Tag: Christian Life

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Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date July 14, 2024

“The Kind of Christians we are or Should Be“

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The Kind of Christians we are or Should Be

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

February 14, 1954

Summary

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

Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags Apologetics, Christian Life, Peter

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date February 26, 2023

“The Separated Life”

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The Separated Life
Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
November 30, 1958

In 2 Corinthians, the man of God is deeply concerned over the church at Corinth. We talk romantically about the early church. The early church had its faults and its flaws. And it broke the heart of some of the early church leaders, including Paul, who wept over his churches frequently.

In the sixth chapter, Second Corinthians, verse 11. Oh, ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you. Our heart is enlarged. You are not straightened in us. But you’re straightened in your own bowels. That is, you’re not hindered by us. You’re hindered in your own heart. Now, for a recompense in the same, I speak as unto my children, be ye also enlarged. Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? What concord hath Christ with Belial? What part has He that believeth with an infidel? What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God. As God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye separate saith the Lord and touch not the unclean thing. And I will receive you and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises dearly Beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

Now Paul, here commands all the Christians, or lays upon the Christians the duty of the separated life. Without this, religion is powerless. Without this, prayers have practically no meaning at all. The church attendance may be entirely vain. And without this, even right belief is inadequate. Wesley said, right opinion is but a very slender part of religion. He didn’t say that right opinion, that is, right doctrinal beliefs were not an important part of religion, but he said, it was a very slender part, they made up a very slender part. And without separation, there can be at last, and finally, nothing but weakness. There can be no power in religion.

There are those who do not care much to hear about the separated life. And I can understand why. But you know, if you read your Bible very carefully, if you have time to read it, and you read it very carefully, you will note that separation was critically necessary at various times and they stand, these times, as a sort of landmark for us. For instance, there was the ark of Noah, the time of the great flood. There was only one way to be delivered from the Flood, and that was to be separated unto the ark. God separated Noah and his wife and his family, and the entered into the ark, and were in the world but not of it. On the world, but above it. Present, but not part of the world, and they were saved by their separation.

Go on to the day of Abraham and Sodom and Lot. Sodom was destroyed by the fire of God, and Lot’s family, all but one, was saved, and they were saved by separation. Escape to the mountains was the sharp imperative command. Escape to the mountains. And if they had not done this, they would have perished along with the rest. No amount of praying would have helped them. They could have had prayer meetings all over this populated earth before Noah’s Flood. They could have had all kinds of conferences and conventions and meetings. They could have edited magazines and run Bible schools. They could have been religious, added up their numbers and said there are more people going to church than ever. And they could have had all sorts of dramatic news about religion, but Noah’s Ark was the only place where there was safety. And it was out of the ark and lost. In the ark and saved. Separation was imperative. It was not simply something that we better do. It was something that became necessary to do.

So, with Sodom when God said I will reign fire upon Sodom. There lay Sodom, and they could have, as we often do, they could have had little prayer meetings all around over Sodom. And the man Lot could have said to his wife, now let’s have family prayer here this morning by the gate. But if they’d have stayed in Sodom, they’d have caught the fire. It was escape to the mountain and get out. And so, it is in the New Testament teaching. It is, take the cross, follow me, be separated, free yourself, and it’s this and by this alone that there is salvation.

Now he said, be not unequally yoked together. This is all familiar truth, but I want to patiently once more lay it before you, particularly for the sake of the younger Christians; the new generation of believers, be not unequally yoked together.

Now, a yoke you know, is a strong beam that fastens two necks or more together and make them one. It unites two so that they are one. Now if the two are equal, there is harmony. If there is a difference between the two there is disharmony. And the greater the difference of course, the greater the disharmony. If these two are yoked together want to go the same direction will, but if they want to go different directions, there can be only trouble. Two people united, yoked together, can only have trouble if they’re going to go different ways.

Then there’s the acknowledging of the same master. If you’re yoked to the same Lord, then of course, you have no trouble because you’re going the same way and all is well. But if the one obeys the Master and the other chooses another master, why, there can be only difficulty all down the way. If one is bad and hinders the good one, and the good one can’t make the bad one obey. And so there is trouble all down the line.

Now, with the unbelievers there is what we would call moral incompatibility–a great gulf fixed–righteousness and unrighteousness says the Holy Ghost. What is the fellowship? Fellowship as I have explained you know, is a state of equality. Fellow is an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning an equal and ship means a sharing. So fellowship is a sharing equally in something by equals. But if one is righteous and the other is unrighteous, how can there be any equal sharing of the same thing? There is no equality in anything. Therefore, righteousness and unrighteousness stand against each other forever.

Then we have light and darkness. The Bible has a lot to say about light which always it makes out to be truth and goodness; and darkness which it makes out to be error and evil. And he said what communion here? We have almost the same word. It’s strange how language moves about, shifts itself like clouds across the face of the sky. But the word fellowship and the word communion are almost the same word. “Co” we have cooperate, and such word meaning joined. And we have here the state of being joined together in intimate fellowship. And how can you join light with darkness? If the darkness is there, the light is not and if the light is there, the darkness cannot be. One drives the other one out.

And then there is Christ and Belial, Belial the evil God. How can Christ have any concord? And we have the same, almost the same word again. The translators are ringing the changes on good words here, but we have concord, a oneness, a getting together, a harmony. How can Christ be harmonious with Belial? How can it be that the devil and the Lord Jesus Christ should ever have any concord? It cannot be. And how can the one who believes have any concord with the unbeliever? How can they take part together? The believer wants to live for the world above and the unbeliever wants to live for the world below. So they have two different worlds in which they’re interested. One wants to lay up his treasures on high and the other wants to lay up his treasures below.

So again, they have two different worlds and two different storehouses. One wants to talk to the invisible and live in the light of eternity, and the other wants to commune with the visible and live for time. How can therefore be any communion or fellowship? One wants to live right and seek to do good all the days of his life, and the other one is careless about it, if not downright wicked. He’s at least careless about being good. So how can the believer and the unbeliever ever hope to be together?

The unbeliever who says, I have doubts about there even being a God. How can he have warm, heart fellowship with a man who says, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth? The unbeliever who says, I doubt that Jesus Christ was anything else. But just a good man. I don’t know much about him, but I just think he was a good man. How can that man have warm heart fellowship with a man who says, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord, who was begotten of the Holy Ghost, conceived by the Virgin Mary? How can these agree? And how can the temple of God have fellowship with idols? What agreement, it says here again, and still, it’s the same word, fellowship, communion, concord, agreement? How can there be? The temple of God that is dedicated to the one true God and the temple of idols dedicated to the base, low fetishes of the world? How can there be any fellowship?

Well, now let’s make a practical application of this. A practical application would be, say, in marriage. Maybe I’m talking to somebody this morning that is thinking at least about, you’re a Christian, you’re a real Christian and you’re thinking about marriage with someone who’s not a Christian. My advice would be a blunt, unqualified, no, don’t do it. It could only be advice. I am not a pope and I can’t threaten you with purgatory. I can only tell you that if you marry on another level with someone who is given over to unbelief and to the world, you’re going to have trouble as long as you live. Honeymoons don’t last forever. And after the first blush and excitement of being married is over with, you’ve settled back to trying to live some kind of a life under the same roof and get along with a man or with a woman who doesn’t believe in God.

You say he’s not saved, but he tells me that he’s interested. I’ve heard that story and I’ve listened and looked at faces all twisted with weeping. And I’ve seen tears streaming down cheeks. He told me that he would get right and that he wanted to go to church. But as soon as we were married, he refused to have anything to do with it. He won’t let our children go to Sunday school. That’s the old story and it’s rarely any other kind of story. You say, but I think I can win him. I’ve heard that one too. I think I can win him. Now my brother and sister, it would be a thousand times better for you to not be a Christian.

Old Dr. Morrison, that great old Methodist orator of a generation ago told about when he was a young fellow, he was converted and he was thinking about marrying a certain woman, but she would not give her heart to God. So, he said, I quit her and let her die an old maid, bless God. Well, that was dear old Dr. Morrison, the old-fashioned slam, bang, Methodist preacher who could soar on wings as he preached but could also get pretty salty as the aforesaid quotation was explained.

But now in business, Sir, we have it again. How many have come to me and said about this business. Do you think it’d be all right? This man knows his business, and I’m a Christian, he isn’t. My earnest, earnest advice is no, don’t enter into business with a man unless he’s a Christian, if you’re a Christian. Don’t enter into business with him. That is, don’t link yourself so that there’s a yoke on you, because he’ll want to open on Sunday, and you will want to shut up on Sunday. And he will want to joggle the books and you will want to be honest. And so it goes.

Then there are clubs and lodges. You know, I’ve never been an anti-lodge man, very much, but I don’t believe in secret societies for Christians. I think Christians ought to keep out of secret societies. And I say that even though that might hurt some of your feelings very badly. As a young man I said it and a man got up and out of my church and he was so mad, he wouldn’t even let me talk with him afterward. I couldn’t get to him to talk with him. He was so mad. He evidently was putting his lodge above the above the church, above the ministry, above a serious word of advice by a preacher. Well, nothing anybody can do, I suppose. People want to do it. They want to do it. But my earnest advice to all young Christians who will hear is keep out of it. Keep out of it.

You remember our friend Charles Bloomer here, who’s now living down in Arizona or New Mexico, whichever it is Nevada, one of them states down there. He was 30 years an organist in the Masonic Order, somewhere meeting here. Then he got converted, the Lord had to get him down on his back on the floor in a currency exchange with two bandits with guns in their hands standing over him, and he was lying down there looking up while they’re trying to open the safe. And as he laid down there, they threatened him to kill him. He said, O God, if you could get me out of this deal, I’ll give my heart to Thee. So, God got him out of that, and they left without harming him. And he promptly got down on his knees and gave his heart to God.

So, he went back down to where he’d been for 30 years, an organist. He asked for permission to get up and talk. They said, sure, Charlie. So, Charlie got up and talked, and his talk was something like this. Dear friends and former brothers, I have an announcement to make. It is that I have become converted. I am now a Christian born again and I will not be back. I love all of you. You’re my friends. I have nothing against you. I’m not mad at anybody and everything is fine. But I’m a Christian now, and as a Christian, I’m through. Well, they let him go. And they told me, some people told me that afterwards, there were those who would go to his wife and say in a kind of low voice, is Charlie any better mentally than they used to be? They thought something had snapped inside of his head, but it hadn’t. The chains had snapped inside of his heart. And Charlie’s never been back. He’s down. He’s down now in Nevada, and if you get Charlie started writing letters to you, he doesn’t write letters, he writes treatises. He could publish them, long, happy, bouncing, joy as letters. I don’t know any Christian anywhere happier than Charlie. But that cost him a little price there. He gave it up.

Well, then, there’s amusements. I have said a lot about that and I’m not going to say any more now. But I want to call attention to this, that there are situations under certain conditions where a degree of mingling has got to exist, and the Bible takes note of it. First Corinthians five explains this. Paul said, I told you not to company with fornicators. But he said, now don’t misunderstand me, I didn’t mean that you weren’t even to work with or live beside or have any fellowship at all, socially, anyway, with people like that. Because he said, if you left all the evil people in the world, you’d have to withdraw from the world. The monks incidentally later on did that very thing. In order to escape the world, they withdrew from it and lived in caves and monasteries. Paul said he didn’t mean that. What he meant was, don’t have fellowship, Christian fellowship with them, or try to have. Don’t make them your warm, close friends. But you have to live with them.

And there’s First Corinthians seven that concerns, not mixed marriages, but marriages that got mixed after they were contracted this way. A sinful pagan couple, heard the gospel and the wife believed it and was converted and blossomed out into a real Christian life, but the pagan husband refused to believe. And so they were in trouble. Paul wrote and in First Corinthians seven he explained it. He said, now if you’re married to an unsaved husband. He didn’t say, if you marry an unsaved man, but he said, If you are married to a man who is not a Christian. You’ve just become a Christian. Why, don’t leave him because possibly your life before him will help to win him.

Now, of course, you will have your difficulties there. You will have the lack of concord, the lack of fellowship, the lack of communion. You will have to keep your conversation to light bills and babies and whether their refrigerator is working and whether you put the cat out or not. And you will have to keep your conversation to things mundane and earthly. You’ll never have any high conversation cause that unsaved man won’t listen. He won’t listen. But says Paul, don’t leave him. Some of them were for radicals, some of those women, when they got converted, they were so happy in God.

They said, well, that old pagan husband of mine, I can’t stand him anymore. Look, down on his knees to an idol. Paul said, don’t leave him. Don’t leave him. You have no right to leave him. If he’s a pagan, and you’re a Christian, you shouldn’t marry him. But if you’re stuck with him, keep him because you may win him. Besides that, you got the children to think about.

Paul was a good, salty, downright fellow with a lot of common sense. And he explained that. But now there are other instances besides the two that I mentioned. There’s buying and selling on the market. When I go to buy something in a store, I don’t ask whether the man is a Christian or not. Working on a job with unbelievers or having somebody work. I don’t ask that when a plumber comes whether he’s a Christian. He can turn that wrench just as well if he isn’t. And such obligations of citizenship as we may have in the common social relations, we must carry them on and we must carry them on with unbelievers. Because unbelievers are in the world and they’re the vast majority, and we are a minority group.

But Paul said, remember, don’t take these as your friends. Don’t make these your companions. Remember to stay with those that are like you, that believe what you believe, that go all the way you go, that’s walking on your path, whose Father is your Father and whose Savior is your Savior, and have your friendships among God’s people. There are some of you older people here now who’ve reared families and they have gone and you will never stop thanking God until your last breath and conscious thought, that your children found Christian fellowship in this church or some other church. But some of you to whom I speak now right in this church. I could name if I wanted to start naming names. I could name families who found, their children found fellowship among God’s people here. And you will never stop thanking him as long as you live. It doesn’t mean the church is perfect, but it means there is a fellowship of saints.

Then, I’m also talking to a few, I regret to say, who have wept bitter tears into the long night seasons because your children found fellowship out of this church and fellowship with the fringe people, young people whose lives were not right. Maybe later they got all right and came to God, maybe they didn’t. But almost always, it’s the way out. It’s the way young people start. They get with the wrong people. They get friendly with the wrong people and pretty soon that friendliness cements into friendship itself, and then that friendship cements and hardens up until they’re bound together. And the church person doesn’t lead the other one, but the other one leads the church one down. That’s too bad, but it’s so. So, there’s only one way to handle it, young fellow. And that is, find your boon companions among God’s people. But you say they’re dull. Better be dull and right than to be smart and wrong.

One of the great poets, which one was it, Milton or Wadsworth that wrote a sonnet to a young lady. This young lady had been accused of being dull and dumb and lacking in personality because she insisted on being right. And he wrote a quite a long poem to her, telling her, urging her to stay by God and righteousness and morality, and be good and decent and let them call you dull. You can make up in your life in your inner life, for all of their freshness.

Well, maybe some of God’s people are dull, I find some of God’s people dull, I do. I don’t find any of you dull, but I find other Christians sometimes dull, and I’m sure that I have bored some Christians to the point where they could weep. But better to keep company with dull saints than with smart sinners. For the dull saint will shine finally in the kingdom of God and the smart sinner will burn in the fires of hell. And the strong reason given here is that you are the temple of the living God. As such a temple of the living God is sacred. Just as you would not desecrate a church. Just as you would not have gone into the Jewish temple and desecrate the holy place. So says the Scripture, you are not to desecrate the temple of God. Always and at all times, you are to be holy.

There are never any open seasons for Christians. There’s never any period when the lid blows off and you’re allowed to have a wonderful time for a while, never. You can have a wonderful time in God if you know how to go about it. But there never is any serious weeks or days that you’re supposed to be very spiritual and after that, they can relax it on you. No, God’s people are to be good all the time, all the time. Gold is gold all the way through, wherever you find it. Sunshine is always sunshine wherever it is. And righteousness is always righteousness wherever it is.

Now, he gives exhortation here and bases his exhortation upon the trues I mentioned above. Come out from among them is his exhortation and be ye separate. And of course, you will be known as a separatist. And I don’t mind at all, for I am one. I believe in it. Come out from among them and be ye separate. Now, we won’t argue this point nor defend it. Those whom God has enlightened will understand and those that God has not enlightened will not see it and wouldn’t believe it if they did.

So, I’m not arguing the point. I’m saying come out from among them and be ye separate. And blessed are your ears if they hear what the Spirit says unto the churches. Touch not the unclean thing is the second exhortation. The worldly-hearted will defend themselves and argue. The Spirit-taught will obey. We won’t have to say much for the Spirit-taught man, he hears the Spirit say touch not the unclean thing and he knows what he means. And he won’t be drawn into a debate. He will just go and touch not the unclean thing.

The chosen of God will ask no more. He’ll ask for no discussions, ask for no debates, ask for no conferences about what we should do. Just do what we’re told, that’s all. And God says, I will be a Father unto you. And you shall be my sons and daughters saith the Lord Almighty, sons and daughters of God. Did you ever stop to think of it, sons and daughters of God, God’s sons, God’s daughters? Beautiful, beautiful, isn’t it? To be a son of God, to be a daughter of God. And to have God say I will be your Father and you will be my children. To have the great God Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, a former of all space and time, who made all things that be, Ancient of Days without beginning in without end, stoop and say you will be my daughter, if you will listen here and be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, but come out from among them and be separated from them. And touch not the unclean thing but believe in my Son, and live a life dedicated to His glory, I’ll be your Father. How wonderful.

Better then to be a son of a king. Better then be the daughter of a queen. Better then to be queen for a day. Better then to be Miss America. Better then be known around the world for some talent or gift that may be yours. For men die you know, they die of heart attacks while making pictures. They die on airplane crashes. Great leaders, political leaders, leaders in the entertainment world, the philosophic world, Great leaders, great musician died. One almost wants to stand a moment in silence, at attention, out of respect to a man in whose heart there was a harp. So they die. They die like Christians die. They die everywhere, the good and the bad die.

But oh, how wonderful to walk around on the earth in constant danger, but knowing that if you die, God has said, I will be your Father. What more do you want? What more could you ask? How could you hope to be any more, or have any more than to have God say, I will be your Father and you will be my daughter. You will be my son. This I think is wonderful, and this is what’s offered, but it’s not forced upon us. God doesn’t argue it. He just states it. He doesn’t debate it. He just places it before us. And blessed are the ears that hear and blessed is the heart that obeys. God grant that that describes you and me. Amen.

Tags Christian Life, Separated Life

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Tozer Talks

“Getting Glory Out of Gray Days”

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Getting Glory Out of Gray Days

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

January 8, 1956

Last Sunday, I began a message which I had preached more than 20 years ago to this church. And I would suppose only about a quarter or less than those who are present. It’s supposed to be a new year sermon on “The Glory in the Gray. But I found as I watched the clock and heard myself talk that I was only able to get halfway through it and said that I would conclude today, though of course, both sermons were units in themselves.

The text was, they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. And they shall walk and not faint. And I pointed out that these three methods of locomotion, mounting on wings, running, and walking, corresponded to three phases in our Christian life. And remember, this is not a sermon on how to become a Christian. This is assuming that you’re already a Christian. And if you’re not already a Christian, then what I say cannot possibly mean you.

When a lawyer calls a number of persons in to read a will to them, what he says only has significance for the persons who are included in the will. If four or five others should crash the gate and sit in and listen, it wouldn’t have any significance for them at all, because their names weren’t there. They weren’t included. So, the sinner will not apply to himself anything that I say nor try to make this a thin philosophy for unconverted men. This is for Christians only, that life presents three phases which I called, life’s highlights, mounting up, and life’s dark nights, running in terror and fear, and walking, life’s gray days. The days when there isn’t anything much going on, when you’re not afraid of anything and you’re not particularly elated about anything, but you’re doing what you know you should do and paying little attention to your feelings. Those are the gray days of life, the common humdrum of life.

Incidentally, when I preached this sermon twenty years ago, I remember there was present a missionary, an old missionary, Brother Andrews from India. And I used the word humdrum. And we had six sons in our home at that time, and the oldest one I imagine was around fifteen. And Brother Andrews came up and said, Brother Tozer, I understand what you mean by humdrum. He said, in your home, I imagine there’s a little of both, hum and drum. That just came to my mind as being at least something I remember from that previous sermon.

Now, I said that I wanted to talk about how we could beat this gray day phase of our lives, how we could get out of it what God has in it for us, how we could live our uneventful plain, pedestrian, simple life. There would be those high moments of flying with wings as eagles. And we thank God for them. And I’m afraid there will be also a few of those days that are dark or those nights that are dark, or days that are dark as night. I hope not many, but there may be some. But mostly, there will be gray days when the sun doesn’t shine and it doesn’t storm. it doesn’t stir you, frighten you, disturb you, nor thrill you. Then it’s hard to be good, and it’s hard to be spiritual, and it’s hard to keep up faith, and it’s hard to remember who you are and where you’re going and what your plans are, what God’s purposes for you are.

Now, for the remainder of the time, I want to give you some, some points as the preachers call it, about how you can get the glory from the gray, and manage to get out of that ugly, drab field, very great fruit and grain. How you can get out of the ugly mountain there, the plain drab mountain, real riches. So, I give you these nine points, and you can take them or try to remember them, or do what you will with.

The first is that every Christian must begin by, after he accepts Christ, and that’s taken for granted, that he must accept the universe. You know, that we live in a world we didn’t make and we’re not responsible for it. The only thing I’m responsible for, is what I’ve put here by my deeds, good or bad. But the universe is here and I didn’t make it. I didn’t make the weather nor I didn’t determine that it was to be cold in one place and warm in another. I can’t help it about floods and earthquakes and storms. I can’t help it because it gets too hot in some places and too cold in others and rarely anyplace just right. I can’t help it that we’re here on a moving conveyor belt traveling between the cradle and the grave. I didn’t ask God and He didn’t ask me.

So, here we are in the middle of the world. There are some things we don’t like in the world, and I think we are tempted sometimes to say that we could improve on it. The great thinker and writer who was an unbeliever, Voltaire, said often, or at least he left the impression that this wasn’t much of a world. And he wrote a whole book “Candide” in which he showed this wasn’t the best of all possible worlds. And somebody said to him, well, how would you improve it? Well, he said, I’d start by making good health catching. And of course, that was very funny and I suppose he got a guffaw from the crowd about it. I don’t know why sickness is catching and good health isn’t. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that a Christian, when he comes to the fountain and is washed, and to the throne and is accepted, he must begin by accepting God’s universe and not trying to edit God’s volume. Not trying to amend God’s constitution. Not trying to add any lean-tos on God’s palace, and not trying to fix up or change any of God’s blueprints. He must accept the universe in which he lives, and say, this is my Father’s world. And I am not going to irritate my own heart by kicking against the pricks, and wishing it was otherwise that it was. So, that’s one thing.

Now, Brother, that’s a philosophical approach, but I think also that it’s quite a spiritual one, that we must begin to be thankful, be thankful for God’s world. The Book of Psalms is one radiant, sunburst of thankfulness for God’s world. The old man of God who wrote the Psalms or the men of God, for David wrote most of them. There were a few others that added some Psalms. Moses, for instance, one and two Hezekiah, some perhaps, and Asap wrote a few. They were men of God and they were radiant with thankfulness. They were glad for the world in which they lived. They said God made the world and who am I to kick against the pricks? Who am I to reply to the potter and say, what makest Thou? Who am I to reply to the man and say, what begettest thou? I will accept this as the best world pro tem that I could live in. That this is it now with its stormy winds and its sleet and hail, and it’s earthquakes, and it’s accidents and death, and with its diseases and graveyards and prisons. I accept it. I can’t help it.

There’s much that I don’t like. But apart from sin, I’m going to accept everything. And I’m going to thank God He made the world as he made it. And I’m going to believe, that in that day when it’s all over, I will look back and say, He has done all things well, and this is the best of all worlds possible. And that nobody could have thought any better way to do any thing. I believe that. I can’t prove that, but I believe that. This is God’s world and I accept it. And you will find there’s a lot of glory in it. And you will, if you trust God and believe and pray, you will find as you’re thankful for God’s world, that there will be a lot of glory come out of that world for you.

The second thing is, accept yourself. That is, you must not envy anybody, anything. Envy is a desire to be what somebody else is, or be somebody else, or have what somebody else has. That’s envy, generally. Now, let’s get rid of envy. Envy is a sin. And when God made you, he made someone different from everybody else in the world. Do you happen to think that there are 165 million people in the world and nobody else exactly like you? But you say, my son, why people say, you will never be dead as long as your son is alive. But you know, that’s idiomatic expression, don’t you? You know that that’s merely a way of talking. There are no two people alike, not even identical twins. So there’s nobody like you.

Now, I think it is an amazing and wonderful thought, that the great God Almighty is able to create new beings every day and continue to do it every day of every year, and every year of every decade and both decades and every score of years and all five score of years in every century, and keep on doing it for all the millennium and never make any two alike. So, I’m not going to wish that I was like somebody else. Now, you get that in your mind. You’re just what you and if God wanted you to be different, He would have made you different.

Now, of course I mean, when it comes to sin, that’s another matter. When it comes to sin, then I am not as I should be, and I must be different. And God has the remedy. It’s the Word and prayer and the blood and the fire of the Holy Ghost. But we’re not talking about sin now. We’re talking about who we are. You wish you were tall and blonde, and you’re little and dark. All right, thank God you’re a little, dark fellow. Or your little, or thin and tall and wish that you were short, where you wish you were heavy when you’re not, and you wish a dozen things. Stop wishing anything and thank God that you’re just exactly what you are. I think sometimes my friend McAfee wishes he was an Englishman. If you have a little English blood in you, he’d just run shaking your hand right away. He and I have a lot of fun about that. His wonderful love for the English.

Do you wish that you had the genius of a Beethoven or the brains of an Einstein? Do you wish you had the money of some great tycoon or the beauty of some great star? Stop that. Christians can’t afford to indulge in pensive wishing and dissatisfaction with themselves, murmuring about what they have in God or murmuring against what they have. No. Accept yourself, my friend. And be thankful for yourself. And that’s not egotism. That’s faith. Be thankful for yourself.

Well, I have little English blood in me, but I just have exactly the amount God wanted in me, no more, no less. There’s a lot of German blood and I don’t mind that at all. So, I’m just exactly what I think I wanted to be if I had had my own choice. Now, I believe in that. It’s possible that 10 million people in this country or 164,999,000, may be greater than I, but at the same time they’re not I. So, I’m not going to trade around with anybody. I wouldn’t change nor be anybody else than what I am. Now, I get a lot of glory out of living in a plain life in a plane drab world if I simply say, now this is God’s place for me, and I am just what God meant me to be apart from sin. I must be perfecting myself and cleansing myself always. But apart from sin, why, I haven’t a complaint to make in the wide world.

And then third, accept your times. And don’t bemoan your place or your times. This is the best time in the world if you know what to do it. These are wonderful times if you know how to handle them and how to approach them. We look back over the far points of yesterday, the far hilltops of yesterday and we say that must have been wonderful to live in a time of Finney. Or, it would have been a beautiful thing to live in the time of Augustine or of St. Francis. It would have been a wonderful thing to live when the Holy Ghost came at Pentecost, or when the church was starting her missionary work to the ends of the earth in those early days. Not one bit better than now. You would not have been any better a Christian then than you are now because times don’t make Christians. God makes Christians.

And some of the finest Christians have been brought into being at the times when they were the lowest. Look at St. Bernard for instance. St. Bernard was a Christian in an hour when the whole world was dark. And yet he was a great Christian. God makes Christians, not the times. If you can’t be a good Christian in 1956, you couldn’t be a good Christian in 35 A.D. If you can’t be a good Christian now, you couldn’t be a good Christian in the Millennium. So, the point isn’t what times I live in. The point is, do I live in faith? Do I live in Christ? Does the Holy Ghost live in me? And am I, an indwelt man. So, accept your times and stop bemoaning the good old days, some of you dear old people have that habit. You remember the good old days when you were young and everything looked wonderful to you.

I sometimes look back upon the little Alliance Church over in Akron, Ohio. And I am suspicious that I am overrating that church, because that was my first introduction to anything spiritual. That’s the first time that I ever knew spiritual singing and spiritual praying and the people knew God. That was the first time I’d ever come in contact with anything like that. And of course, I look back upon it now as being an oasis in the desert, a wonderful, little Millennium for me. But I have a suspicion now, that I know humanity better, that there was an awful lot of things wrong with that church that I in my young innocence didn’t know about. And you’ll find that there is a lot of things wrong back there in those good old days where you wish you were again. No, God will do anything for you now that he ever did for anybody, anytime, anywhere. Remember that. None of your father’s ever had anything you can’t have. God will fill you as full as He ever filled any man in the history of the world if you will meet His conditions. So, let’s not bemoan the times and grieve God by being sorry that we’re living in 1956. I’m not. I’m glad I’m living right now.

Well, accept your place in life. That’s point number four, if you please. Your place in life, God puts you in that particular place. You’re married to somebody or you’re not. Or you’re a certain age or you’re old, or you’re young, or you’re middle-aged, and you’re this kind of workman or that kind of professional man. And you wish you were something else. I think that humanity being what it is, there never was a man yet, whoever had a job or a profession or an occupation that somewhere he wasn’t tempted to wish that he was doing something else. Have you ever met a man that was absolutely convinced this was the only job for him? No. There never was a married woman yet, now don’t look at me, but there never was a married woman yet, that somewhere down the line, didn’t look pensively at the young single girl going on her way at the office and saying, boy, if I could quit at 4:30 and not have anything else to think about, I’d be a happy woman. But if you were the single girl going on your way to the office, she’d be looking in at you and saying, look at that lovely family there. Those pretty kids. I wish I had that. So, everybody wants what they don’t have.

I saw a cartoon one time that was supposed to represent humanity, or a picture that’s supposed to represent humanity. It showed an apple tree. And on the ground lying everywhere, obviously after a heavy wind, there lay great, juicy apples, almost piled on each other. And away at the top of the tree and off far to the left of the picture, hanging alone, was a little shriveled apple. And here stood a boy with a rock looking at that apple. And all around him were bushels of all luscious, juicy, sweet, succulent fruit. But that one lonely little shriveled apple was the one that boy wanted. The artists that drew that had a sense of humor and a little knowledge of humanity, for that’s exactly the way we live. We want what we don’t have and what we have, were not inclined to want.

Now, that’s Adam’s way and a sinner’s way, but it oughtened to be a Christian’s way. A Christian ought to thank God for his place in life and stop complaining. And then again, remember this, that that place you’re in and all this that comes to you in these gray, plain days, that’s the lot of all saints. I’ve pointed out before here many times that it helps us when we’re undergoing hard times, if we remember that we’re not alone in it. Other people are undergoing hard times, too.

So, if you keep that in mind, it’s the lot of all the saints. But you say, I read the life of St. Augustine and I know that he had high times. Well, you will have high times too. But Augustine had a few of those high peaks, but he had more valleys than he did peaks and more level plateaus than he did mountain tops. So did Paul. We read about Paul’s shipwreck and Paul getting stoned at Lystra. We read about his being knocked down on the road to Damascus and being filled with the Spirit when Ananias came to Him. We read about his being thrown into prison and about his going out to die. We read about those things and we imagine that Paul’s life consisted in one unbroken sequence of thrillers. Oh, no.

Why, Paul had long days. For instance. and he dwelt two years in his own hired house. That’s all there is to that. There are two solid years telescoped into one sentence. What happened during those two years? No highlights, no dark nights, just gray days. Paul had to go on living, preach the gospel and go ahead and do the best he could. And take a few bumps and have a few victories and go right ahead now. And that’s exactly the way you should do. And it’s the lot of all the saints. Again, remember this, that the workshop of God is never very brightly-lighted. It’s usually dimly-lighted. It’s not dark, totally. And it is not bright. It’s rather gray. And in that workshop God hews and cuts and chisels and builds and refines. And you’re the one he’s working on. So when you look around and you’d like to do something dramatic.

Do you remember when you were saved just in your teens, how you wanted to do something dramatic? I always did. When I would hear the Star-Spangled Banner, I’d get goose pimples on my wrists. I wanted to go out and die for my country, but I wanted to come home and hear the people praise me for dying from a country. It was an odd situation that I created. But we’re like that, you know. We want to do the big, thrilling thing. But we don’t do it that way. We don’t marry the princess. We marry little Mary Smith down two blocks down there, plain looking little woman who manages to look pretty well with a little help. And they get along all right, thank God. That’s the way we live. And we don’t, we don’t always have the big thrills. Gods workshop is dimly-lighted and their God in the half shadows, in the gray, is working and working with His people, always working.

I’ve often quoted and we quote brother McAfee and I often quote to each other and in prayer, what Fenelon said about the coal mine, and the gold mine. He said deep in the bowels of the earth, God is working; deep in the heart of the man, God is working like a miner in the bowels of the earth. Digging and refining and working away there. Nobody knows it, but God and the man. The man’s likely to forget it, so keep it in mind, you’re in God’s workshop and God’s workshop is not always lighted with the finest lights. It’s a little dim there. But the great God knows what he’s doing. He seeth in the shadows and He’s working there.

And then keep in mind also that there are rich treasures. There are more treasures in the plateau then there are up on the mountain peak. More treasures for you in living straight along and walking by faith, then there is an mounting up with wings, although sometimes you will mount up with wings too.

Could I tell again an illustration which I gave some years ago, of an old gentleman who had several sons. He noticed that those boys of his, as I think most boys, even as you and I, wasn’t exactly what you’d call, wild about work. So, he came to die and he called his boys in and he said, boys that orchard down there, in that vineyard, I buried a treasure there. He said, it’s buried there and it’ll make you all rich. I’m got to go now, goodbye. And so, he pulled his feet into bed like Jacob and died. Soon as the funeral was over and they could get to it, why, they got their heads together and said, father said he had buried a treasure. There’s a treasure buried in the vineyard. Let’s dig it up. So, they digged up the vineyard. They didn’t find a thing. It took them about all summer. They didn’t find a thing. They went over every inch and didn’t find a thing. By that fall when it came grape-gathering time, they had so many grapes, the neighbors remarked about it. So they harvested the grapes. They said, well, we’ll harvest the grapes next spring, we’ll try it again.

So they harvested the grapes, and to everybody’s surprise, they had made more money that year than they ever thought possible. So the next spring they said, well, we’ll get going on digging for the treasure, so they dug a little deeper. And that year, they had more grapes than ever before. And they said, well, this is this wonderful. Let’s harvest these grapes. So they harvested the grapes and sold them and banked the money. And they did that for three or four years, and never found the treasure they’d been digging for. And then at last, they began to look at each other and said, I wonder if the old man wasn’t slipping something cross on us. Then they began to grin and said, now we know what it is. We know. The treasure that we were supposed to dig for was the cultivation of our vineyard, our orchard. And the digging around the roots and the constant digging and keeping the soil digged-up has given us so much fruit that we’re practically rich and if we keep this up a few years, we’ll be rich men. They stopped their effort to find gold and silver and went on digging around the roots of the tree and went on to be rich men.

So it is with our God. God has buried treasures, brothers and sisters, but they are not the treasures that are in bags or boxes. It’s another kind of treasure, so that when you go ahead now, quietly living your life for God this year, God will make you rich. Not the way you expected but the way God has in mind.

And I would say, point number eight is that God put you here, and that is by providence. Our fathers used the word we seldom use, it is the word providence. We don’t believe much in that now. But providence is the secret, silent working of God to an end, in which He plays us over the board, as a man plays chess pieces over a board to a predetermined end. And when we look back, we will see how He worked in our lives. Now that is what I mean by providence. And God is working providentially to bring things to pass for you. God put you here.

And last of all is that Christ is with you always. If you will remember that you won’t worry very much about the light nor the dark. And when the gray day comes, you will remember the Lord is with me all the time. Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world.

So now, remember this, you can fly, but you can’t fly always. You will be called upon to run in the dark sometimes, but not very often. Mostly you will walk by faith. And it is the walking by faith that pleases God the most. Anybody can be happy in the hour of great elevation of soul. Anybody can pray in the moment of great tragedy. But when neither one comes along and you’re forced every day to live just as if you’re anybody else. There’s nothing to thrill you and nothing to excite you, and just go right straight ahead with God in your mind and Christ before you walking by faith. That’s something else again, but that’s what you called to do. So walk by faith.

Here’s a stanza of a hymn. I don’t care much for the hymn I admit. But the man did get something into this last verse. It was James Russell Lowell’s hymn called, “Once to Every Man and Nation,” and this is the way he closed it. He says, though the cause of evil prosper, yet tis truth alone that strong. Thou her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong. Yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown, standeth God within the shadow keeping watch above his own.

So, during this year and during all the years we have yet before us, you will find that right will be on the scaffold and wrong will be on the throne. And yet it’s not the throne where wrong sits that will determine the future, but it’s the scaffold. For righteousness stands with a rope around her neck. She’ll sway the future. And in the shadows is God keeping watch above His own.

Now that’s my faith, ladies and gentleman, that I believe in. We walk by faith and not by sight. So, if God wants to during these days ahead, if God wants to take me in a high flight, I’ll be glad to go. I’ll be glad with Paul to go to that third heaven and come down and keep my mouth shut about what I saw. And if God in His tender mercy sees fit to let me plunge into a dark night where I can’t find my way through, I’ll try to be patient and walk with him until the light returns. But in the meantime, I don’t expect too much of either. I expect an awful lot of humdrum. An awful lot of just plain keeping on and serving God and keeping faithful when there’s nothing to be faithful apparently about, as far as your feelings are concerned.

So, I recommend that you learn that song, May Jesus Christ be Praised, and sing it every morning when you get out of bed while you’re groping blindly and more or less somnolently for the alarm clock and wishing you had five more hours to sleep. Why, began to sing, when morning gilds the skies, my heart awakening cries, may Jesus Christ be praised. And all through the day and night and darkness and light, praise Jesus Christ. You will find you will have the glory that you never dreamed was there. The rich gold of God’s sweet reward will be yours because you trusted and weren’t afraid and walked and believed and honored God when you couldn’t see nor feel. You honored God and God in return will honor you and lift and protect and bless and keep you through the years. Amen

Tags Christian Life, Joy, Trust

Messages

Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date November 6, 2022

“The Believer’s Walk”

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The Believer’s Walk

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer
December 15, 1957

In the first of the two Thessalonian epistles, chapter four, Paul says, furthermore, we beseech you brethren and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us, how ye ought to walk and to please God so ye would abound more and more. For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, even your sanctification. that ye should abstain from fornication. That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God. Let no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter, because that the Lord is the avenger of all such. As we also have forewarned you and testified. For God has not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. And he therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, God who hath also given unto us His Holy Spirit.

This is only a little section of a letter written by a man named Paul, an apostle to a church in the city of Thessalonica, a Greek city, to a new church, relatively new. And these persons to whom he wrote, were good Christians. That is, the church was good. There are seven things said about the church, said about the Thessalonian Christians by the man Paul. For Paul was always very careful never to deliver a 100% condemnation. He always wove into his condemnation some complimentary remarks about their spiritual lives. He knew that if you are too hard on people, you discourage them. If you’re not hard enough, you let them go to sleep. So he tried to keep them awake and still not be too hard on them. He said this about them, that they had abandoned idolatry. They were by nature, rather by culture, they were idolaters by religion. But they had now abandoned this. They had turned to God from idols, and they had turned to the true God.

I have said many times, I suppose I will not say anything this morning I haven’t said many times. I’ve said many times that God never recommends vacuum. If He takes you out of a place, it’s in order that He might take you into a place. He never takes you out and leaves you. If He says, turn away from that, He says that in order that He might say, turn unto this. So they had turned away from idols and turned to the true God. They were not left in the middle in a state of of unanimous indecision, I think I heard it call last week on the board. They were unanimous only in their indecision. But that would be a frightful place to leave a man. But they turned to the true God after turning from idols. And in their faith, they worked and hoped and loved and labored. And they received the gospel in power, Paul said, with much assurance, which he took as a proof of their election of God. And they were actively missionary-minded, for they send out missionaries and supported them. They had continued true under persecution, which is a good test of a Christian, and they were living in expectation of Christ’s return.

Now those seven characteristics of the Thessalonian Christians, were enough for them to get into any church in Christendom and to be taken further as an example of other churches. And still Paul was not content. He commended them for what they were, but he also urged the sacred duty of their being holy people, holy beyond the call of duty, holy beyond the current mores, holy beyond the standards of their time. And he warned them as I warn you, that nothing else is enough. If we do not seek and pursue purity of heart, which results in personal purity of life, nothing else is enough. Now, Paul said that he had taught this to them. And he had taught them what he called righteousness and true holiness. There is such a thing as righteousness that is not true holiness. But there is righteousness and true holiness.

Now, Christ personalized righteousness when He came. And He took it out of the realm of what we now call ethics, or have always called ethics, and taught that righteousness was simply to please God. We need not know what righteousness is, but we do need to know that if we please God, we’re doing righteousness. John said, that if we kept the commandments of the Lord, He would hear our prayers, and then added, and also if we do the things that are pleasing in His sight. Not that the keeping the commandments of the Lord was not pleasing in God’s sight, but it was not enough. There has to be an affection shown toward God.

It’s the same as rules in a household. The average household has rules and you keep those rules, and you see that the children do, and everybody takes it for granted. But that’s not enough. You could come, your children could come into your household and watch not to break the rules, and yet never do or say anything affectionate to show that they really loved you. It isn’t enough that I keep the laws of the New Testament, the commandments of Christ, that I am to do this and do that and refrain from this. That’s not enough. That must be, but Christ personalized all this and made it to be the result of a spontaneous, loving, relationship toward God.

And the church of Christ is righteous when she does those things which she knows to be pleasing in the eyes of her righteous Savior, and goes beyond mere keeping of rules, however important they may be. And Paul lays many of them down. We can talk about grace all we want to and freedom all we please. We’ve got to throw a lot of the New Testament out if we reject commandments and rules, for there are a lot of them here. But keeping to those rules is not enough. There must be added to this, or perhaps I should say, that we keep them because they are to us the mind of our Lord, that we do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

Philosophers analyze righteousness, but Christians obey and are righteous because they do the things that are righteous without knowing why they’re doing them. We’re now in time of analysis. Somebody referred once in my hearing to the paralysis of analysis. And now in seminaries and Bible schools, they analyze till they’re paralyzed. They stand halfway between two extreme views of things and can’t make up their mind which and split hairs and divide them until there’s no spontaneity left. We scarcely know which side we’re on at all. Well, that’s not a Christian’s approach. If a Christian knows that the Lord wants it that way, he wants it that way whether he knows why or not.

We might and I think it wouldn’t hurt us if we studied into the why of things. Why is it wrong to steal and why is it wrong to lie? There are good, sound philosophic reasons underneath it all. But that isn’t the reason that Christian stops lying. He stops lying because he knows lying displeases his Lord. He allows these scholastic hair splitters and casuists to write their long commentaries on why it’s wrong to steal. And if you steal with a certain high principle in mind you’re doing right, and why it’s wrong to lie. And in some quarters, they even have taught their their devotees that you can lie provided you say instantly afterward, Lord, I didn’t mean that. They even say that you can go to court and lie in court, if after you have told the lie in court you say to God, now God excused it, that doesn’t count. Now, that’s actually in print. I can show you where it is. That’s real. That’s real. That’s Jesuit casuistry. The hairsplitting of morals.

Is it ever wrong to tell a lie, or is it ever right to tell a lie? Is it always wrong to lie? Well, the hairsplitters give good reasons why sometimes a lie is a good thing. For instance, they’ve argued if you know that somebody is very sick and that a shocked would kill them, you can lie to them. I wouldn’t do it to save anybody’s life. But I wouldn’t shock them either. I believe God would help a man or woman out so that he would neither need to lie nor kill anybody by shocking them with the news of their friend’s death or accident. I believe it entirely possible to preserve the righteousness of truth and at the same time not give anybody a heart attack.

Well anyway, the Christians who teach morals from that cold standpoint, sit around and talk by the hour about, can you do this, or is it wrong to do that, and just how far can you go in this direction? That is a proof of the lack of spirituality. Paul said that we were to do these things in Jesus, because we do the things that are pleasing in His sight. And Jesus said, thou hearest Me always because I’m always doing what’s pleasing to Thee, pleasing in Thy sight.

Of course, we have rules at our house. We always had. When we were bringing up the boys, I used to say to them, now boys, if you were on a basketball team, there’d be certain things that you wouldn’t be permitted to do. There would be certain rules. And if you played on the Sox or Cubs, there’d be certain things that they’d say, now, you can’t do this. And I said, at home, it’s the same. There are certain rules that you keep, and that’s it. When we have our grandchildren out to the house now, there are certain rules or things they can’t do. We rarely ever have any trouble with them. But there are things they can’t do. But the beautiful part about it is, when they go beyond the call of duty and respond to your affection in a way. My little boy Paul, excuse the expression, for he laughs at me, whenever I mention the word Paul, he leans against the wall and says, now, I’m in for it because he knows what I think of this little blonde boy. But he’s a good little fellow and keeps rules more or less, but four years old. One day, I patted his little head and whispered in his ear, you’re a good little boy. And he patted my arm and said, you’re a good grandpa too.

Well, you know, I haven’t got over that yet. That’s been months ago. And that wasn’t keeping rules. That was a response. That was a response that was something out of the heart, spontaneous. Nobody had taught him to say that. And he didn’t have to say it. And it’s exactly so here. Righteousness and true holiness is the spontaneous response of the heart to the love of God. Of course, it takes certain directions, and so, Paul wanted to lay those directions down for us. And he pointed out the importance of a holy walk. He said, this is the will of God, even your sanctification, to be devoted to God’s uses. Of course, that’s one and the primary meaning of the word “sanctified.” But it also means to be cleansed for that purpose.

Those who don’t believe too much in cleansing, argue that sanctify means to set apart for sacred uses. But I have one question which I want to ask you. Can you conceive of God setting anything aside for His sacred use that wasn’t first cleansed? Can you conceive of a priest in the Levitical temple standing and singing or offering incense from a vessel that was dirty that needed to be washed? No. They believed in washings and washings says the writer of the gospels for the Jews will not eat until they have washed their hands. They’re always keeping clean. Their idea of a sanctified vessel was a vessel that was as clean as it could be made, and then dedicated to God. It had those two connotations. Not one, but two. I can’t think of a holy God using an unholy vessel. I can’t think of a holy God eating out or wanting his people to eat out of a vessel that’s dirty.

Now, this is neglected in our day, and we want to talk about it a little. It’s not denied I think, that Christians should be holy, but not too much has been said about it. And most I think, that most of our preaching after we’ve got the sinner in, we can’t be rough on him. But after we’ve got him in and he’s joined and got baptized, and has gotten into our fellowship, then after that, most preaching consists of telling them how nice they are. At least, that’s what I hear when I listen on the radio. Most all that is telling people how nice they are.

Well now, we want to do that, as I pointed out that Paul does and Jesus does in these seven letters. But they also, we must shout aloud, that He that saith, He abideth in Him ought also to walk even as He walked. That it is the will of God that we should be a holy people. And in this particular chapter, Paul talks about one kind of evil which our missionaries tell us sometimes creeps right into their churches and I’m afraid in our own churches, too. He talks about, he said that everybody should be freed and delivered from fornication.

Now, the damning effect of impurity will never quite be known in this world. We’ll never know until the judgment, until we know as we’re known, the ravages of impurity are greater than that of any disease, greater than the ravages of any of the great killers. And the victims of this, of these sins, are found by millions in hospitals and insane institutions and institutions for the blind. But the most deadly effect of sin is always in the heart of its victim. Never forget that.

A man may, as has happened some times, a man may get drunk and fall into fire. I knew a man that His neck was all burned. He said, years ago, he’d become a Christian. And he turned around and showed me the scars on his neck. He said, I worked in a factory where there were blazing fires. And he said, I’d get drunk and stagger around and even at my work and fall in and have to be dragged out. He said, that’s the result. Well now, that was bad because it had burnt him. It might have killed him, but it burnt his neck and left great, ugly scars there. But those scars didn’t represent the real deadly result of his sin which happened to be drinking. But something inside the man was suffering. Something inside the man was getting sore, shriveling, cracking, splitting, dividing, withering, dying. Thank God, our Lord Jesus Christ got a hold of that man and saved him, saved him, wonderfully saved him.

Incidentally, I might as well carry on that little story. This man was named Jim Terwilliger. And he was about that high and about that thick through. And I knew him when he was in his 70s. He had been saved when he was 56. And that dear man of God, here’s how he was saved. He was dead drunk lying on a couch. His wife was kneeling at his head, and his Christian doctor kneeling at his feet praying for him. He said, he heard a voice say, wake thou that sleepest and rise from the dead, then Christ will give thee light. And he stood and wept as he told his story. He said, I woke up completely cold sober and thoroughly converted and born again.

Now don’t ask me about how it happened. That’s not the way the little book tells you. That little book you get three for a quarter on how to win souls, and what to say to them and what to say next. That isn’t the way they do it in the little books, but that’s the way the Holy Ghost did it, brother. This man lived with a Christian wife, and he was drinking and disgracing himself, like an old pig. But she had gotten ahold of God and that physician had gotten ahold of God. And here was a man that came bouncing out of a dead drunk, cold sober and converted. From that time on to the end of his life, he did nothing but weep and sing and shout and praise God and testify to what the Lord has done for him. Don’t ask me to explain that. I can’t. That isn’t found in any of the books. That was just done.

Now, dear people, the worst part of any sin is what it does inside of you. A real estate man cheats a widow. The widow suffers. Her children suffers. But that’s not the worst. The worst thing is what happened to the man. Emerson said, the thief always steals from himself. And when I cheat anybody of anything, I’ve cheated my own soul and done my self harm. Always remember that the great evil of sin is internal, that it’s what happens inside.

Sometimes in an accident, there will come bearing on a stretcher, somebody in shock. And they will feel the arms, the legs and say, well, there are no broken bones, no broken ribs, but there’s internal injuries. And you die from those internal injuries, not from broken legs. And it’s the internal injury of sin, iniquity. What’s happening to these people? I don’t even get indignant anymore when I hear about them, these people that that live like animals. And their concept of home is like animals. I don’t even get angry anymore or indignant. The world is that way, and that’s the way it is until the Lord either comes and burns it with fire, or until He takes His people away or sends a revival or somehow changes things. But the terrible part is the cancer eating inside the heart.

Now, we live in in a Sodom today. Our American civilization is a Sodom. That is why when I hear speeches from in Washington talking about our American way of life and the free peoples of the world and all that. I know what they mean, and I know what they think they mean and don’t. There are no free peoples. And there are no righteous nations. And the best nations have, oh, so much for which to repent. If America hopes to be preserved on the strength of her righteousness, she might just well prepare herself for annihilation. No nation is righteous. We’re living in a Sodom.

I know it’s easy to make charges from the safety of the pulpit. I know that, and I know how hard it is to prove them because sin is a slippery as an oil eel. And I know that the attorneys for the defense are very, very many, and very learned. You can get books now showing that sodomy is perfectly normal, and that it is simply one person’s way of responding. That while naturally, and the majority don’t respond that way. Man falls in love with a woman. That’s that seems to be the majority, but occasionally, the Sodomite man falls in love with a man. Paul describes it in Romans 1. Back in Genesis, the city of Sodom was destroyed because of it.

Now, we have attorneys for the defense, teaching in our institutions of higher learning in the land supposed to be Christian, writing very carefully thought out and learned books to show that sodomy is not a sin, and that it ought not to be called a sin. We ought to stop that old 17th century view of it. It is simply another person’s way of responding to a situation. And though, God Almighty sent fire on Sodom, and though Paul warned in Romans 1 of the ghastly result of this kind of thing, our students in their universities now are hearing that it’s all right. Maybe not the most to be desired, but nothing wrong if that’s the way you feel about it.

Well, this Sodom can defend its ways all right. And those who would escape the fire though, they can’t stand on the street corner and argue. They can’t sit in a class or somewhere and read a book showing that Sodomy is all right. Escape to the hills said the angel. Escape to the mountain said the angel. Escape for thy life said the Holy Ghost. And Lot got up and escaped and went leading his wife. I’m thinking of the artist’s pictures of it. I suppose he led her. She looked back and he tried to drag her with him. But she said, I want to catch that late TV show. I can’t leave yet. So she turned to a pillar of salt, still back there.

Old brother Cout. Do you remember him?. Brother Cout, still the same old Bernard Cout. He’s got adenoids you know, and that old ex-missionary. God bless him. He’s one of the sweetest old saints I know. He said the other day in a sermon, two shall be grinding at the mill. One’s taken and the other left. Two shall be sleeping in a bed, one taken and the other left. Two shall be watching television, both left. Well, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t press it like that. There was one in my hotel room in New York. And when I wasn’t busy, I watched it to see what was on. I wouldn’t go that far, but I think you ought to give that a bit of thought anyhow. That was the theology of good Brother Cout from up in the hills.

Well, Saddam can defend itself all right. And the thing to do is not argue or split hairs, but get out. Separate yourself severely and radically from sin of every kind, and regard it with horror and detestation, says the Holy Ghost. He that despises, despises not man but God that called us unto holiness. Any young man or woman that travels the sleazy way of borderline impurity does so at his own terrible risk. And whoever defends evil, defends what God has severely condemned. And whoever despises holiness, despises that upon which God places such high value.

And after all friends, spirituality isn’t what you eat or don’t eat, where you go or don’t go. Spirituality is thinking about things the way God thinks about them, seeing them through God’s eyes, appraising them with God’s standards, that spiritual spirituality. And holiness isn’t don’t wear gold, don’t wear a tie. I think you can doll up and look like a Christmas tree and hurt your Christian testimony. I don’t doubt that at all. That can be done. I think a lot of Christian women do it. And I think that preachers sometime get so much automobile out ahead of them. That it’s a testimony. It’s not for God, but for somebody else, and I think I know who.

But holiness doesn’t consist in having or not having doing or not doing. It consists of thinking about it the way God thinks about it. Judging it the way God judges it. Responding toward it the way God responds. Reacting from it, as God reacts from it. Loving it, as God loves. Hating it as God hates it. And doing the things that are pleasing in His sight. And surely that will include holiness of life and righteousness of walk, which Paul calls here, righteousness and true holiness. May God grant that we have more than the new birth. May God grant that we have more than the knowledge that we’ve been born again. Let us go on unto perfection.

And let us seek as the days go by, in our living, the way we handle our money, the way we treat our friends, the way we live in our homes, the way we conduct our business, the way we think when we’re free to think the way we want to think. That in all that we will be exemplars of righteousness and true holiness. For he that despises, despises not man but God. May God grant that the words of Peter be fulfilled in us, be ye holy, for I am holy, words spoken first by God and quoted by Peter, be holy, for I am holy.

A yearning to be holy is about all I’d want to know that anybody had, and I’d call him my Brother. Are you longing to be holy? I wouldn’t ask that you would know all the different views and the different theological hairsplittings. All I’d want to know is, within his heart is a great longing to be holy. That, it seems to me is more valuable than all the fine churches and all the well-bound Bibles. God grant that we have it. All right.

Tags Christian Life, Holiness