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“Repentance“

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“Repentance”

January 4, 1959

Now, I want to talk today, this morning before the communion, on the 51st Psalm. We read it previously, perhaps a few of you came in late for it, very few. But it’s the 51st Psalm, and David that starts out, to have mercy upon me O God according to Thy lovingkindness and according unto the multitude of a tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

Now, we come to the communion service, the first communion service of the New Year. And of course, we entered the new year. It’s 1959, the first Sunday of the new year. And there are some things we want from God and we want them legitimately. They are not the whimpering of spoiled children. They are the legitimate and appropriate desires of mature Christians. I’ll name about five or six things that we want. We want protection during this coming year. You and I can no more dare face the year without the protection of God than we dare face a thunderstorm or a blizzard without shelter.

Then we want guidance during this coming year. Every one of us will want guidance. We want personal guidance and we want providential guidance, because you will be sought, and your exploitation will be attempted by 10,000 persons who want to make something of you. You will be asked here and there, you will be. Suggestions will be offered to you by the scores, and you want guidance. And you have a right to want prosperity. Not financial prosperity necessarily, though that is not even wrong to desire that we might prosper financially.

Then we hope you will want growth. We hope you will want to fulfill the Scripture that says, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we hope you’ll want to make spiritual progress and advance in holiness. If you do, I believe you’re in the will of God. If you do not, then I’m afraid you have wasted the last year, because last year should have made us desirous of having spiritual progress the next year. And then this year we’re now in should prepare us to want more spiritual progress in the years that may lie ahead. And if we do not I say, if we are languid and perfunctory about all this, if even one of us, even one of us, it’s all then, we have wasted last year to a large degree. We have lived like a turtle or some other animal that barely vegetated. We have spiritually, merely vegetated, merely stayed alive.

Then, if this is true, and I think it is true that we do want during this time, a protection and guidance and prosperity and growth in grace and spirit to make spiritual progress and to advance in holiness and likeness to God, then one quality must be present to assure these benefits. And that one quality is true repentance, contrition. I wonder why we can’t see this, that repentance is not something you do and get over with. Repentance is something you feel. It is a state. It is contrition. And contrition is not something you feel and then get over with as you might take a shot of penicillin soon, to cure, to kill the bugs inside your blood and heal you have, a disease and then forget it. We cannot thus think of contrition. Contrition is rather a permanent state of mind. Flaring up or dying down as a fire might a little as we go along, but always present. The glow of it ought to be in our hearts always and it must be.

The 51st Psalm is a classic example of contrition. It had a historic reason for it. But it created a mood in which David lived. And we do well to let this Psalm create a mood for us. And to try to keep that mood, it’s far better than to try to seek comfort this coming year. If you will have decided, or secretly even decided that you’re going to enjoy yourself more this year, that you’re hoping to have more comforts, more conveniences and a better state of affairs, so you’ll comfort yourself and live better, then you haven’t properly, you haven’t learned Christ yet, as you should.

Now to enjoy ourselves, that’s the counsel of unbelief, to desire to do better, feel better, to be more consoled and to rest more and relax more and work less and have more of the comforts which we tell ourselves we have well, well earned. All right, if that’s your plan for the coming year, then that’s the counsel of unbelief. That’s, that’s what the rich man wanted. That’s what Demus was wanted. But that isn’t what the children of God ought to want. We ought to want guidance and protection and spiritual growth and advance in holiness whether we’re comforted or not. I don’t care whether I feel good this year or not. You know, you can get so busy with God, you don’t notice whether you’re feeling good or not. And if somebody asks you, how do you feel, you have to stop and ask and consult yourself to see if it’s worth the problem?

Well, this contrition is found here in Psalm 51. There are two things I want you to notice about it. One of them is that the writer says no good thing of himself. And he says only good of God. For after all, there are only two persons here. There was a lot of sin and a lot of involvement. David was involved with various persons and he’d sinned against a lot of people, against his country and against the people that trusted him. He had sinned a lot. There was a lot of involvement. But when David began to pray, he recognized that all that involvement was secondary. The Primary Person is present here too, then, David, he saw that there were just two persons here. I against Thee, Thee only have I sinned. Against Thee and I. That’s all David talked about.

Now, he said nothing good about himself. He offered no excuses. And he offered no defense. I believe this is greatly pleasing to God, to come to God without excuse, and without defense, I believe greatly pleases God. For God is pleased with some things and displeased with others that we do. And I believe the heart that comes to God without defense and without excuse, greatly pleases God. A woman who came to Jesus and asked him to do certain things for her. He looked at her in amazement and said, why, surely woman, great is thy faith. He was pleased with the woman. With others, He was displeased and said, oh ye of little faith. I think it’s pleasing to God to come to Him without excuse, without defense.

Then, he says only good of God. He doesn’t come to God whimpering or complaining or finding fault. He throws himself on God’s mercy. And I believe that’s the safest place in the universe, throw himself, throw ourselves on the mercy of God. From every stormy wind that blows, says Stowell’s song, from every stormy wind that blows, from every swelling tide of woes, there is a calm, a sure treat: Tis found beneath the mercy seat.

Now, the mercy seat is not a poetic hiding place. The mercy seat has a sharp theological meaning. It is, it is the cross, it is the mercy seat where Christ sits. It means to throw ourselves on the mercy of God without excuse and without personal buildup and without defense, and without any whimpering or complaining against the treatment God has given us; to come to Him thanking Him for every good thing and admitting frankly we deserved every bad one and throw ourselves on the mercy of Gods.

You know, the problem with us is, and the reason that our good resolves don’t last, it is a joke. It’s a cartoonist joke it. It is the joke of the comedian and the funny paper and all the rest that we make a resolution and break it. But the reason Christians make these resolutions and break them, whether it’s at New Year or whether it’s sometime in the middle of the year at some convention or revival meeting, is inadequate repentance. Inadequate repentance, that’s our trouble. To have sinned or be practicing sin and to know it and yet to be unable to feel sorry about it. I tell you, that’s worse than cancer. That’s worse than multiple sclerosis. Those things are physical, and they can even be healed, but you can’t heal this.

To sin, to practice sin, to be living with sin on you and to know it, and you to be unable to feel sorry about it. And, in order to feel sorry and be too weak to amend, that’s, that’s inadequate repentance. And inadequate repentance always is a sandy foundation. And all of your good intentions will fall apart and you will not make any progress if there is inadequate repentance there. I say, to feel sorry for our sins and yet not to be able to make any changes, or to know we have sinned and yet not even to feel sorry, this is greatly to aggravate our evil and compound the felony. And then to admire ourselves and to defend ourselves, it’s to deepen the intensity of sin and make it grave and critical. And I believe it’s greatly to displease God.

And then while trying to repent, secretly to desire to continue in the thing we’re trying to repent of. What inconsistency is this, what incongruous praying, what hypocrisy; that we’re trying to repent and secretly intending not to repent at all, but to go back and do the same thing over again. And to be so little concerned even while we’re repenting that we break off without concerned to eat or to sleep or to chat or to seek entertainment.

You know, Israel in the olden days when they were repenting, they put on sackcloth and ashes. Do you know what sackcloth is? It’s a gunny sack we call it now. It’s about as coarse a cloth as there is. Nobody would want to wear it. And if you wore it next to yourself, you’d be scratching continually and suffering after a while with a rash. And ashes, what about ashes? Nobody can say a good word for ashes. I can’t think of a good word to be said for ashes.

And Israel put on sackcloth and threw ashes on their heads, up into their hair, down their necks and down over their bodies. Why did they do that? Was there some sanctifying virtue in the sackcloth? No, they didn’t think that and you don’t think that. Nobody does. Did ashes have anything in it, ashes. No, ashes have nothing. There’s nothing in ashes or sackcloth. But what they meant was, O God, we have sinned and we mean to repent and we’re trying to repent and we want to repent and we’re willing to even lay aside even the common and legitimate pleasures. Even the legitimate pleasures, we relinquish them in order that you might know that we mean what we say. Instead of breaking off to eat or sleep or look at a TV program, why, they put sackcloth and sat and threw ashes on their heads. It looked silly, and it did not have any Biblical commandment. There was nothing in the law of Moses that they were to do it so far as I know. But they did it because they wanted themselves to know and they wanted God to know that their repentance was going to be adequate. They were ready to give up the legitimate things in order that they might make their repentance effective.

Now what is the uses, or are the uses of sorrow in repentance? For the Bible talks about sorrow and repentance. But I believe that sorrow chastens the soul. To sin and to get off easy and sin again and get off easy and to sin again and get off easy and continue, pretty soon you’ll get a habit. You get a habit of it, to sin, commit the sin of omission. Any sin of omission and to get off easy, and then to commit it again and continue to commit it, pretty soon we’ve established tracks for our hearts to run on.

And because sin didn’t cost us anything, but we cheerfully said, well, Jesus paid it all. He’s forgiven me and it cost us nothing, we don’t know how bad it is. We don’t sense it. And so, sorrow is the chastening of the soul. Sorrow is the sackcloth. A man who had worn sackcloth for two or three days, he didn’t forget it. And he hesitated twice before he went back to do that thing again, for he remembered the rash and the itching and sleepless nights and the sneezing from the ashes and the dust and gritty ashes in his hair, he remembers that. He punished himself a little.

Now, I know self-punishment does not atone for sin, but it does serve to make a man sick of it. And that’s why Paul said there was a sorrow not to be repented of. He that sorrows unto repentance, sorrows with a sorrow not to be repented of. Nobody ever repented of having repented. Nobody ever did yet repent of having repented. And the chasing of the soul by the Holy Ghost in the sorrow of contrition, helps to cure us so we don’t want to do this thing again. It’s a kind of therapy, a cure, a psychological cure, to make us sick of the condition that we’d gotten ourselves into. I believe that we would do well my serious-minded friends. I believe we would do well wo enter this, vibrant, living, dangerous new year, this threatening, louring new year, to enter it in a state of contrition.

But I would close by asking you to beware of contrition without hope. Because contrition without hope becomes remorse, and remorse is sick repentance. Judas did not repent. But Judas felt remorse. The repentance of the man Judas was a sick repentance and the result was he simply tormented himself to death, went out and committed suicide and knew the foretaste of hell before they went there. That’s sick repentance, which is contrition without hope, I want to warn you against it. I want to warn you of the frivolity, the spiritual frivolity which allows you to go on and on carelessly on your way without checking on yourself. But I also want to warn you, that if you allow yourself to become so serious and so heavy hearted, that there’s no hope in it. Then your repentance is a sick repentance. It’s self torment and it’s not the repentance of faith.

True Repentance is three things. Let me give them to you and then we’ll close. True repentance is a realistic self judgment, a realistic self judgment. I do not believe God is pleased to have me say worse things about myself and it is true, if indeed I could imagine anything worse than is true. I don’t believe it pleases God. I have heard and I’ve smiled, I’ve heard young girls, say 14-15 years old, stand and testify, very emotionally moved and eloquently tell what vile wretches, what terribly depraved, deeply sinful and abandoned creatures they have been. And I smiled to myself and said, God bless the little honey. I suppose the worst thing she ever did in her life was slap her little sister or drink Coca Cola. But, you know, she was calling herself names, abusing herself because that was the proper thing to do you know, where she came from. That was the proper thing to do. Never, never lie about yourself, not even not even to please what you think is pleasing God. Be realistic in your self judgement. David said, let everyone, not David but Paul said, let every man think soberly of himself. Not more highly than they ought to, but soberly.

So, judge yourself. That’s the word, judge yourself. Judgment isn’t a 100% condemnation. Judgment is an appraisal of the depths of the guilt and the handing out of punishment in keeping with the degree of guilt. If it’s only secondary murder, then they’re not going to hang a man. They’re going to give judgment according to the depths and degree and intensity of the sin. And so, we must be realistic about this thing. And then, when we’ve been judged ourselves realistically, we must make full determination to change, any sweet talk before God about how bad we are that isn’t accompanied by a quiet determination to change, is not repentance at all, but nothing else.

Then there should be a third thing and that is a cheerful confidence in Christ. Ah, the devil must grind his ugly teeth together when he sees a Christian so penitential that he’s tremblingly before his God and pleading for mercy, and yet sees a smile on his face at the same time. Because the smile is there, out of cheerful confidence in Jesus Christ the Lord. The same day that he wrote Psalm 51 he also wrote Psalm 103. And these are the words of Psalm 103. No remorse here. No sick penitence here, but wholesome sound repentance followed by cheerful hope and good expectation of God’s forgiveness. The Lord is merciful, said this same David, and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. He will not always chide, nag. Have you had friends about you, husband or wife or anybody, father, mother that would just nag continually? Your faults were a subject of continual nagging. God will not nag. He will not always chide. Neither will He keep His anger forever. He hath not dealt with us after our sins nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. And as far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.

When I first came to the city of Chicago, there was a great pulpit orator in this city by the name of Dr. Frederick Shannon. Maybe somebody would remember him. Dr. Frederick Shannon. He preached somewhere in one of the downtown churches. I used to hear him occasionally on the radio. He was one of the old-fashioned orators, an Irish orator. He would talk about the robin as the bird with the sun down on his breasts, I remember hearing him. And he said that once he was preaching in his church and there was a great retired professor of mathematics sitting down near the front. And he was preaching from the text, as far as the east is from the west so hath He removed our transgressions from us.

And he spoke out and said, Dr. So and So, how far is the east from the west? And he said, instinctively, the old man reached in his pocket, pulled out a pad and a pencil. Then he stopped, and put them in back and looked up at the preacher and grinned. You can’t figure that Brother. How far is the east from West? Nobody knows. Not all the mathematicians in the world can tell you that. And that’s how far God takes sin away. For like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him. For He knoweth our frame. He remembers that we are dust. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children’s children. Bless the Lord ye His angels, blessing in all places of His dominion.

Let us enter the new year in a state of cheerful contrition. Before God, contrite always. But also, cheerfully hopeful that our God is forgiving, kind and loving and tender. He’ll never deal with us as we deserve, but deal with us out of His own heart. That’s my hope for this year, that I’ll be dealt with out of God’s heart. God will never look down and say let’s look Tozer over, so we’ll decide this year what to give him. Uh-uh! If He did, oh, I’d be remorseful to the place of sick, pathological penitence, but would never have hope. But He will look in His own heart and say, out of my heart, I decide how good I’m going to be to him.

So, that is our hope friends this year. God will treat you the way God is, not the way you are, provided of course that you have done as I’ve suggested here, that you have realistically judged yourself and determinedly changed to please the will of God and then cheerfully hope. I believe that God will keep us during this year, and that we shall grow in grace. We’ll have His protection and His kind watchfulness in all the days ahead.

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“So Teach us to Number our Days 1“

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“So Teach Us to Number Our Days 1”

December 29, 1957

So teach us, or teach us so, to number our days. Or, if Thou will teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Now, I have a negative and a positive sermon. I have one for tonight that I think will be helpful and cheerful for everybody. This morning I want to talk to you. I trust you’re intellectually and spiritually mature enough to be talked to plainly. And let me begin by saying that this we’ll consider the last day, though it is not quite by two days, the last day of the year. The last Sunday it is. And I shall continue to talk as though it were the end of the year. And you will make such mental adjustments as may be necessary as I go along.

But this is the last Sunday of the year, which I have no doubt, when seen in the wrong perspective of history, will prove to be or have been among the most momentous of the Christian era for a number of reasons, which you may read anywhere and which I’ll not take your time to enumerate now.

If you have been listening to the radio or reading the newspaper or if you have been a reader of Newsweek, Time, United States News and World Report, or any other of the magazines or journals that chronicle the news, you will have been finding out what we call, or learning what we call current history. But in this last year you and I have been writing a history which is infinitely more important than anything that took place in the Kremlin or Washington or London or Bonn or Paris. We have been writing a history which will probably not yet get into the books. But it is the history of our own lives that we’ve been writing. And that history will stand accurate and forever.

If you were to sit down and write up the last year and try an autobiography or journal, a diary for the last year, it would not be quite accurate and would likely be forgotten before many years. The reason it would not be accurate would be two reasons. It would be two. One would be a faulty memory, and the second would be that nobody quite likes to tell the truth about himself. And then, we would have to discount your journal or mine a little because we are more or less prejudiced in favor of the subject, and our memory would be faulty. Therefore, it would not be accurate.

But this which you and I have been writing, for though it is past, it will be there in our future. And it is being written with the thoughts we have entertained, the words that we have uttered, the deeds that we have done or left undone. How we dare not flip this book shut as a child flips shut a Mother Goose book or a comic book, as something that is amusing, but scarcely serious. We must close this book of ours reverently. And we must put it carefully away knowing that we shall see it again.

Now, think about this last year. During the year, we have been given a number of gifts from God. We have been given 365 days; 365 times since this time last year, the sun did rise and the sun did set. We have been given also, 52 weeks with 52 Sundays and 52 Wednesdays. Why do I mention 52 Sundays and 52 Wednesdays? Well, I mentioned them because we claim to be Christian. We say that we’re a part of the stream of Christian tradition and thought. And while we’re not Sabbatarians, yet Paul said on the first day of the week, let him. And the church has, all down these centuries except for splintered, little marginal splinters, the church has been meeting and worshipping on the day commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and not the seventh day which is the Jewish Sabbath.

And we have had 52 of these given to us last year, in which we could take time out to cultivate our souls and seek the face of God and hear the preaching of the Word and sing together the songs of Zion. And then we’ve had 52 Wednesdays, but somebody says, what’s Wednesday. Let every man decide in his own heart what the day is. I’ve read that too. I know that’s there. And I know that Wednesday isn’t any holier than Monday or Saturday at 4:15. I know all that. But I also know that Jesus went into the temple at stated times as His customize was. He wasn’t too big to recognize the custom of His times. And I remember that Paul went out to the riverbank where a prayer was want to be made.

There are those who say, well, you can’t bring my neck under a yoke from which our fathers escaped. I refuse to come under your yoke. You said Wednesday is a prayer meeting day. And then you’ll condemn me if I do not come, and thus you lay your conscience upon my conscience and we get quite a talk. But isn’t it quite significant that the apostles, those great big men, those apostles, Peter, who went up to the housetop at the time of prayer. And Paul who went to the riverbank at the time of prayer though nothing in the law commanded it. They accepted it as an opportunity. And they fit it in with the people of their time, and they worshipped their God together. They weren’t too big to do it.

And my brethren, let me say that the Christian who so interprets the New Testament as to free himself from the spiritual obligation to mingle with the children of God a few times a week, that Christian is not big, he’s little. And he is proving his littleness by doing what he does. And though he says, I am a free man under grace, He is using the grace of God to cultivate his own carnality. The apostles and the Lord of all the apostles recognized that in every year, God gives them 52 days or 52 or more times, during the weekdays, during the week when they can worship God. It’s once a week, or if it’s three or five or ten times in the early church it was every day.

Well, these are the times and I’m not going to ask, but you’ve been writing history my young friend. And my older friend, you’ve been writing history. And if you were writing it, you’d no doubt could put in some footnotes to clear yourself completely. But the history is being written by words and thoughts and deeds done and deeds left undone.

Well, in addition to the 365, or not added to them of course, but as part of them, you had 8,760 hours given to you last year, 8760 hours. If you just had 8,760 dollars and that was, and you weren’t to have any more, you’d watch it. And you wouldn’t say, oh, it’ll only cost a dollar. And yet, I hear people say, it only takes an hour. Well, there aren’t many of them. Twenty-nine hundred and twenty of those hours we’ve spent in unconsciousness, most of us, and some of you have spent considerably more. And twenty-nine hundred and twenty again we spend at work. And when you add going and coming, and getting ready, why, we have very many more than that taken off, leaving us maybe, maybe 2,500 hours. Twenty-five hundred hours that we weren’t working or asleep or going or coming.

What were we doing? Well, there were certain things we had to do and that we properly needed to do. There was for instance: eating, drinking, bathing, dressing, and the little amenities that are ours by virtue of the fact that we’re part of a social order. And that cuts down those hours a great deal more. And so how few of the 8,000 hours that God gave us last year, have we had to prepare for the last hour? And how few have we had to prepare to meet our God. And yet the hours, oh, there were plenty of them. There were plenty of them, a couple of thousand anyway. I’m just wondering. I’ll not ask what we did with them. But anyway, during those hours we were writing history, I was writing history and so were you. And that is written in the Book of Deeds. It’s written in the Book of Deeds. And though we are redeemed from hell by the blood of Christ, and though His righteousness is imputed to us, still, He is not turning us loose like unbroken calves or colts from the stall to run our wild way. We’re disciples of Jesus. And He’s given us these hours to learn of Him and to prepare ourselves for the last hour and to meet God.

Then have you noticed this little thing too, that during this last year your heart was busy. Your heart, that vital engine that pumps away most of the time you don’t think about it all until you hear somebody died of coronary occlusion, and then you think about your heart for 10 minutes. Or you read an article in Reader’s Digest about the heart and then you think about it for an hour. But mostly, it just goes right on.

And you don’t think about it. But it’s that vital engine which must not stop. It must not stop. If it stops, you can’t keep going. It must not stop. And each hour it beats 4200 times if you’re normal physically. And each day It beats 100,800 times and last year, you know how often your heart beat? Now, mine didn’t. My hearts about 62 instead of 72. I always was slow about things. And my heart beats usually about 62 times to the minute. So, I got caught short here, but if you’re an average 6 or 72er, I counted at 70 to make it so there would be nobody complaining. Your heart beat 36,792,000 times last year. And if it had just missed two or three or four of those, you wouldn’t be here and the total wouldn’t have been pile up. You would have been among those who went from us last year, and whom we reverently laid away to await the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now, those were the gifts God gave us last year. That’s not all, but those are the ones we usually don’t think about: 365 days and 52 weeks and 8760 hours, and 36,792,000 heartbeats. God gave them to us last year. And you know this? All of it was the pure mercy of God.

I wish I could live another 100 years just to find out a few things; find out some of the wrong things that I’ve been taught, and to find out the things that I hadn’t learned yet. For instance, I think I’d stop making a distinction between the things that are of God’s mercies and the things that are not. Somebody says, well, I go out and I work and I get my money. I buy my house. I buy my goods. And I walk on the earth and I, the sun shines on me and the rain falls and I drink and eat and live. And that’s not the mercy of God. But if I get saved and accept Jesus Christ, that’s the mercy of God.

My brethren, did you ever stop to think that God never acts any other way except in mercy? And that it just took as much of the mercy of God to keep your heart beating 36 million times last year as it does to save you by the death of Jesus on calvary? Did you stop to think that, that they, ever stopped to think that the 365 days God gave you last year were as surely an act of His mercy as when He gave you eternal life through Jesus Christ your Savior?

Did you ever stop to think that every hour He gave you and every heartbeat and every breath you drew were acts of God’s mercy. David knew it. And David said, have mercy upon me O God and hear my prayer. Why, he meant that even God’s hearing a man’s prayer was an act of mercy. But we divide the world, we divide our lives up into two divisions, and we’re schizophreniacs, religious schizophreniacs. We say, well, now this part, this is the secular part over here. This over here, I get that by virtue of the fact that I’m a man born in the world, it’s mine, and that I have a right to it and all the rest.

Did you ever think that when you first sinned, your first sin, you violated every right to everything that you got when you came into the world? When you consciously sinned, your first volitional sin, and did it out of your own will, you forfeited your rights and gave up your rights and died under law, and that therefore, anything God gives you is an act of mercy. That car you drive, you say, I sweat for that, but who gave your heart the impulse to beat on and on and on and on while you sweat? You say that house God knows I’ve sweat for that. Who gave you the power to sweat for that house? Who breathed life into you and even though you had sinned, kept you alive and kept you going?

No, my brother. Don’t you take all these gifts of God as being natural and only eternal life has been merciful. Why, every gift God gives you is as much a gift of grace as when He sent his Son to die on the cross. Each day is a day of grace. Don’t forget it. It’s another day of grace. Long time ago, you were sentenced to die. When the political prisoner in England years ago was sentenced, “I sentence you,” he said to the judge, “to die. And nature sentences you, Your Honor, to die,” said the prisoner and walked boldly out of the room.

My friends we’re all under sentence and every day is a day of grace. Why doesn’t the sentence, why doesn’t the sentence fall? The trial is over. The verdict has been brought in. The day that thou eatest, thou shall surely die. There is no use for any more evidence. There is no use for any more pleas from prosecutors or, or defense. No reason for it, it’s already settled. God the Lord hath spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof.

Therefore, you’re already under sentence. But the day of grace, every day is a day of grace whether it’s raining or whether the sun gets out of bed before you do. And you wake to a beautiful, clear day. It’s a day of grace. It’s another chance. It’s another chance to change. It’s another chance to change. And it’s another proof of God’s patience. How utterly patient God is.

One of the great faults of my life, one of the great faults of my life that I have not yet conquered, I hope you’ll pray for me, is that I can’t be patient with people when I see they’re so obviously wrong. But oh, how patient God has been with me and with you. And we’ve been so obviously wrong, and yet God has waited and waited and waited. He waits that He might be gracious it says in Isaiah. And that long, long, long waiting of God and grace and mercy and love. So, every time the sun rises, instead of getting up and grumpy, we ought to get up and say, thank God, thank God it’s one more day. One more day I didn’t deserve.

You know, we take too much for granted. We Christians, we take too much for granted. We say at the beginning of each year, well, we’re, especially around watch tonight, we’re pretty sober. And we say this may be the last. And ominous echoes of broadcasts that we’ve heard and news reports come to us and we say, this may be the last. But then, it isn’t the last and we wear out another year and it doesn’t wear us out. And we come up to the end of another year, and we say I was foolish last year for worrying.

Like when I was a boy, I used to go home sometimes from down a little way where I would be, maybe at the store or something down in the little town near. And I would have to come through a dark place we called Wildcat Hollow. I always said that they called it that because there were no wildcats in it. There never had been any in my time nor I think in my father’s time, but it was known as Wildcat Hollow. And there was a road or path that went through it and the overarching trees. It was completely pitch dark. And as a young boy, 12,13 or 14 years old, naturally, I was scared.

And I used to make good vows and good intentions and pray a little as I went through Wildcat Hollow and then, when I came out of Wildcat Hollow into the moonlight, I forgot all about it. I forgot that I was religious and forgot I needed God when I got out over the dark places. Occasionally an owl would let go just off to your right, and it sounded like the devil himself and you were terribly frightened. And then your little heart sent up a little more prayer. But the moonlight somehow rather took all your fear away. And as you walked across the green sward in the moonlight, you soon got thinking about something else.

People are like that as the year ends and a new one begins. We’re a bit serious. We say, well, this could have been the last year, but then it wasn’t. We said that five years ago and 10 years ago. We’re going to say it again now. But did you know my friend that that’s likely to make us bold and arrogant, very likely to. For don’t forget that all things have an end. The pitcher goes at last once too often to the well. The old tree braves one too many winter storms and comes down with a great shout in the forest and echoes across the hill. And the heart beats weaker and sputters out. It’s been doing its little job so long we think, oh well, what’s this worry? What’s this worry. I don’t believe what I read. Well, it hasn’t happened yet. But all things have an end. And the pitcher goes to the well and the tree falls to the ground and the heart sputters out.

So, teach us to number our day said Moses. Teach us so to number our days. Teach us to number our days O God. You know that the Christian should be of all people the most serious. He should also be serene and brave. I’m always bothered when I see a Christian stampeding. Always when a Christian gets hysterical, I’m bothered. Why should a Christian get hysteric? Why should he get bothered? He should be serious. People who live for fun and live for entertainment and pleasure, if they see it going from them, they get frantic. But there’s no reason for a serious-minded Christian to get frantic. The Christian should be serious and brave and serene. He may see humor in things. I don’t say he shouldn’t. And my concept of a Christian doesn’t fit exactly with that of the monks of the early centuries. I do not think it’s a sin to smile. God made it possible for the muscles of the face to pull themselves in a little web, coordinated web that makes the face look pleasant, and I don’t think it’s a sin. But a Christian ought to be serious and brave, and his attitude toward life ought to be serious. My great, my great grief over the modern churches is that her attitude toward life is not serious. She doesn’t take it serious. Christians should be realistic and unafraid.

A Christian shouldn’t have to have things kept from him. The Christian has a cancer. He ought to be told it, he ought to be told it. If there’s anything wrong with him, He should know what. The Bible says this or that. He should know that. You shouldn’t live in a fool’s paradise to keep things from him. I trust my family will never keep anything from me. I’m a grown man. I’ve lived and suffered and sinned and been forgiven and pardoned and cleansed and I love God. And I don’t want to live in a paradise of idiots and be happy only because I’m ignorant. I want to know. I want to know however I feel about it.  I want to be realistic about this whole thing. For a Christian has no superstitions. And he has no fears. A Christian isn’t afraid. He may have the normal instincts. Jesus had an instinct that when He knew He was going to die, He sweat blood, because He was going to have the sins of the world poured upon Him.

And if I should suddenly poke my finger toward your eye, you will go that way. And the bravest soldier that ever lived in all the world would recoil if you started to stick a pin into his eye. So there’s such a thing as the reaction. It’s normal. That’s one thing, but it’s quite another thing to go about in fear. Go about in fear, afraid of dead people, afraid of numbers, afraid of tokens and superstitious things.

Oh, my friend, the voice of God sounds from above reassuring His people. Reassuring His people, lo, I am with you all the days. And I will hold thy right hand saying, fear thou not for I am with thee. I will not forsake thee. When thou passeth through the waters I will be with thee and through the fire, it shall not kindle upon thee. And down to old age all my people shall prove my gracious, unchangeable love.

My brethren and sisters we’re not to be afraid. God’s people ought to be great grateful. You can’t be grateful if you’re shallow. And you can’t be free from fear if your shallow. But the plans you’ve made for after church tonight, I don’t know what they may be. But if the plans you’ve made for after church are all filling your mind. If those are suddenly caught away from you, you will be disconsolate. But if God is enough, if God is enough, if you’re a Christian indeed, and nobody can take away your plans from it. I plan to die in grace and go to see the face of my Savior. You can take that away. Nobody can take it away.

Well, a Christian doesn’t plan to stay here, for he knows he’s a pilgrim. I thought about this yesterday or Friday when I was running over all this, my getting ready for today. I really got this up on the train coming home from Nyack two weeks ago. But I put it in shape and rethought it for you. And I thought about this. The difference between a religious pilgrim, so called, who makes his long trip to Rome and returns, or to Mecca and returns, or to the Ganges River and returns, those are the pilgrims. And almost every religion has its holy place, and people go there and are considered very wonderful if they’ve made a trip there. The Mohammedans, and I think the Buddhists have a certain headdress that they, for which they indicate that this holy man has made his pilgrimage and returned.

But you know that a Christian pilgrimage is one way, and he ain’t coming back. He isn’t coming back. He’s not going to go to heaven and return. He’s not coming back until the restitution of all things, when God has made the world over and changed it and all that the prophetic teachers know so little about and described so fully. But in that day, my brother, we may come back. But, in the meantime, we’re not planning to come back. We’re not going there and return. It’s a one-way trip, this pilgrimage, because there we’re going to our Savior and be in where– the house of the Lord forever.

So, let’s be cheerful What is that song? Come let us tune our cheerfully. What is that song? We could sing that couldn’t we? I think that’s a wonderful song. Anybody that says hymns are draggy they don’t know what they’re talking about. There’s more lilt in this and more dance and joy in this and there is an all the rock and roll that ever rolled and rocked. That song we’re going to sing next, Come let us join our cheerful ayes as we surround the throne. Brother, if ever there was joy, you could have felt the swift beat of the angel wings in that song.

So, let’s be cheerful. We’re traveling home and we know where we’re going. We know where we’re going. We’ve had a good year, we’ve had a moment this year. We’ve had a year of writing history. But we’ve also had on our side God the Father Almighty and Jesus Christ, the Mediator, and also the Comforter, the Holy Ghost. And we still have them there with us. So let’s be wise and let’s be triumphant. Let’s be grave and let’s be serious. But let’s tune our cheerful ayes and let’s be happier than Elvis Presley. Let’s be happier than all the Pat Boones and Rosemary Clooneys in the world.

Father, in a fear drenched world, we keep our heads above it and worship the Lamb that was slain. And thank Thee for mercy and grace and another day that’s ours. Thank Thee Heavenly Father together. We rejoice that we’re Thine. And we join with angels and saints and beasts and living creatures and elders and serphim and cherubim and worship the God who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood and made us kings and priests unto God. And now may grace and mercy and peace be with us through Jesus Christ our Lord.