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The Glory of That Which Cannot Be Seen with the Mortal Eye”

The Glory of That Which Cannot Be Seen with the Mortal Eye

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 13, 1957

A very familiar and often used passage of Scripture, 2 Corinthians 4:14-18:  Knowing that He which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Now, I think it doesn’t take a great deal of intelligence to know that the man of God, who spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost, is contrasting two kinds of seeing here. He was not advising us to try to see the invisible with our naked eye. He said that there were two kinds of seeing, the external eye that saw the visible and the internal eye that sees the invisible. And while we cannot go through life and not see the visible unless we should be among the unseeing persons whose eyesight has failed them. They’re not many, thank God, but a few of our friends are like that. And others of us get along by means of lenses out in front. But for the average human being manages to see things as he goes about, and Paul is not telling us not to. But he is saying that there is a gazing, a looking, and that it is to be done with the inward eye and not with the external.

Now life, all about us, is charged with mystery. I’ve said this so many times that you must be weary of my saying it, but it is this that gives a quality, all the quality, all the value there is to life, is that mysterious part of it. The part that can be explained does not explain the value of the life. We can study anatomy and biology, and know all about children, babies. But that doesn’t explain why people love babies. There isn’t any explaining. You can paint and write poetry and orate until we’re blue in the face, and yet, there is an overtone, a rainbow color of emotional color about it all that makes babies precious to us.

And so, with almost everything, we can explain it and look and see physically, but that doesn’t explain it. That is the basis of it. That’s the foundation upon which it may rest. But there is a glory in the imponderable things, the instinctive things; the things that are unlearned. That is, they’ve not been learned. They are just there. They give the meaning to life, the glory of our lives, the value of them; that by which and for which we live, lies in the intangibles, the imponderables, the things that we can’t get at, but we can see with the inward eye.

For instance, it is not what’s before us. It’s who sees it that matters. It’s two men, a farmer and an artist who take a walk out, they’re friends. And temporarily, they’re together and they take a walk out of an October afternoon. And the farmer sees the corn and the fat cattle, and he’ll talk and talk well and pleasantly about having to bring in this machine and it’s about time to take those 100 off of that particular field and bring them in or shift them to another field. And what he sees there is what you can buy and sell and put in the boxcar, and weigh and measure and evaluate in terms of dollars and cents. He sees the soil and the cow and the steer and the corn shock.

But all the time, the artist is all thrilled. He sees the cattle, but he doesn’t know how much they cost. He sees the corn shock but has no idea of its value. What he sees is that which can’t be weighed nor measured nor bought nor sold, but nevertheless gives value to living in the world.

The other man is fixing it so we can physically live in the world by having milk and meat and vegetables. But the other man says, all right, you’ve made it possible for us to live in the world, but why live in the world? Why? Why? Well, when he sees the blue skies and the fleecy clouds and the colored leaves, he knows why. You can’t explain it. You can’t write a book on, “Is Life Worth Living.” It either is or it isn’t. Everybody knows that it is, that has felt the thrill of a love and known the glory that belongs to God. And everybody knows. You can’t prove it. You just know it.

Or you take a dog who may be running out the night and may for a moment take a quick, casual glance at the starry sky. Well now, dogs have eyes, and they have pretty keen eyes. They go on their sense of smell more than eyesight, but they still have good eyes, and they see it. The dog, he sees the moon hanging there and he sees the stars. He sees them. But what does he do about it? Nothing at all. He’s looking for a coon or for some other animal that he may pull down and eat. But he sees the stars.

But David goes out and the dog runs alongside of David. And David sees the stars. And so, David writes the eighth Psalm. My God, how wonderful thou art. Thy Majesty, how great; and talks about the stars by night and the moon and the heavens above and what they tell about God. Forever singing as they shine, the Hand that made us is divine.

Now, both eyes saw the heavens, but the eyes of the dog saw nothing. The eyes of the spiritually inspired poet, David, saw the wonder and the glory of it all. It’s the intangible thing, the thing you don’t learn, the thing that’s there because you’re human; because God made you and stamped you with the royal imagery of Himself.

Now, religion has tried, always tried, any religion, all religions, with possibly except Buddhists, have tried to show the glory that belongs to that which can’t be seen as over against that which can. And I suppose it’s an open question whether it’s better to have no religion or to have a wrong one. I suppose it’s an open question. But I would say that religion may have done the world some good, even the poor, pagan, animistic religions may have done the world some good in that they did do this. They did and they have taught the world, did teach and have taught the world that there is something; there’s another world than this. That this isn’t it. That you can have all of this and lose your own soul and be nobody. The Parsis know that and the Mohammedins know that. They all know that. And certainly, it is the very essence of the Old and the New Testament.

And the busy men have not taken this very seriously. They have reversed the apostle’s text which says the things that are eternal, that are seen, are temporal, but the things that are unseen are eternal. And they’ve reversed it and edited it a bit. And while they would agree that this is true in their living, they prove that when they quote it, they mean it like this: for the things that are invisible and unseen are rather shaky and unreal, but the things you see they are the real thing.

Give me, said the communists in early days and the socialists and the agitators, give us something here. Don’t put it off until the world over yonder. And they parodied our songs and said you will have pie in the sky by and by. And thus, they turn the attention of people from God to earth, and from heaven above to this veil of suffering and woe. And they put their emphasis upon the things that can be seen. And they said, don’t talk to us about invisible things. Talk to us about things we can get our teeth in. We want to have more. We want to have bigger cars and bigger farms and better cattle. And we want our women to dress better and we want to dress better. We want to be paid more and we want to work shorter hours. Don’t talk to us about heaven. We want to know about earth.

Well, this reminds me of what the man Paul said a little further back in his Corinthian epistles. He said, howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor one of the princes of this world that come to not. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery. Even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory, which none of the princes of this world knew. For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. Then he goes on to say, eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of a man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

And here, we break away from the, give us more of this, now. Give us what we can see and weigh and measure and feel and touch. And we rise to the wisdom that says I must have something to see and hear and touch. I’m a human being. God has given me a body. And it’s got to be stoked occasionally like a furnace. It’s got to be gassed up occasionally like a car. I have to recharge it sometimes, and so I will not despise God’s humble gift of pumpkins and corn and fat cattle. I won’t despise it. But I will only say these are temporal.

And the things that are seen are temporal, whereas the things that are not seen are eternal. The woe of the world has been its bondage to visible things, reflecting men in all parts of the world at all times, not only religions, but philosophers themselves were not particularly religious, that held this to be the prime curse of the world. That we are victims to the things that we can see. That we’ve allowed ourselves to be chained down to visible things. And it’s a great error to hold that the things visible are ultimate reality. They are not ultimate reality. They are evanescent. They’re passing. They’re like a shadow across the meadow on a cloudy day. But the things that are not seen are the eternal things.

The things that are seen are the balls and chains that are on the ankles of the race and hold us back so we can’t fly. Our feeble wings will not lift us because we’ve got a ball and chain. The farmer has his acres and his fat cattle, and the worldling has her jewelry.

I thought if you were to offer a woman a hangman’s noose, she would scream, turn pale and perhaps faint. But offer her a $10,000 necklace and she’ll strut around even though she’s in danger of her life. She’ll strut around with that thing. And I wonder which is the more dangerous, the hangman’s noose, which with a quick snap ends at all, or the $10,000 or $20,000 necklace that binds the spirit of the woman, binds the spirit of the woman and holds her down, holds her down. She’s got her head in a noose and doesn’t know it.

Or the businessman with his profits and his interest and his bonds. I wonder if any of you have ever happened to notice the word bonds. I wonder if the bonds issued by great companies or by a government, which we so eagerly buy and put away, may not be bonds in more ways than one. I think it is entirely possible that it should be so.

Somebody sent me a book recently, a republished, written by an old man of God who lived in England a couple of hundred years ago. It deals with the whole question of laying up treasures on earth. Now, I think he carries it further than I would carry it. But I think we Christians need to rethink this whole business of profits and bonds and treasures laid up. They may be bonds; indeed, to bind us and hold us to the earth.

The man of God talks about the evidence of things not seen. Remember my brethren, when I preach what some enemies call mysticism, which is only the Word of God, that I am not asking anybody to look at a dream world. No, no. I don’t believe in dream worlds. I don’t believe in imaginary worlds. I don’t believe in anything imaginary. I don’t like imaginary stories. That’s why I don’t like fiction, particularly. I don’t particularly like Christian fiction at all. Because it’s imaginary. There’s nothing there. I want to be able when I talk about a thing, to be able to go and say, look, there it is. That’s what I’m talking about. There it is.

I can’t go along with the fairy tale tellers who have the woods populated with little dancing girls, little waspies or whispies that come crystallized out of the sky. It’s pleasant I suppose to talk about it, and there have been operas written about it. And there have been plays such as Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s pleasant, you know, to listen to it, like listening for 20 minutes to, say, one of these little music boxes. But after that, I want to get away from it and get down to something solid. Is there any anything there that it is talking about?

And when Scripture says that faith is the evidence of things not seen. Faith is not a place where you go and hide. It’s not a retreat from reality. It’s a gateway to reality where we see the real things. We’re not asking anybody to accept imaginative things or imaginary things. We are asking them to build their faith on that which is.

Abraham saw a city that had a foundation whose Builder and Maker was God, but Abraham never saw it with these external eyes. He saw it with his inner eyes. And that was not an imaginary thing. We’re not asking him to become dreamy and write silly poetry about it. We ask him, Abraham, look, look, there’s a city, a city. Look quick, you won’t see it long. There it is. You’re a busy man. And you’ll only get a glimpse, but there it is. And Abraham looked quick and saw it with his inner eyes. Somebody said after that he never would live in a city. He lived in a tent. He couldn’t stand any city after he’d seen that one, by comparison.

So, instead of ghosts and fairies, we believe in reality. God reveals the real world, having substance. And it can’t be seen with the outward eye, but it can be experienced with the inward eye. And it is, I repeat, the only ultimate reality.

You know, I am made to wonder at the wisdom of the Christian. And I repeat that we ought not to be apologetic the way we are. We ought not to gaze with awe and wonder at great minds, great minds. Paul called them the princes of this world, and the mighty and the wise. The man who said it was not a poor little fellow saying sour grapes, I don’t want greatness. He was great. Six they say, six great minds have been in the world and Paul’s was one. Of all the millions, six great minds. And so, this man Paul was not, sometimes we evangelicals don’t have any education, so we preach a whole sermon to prove it’s no good anyhow. Like the fox that leaped with a great myth and said I don’t like them anymore.

So, this sour grape business, we’re not talking about sour grapes. They don’t have anything we want. The mighty, the great’s of the world. The Christian has a wisdom that’s not of this world. A Christian penetrates, passes through, sees, touches, and handles things unseen. He’s learned to distinguish that which has value from that which has no value. He’s learned the correct table by which he judges things. And so, he no longer wastes his money.

I read; in the rare times I pick up the Reader’s Digest. Every article is written by the same fellow, obviously, they all in the same way, anyhow. But I got ahold of it. And I read an article in there about a man and his wife who are psychologists and who had degrees in education and psychology. Their whole life is given over to training animals: turkeys, chickens, pigs, ducks, dogs, cats and other animals. And they spend their lifetime learning the psychology of a duck and learning how to bridge across from the duck’s low-grade mentality or a turkey’s low-grade mind to their human minds.

Well now, if a fellow had a good, honest job, and was doing mankind some good and he did that in the evenings to get his mind off of his troubles, I’d say maybe that would be all right. But my God in heaven, to spend your lifetime learning the psychology of a turkey.

Well, Christians have risen above it, beloved. They’ve risen above it. I can understand how a fellow might want to see a ballgame sometime. But to give the best years of your life throwing a hunk of matter around covered with a skin of a horse and worrying about it. I just don’t see it. How can you give yourself to it.

I know one fellow, and if you’ll excuse me and not think I’m boasting about it. I know one fellow that had a letter from the Boston Red Sox asking him to come. And he said, I’ll keep the letter, but I won’t waste my time amusing people. And that was one of my sons. I’m glad he learned that much. I won’t waste my time amusing people. There’s too much reality in the world to spend your time amusing people.

The Christian has learned what’s real and what isn’t real. The worldling doesn’t know shadow from substance. And sometimes he’ll give his life to a shadow and find in the end that he’s missed the substance. But a Christian knows where substance is. God has given him x-ray eyes that he can see through shadows. And he won’t waste his time on shadows. He won’t waste his talents nor his money nor his efforts; and the Christian has found the everlasting reality.

I tell you; I don’t know what it is in my heart, but I assume it’s in everybody’s. But I could never, never, never, let myself rest unless I knew eternity was in this thing. I am not going to be around here long, and neither are you. For us to give our time to that which we can’t keep.

So, somebody said to you, let’s put it like this by way of a rather awkward illustration. Suppose somebody said to you, I have a beautiful house which I have built, but for reasons I’m not going to occupy it. It’s a split level. It’s a $72,000 house; it’s got all the trimmings. And I’m going to give it to you on the condition that you give up your friends. And you give up prayer and you give up church and you give up prayer meeting and you give up your Bible. I’m going to give it to you. How long can I keep it? Five years, just five years. I’ll give it to you in ’57 and in ’62, it comes back to me again. Now, those are the terms. You can just have this beautiful, gorgeous home for five years, and then it comes back to me again and you’re out on the sidewalk.

Is there a man with soul so dead that he would accept a fool thing like that? Is there a man with soul so dead and a heart so leaden that if he would accept a house, however costly and beautiful, and however well-appointed and charmingly situated, if it meant that he was to give up friends on earth and friends in heaven, and have it only five years and then be kicked out on the sidewalk?

Well, that’s an illustration only which I combed out of the air just now. Here is the application of it. And it is this, that the world says to you, now here, I’ll give you this. It’s not real and won’t last. And after a certain time, you’ll have to give it up. You’ll be out on the sidewalk with no friend in heaven or earth. But for a little while, I want to give it to you, the terms and conditions being, that you should cut down on this religious business. Oh, we’ll let you believe in God and all that, but cut down on this religious business and neglect your soul and you can have all this.

Well, we don’t have to make illustrations. Did not the devil say to Jesus, all this I will give thee and the glory of it, for it is mine and I can give it to whom I will. And Jesus, with not one penny in his pocket, no, not one dime in the bank said, get thee behind me Satan. For the Lord Jehovah thy God shalt thou serve. And Him only shalt thou worship.

Well, the unseen. We live for the unseen. We live for God and for Christ and for the Holy Ghost. We live for the new generation. The new age they call it. Back in the 30s, communists were crawling like maggots in and out of Washington and in and out of the State Department; in and out of the White House, all over the world and into our cities. Nobody had risen to do anything about it. Nobody dared to point and say that’s a snake going there, nobody. And they were writing their poetry, and you could buy it anywhere. And I got three volumes of their poems, three volumes. I read them and they deal about the new age and the glory of the new world that is being born. But what kind of a new world is it? It is a world where you make more money and eat better, but die, nevertheless.

Lenin lies dead. Stalin lies beside him. And old bald Khrushchev will lie there soon, all together apart from the fact they can come through on their extravagant promises, which they can’t.  All aside from that still, if they could bring Utopia to the world, and every man could be rich and every woman beautiful and all humanity healthy, they still can’t make good on their new age because they’ll die. And whatever doesn’t take that awesome, awful, startling, terrifying fact into account is no good at all. No good at all. Socialism, Communism, any other the isms, or all the good that men have done to make it easier for people to live, I’m grateful. I’m grateful for unions and I’m grateful for agitators and radicals that got the five-year-old kid out of the textile factory. I’m glad for all that that’s been done over the years, inspired by Christians, incidentally. I’m glad for it. I’m glad for the agitation that got the slave free. I’m glad for anything that makes it easier to live. But I deplore when that becomes an end in itself.

And they tell us now, now we’ve got liberty and freedom and prosperity and everything. I’ve got so I don’t like to hear any talks from Washington anymore. It’s ominous. They’re all telling us how well off we are– watch it my brethren–how well off we are. There’s nothing like it since the world began. No. But every man must die and come to judgment. And if there’s nothing beyond that, then I refuse to be concerned with it. I absolutely refuse.

Jesus Christ came to Judaism, and he found a religion that stood in meats and drinks and carnal ordinances, that had a heart and a soul and a spirit, but it also had much external. Examples and shadows of heavenly things, but not those heavenly things. And Jesus Christ our Lord swept all the shadows away and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel and projected the eternal into the temporal, and the everlasting into the passing and said, I go to prepare a place for you. That where I am, there you’ll come. And he talked about it as a man talks about the house that he’s bought or the farm that he owned. It was real. But he said, It’s spiritual. This is a spiritual thing. He swept away the shadows and said God is Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

But He left two symbols. Before coming down here I read some lines by Martin Luther. Martin Luther said, gentlemen, there are only two sacraments, not seven. The Lord’s supper and baptism. He said, I want you to know that all these offices and days and forms and feasts are all wrong. The Word of God and the Holy Ghost, that’s all we need. Luther said it. You wouldn’t think so now, but Luther said it. I’ve got it up here. Luther knew that all days and all of this we go through is just an external thing. The reality is God. Jesus Christ came to Judaism, locked in those things and swept them all away. He said, the kingdom of heaven is within you. And if you worship God, you must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And where two or three are gathered in My name, I’m there in the midst; and there is your church.

But he allowed us two visible symbols that we might not be cast wholly out on the invisible. We might at least be anchored enough so that while we have a body and an eye and a tongue, that there might be something physical that would be a symbol. And He gave it to us as a man gives a ring to his bride. Not as a substitute for Him. But as a poor little reminder of Him when He’s away. Just a symbol, a little sign. And He said, now, there are two visible symbols, bread and wine. The bread to tell of my broken body and wine to tell of my shed blood. As often as ye meet together. The world wonders what you’re doing and peeks into see, and they see you eating the bread and drinking the wine and, oh, you’re thinking of Me.

And so, the weak that can’t quite get things by faith, but demand a little prop from the outside. He said, all right, bread and wine. I give you this. I’ll give you this now. And as often as you do it, you do it in remembrance of me. But in itself, it’s nothing. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it symbolizes. It’s the ring on the finger of the bride to remind her that her bridegroom is in the glory waiting for her. And they tell of the realities that are eternal.

We’re going to have communion right away. And it’s not for members of this members of this church only, but the members of the Body of Christ. Here is a little prayer I want to read to you before we gather at the front. O Bread, of Life from heaven, to weary pilgrims given. O Manna from above. The souls that hungry feed Thou. The hearts that seek Thee. Lead Thou with Thy sweet, tender love. O Fount of Grace redeeming, O River ever streaming from Jesus’ holy side. Come Thou Thyself bestowing on thirsting souls and flowing till all are satisfied. Jesu, this feast receiving Thy Word of Truth believing, we the unseeing adore. Grant, when the veil is rended, that we to heaven have ascended may see Thee ever more. Take those four words. We the unseeing adore. So, we’ll have the communion service now and adore the unseen Presence. And then we’ll gather while we sing.

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Tozer Talks

The Unequal Contest Between God and Man”

The Unequal Contest Between God and Man

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 29, 1956

I want to read first a passage from the Old Testament. Well, both will be from the Old Testament, but a long passage and then take a text from the book of Job. In the book of Numbers, the 22nd chapter and the 22nd verse. Not that I’m going to speak from this chapter, but that I want to lay a sort of background for truth that will follow. God’s anger was kindled because Balaam went. And the angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ass and his two servants were with him. And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way and his sword drawn in his hand. And the ass turned aside out of the way and went into the field. And Balaam smote the ass to turn her into the way. But the angel of the Lord stood in the path of the vineyards, a wall being on this side and a wall on that side. And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she thrust herself onto the wall and crushed Balaam’s foot against the wall and he smote her again. The angel of the Lord went further and stood in the narrow place where it was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left. And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she fell down under Balaam. And Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff.

And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass and she said unto Balaam, what have I done unto thee that thou hath smitten me these three times? Balaam said unto the ass, because thou hast mocked me. I would there were a sword in my hand, for now would I kill thee. And the ass said unto Balaam, am not I’m thine ass upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day. Was I ever want to do so unto thee? And he said, no. And the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way and his sword drawn in his hand. And he bowed down his head and fell flat on his face. And the angel of Lord said unto him, wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times. Behold, I went out to withstand thee because thy way is perverse before me. And the ass saw me and turned from me these three times. Unless he had turned from me, surely, now, also I would have slain thee and saved her alive. Balaam said unto the angel of the Lord, I have sinned. For I knew not that thou stoodest in the way against me. Now, therefore, if it please thee, I will get me back again.

Now, the text for tonight, is found in Job 14:20. Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth: thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away. I read the text again, Thou prevailest for ever against him. It is job talking to God and says, Thou God prevailest forever against the unbelieving and rebellious man, and he passeth: thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away.

Now, in the Bible, there is never any twilight zone. There is never any soft and gentle purring on the part of heaven over earth. You find it in pulpits and in literature, but you never find it in the Scriptures. The Scriptures take the sharp, bold attitude that God and sinful men are opposed to each other. And that God has a controversy with every man until that man surrenders, repents, and begins to obey God. Now, that’s the attitude that God of the Bible takes, and that God and man are in opposition. And Job takes it too when he says, Thou will prevailest forever against him. If I were giving a name to this sermon tonight, I would call it, the unequal contest because the contest between man and God is unequal.

Now, I like to make myself perfectly clear that if you’re not obeying God, then you’re fighting God. Just as the man Balaam was going in opposition to God’s will and God stood in the way. The angel of the Lord, which scholars believe is God, stood in the narrow way by the vineyard. And Balaam was too blind to see it. So, God stands to oppose every man who was going in the wrong direction, a direction of sinfulness, selfishness, or ungodliness, or all three. And God and that man are as the angel and Jacob were by the bank of the river. They’re wrestling against each other.

But the contest between God and man must ever, ever be an unequal contest, because power is with God and weakness is with man. Wisdom is with God and ignorance is with man, because the right is always on God’s side. Always remember this, if you don’t know what the right thing to do is in a given situation, always take God’s side and you’ll have the right side. And if you take any other side but God’s, you’ll have the wrong side no matter how fine the argument may have polished it up for you. No matter how beautiful the veil may be that covers the sin, if it’s not on God’s side, the sin is there, nevertheless.

So, the right is always on God’s side. And the length of years are always with God. How can we who live for a little day hope to win in contest with the great God who liveth forever. God has seen generation rise and go down again and rise and go down and rise and fall and pass away. And God has remained because God is eternal. God had no origin and God will have no end. God is moving on, always moving on and man is only moving on until the last heartbeat and then he drops down into the arms of mother earth again and God prevails. Thou will prevailest says the Holy Ghost. Thou prevailest forever. And all His length of years are on the side of God and man is only the ephemera.

When I was very young boy, I learned what an ephemera is. An ephemera is a fly that is hatched in the morning, lives a day, and dies in the evening. Now, it’s called an ephemera, I suppose because it’s ephemoral, it passes away. And man is an ephemeral creature. He’s here today, but he is not here tomorrow, and the place where he is will know him no more.

And then there is God’s side. He’s the creator and the provider and the right of the proprietor. Always remember this, my brother and sister, that you and I are God’s poor relation, and that we’re living off of God whether we believe it or not. And the proudest and richest man in the city of Chicago, who would scorn such a sermon as mine tonight, nevertheless, he lives off of God and God looks after him and feeds him even though he bites the hand that feeds him and hates the heart that provides for him and opposes the God who gives him his daily bread. Yet, nevertheless, he’s living on God’s property and God lets him have a house on His estate, rent free, and looks after him and takes care of him, but always, always, he’s opposed to God.

And the opposition is the opposition of the one who has accepted the good gifts of God for a lifetime and yet has opposed the very God that has fed him. You can’t win that way, you know. The person who is not with God, Jesus said, He that is not with me is against me. And he that gathers not with me scattereth abroad. And no man can hope. It’s not in the nature of things. It’s not in philosophy. It’s not in reason. It’s not in theology. It’s not in nature that a man can oppose God and win. Always, always God prevails.

Now, prevails forever against him. And thus, we find man fighting God. And the fight is always against right. Somebody says I am not against right. But I don’t believe in the church, and I don’t believe in accepting Christ and going through all of that. Let me tell you, that you’re fighting the right if you’re fighting the gospel of Christ. If you’re opposed to the will of God anywhere, you’re opposed to the will of God everywhere. The outlaw is not the man who breaks all the laws of his land. The outlaw is the one who selects the laws he wants to break and keeps the rest. An outlaw will steal from a grocer in order that he might have money to pay somebody else. He’s keeping some laws, but he’s breaking others. So, the man that God is opposed to and has a controversy with God, is not the man who’s breaking all the laws of God, but the man who’s selecting the laws that he wants to keep and breaking the rest. I will prevail, is forever against him.

Now such a man is this and I feel this very deeply tonight. I don’t know whether I can get it across to you; you can’t always do it. It takes the Holy Ghost and a lot of other combinations in order to get an idea across to an audience or even to another person in private conversation. But I feel it very deeply tonight that I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford to oppose God. I simply can’t afford it. Because the man that is an opposition to God can’t win and he can’t succeed. The two things that always men want to do. And the man who is on the other side from God cannot win and he cannot succeed. He can succeed as writers say, but he can’t succeed as a man. He can win as an athlete, but he can’t win as a human being. He can win as a politician and get the most votes and take office, but he’s not half a man. He can’t win as a man. He isn’t what God meant him to be. He’s not fulfilling the potentials of his nature.

The man that is opposing God anywhere, that has any controversy with God, is a man that can’t win. If he’s a farmer, he can have crops. And the tall corn may wave, and the yellow wheat and oats may wave on the field, but he’s still not winning. He’s only raising corn and wheat. He must win as a man. You must succeed as a human being, my listening friends. You must succeed as a human being. You must fulfill that which God puts you in the world for. The Bible teaches us that we’re not born by accident into the world. That we come here in the will of a sovereign God. And that God gave us our nature and gave us the blueprint for our lives and gave us possibilities and powers and potentials and gifts and faculties that lie within us.

And I can win as a farmer, but if I oppose God, I am not winning as a man. I might win as an athlete and lose as a man. And no man can afford thus to divide himself. The man who wins in an election and takes office and does it crookedly and violates the laws of his own nature and the laws of God. That man hasn’t won. He’s lost, tragically, terribly, lost.

Emerson said way back yonder nearly 100 years ago, young man, you want to be President, do you? Alright young man, let me tell you this. If you knew how much of his manhood a man has to sell out to be elected to office these days, you wouldn’t want to be President. No, I didn’t say that, Emerson said that way back there nearly 100 years gone. So, a man can win in one thing and lose in another.

I’ve known young women who went out to get a man just as certainly as a duck hunter goes out to shoot a duck. They had that in mind. They intended to do it. They didn’t fall accidentally into the company of the young man. They are after him, or at least somebody of the masculine gender and they got him. And so, they were written off. They weren’t failures. They won. They said, I do. I will. But in the act of getting that man, they lost everything that was dear to them for time and eternity. I’ve seen this horrible thing, and dear God, I don’t know why it has to happen.

And I’ve seen sweet-faced, innocent looking young ladies, Christians, converted to Christ, walking with him carrying their Bibles. And I have seen that strange phenomenon that nobody understands grab them. And their eyes fell upon some alley cat of a man reeking to God Almighty, blue imperium with tobacco smoke, no culture, no education, no ambition, no polish, no gentlemanliness, no anything. And a refined, beautiful and delicate young woman marries that tomcat. And from there on, God Almighty knows what happens. Does she pull him up? Never. It’s always the other way around. No matter how good a swimmer you are, if you jump into the lake with an anvil around your neck, you won’t pull the anvil up. It’ll pull you down.

And I have seen young men, fine looking fellows with a clear light in their eyes. And I knew that the voice of God was whispering to them. And they could have sung the simple colored song, I know the Lord laid His hand on me and meant it. And I have seen them become enamored of these–you know that type. And I’ve seen them follow them away from God and the church out into the world. And they won, but lost in the winning, tragic, terrible loss. You can’t win and oppose God. You can’t do it. God has the power and God has the glory and God has the might and God has the kingdom and God has the dominion and God has the years and God has the experience. You have nothing, nothing. You must turn unto God in Christ and get over on the winning side.

Now, that rich sense of relaxation and rest that comes when the fight is over and the worry is gone and you cease to oppose and stop fighting, and the contest is over and it’s all right. And you know when a nation is at war with another nation and one nation wins and the other nation formally surrenders, there’s always a sense of relaxation and peace comes to that nation. You can’t escape it. During my lifetime, I’ve known twice that Germany surrendered and once that Japan surrendered and once that Italy surrendered. And always the pictures that come from those countries show a sense of rest. It’s over. The fight is over now, and I won’t have to fight anymore.

Well, the man that’s fighting God is fighting a war, a battle that he never, never can win while the world stands. He can never have peace and happiness. What little he gets is only a passing thing, because God is always right and you’re always wrong. People call me up or write me and they want me to approve their lives. I get lots of letters wanting me to approve a wrong that they’re doing. They’re hoping to be able to get a little help from me saying chuck up, keep your chin up. You’re fighting God, but maybe one of these times God will drop asleep, and you can win. But they never do it, never.

When I was 17 years old, I formally took God’s side of every question. And I have not lived perfectly down these years. Don’t look at me and think I have. I haven’t. But at this moment, by the grace of God and the blood of the Lamb, I am on God’s side on everything. And I will not give any approval to anybody that are not on God’s side. I’ll never tell anybody they have a chance in the wide world if they’re not on God’s side. They have no more chance than you would have walking into a tornado hoping to turn it back. The Great God Almighty prevaileth forever against him and sendest him away. Thou changest his countenance and sendest him away. Thou changest his countenance and sendeth him away. I don’t think Shakespeare ever thought of anything more brilliantly imaginative than that. And yet, how simply true it all is. God changes His countenance.

There’s the pink-cheeked boy. And you never see a homely boy never. If nothing else, the very look out of their eyes is good to look at. And their round cheeks devoid of all this dope that you put on, the round cheek boy, the red cheek boy. Come back again in a few years, you’ll see a strong-faced man were a pink-cheeked boy has been. God’s busy changing his countenance. Come back again in a few years, you’ll find the sagging face of middle life. God has changed his countenance again. He doesn’t change it by snapping buttons. He changed it so slowly. People don’t notice it. And we come up to each other and lie like thieves and say, you haven’t changed a bit. God Almighty knows, He’s changing his countenance.

And then there’s the wrinkled, dry face, the flaky face of the old man. And then there’s the pale, cold face of the dead man. Thou changest his countenance. And if I didn’t believe in God for any other reason, I’d believe in God by looking at my own pictures over the years. Somebody’s changing my face. Somebody’s changing yours too. Don’t you think they are not.

Thou changest his countenance and sendest him away. Sendest him away from where? Well, away from his comfortable little nest. You know, we are all old dogs at heart. We love our homes, and we love our bedrooms, and we love our chairs and we love the presence of familiar things, the pictures we’ve known for so many years. And even things that are not so nice, they’re precious to us because we’ve had them a while. We all like to go in there like good old hound on a winter night and turn around three times and lie down and breathe deep and say it’s good to be under a roof. And we have our little nest, don’t we?

Well, it’d be sweet if the kind smile of God was on that home. Beautiful, if the kind smile of God was looking down like a moon that never changed and a sun that never set. But so many haven’t God in their homes at all. And God changes their countenances and sends them away from their little nest. Away from the familiar things that they love. Away from the people they knew and away from the reassuring landmarks. Thou sendest him away. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to go from his familiar haunts. He doesn’t want to leave the world.

Take a boy that has lived in a neighborhood; and he said lots of unpleasant, unkind things about the neighborhood and wished he could move out of it. And then, Uncle Sam grabs him and ships him off to Germany or Japan or Korea. And he isn’t there very long until he begins to paint a picture, a sweet picture on memory’s canvass of that back home, that little, dumpy corner where he used to get a soda with his girlfriend. It begins to shine like a palace of a king. And that crooked street with holes in it that trucks bumped in as they went along and waked him at night. And he turned over and grumbled, oh, the sound like the sound of the chariot that took Elijah home. He’s homesick now. He wants to come back where it’s familiar again.

And when he gets off the boat, nothing looks good except that little section where he comes from, where home is, where Ma is, and maybe his old, awkward father, who’s so glad to see him but wouldn’t let on, and maybe he is half-grown, freckled sister. Brother, does it look good to him back home there. He wants to come back home, and everything looks good to him. And when he walks up carrying that telltale canvas bag over his shoulder that says he’s Uncle Sam’s boy. When he walks up the street, he doesn’t see the holes anymore, and he doesn’t see how dumpy the corner delicatessen, or the corner candy store is. Wonderful as he comes home.

Am I describing to some of you fellows that went out and came back? Come on, fellows, isn’t it so? That’s the way we think about it when we go away. They’ve become familiar to us. And when we’re pulling away from them, torn out like a plant out of the soil, how darling, how sweet, how wonderful to come back and get our roots back down in again for a while and rest.

But Job says, Thou changest his countenance and sends him away. He’s fought God these years. He’s heard the gospel. He’s resisted it. He knows what’s right and he won’t know it. And he knows whose side he ought to be on, but he won’t take it. And one day God says to him, all right, boy, get going. Get going, Depart from me and God sends him away and he passes. Thou sendest him away and he passeth. I tell you, Shakespeare never wrote anything like this. Thou changest his countenance and sendeth him away and he passes.

There’s the biography of the human race. There is the biography of that old uncle of yours that fought God until he died. There is the biography of that old aunt of yours that never went to church and laughed at you and your family for going. There’s the biography of that smart aleck young fellow who had all the answers down the road there a few years back. Where is he now?

Where’s Voltaire? Where is Hitler? Where is Lenin? Where is Stalin? Where is Tom Paine? Where’s Bob Ingersoll? Where’s the man who founded the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism? Where’s the gangster? Where’s the fellow who had the north side under his thumb and carried a gun under his arm? Thou sendest him away and he passes. Thou changest his countenance and sendest him away. And they’re all gone. Where’s the big, bloated woman who used to come in at nine o’clock in the morning bleared-eyed drunk, and then cursed when you tried to talk to her about the Lord Jesus. God changed her countenance and drove her away and she’s gone.

Where are the multitudes that used to meet in Rome in the amphitheaters and watch the Christians being killed, and shout and scream like a breakfast club or a Bob Hope audience now and laugh as the Christians went in to die? They gained strength from the sound of their own voices. And the very volume gave them the idea that they could live forever and couldn’t perish. But God changed their countenances one after the other. The pink-cheeked lad was changed to the stern-face man, to the tired, middle-aged man, to the drooping old man, to the dead man. One by one they went and not a one of them lives now.

Where are they? Gathered on a Sunday night in the rain to watch the prize fights out here when John L. Sullivan fought bare-fisted 75 rounds? They thought they could get away with anything and everything, but where are they now? Where are the boys that get in the cars? Where will they be a few years from now and drive away in a roar of smoke and egotism, and whistle up the girls down the street? Where will they be a few years from now? God will change their countenances and drive them off. Send them away. God prevails forever against them and stands in the way. And always God is there. Always He’s there. The boy that steals the car, Gods there. The girl that goes out into questionable company, God is there. The man that lies soaked in nicotine and alcohol and looks blear-eyed at the TV set till one o’clock in the morning and neglects the church and God. God is there. Thou prevailest.

There it is Jacob. There it is Balaam. There He is Paul, on the Damascus Road, there’s God. God surrounding him like the air, going before him, following up, on the right of him and the left of him, above him, beneath him, all around him, there is God. The most awful thing about him is that he doesn’t know the jackass inspired by God could see the angel and the Prophet couldn’t.

McAfee, it’s an awful thought, a prophet of God with two men with him. A prophet of God and two men with him going on their way to get an offering, make a little money and bring in a little change. And the angel of God was opposed to their program, and they didn’t know it, but only the donkey knew it. But God was there, and they were turned back.

Now what is the answer to all this? You can’t win. You can’t know enough to win. You say, I want to get my M.A., then I’ll be all right. Your M.A. will only push back the frontiers of your ignorance and show you areas that you will never know that you didn’t know that were there. That’s all the M.A. will do for you. Somebody else says, I’m writing my thesis now and I’ll have my PhD. PhDs are a dime a dozen. I’ve got a seventh-grade education and PhDs write me and ask me questions, and I’m just an ordinary dumb fellow. I’m only telling you that because PhDs, they just have Doctor of Philosophies, that’s all.

That’s all a fellow that got a PhD told me this. He said, you know, Brother Tozer, what they do to you when they take in to examine you? He said, they examine you in fields where you’re not familiar in order to make a fool out of you. And he said, after they have reduced you to groveling idiocy so that it’s obvious that you don’t have the IQ of a half-grown tabby cat, then they give you your degree. So, they just want to show you how little you know and then they make you a doctor of philosophy.

Now, I worded that after my own method, a PhD couldn’t word it like that. But I worded that myself. But that’s what he told me. He told me that they just reduced him to a palpitating protoplasm and then give him and say, here’s your PhD, Brother. When you know you don’t know anything, then you’re smart enough to get a PhD. So don’t think a PhD is going to help you, son. It won’t help you at all. It’ll just make you proud, proud of your ignorance.

But what to do? What is there to do, change your religion? Somebody says, I’m going to change to be Catholic or Jehovah’s Witness or something else. It’s just like an enemy of God changing his clothes, that’s all. Just like Al Capone putting on a gray suit when he’d been wearing a blue. You’re just changing the externals, but you haven’t changed one thing; that you and God don’t get along. You and God have a controversy.

You never, never get any help by changing your religion. You never get any help by reading Aristotle. You say, I’ve heard the name Aristotle. He was a wise Greek. I can read him. I was just reading his categories this afternoon. But he didn’t say anything to help me. He’s just defining things, that’s all. Just helping me to know how to rot when I die. It’s helping me to know the laws of nature that reduce me to dust. But he never in any wise ran up a white flag and brought me and God together and he can’t. Nobody can.

What do we do then? Well, there’s only one thing to do. Quit the fight. Put up the white flag. Throw in the towel and say, O Great God, what a fool I’ve been that I have tried to run my life. Live my life and go my way and neglect the Savior and neglect the cross, oppose Thee and live an unrighteous life. O God, I can’t do it and I won’t continue to do it. Cease the fight.

You know, part of the joy of conversion is, the fight’s over. The fight’s over. You’re not fighting God anymore. That’s over. Amen? No more fight. Say, O God, I fought until it was awful. You know, it’s nice to get knocked out in the ring when you’ve really fought, until you’re exhausted. Some of those follows that are lugged off on the shutter are the happiest fellas in the world. It’s over now. They’ve quit. They’re done. Well, God won’t knock you out. But God will reduce you as he did Jacob. Jacob wasn’t happy one second all night long as long as he wrestled against God. But when he threw in the sponge and quit wrestling, then the sun rose upon his forehead.

I have a picture. If I had the ability of an artist, I’d paint the picture of old Jacob with the sun reflecting off his old bald head there by the river Jabbok. And I’d put an old Jewish smile on his face and mix it in with his old beard. And I’d show a happy man completely relaxed from head to foot. For the first time in his life, he’s relaxed. He wasn’t fighting anymore. God was on his side and he was on God’s side and he was on the winning side, and there was nobody opposed to him that amounted to anything. If you’ve got all the world on your side and God is opposed to you, you haven’t got anything on your side. But if you’ve got God on your side and the world is against you, you haven’t anything against you that amounts to anything. For John tells us that if God is for us, who can be against us.

So, give up the fight and kneel before your Maker. Kneel before your Maker. It would be a great thing for some of you if you would kneel down on your knees before your Maker. Get down on your knees, bend those knees of yours. Get down on your knees. Say here I am, God. It’s strange for me. I haven’t been on my knees except to work for a long time. Here I am on my knees. What a change.

I heard a Methodist preacher many years ago preach a sermon on the text: behold, he prayeth. It was about Saul when Saul of Tarsus was fighting Jesus Christ, you know, fighting him all the way along breathing, threatening slaughter, fire coming out of his nostrils like a dragon. And the Lord met him on the Damascus Road. He knocked him flat and blinded his eyes. And God said to Ananias, go down to such and such a street and find Saul. Behold, he prays. And the Methodist preacher made a great deal of it, that God is even a bit taken aback. He’s praying. This hard, vicious man, this heresy, this self-righteous enemy of the church was like a little lamb on his knees bleating up to God in his blindness.

It will be a great day for you, Brother, the day you will drop to your knees and not be ashamed and say, I’m quitting. I’m throwing it in. I can’t fight eternity. I can’t fight time. I can’t fight nature. I can’t fight God. Now give up and quit. What do you want me to do, God? What do you want me to do? And I know what God will say. God will say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. He will say as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on His name. That’s what he’ll say. He’ll say, you believe in my Son now. Obey Me for now on and your troubles, the main problems are over. You will have little troubles, but your main troubles are over.

And then take refuge from God’s anger in God’s love. I read that again. Dear old, what’s his name, the great medieval poet. It said he wanted to take refuge from the wrath of God in the mercy of God. The wrath of God blazed out of one side and he ran around on the mercy side and took refuge. There is a wrathful side of God and don’t you think there isn’t. But there’s a mercy side of God to that side of the cross. So, if you will get over on the side of the cross, you will meet God in peace at the cross of His love.

For Job said just above, Thou hast the desire to the work of Thine hands. Thank God. He has a desire to the work of His hands. A mother, yea, a mother may forget her second child. Do you know any mother would forget her child? Occasionally they do. Occasionally, the police find them in doorways or alleys. Occasionally, they’ll find a little foundling at the door of a hospital, but not very often. God selected the most wonderful thing He knew and said, can a mother forsake her baby? No. Not if she’s human. Not unless there’s some awful tragedy that’s taken her that makes her heart hard for a moment. She has a desire to the child of her love. And God has a desire to the work of His hands. I’m glad I can preach that tonight too. He has a desire to the work of His hands.

Well, what about you now? You. Don’t make excuses and don’t put up reasons and don’t try to make terms and don’t try to bargain and don’t try to make a deal with God. Come just as you are. Believe just where you are. Trust God just where you are. Throw up the hands of the inside your heart and say, Lord, I surrender all. I give up. I quit. No more fight. I take Thee Lord Jesus as my Savior forever. Would you do that, and will you do that? Have you done that? I wonder how many have done that? Good. Would you learn if you haven’t? I don’t want to embarrass. I don’t want to press you.

But if the blessed Holy Spirit has talked to your heart tonight and told you that God has a desire over you, that He hasn’t forgotten you. If you go, you’re away, he’ll stand against you though He’ll follow you and follow you as the angel did Balaam the renegade prophet. He’ll follow you on and on and on and on. But there will be a day when He’ll send you from Him and you will pass with a changed countenance and a broken heart. That’s a fact. But it’s also a fact that He has a desire to you. And He sent His only Son to die. And mercy’s door is open, and the grace of God can be yours. Let us pray.

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Messages

Tozer Talks

For the next ten weeks starting May 21, we will release once again A.W. Tozer’s noted series on the attributes of God titled, “A Journey into the Heart of God.”

May 21 – Attributes of God #1 “A Journey into the Heart of God”

May 28 – Attributes of God #2 “God’s Immanence and Immensity”

June 4 – Attributes of God #3 “God’s Goodness

June 11- Attributes of God #4 “God’s Justice”

June 18 – Attributes of God #5 “God’s Mercy”

June 25 – Attributes of God #6 “God’s Grace”

July 2 – Attributes of God #7 “The Omnipresence of God”

July 9 – Attributes of God #8 “God’s Omnipresence and Immanence”

July 16 – Attributes of God #9 “The Holiness of God”

July 23 – Attributes of God #10 “The Perfection of God”

The Causes of Chronic Spiritual Failure and the Cure 2

The Causes of Chronic Spiritual Failure and the Cure 2

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 10, 1957

In the Book of Micah, the sixth chapter. Hear ye now what the Lord saith. Arise, contend thou before the mountains and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear ye O mountains the Lord’s controversy and ye strong foundations of the earth. For the Lord hath a controversy with His people. He will plead with Israel. O My people, what have I done unto thee? Wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against Me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt and redeemed thee out of the house of servants. In Deuteronomy, the 28th, chapter, verses forty-seven and eight, because thou serveth not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.

Now I said, I would give two talks on the causes of chronic spiritual defeat, and the cure. And briefly, in order to relate the morning sermon to this evening, I said that the summary of God’s Word here to Israel and to us by extension, is that men will not serve God gratefully so they must serve the enemy sorrowfully. And he’s talking about His people here. You will not serve God thankfully so you must serve the enemy sorrowfully.

And I said, that most Christians, I don’t know whether I said most, but I think I could say most Christians, even though they’re Christians, they’re secretly not free. They’re not serving the Lord with much joy. And the reason is, that they have an erroneous spiritual philosophy. Their outlook is wrong. They look on things wrongly. And the Lord dramatically says here, My people, what have I done? What have you got against Me? There is a controversy here between God and His people. And these people can’t get along with God. They live in God’s household, I suppose, but they can’t get along with God. And the result is a resentfulness, a sense of bitterness in greater or lesser degree and a muting of the high trumpet note of joy that ought to be in their souls; muted till it’s hardly heard of at all.

And the reason for this is that there are two things we don’t see as we should. We do not see that God owes us nothing. That anything we get is pure grace, and that if we got what we deserved, we’d be dead. And if we went where we should go, we’d go to hell. And if we got what we should get, we’d get judgment and justice, and that anything else is sheer mercy and grace on the part of God without merit or works. And while all that I’m saying is old, familiar, fundamentalist truth, we hold it in our heads, and our hearts fight back. And we say inwardly, what have I done that I should deserve this? We grumble inwardly against God for failing to answer prayer. We find fault and censor the people of God. And this becomes a chronic thing within us. And we do not serve God joyfully, therefore we serve our enemies sorrowfully. And if we could get these two things settled, that we have sinned and come short of God’s glory, that every thought and intent and purpose of the heart of mankind apart from the new birth and the indwelling Jesus, is only evil continually. All of them are evil continually. And that grace, the grace of God which came in Jesus Christ, to go 100%, forgiving and blessing without merit. This we believe, but this we do not believe. This we believe creedly, but we do not hold it as a part of our working philosophy of life.

Now I want to talk to you and I want to use these two great truths. Let them be the left and the right eye. Let them be the two sides, the two pillars to hold up the temple. That we should perish that we none of us here has any right to be alive. Not one of us has any right to sing. Not one of us has any natural right to sing when the gates swing out and never I’ll be there. None of us has any right. This is a gift of God without works. This is a gift of God by grace. This is mercy, pure and simple 100%. And if you take these two pillars and you can let all the temple of God rest upon them. And you can view all your future and all life through these two eyes, man’s absolute depravity and God’s absolute grace set against each other and confronting each other.

Now, therefore, if you’re ready to believe those two things, then I’m going to give you, not a spiritual experience, because spiritual experiences, I say, won’t take care of this. You can come down and get blessed and wipe your eyes and go away feeling a little bit humbled and a little bit better, and tomorrow it’ll be back on you again because you’re not seeing things right.

Now, I want to go down the Scriptures beginning back there with Cain and Abel. And see whether the attitude of our secret heart isn’t to blame God and find fault, instead of take the other way around. Look at Cain and Abel. We wonder why it was that Cain killed Abel. And Brother, when you consider that God said, the day thou eatest there thou shalt surely die. And when we consider that sin came into the world and death by sin. And when we consider what the Bible says we are, then the thing I wonder about is not that Cain killed Abel. Cain was acting in conformity with his fallen nature.

But what I wonder about is why Abel offered an acceptable sacrifice unto God? Who taught Abel the fallen man? Who came to the heart of Abel and whispered in his deep spirit that he was a sinner and would have to have a lamb for a sacrifice? That wasn’t natural. That wasn’t according to human nature. Human nature never responds that way. That was the grace of God preveniently operating to teach the man Abel the way of life.

So that when we look at Cain and Abel and we see how they went for a walk and one slew the other. We say, isn’t that terrible and wasn’t that terrible? We wonder where God was and we tend to have a controversy here. But the wonder, I repeat, is not that Cain killed Abel. That’s not the astonishing thing. The wonder is that Abel died and went to glory from a fallen race. The first two children of a fallen pair, who had been alienated from God and driven from the Garden. And now these two, the fallen pair, had these two boys, fallen boys, who walked according to the spirit of this world, the spirit that worketh within the children of disobedience. One of them rose in fury and slew the other and acted according to his nature. The other one offered to sacrifice unto God before that murder, and God responded and gave him the assurance that he was righteous through accepting that sacrifice. And so let all those who read the story sing the praises of God who delivered Abel rather than listening to the brainwashing talk of the devil, and where he overcame.

We come to Noah and the seven that were saved. It says that there came a flood upon the world of ungodly, and Noah and the seven were all that were saved. The rest perished and the flood swept the ungodly away. Now my friend, when God swept the ungodly away, have I wronged thee, says God? Have I wearied thee with my conduct? Is there anybody that can charge me with wrongdoing? Had not they sinned and violated the tenure and franchise under which they operated? Were they not worthy of death? Did not divine justice cry out against the world of ungodly? And when I turned the waters loose and broke up the fountains of the deep, was I not doing what a holy God must do to preserve the moral order of the universe? And were not the wings of the seraphim and cherubim and holy watchers and holy ones yonder all waving. And were they not crying, true and righteous are they judgments, O God, for Thou hath judged men for their sins? But the wonder is that there were seven and Noah that found grace in God’s sight.

So, my brother instead of my saying how terrible that all the world of ungodly should perish, my heart should cry out how wonderful that God saved His seed upon the earth. For He had no obligation lying upon Him. If your ancestors back yonder had all perished, there would be nothing now but weeds and jungle and wild ravening beasts roaming the world. And God in His great mercy saved Noah and his family. And Noah found favor in His sight, favor and grace in His sight. And the good grace of God operated to save the race and to redeem men and to bring you and me into existence.

Again, I go down the Scriptures and I find Lot and Abraham. They came out of Ur of the Chaldees and came down overlooking the green valley and the Jordan. And you remember that Abraham said to Lot, now, my boy. He was younger than he. He was his nephew. He said, My boy, we can’t seem to get along. Oh, we’re all right, but our herdsman fight and we don’t want trouble and so it’s better to separate than it is to be always having difficulties. So, you got a big lot of cattle and herds and I have big herds and a lot of cattle and camels. You take whatever you want. Now take the rest. And the Scripture says that Lot saw the green, watered valley of Jordan and chose that valley for his cattle and pitch his tent toward Sodom. And the preachers all down the years have properly dwelt on that. He pitched the tent towards Sodom.

And it’s a terrible thing that he did. But is that the strange thing? Is it a strange thing that dogs delight to bark and bite, for God hath made them so? Is it a strange thing when two animals tear at each other’s throats? Is it a strange thing when the serpent strikes. It is not, for they’re living according to their nature. But when the wolf lays down with the lamb and the cockatrice and the rattlesnake lie down, and the baby plays on their den without harm. That will be the wonder, my brother.

And so, when Lot chose for himself the green-watered valleys, the valley of Jordan, He pitched his tent toward Sodom. He was doing what sinners do. But the wonder was that Abraham heard the voice of God yonder in Ur of the Chaldees at all. The wonder was that in the goodness of God, that idol-maker back in the Ur of the Chaldees, without any light at all, was listening one day and heard a Voice. And the Voice said, rise and get thee into the land that I will show thee. Did God owe that to Abraham? Did He owe that to Sarah? Did he owe that to Lot? Did he owe it to anybody? He owed them nothing. But in the good kindness of God, you have these two things there for confronting each other. You have man’s sin, Abraham’s sin, Lots sin and you have the mercy of God confronting the sin of man. And that Lot should go on and sin and act like a sinner that he was, is nothing.

But that God should save Abraham; that was something. And can you while you’re thinking about it, my brethren, can you not see that it was a greater wonder that Abraham ever allowed Lot to choose? He was the big boy and he was the older man. He had the most goods, and he was the boss of the caravan. And he could have said, now you take this, and I’ll take this and Lot could have scowled and walked away and taken the little end to things. But instead of that, Abraham said to his nephew, you take what you want and I will take what’s left. And he stayed on the plains of Mamre and Lot took the best part of the grazing land.

Now I ask you, who should be honored there? Who should be glorified? One man acted like the sinner that he was, and the other man acted strangely like an angel. Why, because he was one? No, he was born of the loins of fallen Adam too and he was as bad as Lot was bad. And he was born into the world with his mind made up to have his own way. But the grace of God, the wonderful grace of God confronted the sin of man there. And God for the sake of His own love, the love that will not let us go, God delivered the man Abraham from the bondage to his sin and made him able to take his long trek to the Holy Land. And when the time came, made him arise unselfishly to say, you take what you want, and I’ll take what’s left.

My Brother and Sister, don’t you just see, that if we were to look around the other way at things, instead of assuming that God owed Abel life, instead of assuming that God owed the world of ungodly a right to live when they’d forfeited their right to live. Why, instead of assuming that Abraham did the right thing, and that Lot did the wrong thing, my brother. Abraham did the right thing. But why? Because God worked in him to will and to do of His own good pleasure. We ought to take that attitude and hold it, otherwise we’ve got a controversy with God.

And when we come to the burning of Sodom, some people have worried why God sent fire down from heaven upon Sodom and consumed Sodom and Gomorrah. The wonder is not that God consumed Sodom and Gomorrah. For they were sexual perverts to a point where the vilest, filthiest kind of thing went on, Paul described in Romans 1. And the astonishing thing was not that a just God, and as the liberals say, a God of love, the wonder wasn’t that this God of love should hurl fire upon the cities, but the wonder was the fire ever went out and that all Asia Minor didn’t catch fire, and it didn’t spread across the sea to Europe and eastward to Babylon and over to China and Japan. And that it didn’t burn and burn, until all of us should have been burnt out. All our ancestors before us should have perished. But that’s what we deserve. And we’ll never be right. And we’ll never think right we’ll never pray right until we know that.

Just as long as you think that there’s a little good in you, and that you have a right to God’s grace, why, you will be having a controversy with God. And God will be saying to you, what have I done to you? What have you got against me? Why the fight? Why can we get on, you and I? For I’ve given you all of this? And because you won’t serve me joyfully for all of this, you will serve your enemy sorrowfully. And so, Christians everywhere are defeated. I hardly find a Christian as I travel around that isn’t defeated. They have managed somehow to get on. But they’re defeated Christians. Most Christians are defeated Christians, and they’re defeated because they have got a bad outlook on the Scripture, a bad outlook toward heaven above, a bad outlook.

We’ll go on a little way and we come to Esau and Jacob. And the Scripture says bluntly, God says, Esau have I hated, but Jacob have I loved. And people say, I can’t understand this at all. I can’t understand it. How can it be that God hated Esau? We’ve been brainwashed by liberals. We’ve been brainwashed by Emersonian humanists. And we’ve been taught that we’re all a nice bunch, a nice bunch. Everybody’s fine and wonderful, and that we all deserve something, and the good God who puts His wing over all, and he loves us all. We forget that God said, the wicked have I hated and Esau have I hated. And we forget that the only proper reaction of a holy God to an unholy man is violent repulsion. The only proper reaction of a holy God to an unholy man is a violent break.

And if a heaven could love hell, then hell would be heaven and heaven would be hell and there would be more chaos throughout the universe. Yet, that’s what they teach us. They mix heaven and hell and compound it, and that’s our Christianity. But when God said, Esau have I hated, what is wrong with that? Have you got any controversy with God over that the holy nature of God revolted against the man who would sell his highest spiritual treasure for a mess of soup?

But the wonder of wonders that ought to set all the silver trumpets in Heaven to blasting out the joys of the Lord, to set every organ to that playing is, that God loves you. Why did God love Jacob? How could God love you? How could a holy God look at a crooked fellow like that and love him; how I say? Only because mercy and grace, greater than all our sin, worked in the heart of God, only because of God in His infinite wisdom in the council chambers of the Trinity had worked a plan out whereby He could have mercy upon Jacob. And Esau would not accept that plan, so he said, I reject it. And Esau walked away with his countenance fallen, a rejected man. And Jacob as crooked as he was, wrestled with his God on the bank of the Jordan. And God put his thigh out of joint and the sun rose upon his bald head as he went over the river to make friends with his brother Esau whom he had injured so long ago.

So the wonder here, my Brother, isn’t that God should hate Esau but that he should love Jacob, and you and I should see that. We should look at those two eyes and we should take that viewpoint and not another. And instead of saying, oh, it’s terrible that God should hate Esau and we should rise and take God’s side and not the liberal’s; and not the humanists and not religion of Cain. And we should say, O wonder of wonders that God should love Jacob. O wonder of wonders, not the soul that sinneth it shall die. That’s not an angry God hurling His thunderbolts like Thor. That is a holy God declaring a philosophy of rejection, that a holy heaven can’t take in an unholy hell. And that God, the Holy God, cannot fellowship with an unholy being. That’s just God declaring that. That’s all.

But that God should suddenly sound another note and say, Jacob have I loved, crooked old Jacob, sneaking old Jacob. Old Jacob who knew how to cheat and cheat and continue to cheat that God should say, I love Jacob. He loved Jacob, because within Jacob somewhere, there was an acceptance of an eternal plan that glorified the grace of God and put man in the dust where he belongs.

So my brother today I want to say before three worlds as Brother Ravenhill would say. I want to say before three worlds, with heaven listening and hell listening and a few people on earth listening, that I will glorify God forever for loving crooked Jacob. And I will cry with the angels above, true and worthy are Thy judgments for hating Esau.

And I think of this fellow David. Somebody wrote a book. A woman wrote a book. Women are writing sexier books now than men. I thought John Steinbeck had done it all, but there are women now doing it until they are ashamed to review it in Time magazine. Well, anyhow, a woman wrote about King David. David the King, she called it and of course she had David wallowing in iniquity. The Scripture says David sinned. David was born of Jesse. And Jesse was born of his father and his father was born of his father. And they trace them back, clear back to Abraham and clear back to Adam. And when David sinned, David was acting natural. David was a sinner. And when David sinned, he was acting natural. And if it hadn’t been for the grace of God, David never would have done anything else but sin. And David would have continued to sin, and continued to sinned and died sinning and gone to hell sinning.

Oh, the infinite grace and mercy of God that David could kneel down on his knees and say, have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness. And according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my sin, for against Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight. That’s the mercy. Not that Saul didn’t repent, for repentance isn’t a human thing. It’s a divine thing, and God has to put it in a man. So, Saul didn’t repent, but David did. And instead of our saying, O God, why didn’t Saul repent, we ought to kneel and say, my God, how wonderful that David repented. Oh, not that David committed that double sin, adultery and murder. When he committed adultery and murder he acted like a man. And when he said, the Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want. He makes me down to lie in pastures green. He leads me that quiet waters by, he talked like an angel. The grace of God had come in and confronted his sin.

Now I want to tell you whatever hell says about it, heaven is blowing a loud silver trumpet tonight. That David ever came back to write the 23rd Psalm and the 103rd Psalm, bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name. That he ever came back to be the father of the Messiah who gave His life for the world.

So, my brother, you see, we’ve been brainwashed. That’s our trouble. The devil has taught us an evil philosophy. And we go to an altar and we try to get blessed so we’ll have victory. And we get up with a bad outlook on life. We get up all crooked and cross-eyed. And we think God owes us something. And we won’t serve God joyfully, so we serve our own poor flesh sorrowfully.

David, I’m glad for David. And as long as I live, I will say, O wonder, wonder of wonders that a wild boy growing up in the wilderness at a time like that, with no education, that we know of, at least very little. And there in little old Palestine surrounded by the enemies on every side, that a boy should go out and lie down and look up and say, when I consider Thy heavens, and write such profound philosophy and compose such profound spiritual hymns, that the ages have been better for them. That’s the wonder of wonders and we ought to vie with Gabriel while he sings in notes all most divine. I can’t sing like Gabriel, if he sings. I don’t know whether they sing. They say he sings, but I can vie with him in singing. But I can do my best to glorify God that he ever saved David.

And then there was Elijah. We preach doleful sermons about Elijah and the juniper tree. And that Elijah went 40 days in the strength of those pancakes an angel baked for him. He did literally, read it, it says that. It says a little bread and it was flat pancake, a barely pancake, like our pancake now. An angel baked it and Elijah went, my brother, a tired man, a man who was all out of his element. He’d walked among the mountains, Elijah had. He lived up there on the quiet fastistes where the great, rugged jutting rocks touch the blue sky above where the white goats jump from peak to peak. And he lived in his little simple home somewhere up there. I don’t know where, somewhere up there. The love of God confronted the wild man, Elijah. And Elijah knew God. And Elijah learned even there among the rocks and trees and gullies, he learned to stand before Jehovah.

And one day God said to Elijah, Elijah, down there in the big world where there are cities and people and kings and princes and priests and where there are prophets of Baal and where my religion is being degraded by Jezebel, I have a job for you. No doubt Elijah asked questions and said, great God Jehovah, what have you for me to do? I have no education. I have no courtly knowledge. I have no etiquette. I know nothing. I’m dressed in this old rugged thing, a long beard. What am I going to do down there? I’ve heard tell, to use an old country phrase, I’ve heard tell of the fine court that they have. What can I do? God said, you leave that to me. Down went the man Elijah, and walked in without announcement and suddenly appeared before the King. The King leaped to his feet and looked at him and he said, I’m from God. And I come to tell you that there will be no rain until I say so. He clicked his heals like a sergeant reporting to the commanding officer and stalked out. I stand before God, say that.

Later on, after tremendous pressure and under the threat of Jezebel to take off his head, he gave up and fled into the wilderness. Preachers have blamed him ever since. Blamed? He was acting like a man, a nervous, pressed, distraught man. A man who would love God and had dared to face out his host. And who had gone up on the hill yonder on the place they called Carmel and had faced 400 prophets of Baal and had laughed at them and worked them up to fury. And then called down the fire of Jehovah to consume the sacrifice. That’s not the act of a man. That’s the act of a man of God. The wonder isn’t that he could flee like a man, the wonder is that he could pray like a man of God.

Are we going to let the devil and the liberals and the cheap religion of Cain brainwash us until we have a controversy with God, until we talk more about the cave of Elijah or the Juniper bush, than we talk about God, the God of Elijah? Ah, Brother, as long as I live, I’m going to thank God every time I think of it for Elijah. And I’m going to overlook the fact that he fled and got under a juniper bush and asked God to take him home. Any man might have done the same thing. There was a hero of a man. And yet, he hadn’t a thing to start with but a bad seed inside his breast. He had nothing to start with but sin and yet God delivered him and made a prophet out of him and gave him to the world and  the church of Christ down to this day. There’s you’re wondering. And if you want to ask God any questions, don’t ask God why Elijah fled, ask God why Elijah prayed. If you want to go and ask God any questions, don’t say God, how could it be that Elijah went into a cave. Ask Him how could it be that Elijah went into a court.

And we come down to Jesus. He was born into the world. Mary had a baby as the colored spiritual has it. She had a baby and named him Jesus. And when He appeared, only a few recognized Him. There were the four old people I preached about, God’s four old friends, Annis, Simeon and Zechariah and Elizabeth, four old friends of God, and a few others recognized Him. And He came unto His own and His own received Him not. And when His own received Him not, they acted like what they were. And any that received Him did so by the sheer mercy of God and that alone. For there wasn’t in human nature one trace of life, nor one eye that would have ever believed that this Jesus was the Messiah.

So that which we should ask God about is not O God, why did so few receive Thy Son? But what we should ask God is, O God, why did anybody receive Thy Son? Seeing who we are, seeing how bad we are, and seeing how selfish we are, and seeing how blind we are and seeing how we’ve sinned against the Light, that lighteth every man that comes into the world. And seeing how we are sinners by birth and aliens by choice, and seeing how we’ve studied the art of iniquity at the feet of the devil. Why did anybody believe in Jesus? And everybody that believed in Jesus when He walked among men was a bonus. It was something added, an extra that men will thank God for while they live. And that they nailed Him on the tree was entirely natural, seeing that men had the natures they had. But that He was willing to die for those who are willing to crucify him. There’s the wonder of wonders.

So, let’s get our philosophy right, my Brethren. You’ll never have and keep spiritual victory as long as you’re upside down. Get your feet under you instead of on top of you. And look at this thing right and see that all down the centuries men had sin because they’re sinners and God has saved some because He’s God. And that grace is operated in triumph over sin. And that’s what we need to thank God for.

And there was Peter. Poor old Peter has had to take a beating. I imagine there’ll be a lot of smiles in heaven. Some of us preachers will go sneaking up to Peter and Jonah and some of these fellas we had browbeaten and called out and used them as horrible examples and say forgive me, I was dumb. I didn’t know any better. Here was Peter; Peter was an impulsive, nervous man, quick to love and quick to pour himself out and quick to pick himself up again, that was Peter. Peter would have made a good American. He had all of our impulsiveness and our blessed dumbness and kinks. He had all that, and Peter denied his Lord. Here he was. Oh, he said, Jesus, Jesus don’t talk that way to me. Don’t talk to me. You say, I’ll deny you Lord; now all of these may. He said, John there, I’ve always suspected him. And the rest of them. I know they’re weak, but good boys. Now don’t think I’m talking against the Master. They’re good boys, but though all should deny Thee, yet, will I not. And he meant it and he meant every word of it. And he fully intended to go out there and die. But he forgot that he was Peter. Not an archangel. He forgot that he was Peter.

So, when the pressure got on and it was obvious that Jesus had lost out. He wasn’t able to help him anymore. They had him handcuffed and were leading Him off. The soldiers had him. It was evident that there was no help coming there. And they were after Peter. Peter said, I may as well salvage something out of this. So, he denied his Lord; caught in the pinch, he denied his Lord. We preachers have beaten him over the back for 2000 years for denying his Lord. In denying his Lord, he was doing just exactly what every sinner would do. He was doing just what you can expect a sinner to do. He was acting according to his fallen nature. He was doing what Adam had put in him to do.

Follow me a little. And look at this fellow Peter when the Holy Ghost came upon him and a flame of fire sat on his head. And Peter got straightened out and got to thinking right. He wrote his epistle about the blood that was more precious than that of gold that perishes. God got him straightened out and un-brainwashed him. Then look at Peter. Look at Peter in the jail. And he rejoiced and sang with the others that he was worthy to suffer for Jesus’ sake. And they said, we’ll let you out, but don’t preach. He said, I’ve got to obey God, and he preached and got checked back in again. So, for a lifetime that was left, he suffered like that. That’s what to think about. Who did that? Was that Peter? No. That was the grace of God in Peter.

And so, we should be thanking God every minute that the grace of God came to an impulsive, fast-talking, nervous man called Peter and made a St. Peter out of him. Thank you, Lord, for making Peter St. Peter. Thank you, Lord, for letting the sinful David write the 23rd Psalm and get cleaned from the 51st Psalm and get clean from his sin. Thank Thee, O Lord, that though Elijah fled into the wilderness, Elijah had the courage to go face Thine enemies and mine. Thank you, Lord, that though you brought the flood upon the world of ungodly, that you saved this seed alive. And you’ve given us this wonderful world. We’ve got no controversy with you, God, no controversy. You wouldn’t serve me joyfully for all I’ve done for you, said God. So, I’ll let you secretly serve your enemies sorrowfully. And that’s what’s the matter with a lot of us. Our philosophy is wrong, I repeat.

Well, I almost through. How do you yourself hear? On top of that I should have devised a series on that. But how about, how do you view yourself? You say you’re a Christian? Well, you’re a Christian, but you came late. Some of you came late. You are Christian, but you came late. Are you going to spend your days beating yourself over the back because you came late? Why don’t you thank God you ever came at all? For the Scripture says no man can come to Me except the Father draw him. Have you read that? Calvin didn’t write that. The Holy Ghost wrote that. No man can come to me except the Father draw him. You came, you said, I came. You thought you did. You were drawn by the miraculous, sovereign grace of God to come. And you came, and better men than you didn’t come.

I’ve got in Miami, Florida now a doctor brother who is and always has been a better man than I. And if he’d been here 29 years as I’ve been and lived with you, you would have said the older brother is the better of the two. For he is a gentleman and our pastor sometimes isn’t. But he’s a lost man. He didn’t come, I came. And I was the worse of the two and I came, he was the better of the two and he didn’t come. Why? Am I going to spend my days beating myself over the head because I am not as good a Christian as I ought to be?

Listened to me, Brother. You say I’m a poor Christian. Well, don’t you thank God that though you’re a poor Christian, you’re any Christian at all? Because that’s not natural under the circumstances. Jesus Christ our Lord laid down terms for the gospel that almost guaranteed that nobody would come, almost guaranteed it. Did you ever think about that? He laid down conditions at the door of the kingdom of God that all but ruled out the possibility of anybody coming. He said, If you come you got to deny yourself. You got to bear your cross. You got to give up your life and your soul and you’re all. You’ve got to turn your back on your loved ones and your sons and daughters and wives and husbands and brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers and love Me above them all. And you got to give up everything and deny yourself.

Now if that isn’t making it hard or almost impossible, I don’t know what is. And yet, in spite of the fact that He laid impossible terms down at the kingdom of God, they’ve come down the years. 13 million of them died in Rome under the persecutions, the 10 persecutions, from Nero to I believe his Diocletian. Down the years, they died. And over behind the Iron Curtain now, squared-jawed, high cheekbone Russians are stalking off to church in the day and standing in their unheated church without pews and listening to the Truth. In China, some of the Christians that our missionaries won to Jesus before they were chased out are still over there fighting.

I got a marvelous phone call this last week. A man called me on the phone and he said, I make and sell choir robes. Are you interested? I said, No. We’re not. But he said, why? How can you have a choir without robes? And I said, well, you must be an Episcopalian. He said, No, I’m not an Episcopalian. I’m of the Greek Orthodox Church. He said, in fact, I’m a priest of the Greek Orthodox Church, and was a priest of a Greek Orthodox Church, but he said, I quit being a priest and my wife and I make robes and that’s the way we get along. He said, I’m just calling. I just happened to call you, ran into you on your church in the telephone directory. And I said, you got to the Cs. He said, yes, I got down to the Cs, Christian and Missionary Alliance. What is that, and I told him.

And then we began to talk, and bless my heart. I found a Christian. Here’s a man and I said, we talked over the phone and I told him about the Lord. And he talked back and pretty soon my heart began to get warm. And he said, now let’s quit talking about robes, he said. We just talked like two Christians, two men. And he said, oh, say, did you ever read the Philokalia? I said, I’m looking at it while I’m talking to you. I said I have it on the desk.

Oh, he said, there was a day in my life when I got so discouraged, I got down. I was going to kill myself. And he said I ran into the Philokalia written by the old Greek fathers back there, the saints of old Greek days. And he said, I read in that and I got down on my knees and I said, O God, forgive me. And we had a Christian on our hands, Brother, just as sure as you live. Now, I don’t go along with him in wearing his long-tail coat and doing all the things they do. And I don’t have to, but I found a Christian there. And there are a lot them over there and don’t you allow old baldy Khrushchev to tell you otherwise, they’re over there. And they’re in China and they’re in Czechoslovakia and they’re in Spain and they’re in Italy. And they’re where they’re not supposed to be, according to the authorities. God has His people there and how’d they get there? Anything good in them? There’s nothing good in them, but the grace of God operating. That’s it. So, we’re not very good Christians. Somebody says, all right.

I preached a sermon, 14 sermons on being a better Christian, you remember, the first of the year, how we can go on towards spiritual perfection. And I have preached eight or 10 more on worship here recently. So, you can’t blame me for saying I’m preaching that we all ought to stand still. I think we ought to go forward. But instead of going forward with controversy in our hearts and our own outlook, we ought to say O thank God I got anything at all. Thank God, I got in. If I haven’t a big crown at least I’m in. You’d have a different attitude toward life, my brother. And the whole sun would be brighter in the morning, and the whole life would be different.

Well, how to view your church now. We’ll talk about that a minute. You know, this isn’t the best church you’ve ever been in, I suppose, and isn’t the worst, this assembly. I love that expression, assembly. I know some have copyrighted it and we shy away, but it’s a good word. And that’s what a church is. It’s an assembly of the saints. It’s a gathering together of the people of God. A despised minority group meeting together at stated times to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and minister unto the Lord and pray. They are despised and they’re few. And they gather in little groups, little cells and assemblies here and there called the church. This building isn’t the church. It’s a meeting house. The people are the church.

And how do you view it? You say, well, I know a hypocrite in that Alliance church. Well, if there’s only one, let’s celebrate together. Let’s dance out on Union Avenue and thank God from the top of our voices there’s only one. If there should only be two or ten, thank God that where a few hundred people gather there are only ten hypocrites.

Jesus had them in his little group and Peter had them in his and Paul wept over them till his epistles were smeared with it, with his tears. Of course, what do you expect? When a hypocrite gets in a church you have got nature. You’ve got Adam. You’ve got the thing the way it should be granting that we’re all fallen men. But when a company of people meet together and love each other and forgive each other and put up with each other and pity each other and help each other, you haven’t got nature, you’ve got grace. So, we ought to thank God for the grace that makes us a church at all. Not complain because there’s a hypocrite sneaking around occasionally. Ah, don’t forget that every fold has the lambs. Paul Rader used to say the bright light draws the bugs. And you’ll find that in every church where there is life you’ll find that there will be some who will be nuisances. But God uses that to buff you down and keep you humble. Amen.

And now about ourselves in our days. Some you don’t feel well. You’re afraid you’ve got the Asian flu. You’ve been listening to the scare talkers over the radio. Or you’re afraid maybe that that indigestion may turn out to be cancer? Well, it may. It may. I think you’d be as good a Christian as the old, what’s his name, was a philosopher? They came to one of these old Greek philosophers and they said, mister, whatever his name was, your son has just died. Well, he said, I never said I had begotten an immortal son. I expected him to die. That was a little rough maybe, but then, that’s looking at it isn’t it? That it’s facing that out. And did you think when you arrived here that you’re going to have a corner on the world and never die? Maybe you will die. Maybe I’ll preach your funeral. But is that a tragedy with the blood of Jesus Christ on the mercy seat and Christ mentioning your name to the Father and your name in the Lamb’s book of life and a good life behind you? What are you worried about? Must we sniffle like paddled spaniels? Why can’t we face up to it? Maybe I’ll die. Maybe they will wheel me down here.

Some of you remember meetings we’ve had, maybe sniffle a bit, one or two or many. Most I suppose would say you had it coming, and I did. I mean it. I did, I did. But I’ll tell you one thing Brother, just as sure as you live, I will tell you one thing. It’s contrary to the nature of my ancestors. It’s contrary to my English father. It’s contrary to all the high nerves that I’ve inherited from my people. It’s contrary to all the pessimistic outlook that I naturally have. It’s contrary to us all, but I serve notice on the devil this hour. The fact that I’ve lived to be my present age is a miracle of the grace of God, as pure and wonderful as turning water into wine or making the sun stand still. And if I die tonight at midnight, I want you to remember the last thing you heard me say was that I’ve lived too long already and that the good love and grace of God has prolonged my days and every day is a bonus every day.

And so instead of our taking the attitude God owes me something, why doesn’t He pay? Let’s take the attitude God owes me nothing and everything I have is His grace. You’ll be a different Christian if you’ll take that and cultivate it and believe it and take that spiritual philosophy. Let it become a part of your life blood. I’ve preached too long, but I had it to say. God spoke these things to me and I’ve given them to you. Let’s stand. Let’s not spoil it all by irresponsible chatter. Let’s go home and face next week in victory. Everybody said, Amen. Shake hands. We’re dismissed.

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The Causes of Chronic Spiritual Failure and the Cure 1

The Causes of Chronic Spiritual Failure and the Cure 1

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

November 10, 1957

I have from God a message for you this day. More particularly do I believe it today than ordinarily. And usually, I don’t come unprepared to the pulpit. I want to talk about the causes of chronic spiritual defeat. And, of course, how we can remove them. And I’m going to preach a sermon which will be complete in itself this morning, dealing with half of it. But tonight, I’m going to preach a second sermon breaking down these causes and showing how you can escape them.

Now, this came from God to me and I am convinced that it’s His voice. I hope that you can be here and that you can bring your friends with you tonight, to this house of God, this chapel, to hear the Truth. I want to read two texts, one from the book of Micah. The prophet Micah in the sixth chapter; here’s what he said. Here ye now what the Lord saith, Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord’s controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel. The simple truth is a lot of God’s people can’t get along with God. O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me. Then in the book of Deuteronomy 28th chapter, two verses, 47 and 48. Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.

Now what does God say here? In the first place, this is written to Israel. But it is an understood truth that these things were written unto us for our admonition upon whom the end of the ages has come. And that they are there for our instruction, and that the spiritual content of them is as true for us and as applicable to us as it was to Israel. Though the historic details may differ, the facts remain the same.

Now, what does God say here to his people? He says, I delivered you. I delivered you and I gave you everything. I delivered you by the hand of Moses. And I delivered you out from the hand of your enemy. I delivered you by blood and fire. I gave you a land for which you had not worked, harvests that hadn’t been yours, orchards that were not ever planted by you. Somebody else planted them and you took them. You got them. I gave them to you because they were mine. And yet, you act as if I owed you something and hadn’t paid. And because you will not serve me joyfully, therefore you shall serve your enemies sorrowfully.

You will not serve me joyfully though I have done all these things for you. And though you are in debt to me so far that you can never get out. And I’ll never throw it up to you. All I want you to do to pay on your indebtedness, to just live joyfully and praise Me thankfully. That’s all I ask says God. But you won’t do it. You would turn it around as if I owed you something and refuse to pay and says to God, what have I done to you? Testify against me. Bring in your evidence. Why am I, why am I up before the court of your judgment? Because you would not serve me joyfully, therefore you shall serve your enemies sorrowfully.

Now, the reason for spiritual defeat. I am not going to talk about smoking and so on, the causes of chronic spiritual defeat. One cause is this right here. We cultivate, or allow ourselves to cultivate, an attitude of thanklessness, of chronic thanklessness. We allow ourselves to live and think and feel as if God owed us something. And when anything comes to us that isn’t as we like it, instead of saying, be it unto Thy servant as thou wilt, I deserve this and much more also, we become sour inside. And we cultivate an attitude of arrogance that grows finally into a spirit of impertinence toward God Almighty. And so, we become sinful. Christians becomes sinful, not the kind of sin that can be practiced outwardly, like gambling.

Incidentally, I read a piece of news today I thought I’d pass on to you. The state of Colorado, the, what would he be? But the head lawyer in the state, ruled that bingo was a form of gambling and therefore forbidden by the laws of the state of Colorado. And immediately, a dear religious brother leaps to his feet and introduces a motion before the state legislature asking that a bill be passed exempting the churches from this ban in as much as they needed the money. And they were nice people and doing good. So, in Colorado, that bill passes and you can expect it. It’ll say, this is a sin and they will have a cop throw you in jail if we find you gambling, but it doesn’t apply to churches. They can sin under official sanction.

Now, to just let you know that. It’s why we don’t have any bingo rooms here. We believe gambling is gambling whether it’s done by gangster or whether it’s done by a Bishop. It’s still gambling and men like that will burn for their deeds unless they repent. And they’re not likely to repent if the legislature exempts them. And I’m quite sure in that great day when men rise and spend before the white throne, they won’t be able to pull out bill number HR 4, which says it wasn’t wrong after all. Well, gambling is a sin, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. You can be just as bad as those bingo churches in Colorado and nobody would ever know it at all. Not drinking and not cheating at your business. You can be honest in your business. Not lying and not fighting.

But another kind of sin which is as bad, and before God I think worse and is as certainly a cause of spiritual defeat and chronic defeat at that, is disappointment, this being disgruntled and sour and resentful. And the reason we Christians get disgruntled and sour and resentful is that we’re not taught on a certain thing. We have an attitude that’s wrong, and we need a new and a biblical philosophy. And when I use the word philosophy, I’m not thinking of Plato and the rest of them.

I’m thinking about a Bible philosophy, for philosophy means, as we use the word, a viewpoint, a way of looking at things, a body of truth which you hold. And we have allowed ourselves to let the word of God slide lightly over our minds. But we have in the meantime, there’s a little silt, a sediment that has come to the bottom of our hearts like the grit that settles to the bottom of a tea kettle after you’ve used it for a good many months. It settles and gets down there. It’s kind of a would-be stalactite or stalagmite if it were somewhere else.

But, in the bottom of your tea kettle, it’s just a thick, it’s sediment that has settled out of the water a hardened mineral, a rock formation. So that settles into our souls, and we hear the Word taught and we sing about it, an we pray about it. And we give to support it and all the rest. But at the same time, there is a silt, a sediment, a hard, gritty substance, that forms in our hearts. And we can get above it and we’re in a state of perpetual disappointment. And oftentimes, it goes on to be a state of disgruntlement. And the result is a sour, resentful spirit. We shake hands and we smile and we sing and we try so hard.  This isn’t hypocrisy and I’m charging nobody with hypocrisy. I’m charging no one of hypocrisy anymore than I would charge a sick child with evil because it was sick. This gets on us. This gets into people.

And this takes the joy out. It takes the bell out of the steeple and the chimes out of the heart. And God’s people go about trying so hard to be happy, but being disappointed and disgruntled and feeling that they have been wrongly treated. And God says I’ve got a controversy with my people. My people can’t get along with me. That’s the trouble. They can’t get on with me. God and His people can’t get on like a father whose children refuse to obey him and won’t speak to him and resist Him.

God says, I’ve got a controversy with my people. Why, what have I done to you to, He says. Where am I at fault says God. Didn’t I bring you out and didn’t I set you free and didn’t I give you everything? And yet you act as if I had given you nothing and what I did give you, you deserved and what I haven’t yet given you, I am in debt to you for. And so, you serve your enemies in secret says God. You have served your enemies. You have served them sorrowfully when you were meant to serve me joyfully. But you serve your enemies in secret. And I’m describing a lot of you people. Don’t think I’m not. And it’s only by the grace of God and a lot of prayer and self-criticism and judgment that I am not describing myself this moment, because, here it is.

Now I want tell you how to get delivered from it. And I’ll take for a few minutes now, then I want preach a full sermon tonight on how to get delivered. And I wish I could tell you that there was an emotional experience that would deliver you. But let me remind you of something my brother, an emotional experience doesn’t teach doctrine. An emotional experience doesn’t make you a spiritual philosopher. An emotional experience may bring you in contact with a person with God, and it does if it’s a correct and right spiritual experience, but it doesn’t instruct you.

The Bible is given to you to instruct you. The Holy Ghost through the Bible instructs you. And it’s a lack of spiritual instruction that bothers us. And there are some things we’ve got to learn. And we’ll never be right no matter how much we weep and no matter how happy we get. We can sing a hymn by Isaac Watts and feel goose pimples on our wrists and the sense of elation and feeling and all that. And when it’s over, 20 minutes after we left here, we can have a fender-scraping accident on the corner of something and something else and we’ll find that that didn’t instruct us at all. That gave us a lift, an emotional lift. And it properly should but it wasn’t enough.

We’ll never be right until we get delivered from an injurious, spiritual philosophy. We look at it one way and God looks at it another and there’s a controversy you see. We just can’t get along. We can’t get, some people can’t get along with God. Some of His family can’t get along with Him. Because of the controversy God has called it, and how else could you have a controversy? And we’ll never be able to receive a satisfying spiritual experience until we have a sound spiritual philosophy. That is, until we have been set right about how we should look at things and see them, and when we are set right about it and when we see things as God sees them.

And I’ll show how we can see them by going back to Abel and coming down the years. But I want to give you two facts against which everything else in your life must be set and against which all of the sermon tonight will be preached. Although I will repeat probably not more than a paragraph or two tonight. I want to develop rather than repeat.

But here are two facts you and I have to know my friends. Not only know them doctrinally, but know them as a part of our spiritual thinking until it becomes to us a creed. It becomes to us a philosophy. It becomes to us a way of life, a way of thinking.

First is, that it’s written in the Book that the soul that sinneth, it shall die. And God says all the thoughts and imaginations of the heart are only evil continually. And He says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And that by one man, sin entered into the world and death by sin. And that It’s appointed unto man once to die. And after that, the judgment. Now, that’s written in the Book, and that is held by every orthodox believer everywhere. But my brother and sister, we manage somehow to mean, it means everybody but me. And though if we were asked, is it so, Mr. Smith, that you have sinned and the thoughts and imaginations of your heart were only evil continually and you’ve come short of the glory of God, and that by one man, Adam’s sin entered into you, and death lies in you. And that after death which is ahead of you, you will come to judgment. Is that true?

Well, he’d say, oh, that’s the Scripture. That’s true, but it’s one thing to acknowledge it as being written in the Bible. It’s quite another thing to hold it as a way of life, a way of looking at things, a dye that colors our thinking and gives it a golden God color. It’s quite another thing I say, it’s one thing to hold it as a creed. It’s another thing to think against it and live against it and pray against that fact, and let that be the black background against which everything else is painted. The dark shadow that lies across the world is sin. And against that dark shadow, and in that dark shadow, we must place every other judgment. And men are rebels and sentenced to death.

Now, here we are. Some of you look as if you had just come down from heaven above. You’re all nicely done, and I’m glad for you. Certainly, that’s all right. I believe that we ought to do the best we have with what God given us. And you’ve done it and I’m glad. And some of you look as if you just come out of the cocoon and we’re flying about in the sunshine, and nobody would believe that you’re very bad and you don’t believe it. Then because you don’t believe it when you get in a jam, you react angrily against the jam. And you say, well, why should God treat me like this? Now, you wouldn’t say that, because that’d be bad. God’s people have learned the trick of never saying what they think. And you wouldn’t at all say that. But because you don’t actually believe that your heart has been desperately wicked and that sin has entered and death by sin and that if you were where you should be, you would not be here now. And that you’re a rebel and sentenced to die. We simply can’t get our hearts to believe it. And the result is that we react angrily and resentfully against anything that comes against us.

The Bible says men are rebels and sentenced to die and this is what we deserve. Now you’ll be sure of one thing, sir. We hear of men dying in sin and we tremble for them and pity them and say, isn’t it too bad and we’re sorry. And we almost feel as if we’d like to say, God, why did you allow that to happen? God says, what have I done? Why are you blaming me? Because every intelligent order of being yonder will cry, hallelujah for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, true and righteous are His judgments and His ways past finding out.

So, remember that always. That instead of the angels and those spiritual beings who understand what’s going on on earth. Instead of their going back to God with a scowl and say, God, why did you allow that woman to get a cancer? Why did you allow that man to get the flu and lose two weeks work when his family needs it? Why did you allow this? Not one of them goes back to God and finds fault with the Holy One who sits upon His throne. They all cried true and righteous are Thy judgments O God. For they see things in the right light. Theirs is the correct spiritual philosophy and ours is the incorrect one.

Now, I want to ask you are you man enough? Are you adult enough? Are you mature enough to take this? I’ve just been reading in Ezekiel where God says, Son of man, here’s a roll, eat it and it will be sweet, but it will make your belly better. Get into it and it will make you better, that is, in your deep heart. It’s a hard thing to take, but are you ready to take it that way every day” Your lives are borrowed days. Long ago God said, the soul that sinneth, it shall die and sin entered into the world and death by sin and it is appointed unto man once to die.

And every day you live is a borrowed day. Every day you live is a bonus given you by the kind mercy of God and you don’t deserve it. And every dollar you earn is a bonus which God gives you. And every year your child lives and grows up is a kind mercy of God and not anything you deserve. And God said you won’t take it that way. You insist on looking at it the other way. Therefore, because thou serveth not the Lord thy God joyfully and with gladness of heart for the abundance of all of these things, thou shalt serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, sorrowfully. So, my brethren, we’ve got to get this straight. That point number one.

Now, there’s your fact. There’s your fact. And if you fool with that, or if we try to exempt ourselves from it and say that’s true of the human race, but I haven’t done anything wrong. All right, you won’t serve God joyfully and instead of taking this day, this 10th day of November 1957 as the day the Lord gave you a bonus, something added and extra, which you don’t deserve, why you think that it’s alright for you to be here and live. Just so long God says, all right, you will be defeated inwardly because you look at things wrong. And you put the blame where it doesn’t belong and take the blame away from where it does. And you make God a sinner and you make yourself the saint. You won’t serve me joyfully, therefore, you’ll serve your enemies sorrowfully.

Then the second thing is that God is merciful. And this is the second fact. There are two of them. And against these two facts we must judge everything else. I am going tonight by the grace of God come down the years. I hope we can have time for seven minutes of testimony tonight.  And then, we don’t want to be late, but I want to, I want to start with Adam and come down the years and show how these facts are.

Now God is merciful, full of grace, long suffering, and the grace of God has appeared to all men. And He is so merciful and gracious that He gave His life for the very ones who took his life. You hear me, He gave His life for them that took His life. This would never be done since the beginning of time, no nor ever after, that any man should give himself for them, who took his life away. And yet He did this, so that against our sin, our unmitigated sin, against our unqualified sin, the sin for which there’s no excuse and no, cannot possibly be extenuated. Against that sin is the shining mercy of God, full of mercy and full of grace and long suffering. And this grace of God has appeared to all men. And Jesus Christ came in that grace of God and brought life and immortality to light and remitted for a while the sinner and because God is merciful, we who were sentenced to die, still live. And because God is gracious, we who ought to be dead are still alive. Because God is gracious, we who ought to be in hell are on earth, and we’ll be in heaven. What have I done against you, said God? Why can’t you get along with me? Why are you always in the state of sour defeat and grumbling? Why do you live like that? You blame me and you can’t get on and you’re serving your enemy secretly. You’re serving the enemy.

And you’ve listened to the devil and your brain has been poisoned, and you’ve got a wrong outlook on life. Keep these two great facts before you. I ought to be dead, and I am alive. O wonder of wonders, it’s the goodness of God. I ought to be in hell, but I’m on earth and I’ll soon be in heaven. Wonder of wonders, how good God is.

My brother, if you will get that attitude and hold it and keep it, then maybe on top of it, God can give you some spiritual experiences that will last and stick and turn you into a saint and make something out of you and out of me. We deserve to die, yet we live. And by whose mercy do we live? By the mercy of God, this poor soul is set free. And we took a life away. In addition to all our other sins, a Man came to us and we took His life away. And whose life did we take away? The only man in the world who didn’t have to give it up. There was only one man since the beginning of time who didn’t have to give a life up, and that was the man Christ Jesus. When He came squalling into the world and cried his baby cry, death turned away and shrugged his angry shoulders and frowned and said, I have no claim. Here’s a baby I’ve got no claim on. I thought I had a claim on every baby; and every baby that’s born has a mark on its forehead. Death puts it there.

But there was one baby born that didn’t. He looked like any other baby and nobody knew the difference. It was a seven or eight, nine-pound baby boy and there had to be a mother and He nursed at her breast. He got His little clothes changed and His little bits, a whisp hair brushed back by the shining eye, with the hand and the shining eyes and happy mother. He was like every other baby and nobody knew the difference. But death knew that he had no mortgage on that Baby. And if He ever died, He’d have to do it voluntarily. Everybody that’s born, he owns a first mortgage on their soul.

Death holds a first mortgage and he will foreclose when he feels like it. But not that baby. He had no mortgage and he couldn’t foreclose. But one day that Baby, now grown to be a tall Man, mature and strong and wise, walked out and died and gave Himself. He gave Himself for all the other little babies who had the mark unseen. His mother examined the tiny little brow and smoothed it and pets him and coos over him and says isn’t he pretty and he is. They’re nice, they’re nice. But death sees under the skin what the shining faced mother can’t see. I’ve got a mortgage in there, tattooed into his brain. There came One who had no tattoo from hell on Him. And that death had no dominion over. And He gave Himself to die, the Just for the unjust and took our place and died and gave us His place to live. And we’re alive now only for that reason. The angels that sinned and kept not their first estate, God hurled them down to hell. And the demons, those strange, sinister creatures from somewhere, God sent them into darkness. But us He let live. And we’re here because God is merciful. Do you get those two facts? We ought to die, but we’re alive. We ought to be in hell, but we’re on earth and will soon be in heaven. And through the infinite mercy of God, He lets rebels reign as princes in the house of David.

Oh, my people, what does God owe you? Oh, my people. What does God owe you? You won’t serve him joyfully. Therefore, you serve your enemies in frustration and resentment and bitterness, and I’m describing some. Instead of receiving the kindness of God joyfully and going about filled with gratitude as a man might be who was sentenced to die, but who walked out of the death cell a free man and raised his hand in the sunshine and thanked God he was alive. Instead of that, we fault find and criticize. A solo is off key.  Yours wasn’t Brother, but the soloist is off key. What kind of singing is that? The sermon isn’t quite as good. The old man is slipping. A Board member doesn’t come through quite as they should. What’s the matter with that Board? And so, it goes on all the way up and down the line. Brethren, what has God done to us? We see, we look at things wrong.

Tonight, I want to explain from Abel down and show how today you and I ought to be the most thankful, it’s a little early for Thanksgiving, but the most thankful and the most grateful and the happiest people in all of wide world. And we will be when we learn to get along with God.

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“The Secret Place of the Most High”

The Secret Place of the Most High

Pastor and author, A.W. Tozer

July 29, 1956

Now, the first verse of Psalm 91. I preached three times last Sunday and twice every other day except one, to what one man called a motley group. They weren’t motley, but they were certainly inter-denominational. And sitting on the front row every blessed meeting was an Episcopalian rector. And he shook hands with me over and over, and expressed his appreciation and sense of oneness with the kind of truth that we were trying to bring.

But now, the 91st Psalm, he that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. This 91st song is one which, because of its misuse by so many, I have never, I wonder if I could confess this, cared too much for. Probably I shouldn’t say there’s any passage of Scripture I don’t care for. But even you’ll admit there are some passages dearer to you than others and some that you don’t read, except dutifully, when you’re reading through the Bible. And the 91st Psalm was one, among all those golden shining songs, that to me, has been sort of dutiful song, which I read, but didn’t really get too much out of. And I have never preached on it in 28 years that I can recall, though, I probably have referred to texts from it occasionally. But I’ll let me correct my fault this morning. And perhaps for the next Sunday or two, and talk from the 91st Psalm.

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High. Let’s break that down. First, there is the place. Now, place is a location, and it can be and usually is a geographical location. It is also a moral or spiritual or mental location by extension of the word. But let’s not forget that it’s a real place. The secret place of the Most High is not a poetical phrase only. It is a real place, having an exact location, not vague, nor indefinite. It is so real that we can be in it or we can be out of. We can be nearer to it, or far from it. We can be at any time, approaching it or going further away from it. That’s a real place. And yet it is not a physical place.

The secret place of the Most High is not a church. I do not want you ever to become church Christians in the sense that you’re building Christians. I don’t want you to be tabernacle Christians. We have had an epidemic of tabernacle-ism, and I don’t like it. But I’ve said enough on that, I think in the past, but still, I don’t want you to think that you must come to a church in order to be in the secret place of the Most High. This building is not the secret place of the Most High. I was around here when it was built. And anything that I saw being built, couldn’t be the secret place of the Most High because Moses wrote about the secret place of the Most High, assuming Moses is the author, and I think everybody does, of this Psalm. And so, anything that Moses wrote about couldn’t be this building, because 16 years ago, I saw it being built.

So, it is not a church. It is not even a prayer closet. We say sometimes that I’m glad we testify and glad I came to church today. I’m glad to be able to sit in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Oh no, the church is not the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, neither is the meeting the heavenly place in Christ Jesus. That is a spiritual location, not a physical one. So that not even your prayer closet, however precious your secret times of prayer may be. That’s not what the Psalmist meant when he said, he that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High. It’s not a shrine, and it is not a meeting. It’s not a country, not even a holy land. It is not a denomination, and it is not a doctrine.

The secret place of the Most High is the heart of God, the place of faith in God, love for God, confidence in the love of God in Christ, obedient trust in the mercy of God. It is a state of heart, in a state of heart. It is our state of heart in the heart of God. That is the secret place of the Most High. And we may enter it and we may abide in it. And we may be in it or out of it. But the secret place of the Most High is there for us.

Now, it is a secret place. And it is secret, not because it is hard to find, nor because it is hidden or difficult. It is a secret place because there are so few who enter it. It is an open secret, and is secret only because there are so few Christians that ever find or enter into the secret place of the Most High. There are a few hungry, eager people in all the denominations who are seeking the secret place of the Most High and are finding it.

I do not intend to come to you from a week away and tell you about what happened there, though we walked the borderline of revival to the point where they were up into the night hours into four o’clock in the morning, seeking God and getting through to victory. But they were of all denominations, and I find these seekers after God in every denomination. Let me tell you this. I have told two or three here since I’ve come about one young man who was at the Highland conference. This young man was one of the best-looking young fellows that I have ever seen. Eighteen years old, handsome to the point of being a Caller ad and muscular, muscled up great chest, great arms, and simply good and wholesome to look at down to his waist. And from there down, was a polio paralytic, completely, and had to be in a wheelchair.

That young man, in his eagerness to get to this place; he comes from a broken home and had no help there, presumably. But in order to get to this place, this young, eager 18-year-old boy, hopelessly paralyzed from the waist down, his shrunken, flimsy legs dragging behind him like fins. This boy hitchhiked 150 miles in a wheelchair to get to that conference. And one day to their astonishment, wheeled himself into the office and said, I want to work so I can stay here. And they said what can you do? He said, I can trim hedges. I can do things. So, they gave him a job. And he pulled himself around, trimming hedges in order that he might be there at the conference. And he was at every meeting, sitting there, listening eagerly.

When I think of that young man, I’m bothered for some of you who have been brought up in Christian homes and have been surrounded with all the nurture and spiritual culture that could be brought to bear on you. And yet, here’s a young man from an un-Christian, divided home, hitchhiking in a wheelchair 150 miles to get to that place of God, that place of God.

A little girl whose father had tried to kill her mother, whether she saw it or not, I’m not sure and she had escaped and the neighbors had gotten the police to get away this drunken beast. And this little girl hated her father until she was violent. And they were trying, they were soothing her and trying to teach her and one great big young fella with a daughter about her age used to lead her around. She put her arms around his neck and said, oh, I wish I had a daddy like you. But she was only to have him for two weeks, and then back to that.

Brethren, when I think of how without a chance in the wide world, without anything to encourage them, without anybody apparently to help them at all or even pray for them. Some people touched by a divine stroke, find their way through. And others, it’s secret. They don’t know where it is. They haven’t found it and probably never will. It’s as unreal to them as fabled Atlantis, the island that’s supposed to have arisen out of the Atlantic Ocean stayed a while and gone back down again, beautiful, but only temporary.

So, this secret place isn’t Atlantis to the average person. And they that dwell in it tend to be different I have noticed. They who dwell in this secret place are different. They’re peculiar, and they’re a little bit careless of this life. And they tend to flock together, though they’re lonely. And they know each other without an introduction. I’ve said this many times, but it’s been confirmed, it’s good to arrive at a conclusion spiritually, and then, as you move about, find that your conclusion is not being disallowed, but that it’s being confirmed and strengthened. And my conclusion that the people of God today are not the mobs and the crowds, but people, the elect, picked out from all of the religious hubbub and united together in a bond of spiritual union. And they know each other. This Episcopalian rector, why he and I had the sweetest, warmest, longest talks together. And he even wants a list of books that he ought to read so he’ll get to know God better. I’m going to send it to him.

Well, I am not an Episcopalian. I never could fool around with an altar and a robe, but he does. And yet, there is a hungry heart among the Episcopalians and hungry hearts everywhere; and they know each other without an introduction. They say this, Mr. Jones, Mr. Smith, and they shake hands and look at each other. And after the first prayer, they know they’ve known each other in Christ long before that.

Then it says, the secret place of the Most High. Now that adjective “most” is there, but the high, since it’s supposed to be a noun, usually an adjective, it’s God Himself, the Most High. Usually it said, the Most High God, but here He is called the Most High, and so it’s God.

Now, the first occurrence of the term is back in the book of Genesis, so far as we know the first time it was used. And Abraham when he heard that Lot was taken captive, armed and his trained servants born in his house, 318, and he divided himself against the enemy, and sent his servants out and smote them and pursued them unto Hobab. And he brought back all the goods and also brought back Lot and his goods and the woman also and the people. And the king of Sodom went out and Melchizedek king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was the priest of the Most High God. And He blessed Abraham and said, blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth. And blessed be the Most High God which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And Abraham gave Melchizedek tithes of all. And the king of Sodom said unto Abram, give me the persons and take the goods to thyself. And Abraham said to the king of Sodom, I have lifted up my hand unto the Lord, the Most High God, the possessor of heaven and earth, but I will not take from a thread even to a shoe latchet. And I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou should say, I have made Abram rich.

Now, Moses wrote this. And if Moses also wrote the Psalm, you see the spiritual and mental tie in here. The Most High, he was thinking of the Most High God who was Jehovah, possessor of heaven and earth and the meaning of the words to us. We have the disadvantage of knowing too much about it. But there were pagan gods all around Abram and all around Melchizedek and the city of Salem. But here was the one God, the Most High God, the God over all. And here was the Hierarchy of Heaven, the princedom, the powers, the angels, the seraphim, and those watchers and holy ones that Daniel spoke about. But above them all was the Most High God throned in life, the Unbeginning One, immortal and all wise and all powerful. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the Most High God.

So, this secret place, this spiritual location, this home, this mansion, this abiding place of the heart, is secret only because so few know it, but it’s in the heart, the Most High God. And they that dwell in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. And you and I actually don’t know what this means, because it’s rare that we’re caught out in the sun in such unbearable heat that we have to hurry to a place of shade. But in the Bible lands where this was written, the shadow meant the difference between life and death. Because you see, here, the sunrays slant, and we don’t get them. They’re not as dangerous, but there they’re straight down. And that is the reason that the terror could walk by day and by night, and that there could be sun stroke. And there could be those who were smitten by the stroke and even the moon at night they said. The light and heat were sufficient that it could strike some people, weak persons or old persons. And they just had to have shadow.

Oh, we sing, Jesus is a rock in a weary land, the weary land, the shelter in the time of storm. And in the desert land there, in the waste howling wilderness, the sun during those long days came straight down. Our missionaries in those areas have to wear helmets to keep from having sunstroke because of the rays of the sun. And they need shadow, they need shade. That’s why they talk so much about our God being a shade and a shadow and a place of cool retreat, and a rock and a tree, because they needed shadow there in those days.

Now, we don’t understand it physically as they did, but we understand it or should understand it spiritually. For we need a shadow from the heat as bad as they did. We need a shadow from the heat caused by friction and the heat caused by pressure, those two kinds of heat, and we desperately need them. The friction of moral incompatibility, incompatibility with the world; the incompatibility of the Christian heart with the world.

If you don’t know what I mean, you’re not anywhere near the secret place of the Most High. If I’m speaking a strange language and you know the English words, but you don’t know what I mean, then I would urge you to turn your face toward the secret place and push on at any cost till you enter there, because there is a moral incompatibility with the world. Lot felt it in Sodom. The Scripture said he vexed, he chased, he irritated his righteous soul, for though he went to Sodom and failed tragically. He was a good man in a terribly bad city, and he couldn’t do anything about it. He had no power to make them obey Him. So, he had to watch their wickedness. He had to see their evil. He had to. And thus, he vexed and irritated his soul.

There was a friction set up by the moral incompatibility between Sodom and the world. And there was Israel in Egypt, all the day in Egypt. Israel had to see that which shocked and wounded their Hebrew hearts. And Christ and apostate Israel, when our Lord came to apostate Israel, he walked up and down among them, and everywhere. Their religion of His day set up an irritation on His holy soul. And He was pressed between the upper and the nether millstone, ground, and the friction of His times. He said, the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. His zeal for God, in a temple where there were cattle and money-changers and worldlings and hypocrites and lawyers and rabbis that knew not God. When He heard the name of His Father spoken by lips that never had known His Father, it set up a friction on the personality of Jesus and hurt Him and wounded Him. And Paul, in his epistles, tells about how he wrote even weeping. And the Reformers in their day were men of wounds.

Somebody told me about Rolland Pierce, who was one of the Keswick brethren from Philadelphia, and they say a great man of God there, though I have not met him personally, I’ve had correspondence with him. But somebody told me that Rolland Pierce had been at Highland Lake the year before. And one day on a walk, he said, Brother, I’m a wounded man. I’m a wounded man. He said, I’m happy in Christ all right, but I’m wounded because of the church. I’m wounded because of religion in America today. I’m wounded for what’s going on. I’m glad he’s a wounded man. I wouldn’t solve his wounds. I wouldn’t in any wise try to heal or to comfort. It’s the wounded hearts that are going to win the world, or going to win Christianity back to Christ again in these last days. Only the wounded hearts ever know the true fellowship with God. And Paul, you remember, said he wanted to know the fellowship of His suffering in order that he might know Him.

Well, that suffering is necessary. And if you don’t know what I mean by moral incompatibility. If where you work you manage somehow by being up on baseball and everything else, and the latest current Reader’s Digest joke. If you manage to keep up on all that in order that you might live peacefully with the people you work with, then you don’t know what I mean. If you don’t know the loneliness and the heartache of being forced to work next desk to a man who smokes like Vesuvius and curses and embarrasses, if indeed it does embarrass the young ladies in the office by his off-color jokes. If you don’t feel morally incompatibility there, and the vexation and the irritation of being good in a bad world, then you won’t know what I mean. There will be no heat.

But to the Reformers, there was heat. And to the missionaries, there is heat. The missionary that must go out. Ed’s in the Valley today along with the rest of them. Imagine it, nakedness around about them, dirty, smelly, foul, nakedness. And according to all that I can hear, a sexiness which is so terrible and base and obscene, that it’s shocking and horrifying; and they’ve got to live with there. Well now, if that doesn’t set up friction and heat, the heat of incompatibility with the world. Oh, we need the secret place of the Most High.

And always remember, the secret place of the Most High is not a place you leave to do battle with the Lord, because it’s not a physical location. It is the place from which you reach out to do the battle of the Lord against the foe. Nobody needs leave the secret place of the Most High. When I go to preach somewhere, I don’t say goodbye to the secret place, as the soldier does to the barracks and goes out to get shot at. But I take the secret place with me. And every one of you can have the secret place of the Most High right there where the incompatibility is. Right there where the friction is. Right there where the heat is, and you must have it. Then you can hide there. Now all the sons of heaven who are on the earth will know this friction, this heat.

And then there’s a heat caused by pressure. Science and civilization have set up unthinkable pressures, simply unthinkable pressures. The pressure for instance to the human ear drums that come from airplanes. Now, I don’t want to seem to be an old grouch who believes in the horse and buggy. I don’t believe in the horse and buggy. I haven’t ridden in a horse and buggy for many, many years and don’t intend to go back to the horse and buggy. But they tell me that when we convert over to the rocket or jet planes, that it’s going to be ten times noisier than it is now. I don’t know what we’ll do. We’ll have to seal in our churches in order to be able to be heard when a plane goes over.

But science and civilization have set up pressures, the pressures, and that pressure creates heat. Those of you who’ve studied it know that a diamond is simply carbon. It’s the same as the coal you burn in a furnace. But it is coal, carbon that has been put under such unspeakable heat, such tremendous, such terrific heat, that it is set up, pressure I mean, that it is set up a heat which is so high that I wouldn’t even want to tell you for fear I’d miss it by thousands and tens of thousands of degrees. But that’s what makes a diamond. A diamond is simply carbon under pressure, that’s been put under pressure. And back in prehistoric times, perhaps, and such heat has been set up, a diamond has been made. Now, if you know how to do it, the heat and the pressure today can make you a diamond for the King’s crown. But think of the appalling consequences of those who don’t know where the cool place is while the heat’s on. Think of the pressure of civilization.

As I rode along with my friend, Reverend Tracy Miller of Scranton. He came up for a couple of days and took me out for a drive around the hairpin turns and winding ways of the mountains, the Catskill Mountains. And there we saw a building, sitting off a great building, a huge thing, a series of buildings covering what seemed to be acres and acres and acres. And I said, isn’t that a vast institution by the middle of what is it? He said, that’s one of New York’s institutions for the insane. And I said, what a vast thing, isn’t it? Yes, and he said it is being added to continually, continually. New York is paying a price for being the hub of the universe. It’s paying a price in the pressure set up by the high concentration of civilized gadgets and we are paying a pressure for it my friends, don’t forget it. Don’t forget it.

The farmer who chewed the straw with one foot on the lower rail and talked half an hour relaxed and restful over the fence to a neighbor, also chewing a straw, knew nothing of the pressure of the modern farmer who has mechanized his farm. Nothing of the pressure of the farmer who gets into his Piper plane and putts off somewhere to hear a professor lecture on how to get more out of his yield. He’ll get more yield out of his farm. The pressure has been set up. The competition is so fierce, it’s fierce everywhere. The competition in business, automobiles, manufacturers. Now, all cars are good cars now, competition has necessitated that. They’ve got to be. A poor car couldn’t last at all. They’re all good. But they’re all lying about how good they are, in order to get just a little ahead. And if one of them finds one little button and adds it the next year, the other one has that button. And thus, the competition is on, the pressure, the heat, the terror of it. It’s like a foot race. Have you ever seen the pictures or seen in reality, the boys that make those mile dashes and see them when they come in. Their faces are so strained. Their eyes are set in their heads, and it looks as if they might die of heart failure. The pressure is so terrible; just 1/10 of an inch maybe of a second may be the difference between losing and winning that race.

Well, now that’s where we are today. Everywhere, it’s competition, competition. And in certain areas of the evangelical world, it is the same. Everybody’s competing. Maybe you ought to have that kind of a man here. But you know, friends, years ago, I quit it. I don’t care who has a bigger church than mine. I don’t care who’s better known than I am. I don’t care. No competition, no jealousy, no competition. With my high nervous temperament, I would have been dead long ago, if I had not rested in God and found the secret place of the Most High and adopted a blessed, don’t care attitude toward all the religious competition. Let them run their foot races if they want to. It’s in the flesh. Let them tell how many people they have and how many dollars they have and how much they have. I don’t care at all. Last week, I went down, the week before last, I went down and had my doctor give me a check over; took my blood pressure and said you live to be 150 at this rate. No blood pressure, I had some I mean, but I mean, not high. Why? I could have a high blood pressure, I could. I could have hardening of the arteries, but they feel my arteries and say, soft as a young man. Because I will not live under pressure. I will not do it. It doesn’t do God’s work any good. It doesn’t help anybody. I will not live under the curse of pressure.

I have found the secret place, the hiding place of every precious thing. And there in the coolness of the heart of God, I can say, cool me O God and keep me cool while these hot breezes blow. And the magazines come out and everybody’s pushing in, urging in, then the religious press, everybody. I get stuff here all the time for immediate release it says. When I see that, it goes into the wastebasket. For immediate release, somebody wants me to plug him in the Alliance weekly. I plug nobody. Let him earn his spurs. If he’s a missionary and he’s doing a good work, we will report what he’s doing. If there is a good meeting somewhere, we put a little scrib up and tell the people to encourage the others to pray. God’s still working. But we will not plug anybody, because that’s carnal competition and heat. That fellow is running a temperature.

There is a place Brethren, where you don’t have to be under pressure, but you don’t have to run too much of the heat, just enough to make a diamond out of you but not enough to ruin you. A safe, cool, healing, restful life-giving place. It is the secret place of the Most High, and it’s entered by faith in Christ. Not the best people, not the good people, not people specially fitted for it, but just anybody that will enter. Anybody that will enter and there’s a way there, a blood-stained way. I heard Strat Shufelt on the record singing several times. They had records and played them out over the loudspeaker. I found a way through the blood, past the veil to the holy of holies with God. And I recognized Strat’s good old voice and I wanted to shake his hand though he was miles away. And he sang about that holy place, that good, holy place where he’d found, through the blood, past the veil, in the holy place. Brethren, that’s where we need to be today. And then, civilization won’t kill us. It won’t!

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“We Have Renounced”

We Have Renounced

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 7, 1958

I spent three days last week in New York City. I thought I would be seeing the Lemons there, but I did not. I must have misunderstood or they were busy at something else. I did meet there, to my surprise, someone who sends a greetings. Fresh in from Arabia, Bernice Hess, a member of this church was there. I only had a brief moment with her. But I think we’ll be seeing her around here again shortly.

Now, tonight, I hope that you can be present. I want to deliver my soul on the matter of the space age and what it’s all about. You’re hearing so much about it. And I want to talk about it from the standpoint of a Christian. I told you last week that I had first written an article on the subject and submitted it to a certain magazine, and they didn’t know whether they could take it or not because its prophetic views didn’t coincide. But I got a letter in New York while I was there that five or six editors had already unanimously agreed to print it so, it will be out I guess. And now, I want to preach sermon about that tonight. Then a week from tonight, and thereafter. I’ll be moving in and out of the city a little for some conferences, but I will always be here for Saturdays and Sundays; preach on the radio and at the church.

Beginning next Sunday night, I want to begin what will be the most costly series of sermons that I ever will have preached. Because, you can’t preach what I want to preach and be flippant or careless. It’s got to cost you something. I hope that you will be my word-of-mouth advertising agency and tell the people, a journey into the heart of God. I’ll preach of course from the Bible, nothing but the Bible, but I am going to make use of some thoughts and ideas presented by the lady Julian whom I have quoted here some, who lived 600 years ago. I preached a sermon here some years back, using a testimony of hers as my outline called, “Four Faithful Wounds, or three faithful ones was it? So please remember that tonight and tomorrow, next Sunday night beginning this series.

Now before the communion service, I want to say just a few words and make some comments on Paul’s testimony in 2 Corinthians Four. Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not. But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty. Not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully. But by manifestation of the Truth, commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves, your servant for Jesus sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, that shined in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Now, these are the words of the man of God, Paul. And he’s talking about the Christian ministry, not the preachers, but the ministry of the gospel, the ministry of the New Testament, as contrasted with the ministry of the Law, in his third chapter here. So, we will apply it not to preachers only, but to everybody that’s a Christian. To every Sunday school teacher, everybody that gives a testimony anywhere or writes a letter, or in any other way, gives witness to his faith in Christ. He says, therefore, seeing, and I have pointed out before many times, that this word, therefore, is one of the great key words of the New Testament, used 350 times in the New Testament and scores of times by Paul. And it means, for this reason. For this reason, he says, and it, it is the great logic word of the New Testament. It teaches us that our faith does not rest upon a fancy nor vision of whim, but it is a closely interwoven, interlocking spiritual system of truth. Or otherwise stated a great cathedral, in which every truth is a course in the stones, rising higher and higher, always into the blue above.

And he said, Therefore, because of what he had said previously, and previously had pointed out, that the ministry of the church, and not the preacher’s ministry, but the ministry of the church. It was the ministry of the New Testament spirit, instead of the Old Testament law. Just as Israel was built around the law, so the church is built around the gospel. And this gospel is a witness. And that witness is a witness of glory, a witness of life instead of death, a witness that will finally move on until, we, by the Spirit of the Lord are changed into the image and glory of Christ.

Now, he said, therefore, because this is true, therefore. Therefore, we have renounced. Here is a flat, blunt word, renounce, renunciation. There’s only one way to handle some things, and that is by renunciation. There are some things you can compromise with. There are some things that you can negotiate. If somebody comes suggesting something to you, having a position different from yours, different from your church’s, there are some things you can negotiate. You can compromise it, because you don’t have all the right. And if they have some wrong, why, you can eliminate that, and thus you can get together. That’s possible.

But there are some things you can’t compromise. And there’s no place for negotiation. You’re a businessman and you have a partner. And that partner is interested in a business venture, which will include you. It’s going to be within the law, but it’s going to be crooked. It is going to take advantage of somebody’s weakness or the lack of knowledge of somebody. And while you will never be caught by the law for it, it will nevertheless be taking an unfair advantage. And your partner comes to you and suggests you do that. Now there isn’t any negotiation possible there. You don’t compromise with a thing like that. You renounce it. Someone wants you to drink, or wants you to engage in some evil–only this once. You don’t negotiate. You don’t compromise, you repudiate.

And Paul says, we have repudiated. What did you repudiate? He said, he repudiated the hidden things of darkness. Seeing that we are following a Christ with unveiled face, why therefore, should we ever engage in hidden things or be interested within hidden things of darkness. Following the Christ whose face shines with light, why should we be found in the darkness?

Now in the church of Christ, secret dealings are unthinkable. In Washington, they have much that they call, top priority, classified. And if the word classified is stamped across a document, nobody dares talk about it. And it’s not to get to the newspapers, it’s classified. Now, I can understand out in a world where it’s dog eat dog and animal claw animal and devil fight devil. I can understand why it’s entirely possible for a nation to deal in some secret things, and not tell everything they know to everybody, particularly in times of great distress and wars. But it is unthinkable that the church should ever have anything they can’t talk about. It could be possible, and I suppose it might be, that a Board or a man or a group within a church would not want to tell everything they’re doing, for the sake if you can’t explain what it takes, to take 24 hours of talking to make everything plain.

But if anything is hidden for reasons of secrecy, that is wrong. We dare not try to promote God’s work by secret methods. We can’t promote God’s work by the devil’s means. God promotes His work by His means. And God shining as the Light, shines as the Light and hides nothing. And God is never the author of concealment. But perhaps I should modify what I’ve said. Maybe I should throw in a footnote and just say this, that if you are a Christian and you happen to know that some other Christian, brother or sister, was caught unaware, and his feet were caught in a snare, and he fell. And you know it, but you know also the tears and the repentance and the grief. And nobly and earnestly he got to his feet again, and how now with humility, and a chastened spirit, he seeks to walk with his God. Ah, love covers a multitude of sins, and then you can be right in concealment.

Do not imagine for a moment that frankness and candor requires that you spread around everything you know about everybody. No, no, love covers. And so when we can be quiet about other people’s faults, and we can spread a veil of charity over the weaknesses of our brethren. That’s good. And so I would modify what I’ve said, by saying that God is never the author of concealment, and the church can never have any secret dealings. But I would modify it by saying only, where some weakness or fault or sin in a brother has caused him to fail his God, then in quietness and charity, we can keep still about it.

And God forgives and we forgive and it’s nobody’s business, but the God who was pardoned. So therefore, it is, I suppose, quite proper, that in that way, we can sometimes conceal what we know. But if it’s to hide anything because it’s not right, if it’s to hide anything because we are trying to put something across, if it is like a lawyer, to push one kind of evidence and soft pedal another, never will God have anything to do with it. Hidden things God hates.

Then, not walking in craftiness, sly and cunning and clever it says that means. Now, the ministry has suffered a great deal by cleverness. The first book I wrote was reviewed as being clever. And I’ve been ashamed of that book ever since. I think it was a good book, that is, it told the story of a good man. But it was a clever book. And I’ve been ashamed that anybody could ever use that. Cleverness, my brethren, is not good. Christians of all people should not try to be clever. They should try to be, candor, not cleverness, should be the Christians goal. The Son of God was not a clever man.

There are men living today that are clever. As I have said here before and used as an illustration, I listened to interviews on the radio quite a bit, these Capital Cloak Room and Capital Assignment and Face the Nation and all of these, where newsmen will get some key public figure and interrogate him. And it’s quite amusing to see how little you can get out of some people. They’re clever. They asked him questions, and some of those newsmen get positively blunt in their questions, they get almost nasty as they question these figures. Some of them come out boldly, and blunt and talk right out, a lot of them do. But most of them don’t. When you’re through, if I were to ask now, Mr. Tozer, will you write up, give us the conclusion. What did this public figure say? I’d have to throw up my hands and say, I don’t know. Because he didn’t want anybody to know. He’s clever. And he stands before the electorate and delivers clever talks, and he gets elected, because nobody’s quite sure on whose side he is. Or that is rather I should say, everybody thinks that he’s on their side. That’s better. And then everybody votes for him.

Well, that’s all right in politics, if they want to do it, but there’s no place for a Christian. The Church of God never should have anything like this. We should seek not to be clever, but to be holy. And yet I know that there are preachers who have majored in clever sayings, and have gone all over the world repeating dutifully those clever sayings, and they get the same laugh from the same audiences over and over and from the new ones always, and they write them into books. God forgive us. No cleverness, my brethren, we have renounced these things. We have renounced hidden things and walking in craftiness.

Handling the Word of God deceitfully, we renounce that too. That’s another thing. Now, that means adulterating the Word of God, so that it, for a purpose. And that means using the Bible for bait. You know, the difference between bait and food, isn’t what you think it is. Because a bait is food too. The difference between bait and food is, that food is food and nothing more. Whereas bait is food with a hook in it. And that sounds clever. I’m merely trying to explain. There’s no attempt there to be cute, but just saying that bait is food with a hook in it. A fish goes around, swimming comfortably around in the water for years, when it sees a bit of food, it goes up and sucks it in and eats it. And then one day it sees a piece of food and it recognizes it. It’s a worm or it’s a grasshopper, and it goes up and sucks it in but it has a hook hidden in it. Pretty soon, the fish is up on the dock or up on the bank and the boy is unhooking it, putting it in his little basket.

Well, that’s the difference my friends, and the Word of God should never at any time be used as a bait to get something else. It should be delivered, whether it’s a witness given by a layman, whether it’s a teaching in a class, or whether it’s a preacher or an evangelist or whoever it is. The Word of God should always be preached with sacred candor. And if you don’t get the fish, then you don’t get the fish. But nevertheless, you will please God and fulfill your duty by giving the truth. And never soften it nor smooth it nor make it easy.

I got a letter from somebody living in St. Petersburg, Florida. I don’t know the lady. I never heard of her before in my life. And I don’t even know that I can help her. Here’s what she said. She said, some years ago, I read something by the Puritans about the Holy Spirit. And you said, this and this. And she said, I couldn’t stand the searching. So I put it down. And she said, but God has never let me get rest. And now, I’ve got to have it again. I’ve got to know. I’ve got to get right with God on this. And she said, if you can tell me, she said, I think my husband lent it out, and I can’t find it, and I don’t know the name of, but if you can tell me where to find it. I will get it and go to my knees and wait on God and pray through.

Now, she got a hook all right, but it was never a concealed one. It was right there for anybody to see. And she threw it from her and said, I don’t want this road. I can’t stand the searching. But the Holy Ghost has taken some months to do His work, and now she wants to be searched. I believe that the Word of God should be so presented, that the blessed Holy Ghost can put His kind net around the individual. But never, never should a man use the Word of God as bait to hook somebody, or as a means of getting money or getting fame or getting something else. Complete candor is what we want.

Then he says, we commend ourselves to the consciences of all men. To what should a good man of God seek to commend himself? To the prejudices of his groups? I’ve told you, I think in other times, how it’s possible to get men to become a member of a church and have your own little group and want to live so as to commend yourselves to the prejudice of your group. No, it won’t do. Too many abuses, too many errors come from there. Billy Sunday, you know, said one time in a sermon. He was a very rough preacher. He didn’t try to please everybody. In fact, he didn’t try to please anybody. He said one day, they claim I rubbed the old cat the wrong way. He said, my message to the old cat is, turn around. He was rubbing the right direction, but the old cat was headed the wrong way.

Now, we commend ourselves to the consciences of all good men. And if we try to commend ourselves to the prejudices and narrow views of our own little group, pretty soon, we’ll be stroking the right way. But the cat will be facing the right wrong way, and and we’ll be wasting our time. Let us always stroke the right direction. And then let people turn around or else let the sparks fly. Did you ever take a cat and stroke her and a partly dark room the wrong way. They always spark.

Well, the next thing is, should we attempt to commend ourselves to denominational loyalties? I am psychologically unable to understand how anybody can commit himself to a denomination and say now whatever they believe, I believe, and I won’t question it. I don’t know how this could be. With a Bible open, if I had no Bible, I could do that. But with the Bible before me, I can’t do it. It’s impossible that I should do it. So, I’m not going to try to commend myself to my denomination. Denomination is not the master. Truth is the master and Christ is the Lord. So, we are to commend ourselves to God and to the consciences of every man. Or shall we seek to commend ourselves to the current religious vote? No. The true man of God is seldom found on the side of the crowd. Very rarely, that he gets on the side of the crowd, and that’s usually in a windstorm, and he hasn’t got his bearings yet and the dust hasn’t cleared. But as soon as the dust clears, he usually withdraws from the crowd.

Old Thomas à Kempis said, as many times as I have gone among men, I have returned less a man than I was before. And the ages have read that book and loved it. But if the masses are for it, the chances are very strong, that it isn’t right. Jesus walked alone, and I think His children walk alone pretty much. We walk with Moses and Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Isaiah and Peter and Paul and James and John, but we don’t worry about the crowd. We can mend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God, and appeal away from prejudices and from denominational loyalties, and appeal straight to the hearts of men.

So live that when Thy summons comes, every honest man will have to say, you were a good man. And even if they didn’t go your way and didn’t follow you, their honest heart, so far as it’s honest, has got to admit, at least to themselves, that you were a good man. In the sight of God, those five words are very significant words to me, in the sight of God. You know, my friends, it won’t be very long. They’re going aren’t they? Old Brother Savage is with his Savior now. Old dear old Brother George Hoffman, who never would let me calling Mr. Hoffman, He insisted always it was George. So George Hoffman, he’s about to go, I think he’ll never come out of the sleep he’s in now.

Well, to one that time is going where they’ll only have the sight of God, that come out of all the caves and hiding places everywhere, and stand in the sight of God, it won’t be very long for anybody. It may be very soon for some. I’ll tell you this again. I gave it a sermon some years ago. I forget this man’s name. I’m sorry that I do not recall which of the great celebrated artists it was. But he was a Christian as well as an artist. And when he died, or before he died, of course, he gave when he knew he was dying, he gave an order that an epitaph was to be on his grave, chiseled into the stone that marked his last resting place. And here were the simple words, here lies, whoever it was, and beneath it, What I was as an artist meant a great deal to me while I lived. What I was as a Christian, is all that matters to me now.

In the sight of God, what I am as a preacher, I suppose, maybe means more to me than I think it ought to mean to me. But there will be a day on what I am as a preacher, will never be mentioned. What I am as a Christian, it’s always going to matter.

Now we’re going into this communion service. And it’s for everybody, whether you’re visiting a child of God, you’re welcome at the Father’s table. Whether you’re a member here or any Alliance church or no Alliance, church. If you’re a member of the body of Christ, we welcome you. Only try to do what you do in the sight of God. We’ll try to do what we do in the sight of God. So, let’s have as our motto, this we do in the sight of God. Brother, lead us in a song as in the sight of God. Brethren, come in the sight of God. And we’ll have our communion service, as in the sight of God.

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“The Word Made Flesh – The Mystery of It”

The Word Made Flesh – The Mystery of It

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

December 20, 1953

In the Book of John, the first chapter, verses 14 to 18 inclusive: and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father. John bare witness of Him and cried, saying, This is He of whom I spake. He that cometh after me, is in time, is preferred before me, that is, in honor, for He was before me, that is in rank. And out of his fullness have all we received, grace following grace. For the Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.

I remember years ago, I think I mentioned this before, reading somewhere, a great literary critic, comparing two men, Milton and Shakespeare. He said that Milton was great, but unquestionably, Shakespeare was greater. He said that Milton had imagination enough to select for his great work, a theme as vast as Paradise Lost and Regained, which gave him full sweep from the dim dawn of empty nothingness through to the triumph of Christ after His resurrection. And Milton says, when he starts out, that he’s going to soar above the Aeolian Mount, and justify the ways of God to men.

Now said the critic, Milton boldly declares that he’s going to soar high and do amazing things. Then, says he, he astonishes us by doing exactly what he set out to do. But he said further, so much mightier and so much more brilliant was the imagination of the man Shakespeare, that He limited himself deliberately to small subjects in short sections of history. He said, If he had attempted anything as vast as Milton, that is, the sweep of time from timeless yesterday to timeless tomorrow as Milton did, he would have died of plethora of thought. He’d have had a brain hemorrhage. It would have been too big for him, because the vastness of it would have called so much out of the man that he would have exploded.

Now, that was one man’s opinion. It sounds pretty good, and I introduced it here only because I feel in selecting this passage of Scripture, so completely inadequate, that if I blow up, even in a mild attempt, to expound what is buried here, you will know that it’s only normal, because John, this mighty man who was infinitely mightier than even Shakespeare, takes us up into the Godhead where an old Milton could go; and certainly no secular Shakespeare could ever go, and introduces us to spheres and circles of Deity so high and lofty and noble, that if we follow him, we’ll certainly die in the attempt. But all we can hope to do is to toddle along on our short legs and gaze heavenward like a goose that said, her wings clipped, and whose heart is in the skies but whose wings just won’t take her there.

Now I’ve said all this because, my best faith, my loftiest expectations could not possibly allow me to believe that I can do justice to a text that begins, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and ends, no man has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He have declared Him. We will do this then tonight. We will walk along the broad seashore of God and pick up a shell here and there and hold it up to the light and admire it’s beauty. And then turn away and say, we’ve only picked up a shell again, and have a pocket full of shells maybe to take with us. But on all sides, there stretches the vastness of the seashore, round the great lip of the ocean, and far beyond anything that we can ever hope to see yet buried here.

Now we notice first of all that he says the Word became flesh, or the Word was made flesh. And I would point out, that we have here, and stated in four words, one of the darkest mysteries of human thought. How the Deity could cross the wide, yawning gulf that separates what is God from what is not God. For in the universe, there are really only two things, God and not God. That which is God and that which is not God. And all that is not God was made by God. And God was made by none.

So we have God and not God. And the gulf that separates between God and not God, that is, between the Creator and the creature, between the Being we call God and all other beings, is I say, a great and vast and yawning gulf, and how God could bridge this. How He could do this, I say, constitutes one of the profoundest and darkest mysteries that human thought can ever give itself to, and how God could join the Creator to the creature. If you have never thought very much about this, it may not seem so amazing. But if you have given it a little thought, you will see how astonishing it is, that unbridgeable gulf between God and not God.

For the very archangels and the seraphim and the cherub that shield the stones of fire are not God, so that there is a gulf fixed, a vast gulf, and the Gulf of infinitude, and how God managed to bridge that, and how He could join Himself to His creatures. And how He could limit the Limitless, or in the language we hear more popularly, how the Infinite could never become the finite. And how that which had no limit which is God should deliberately impose upon Himself limitations. And how God and why God would favor one order of being above another. For if you read your Bible, you will discover that man is not the only order of being. Man in his sinful pride thinks he is. We don’t even believe in angels anymore. We think angels are simply Santa Clauses with wings. And Protestants don’t believe in angels anymore. Foolishly, you don’t believe in angels.

No, we don’t believe in cherubim nor seraphim nor creatures nor watchers nor holy ones nor any of these strange principalities and powers that walk so darkly and brightly through the passages of the Bible. We don’t believe in them as much as we should at any rate, and yet they’re there. And mankind is only one order of God’s creatures. And why God should favor one above the other? For it is written in the Book of Hebrews, that God took not upon Him the nature of angels, but He took upon Him the seed of Abraham. Abraham certainly was not equal to an angel. One would suppose that God in stepping down should step down as little as He dared or could. That He would stop with an angel or a seraphim, but instead He came down to the lowest order and took upon Himself the nature of Abraham, the seed of Abraham. Paul throws up his hands, even that man Paul who was declared to be one of the six greatest intellects of all time. That great man of God threw up his hands and said, great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh. And I don’t know but what this is the most becoming approach to the whole subject is, to throw up our hands and say, O Lord God, Thou knowest. For there are so many more things in heaven and earth that are unknown in our theology, so that it’s all a mystery.

And I would quote Wesley here, at least the gist of what he said, when I point out that it’s a dark mystery how God could stoop down and become man and bridge the yawning gulf, enjoying Himself and limit to flesh and limit the Limitless. Wesley said, distinguish the act from the method by which the act is performed. And do not reject a fact because you do not know how it was done. I think that’s very wise. And we would come, it would be very becoming to us if we should enter the presence of God, reverently bowing our heads, and singing these carols and saying that, it’s so God, but we don’t know how. We will not reject the fact because we do not know the operation by which it was brought to pass.

Now, this much we can know at least, we can know that the Incarnation required no compromise of Deity. Let us remember it, that when God became incarnate, there was no compromise there. The gods of the Roman Pantheon, the gods of Greece, and the gods of the Scandinavian regions, were gods that would compromise themselves. The old Valhalla was full of gods that were compromisers and the Elysian Fields and the Pantheon and all that. That wherever the gods were, they always were gods who had compromised themselves one way or another.

But the Holy God, who is God and all else, not God, that God, our Father who art in heaven could never compromise Himself, so that the Incarnation was wrought and accomplished, this deep, dark, yawning mystery of incarnation was accomplished without any compromise of the Deity. God did not degrade Himself by this condescension. He did not in any sense make Himself to be less than God. He remained God, and everything else remained not God. The Gulf still existed even after Jesus Christ had become man and had dwelt among us.

So that instead of God degrading Himself when He became man, He by the act of incarnation elevated mankind to Himself. He did not degrade Himself to mankind. That’s pointed out in one of the old creeds. The Athanasian Creed pointed out very carefully. The old church fathers were very cautious here and they would not allow us to believe that God, when He became flesh, became flesh by a coming down of the Deity in the flesh, but by a taking up of mankind into God. And thus, we do not degrade God, but we elevate man, that is the wonder of redemption.

Now we can know this again, that this unison or union with a man and God is affected under perpetuity. God can never back out of His bargain. God can never cease to be, in that sense, man. The second person of the Trinity can never, what should we say, un-incarnate Himself or deincarnate Himself. He became incarnated forever, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Now at first God dwells with men.

I like to dream over the past. There’s a book written called “Earth’s Earliest Ages.” I have never read that book. I have looked through it, and I have concluded that the man knows more about the antediluvian days than Moses did. And when I discover a man who knows more than Moses on a subject in which Moses is a specialist, then I shy away from his book. But I confess that those early ages have a great fascination for me. And one of the passages that greatly charms my heart is that one that says that God came and walked in the garden in the cool of the day, and looked for Adam and Adam wasn’t there. Without reading anything into it, I think it’s safe to assume that that had been a common custom there. That that wasn’t the first time that God came to take a walk with Adam. In the cool of the day in the midst of birdsong and the fading light, God and man walked together. That was common. It was to be because God made man in His image, and would not degrade Himself by communing with man. He found Adam gone.

But there was God with man. Originally God dwelt with man. And then when man sinned, God rejected Him, drove him out and set up His flaming sword that he might not return. He sent him away from His presence. And after that, you will find through the Bible that God never dwelt with man again quite the same. He dwelt in the Shekinah hidden in the fire and the cloud. Occasionally, He would appear in what theologians call a theophany, an appearance of the Deity. And God would walk with a man briefly, or speak with a man as He did with Abraham in the tent door, or at Gideon there in the threshing floor. But never did He stay long, and always was He veiled and cautious. And even when He showed Himself to Moses, it was in the fire of the bush, or it was while Moses was hidden in the cleft of the rock. And God allowed only the hind or trailing parts of His garments to be seen. For sin had unfitted the eyes of men to look upon the majesty of Deity, so that the God who once was with men dwelt only intermittently with men, and then suddenly He came. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us. Now, He is here again, to dwell with men in person, and they called His name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

So, I want you to take three prepositions here. I’m not a prepositional preacher I’ll have you know, but occasionally, a strong preposition will do for us, even when it’s the end of a sentence. What you can’t get any other way, notice, when He appeared as man, He appeared to dwell with men in person and to be united to men, and then ultimately, to dwell in men forever. So, it’s with men and to men and in men, that He came to dwell, to dwell among us. And says the Holy Ghost, we beheld His glory.

Now, it’s right that we should inquire what was this glory which the man John said, we beheld or they beheld? We beheld His glory. Was it the glory on His works? For Jesus was a worker. And He was not only a worker, He was a wonder-worker. Our Lord, from the first miracle at Cana of Galilee to that last miracle. Wasn’t that the last miracle? I was trying to recall tonight before I came downstairs. I said to myself first that I would say that last miracle was when He cursed the fig tree, but it struck He performed at least one after that. Maybe I’m wrong and I’ve forgotten a more recent one. But it seems to me the last miracle our Lord performed was when He undid that bit of impulsive ear cutting that Peter had done when he took that sword and wizzed it past the servant Malcus’ ear and cut it off. Jesus grabbed it and put it back on and said, that’s no way to act. Put up your sword.

But all the miracles that lie in between were dramatic miracles, colorful and significant, whirlwind miracles in some instances. For our Lord was a wonder-worker. Every part of nature had to yield to Him. He turned the water into wine. And men have been arguing ever since whether it was Welch’s grape juice or wine with alcohol in it. It mattered little. He turned water into wine. And the miracle was that He could do it. And when our Lord came to the sick, He healed them. When He came to the devil-possessed, He commanded the devil to go out. When our Lord stood upon the rocking deck, our tiny boat tossed by the buoyancy of the waves and blown by the fierceness of the winds, He spoke to the water and He rebuked the wind and there was a great calm.

Everything our Lord did was wonderful. The tenderness of a son, when He gave the widow back her boy when they were on the way to the graveyard. The tenderness of a brother, when He gave back Jairus his little 12-year-old daughter. Handed her with a smile back and said, here she is. Sit up daughter, it’s time to go to school. He used the language, the simple language they say, that they used in those days to call children. You’ve called your child when it’s school time. And Jesus used those words, and with the tenderness of a brother, He called his little sister up from her dead sleep, and all down through His ministry, what He did was wonderful. How tender and how kind when the woman who was bleeding over 12 years received a sudden deliverance, and with a word, He staunched the debilitating flow of blood. And she went away with shining face to tell everybody that the hem of His garment had healing power in it.

So, the works of our Lord were always dramatic works. Always, they were amazing works. I wonder if John had it in mind when he said, we beheld His glory. We beheld Him still the waves. We beheld Him cast out devils. We beheld Him give sight to eyes long blind. We beheld Him as He raised the dead. I wonder. I think not my friends. I’d like to agree with you. I hear sermons on the radio sometimes that make the physical body everything, and works of miracle everything. And I wish that I could go along with such interpretation and say, the glory of Jesus Christ lay in his ability to cast out devils, that the glory of Jesus Christ lay in his ability to heal the sick and raise the dead and still the waves. Now, undoubtedly, that was wonderful. And He did get some praise to Himself from these necessary acts of miracles.

But, ah, I believe that there was a greater glory than merely works of wonder which our Lord manifested there. For always remember this, friends, that what a man is, is always more important to God than what he does. Remember that if a man were able to stand up and create pine trees and lakes and hills, and were not a good man, he would still be of no value to God. And let us remember, that if a man were a good man through and through, a good man and had no power at all to do any miracle, he would still be one of the sweetest treasures of God, and God would write his name on His own hands. For it is goodness that God is looking for. It is being in character and personality that God is looking for, not our ability to do amazing things.

So, it was what Jesus was that was glorious, not only what he did. In fact, what He did was secondary. What He was primary. So, Jesus Christ’s glory lay in the fact that He was perfect love in a loveless world. That He was purity in an impure world. That He was meekness in a harsh and quarrelsome world. That He evinced humility in a world where every man was seeking his own place. That He showed boundless, fathomless mercy in a hard and cruel world. That He evinced selfless goodness in a world full of selfishness. It was the deathless devotion of Jesus and the patient suffering and the unquenchable life and the grace and the truth that were in Jesus, that they beheld. They beheld His glory, the glory as the only begotten Son from a Father, full of grace and truth.

And so it was this that made Jesus wonderful. As little as the world knows about it today in all their wild money-inspired and profit-inspired celebrations, as little as the world knows about it. Even the poor, blind world is not celebrating turning water into wine. They’re not celebrating healing the sick nor raising the dead. They’re not celebrating the cursing of fig trees or the sticking on of cut-off ears. The poor, blind world, with what little bit of religious instinct it has left in it yet, is this season, celebrating what He was. And as we sing our songs and we read the editorials and squibs about Him in the magazines and papers, little is said about what He did, but everything is said about what He was. For the amazing thing was that it was God walking among men.

And here was something other than man and yet man. Here was something that was not man and yet was man. Here was God among men. Here was a man acting like God in the midst of sinful men. And this was the wonder of it all. And this was the glory that Alexander never could hope to reach for Alexander. That wild boy, the son of Philip leaped as Daniel would call him, like a goat, and trample the civilized world under his feet and conquered it and wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. Alexander never conquered himself. Alexander died a profligate, a disappointed profligate and spoiled baby. A genius on the field, but a baby in his own house.

And all together apart from His miracles, the glory of Jesus Christ shines like the brightness of the sun. For what He was had astonished the world. What He said has been amazing. What He did was wonderful, but what He was, was the crown upon all the doing and the saying. So, that we celebrate today a man who was. We celebrate today a God who became flesh. We celebrate this season, the miracle, the deep, dark mystery of the miracle of that which was not God being taken up into God, and being in flesh, so that we now have Jesus Christ, who is God, and yet also who is man.

It says, the man of God here of His fullness, have all we received in grace for grace. Out of His fullness of all we received. Now, what does that mean? Does it mean that everybody’s received of all the fullness of Jesus Christ? No, it can’t mean that. It means that Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son, is the only medium through which God dispenses His benefits with creation. And because Jesus is the Eternal Son, because He is of the eternal generation and equal with the Father as pertaining to His substance, His eternity, His love, His power, His grace, His goodness, and all of the attributes of Deity, He is the channel, He is the medium through which God dispenses all His blessings. Of His fullness have all we received out of his fullness. Ask the roe that goes down to the edge of the lake and drinks, have you received of the fullness of the lake? And the roe might answer yes and no, I am full from the lake, but I have not received of the fullness of the lake. I did not drink the lake, I only drank what I could hold of the lake.

And so of His fullness, out of the fullness of God, He has given us through Jesus Christ, grace upon grace. So that the only Medium through which God does anything is His Son. Whether He created or whether He is creating, it’s all through Jesus Christ our Lord. If He speaks, it is through the Eternal Word. If He reveals Himself, it is because He who is in the bosom of the Father has revealed Him. If He provides it is through the medium of Jesus Christ, if He sustains, it is because it can be said that He upholds all things by the Word of His power and in Him all things consist.

Alexander Patterson wrote a great book that’s now I think out of print, unless Moodys have brought it out recently. I think I heard they did. It’s called “The Greater Life and Work of Christ.” Dear old brother Gillespie gave me a copy of it years ago and I still have it. And in it, this great Baptist preacher attempts to go back to the basic foundations of things and show just what I’m giving you now. That Jesus Christ is more than simply the Redeemer of man. He is the Sustainer, the Creator, the Upholder, the Holder-Together, the adhesive quality of the universe, the medium through which God dispenses grace to all His creatures, those that will be redeemed, and those who do not need to be redeemed. For there are orders upon orders and ranks upon ranks of creatures that do not need to be redeemed. And yet they live by grace as well as the lowest sinner who is converted.

Grace must operate wherever that which is not God appeals to that which is God. Wherever the voice of the creature crosses the vast gulf to the ears of the Creator, grace must operate. We have limited grace to John 3:16. We must forget that everything God does is out of grace of His fullness. How do the angels get their broad wings? Out of His grace. How did that covering cherub who had built into him pipe organs and who was wiser than the sons of men? How did he get his wisdom and his beauty? Grace out of grace. How do the principalities and powers and mights and dominions and the ranks and the files and the columns of shining creatures that remarks through the pages of the Bible? How did they get what they have? Grace upon grace. Everything God does is by grace, for no man, no creature, no being, deserves anything. Salvation is by grace. But creation is by grace. And all that God does is out of grace. let’s remember. Every human being has received of His fullness.

What have you received? Even though you may not be saved tonight, you have yet received out of the ocean of His fullness. What of life for instance? You’ve received the life that beats in your bosom. You have received the brilliant mind that lies inside your head under the protective covering of your skull. You have received a memory that strings the events that you love as a jeweler strings pearls around a necklace, and keeps them for you as long as you live and beyond. And all that you have is out of His grace, so that Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word, who became flesh and dwelt among us is the open channel through which God moves to give all of the benefits that He gives to saints and sinners and all the continued existence that may yet be yours. Don’t think you’ve earned it. Don’t imagine it’s because you’re good or not so bad. Remember, it’s out of grace. And the whole universe is God’s beneficiary. The whole universe joins to give praise to the Lamb who was slain. And under the earth and on the earth and above the earth, John heard creatures praising Jesus Christ. And all joined to say, worthy is the Lamb. For all things were made by Him and for Him, they are created and are made and were made, so that the whole universe is a beneficiary of Jesus Christ.

And when we present Christ to men as Lord and Savior, let us remember that they have already been beneficiaries and we’re only presenting Christ in a new office. When we go to a man and say, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re only saying, believe on the One who sustains you and upholds you and has given you life and pities you and spares you and keeps you. Believe on the One out of whom you came. For apart from Jesus Christ, God never did anything. The stars in their courses, the frogs that croak beside the lake, angels in heaven above, man on earth below, all came out of the channel that we call the Eternal Word. All of His fullness we have received or, we have received out of His fulness. We only present Jesus as Lord and Savior.

I said some time ago, I don’t remember where, and then I wrote it into an editorial, that there was no Saviorhood without Lordship. Somebody in the East cut out a paragraph from Sunday School Times and sent it to me. He said, read this. And I read it and I had never seen it. It was written by the man who used to be pastor of the Wheaton Bible Church. I never can straighten that name out although I know the man quite well. McCauley, McCauley, or McCauley, and here condensed into a paragraph he said what I took an editorial to say exactly the same thing, which appeared in the Sunday School Times, that Jesus Christ is both Lord and Savior, and He is Lord before He is Savior. And that if He’s not Lord, He’s not Savior. And when we present this Word, this Eternal Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us, when we present Him to men as Lord and Savior, we present Him only in His other offices. Previously, He has been Creator and Sustainer and Benefactor. Now, we present Him and asked men to believe on Him as Lord and Savior. But it’s the same Lord Jesus.

And he says, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Now, this is not to contrast that as grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, the law was given by Moses. This is not a contrast between the Old and New Testament. The theory that pits one testament of the Bible against the other is a false theory. The idea that the Old Testament is a book of law and the New Testament a book of grace is a theory completely false. There is as much about grace and mercy and love in the Old Testament as there is in the New. There’s more about hell in the New Testament than there is in the Old. And when it comes to judgment and the fury of God burning with fire upon sinful men and sinful creatures, it’s found in the New Testament, not in the Old. And if you want excoriating, flagellating language that skins and blisters and burns, don’t go to Jeremiah, go to Jesus Christ. Don’t go to the book of Jeremiah. Don’t go to Elijah, go to the 23rd of Matthew.

Oh, how much often does it need to be said, the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New. And the Father of the Old Testament is the Father of the New Testament. And the Christ who was made flesh that dwelt among us is the Christ who walked through all the pages of the Old Testament. Was it law that forgave David when he had committed his great sin? No, it was grace. It was Old Testament. And was it grace that said, Babylon has fallen, the great harlot has fallen, Babylon has fallen? No, it was law.

So there is no contrast as we falsely assume. God never pits the Father against the Son. He never pits the Old Testament against the New. What He says here is, and the contrast is between all that Moses could do and all that Christ could do. The law was given by Moses. That was all that Moses could do, for Moses was not the channel through which God dispensed grace. Moses was the law-giver. And Moses did all Moses could do. For God did not choose Moses as the channel through which grace should flow to the world. He chose His only begotten Son. And so the contrast, the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ means only that all this could do would be to command righteousness, but Jesus Christ produces righteousness.

All that Moses could do would be to forbid us to sin. But Jesus Christ came to save us from sin. Not pit us against each other, but One doing what the other could not do, for Moses could not save, but Jesus could save. And the Holy Ghost in Romans says, the law that Moses gave was holy and just and good and must not be spoken against, but it could not save. But because Jesus Christ is the Eternal Son, the channel through which God dispenses grace to the world, grace came through Jesus Christ. And I ask you to notice, my brethren, that grace came through Jesus Christ before Mary wept in the manger. Grace came by Jesus Christ before He became flesh to dwell among us. For it was the grace of God in Christ that saved the human race from extinction when they sinned in the garden. It was the grace of God in Jesus Christ yet to be born that saved the eight persons when the flood covered the earth.

And it was the grace of God in Jesus Christ yet to be born, but existing in pre-incarnation glory that forgave David when he committed his sin, forgave Abraham when he lied, that enabled Abraham to pray God down to ten when He was threatening to destroy Sodom. He forgave Israel time and time again. It was the grace of God in Christ, yet before the Incarnation that made God say, I have risen early in the morning and stretched out My hand unto you. it made Him say, as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear Him. Jesus is the channel through which grace comes. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And He said, I am the Truth. It’s through Him that grace is released to the world, released through the wounded side, to sinners like you and me. And all the grace of God anywhere comes through Jesus Christ.

Then he says, no man hath seen God at any time. But the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father. He hath declared Him. I get quite amusement out of the problems of the translators, not being a translator or ever attempting it. I get a lot of, I don’t know whether it’s completely holy or not, but it’s fun. I enjoy the frustrations of the translators. God’s Word is just too big for them. They just can’t make it. When they come to this word here in the Greek, but the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him; in English in the King James, it’s declared. But in other versions, they, they skirt it, they go around it, they plunge through it. They use two or three words, and then they back down to one. And they do everything they can do to try to say what the Holy Ghost said. And then they give up. They can’t say. Our English just won’t say. We get to it and try to say it and we use a dozen synonyms.

And when we’ve used up our words, we still haven’t said all that God has said, when He said that nobody had ever looked at God. Nobody had ever seen God, but Jesus Christ when He came, showed us what He was like. And I guess that simple, primer language is as good as any. No man hath seen God at any time but the only begotten Son who was in the bosom of the Father. He hath shown us what He’s like. He has declared Him. He has set Him forth. He has revealed Him the translators say shifting their language to try to get at this wonderful miracle of meaning. The Man who walked in Galilee was God acting like God, with God limited deliberately, having crossed the mysterious, yawning gulf between God and not God, God and creature, taking upon Him the form of a man to become flesh to dwell among us.

No man hath seen God at any time, but it says, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father. I want you to notice it’s not who was in the bosom, who will be in the bosom, but is in the bosom. It’s in the present, perpetual tense, continuous tense I think the grammarians call it. It’s the language of continuous and even when He hung on the cross, He did not leave the bosom of the Father. You say, how then, Mr. Tozer? How could He cry, my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Was He frightened? Was He mistaken? Never, never. He was never mistaken about anything. Then what was it?

You say He never left the bosom of the Father. And He said, why hast Thou forsaken me? The answer is very plain. The answer is this, that even when Christ died on the unholy, fly-infested cross for mankind, He never divided the Godhead. You cannot, says the old theologians, divide the substance. Not all of the swords of Nero could ever cut down through the substance of the Godhead, to cut off the Father from the Son. But it was the Man who cried, why hath Thou forsaken me. It was Mary’s son who cried. It was the body which God gave Him. It was the Lamb about to die. It was the sacrifice that cried. It was the human Jesus. It was the Son of Man that cried. But the ancient and timeless Deity was never separated. And He was still in the bosom of the Father when He cried, into Thy hands I commend my spirit. For, Father, Son and the Holy Ghost are forever one, inseparable, indivisible and can never be anything else.

So, the Eternal Father never turned his back on the Eternal Word, for He was always in the bosom of the Father. But the Eternal Father turned His back on the Son, the Son of Man, the Sacrifice, the Lamb to be slain. And in the blind terror and pain of it all, the Sacrifice, the Lamb temporarily become sin for us, knew Himself forsaken. God dumped all that vast, bubbling, boiling, seething, dirty, slimy mess of human sin on the soul of His Son and then backed away. And in that moment of anguish, He cried, why have You forsaken me? But in the next breath, He could say, Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.

So, the Cross did not divide the Godhead. Nothing could ever do that. One forever, indivisible, the Substance undivided, the Persons unconfounded. Oh, the wonder of the ancient theology of the Christian church. How little we know of it in our day of likeminded shallowness, and how much we ought to know it. No man hath seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father. He hath shown Him fully.

Now, the mystery of atonement had to be performed. Why in the Old Testament, why in the Old Testament, did the priests go behind the veil, perform the ritual of atonement, and then come out from behind the veil. And priests specially prepared, rush to close that thick veil and hide the holy place. It was God saying in beautiful symbolism that there would be a day when another Priest with other blood should enter into a realm where the mind of man could never penetrate. And there in a mystery too deep and dark and wonderful for a man to understand, all alone with none to help him. Not David His lover, not Abraham his friend, not Paul, no one alone in the silence and the darkness should make atonement for sin. That’s what happened when God stepped back and allowed Him to die. But briefly and quickly, His heart was joined again to the love of God. And three days later, He was raised from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God the Father Almighty man from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

And now, the closing line, He has declared Him. What is it He declared about God? There are profundities that He could never declare. There are depths that He could never declare. But there are some things He could declare and did and does. He declared God’s holy being, and above all, for us for poor sinners, He declared His love and His mercy. So He set Him forth and Jesus Christ tells us in His tender, human being that God has a care for us.

I remember hearing years ago of some boys, at that time I didn’t understand it as I might understand it now. Four or five sons had been reared in a home. And the old folks were wordless. They didn’t say much. They didn’t show much affection. Nobody did. And the boys didn’t after they were babies. They quit kissing their parents and quit using words of affection and grew to be strong men and married and separated and got away. They seldom came home and seldom wrote. And then mother’s time had about come they thought, and they sent for the boys. And they said, if you want to see her, come. They came, all of them, big fine fellows now, each with his own home and his own business and job. And they stood around her bed and one of them said, Mother, we want you to know that you meant a lot to us boys. We haven’t been unappreciative. We’ve loved you, and we thank you. Then they separated. And when they were gone from her, she turned and said to someone by her side, oh, if they’d only told me before. These years, I wondered if I’d meant anything to them. These years, I thought I’d failed them, but now they tell me, we’re so thankful. If they’d only told me.

You know, it’s possible to feel a lot you don’t tell. It’s possible to have fine intentions you never make known. And how easy it might have been for God to have loved us and never told us. To have been merciful toward us and never revealed it. But the Scripture says, nobody ever saw God but the only begotten Son. Some translations say the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father. He has told us. He came to tell us what the silence never told us. He came to tell us what not even Moses could tell us. He came to tell us, God cares and God loves and God has a plan. And God is carrying out that plan. Before it’s all finished, there’ll be a multitude that no man can number redeemed out of every tongue and tribe and nation. That’s what He told us. He set Him forth. He revealed God’s being, God’s love, God’s grace, mercy, good intention, redemptive intention, saving intention. He set it forth. He bought. He gave it to us. Here it is. It’s ours. Now, we have only to turn and believe and accept and take and follow. It’s all ours.

Well, I think that’s what I want to say tonight. May God bless us. Our wings aren’t very broad, but by flapping them real fast we can at least get off the ground. Thank God for the Truth, for the Word, for the Eternal Son. For the One we present to you as Lord and Savior, is He your Lord and Savior tonight?

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Messages

Tozer Talks

During the week of December 4, we are going to present three messages related to the Incarnation. The first of which is “The Personal Application of Christ’s Coming into the World,” A complete transcript as well as the original message audio is at https://tozertalks.com/tozer-talks-21/

“All Life’s Problems are Basically Theological”

All Life’s Problems are Basically Theological

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 21, 1959

I have this morning, three texts in the book of Ephesians. Paul’s letter to the Ephesian Christians the fourth chapter, verses 21 to 24. If so be that you have heard Him, his Christ, and have been taught by Him as the truth is in Jesus, that you put off concerning the former conversation, conduct, the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. And Paul again, in Colossians, the third chapter, verses 9 and 10. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.

Then in the book of Hebrews, which I think also that Paul wrote that we’re not certain. It doesn’t matter. The words of the writer to the Hebrews 12:9 and following. Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily, for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, or as it seemed good to them. They didn’t enjoy it, but they felt they had it to do. They verily, for a few days chastened us as seemed right to them. But God for our profit chastens us that we might be partakers of His holiness.

And the longer I live, the more I’m convinced that all the problems of life are at the bottom, theological problems. That there aren’t any other kind, really. That all problems that psychology is trying to settle are at bottom, theological, really. And all the problems that industry, labor is trying to settle, could be settled if they were recognized as also being theological problems. Political problems and all social problems are at bottom, theological. I mean by that, this, that if you forget that God is and think of man just as being here, somehow, without any thought of his origin, then you have at least a dozen major problems on your hands. And the attempt to solve one upsets another. If you try to solve a social problem, you get yourself into a political problem and political problem upsets a labor problem, and labor problem creates an industrial problem.

And so we go mixing ourselves up because we’re thinking of ourselves apart from our origin. If we realize that God made us and made us in His image, and that our first responsibility is to Him. Then, if we went on through the truth revealed to us and settled that responsibility or met it, we’d settle our theological problems and automatically, the other problems would fall into place. It wouldn’t mean there wouldn’t be something to do, but it would mean that we had hold of the heart of it and that we could solve it without disrupting something else.

Out in nature it is the same. Down where we live in the poor section of Beverly Hills, we used to have birds. I remember even as much as last year, no longer ago than last year and the year before, we’d wake up in the morning or they would wake us up, but I never again have complained about being wakened up by birds, birds of all kinds singing. You never heard a choir sing as they sang. Now, we have two or three kinds. I heard a cuckoo this morning, and the ever-present jay, of course, and the robins. And of course, you can’t kill an English sparrow. But those are about the four that are left. What happened to the rest? What happened to the rest is this, that the elm blight came through the country, and the proper authorities decided to try to stay the elm blight and I am for them because I think that if we lost the elm tree from this section of the country, we would lose one of the most beautiful and ornamental trees that’s possible to imagine. So they sprayed the elm trees to get rid of the elm blight. Little worms ate the elm leaf or other things that were touched by this poison. It didn’t bother the worm, but the birds ate the worms and died. And they died by the hundreds of thousands.

Now, I use that as an illustration only. I don’t know who’s right nor who’s wrong. It’s very difficult because one thing upsets another and you get one thing straightened out and another one is on your hands. So it is in politics and society and in industry and everywhere. The attempt to settle one thing unsettles another, because we do not realize that God is and that God made us and that originally He made us in His image. Now that’s one of the great pillars of our faith, that God made us in His image.

A second great pillar of our faith, I’d scarcely call it a pillar of our faith, but it’s a fact necessary to the understanding of all other truths, that man fell. And that man who originally came from God’s hand, in God’s likeness, fell and lost that likeness, or at least had that likeness marred as a vandal might cut and smear and marr a great masterpiece in an art gallery. The artist, or the one who knows about such things might be able yet to find traces of the artistry of the master in that picture, but it’s yet ruined and nobody would buy it. So, it is with mankind. In mankind, there are traces of the image of God. Every mother that holds a baby to her in her arms and smiles down with love, is showing that there is yet remaining, there are yet remaining some traces of the image of God. But it’s a marred image. The vandal we call sin has slashed it and smeared it and ruined it.

Now, the third great truth that we must remember is that God sent His Son Jesus Christ to the world in order that He might undo the works of the devil and sin, and that He might bring back again the image of God to man. That’s what my text said first, that God meant to restore us again unto His image. God isn’t satisfied. If we could imagine a Rembrandt coming back from where we hope he is with God, and seeing where some vandal had used acid or some other thing to destroy one of his masterpieces, or had painted it over. And that artist, out of love and pride, should want to restore that picture until it was shining once more in all its early glory.

So, the great God who looks upon mankind and sees bits of His image there and knows it’s His handiwork, knows indeed that it’s His masterpiece. He sees also the filth and the slashing and the efforts of sin to destroy that masterpiece. And God, out of His own pride and for His own glory, sets out to restore that masterpiece again to His own image. And He does it through Jesus Christ our Lord. For the texts say that plainly here. We have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created Him. And if so be ye have heard and taught to put off concerning the form of conduct of the old man and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that you put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. This is the purpose of God.

And then in the Hebrew text it says that to do this, to restore this picture back to the image of God again, to make men like God, He has methods. And the first and primary one is of course, is redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ the Lord. But then granted that men are redeemed, Christians are His children. Then He works on those children as the eager, indignant Artist, loving Artist, loving because it’s His handiwork, indignant because it’s been marred, proud with His own reputation depending upon it, He goes to work to restore that masterpiece. So God goes to work to restore the masterpiece again. And the Spirit says that even as earthly fathers, in order that they might bring their children into some semblance of civilized decency and bring them up as they should, they chasten them. But God chastens us for His own profit that we might be partakers of His holiness. God is of course primarily holy, and the restoration of the soul to God is the restoration of that soul in holiness.

Now, I want to point out, if I were an old 17th century preacher, I’d probably have my point something like this: wherein we cannot be like God, wherein we can be like God, and the method by which God makes us like Himself. That sounds like least an hour and a half, but it will be shorter. Wherein we cannot be like God. I point out to you that though men are made in the image of God originally, and it is the purpose of God to restore us to that image, there are attributes which God cannot impart to a creature. Let me name some of them, self-existence for instance. No creature can say, I AM, and have a complete sentence. But God said, I AM, and put a period there. God is self-existent and self-sufficient. Only God can say I am, and make it stick forever without modifying it. God cannot give to His creatures self-existence or self-sufficiency, because His creatures depend every moment upon Him and He depends upon nothing and no one because He is God. Again, God cannot impart eternity to His children. There was a time when we were not and God’s spake and we came into existence. We can live forever, exist through all eternity, but we can’t turn the clock back and go back and start the beginning of eternity which has no beginning. Only God is eternal. And He gives eternal life, but eternal life that is, what would we say, unilateral, running one direction, only out into the eternal future, not into the eternal past. There was a time when man was not, but the eternal God was.

And God made man in His image and then man was. So man had a birthdate. Man had a time when he was created. God could mark it on a calendar of the eternal centuries and say, here is where man began. So, God can’t impart His eternity to us. He cannot impart His infinitude. Infinitude of course being limitlessness, boundlessness. We all have limits by virtue of the fact we’re creatures. The archangels around the throne have limits. The seraphim that burn beside the sea of fire have limits. The greatest geniuses that have ever graced our world in any field of human endeavor have all had limits. Any student of Shakespeare will run into passages that Shakespeare never should have written. And every critic, every man who studies a little will smile and shrug and say, well, that was Shakespeare at his worst. He had he limits.

I remember once being at a recital where they were singing the Messiah, and the song director we had here years ago, Mr. Marston Pierson, many of you remember, was with me. We had the score in front of us and were watching and looking on while the Apollo Club sang Messiah. And before we started, we were chatting and I said, Marston, I’d have one criticism of the Messiah. He said, What’s that? He smiled down with a big expansive smile of his and I said, it’s too long. Well, he said, I’ll tell you, Mr. Tozer, that would be a question of your judgment against Handel’s, and I’ll go along with Handel. And I smiled and admitted that he had a point. But after they began to sing, then I noticed that every once in a while they skipped a chorus. And they would skip another chorus. Then they would skip five or six pages. Then they would skip a solo. And they’d skip another chorus. And along toward the end I said, how’s this they’re skipping so much. Oh, he said, nobody ever does all of the Messiah. I felt better. I still think it’s too long. Even Handel had his imperfection.

And the finest composers that ever lived couldn’t escape themselves. I don’t promise always and I don’t want to be put to the test, but I think if you’ll put on a record, and if it’s Mozart, I’ll know it. He couldn’t escape himself. He had a happy, joyous disposition that wouldn’t go two bars until it started shouting, delighted to be alive, and it’s there and you can’t help it. Every man has his limitations. The angels of God have their limitations, but God has no limitations because God embraces in Himself in one effortless embrace all that there is. God can’t impart that to you. You’re limited. He is infinite. Again, God can’t impart His omnipotence. And he can’t impart His omniscience. You can know a great deal and you can know increasingly, but you never can know all. The only person that knows everything is a freshman in college. But as he goes on, he knows less and less until he gets his degree. And by the time he gets his PhD, he knows still less.

A man who just had his PhD degree, gotten it, wrestled it out of New York University, I was talking with him. And he said, you know what they did to me? And I said no, Harold, what did they do? He said, they examined me on things I hadn’t studied. And he said, when they had reduced me to blubbering incompetence where I didn’t know anything, they gave me the degree. They said that’s the way they did it. They gave a degree of Doctor of Philosophy to a man not because of what he knew, but because of what he knew he didn’t know. And I’ve said to many colleges where I’ve spoken, that if I was grading students, I would never grade them on what they know. I would grade them on what they knew they didn’t know. That would be far and away better because, if you’re graded on what you know, you never can pick up anything but a little sand by the seashore. But if you’re conscious of how much there is that you don’t know and that you’ll never know, you’ll have at least humility on your side. But if you’re graded by how much you know, you’re likely to have pride, and a pride that has no foundation. So you see, there are attributes of God that He cannot impart to us. What is it then that God would impart? In what does He mean when he says made in His image, restored to His image through redemption?

Well, there are attributes of character. These that I have named before, are attributes of being, and as attributes of being they belong to the uncreated God. But there are attributes of character that God can impart to His creature. What are they? Let me name seven of them briefly. First of them is love. Love is an attribute of character, not of being. An act of good will toward all creatures, not necessarily an emotional binge. We’ve degraded love in our day until we don’t know what it is. And the God who made Adam to love Eve, wouldn’t recognize this whimpering, psychotic stuff now that we call love. Love is active goodwill toward all creatures, the love that rejoices in the good of all. And God is love and supremely God has this quality of character and He would impart it to all of His children. That we also, I have no malice, no grudges, no hard feelings, no ill will, no evil wishes, but only a high goodwill toward all mankind with the wish and hope that everyone might prosper, forgive everyone and love everyone.

Then there’s righteousness. Righteousness is not an attribute of being but an attribute of character. And all the acts of God are in harmony with righteousness, and He would restore His people to righteousness. I have no confidence whatsoever as I said yesterday on the radio. I have no confidence whatsoever in any kind of Christianity that doesn’t make a man good. I know that a lot of us have a fear that we might emulate the Catholics and preach salvation by merit. We’ve gone so far the other way that the New Testament doesn’t recognize it. There’s a horrible incongruity in the universe. God redeems us unto righteousness. And the first way you should be able to tell a Christian is by the fact that he’s a good man.

Then there’s mercy. Mercy is an attribute of character, love operating toward all sinful creatures. Quality of mercy is not strange, it then falleth like the gentle rain from heaven upon the place below. And mercy of course we can all show. And there’s patience, long-suffering it’s called elsewhere in the Scriptures, long-suffering. I want to break down here and admit that all the years I’ve served Christ, this is my toughest one. I don’t know Brother whether you have any tough ones or not. But this is my toughest one. To be patient and to wait and to be long-suffering with people who ought to know better. That’s the hardest thing for me, and that’s temperamental. That isn’t because I’m good necessarily, that’s temperamental. I got that and I know where I got it. I can show you pictures of the man that passed that on to me. It was my English father.

But God is patient and long-suffering, and He waits and He waits and He waits. Think how long God waits? The ability to wait and keep sweet is a god-like virtue. And God would pass that on to us, but He can’t give that to us as you would give a man a dollar or ten dollars. That has to be wrought into the man, beaten into him as a woman beats flavoring into a cake batter, beaten in until it’s all thoroughly mixed, patience, long-suffering. And there’s gentleness, mercy operating toward the weak and the vulnerable. And there’s faithfulness, integrity toward every moral obligation, toward God, toward each other. And there is purity, holiness above all qualities. This is probably the one that takes the others all in, holiness of character, unmixed perfection. Now, all this is summed up in the phrase, of His holiness.

Redemption, I repeat, undertakes to restore the character of God to the character of a man. It undertakes through Jesus Christ, beginning with the new birth, to go on to perfect that man and make that man God-like in his character. I’m glad God is patient. If He were not patient, He would take His hand and wipe the church from the face of the earth, for we’re certainly a long way from being God-life. But, it’s the purpose of God in redemption to restore us unto His image. This is the ultimate purpose of God, conformed to the image of His Son it says in Romans 8:29. And the possession of this image is the bliss of heaven and the absence of this image is the grief of hell. And it’s imperfect possession in the church is the cause of all of our troubles. It produces discontent and unhappiness. It’s the cause of spiritual weakness. It’s the source of coldness. It’s the cause of quarrels and divisions among Christians.

So, the way of God in bringing to us His own image again, you can’t do it in an easy way. This is the time when everybody wants everything done in an easy way. They say now, no more mussy ice cubes. I can remember when ice cubes weren’t known. You had to saw your ice out of the nearby pond and put it in sawdust and keep it over winter. And we got refrigeration, and women thought they were in Utopia. Now, they’re calling it mussy. And they’re figuring on something else. I don’t know or remember what. I never listen to closely to the commercials. But I remember hearing that. The thing that ten years ago was the latest invention. Now it’s considered old-fashioned and you scorn it for something new. We want everything so that we put a nickel in the slot, pull the lever down and take it and go.

Religion has degenerated into that too. No, no, my friend. God doesn’t make things like that. God doesn’t put a few grains of dust on His hand and blow and there’s a flock of chickens. God has a hen lay an egg and then sit on that egg 21 days and then watch over what she’s hatched out for another month and a half. God doesn’t speak and the tree grows, but He lets a seedling get in there and swell with moisture until it suddenly burst. Then up comes the sprout. Winter follows Fall and Fall follows Summer and Summer follows Spring year in and year out until two or three generations of human beings have come and gone and then there stands a tall noble tree there. God works slowly and sometimes He works painfully.

And the more wonderful the object God is trying to bring into being, the more painful it’s likely to be, and the more trouble it’s likely to cause. Why doesn’t God whisper and have a baby born? Because He’s got something wonderful in mind. So, He takes it the slow, inconvenient, painful way. And after inconvenience and discomfort and trouble, comes what Jesus called the sorrows of a woman, then the baby. But is it all over? No, she spends the next fifteen years keeping him from committing suicide accidentally. Trouble, trouble, trouble all the time, because she’s rearing a man. She’s bringing up a man, a man-child, said Jesus, is born into the world.

And the more wonderful the creature is, the longer it takes God to bring it to maturity. So, it is with a Christian. He works on us and works in us and chastises us and corrects us and humbles us and encourages us and humbles us again. He chastises us once more and humbles us again and encourages us some more until we become a partaker of His Holiness. This is so vital, so vital, so critically important that He should restore the image of His Son again in us and we should be made back into the image of God from which we fell.

So vitally important it is that it should engage our painstaking attention, Bible searching, prayer, self-examination, cooperation with God, humbling of ourselves, self-sacrifice, meditation, every means of grace, the church, the sermon, the song. Every means of grace that God has placed before us we should use, that we might work with God and having His holy image restored again in our souls.

For remember, the imperfect image of God in the Christian soul is the cause of all of his troubles. And no image of God in the soul, is the terror of hell. And the image of God perfectly restored is the bliss of heaven. May God grant that we would be wise enough to work with Him in His slow and sometimes painful, but wondrous plan to restore again in the souls of His people, His own image that we might be like Him and someday might gaze without embarrassment on His holy face. Amen.

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Messages

Tozer Talks

“The Knowledge of God I”

The Knowledge of God I

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 24, 1956

This will be the first this morning of a series of four messages on the knowledge of God or religious knowledge. I want to talk about the knowledge of God and the three degrees of knowledge which it is possible for us to have. And I will talk generally this morning about this and give an illustration which I want you to keep in mind for the rest of the four sermons, or three sermons that follow. And then I will talk about the three degrees, the knowledge furnished by reason, the knowledge furnished by faith and the knowledge furnished by the Holy Spirit. Those will be the next three after today.

I want to read a number of Scriptures. John 17:3, you know what that is, this is eternal life, that they might know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. Philippians 3:10, Paul said that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering and be made conformable unto His death. We will simply take the line, that I might know Him. And life is that you might know God, and that I might know Christ.

Then there are some other texts which I want to read. One is in Romans 1:19, 20, Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Then in Hebrews 11, this passage, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it, the elders obtained a good report. Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made by things which do appear. Now, it’s through faith we understand this. And then 1 Corinthians 2:12,13. Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

Now, we read in the John quotation, that eternal life is not a thing. Eternal life is a knowledge. This is eternal life that they might know Thee, the only true God. And I hardly need to say to you that when the man of God wrote this word “know” in here, he didn’t mean that we should gain the meaning from it, of merely intellectual cognizance. As when I say, I know Hamlet, I read it. I know Mr. Jones; I have been introduced to him. I know the multiplication tables, something that we receive into our minds. John didn’t mean that when he said that this is eternal life. Of course, it was Jesus Himself that said it, as if there were any distinction between the words of our Lord and the words of an inspired apostle. But to be accurate, Jesus said in His prayer to His Father, this is eternal life, that they might know Thee. That knowledge is a deep inner thing. And we want to talk about that over these days ahead, these Sundays before us, that deep inner thing, not the grasp of the mind, not the intellectual cognizance, but something profounder than that. But that is here, that this is eternal life, to know God and know Jesus Christ.

Then Paul’s sentence in Philippians, the third, where he sums up his life motto, that I might know Him. Now this is, I think it might be said, I don’t like to speak for another man who can’t be here to defend himself, but I think I would be safe in saying that those words, that I might know Him, those five words, probably more than any other words, sum up that which made Paul run. That was the motivating power in the life of the man. What an ignoble and base conception of Christianity, to believe that Paul’s interest in Jesus Christ was to escape hell. What a tragic and terrible breakdown in our spiritual thinking that we should imagine that Paul’s interest in Jesus Christ was that he might sit in the New Jerusalem or that he might pick flowers on the hillsides of glory, as somebody inelegantly called it.

Now, the knowledge of Jesus Christ does deliver us from the results of our own sins, and it does make heaven our future home. But these are byproducts of Christianity and not the center and the core of it. The core of the Christian faith is that I might know God. This is eternal life that I might know God. And this is the destiny and destination, the full future for my life, that I might know Him better. And so the perpetually increasing and everlastingly growing knowledge of God will be our heaven.

Some people might wonder why I don’t preach more on heaven. I don’t preach very much on heaven. There are several reasons. I don’t know very much about heaven as a location. I believe in it as a location, but there’s not very much said about it. But there may be other reasons that I don’t know of unhidden to me why I don’t preach more on heaven. But I believe that heaven will take care of itself, if our relation to God is right. And if our relation to Christ is right, we will need to worry about the matter of heaven or hell. And incidentally, I don’t preach very much on hell either. Fortunately, there isn’t much known about hell. Only we know it’s there, and we know it’s the end of a Christless life and the bottom of a Christless grave. And we know heaven is there and is to be entered someday. I wouldn’t say the end of the Christian life, but it’s to be at least within the framework it’s received. It’s there. It belongs to us, heaven is ours.

But the main business for you and me in God and in religion now, is not to know all we can about heaven, though you may do that. That’s good too, or know all we can about hell. But our main occupation in which we should be constantly engrossed as well as engaged, is that we might know God and His Son Jesus Christ. That we might know God the Father and Jesus Christ to the point of having eternal life, before we even join any church or claim that we’re Christians at all, or take upon ourselves the name of Jesus, or call God our Father. And then, not stopping there where a great many Christians do, but going on to make a career out of knowing Jesus Christ better.

Now, this knowledge that I have been talking about, the knowledge of God and divine things, have three degrees. And there are three degrees distinguished. There is the knowledge furnished by reason in the Roman’s text, the knowledge furnished by faith in the Hebrew’s text, and the knowledge furnished by the Spirit in the Corinthian text. Now, these correspond to a very beautiful illustration, or a very beautiful order in the Old Testament. It is an illustration maybe, rather than a type. You will notice that I don’t talk very much about types. I broke a set of teeth on types when I was a young fellow. And I’ve reacted a bit from types. I believe there are some types in the Bible all right. I don’t doubt that at all. I believe that there are certain historic facts, while they are historic facts, nevertheless, have been so placed there, that they mean something else beside what they mean.

Could I illustrate an illustration, if you will forgive me by saying this, that a diamond in a wedding ring, or a wedding ring on the finger is a fact. It is a reality. It’s an entity in itself. It is not an imaginative thing nor a poetic thing, it is a reality. You can take it off and hold it and weigh it and measure it and evaluate it and lose it and find it, and it is a reality. It’s a testable reality. But to the woman that wears it, it’s something more than that. To the woman that wears it, it has a secondary meaning that someone not familiar with the circumstances would not realize at all. It speaks of something beyond itself.

Now, in the Old Testament, there are some historic happenings which speak of something beyond themselves. That does not mean as some of our Neo-orthodox brethren would have us believe that that never happened historically, but that it is a beautiful figure, a story told to illustrate. Now, that did happen, everything in the Bible did happen. It is an historic entity. It is a hard thing that you can check and say, now this happened within a given day or year, under the sun, a certain hour of the day, in a certain historic and national and ethnic setting, this is reality. But by the good grace of God and through the mystery of the Holy Ghost, it may mean something more than that. It may, as the ring does, have another meaning lying beyond it and above it, which the wise will understand, and that doesn’t cancel out the historicity of the happening. It did happen, but it’s in the will of God it happened that we might see beyond it.

Israel coming out of being in bondage in Egypt for 400 years. Now that was a historic fact. But it’s set forth to the church ever since Calvary, it has set forth the fact that man in his bondage is in Egypt, and he’s a sinner in Egypt. And when he was delivered by the blood of the Passover, that was a historic fact. But the church of Christ has seen down the centuries that that was more than a historic fact. That was a historic fact with a high symbolic and spiritual meaning. So that to this day, we celebrate the Lord’s Supper and it dates back to the Passover and the shedding of the blood and the dying lamb and the sprinkled blood and the deliverance and the distraught people being delivered at night.

Now that’s what I mean when I say an illustration that couldn’t be a type. I don’t believe everything is a type by a long way. And I don’t read the Bible with types in mind. But when something sets forth as beautifully and as clearly a truth as this I now shall mention, why, I am not going to be like the man of whom it was said, so much he scorned the throng, that if the crowd by chance went right, he purposely went wrong. I don’t want to do it that way.

So, let’s look for a little at the Old Testament tabernacle, the Levitical order. In Hebrews 9 & 10 it tells us, that these things were a pattern of the things in the heaven, and that they were a figure of the truth and a shadow of good things to come. God built, and caused to be built into the Old Testament tabernacle and Levitical system, God cause to be built into it, this secondary thing, this heavenly thing, this thing that is divine and eternal. And so affixed its so, that it would illustrate and reveal as by light shining in, a truth that is so heavenly, you couldn’t get hold of it if you didn’t have an earthly illustration.

Now let’s look at that tabernacle. For instance, you could imagine a building without any roof on it, but with sides, with walls, and that building, an enclosure rather than a building, is 150 feet long and 75 feet wide and open to the sky. And there is no door in this enclosure, anywhere around, until you come to the east, and face to East always. And on the east side, there was quite a wide opening, a door, or a gate, a portal. And across that gate, that portal, there was a vail. And then inside, inside of this enclosure, there were three things observable as soon as you went in. One was an altar and the other was a laver. And on that altar, the priests slew the lambs and the heifers. And in that laver, the priests washed themselves.

But now, within that enclosure, there was a smaller enclosure, a smaller building, called rightly, the tabernacle. The other was the outer court. And that tabernacle of course, was much smaller than this enclosure, and it was divided into two parts. And it was entered by a veil. There was a veil that allowed them to enter. The first enclosure you entered and you saw just two things, the laver and the altar, and you saw also this building. But it was shut out by a veil, and you entered through that veil, and then inside there you saw a table upon which was bread for the priests. And you saw seven candlesticks shining light there, because there was no light that could reach it from above. It was completely enclosed. And then of course, there was the table, the candlestick, and the altar of incense, meaning prayer of course. And then, there was another veil there that invited your attention. But nobody dare pass through that veil. That was the veil that shut off the priests from the Holy of Holies, where dwelt only God. And in there, there was only one piece of furniture. And that was the Ark of the Covenant, or the Holy Ark. And in that ark, there was the Law. And over that ark, there was a mercy seat. And above that mercy seat, there were the wings of the cherubim. Between the wings of the cherubim, there was a flaming fire which was the Shekinah.

Now descriptions are always a little bit boresome. And I know you were bored by that, but I think from here on, we’ll be all right. That these three divisions correspond to the three kinds of knowledge, we keep that in the back of our minds while we talk about those three kinds of knowledge for the days ahead. There was the first, the court of the priests, the outer court.  And they could worship there. and it was of God, all right, and God owned it. And God didn’t reject it. It was God’s doings. God put it there. And the sacrifice was made there. And the laver was there. But, it was the light of the sun by day and of the moon, by stars by night that lighted that enclosure. It was by the light of nature. And that corresponds to the first degree of divine knowledge, which is the knowledge that comes by reason.

Religion makes two mistakes. One of them, I think there are three mistakes maybe. One of them is, religion makes reason everything. The other is, that religion makes reason nothing. And the third is, that religion fails to understand what reason is. I think those are three mistakes. Fundamentalism tends to make reason nothing at all. It just isn’t anything. And all you have to do is to condemn a man to the seventh hell as to call him a brain, say, that man’s a brain. He’s a very intellectual man. And immediately the mark of Cain is on his noble, expansive brow, placed there by his brethren.

Brethren, that is a mistake, a great mistake. God Almighty made all the brains you have. And He is not apologizing for them. God isn’t going to any devil or any archangel and saying, I’m awfully sorry, I was busy with something else and I made a mistake. I put brains in a human head, and I’m awfully sorry. And if you’ll overlook this, I’ll try to be more careful. God never apologized to anybody for putting brains in a man’s head.

So that’s reason. Reason works on nature. Reason works through its senses, through the five senses, and through deductions drawn from the data of the five senses, so that we have this text, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Now, that’s pure reason. That’s the light of nature that comes down from above. There isn’t anything mysterious about that. It’s divine, but it’s not mysterious. You know certain things, and we do know certain things. There’s a Light that lighteth every man that comes into the world. And everybody knows something about God. And everybody knows something about divine things. Don’t think we don’t. We do. Everybody knows it. The heathen, the Danies in the Baliem Valley, know a little bit about God. They think they came up from the river and never were created. And at least they’ve gone that far. They know a little.

Everybody can know a little. We see the sun by day and the moon by night. We see the stars that twinkle in their far distance there. And we hear the roar of the wind, and we see the lightning strike the oak. And we see the mother kitten curl down and nestle up against her kittens. And we see the wonder and the beauty of nature all around about us. We know each other. And so we learn something. And we learn something of the God who made it all, as I learned something of Shakespeare from reading his play, or of Milton from reading Paradise Lost. I don’t see him but I learned something about him. Reason tells me something about the author when I see the book. Reason tells me something of the artist when I see the painting. So, when I look around on God’s world, I know something about God. That’s the light of nature. That’s reason. And you can know something about God through nature and through reason. Let’s not throw that out.

Back in earlier in more restful days, they talked about what they called natural theology, but you don’t hear anybody talking about natural theology anymore. Because if you do, they will think you’re a modernist. But I am not a modernist, nor am I a liberal. I am not now, neither have been a liberal. And I don’t have to hide behind any Fifth Amendment. I am frank to say that I am an evangelical, in that I believe all of the Bible, and I have only a friendly smile, and not too friendly a smile, for those who try to explain parts of it away. I know better. I know it’s all God’s word and it’s here. But I also know that God has given us His word and the things that are seen, the visible world tells us something about God’s eternal power and Godhead. We know at least one thing, that the God that made the world is a powerful God. We know that much.

And we know another thing about that God, He was free to make it. So, we know He is sovereign. And we know that it took a mighty wise mind to put this world of ours together. So, we know God has wisdom. We know God has knowledge. So, we can know quite a little bit about God by just looking around about you. Go on out. Come out our way and listen to the 17-year locusts. You will learn a little bit about God in a practical, salty, down to earth way, not in that dreamy, poetic way, that we hear about some times, but in a salty, down-to-earth way. You will know a good deal about God. Look up among the leaves and see the wonder of it all. On the one little branch, there’d be as many as 12 to 15 locusts.

And you say, I’m going to pick one off, and you pick him off and he’s not a locust at all. He just where the locust used to be. He’s been called out of It. And there, I don’t understand all that. Only I know that that didn’t happen like that brother. It just didn’t happen like that. There was a God who not only knows in a great broad, on a broad scale, but He knows all the details and He fixed it so every seven-year locust, 17-year locust will do exactly what he ought to do. And he fixed him so he didn’t even sing like the other locusts. You notice he’s got a different song if that is a song, whatever it is, he’s gotten different, it sounds different from the other locusts. God made him.

We talk about the integration and the difference of the races and we all ought to be one lovely brown crowd all mixed together in another generation or two. Have you ever stopped to think brothers and sisters that God made 125 species of warbler alone and put them on the North American continent. One hundred and twenty-five that can be identified, and not any two of them are alike. And they stay within their own bracket and breed within their own bracket and never fight and never fuss and never have racial difficulties. But they say, 125 different kinds of warbler, just warblers, to say nothing else of the other birds. And then they want me to believe that God wants the whole human race to be reduced to one brown human muddy looking and with no racial characteristics whatsoever. If he does, he went about it in a funny way. And it doesn’t seem to jive with everything else I can learn about God.

Well, now, that’s the outer court, the tabernacle, the knowledge by reason. You can draw your conclusions from reason. But you can’t get saved that way and you can’t get to heaven that way and you can’t get rid of your sins that way. You can’t know God that way to the point where you will be delivered and have eternal life, but you can still have a lot of knowledge about God. And the beautiful thing about it is, when you become a Christian and do come to know God indeed, you don’t have to murder this other part of your life. You can love it too.

We just sang a number here by Reginald Heber, The Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning. Well, Reginald Heber was a great soul, a bishop, a missionary to India and a great soul wrote, Holy, Holy, Holy and many other of the great songs. O Hosanna, Hosanna to the Living Lord, one of the most ecstatically spiritual songs ever written. And yet this man loved nature to a point where his hymns were all interwoven with the glories of nature. Take David, the man of God of whom Jesus said, God spake by the mouth of David, spake by the Holy Ghost. The mouths of David and the Holy Ghost were used interchangeably. The Holy Ghost speaking through the mouth of David. And yet you can read the Psalms of David and literally be lifted inside of you with the wonder and the glory of what David saw everywhere.

Well, now that’s, that’s one, that’s the outer tabernacle. And you leave that and you go through a veil and you come into the holy place. And there you have a candlestick and the bread and the altar of incense, but there’s no light from sun or stars. Reason comes in and kneels there. Reason says, thank you God, for there’s no roof on the outer court. And reason can look up and see the sun by day and the stars by night. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for what I see. Thank you for what I hear. Thank you for what my tongue can taste and my nose can smell and my fingers can feel. Thank Thee Heavenly Father for the outer court. Thank Thee for reason and thank Thee for deduction and logic and conclusions. Thank Thee Father for all that I’ve learned about Thee out in the outer court.

But reason kneels and worships inside because there’s no light of nature that can come there. There’s simply candlesticks and bread and an altar of incense, that is all. That is getting a little bit closer, because that is the knowledge furnished by faith. There, reason can’t check. Reason listens to the voice of God and looks at the symbolism there before him and believes. And so in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, we learn that we have to believe certain things and accept them by faith. So that faith is another manner of receiving information from God and knowing and having knowledge of divine and spiritual things. The knowledge of faith is a legitimate and proper way of finding out things. You’ll never be able to get at them with your reason. You will have to believe and that is equivalent to faith, to know Him, because by faith, we know. By faith we know.

And then there’s the third, there’s another veil. The priests enter every so often into that holy place. But nobody enters into the Holy of Holies, because it’s shut off from the holy place. There there’s only one piece of furniture, the Ark of the Covenant, the Mercy Seat, and the cherubim and the shekinah, the flame of fire from which God speaks. Once a year, the high priest goes in there. Some said he took a sensor with him and that’s why it is mentioned in Hebrews 9, he went in there with blood of atonement and with great reverence. No light shone from moon or stars for no light was needed. He carried no light of his own because no human reconstructed light, not even a candlestick was needed. But the light in that holy place, that Holy of Holies came from between the wings of the cherubim. There was the Shekinah, the Presence, the Presence shining out there and filling all the room with a soft, deep glow.

And the high priest looked down and crept forward in a rapture of delight and sprinkled the blood there and then backed away in deep reverence, and Israel had been atoned for another year. And Israel’s sins could be forgiven now for the high priest confessed there in that awful moment, the sins of Israel. And then, he backed out. And several priests came and helped for it was so heavy, it took seven priests they said, to shut that veil back up again. That beautiful veil so carefully woven by men who had to be filled with the Holy Ghost in order to know how to sew beautiful enough to make that veil. And for another year until the next day of atonement, nobody entered in there. There was God’s presence. There with gold, there was the shining light. There was the mercy seat. When Jesus our Lord died on a cross, that veil that took seven men to move, was ripped from the top to the bottom. And now the book of Hebrews says, we can enter ourselves where the high priest is. Every one of us can enter into that place. There is the knowledge that comes by spiritual experience.

There are three degrees of knowledge, my friends, there’s the knowledge that God gives us through nature, reason. There is the knowledge He gives us by faith. He tells us certain things, we accept them. That’s knowledge. But that’s not enough. To that knowledge, we enter on in a little further yet and that is into the very Presence where we can hardly speak, and we’re alone with God there, we’re touched and reverent and hushed with devotion. There is knowledge by spiritual experience.

Now what is the difference between the kind of teaching that I try to give and that many others also, some others try to give an ordinary orthodoxy, ordinary fundamentalism. Ordinary fundamentalism passes by reason and will hardly believe in it at all. It goes on into the holy place and accepts everything by faith, and that’s good. The first is not good. The second is, but never goes on into the Holy of Holies where they’re silent with breathless devotion. There we call the deeper life. Nothing, nothing of pride can enter there. Nothing human can enter there except the redeemed human spirit. And there, kneeling in awestruck devotion, the soul waits on God, and sees God and feels God and senses God, and knows with the knowledge that comes by the Spirit. The Holy Ghost reveals and we know nothing contrary to faith, nothing contrary to divine revelation, but only and not even anything beyond it, but only that we have in reality what otherwise we would only know to be true by faith.

Now the inner core is ours. The inner life is ours. That inner life bears the same relation to faith, as the spirit of a man bears to the man’s body. The man’s spirit fits his body, I suppose it does. It’s not contrary to it. Both are of God, but the body without the spirit is a corpse. So the knowledge that comes by faith, theology doctrine, without the Holy Ghost is a corpse too. And that’s what’s happened to us in the last years. We have rejected reason. We haven’t harmed ourselves too badly there I suppose.

But I like to go out sometimes and stand between the altar and the laver and know the Lamb dies from a sin on the altar, and on the laver, I can wash the sin away. I can stand between the altar and the laver and look up toward heaven and thank God for the stars that shine. But I don’t stop there. Emerson stopped there. He didn’t even go that far. Whittie I think stopped there too, and lots of others. Oliver Wendell Holmes stopped there. That’s the reason I don’t like his hymns. A lot of men stop in the outer court and they never went on. The Christian goes on and receives by faith everything that God has to say to Him. By faith he believes it. He can’t understand it. Reason is outside looking up at the stars, but faith is inside looking up for God. But he doesn’t stop there if he’s a real Christian. Paul said, that I might know Him I press off, I press on. Was he thinking about pressing on past the outer court, past the Holy Place, past the holy, into the Holy of Holies? Was he by any means, that I might know Him?

So, that increasing knowledge of God, that progressive knowledge of God, that is the career of the Christian. That he might know God and know divine things and heavenly things with increasing awareness, with increasing intensity of consciousness. With increasing breadth and depth and width and height, on and on, until he sees Him as He is.

Now for the next weeks. I’m going to talk about the knowledge of reason. How valid is it and how far can it take us. I am going to talk about the knowledge of faith. Where does it enter? And, I’m going to talk about what is the knowledge of experience. And if you miss the others, don’t miss the last one. The glory of the immediate knowledge of the Presence.

Categories
Messages

Tozer Talks

“Some Christian Qualities to Seek

“Some Christian Qualities to Seek”

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

October 20, 1957

A brief message from the Book of Colossians. Colossians 3, in the fifteenth verse, often read and memorized by the people of God but still as fresh as a new morning. The Holy Spirit says to us, let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body. And be ye thankful. And let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.

Now, he says, “let” here, and as you know, the word let means, see to it. It doesn’t mean permit only. It’s stronger than that. It’s an affirmative, positive word—permit. Let as we say, let him do it. It’s to grant permission, but “let” here. And also let means hinder. But in this instance, it means see to it that. In other words, as George Duncan said last Thursday night at the Keswick, there is no place in grace where we are free from the necessity of discipline and choice. I agree with that fully. There is no place where you’re going to float to heaven on a pink cloud. You must take hold of yourself, because in us dwell two powers, the natural life, with bad inclinations. I know that some say that the bad, natural life is taken out, but I’ve never met anybody yet that I’d trust if the Lord left him. I’ve never met any Christian yet that I’d trust him very long if the Lord left him.

They say that one great old brother who believed in the elimination, that is eradication of the natural bad in man, the natural flesh. They said to him, brother, you say that the natural life received from Adam has been eliminated? He said, yes sir. That’s what I believe. And he said, let me ask you a question. Suppose that a young man who had had the natural Adam life completely eliminated, married a young woman who had had the natural life completely eliminated. And they had a baby, would the baby be redeemed automatically and not need the new birth? They had him. So, he gave an illustration. He said, well, it’s like this. He said, you have a sour apple tree and you graft a good apple branch in, he said, that good branch will bear good fruit. But if you plant the seeds, you would get a bad tree. That was supposed to answer that question, but all it did was confirm the other man’s opinion, because obviously, that seed was bad, and it’s bad still. So, we’ve got that to deal with. It’s possible to live above it and live in the Spirit and not fulfill it as I tried to preach last week at Keswick.

But there is within us the power of Christ, the presence of the new Man and the holy inclinations and the good inclinations we find in the seventh of Romans yearning to do good. And in the eighth chapter of Romans we’re taught how the yearning to do good can overcome the yearning, the gravitational tendencies of the natural man. But our lives will go in the direction that we determine they should go. He said, let’s see to it, see to it. The indwelling power of Christ then will furnish the power. This that I have said previously is not in any way to excuse poor living. I don’t believe in it. I believe that God’s children are to live day by day in the Spirit and not sin and fulfill the lusts of the flesh. He said, let’s permit, see to it that the peace of God rules in your heart. And whatever rules in your heart, that’s the way you’ll go, just as whoever is at the wheel of the car, that’s where their car will go. And whoever runs the country, that’s the way the country will go. And so, whoever rules your heart, if it’s the peace of God, why, you will have that in your heart and that will be the way your life will go. To which also he says ye are called.

Now, Adam, old Adam and his brood come from that bad seed the brother talked about in that apple. There’s inward discord there. That’s our trouble, inward discord. We’ve always had inward discord you know. It’s only recently that we invented psychiatrists who lay you down on the couch and have you tell your story. But everybody has had inward discord. I can imagine that Adam and Eve walked around grinding their teeth many of time. And Adam went away shaking his head saying, that woman. I am sure of it. I’m sure of it. That’s just because they were fallen human beings, discord was their inward discord. And always it’s the inward discord that causes the outward discord.

If suddenly, everybody in the world had peace of heart we could eliminate the Sputnik and all the armies and navies and policemen. If we had inner accord, I said discord, but accord, inner accord, if we had inner peace, everybody had inner peace, we can eliminate all armies. And we could call home John Foster Dulles and all the rest and say, now, go fishing. There’s nothing to worry about, nothing to worry about, because the inner discord is taken away and everybody’s at peace. And when people are at peace, they won’t hurt each other. It’s when they’re not at peace that the trouble comes, and most people aren’t.

So, he said, have peace. Let’s see to it that the peace of God rules in your heart to which you’re also called. And it’s the inward discord that causes the outward bickering and brawls and wars. And it’s the inward redemption, redemption and reestablishment of peace that results in inward harmony. And he said, ye are called, you’re called in one body, harmonious accord between ourselves as a source of measureless enjoyment. No question. It’s a source of measureless enjoyment. And discord is the source of the greatest suffering in the world.

I have said, I have never had anybody answer it. Maybe it wasn’t worth answering or maybe nobody could, that I have said that I believe the source of the most pain and suffering among mankind is bad dispositions, people with bad tempers. But you say, isn’t cancer worse? No, cancer kills its victim and gets it over with, but a fellow with a bad disposition lives with it, maybe seventy years. And his wife lives with it, poor woman, maybe fifty years. And she suffers, not as sharp and as acute maybe as tuberculosis or cancer or leukemia, but it doesn’t kill its victim. It just tortures them till they die. But inward peace, the harmony and love inside the heart is a source of great enjoyment to us all.

So, let the peace of God rule in your heart to which you’re called in one body. And let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Now, here’s what the Gideons are dedicated to, to giving out are the word of Christ. The word of Christ. The word of Christ, what does it mean? Does it mean that you will buy a red-letter testament? If you have a red-letter testament, don’t be offended by what I say, because it’s perfectly alright for you to have one I suppose. But I think the red-letter testament unintentionally gives a bad impression, because it gives the impression that the letters written in red, were the words of Christ and the other ones are the word of man which is not true.

The word of Christ is not only the words Christ spoke, but they’re all the words spoken about Christ by inspired man. So, letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly may mean letting the first Psalm dwell in you or the 23rd Psalm or the 22nd Psalm, or the 46th Psalm or the 103 Psalm, or any of the Psalms or the Prophets, or the Gospels, or the Acts or the Epistles or Revelation. So don’t imagine that if you see some words printed and read that that means that they’re Christ and they’re more important, they’re not more important. In addition to the fact they murder your eyes, I don’t know whoever invented that, but it’s invented and so we have.

But the word of Christ is whatever the holy prophet said about Christ, what the holy apostle said about Christ and what Christ said about things when He was on earth. That’s the word of Christ. And let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

Now, where does it dwell in you? Well, it dwells in your mind by memorizing, and we ought to memorize the Scriptures. We ought to memorize it by loving it rather than mechanical memorization, but we ought to memorize it. It’s in your mind by memorizing. It’s in your heart, by loving it. It’s in your will by choosing. And it’s in your life by enthroning. Those four things–that would make a sermon in itself and anybody can have it if he wants it for a sermon outline of four points here. The word of Christ dwells in your mind by memorizing it. There’s something about the word of God, when it gets into the human mind, it corrects faults and purifies the mind and does something good for it. And then it’s in your heart by loving it. We should love the word as David said he did and it’s in your will by choosing to obey it and it’s in your whole life by enthroning it. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.

Now, the Holy Ghost put that little phrase in, “all wisdom,” a little prepositional phrase thrown in here as a modifier. And I want you to notice that he said, let the word of Christ dwell in you and in all wisdom, because it’s perfectly possible to have a lot of the word of God in your mind and have no wisdom at all. And so, it will be worse off than if he didn’t. I mean for instance, Jehovah’s Witnesses quote the Bible continuously, but they have no wisdom. They quote it all out of its context and give their own meaning to it. And so there are other groups that quote the Bible, but it’s not in wisdom. There is a divine wisdom. The same Holy Spirit that inspired the Bible must teach the Bible. He must illuminate the Bible so that when you hear it and read it and memorize it, you’ll know what it means in spiritual meaning.

Then he says, teaching and admonishing one another. In this day and age, we hire our teachers. We hire teachers at school, and we sit and listen to them and go home. But the Scripture says teaching and admonishing one another. Every one of you should be a teacher of somebody else. Admonished means to reprove and to warn gently and kindly, but seriously and determinedly.

I’ve been doing a bit of research on the old Methodists for a series I’m writing on those amazing Methodists. And you know what I find? I find they divided their churches up into groups of twelve, called classes, and up into smaller groups called bands. And they had group leaders, class leaders, and then they had persons over those bands. And the business of those class leaders was not to lead the meeting, not to be as we say now, the emcee. The Methodists never heard of that horrible thing. But what they did was this, they picked out some wise old sharp-eyed, prayerful brother and they said, now we’ll make you a class leader and we’ll put eleven people under you, not actually under you, but we’ll put them into your prayerful care.

And they gave him the list and gave him their names and said, now you watch over them as over your own soul and pray for them. And if you see them going wrong, go to them. So that this class leader with these eleven persons to whom he was responsible, women for women I suppose and men for men. But when this class leader saw anybody beginning to slip, he didn’t go to the pastor and he didn’t go to the open prayer meeting. And he didn’t talk behind his back. He went right straight to his Christian brother. And he said, my brother, I am bothered about you. I’m worried about you because of the way you’re living. And most often he got him straightened out and nobody ever knew anything about it. It was the Holy Spirit using a man to admonish another man–teaching and admonishing one another. But we’re not honest enough nor courageous enough now to do that. Now if you admonished a man he gets blazing mad, but that’s because we’re so carnal and far from God.

In Colossae, they were assumed to be close enough to God to accept admonishments. And in the Methodists, they had to be close enough to God or they got shown the back door. They actually did show them the back door. And if Wesley found things weren’t going right, he said, straighten out you’ll see my face no more and he walked out on them and they straightened out.

Now, if we did this, this would head off many a bad fall on the part of some of our Christian people, particularly young Christians. It says we’re to teach and admonish each other, and one way of teaching and admonishing is to sing. Sing songs and hymns and spiritual songs. Now, this is Paul’s threefold classification: psalms of David set to music, hymns written by the Christians and you’ll find a number of them if I had time. I’d point them out to you in the New Testament. Some of Paul’s epistles contain little gems which Paul didn’t write, but which we borrowed and set in there, the same as if you hear a preacher preaching a sermon, and suddenly, he goes off into a four-line stanza of a hymn saying what he wants to say better than he can. So, Paul, in some of his epistles, quoted certain passages, which were actually hymns which the Christians were singing. And he said that they ought to sing these, and not only the songs but hymns of what the old Methodists and Presbyterians called a human composition. And then spiritual songs, I don’t know what that would be, perhaps it would be another way of saying the other two, songs and hymns.

And then, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord. You know, whenever I go, almost any place I go, what I miss is our singing here. I miss it. We don’t have the greatest singers in the world here. We have good singers. And we have some who have a reputation as good singers. But I mean that we’re not a St. Olaf’s outfit here. But there’s something here, the singing; singing with grace in your heart. And I hear grace in a song when I hear the song. There are some religious songs that you couldn’t get any grace and grace would enter that place. But there are other songs that you’ll sing with grace in your heart, you’ll make a rather ordinary song pretty good. Have you ever had the experience of having a fellow who wasn’t too well instructed, but who did love God and who sang with the Spirit. He would get up and choose a rather ragged number that wasn’t too good and put his head off on one side and close his eyes and sing it, and pretty soon you were getting blessed even if the song wasn’t the best. Now if he’d had a good one, he’d have multiplied his usefulness. But, I’ve seen that happen more than once. And if somebody sang with grace in their hearts, and if the song wasn’t so good, they made it good. And I’ve heard some of the most noble songs ever composed by the pen, inspired man, ruined by being sung without grace.

And then it says, sing to the Lord. Not sing to the congregation, but sing to the Lord. And if you sing a good song to the Lord, somebody’s going to get help as sure as you live. And it’s my positive conviction that next to the preaching of the word and expounding of the Scriptures, the next greatest power to do good in the public assembly is grace-filled singing of great songs to the Lord. Sing with grace in your heart. There oughtened to be anybody in the choir that couldn’t come stand right up before the board and take an examination on whether they had grace in their heart or not. The paid and the professional singer doesn’t do much good.

One of the sexiest singers singing today, I’m not even going to advertise him by speaking his name. One of the most, one of the most carnal, sexiest singers singing today has some sacred album. They said they did it to try to help to counteract bad publicity. Can you imagine a guy, a man, a young fellow so terrible? He’s got a reputation says, well, I want to get away from this reputation for being that kind of a fellow, so I’m going to sing some hymns and so he sings himself some hymns and poor, dumb Christians buy them and put them on and play them and wipe the tears out of their eyes. Well, singing with grace in your heart. And if we don’t sing with grace in our heart, we might just as well not sing.

Then in closing it says, whatsoever you do, whatever you do, and you know we’ve all got a lot to do. Do you ever get up in the morning and say to yourself, I haven’t much to do today, but before 10 o’clock, you were involved in so many things you wish you had twelve hands instead of two. It happens to me all the time. I get up early and come up to church here. I’m up an hour and a half in the church here before you’re present, looking around at things for the Sunday school and straightening out things and praying a little and going over my sermons, and I’m here. And I think I’ll have nothing to do when I get up there but sit and meditate and pray. When I get up here, I find that there’s so much to do that it takes up to church time and behind the scenes, but I’m doing it. Whatever you do, he said, the world’s full of things to do. Personally, I think if we were wiser than we are, we’d find some things that didn’t have to be done. We cut down on our activity a bit. We do them. But if we, do it to the Lord it says, whatever you do, do to the glory of God, in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father. So, this glorifies all activities, that is if they’re divine, if they’re in God.

Domestic toil, one of our poor pastors. Here he’s been up every night now for ten days. And his poor bleary-eyed wife. The little fellow is healthy, but he just mixed up. He thinks night is day and day is night. So poor Brother Moore has to lug him around at night you know, so if you hear a tramp, tramp, tramp, don’t think the enemies coming, it’s just Brother Moore. He’s carrying the new baby around. You can do it to the glory of God, son if you know how.

And you can do everything to the glory of God, domestic toil, labor, caring for babies, your business, your long-distance calls and closing of that deal if it’s honest. If it isn’t honest, you can’t. But if it’s honest, you can do it for the glory of God and your school. You can do that for the glory of God and your travel, whether it’s by bus which is the worst way to travel, or by plane which is the fastest. Why, you can still glorify God, giving thanks to God the Father. And I say, we must preserve a thankful heart.

I wonder what there is about frost and yellow leaves that makes people thankful? I don’t think we ought to wait until the birds go south to get thankful. Thankfulness should be an ingredient in our Christian hearts, and we shouldn’t be thankful all the time. For thankfulness is more precious than diamonds. And I for my part, I’m determined to be thankful. Every day I considered a bonus. I ought to be dead long ago if God had dealt with me. And if he’d have been as hard on me as I’ve been on His people, I would have been. But He still lets me live. And every day I think of it and say thank Thee Lord and another day a bonus. Every day is a bonus, every day. I think we ought to thank Him and keep thankful. And if we keep a thankful heart and a singing heart and a Bible-filled heart, a Scripture-filled heart and a good honest, courageous heart that isn’t afraid to admonish and reprove when we have to, why, we’ll certainly have peace of heart. And if we have peace of heart, why, we’ll have, and it’s all here in this text. We’ll have harmony and accord and that’s the sweetest thing in the world. It’s like the oil on the head of Aaron that went down to his beard and went down to the skirts of his garment for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore.