here. The blood of Jesus Christ takes away the sense of sinning.

And then in the third verse is the seventh, and that is that you may have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. This is the wonder of communion. Communion is more than the Lord’s Supper. It’s more than a name given to a church. Communion is union or it couldn’t be commune. There must be union and there is a union, a union of people from everywhere. If I were to take a poll tonight in this relatively small congregation of your nationality. I suppose I’d have fifteen nationalities right here. And if I were to take a poll of your educational background, I suppose it scarcely be half a dozen of you, that had the same. But yet, in Christ Jesus, we as Christians have a fellowship. A fellowship that isn’t forced, it isn’t strained. It doesn’t depend on our beating the drum, nor wearing badges, or hating anybody.

You know, some people have a fellowship, a fellowship of hate. They’re joined together by their mutual hatred for something. But you and I are joined together by our mutual love for somebody. And so there is a fellowship, and you don’t have to ask, what’s your background, the fellowship that’s as wide as the world. It’s the fellowship of saints. It’s the communion of the redeemed. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. You know, we stand rather awed in the presence of angels. If we get among angels, we’ll be rather awe-strickened and we say, we’ll say how wonderful angels are. And that’s right. They are and they’re so much ahead of us now. They’re way ahead of us now. And they, they really, I suppose there’s a reason we should think about them with the good deal of awe. But you know, there’s going to be a time when they’re going to stand at attention and look at us. Because no angel, no angel was ever redeemed.

God did not redeem angels. He took not upon him the nature of angels. He took upon him, the Seed of Abraham, the nature of Abraham, a man. And how God, that Eternal Life, and that Light, and that Holy One in Whom is no darkness, how He can walk arm in arm with men who’ve walked knee-deep in the slime of sin, whose mouths have been filled with cursing all the day long, whose throats have been an open sepulcher, whose thoughts have only been evil continually, now transformed and forgiven, and renewed and reinstated and cleansed. God convened a fellowship with them. I think the angels are going to stand around in respectful attention and say, we don’t understand it. I wonder if that’s not what Peter meant when he said, of such things, angels desire to look into. We may be a mystery to them. They are a mystery to us, but perhaps we’ll be a deeper mystery to them.

So here we have the theology of Christmas. You can take this with you. And when you take the tree down and run the vacuum over the needles that spilled on the floor. And you put the decorations away for another year and settled down to just living in the United States, you’re still have this: hard and solid and big. You can build on it and you can live on it. It will be bread, mountain high to eat. It will be a rock, mountain high to build on. It will be a fountain of light, to light you through all this world and the world to come. Thank God for the melody of Christmas. But thank God more for the theology out of which that melody sprang. For all the melody in the world and all the lovely dreams of beauty would be nothing if they had no foundation. Here’s the foundation. They rest as solid as the holy throne of God. You and I can believe them and we dare believe them; stand on them and live on them and when the time comes die on them!

Tags Character, Christmas, God, Incarnation, Obedience, Tozer

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date December 12, 2021

“The Character of Zacharias“

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August 12, 1956

In the first chapter of Luke, please. But I think I ought to say before I read my texts and give the talk that this is the low day for us here in that it is the closing day of the convention. Just within a forty-five-minute drive of here, and a good many of our people are here. Quite a number of our choir people are out there. I mean, are there, and we will probably notice it tonight. There’s only one day in the year which our choir doesn’t have a message for us. And we do allow that to get by on that Sunday. That’s convention Sunday out at Des Plaines. Our people go and come and some will be out there, and some will not get home tonight. But we want you here and we plan a good service tonight and we look for you. But if you should want to help them out there and stay, we’ll understand and it will be all right.

Now in Luke the first chapter beginning with verse five. There was in the days of Herod the king, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. And they had no child because Elizabeth was barren. And they both were now well stricken in years. It came to pass that while he executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course according to the custom of the priest’s office. His lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense. And there appeared under him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled and fear fell upon him. But the angel said unto him, fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard. And thy wife, Elizabeth, shall bear thee a son. And thou shalt call his name John.

I will not read further because there we see the picture of the old man and the angel. And I don’t know whether I can as they say, now project this, or make you see it at all, or feel it. And if I cannot, it will be my fault, not yours. But to me there is about this scene something wonderfully wholesome, something strong and reassuring and healing to the soul. But we’ll have to read it and hear it in the right mood though. We can’t rush into this. We must walk reverently up there and with hushed voices gaze, and we must be submissive to the will of God and we must bring our hearts into tune with the New Testament and with the religion of the New Testament and with God Himself. We must be trustful and expectant. If we rush here from a ball game, of course we won’t see anything here. But I hope that you came in the right mood. I hope that you have recollected yourself and are, and we’ll be prepared to think with me about this.

Now, it says there was a certain priest by the name of Zacharias. And he was of the course of Abia. And he had married a wife many years before who was of the priestly line too. That is, she was of the tribes, she was a daughter of Aaron. And her name was Elizabeth. And they, both of them, were righteous before God. And they walked in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless. And he, the old man, executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course according to the custom of the priest’s office. And at the right time, he went and burnt incense, and then into the temple of the Lord while the multitude of the people stood outside praying at the time of the burning of the incense.

Now here, if we see nothing else, we see character, that beautiful word character. It was a sad day for the church of Jesus Christ when the word character went out, and the word personality came in. Because now in the average gospel church, character is just a little bit of a dirty word, because the liberals have talked so long about building character when they didn’t have any foundation to build on; that we’ve decided, even if we have the foundation, we won’t build anything on it. So that in place of talking about character now, we talk about personality. We borrowed that scintillating praise or word from elsewhere, and you know where, and so now it’s personality. But God doesn’t care very much about personality. He cares everything about character. Character is what we are under pressure. Character is the total of you added up at the bottom of the column. Totaled is the well-integrated qualities that make a Christian. And here we see if nothing else, we see character.

But we see more. We see strength here. Here’s not surface tension. That’s a word we use a lot now, that this thing will hold so much because it’s been proved to hold so much. And there is a paint company that says, if you save the surface, you’ve saved all. And everything is surface now. Nobody cares very much what’s underneath. It’s all surface. Our architecture has gone surface from the 1933-34, what did they call it, World Fair held down here. Our architecture now looks like a fish fin piece of machinery and we don’t care what’s underneath it, just so it looks good on the surface.

This is the day of the surface. And the Scripture says that God doesn’t look on the surface of a man. God looks underneath the surface at the character of the man. And here we have strength and we have depth of strength. Here we have it, but the gold became dim in religious circles when character went out and personality came in. Because personality is what people think you are because you can project yourself. That character is what you are when the squeeze is on. And you’re only what you are when you’re being squeezed. You’re not what you are when everything is all right and there’s no pressure. You are when the pressures on.

You are what you are when the nether millstone starts to grind one way and the upper millstone starts to grind another, and you’re in between. Then what you are comes out; and all that is eternal of you and all of it that God will notice about you. And all little matters what you are when you’re in the squeeze. When you’re being ground there between the upper and the nether millstone, and that’s character. Now, character isn’t always under the grindstone and the character isn’t always being squeezed. But, personality dissolves like the dew on the grass when it gets under the squeeze. But when the pressure is on, character stands up just the same as it was before.

And here’s another word. It says they were both righteous before God. Here’s another word that has gotten in bad; and the word righteous is now out. We don’t like to use the word righteous because we’ve gotten our fingers burned. Because some people teach salvation by personal righteousness, we’ve gotten so we teach salvation without personal righteousness. And one’s just as bad as the other. For the church to teach that I can be saved by my personal righteousness, is a falsehood. For the church to teach that I can be saved and not be personally righteous is also a falsehood. For, the purpose of God in salvation is to make men good forever, and he starts right down here now. And the idea that if the word righteous is applied to a man, that he’s a self-righteous hypocrite, came from the devil and it never came from God or the Scriptures at all. It’s a misunderstanding of grace, and it’s a misapplication and misuse of the word.

But here was a righteous old man. God bless him, he hadn’t been to the right Bible schools, and so he didn’t know that he shouldn’t be a righteous man. He didn’t know that he should be obeying the commandments of God and keeping the order of his course and living prayerfully before his God, and living with one wife and walking decently in the world. He didn’t know that because he hadn’t been to the right schools and hadn’t been taught that that’s legalism, and that Jesus paid it all and that all you have to do is to believe, and that salvation hasn’t anything to do whatsoever with righteousness. That’s what we’ve been hearing over the last years and the result has been, it has dragged the moral level of the church down into the gutter until, in some circles now, you can’t tell a Christian from a sinner except by the button he wears and the fact that he has a tract in his hip pocket.

Now, it says here that there was a certain priest named Zacharias. Thank God for him. I’m looking at this old man. It’s like standing on a lofty mountain peak and gazing out miles and scores of miles away at the lofty chains of mountains there and at the blue sky above and the white clouds that come down like flux of whipped cream. It’s like seeing the sky and the clouds and the hills and the vale that stretched far away there. And smelling the clean, fresh piney air that comes up from the vales below. And knowing that down below, there’s smoke and dust and dirt and noise and tulmult and seesaw rivalry and cutthroat competition, and cheating and deceiving and ambition and lying and at the same time standing above it all and gazing out over the mountains.

Now, in the world all around about us brother and sister, here is exactly what we’ve gotten. I’ve named it. There is all the smoke and dust and dirt and noise and moral tumults and seesaw rivalry and cutthroat competition and all the rest. It’s out there in the world. And all the color and the glamour and the publicity and the pride and the self-love and the deceit and the pretense and the physical transiency of it all and the stage props and the painted, hollowed death, and the Danse Macabre and the march of dead zanies morally and spiritually dead, walking up and down. Brethren, that’s what’s out there. And the poor church hasn’t had brains enough, God help us, to pull away from that. We haven’t had brains enough to pull away from that. We’re busy now getting integrated into it. We’re busy now, showing that you don’t have to leave that. That that’s an old-fashioned view of things, and that there isn’t any Bible for it.

And so, youth has taken over. It’s said in the Bible, to tarry in Jerusalem until your beard be grown. But proud and vain, beardless youths have now taken over and have become founders and experimenters and the getters of quick effects regardless of stability or character or righteousness or solidity or permanence. Well, I’m on the other side. But you know brethren, it isn’t age that did it. I’ve all I always been on the other side. When my hair was as black as a raven’s wing, or the feathers on the wing, I was, still believed and believe then what to believe now about this whole business. And it isn’t senility. It is inside. And I’d had it from the time God filled me with the Holy Ghost thirty-some years ago.

O Zachariah, hold still a little. We want to look at you. We want to look at you and your quiet, smiling old wife Elizabeth. The rat race of Adam has all passed you by. And the brass band and the noise in the parade, it’s all passed you by, and there’s a faraway look in your own eyes, and a kind of a preoccupied set to your features. Because there isn’t anything out there in the smoke and dirt and noise that you want. You don’t want publicity, and you don’t want a better job and you don’t want a bigger house and you don’t want more money and you don’t want to be known in the gates and you don’t want your picture in the paper and you don’t want to get on Times cover. There isn’t anything you want dear old man of God, only character and you’ve got it. Only strength and you’ve got it. Only eternity and you’ve found it.

Oh yes, there’s one thing you do want too, one thing, one thing. You’ve told God about it over the years often, and often you’ve told God about it. And it didn’t come. And over the years, and it’s been a long time since you’ve asked for it now, because you thought there isn’t any use anymore. He wanted a son. He wanted a boy that he could name after him that could stand and offering incense when he was gone. He wanted a boy, but he didn’t get any boy. And so, he kind of quit and gave up and became reconciled. And he thought that he wasn’t worthy of such an honor. But he wasn’t bitter about it. He was just sad. And the sadness sort of mixed with the sweetness to make his old countenance kind and it furnished the low notes in the song of adoration that he sent up every day. The bright notes were formed out of the things God did for him. But the low notes were the ones that God hadn’t, and that one was, he hadn’t given him a son.

But now, suddenly there appeared unto him an angel. Suddenly standing by the right hand of the altar, there was an angel. Not while he was idling his hours away. Not while he was listening to the ballgame. But not while he was just sitting. You know, they do that. We came through the south a couple of weeks ago, and we smiled and talked about it down there in some parts they just sit, even young fellows are in training for it. We saw them only maybe 13-14 years old sitting with the old gray hairs.

But the old man had something better to do than just sit. Not while he was gossiping and waiting for the end, but while he was busy in the work of God doing what he was told to do. Not always knowing exactly how it was going to come out. And there was a little grave of prayer that hadn’t been answered, but he wasn’t going to bother God about it. He had a little prayer that was there and he had a little headstone up, sacred to the memory of a boy that I never got; that I wished I might have had for carrying on the name. But he didn’t. And the old man just waited there and did his work. And while he was waiting there by the right hand of the altar, stood an angel.

I wonder about the old empties that we have in the church of God, brethren. I wonder about these old empties. They’ve grown up now and they’ve married and had their children. The children have grown up and they’ve got some grandchildren. And they walk slow now and are careful not to twist. They move at right angles you know. When you get old, you move at right angles. When you’re young, you just twist and turn like a rubber band. But when you get old, you face around, very military fashion and go straight ahead. Not because you’re military, because you’re stiff.

And so many old Christians are like that. I know so many of them. I meet them everywhere up and down the land. They’re the old empties. They haven’t seen an angel and they haven’t anything particular to do. They’re just sitting. And I wonder if they couldn’t do like the old man did while He was praying, while he was living the life, while he was worshipping, an angel appeared unto him. If he’d been somewhere else, the angel wouldn’t have appeared. But he was at the right place at the right time. And God said, your prayer is heard Zacharias. And Zacharias thought real fast, what prayer? What, I hadn’t been praying anything lately. I haven’t wanted anything. What is it? Oh, that, that I buried that. I thought God hadn’t heard me for that. His old face brightened. Yeah, you’re going to have a son, Zacharias, and Elizabeth thy wife will conceive and bear a son. And then he described him. He said, he’s going to name him John, that’s first. And you shall have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth, for he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. He shall go before Him in the Spirit and power of Elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, and to make ready of people prepared for the Lord. God waited a long time. But when he answered, He poured it on, shaken down and running over.

That was the Annunciation, the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist, that mightiest New Testament figure beside Christ, and Paul. Christ is never compared with anybody else. But next to Paul the mighty New Testament figure. And your prayer is heard, he said. So, the old man could lay the reef off that grave and tear it to pieces and throw it to the wind, kicked down the head board or whatever you call it and plant a peony there now, or a bit of garden vegetable. No use for it anymore. God had heard his prayer.

Now, he hadn’t been a colorful figure. And he never wrote a tract about that. And he never was interviewed, I suppose by anybody. But God had heard his prayer. And he said that prayer you made. Oh, yes, I quit that about 15 years ago, when I gave up hope that I would ever have a son. But God hadn’t forgotten it. And he had that prayer in His bottle up there. He was about to pour it down. Your prayer is heard, Zacharias. You haven’t had much personality, but you’ve had tremendous character. You’ve been good under pressure. You’ve kept sweet when I said no to a son. And you didn’t let it embitter you when the age passed when you thought you could, you and your wife, could have had a son. And you’ve lived your life and your prayer has been you. You’ve been your prayer, Zacharias. Your prayer and you would have been one. You haven’t gone one way and your prayer another, but you and your prayer have been on. You’ve gone the same way your prayer went. And so now I am ready to do a miracle here. Nobody ever heard of it, but it’s going to be a miracle. That old lady over there with the gray hair with a modest smile, she’s going to have a boy. And he’s going to be named great and he’ll turn the hearts of Israel to God.

Oh, brethren, where are the Zacharias in our day? Where are the Zacharias? We are all out to be like Stuart Hamblin instead of like Zacharias. We’re all out to be personality boys instead of like Zacharias. And we scold our young people, some of the older people do. But where are the gray-haired saints? Where are those who have left the parade long, long ago and let it go by, and look at it with a tired benign smile? There are those that are preoccupied with the things of God and live for the hour of their release? Where are they? Everybody over fifty ought to be one of them. Everybody here today over 50, you ought to be in that category. You ought to be one that a young man could look at and say, there’s character. There’s no personality. He’s a little bald, and he sticks out places, but there is character, there is character. There is gold instead of brass. There’s pure, pure silver instead of tin.

There’s a man brethren. That’s what’s the matter with the church and that’s why that ill-advised young people came up and took over and led us over a cliff. It was because there weren’t enough old Zacharias to set the pace. And they had nobody to imitate and they had no heroes to follow. All their heroes were dead. They had to read about George Mueller and David Livingston, and that was pretty dry reading for a young fellow with red blood. So, they got up and jazzed up our Christianity because we had an old Zacharias. Listen old man, you blame the young fellow and you blame that young girl who’s got a lot of zing and a wicked look in her eye. She has no Zachariah to look at, that’s the trouble. She’s got nobody to imitate, no character out there.

Oh, the old empties, help them. They get old and cold and dull and retire, and retire from the work of the Lord too, and move into a comfortable home. All right, old fellow, you think that big picture window is going to keep cancer out? Do you think that beautiful lawn is going to keep a heart attack away? You think that charming door with a brass knocker will be shut so the undertaker won’t come and lug you out? You think that all this fresh country air is going to do you any good in the day when God looks into the hearts of men and judges as according to the deeds done in the body? No, you old empty. You were just an old empty and you’ve come back hollow because you’ve always been hollow, but you were too busy and we didn’t find it out until you got along in years.

Brethren, don’t think for a second that we can get away with it. The old man shouldn’t be seeing angels and dreaming dreams. And the young man should be having visions and there should be alertness and growth. And I should be able any moment to stop and call on any man here to lead in prayer and expect a prayer that would be a blessing to everybody. I should be able to do that. A pastor should be able to stop here and say, now we’ll stand and have brother so and so lead us and point to any man. I should be able to toss a marble out there or a rubber ball, and anybody it hits and say, you pray. That’s the way we should be. But instead of that, every church has a tight little nucleus of a half dozen that have seen the angel, that have heard the voice of God, that have developed character, that have been filled with the Spirit, that have lived the life whose faraway look and preoccupation with heavenly things, mark them out as being different. Every church has its half dozen, or dozen at most and the rest are hangers on. Getting old, it won’t be long until they’re old empties and won’t have a thing. Tap them and they’re as hollow as a drum

Brethren, we blame our young people. Are young people aren’t to blame at all. I don’t think I would ever have served God or ever have gone on if I hadn’t had examples to follow when I was a young fellow. I wouldn’t have had brains enough to do it. I wouldn’t have known how to go about it. But I happen to get into a church when I had only been converted a few months. I happened to get into a church where they stood like pillars, stood like pillars, Brother Colgrove or Brother Hall, and could name them one after the other and there they stood, the pillars. And when they prayed, heaven came down our souls to greet and glory crowned the mercy seat. And I had examples. I had a pastor who was an example. And I had a district superintendent who was an example. And I walked among people who are examples. And God sent a teacher from another missionary society for a year or so to me as an example. And I got my eyes on Zacharias. And I got them off of the personality boys.

I have lived down a whole parade of good-looking rascals that have come up and like a comet have stirred the heavens and gone down into darkness. They’ve gone up like a rocket and come down like a stick, and still I’ve have gone along. I may pop out any one of these days. I don’t know and I don’t care. It doesn’t make any difference. But I do want to leave my testimony behind that it’s better to have character than to have personality. Better to have a life that prays than to pray and go another direction from your prayers. Better to be known well in heaven than to be known well on Earth. Better to be popular with the angels and a multitude of holy beings than to be popular down here below. To be popular down here you’ve got to sell out to a certain degree.

Emerson said, young man, you want to be president? Do you know how much manhood a man has to sell out to be president? If you did, you wouldn’t want the job. Emerson said that, I didn’t. And I am not striking at Stevenson or Eisenhower. It’s not political. I’m just saying that to get popular enough to get elected to anything you have to be pretty slick and a smoothy. And if there’s one thing that people of God oughten to be, it’s smooth. God’s people out to be as salty as sowbelly brine. And they ought to be as sharp as honed steel, but as kind as the heart of God. And they never ought to say anything they didn’t mean.

A man wrote me a seven or eight page, closely typewritten letter. It was a rhapsody, a rhapsody, just a rhapsody. He was a commercial artist out in Jamestown, New York. And in one paragraph he admitted that he had met me at Keswick out in the East, that I had just looked at him. Oh, he said, that it was a hard one to take. He said, I went away saying, who does he think? Does he just think I don’t amount to much, is that it? I just don’t amount to much? Do you think I don’t rate? Am I not an important person? Is that the reason he hadn’t made over me? No, I was just acting natural. There wasn’t any particular reason why I should effervesce, so I didn’t effervesce. But I meet people and effervesce sometimes, really. But it just happened that no bell rang, so I didn’t effervesce. I didn’t turn my back on him. I just didn’t effervesce and that worried him, but he got victory over that. If I effervesced and slapped his back, his teeth would have fallen out and chances are he had thought he was somebody and that rhapsody wouldn’t have been written. But I just acted natural.

Oh, brethren, by the grace of God, that’s what you’re for. But remember this one thing. When you act natural, you ought to be spiritual, so what’s natural is spiritual. The old man Zachariah just acted natural. But the way he acted was spiritual. He made a mistake. I’ll preach about that in another coming Sunday. He made a mistake. He had a little doubt there in his mind, and he got rebuked for that doubt. It wasn’t, you know, he wasn’t an angel yet, but he just talks to angels. So, he made the mistake, but we’ll talked about that later.

So, what about it now? Now this is addressed to everybody that’s a little receding. You say, I’m not getting bald. My hair is just receding a little. Sure, that’s all. That’s all. That’s all, and those gray ones that you pick out and pick out and pick out. I used to pick the gray ones out and now I’m picking the black ones out. They’re out of place now.

Well, Zachariah, just hold still. We just want to kind of let something rub off on us a little this morning. We just want to be like him. We’re living in a different dispensation but his God is our God, and His Christ is our Christ, and his Bible is our Bible. His David is our David and his Moses is our Moses, and his Isaiah is our Isaiah. His knees can be our knees and his voice our voice. He was a good old man. He’d walked with his God. And he made a prayer that had boiled so long up in the yonder in a bottle that God couldn’t hold it in any longer. So we just poured it down, and the result was John the Baptist.

Have you seen an angel lately, brother, or are you just one more of the old empties of the church. You’ve just decided to quit. No zeal, no fire, no sacrifice, relaxing you say. You’re going to relax yourself right into a hole and everybody’s going to walk away saying, he was a dear old man. You’re going to relax yourself right into a hole. And you’re so afraid your poor old heart won’t stand up under it. Come to church and die of a heart attack by the grace of God.

Better to die of a heart attack in the house of God than to lie somewhere out of the prayer meeting and live to be 100. Go to the house of God. Get out and visit. Do something. Wake up. Shake yourself. Pray and ask God what He wants you to do. And if you don’t live to be 100, you’re insured. Your wife will get along. Don’t think, don’t think she won’t get along. Mama needs me. Mama doesn’t need you at all. Mama needs a holy man at the head of the household. Are you one? Mama needs a self-sacrificing man at the house of God. Mama needs to be a prayer meeting widow. Do you know what they are. They’re the women that stay home. They won’t go to prayer meeting and their husband goes every week for a meeting, widows. Better make your wife a prayer meeting widow than to go ahead and get old, and be an old empty, dear God.

I don’t want to quit. I’ve got more zeal now that I had when I was 17. And I don’t want to quit, and I don’t want to die mean, and I don’t want to live my life out so when I go people won’t know who they’re talking about when they praise me.

I want to live for God. Zachariah, thank God for you. You’re a good old man. Your old bones have been resting in the dust for a long, long time. But one of these days, there will be a trumpet. There will be a trumpet and it won’t be Harry James. There’ll be a trumpet and he’ll get up and shake himself ,and all the character he ever had will rise with him. All the character will rise with him. Personality will be left behind. His character will rise with him to the right hand of God. Amen.

Brother, that’s the kind of religion we believe in here, the kind of Christianity we believe in. And if you don’t believe in it, you’re in the wrong place. For we’ll never compromise by the grace of God. Well, I have quit now a long time ago and I’m just running on so I better stop. God bless you this morning. It’s hot and it’s vacation time. But this ought to be the time that you put your two knees down on the floor and pray through until your heart is warm. Pray through until your heart’s warm. And when it gets cold, worry about it. And pray through again until it’s warm and keep your heart warm. For these are the days of cold Christianity brethren and we need warm hearts and sacrificial lives. May God give us both.

Tags Belief, Character, God, Obedience, Righteous, Tozer, Will