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“Let There Be No Apology for Choosing Christ“

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Let There Be No Apology for Choosing Christ

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 16, 1956

Summary

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

Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“An Easter Message”

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Three Great Days: An Easter Message

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 6, 1958

I announced last Sunday that I would break into my series of expositions of the book of Titus and would bring something more nearly related to the Easter day. And today I want to read a bit of Scripture and let it be part of the sermon, by far and away the best part, where a man with anointed vision looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven. And the first voice he heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me which said, come up hither and I will show thee things which it must be hereafter. And then immediately I was in the Spirit, the whole the throne was set in heaven. And One sat on the throne. And He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone. And there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like unto an emerald. Round about the throne were four and twenty seats. And upon the seats, I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment. And they had on their head, crowns of gold. And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal. In the midst of the throne, round about the throne, there were four beasts full of eyes, before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, second beast like a calf, the third beast had the face as a man and the fourth was like a flag eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.  When God speaks of himself, he says, I am. When his creatures speak of him, they say he was and is, and is to come. And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

Now there’s a picture of heaven, and God the Father and the throne and the strange beasts, living creatures, redeemed elders. Then I saw in the right hand of Him that sat on the throne, a book. Written within and on the back side, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the book and to loose the seals there of? They must have searched and searched a long time because no man in heaven or in earth, neither under the earth was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. One of the elders saith unto me, weep not. Behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book and to loose the seven seals there of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“The Great Double-Cross”

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The Great Double Cross

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 25, 1956

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Messages

Tozer Talks

Throughout the remainder of August and September we are going to bring back the noted series by A.W. Tozer on Worship.

Tozer Talks 027 – Worship Series #1 “He is thy Lord, Worship Thou Him”

Tozer Talks 028 – Worship Series #2 “God Great Purpose in Redemption-Worship”

Tozer Talks 029 – Worship Series #3 “Worship the Lord of Glory and Meekness”

Tozer Talks 030 – Worship Series #4 “A Definition of Worship”

Tozer Talks 031 – Worship Series #5 “A Look at Our Worship of God”

“Forward with Christ in Total Commitment“

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“Forward With Christ In Total Committment”

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals Annual Conference
April 25, 1963

It is a privilege for me and an honor to address you. It is an honor that I have not earned and that I don’t deserve. But who am I to argue with your Board. They invited me and Iaccepted and I’m here. Now, there’s one very happy circumstance surrounding my little talk here this morning and that is that I was assigned this talk, “Forward with Christ in Total Commitment.” And if I had chosen it, that’s the one I would have chosen. So, when you get a sympathetic audience before a man, who’s to have the pleasure of speaking on the topic chosen for him, but one that he would himself have chosen, a man should be able to deliver at least a passable sermon under those circumstances. If he couldn’t, I assume he wasn’t called to preach anyhow and ought to leave the ministry and go back to selling real estate or raising rutabagas. We’ll do our best and I will try to keep it in the time. I quit when it’s time, whether I’m finished or not.

Now, in the book of Colossians, the the first chapter it says, Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things and by Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell.

Then in Ephesians, first chapter and concluding verses of the second, Paul says that God’s power wrought in Christ, when God raised his son from the dead, set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And put all things under His feet and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church which is His body, the fulness of him that fills it all in all. And then, second chapter, we are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints in the household of God and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Jesus Christ Himself being the Chief Cornerstone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into one holy temple in the Lord. In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

Now before we talk about our union with Christ and our conscious and volitional attachment to Christ in total commitment, we must look at who Christ is and what His relation is to the redeemed company which we call the church. In one of the passages which I have read to you, you will find this truth set forth which I think I may imperfectly condense into three words. The words being “centrality” and “basicality” and “preeminence.” Now, it says that Jesus Christ the Lord is central. The old writers used to say that Christ is to the church what the soul is to the body. You know what the soul is to the body? It is that which gives it life when the soul flees the body, there’s nothing that can keep the body alive. When the soul is gone, the embalmer takes over, and in the church of Christ, any church, anywhere, of any denomination whatever it may call itself, as long as Christ is there imparting life, being the life of that redeemed company, then you have a church. For Christ is central in His church. He holds it together and in Him it adheres.

And then there is the next word, “basicality.” I never looked to find out whether there was such a word. I made it. But if there isn’t, there ought to be. And what I mean there is, that it’s basic. Jesus Christ is basic to the church. He’s underneath it. And the whole redeem company rests down upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I know this sounds like a string of religious cliches, but I’d like to say it in at least in such tone of voice that the cliche element will go out of it and you’ll hear it as though you were hearing it for the first time. That the whole Church of God rests down upon the shoulders of His Son. I think we might be able to go around the world and simply cry, “Christ is enough. Jesus Christ is enough.” What weakens us in evangelical circles, and that’s all I shall speak to. I never speak to the Liberals on the general ground that is not fair to kill, or shoot at a dead horse or kill a dead lion. So, I don’t bother the liberals, but when I’m among the evangelicals, I like to talk to them.

And I think that our trouble is, what weakens us is, that we put a plus sign after Christ–Christ plus something else. Remember, it’s always the pluses that ruin our spiritual lives personally. And it’s always the admissions or the additives, as they say now, that weaken the church. Let’s remember that God has declared that Christ his Son is sufficient. He has the way, the truth and the life. He is wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. He is the wisdom of God and the power of God. He gathers up in Himself all things and in Him all things consist, so that we do not want Jesus Christ plus something else or Jesus Christ and something else. And we never want to put a comma after Christ; not Christ with a comma waiting for something else, or Christ with a dash leading to somebody else, but we must preach Christ period. For Christ is enough. He’s basic to the church of Christ,

Hear, O Heaven and give ear for the Lord hath spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. And what He has said is, this is my beloved Son, hear ye Him. So the Lord Jesus Christ is enough. So I think that we of the evangelical faith, which is I have always believed to be the faith of our fathers, and a Biblical faith, that we should not preach Christ plus science, or Christ and philosophy, or Christ plus psychology, or Christ plus education, or Christ plus civilization, but Christ alone and Christ enough. These other things may have their place and fit in and be used just as you can throw sand into vat where they’re making glass and it will all melt up so we could lose all of these things, but we’re not leaning on any of them, but we’re resting down on Him who is basic to the faith of our fathers.

And then there’s that word preemminent, that He might be preeminent and have a place above all things. So let’s think of Jesus Christ, above all things, and underneath all things, and outside of all things, and inside of all things. He’s above all things, but not pushed up as the old bishop said. And He’s beneath all things, but not pressed down. And He’s outside of all things, but not excluded, and inside, but not confined. He’s above all presiding, and beneath all upholding, and outside of all embracing, and inside of all filling. So we are committed to Jesus Christ our Lord alone.

Now, our relation to him is all that matters, really. I want to talk a little about a true Christian faith as an attachment to the person of Christ. An attachment to the person of Christ and total commitment to Jesus Christ includes this or is this. There are four or five things I’ll talk about if I have time to get to them, that the attachment of the individual person to Jesus Christ is an intellectual attachment and I will tell you what I mean the that, and a volitional attachment an exclusive attachment and an inclusive attachment and an irrevocable attachment.

Let’s look at the first one. That to follow Christ forward in complete commitment, total commitment means there’s got to be an intellectual attachment to Christ. That is, we cannot run on our feelings or on wisps of poetic notion about Christ. There are a good many bogus Christs among us these days. And I believe that you and I as followers of the Lamb are not only ought to, but that it is obligatory upon us that we point out these bogus Christs and show them for what they are, and then point to the Lamb of God that taken away the sins of the world.

You know that it was old John Owen that said to mourn people in his day the old Puritan, he said, he have an imaginary Christ. And I warn you that if you’re satisfied with an imaginary Christ, you must be satisfied with imaginary salvation. There is many Christs and many lords and many gods but there is only one Christ. And the really saved man and the man who is following Christ has an attachment to Christ that’s an intellectual attachment, in that, he knows who Christ is, theologically. For you know, there’s the romantic Christ of the female novelist and there is the sentimental Christ of the half-converted cowboy and there’s the philosophical Christ of the academic egghead. Then, there’s the cozy Christ of the effeminate poet and the muscular Christ of the All-American halfback.

Well, we have this kind of Christ, but there’s only one kind of Christ, and God has said about Him that He is His Son. I like what they say about Him in the creeds, that He is God of the substance of His Father begotten before all ages, man of the substance of his mother, born in the world, perfect God and perfect man, a reasonable soul in human flesh subsisting, equal to His Father as touching His Godhead less than His Father’s touching His manhood. Who, although He be God and man, yet he is not two, but one Christ. For as the reasonable soul in flesh is one man, so God in man is one Christ. This is the Christ we adore, and we must have a knowledge of this, that is, we must have the Christ of Christian theology.

I have been blamed or praised for being a mystic. I don’t know what the word means. If to be a mystic, you have to have dreams and all sorts of things. I never had one in my life that I couldn’t trace to something I ate. So, I am not that kind of mystic, but I’ll tell you this, that I would never have anything to do with any book or any new movement or any religion or any new emphasis, that doesn’t begin with Christ, go out from Christ and return to Christ again. The Christ of God, the Christ of the Bible, the Christ in Christian theology, the historic Christ of the Scriptures, He is the one.

So we must have an intellectual attachment to Christ. You can’t simply let your heart run out to Christ as the Catholics let it run out to the Virgin Mary in a kind of warm feeling about Christ, not being sure of who Christ is. This is the essence of heresy. We must believe in the Christ of God. We must believe as what God says He is.

Well then, I must go on. There’s the volitional attachment to Christ. What do I mean by that? I mean that if I’m going to follow Christ forward in complete and total commitment, I must do it by my will. The fellow was in a bad shape, and he’s making a bad mistake who tries to live on impulse and inspiration, who hopes to sail across the undulating sea of titillating feeling. You can’t do it my Brother, because the devil gets you down. The man who lives on his feelings is not living very well and is not going to be able to last very long. The old writers used to tell us of the dark night of the soul, that there’s a place where the Christian goes through darkness, where there’s heaviness there. God isn’t going to take us off to heaven all wrapped up in cellophane looking like we ought to be hanging on the Christmas tree. God is going to take us there after He has purged us and disciplined us and dragged us through the fire and has made us strong and has taught us that faith and feeling are not the same, though thank God, faith brings feelings sometimes.

You know, they use to say High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow, That vow renewed shall daily hear, but people are afraid of that now. But I believe that just as Daniel determined that he would not eat of the king’s meat and just as Jesus set His face like a flint and just as Paul said, “this one thing I do,” I believe that the true follower of Christ must be a man who’s will has been sanctified, not a will-less man. I never believed when we teach the deeper life that we say that God destroys our will. A will-less man would be like a man without a backbone. He would be of no good in the world. You’d have to put him in to traction to the hold him up. And so, if if you have no will, you’re no good. But the beautiful thing is that God unites our will with His will, and our will become strong in His will. And sometimes, as you go on in God, you hardly know whether it’s your will or God’s will that is working at a given moment.

Well, now I go on to an exclusive attachment, and what do I mean by that? I mean that our attachment to the person of Christ must exclude all that is contrary to Christ. You see, there is a polarity in the Christian life. And this polarization begins at the very threshold. These are the days when we’re trying to be positive, 100%, positive. But the Scripture says that Jesus, that Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity. And that was said of holy Christ Himself, higher than the highest heavens and separate from sinners. And if He had to hate in order to love, so do you and I. But they tell us that we ought to be positive. People write to me and say, you’re negative. Why don’t you go positive? Well, to be positive 100% would be as futile and as useless and thank God, as fatal, as to inhale steadily along all your life without exhaling. You can’t do that. The human body requires that you inhale to get oxygen and exhale to get rid of the poison.

And so, the church in Christ has got to inhale and exhale. When she inhales, she must exhale. And when the Church of Christ inhales, the Holy Ghost, she must exhale everything that’s contrary to Him, or maybe I’ve got that backwards. I tell you some of the churches wonder why the Holy Ghost hasn’t been around since last Christmas. And the reason is, they haven’t exhaled. They’ve not gotten rid of the old business that’s in there.

Well, I don’t believe that any man can love until he’s able to hate. I don’t think that any man can love God unless he hates the devil. I don’t think that he can love righteousness unless he hates sin. For the Scriptures would leave us with the opinion, with a belief that in order to accept, there are some things you’ve got to reject. Inorder to own, there are other things you’ve got to repudiate. In order to affirm, there are things you’ve got to deny. In order to say yes, you’ve got to be able to say no. And the man who hasn’t the courage or the intestinal fortitude to rear back on his hind legs and roar a thundering no, that some things can never say yes and make it mean anything. I, for my part have long ago come to the conclusion, I can’t get along with everybody. This idea of soft-handed pastors with a saintly flush on their face trying to get along with everybody, quit it Reverend, quit it, it won’t do any good, because in an effort to please everybody he’ll succeed in pleasing nobody.

I’ve been asked to go on your television a few times and to talk with priests and rabbis and all the rest. Why do I want to do that for? I told the newsman who called me, I’m an evangelical preacher. I preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and I couldn’t think of a thing that I could say there. Can you imagine for me to get up with a bunch of fellows who hate my Lord and believe that He was not the Son of God at all, and that I sit there and do or sit there and do fancy footwork. Now, how can you do both? Sit there and try to do fancy footwork, trying to keep from offending somebody that hates my Lord? No, I don’t want to do that at all. If they don’t want Him, they don’t want me. And, if they don’t want to hear Him, they don’t want to hear me. I don’t want a watered-down Christianity, bless God. But I want to be able to say no. I say no to the devil and no to Khrushchev and no to the Pope and no to everybody that has anything to say that’s contrary to the Lord whom I adore and to whom I am attached with an intellectual attachment that theological and with a volitional attachment that is final, and with an exclusive attachment that would exclude everything that’s contrary to my Lord Jesus.

And then there’s the inclusive attachment. Now, what do I mean by that. Well, that’s the inhaling you see. That’s all that Christ is and does and says and promises and commands, and all the glory that circle around His head and all the offices He holds and all the shining beauty of the various facets of His infinite nature. All that is and all that is said and all that is promised, I take that all, I include that all.

And then in addition to that, I’m joined to Him and identified with Him, so I accept His friends as my friends, his friends. I love all people of God. I’ve never been a good denominationist. The president of the society to which I belong, and a lot of the other big wigs, but I like to say this to you Brethren that while I work faithfully along with all my brethren, I never was much of a denomination list. I believe that God has His children everywhere and all of God’s children got wings, and all of God’s children got a robe. And so, I love them all and preach to them all and some of them listen. I accept Jesus Christ’s friends. You know, the Lord has some odd friends really. That fellow that goes down the street with a “Jesus Only” button or a “Jesus Saves” button as big as a dinner plate here, you know, and his hair not combed too well, staring ahead. If he belongs to Jesus, I’m gonna own him.

You’ve got to be willing to own the friends of the Lord, whoever they are. His friends are my friends, and His enemies are my enemies, too. I’ve already talked a little about that. And I think we ought to have the courage to have enemies. This togetherness that everybody’s talking about now; everybody sits down you know and has a togetherness orgy. I can’t go for it at all. I don’t like it. I want to know, what do you stand for? Who do you love and what do you hate? And then after that, I may be able to get on with him.

I remember one time on a streetcar, there was a good brother, he was a Pentecostal brother. He was giving out tracks. He was making a bit of a nuisance of himself I admit there in the middle of the streetcar. People were getting on and off. But you know, my heart warmed to him. And on my way out, I stopped and shook his hand and took a tract and said, Brother, I’m on your side. I’m one of them too. And I shook his hand and we had nice little time there. And I hustled off the car before it got away from my block. So, I like to own all of them you know. The old bishop said that the Lord has His treasures in earthen vessels and some of the vessels are a bit cracked.

Well, I accept the enemies of the Lord as my enemies and the ways of the Lord as my ways and the cross of Christ as my cross. That’s crucifixion. And His life is my life and that resurrection? What is a good definition for a Christian? Well, a good definition for a Christian is somebody that is back from the dead. I think that Paul was one of the oddest and strangest and one of the most glorious of all Christians that have ever lived. And he gave us a little text there that no editor; any of you editors listening to me, you’d thrown that out and shot that back in the first mail going in the direction of the fellow that wrote it. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.

Now, how do you get that way? I am crucified with Christ, He’s dead. Nevertheless, I live He’s alive. Is He alive or is He dead? And the life that I now live, I live not within myself, but I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who will loved me and gave Himself. You see, Paul is contradicting himself there. And yet, within all that contradiction, there is a synthesis of marvelous and glorious truth, that a Christian is one who was crucified and is alive, being joined to Jesus Christ as He was joined and humanity was joined to the Deity in the hypostatic union forever, and the eternal God joined to the nature of man, never to be reversed. So all the members of the body of Christ join to His body, share in some major in that hypostatic union, so that were united with Him nd when He died on a cross, we died on a cross; and when He rose from the dead, we rose from the dead. And when He went to the right hand of God, we went to the right hand of God. If they need be risen with Christ, seek those things that are above. And it’s written that will sit in the heavenly places, which means that we are willing, where He is, members of his great mystic body? Wonderful.

I remember hearing a great Bible teacher years ago who’s long gone to heaven, Mr. Tucker, Dr. Tucker, he talked about being under the circumstances. He said some lady said, well, I’m feeling as good as I could be under the circumstances. And he said, no Christian average should be under circumstances. You should be on top of them. Rise with God through Jesus Christ to live again and let his life be your life and look down on circumstances. If you look out, you’ll be confused, and if you look down, you’ll be terrified and if you look up, you’ll understand. But if you look down from heaven, then you will indeed be victorious. You will be on top of it all.

Well, there’s the irrevocable attachment. What do I mean by that? It means that the Lord doesn’t want any experimenters. Some movie actor wrote a book one time called, “Try Jesus.” I never read the book. I wouldn’t be caught dead reading it. Try Jesus, all this experimentation. I don’t believe in it. I believe that we ought to be suicide bombers, that we ought to tie ourselves into the cockpit and dive on the deck. And if we go out, we go out. Sink or swim, live or die, irrevocably attached in love and faith in full devotion to Jesus Christ the Lord.

One of my boys, I had six boys, five of them had a uniform on during the Second World War. One of them was a dive bomb in the Navy and they gave him seven battle engagements on the Pacific as a dive bomber off the carrier under, Admiral Michener, we had heard there was such thing as suicide bomber, but I didn’t know whether it’s true. But when he camehome he told me about it. He said, yes, there were suicide bombers in the Jap navy. He said, One day, we saw one coming out of the sun down on our deck, and we desperately tried to get to stop him, but he got through our flak and hit the deck and bounced and came to a stop and the bomb was a dud. And so we got to see a live suicide bomber. We opened the cockpit and found a 15-year old Japanese boy chained in the cockpit. When he had gotten in that plane back at the airfield, they chained him and he’d said goodbye. And now with a bomb in the nose of his plane, he dived on the deck of the carrier. Fortunately for my boy and all the other boys, it didn’t go off. But they took a scared, shaking Japanese kid of fifteen out of there. That’s suicide bombing. And you know, that Christians ought to be those who are so totally committed that it’s final. This weak, looking back over your shoulder to see if there isn’t something better; I can’t stand it.

Now, a young man came to one old saint one time who taught the deeper life and the crucified life and said to him, Father, what is it mean to be crucified? And the old man thought for a moment and said, well, to be crucified means three things. The man who was crucified is only facing one direction. I like that. He said, they only face in one direction. If he hears anything behind him, he can’t turn around to see what’s going on. He’s stopped looking back. He’s looking straight ahead. So, the crucified man on a cross is looking only in one direction, that’s the direction of God and Christ and the Holy Ghost, the direction of Biblical revelation. And the direction of world evangelization and the direction of the the edifying of the church, the direction of sanctification and the direction of the spiritual life. He only looks in one direction. And the old man scratched his scraggly gray hair and said, one thing more Son about a man on the cross, he’s not going back. Now, I like that. The man on the cross is not going back. A fellow who’s going out to die on the cross, he doesn’t say to his wife, oh, goodbye Honey, I’ll be in shortly after five. He isn’t coming back.

When you go out to die on a cross, you bid goodbye to your friends. You kiss your friends, goodbye. You’ve had it and you’re not going back. And if we preach more of this and stop trying to make the Christian life so easy that it’s contemptible, we’d have more converts that would last. Get a man in who knows that he’s a suicide bomber and if he joins Jesus Christ, he’s finished, and that while he’s willing to come up and live in the new as far as this world’s concern is not going to go back. So, the fella who takes a cross on his shoulder is not coming back. Then the old man said another thing about a man on a cross, Son. He has no further plans of his own, and I like that. He has no further plan. Somebody else made his plans for him. And when they nailed him up there all his plans disappeared. On the way up to the hill, he didn’t see a friend and say to him, well Henry, next Saturday afternoon about three I’ll be by and we’ll go fishing out by the lake. He wasn’t going fishing out by the lake. He was finished. He was going out to die and he had no plans at all.

Oh, we busy-beaver Christians with all our plans, and some of them, even though they’re done in the name of the Lord and evangelical Christianity, there as carnal as goats, and they’re our plans, they’re our plans. I met some gentlemen out in the hall and one of them said about a certain book I had written, how what a blessing it had been. And I said yes, that’s the only book I didn’t try to write. I said I didn’t try to write that one and the Lord blessed it all over the world. But I’ve tried to write quite a number that fell flat on their faces. So when you see it depends on who’s making your plans for you. It’s beautiful to say I’m crucified with Christ and know that Christ is making your plans. I tell you gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, twenty minutes on your knees in silence before God will sometimes teach you more than you can learn out of books. They teach you more than you can even learn in churches. And the Lord will give you your plans and lay them before you. If the boards of the churches would only learn to spend more time with God and less time debating, they could save all those midnight board meetings where everybody leans back weary and on the shades of aging grease on the wall behind where the hair tonic got on the wall, and in the boardroom weary from discussing things. I tell you, you can cut down, you can cut down your time in debating and discussing if you spend more time waiting on God, He’ll give you the Holy Ghost and teach you and give you His plans.

All right now, I think that’s about all I want to say, that we are to be joined to Jesus Christ, intelligently joined by knowing who He is. We’re to be relationally joined and not try to live on our feelings though thank God there’ll be a lot of feelings that go along with it. And we’re to be exclusively attached and exclude everything that’s contrary to him, and inclusively attached, taking in everything that He’s surrounded Himself with. And irrevocably attached, so we’re expendable. And we’re not going back. Well, may God bless us all now. It’s time to stop. Fortunately, I ran out of material just as I ran out of time.