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Tozer Talks

“Confidence

“Confidence”
Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer
June 17, 1956

Whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule. And let us mind the same thing. And another passage is in Hebrews, two passages in Hebrews, the third chapter, verse six, whose house we are if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope, firm unto the end. And in the tenth chapter of Hebrews, verses thirty-five and thirty-six, cast not away therefore your confidence which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.

Now, there are about three things taught in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament that I want to mention to start off here. One is, that the Christian life is a progression. That it is a journey of the redeemed soul toward God. Not only has the redeemed soul found God, but he is also on a journey toward God and there’s no contradiction. That is one thing that’s taught in the Bible. The other thing is that Satan stands to resist every step of that Christian’s way. He is shrewd and skillful in laying his roadblocks and his traps to stop the progression of the soul toward God and God-likeness. But another is, that to advance against this opposition requires faith and steadfast courage. And the apostle calls it–confidence.

Now that’s what I wanted to talk about today, that we Christians are maturing, growing up in God, if we’re obedient and faithful. We’re progressing on a very important journey from where we started up into the fullness of God. We’re being hindered by the skillful and powerful contrivings of the devil, and that we must exercise faith and courage, and hold on to our confidence.

Now, a little exposition of those two texts which I chose. The Hebrew Christians were losing heart. And the man of God, whoever he was, wrote them a letter in which he sought to encourage them to go on with God, and uses these words, hold fast, have your confidence, rejoice, and to hope because there in is great reward. Cast not away he said. Hold your confidence and rejoice in hope to the end.

And then Paul, in the third chapter of Philippians said in effect, I’ll not read it again. But he says in effect, the whole chapter, that he’s not a perfect man yet and God isn’t finished with him. There is yet a good deal to be done on him before he’s ready for the presence of the Lord in fullness. Anybody’s ready for heaven who’s converted, who’s justified, but Paul thought about something bigger and grander than that. He thought about a conformity to Christ’s death and resurrection, conformity to Christ likeness, and the knowledge of Christ greatly increased and intensified and elevated. He thought about all that and said that he wasn’t yet, hadn’t reached that yet and wasn’t yet perfect. And then he turned around and with a fine disregard for consistency says in the text which I read, 3:16, let us therefore as many as be perfect, continue on and abide and go ahead from here.

Now, there are two opposite errors here which I thought I might point out to you though it’s not too important a part of the sermon. One is made by the liberal and the other is made by the careless evangelical, or by the zealous evangelical. The first one is the pastor, the liberal pastor, receives into his church people who’ve never been converted and then proceeds to exhort them to continue in the Christian way, forgetting that you can’t continue in a way that you have never entered. And urges them to grow in grace, forgetting that you cannot grow when you have not been born. And that life cannot be developed when there is no life there. The error is assuming divine life to be in a man or woman, because he sits in a pew or joins a church. That’s error number one. It’s a very serious error, because to continue to assume that a divine work has been done within the soul when it hasn’t, is to place that soul in grave jeopardy and all but guarantee its final ruin.

Now the second then is the opposite completely; for while liberalism assumes that life is present when it is not. Sometimes zealous evangelicals deny that life is present when it is. It is the error of the other side. And the more zealous we are and as keener we are for revival, the more likely we are to cut down the corn along with the weeds, and to insist that every baby be born full grown, and that every pilgrim reach his destination the day he starts. Now, that’s a great mistake. It’s a mistake. I tend toward myself because of my temperament, because of my impatience with the sluggish, plodding feet, dragging Christians. But I’ve got to correct myself and I’ve got be scriptural, even if it means to cut against my own temperament. And I would this morning remind you my friends, that there comes a time when a Christian must make a positive affirmation of faith. There comes a time when a Christian must say, now, I am not yet perfect, but I thank God that I am not where I used to be and that I do see evidences of change life and old things have passed away, and lo, everything has become new.

I’m not as wise as Solomon, but I thank God I’m wise enough so that I own Jesus Christ as my Savior. I don’t know everything yet, but I know Whom I have a believed. I don’t have the gifts of Isaiah or John or Paul, but I have at least the ability to appreciate those men and to learn from them. And I haven’t gone as far as St. Francis yet, but I thank God I’m on the same road headed in the same direction. There comes a time when we’ve got to do that, when we’ve got to thank God for everything that we’ve had up to now.

Now, there’s grave danger that there shall be ingratitude in our hearts about all this. For instance, we read the life of a great saint and after reading it, we find that we intend to compare ourselves with that great Christian. And of course, compare ourselves unfavorably. There are two or three reasons for that. One is we probably aren’t up to them yet, and the second is, we saw only the good parts of their lives.

I got this morning, it was left in the mail yesterday I presume, a package of books from a publisher with the lives of two great Christians, Dr. R.A. Torrey and Reverend William Christie. Well now, those were great men, one of them still living, one gone to heaven. They were great men. And I got here early this morning. I usually get around eight o’clock. So, I had little time and I sketched through both of those books and I didn’t find anything wrong with either one of them. I found only the best side of it. I found that their friends had written them up, and even Paul would feel a little discouraged after reading those biographies, because these two men are just too wonderful for this world. And now they weren’t that great. They were good, godly, wonderful men, men that I couldn’t come up to their knees I suppose, or you. At least we don’t think we could, but we didn’t know everything about them and we didn’t know their weaknesses, and we didn’t know where the spots where they might have been blind. We only saw them in the light of a glowing devotee, through the eyes of those that love them.

Now, there’s danger that we read the lives of the great and conclude that we don’t amount to anything at all and become despondent. I urge you to hold fast and rejoice and hope, and thank God for everything He’s done up to now. I sometimes say that if the Lord never answered another prayer for me, it will take me at least 20,000 years to thank Him for the ones He’s answered up to now. If He never opens a new list of spiritual sight to me, I’ll have eternity to thank Him for all the panoramas and all the spiritual landscapes that have been open to my gaze over the past years. And if He never whispers another time to my heart, I’m glad for all the times He has whispered. And if I can’t pray as well as George Mueller, I thank God at least He inclineth His ear unto me and heareth my cry. And anybody can say that, who really knows God, and I can say it. So, I’m not going to be knocked over by these very burning fellows. They come make a comment and they burn everything to cinders that within any reasonably close distance of them.

The other day, oh, it was a long time ago now, I waited a long time for I dared mentioned it, but I sat listening to a preacher somewhere on this terrestrial ball. And he was preaching in a church where he was a total stranger. He only knew two or three people in the church. And he hadn’t any way whatsoever of appraising the people in that church or of discovering what kind of people they were. He didn’t know them at all. But I sat and listened to him while he discounted and reproached and scolded and disparaged and chided and unchurched people to whom he was a complete stranger and they to him.

And I began to ask myself some questions. And I wrote them down in a notebook and I waited a long time for them to ripen and see whether I just reacted unpleasantly or whether there was really some truth in it. And here they are. Nobody’s ever answered these questions for me. Maybe you can help me. What I asked myself was this. Why do some ministers, in order to take us on in the Christian life, first have to prove we’ve never started yet? Now, I need a lot of help from God. There’s no question about that, but I can’t be helped by the man who makes me admit to start with that I’ve never been converted. He can’t help me, because he’s making me lie to begin with and that bad. So, I’m asking the question, why in order to take us on, do some of our blazing revivalists insist that we have never started at all?

Second, why is it that some of these brethren, to emphasize the truth, assume that everyone else is ignorant of that truth and never heard about it at all? And why is it that to stir us up to more prayer, we have to first be told that we don’t pray at all when we know we do. And why is it that to induce penitence in us, they have to imply by an illustration or by an outright assertion that we’ve had a fierce family quarrel just before church time? And why is it to convict us of sin, that they have to act mysterious and look very grave and roll their eyes modestly to the floor and suggest that there is among us, grave, secret sin? And why is it that if we are not doing their kind of work, they always have to assume that we’re deadbeats and never did any work at all.

It goes like this, you know brother, you’re not only going to have to keep a tender heart, but you’re going to have to develop a tough hide too along the road. A tender heart is necessary and the tenderer the better, but the hide has to be a little tough. A missionary goes to the foreign field and he has to have a tender heart to love the natives and keep right with God, but he has to have a tough hide to stand the mosquitoes and the other unpleasant things.

Now it’s the same on the Christian way. Keep a tender heart, but a tough hide. And I’ve developed quite a tough hide over the years. It hasn’t hurt me any. My heart isn’t as tender as it ought to be, but I’m not worried about my hide, because it’s kept me from going to pieces and being preached clear out of house and home and driven to the caves in the rocks by men who tried to tell me that because I’m not doing their work, I’m not doing any work at all.

It’s like this, someone who loves to work with the Jews will come and they’ll give you such a burning message, and then scold and chide and abuse. If you’re not doing Jewish work, you’re just not doing anything at all. Somebody else will be working in the mountains of Kentucky, and when they’re through with you, if you’re not interested in the mountains of Kentucky, it’s doubtful you’ve ever even been born again. Another one’s doing work in say the institutions, in jails and so on, and they will wring you like a wet towel, and when you’re finished, you’re limp and scared and wondering what’s going on. Why, you’ve never been to jail nor in an institution.

Why must we be like that Brethren? Why can’t we see that God has workers to do all his work? And that the man who is doing Jewish work, if he’s in the will of God, he’s doing it because God put him there. The person who’s in the Kentucky mountains, God sent him there. The person who’s called to do institutional work, the Lord sent him there. The person who’s on the foreign field, God put him there. And why can’t we accept each other instead of making each other feel silly and small and no good because we’re not doing the work that somebody else is doing.

Now, Paul, used big ball games as an illustration, why can’t I? Suppose that there was a little meeting of the Cubs? No, we won’t use the Cubs, let’s use a major league team. Let’s say the Yankees. And suppose that there’s a meeting of the Yankees and one fellow who plays first base delivers a burning speech and makes everybody else wilt and feel no good because he doesn’t play first base. And then some fellow pitches and by the time he’s through, everybody is wilted again feeling that if you don’t pitch, you don’t play baseball. And so, with an outfielder and the next fellow hits home runs. And if you don’t hit forty home runs, you don’t play baseball well. Well brother, can’t you see that each has his place on the field and each contributes his bit and each does each work and each will get his pay; and so, in the kingdom of God.

I don’t have to worry because I can’t do everything. Nobody can do everything. But if you can do one thing and do it well, you ought to thank God for that. But I’ve had to put up with an awful lot of sneers from people who thought because I wasn’t doing the work they’re doing. I’m not doing anything at all. I’m just sitting around twiddling. Well, I don’t know why that is Brethren, but it’s that way.

And then another thing and I’m finished with my seven questions that I haven’t been able to answer. Why do some of the men insist upon creating invidious comparisons? I’ll explain what it means. It goes like this. You talk all you want to about the deeper life. I believe in soul-winning. So, we deeper life brethren are dismissed. They believe in soul-winning, or somebody else says, you can talk all you want to about Bible study. I believe in missions. Another one says, I believe in foreign missions. That’s the Lord’s work. And you can talk about Jewish work all you will.

Now Brethren, there’s no contradiction between these works. God’s doing all of these. And there’s nobody going to tell me that there’s any comparison to be drawn there at all. It’s not exactly to see them as the previous thought, but it’s close to it, because it insists upon drawing comparisons. Somebody will say, well you pray all night. Okay, you pray all night if you want to, I live the Christian life as though there was a comparison between the two and he had to choose. Tom Hare prayers all night, but don’t think he doesn’t live the Christian life. Ed Maxey is going to the foreign field, but don’t think he’s going to give up his Bible to go.

You don’t have to choose either this or that. You can have the whole thing and accept all the people of God and love them all, understand them all. And somebody said, you teach consecration all the time, I believe in soul winning. Well, you don’t draw a distinction between consecration and soul winning; you do both, consecrate men and win souls.

Those comparisons, I’ll tell you why they do it Brethren. They do it to beat us over the head and get us to the altar. And it seems that there are those who won’t believe that they insist upon making you admit that you’ve been deceived and deluded up to now. Oh, you can’t fool me like that, my friend. And somebody says I was there when it happened and I ought to know. I know what the Lord has done for my soul. That doesn’t mean that I’m not pressing on. It does mean that I am not going to allow anybody to destroy my confidence and take away my affirmed faith in God.

Sometimes I’ve had people come to me with a message. They have been in tune with the Infinite and they came to me to straighten me out. Well up to this point, nobody’s ever managed to help me in 42 years of Christian life that way. They put their arm around you usually, that’s to soften the blow and get close to you and then give you the works.

Well, nobody’s ever helped me that way, because I always sort of reason it out. You know Brethren, you don’t need to be afraid of using your head if you use a sanctified brain; it’s perfectly all right. God put it in there. It’s an organ, use it. And I reason things out and I say to myself, now, wait a minute. I haven’t seen it. I haven’t backslidden. I haven’t grieved God. God can talk to me. He was just talking to me few minutes ago. And if he has a message for me, why did He send it around Robin Hood’s barn by a fellow whom I don’t have too much confidence in? Why not come straight to me with it? And I think that’s a good reasonable way to look at things.

A prophet used to be sent and occasionally a prophet may yet be sent to a man who is running from God to rebuke Him and say, though art the man. But, God couldn’t talk to David. David had temporarily pulled the blind down. God couldn’t get any light to him so he sent Nathan. But as long as David’s blinds were up and the sun was shining in and David was sitting on the roof playing the harp, it’s unlikely the prophet could come and tell David anything. God could talk to David.

So, my brethren, let’s thank God for everybody. Let’s even thank God for those who try to insist we’re not Christians when we are. You have this gift? No, well then, you’re out, I’m sorry for you. Here’s a ticket to hell–one way. You don’t rate. Well, I don’t have all the gifts in the world, but I thank God I have a few. Amen.

Now let’s hold fast our confidence and let’s declare our happy, joyful independence. Let’s have faith. Let’s not be our arrogant. Arrogance is of course a sinful thing. But Paul says, and maybe with this we might close, because I think it’s good to close on a scriptural note if I haven’t been scriptural up to now. At least I’ll read some scripture. Now, here’s what the man of God says. He says, wherefore, I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost. Now therefore, there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administration, but the same Lord and there are diversities of operation, but it’s the same God which work is all in all.

Then another twelfth chapter, this Romans, I say through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. So, there are gifts and they vary, and they should be in the body of Christ. And we have a right to know we have them. But we’re to think soberly about it all. Don’t get all excited like a boy with a new toy.

And let’s remember that other people have the gifts of God among them, and let us go ahead, steadfastly quietly toughening our armor against the fiery darts of the wicked, having cheerful hope and rejoicing, and thanksgiving. As we go along in the Christian way. Then we’ll progress toward God which I insist is the sum and essence of the Christian life, a moral and spiritual progressing and rushing toward the image of Jesus Christ. And in that day, when we see Him as He is, we shall be like Him. That’s the beatitude beyond which there is none other.

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Tozer Talks

Reasons for Assembling”

“The Forgiveness of Sins”
Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer
February 17, 1957

Now, in the book of Psalms, the eight-sixth, verse five; for Thou Lord are good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon Thee. Then in the book of Acts there is a statement made by Paul; be it known unto you. That’s 13:38 and 13:39; be it known unto you therefore men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And by Him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.

Now, I want to talk about one of the bluntest and most simple things, the forgiveness of sin. And while religion is in itself naturally beautiful incidentally, I’d like to say that I don’t think in all of my Christian experience, I saw a more dignified, touching and beautiful baby dedication, than this one this morning. Have you? There’s something about the simplicity of the direct approach that’s always beautiful. And so religion ought to be beautiful. Not by ornate decoration, but by this that we saw, a direct, simple, unaffected approach to the things of God.

But we like to fancify it and pretty it up and give it favor by identifying it with popular causes, and give it a certain kind of beauty by identifying it with art and music and every kind of symbolism, and give it respectability by relating it to learning. This we tried to do. And I think the reason for it is, that simplicity isn’t present. We were not simple about it because we’re frightened. There’s a deep shame of heart. We have known a painful, humiliating thing. That is sin. And this deeply disgraceful thing that we call sin, shocks and embarrasses and humiliates. And so we try to cover it up and make religion to be simply a seeking after God or a seeking after truth. And thus we cover the fact that we’re sinners; that we need to be forgiven, just plain forgiven and cleansed by the blood of Jesus.

Now, the presence of our sin is one of the most shameful and embarrassing things in the world. And to save face, we have stigmatized certain sins and generally agree upon them. We agree to place the hand of infamy, or point the finger of infamy upon certain great, gross sins. And that makes us of course feel righteous by comparison. But all sin before God is a serious thing. God being who He is and what He is, and we being what we are and sin being the filth of the human spirit as it is, we are able to endure our own consciences only by refusing to admit the infamy of our sins by excusing or blaming on others, or cultivating a brazen face like a tavern hostess, and so destroying our sense of shame.

But you will find a great deal in the Bible. In fact, if we were to take it out of the Bible, this thought that God forgives people, that God forgives people. People must be forgiven and God forgives people. If you take that out of the Bible, you really don’t have much Bible left. It would be so thin that the you would think that you had nothing but the covers let the whole basis of the Bible or the whole reason for its existence is that there was a race that has fallen into sin. And that sin is a is an injurious, harmful, degrading and destructive and alienating thing, and that it’s got to be dealt with.

Now, that’s the Bible. The Bible is full of it. The whole book of Psalms is full of it. And the prophecies of the Old Testament speak of it and our Lord refers to it and the apostles. It’s throughout all the Scriptures, so that we must deal with this vital problem, or somebody must deal with this vital problem for us, the disposition of our sins. What am I going to do with my sin? This is so huge, and so overwhelming; a disaster this sin thing, that it demands a solution. Somebody is going to have to deal with this, this polio. They’re talking about polio. Only one in hundreds of thousands are touched with polio cancer, only one in many thousands perhaps. And other diseases, heart failure, they scared most men above forty to death last week. It was heart week and you couldn’t flip a radio or look at a paper but what somebody was yelling at you look out for your heart. And I’ve got all the symptoms myself listening to the fellows tell about it. And they tell us, look out for our hearts.

Well, the heart trouble is a serious thing. But friends, you can add up polio and cancer and heart failure, and you still have nothing compared with this one serious thing, this overwhelming disaster which is come upon the human race, this thing we call sin, that is so huge and so vast and so crushing that it adds up too. It’s greater than all of the other disasters added together.

And so, I say it demands a satisfactory solution. We dare not my Christian people, we dare not deal with it as some have tried to do. We dare not deal with it by renaming it. You can rename cancer, but it still kills. You can refuse to believe that it’s heart, but the heart may still kill. You can call a gun by some other name, but if it goes off when pointed at you, it will still destroy you. And yet some have tried to do it. Rename it, rethink it; and by a new nomenclature, that is, a set of names for things related to sin, we’ll hope that we might have gotten away with it. But no, we haven’t. We haven’t disposed of it. It’s got to be satisfactorily disposed of. And either it must be removed from the soul, or it will remove the soul from the presence of God forever.

This is true. This is true of you. It’s true of me. It’s true of my family. It’s true of those I love the most. It is true of all the good people and it’s true of all the bad people. And it’s true of all the white people and of all the dark-skinned peoples. It’s true of the great men and it’s true of the forgotten, faceless multitudes who mill the streets. It is true of every individual. Either, we must find a satisfactory solution for this sin problem, and it must be removed from our soul or it will remove our soul from the presence of God.

Now, to the sincere man nothing else matters I think, and yet, it’s evident that there are various ways of trying to get rid of it. There are those as you know, in foreign lands, who try every means of getting rid of sin, every effort. I saw a picture on the back page of the Daily News. But the news is something else again, but I think it was there. The picture of a man who had stood up, who had stood up all his life. He won’t lie down. You saw it maybe. He wouldn’t lie down. He was a man I would judge to be 55 years old or older, and he’s never laid down since he’s entered the religious order. He stands up even to sleep.

Now that’s a touching thing, that that man knows what a lot of Christians don’t know, that the most crushing, destructive thing in the world is sin. The most lethal disease ever to visit the human heart is sin and He knows he has it. And he thinks that if he stands up all his life, somewhere a good God will say, well, we can’t punish that fellow because he has stood up and tried to atone for his sin. How tragic that a man can stand up all his life, and yet not remove sin from his soul.

Now, I’m glad for David’s wonderful text. It’s so good to hear David say in that eight-sixth Psalm that thou, O God, thou O God are good and ready to forgive and plenteous in mercy unto all them that call upon thee. And I’m glad for the word in the New Testament, be it known unto you, therefore men and brother, that through this man Jesus is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin. To the most sinful age in the history of the world that has succeeded in euthanizing its sin so they don’t believe that is sin, this doesn’t have the joyous meaning that it might have to those who first heard it, might have had.

Let’s put it like this. Suppose that a man came down here in uniform and respectfully asked permission to speak a word. And he had the credentials of the government, and he arose and said, I am asked by the government to make the announcement that you are free, that you will not any longer be restrained by the government. You can vote as you please, go to church as you please, do as you please, work where you please. I am set to tell you that you are now free. You would look at each, we’d look at each other and thank him courteously and wonder what had happened to him, whether he was real or not.

My friends, that’s because you’ve enjoyed freedom from the time you can remember. That’s because you have the freedom to criticize the very government that’s given you that freedom. The very country that has made you free, you are free to condemn. And so therefore, it can’t hit you. It couldn’t hit you as it would, say in Budapest. Or as those thick-lipped announcers are all saying now, Budapest. Imagine now in Budapest. Suppose that in some church there, somebody were to arise and make such an announcement. Why there’d be an explosion that would rattle the windows. There would be tears of joy. They would turn and hug each other and cry and perhaps break into their national anthem. And thank God for that freedom which we have enjoyed ungratefully so long.

Now it’s exactly the same here. When we who have known about forgiveness so long and have heard of the grace of God preached about so much that it doesn’t reach us as it must have these early persons who first heard it. Be it known unto you, therefore men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin, and by Him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. Men and women who had born the long yoke and had worn their phylacteries, and that had to perform every thing told them by the rabbi’s. Now they hear the joyous news that they can be forgiven through Jesus Christ so that all things which they could not be delivered from by the law of Moses. They are now freed by this Man whom God has made both Lord and Christ.

 Is it any wonder that that early church was a joyous church? Is it any wonder that there was an up springing of emotion that they could hardly contain. Now I know also that it was the presence of the Holy Spirit that made them joyful. But I believe that even that kind of joy can be psychologically analyzed, at least in a measure.

And so the contrast, the wondrous contrast between the great, heavy yoke that couldn’t do anything but make their neck sore and their hearts heavy, was now tossed away, and the good news of Christ, the message that God was ready to forgive. A message that no pronouncement of science can equal. The most valuable message probably that this sin-ruined world can ever know. That’s what the Bible means by the gospel. That’s what it means. That’s the message of the gospel. And all the Bible adds up to this. And there is certainly much more, but this is basic.

Now, you say, how is this applied and what can we do about it and how do I make it real to me? Well, the Bible has been very, very explicit here, very explicit. 1 John 1:9, you know what it says. If we confess our sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I think that this is one of the most wonderful and yet the most awful verses in the entire Bible.

And I have never heard it and really talked about. I have not even myself, though I have this conviction about it. I’ve never said enough about it. If we confess our sins, He is merciful and gracious to forgive. If it said that I would understand it. If it said that, I would say, well, that’s true, and that’s in line with the rest of the teaching of the Bible because God is merciful and gracious, and therefore, when we confess, He mercifully and graciously forgives. But he doesn’t say that. If it had said, if we confess our sins, God in His pity will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I would say that accords with the rest of the teaching of the Bible, about the great pity which God has for suffering men. But he doesn’t say either merciful, pitiful, gracious, kind. He doesn’t use any of those words. It says faithful and just. Did you ever think of that? Did you ever stop to wonder why those words faithful and just are there? If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just.

Now, why, when it looks to me as if faithfulness and justice would mean just the opposite? It would mean that we should be punished without mercy from the presence of God forever. A just and a holy God could not receive sinners into heaven. No man can see God who is unholy. And the soul that sinneth it shall die. And all the nations that forget God shall be cast into hell. That’s the justice of God. That’s the faithfulness and justice of God. And it looks as if it should have said that the faithfulness and justice of God will refuse to forgive sin and will drive us from His presence forever.

But why did it say faithful and just to forgive? It is because one of our own race, one of our own people who was once held in the arms as this little girl was held this morning by an old man and prayed over. One of our race who once walked on baby legs and grew long-legged and bony and awkward when He was twelve or thirteen and then grew on to a fine, symmetrical manhood. And grew in wisdom and in favor with God and men. There was One of our race, completely responsible for us, and taking upon Himself all our iniquities. And He went, and in the darkness did something which now places forgiveness of sin out of the hands of mere mercy, as we might say, and makes it a necessary thing for God to do.

Jesus Christ, by His atonement, made a covenant so that God to be just, has to forgive when sins have been confessed. God to be faithful has to forgive when sins have been confessed. I say this is one of the most astonishing texts in the entire Bible, that God forgives sin justly and faithfully. Why justly and faithfully? Because there sits at His right hand One who went through the unspeakable, hard agony on the cross, and in darkness fixed things so God could not only show mercy, but even justice is on the side of the returning sinner. Even justice is on the side of the man who comes to God. Even God’s faithfulness is on our side. If there had been no darkness, no cry in the night, no wound in the side, no nails in the hands, there never could have been anything for you and me in justice and faithfulness except damnation.

But because the cry was heard in the night, Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit. And because the sun refused to shine, and because a man went in there into the darkness and gave His all for people that hated Him and were his enemies, now God has turned around so that God must forgive sin. He can’t do anything else, but that.

So, if you will confess your sin, we have covenant on our side, and we have justice then on our side. Isn’t it wonderful my friends? I don’t often say that in sermons. Isn’t it wonderful? I know that’s a rather cheap way to put it, but don’t you see the deep value and wonder of all this? That because there is an atonement made through this Man, through this Man, said the apostle, be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified. And now justice is even on our side. Not mercy, not only mercy, but also justice.

And the faithful God can fulfill the text of the Old Testament, that Thou God are the God who forgives iniquity and sin. To me, that’s worth taking everywhere throughout the whole world. People often wonder why I don’t deal in baptism, and they write and ask me whether I believe in pre-tribulation, or post-tribulation rapture, and they write and ask me what I think of this man or that man, as though I wanted to tell them. And people are always wanting to get out on a limb, and I do it myself sometimes. But Brethren, at the beating heart of our message, and of our Christian fellowship is this, that the terrible calamity hit us. And not only did it hit us, but we brought it by our own sin. And we have no excuse in the wide world to offer. We did it as David said. It’s our fault, we did it. And yet God in His great mercy has sent a Man and that Man being God, and man has fixed it now so even justice is on our side.

So I want to close by saying this to your friends. Don’t think of of God being divided up in his attitude toward you. Never think of God’s mercy being for you and His kindness being for you and his pity being for you. And then his justice and his faithfulness and His holiness being against you. Never think of it that way. It used to be maybe that way before the atonement was made. But it’s that way no more. All of God is for you. And all the attributes of God are over on your side. And everything God is, is yours. And there isn’t an attribute or a characteristic of the Holy God, but is over on your side because Jesus died and rose and lives and pleads.

Now, there’s the simple gospel. And yet it has been the throbbing heart of the gospel message during all these long years. So, tell it friends and keep telling it, and tell it to everybody and tell it abroad. And Roy, go back and tell it. I know you will. And we Christians pay and pray to help them to go and tell it. This wonderful message, to us, who are so used to things. I say we have sort of lost the beauty of it. But, oh, to those that know it for the first time, how wonderful, how wonderful it must be. How wonderful.

I think that tonight, I have reason to believe tonight will be one of the greatest meetings we’ve ever had in this church, and I want you to be here tonight.

We thank Thee Holy Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst not overlook us rebels here in a dark, forlorn world. But Thou didst send us Thyself, Thy Son. We thank thee for the Fountain which is opened in the house of David and is now open for all of us. We pray that we may not through morbid humility or fear or self-hatred, fail to enter and be washed, but that we might enter and be clean. And now May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion and fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all forever.

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Tozer Talks

Reasons for Assembling”

“Reasons for Assembling”
Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer
November 2, 1958

The sermon this morning will be brief, I trust. I want to make some comments appropriate for this communion this morning from the tenth chapter of Hebrews, a part of which I read in the earlier part of the service. I want to call attention to our position in Jesus Christ. Verses 10-12, by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all, and every priest standeth daily ministering offerings, oftentimes the same sacrifices, even though these can never take away sins, but this man after He’d offered one sacrifice for sins forever sat down on the right hand of God. There’s the one sacrifice. And that means the end of sacrifices, the end of sacrifices. Nobody has offered a blood sacrifice that’s been accepted from the day our Lord Jesus Christ said, it is finished. Before that, there were sacrifices plural. Since that there have been no sacrifices offered in blood. There have been many thousands, even millions offered, but none had been accepted. Because to add any sacrifices to the one complete, full, final sacrifice is to do despite to the Spirit of grace. There is one sacrifice.

In verse twenty-one, having an high priest over the house of God, one Priest, and that means the end of priests. The end of sacrifices and the end of priests. We have to keep this in mind. There has not been a time probably since the days before Luther when we were being conditioned mentally by advertising, radio, television, speeches, columnists, news items, pictures, and just a general barrage of propaganda to accept the idea that there is something to be said for the repeated sacrifice of the Mass and the position of priests. There is nothing to be said if we stay by the Bible. There is one sacrifice offered for ever. That means the end of sacrifices.

Therefore, without hesitation and in a spirit of complete charity for the people, but with grief at the error, I say that every sacrifice offered by priests now is an affront to the holy God. However well intentioned, it’s an affront. There is no more sacrifices now and there is only one Priest.

So, we come to the end of priests, except of course, that we are all priests. 1 Peter 2:9; we are chosen generation, a royal priesthood. And we are all priests offering up sacrifices unto God, but they’re all grounded on that one sacrifice. And the Christian priest offers no blood sacrifice. He offers the sacrifice of praise unto God. And so, we explain that when we say the end of sacrifices, we do not mean the end of personal sacrifices, hardships, such as missionaries endure. Neither do we mean that we are not to offer up the sacrifice of praise, well pleasing in His sight. But we mean atoning sacrifice is no more. Nobody can offer them now. Not all the beasts of the mountains, not all the cattle, the bay face cattle that roam the rich hills and valleys of our West, would be enough to wash one sin away. No more priests.

And we can draw near, verse twenty-two. Let us draw near in true faith with a heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled and our bodies washed with pure water so we can come together. Here’s what I want particularly to emphasize, that as we draw near to Him, we draw nearer to one another also. Not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together, verse twenty-five.

That word assembly is a word I’m coming increasingly to love. The word assembly of course only means a gathering together. And it has to be a modified or you don’t know what kind of an assembly. When the communists meet, that’s an assembly. When the politicians gather their people in to talk to them, that’s an assembly. When a group gathers to see a baseball or football game, that’s an assembly. But there’s a modifier here, the assembly of God. God’s assembly, the only assembly God calls, and the only one he has called. It is called the church in English. And so, we are not to forsake the church, the assembling, the coming together.

Now, I want to point out briefly why we should assemble. We should assemble because it’s the normal thing. You know, the closer you get to the Shepherd, the nearer we get to each other. When the sheep are scattered all over the meadow browsing and the shepherd issues his peculiar call and they all come running to him, the nearer they get to him, the closer they get to each other. Isn’t that beautiful and simple.

So, we come closer to each other by coming closer to Christ. Five men in a church who are apart, if they come close to Christ, each of them will find they’re closer together because they’ve come closer to the Savior. All the creatures of the forest meet at the water. They all come to the same place. And those scattered all over the hills, when they meet at the water, they’re close together.

Well, we need each other is another reason, even if we don’t feel that we do. The man who feels that he needs other people is normal, but when we feel we do not we’re badly in error and something wrong with us. The individual Christian needs the company of Christians incidentally, the company of Christians. And we should come to that company of Christians with receptivity. God will say to a company what He cannot say to the individual, just as He will say to the individual what he cannot say to the company.

Somebody called me the other day, a member of Moody Church. I told Brother Redpath at a luncheon the other day that one of his sheep had been consulting me. And but anyway, she called and she was concerned about some spiritual problem. Well, she said, I attended, I went all through Keswick and I never went back. I never went back to the prayer room because God never meets me in company. And she wanted to know what’s the matter with her. And I said, well exactly the same thing is true of me. I never meet God at an altar of prayer. I’ve had to meet God alone. But yet God has said things to me in the company. I sit here as we sing and the Scripture is read and prayer offered and God says things to me that He did not say to me when I was alone. But He says things to me alone, that He cannot and will not say to me in a public assembly. So, we need both. We need to come to God alone. But we need also to come to God with the assembly, for God speaks to His assembly what he cannot speak to the individuals of that assembly if they’re not present in the assembly.

Now, how much value I can give to a crowd of Christians will depend upon how close I’ve been to God and how God has spoken to me alone. There must first be personal religion and then communal religion. Our fathers talked about that. You know, I wish that there might be a reingestion and reissuing, a rethinking of all the old Puritan teaching. They had phrases, good, strong biblical phrases that we’ve lost in our modern day. One of them was personal religion and communal religion. They taught that we had to have God in Christ personally before we dare join ourselves to the assembly and thus join in the worship with a company. So, there’s a company that meets. Forsake not the company. Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.

Then the third reason is that Christ went to the company regularly as often as He could. And I suppose it would be every Sabbath day He went to the synagogue or the temple as was His custom it says. And He didn’t find everything as He wanted it there, but He went nevertheless, because He knew the law of the assembly. And Christ promised special blessings to the company where two or three are gathered and so on.

So, He made a special promise to the company. He also made a special promise to those who pray alone. Enter into thy closet and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But He made a special promise to the company. And when we meet, we meet in the historic tradition. I am not a traditionalist, but I’m pretty much inclined to give some credence to the value of that which has stood solidly from the days of Israel down to this present day, unchanged through all the long tradition of Bible religion. And they met, they assembled, they came together in the historic tradition. And when we Christians, if we could only, if we were up looking down, if we were up there looking down and could see history from Abraham to the coming of Christ, we’d see the little companies dotting the map all the way down. We’d see ours, a little company in the historic tradition.

Now, I want you to notice why Christians practice this assembly-going so rarely and some intermittently. Well, I think that there are several reasons. One is a break in internal communion. If I have a break in internal communion, then I don’t feel that I want to go with a larger company. If I have broken with God, if I have broken with the Shepherd, I have automatically broken with His sheep, though I may not have had any fuss personally with any sheep. But, if my heart has been cut off from the Shepherd, I have also cut myself off from the sheep.

Then there is secret backsliding, wrongdoings, evils. I never have believed in that subtle power of suggestion used by some public speakers where they will lower their voice and act mysterious, and talk around and around and try to by the power of suggestion make you feel you’ve been a very evil person indeed. I don’t believe in that whatsoever. I have sat knowing that I wasn’t doing a thing and knowing I hadn’t been guilty of it, knowing before God I hadn’t been guilty of it. And yet, I’ve had men talk me to a point where I felt guilty because of the low subtle, breathy voice suggestion that probabilities were I’d been doing it.

Well, I don’t want to practice that. And I don’t want to suggest there’s been any secret backsliding. But I do want to say that if the heart back slides, then it’s embarrassed when it comes in the company of the saints. To hear two happy Christians with their open countenance discussing the Lord, the man who is secretly backslidden and alienated from God is not, at least in his emotions and feelings, is not very likely to feel comfortable, rather embarrassed.

Then plain coldness of heart sometimes will shut us away from enjoying the church. We ought not only to come to church, we ought to enjoy it. But the coldness of heart will prevent it. And candidly, it simply means that some don’t come to church or go to church because they’re not interested. They find Christian worship boring.

Now, this is the real reason for they’re not assembling themselves together very often or only maybe once a week. But they usually, such persons, usually excuse their conduct by blaming the minister; and I’d be the last one to defend the minister. I listened to two tapes of my sermons here last week trying to get some sorted out to send a man over in Williamsport who wants to make copies of them, and I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t go to hear myself preach if there was any place else to go. I’d go hear Redpath. But the minister may be to blame. And certainly, we’re not all perfect and we preach in a monotone and repeat ourselves. But, you know, that’s only an excuse. Yes, it’s only an excuse.

The company, the company, the sheep gather around the shepherd. They gather at the water. They gather where the grass is. And as they gather, they come close to each other and they fellowship with each other. And if the minister shouldn’t be a Spurgeon, they still feel they want to come together. I have gone out and been in churches where the people were so happy and blessed and warm and loving each other. And there was an enthusiasm and a glow over the congregation. And I knew personally that the preacher didn’t amount to much. That is, he was a good man, but he wasn’t much of a preacher. And I thought to myself, why? Why is this fellow who is not much of a preacher nevertheless, why does he have a church like this? The answer is, the people were still in the fresh blush of their love for Jesus Christ and they were gathered there to meet the Lord Jesus, and they listened to the minister more or less. And if he failed them, they smiled, prayed for him came back the next Sunday with the same glow because they were coming to meet the Lord.

Or, a second excuse is, blaming the music. Well, I have been one of the worst critics of church music. And I know that a lot of it is not much good really. And some is worse than others. But you can get along with pretty bad music, if you love the Lord. If there were a picnic on a beautiful July day, why everybody comes, even if the singing wasn’t so good. And if the speaker who spoke at vespers in the evening wasn’t a Spurgeon, they’d still be there, because they had some other reason for coming. It’s good to have a minister who’s preaching warms people’s hearts and draws them. It’s good to have music that can help Christian people to express themselves. But if we have mediocre preaching and mediocre music in the churches, God’s people will be there anyway, because they’re not going to hear the sermon or the music only. They’re going to fellowship the saints. As they come to each other, they come to meet the Lord. And then when coming to meet the Lord, drawing close to the Lord, they draw near to each other.

And then also, this failure to attend church or this sporadic intermittent church attendance, we blame on unfriendliness of the people. Our church here over the past years has been criticized for being unfriendly and praised to the skies for being the friendliest church in the whole country. The truth is, that it’s neither the most unfriendly or the friendliest, it’s just about what you are if you’re visiting. If you’re visiting here today as a guest in the Lord’s house and you don’t know us, you can get away without meeting anybody if you hurry. Or, if you’ll wait around and grin a little, there’ll be twenty-five people ask you your name and where you are and where you go to church. It depends, he that would have friends must what? Show himself friendly. Sure Brother Tozer, remember that.

Then, we also when we break out, break off with God and get cold in our heart, we start blaming hypocrites. Well, certainly they are hypocrites. Jesus had a few or at least one very serious one in His flock and Peter had a couple. He got rid of two of them in a rather drastic fashion, Ananias and Saphira. But even after they were gone, they still had some. The Church has always had them and always will, people who pretend to be Christians and aren’t. But if I’m going to stay away because of that, why I am breaking the rules of the kingdom and the commandments of Christ and the pleadings of the Spirit and the historic tradition of course.

I never know when I enter a bus and sit down, I may be sitting beside a communist. I never know that I may be sitting beside a man who’s got a gun under his armpit. He’s a dropper, a fellow sent out to bump off the enemies of some gangster. I don’t know that. But I’m not going to leave the United States, the greatest country in the world because we got some gangsters in it, and because there are some vermin called communists crawling in out of the woodwork. I am not going to leave the country and say no to everything American. I thank God for all we have. And if my vote will help Tuesday, why, I want to clean things up. But don’t let’s blame the hypocrites, because they’re not to blame. God will handle them. And you come and make them ashamed by being a happy-faced Christian.

And then when we break off with God, lose internal communion and have secret backsliding and start intermittently attending the assembly of the saints, we blame the church building, it’s too cold or it’s too hot, or it’s too drafty, or it’s too noisy, or it’s too uncomfortable. But, if you want to see a baseball game, you’ll go if it’s 103 in the shade, and no shade. And if you want to go to a football game, you’ll go if it’s 32 and overcast and rainy. So, let’s not please have any of that hypocrisy, that it’s the building, or it’s too cold, or anybody else’s, oh, it’s too hot or it’s too drafty, it’s too noisy. All right, but can you say that when the Lord comes? Can you say that when the Lord comes? When the Lord Jesus Christ and you meet, and he looks through you with those flaming eyes, can you say to Him, Lord, I’m sorry, but it was too drafty. It was too uncomfortable, or it was too noisy, the babies cried.

Well, we conclude. We should be at the assembly. We should be there not only once, comfortable Sunday morning, but we should be there Sunday night, and we should be there wherever there’s a prayer meeting also, because we’ve got something to contribute if we’re a Christian. I don’t mean money either. I mean, you’ve got something to contribute that’s more valuable than money even. And you have something to gain. Don’t forget it. You have something to gain. And don’t forget that we’ll find the Shepherd where the sheep is. If you can’t find Him, go where the sheep are and you will find the Shepherd because He’s where they are.

And Paul said when ye become together, when ye become together. Now there’s the good New Testament expression. Christ fed the multitude in companies. Remember, they sat down in companies and He fed them in companies. And Paul said, when ye come together do so and so. How blessed it is that we can come together. How blessed it is. I know what Brother McAfee meant. He teases me a lot. And I do like books. And you get the benefit of it incidentally. But I love the assembly of the saints and I love the songs of the saints. I don’t always join in the singing because I don’t have too good a voice and if I preach twice in a day and sing along with it, I’m pretty scratchy by nightfall. So, I listen rather than sing for my throat’s sake and my other infirmities. But I love to hear and join in with the saints as they sing the songs of Zion. I love to hear Brother Van Kepel quote the Psalter. I love to hear somebody lead out in prayer. I love to hear the sonorous tones of the song leader and then the sweet sound of the music. I love it my friends, I love it.

And if God were to come to me and say I’m going to take you away from all that and you’ll never hear it again, I’d grieve till I died, for I love the assembly of the saints. But sometimes you have to get away from the saints to get to God on certain things. For the Lord will say things to you alone that He won’t say to you with the saints buzzing around you. But as I said before, He will also say things to you among the saints that He couldn’t say to you if you were alone. So, we’ve got to have both, not one or the other, but both. And so, we need to thank God how blessed we are. Let us give thanks that we can be together today and we can celebrate the Lord’s Supper.

Now, the Catholics would say transubstantiation; this is the very body and the very blood. We cannot agree with that though we appreciate their effort to try to get close to God. Lutherans would say, back of, underneath and behind there is the Presence and that gets a little nearer. We want a little more than mere symbolism. We don’t want to say only this symbolizes. It’s a little more than that. Yet, we know a cracker when we see it and we know grape juice when we taste it. So, we’ll not pretend that it’s Jesus Christ body. But we will say, somehow, through the mystery of the Presence, through the mystery of the imminent Presence, by our obedience to Him in remembering His death till He come, He imparts something to us when we obey it. So, as we receive the bread and the wine, we do it with intelligence, but let’s do it also with faith. Knowing that while it is bread and it is wine, somewhere underneath it and back of it, there’s a Presence, that holy, loving presence. The presence of Jesus Christ the Shepherd, more wonderful than all Mount Hermon and the mountains of praying. Zion, the Perfection of beauty is present. Let us rejoice.

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Seeking God Through His Word

Seeking God Through His Word

Author and Pastor A.W. Tozer

August 31, 1958

But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition, reject. Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself. When I shall send Artemas unto thee or Tychicus, be diligent to come unto me to Nicopolis for I have determined there to winter. Bring Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey diligently that nothing be wanting unto them and let ours, I think if I remember my Bible, this is the only place in the New Testament this occurs. Ours, let ours also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they may not unfruitful. All that are with me salute thee. Greet them that love us in the faith. Grace be with you all. Amen.

He said, avoid foolish questions and genealogies and contentions and strivings about the law. There used to be a very fine writer who wrote for the Chicago Daily News. It was syndicated, but we had it here in the Chicago Daily News. I think he had gotten his start with the News. His name was Howard O’Brien, H.V. O’Brien. He was also a critic, literary and theatrical critic. He was a man of the world. He was a very fine man. He was kind. One time, a show came to the city called Lysistrata. Written as I remember by Aristophanes, the old Greek writer. And I didn’t go to see it of course. I haven’t seen a show since I was converted as I remember ever. I don’t even believe in them in church to say nothing of going to theater to see them.

But O’Brien started out his criticism of this play, Lysistrata, by saying this. I don’t remember anything else he said, but I do remember this. He said it is rather depressing to go and see Lysistrata and learn that nobody has thought of a new joke in 3000 years. They were still rehashing the same old jokes that Aristophanes had thought up, if he thought them back there nearly 1000 years, several hundred years before Christ.

Now, I thought of that when I hear these words of Paul, avoid foolish questions. It is rather depressing to know that people haven’t mended their ways any in 2000 years. Paul wrote this nearly 1900 years ago, and we still have these people with us. Human nature hasn’t changed. Nothing’s been able to change human nature, nothing except the grace of God. The problems of debate and argument are still with us.

Our brother Knight and I were discussing religious journalism. And we rather agreed that a great many magazines are running, and running well, by the simple gadget of introducing argumentative articles; to raise contention and get people arguing and writing in angry letters and then subscribing in order to read what else there might be. But it’s simply foolish questions. They’re to a large extent genealogies and contentions and strivings about the law. We have them today. Churches are filled with them. I think we have a minimum here, but I would not be so naive as to think we don’t have any. He said avoid foolish questions. That is, he didn’t say, avoid asking foolish questions. That’s not what the word question means, but it’s proposition, something to debate. That’s what the word question means, and genealogies then he said.

Now the Jews had the biblical records, and those biblical records were very important to them; very important to you and me. Because, when the Messiah came, He had to be born of the seed of Abraham. But not only of Abraham, He had to be born of Isaac. For in Isaac shall thy seed befall. Not only Isaac, but He had to come through Jacob. And not only Jacob, but He had to come through, what was that son of Jacob, and then on down through David and on down the line. The genealogies were very important. God was keeping Israel separated, and they had to have their family tree, their records. Talk about birth certificates. We think that this is a modern invention, and that there are people now living that didn’t have birth certificates when they were born. I didn’t. I had to have my father after I became a grown man. I had my father swear to the fact that I’d been born. And he did and had it notarized.

But birth certificates were issued back in the days of the fathers, way back there. I don’t know that they handed them to you, but they put your record down. For instance, the sons of Joseph after their families were Manasseh and Ephraim. Of the sons of Manasseh: of Machir, the family of the Machirites: and Machir begat Gilead: of Gilead come the family of the Gileadites. These are the sons of Gilead. And so on down the line, page after page after page of these genealogies. They had to be there so that when a man came saying, I am Christ, they could go to the records and see whether he could prove that he came of the seed of David, and of the seed of Nathan, not Solomon, and of the seed of Jacob and Isaac and Abraham. So they were very important.

But you know, religious people can’t let things alone. So, the Jews abuse these genealogies. In order to give them something to do, they began to work with them, and give meanings never intended. Count the letters and then use them for puzzles sort of, and crossword puzzles and work on them and supply fanciful interpretations and turn them into allegory. Abraham begat Isaac begat Jacob. And Jacob begat Ephraim. Now, what does that mean in its deeper meaning? So, they went deeper and they found by counting the letters Abraham, and then the letters Jacob, and subtracting and adding, they managed to get some kind of a weird old wife’s tale going about these genealogies. And one brother said, this had eaten the heart out of Judaism. It had eaten the heart out of Judaism. It was this kind of thing Christ fought when He appeared.

Now, the Talmud had encouraged that. The Talmud is you know, was a commentary several times bigger than the Bible itself, a commentary on the Bible, written by the rabbis. It had it start, oh, maybe the time of Ezra, and finished along maybe 400 or 500 A.D., and they still have it. I have read, I’ve not ,I can’t say I’ve read the Talmud, but I can say, I have read in the Talmud. I’ve examined it and searched into it to see how, what it means when he says these genealogies and foolish questions.

Well, they’re unprofitable and vain. And always they are the proof of a juvenile mind. I remember when I was a young preacher, I was walking through, past the town square in a little town in West Virginia. And here, gathered sitting around chewing tobacco and spitting on the sidewalk, whittling, were a group of old patriarchs. And they saw me and knew I was a minister. And so, they thumbed me over, come over here. I went over. And they propounded to me this question. They said, Reverend, would you give us an answer to this question? What is man?

Well, of course I didn’t give them an answer. I said the first thing like Truman usually does that popped in my head. And I said, oh, man’s a two-legged animal and turned my back. And as I left, they said, well, God’s a two-legged animal for he made man in His image. And of course, both my answer and their parting shot were too foolish to be recorded. But they spent their lifetime, now here they were old, bearded and bald fellows, ready soon to die; and to be called before the Judge of all the earth, to give an account of the deeds done in the body. And it was either heaven or hell for them.

And they sat around and chewed and smoked and whittled and argued endlessly over the question, What is man? And you know, that question, they say, that’s Biblical. David said, what is man? But do you notice how David worded it? David said, what is man that Thou art mindful of him? He said, O God, who am I that you should love me? What a difference? What a difference, careless men who have no thought of God, sitting around arguing on the technical question, what is man and the loving, reverent worshipful man looking at the stars and say, what is man that Thou shouldst love him? All the difference in the world? For David was not propounding a shallow philosophical question. He was exclaiming, O God, how could you love me?

Well, the juvenile mind is always ready. No matter what kind of head it’s in, and I apologize to all serious-minded young people when I say the juvenile mind. The fact that you’re juvenile in years doesn’t mean you need to be infantile in your mentality. A lot of young people are mighty serious-minded, so I am not reflecting on being a juvenile. Everybody is at some time. We older folk may have a twinge of jealousy we’re not still so young. But the point is the juvenile man, the careless, irresponsible mind, I mean, and a shallow religious curiosity, springing out of a basic moral insincerity.

The more I study the human scene and read the Word and pray, the more I am convinced that one thing everybody has to have, that will ever get converted, is sincerity. You may be so sinful; it may be as black as the blackest pit of hell. He may be as corrupt as a maggot infested pool. But if he’s sincere five minutes in the presence of God, he can be delivered.

There isn’t anything the blood of Jesus Christ can’t cleanse from. There isn’t anything God won’t forgive. It’s insincerity that curses mankind. And these people with their foolish questions in genealogy, simply were basically insincere. And God can’t save a man no matter if he’s a man of high morals. God can’t save him if he’s insincere. And no matter how deep a man is, I repeat, if a man is sincere and looks to Jesus Christ to can be converted.

Now, there’s only one motive, one motive that God approves or accepts. There’s only one motive for approaching the Scriptures. And I will break that motive down into four, though it’s really one. The motive is to seek reverently to discover the will of God, to seek holiness of heart and life, to seek to know Christ intimately, and to learn how to instruct others to do the same.

That’s the only reason, the only reason I have for going to the Scriptures. If I go to the Scriptures to try to find the Sputnik, I am guilty of foolish and unprofitable questions which can only be vain at last. If I go to the Bible to find, with reverence and prayer, how I can do the will of God and be holy, then God will honor me and accept me as a sincere man. If I’m not a good man, at least a sincere man, and He’ll get busy making you good after a while, to seek to know Christ and to learn how He can help us.

Now, this unprofitable business of seeking foolish questions, answers to foolish questions and genealogies and all the rest, have eaten the heart out of Judaism that Paul sought to protect the church from. And I’ve done it all down these years. Maybe that’s why false teaching has never got to start in this church. Anybody came in, it never got rooted.

I remember maybe it was 20 years ago or 22 years ago that somebody got British Israelism, somebody began to talk about it. I think some old lady got into the prayer band. Somebody came and tipped me off. I remember who it was. I think she’s here this morning. Miss Sandra, excuse me for telling on you. She told me, she said, you know some people here are beginning to believe British Israelism, and I said, thank you for letting me know.

So I went down to their office and I bought a box full of their books, and I read them. And I announced a sermon called “Faith of our Faddist.” Moodys picked it up and advertised it for me over the radio. They thought it was kind of interesting. And I preached on that, British Israelism, a religious fad. That killed that so dead I’ve never heard of it since. That’s more than 20 years ago, and I’ve never heard of it since. It perished and was buried and gone.

I wonder if the reason we’ve been so blessedly free from crackpots and weirdies and odd balls and all the rest; I wonder if it might be because with all of our faults, we’ve tried to be basically sincere. And tried to place the emphasis on that where the Bible places it, upon the need to know the will of God and do it, and the need to desire holiness of heart and the righteousness of life. I wonder if that could be one of the reasons God in His goodness has helped us on that.

Now, 1 Timothy 1:4, Paul tells Timothy about that same thing. He says, neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions rather than godly edifying which is in faith. Now, the end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and faith unfeigned. Notice, the whole purpose of the Bible, is love out of a pure heart, a good conscious, and faith unfeigned. From which some having swerved aside, have turned unto vain jangling, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm.

Paul was determined he was not going to allow any neat little tricks of interpretation to ensnare his people. He wanted them to be a holy people. And you know you’ve got to watch, got to watch the books you read, you’ve got to watch what you hear over the radio. Even from good stations, you’ve got to watch. Because there are teachers who are busy. They’re not false teachers exactly, they’re simply teachers who are trying to twist out of responsibility. For instance, Psalm 1, blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in His law doth he meditate day and night. You know what our teachers tell us about that Psalm? They tell us, some of them, that that Psalm, is a picture of Jesus Christ. The Psalms are messianic and that’s the introductory Psalm, therefore that Psalm is a picture of Jesus Christ.

And you know what that interpretation does? It instantly relieves me of all responsibility. If that pictures Jesus Christ, then I don’t come in on that at all. And isn’t my business to see to it that I walk not in the way of the sinner or the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in sinners’ way, nor sit in a scornful seat. If I can make that to describe Jesus, I’m perfectly willing to say, oh sure that pictures Jesus. And so I’m free. I can kick up my heels and as Brown says, raise hell on the way to heaven.

And then 1 Corinthians 13, that wonderful, terrible chapter that gives me more trouble than any other chapter in the entire Bible probably, Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I’ve become a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. You know what our teachers do with this, some of them, they say this describes Jesus. So, let it describe Jesus, and you and I have no obligation toward it at all. Well, of course, the terrible snare lies in this, that Jesus Christ is described in Psalm 1, and He is described in 1 Corinthians 13. In as much as anytime you describe a holy man, you describe Jesus, for He was and is a Holy Man.

But 1 Corinthians 13, was never written as a description of Jesus. It was written to show how Christians ought to be. And until we Christians have done everything that we know how in prayer and surrender and faith and obedience, to have this kind of love in our own hearts, we have been simply tricked by this chapter. Imagine, if you will, a man who has the gift of tongues and the gift of prophecy and understands all biblical mysteries and has all knowledge and has such faith that He can move mountains and bestows his good to feed the poor. He’s so generous, he’s the talk of the town. And though he’s willing to give his body to be burned as a martyr. And still he can do all of this and still have a bad motive in it, and have not love and it will profit him nothing.

A mighty easy way to get rid of this, turn it over to Jesus Christ, just the way they got over the Sermon on the Mount, by giving that to the Millennium, saying that’s the charter for the Millennium. That’s the kingdom constitution. And when Jesus institutes the Millennium, that will be the constitution. Well, my brethren, I don’t want to be abusive. I want to be kind, but I’ll tell you this, I can’t bring myself to be so insincere as all that. I believe that this means me and I’m going to take it to myself and I’m going to struggle and labor and pray that these passages may describe me as well as describing Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now, he says in verse ten, a man that is an heretic reject. Here’s a strange thing and a solemn thing about this word heretic. It doesn’t mean what it means now. Now, a heretic is a false teacher. He is somebody who does not teach the truth. By picking out certain things and denying certain other things, he builds a fabric of untruth and teaches that. That is a heretic, as understood in our day. That is the meaning in church history. But that is not the meaning of the word as Paul used it.

Anybody who knows the Greek or has access to sources where he can learn what the Greek means, knows this is not what is meant. By the word heretic here, he meant not a false teacher, but a schismatic. That is, somebody or anybody who for any reason, is resentful and offended or has his feelings hurt, who tends to get silent and withdraw from communion and sometimes gather a few malcontents around him and have a little group of quiet rebels who don’t go along with the crowd or the other Christians. They’re not teaching false doctrine, they’re schismatics.

A man that is a schismatic; a man that is a divider; a man that is a troublemaker; a man that is an injurious critic, reject. But the word reject here means shun or avoid. And of course, it is after a first and second admonition. You don’t just pick a man up and throw him out. But after you have given him a quiet admonition and maybe a second one. After that, shun him and avoid him the Scripture says. That’s in harmony with the words of Jesus in Matthew 18, where he tells us that if people do what they shouldn’t do, try to be reconciled to them. And if they won’t listen, go to them again with some others. And after that, let them be publicans and sinners.

Well, now Paul says a man that is an heretic, after you’ve done what you can for him. That is, a man who is a schismatic, a troublemaker. Up to now, I’ve never split anything except a bit of wood when I was a boy. And I hope I’ll be able to run my race as a obscure Christian minister, without dividing the children of God in any way. But I wouldn’t hesitate to divide them if I knew it meant a matter of doctrine or moral.

I believe that there may come a time in the future when God will send somebody with an axe to split the Christendom wide open; line the men up on one side and the boys on the other and find out who the men are. I believe that. But in the meantime, to be a schismatic, to out of resentfulness or offence or hurt feelings, withdraw, cease to testify, stop praying, say little, but what you say, all on the side of the devil and against the local church. That’s what Paul had in mind. And sometimes if a man like that was influential enough, he managed to get a group of malcontents around him and he started another church. A great many of the churches started in this country were started that way.

Well, I never split one but I help bring two back together again. Some of you old timers remember that, that this church had split before I came here? About 32 years ago, it had split. And part of them had gone down here and part of them stayed here and had two churches. And after I’d been here about two years, they all came back together again. They threw their arms around each other and made up and turned the old building down there over to a garage. And we’ve got some of your right here now that belonged to that old crowd.

So, it’s good to do it all be over on the other side, not a schismatic and divider, but a healer and a bringer together. No, I don’t think I did that. So don’t think I’m boasting here now. It just happened. I was here when it happened. I didn’t bring them together. They just came together. He says, knowing that these subverters and schismatics, knowing that he, that is, such is subverted and sinneth, being self-condemned.

Then, to conclude, Paul instructs Titus. Remember he had left Titus at Crete that he might organize the church and appoint elders, get everything straightened around there. It was rather a mixed-up, confused church and Paul wanted order there. Always like Wesley and that he wanted order, so we got order there. And he says in verse 13, something that I, reminded me last Sunday night. He said, brings Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their journey diligently, that nothing be wanting unto them. Zenas and Apollos were, Zenas was a lawyer who had turned missionary and the Apollos was a great orator who had turned missionary.

And these two men were on their journey somewhere, and he said, now when they come by Crete on their way, have a shower for them. And give them, help them diligently that nothing they wanting for them. He said see to it. And I thought of last Sunday night when we and the time before that, times before that. Next Wednesday, when they have a shower on Peggy Argyle. Receive these and send them diligently on their way and see that there’s nothing wanting unto them. That kind of ties in with the old Pauline method of doing things and I like it.

And I don’t know what the Lord may do with me in old age if I live to be old. But I remember what he said to Peter, he said, when I was young, thou didst gird thyself and do what you please. But when you get old, somebody else will gird you. You’ll have to do some things you don’t like. Probably, the Lord to finally humble me and prepare me for heaven will let me be a member of a church somewhere that does everything I don’t like in order to humble me. But I hope one thing he doesn’t do, I hope He never lets me get into a church where they never send out a missionary or have a shower on anybody to send them fruitfully on their way. Bring Zenas and Apollos on their journey diligently he said. Nothing be wanting unto them.

Then verse fourteen, notice, and let ours also learn to maintain good works that profess an honest trade in order that for necessary uses, in order that they may be not unfruitful. Do you know what Paul had in mind here? He had in mind these showers and this preparation of missionaries. He said, send them out well-equipped and in case any of you can’t give anything, get a job, he said, inorder that you’ll have some money to take care of things like this, actually. This dear old man of God, I guess he forgot people have to live, because he tied it right in with Zenas and Apollos and their missionary journey and said, profess honest trade and get a job in order that you might have an income so that you be not unfruitful and you can do this kind of thing.

Well, that was Paul. And he then finally in verse fourteen, leaves us with, maintain good works. Paul couldn’t stand idleness. And Paul couldn’t stand irresponsibility. He couldn’t stand slothfulness nor unfruitfulness. When Paul looked at a tree and there was no fruit on it, his heart ached. He wanted fruit on that tree. He looked at a Christian who was just twiddling his thumbs and immediately he sat down and wrote a stiff epistle and said, get up and get going and get a job and go to work and let the word of God tee you off. Let it get you moving, get you going. Don’t simply sit in an ivory tower and be a Christian in your head. Get down to business. Gear into life and be useful and don’t be unfruitful. I think it’s a good way to leave us.

Then he says grace be unto you. Thank God for this old man. Grace be unto to you all. They say he was a Georgian, that he was a native of Atlanta. But anyway he closes his passage, grace be with you all. And incidentally, the students, who make it their life work the dig into such things, say that Elizabethan English, you all, was a pure Elizabethan phrase. And the reason that is used in the south is, that several hundred years ago, people came there from England, lived in the mountains and country sections and were insulated somewhat and kept the pure language of old England. And so when a man comes up and says, well God bless you all, come back, he’s speaking Elizabethan English. We kid about it and say he has a southern accent, but maybe it’s us that had the accent and they then have the pure Elizabethan. Let’s not be so sure of ourselves. Anyway, both are nice. So, it’s alright.

All that are with me salute thee. What a gathering it’s going to be. There, there’s going to be Tychicus who is a faithful and beloved brother, Zenas the lawyer turned missionary, Apollos the orator turned missionary, Paul and Titus and the rest of the brethren says, everybody salutes you. Greet them all in love and faith. Grace be with you all. Amen.

I love it myself. I love this old book more now than I ever did in all my life; wonderful old book. Just turn across the page and you run unto Epaphras, Marcus and Aristarchus and Demas and Lucas. All these brethren, we’re going to see them there all right in that day. There’s no question about their being there. The only question is, will we be? They’ve made it. Their journey’s ended. They’ve laid down their burden. They’ve picked up, maybe not their crown yet, but at least they’re there. We’re still traveling on the way.

In the John Bunyan’s great classic allegory, Pilgrims Progress, Pilgrim and some of the others, the Christian and some of the others swam across the river. Old Christian almost sinks, and Hopeful says, I found a sandbar, come on, and pulls you over onto the sand and pretty soon they come up on the other side. And there is the great gate of the city Celestial. And up before that gate, struts a self-important cocky fellow, knocks at the door and says, well, open up, I’m here. And the old man who handles the door says, where’s your proof? Well, I don’t have any, he said. Where’s your script? And to Bunyan that meant the inner witness. He said, where is your witness? Well, he didn’t have any. He said all right, go down. And then Bunyan closed his great book with these awful words. And then I perceive there is a way to hell from the gate of heaven. Terrible. Old Calvin, Puritan. The Calvinists nowadays wouldn’t accept that. They’d edit that out, or at least sluff it over. He said, I perceive there was a way to hell from the gate of heaven, and closed His book.

Brethren, don’t take yourself for granted. The blood cleanses and God delivers and wherever there is sincerity and humility and faith, God will build a wall around you and protect you from everything. He’ll send His angels to guard thee and shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.. As soon as you start taking yourself for granted, look out. Aristarchus and Demas and Apollos and Zenas, they’re over there. You and I aren’t there yet.

I’m not opening the question of eternal security here. I’m only saying, let’s be awfully sure we’re there, we’re in the grace of God. That we have the grace of God indeed and not only imagine we have. Let’s be awfully sure about that. For a lot of people traveled the Christian highway that have not the credentials in their hearts. They only think they have. And they that go from the gate of heaven to hell, are not those who have the credentials. That’s not the point and lost them. No. They are those who never had them but only thought they did.

And maybe that some of you have gotten religion on your Sunday school teachers’ reputation. Or you’ve gone with the crowd and you moved along with your bunch. That’s not harmful. It’s alright, I suppose. But be awfully sure each of you. And I pray that you young people who are going off to schools, don’t live on the enthusiasm generated by youth. Don’t take anything for granted. See to it that the blood cleanses and the Holy Ghost renews and that God has accepted you and that you’ve got the witness within. For there’s a way to hell from the gate of heaven.

Goodbye, Paul. We’ll be back to see again next Sunday. No, later, because you can’t preach without Paul. There’s no use. The Lord made him so important in the book, that you start preaching in the book of Numbers and you’ve got to get to Paul pretty soon. God gave him such a place, Paul and David. David in the Old Testament, Paul in the New, what a pair they make. I never asked anybody for his signature, his autograph, so help me in my lifetime. I’ve autographed a good many hundred things, but I never ask anybody for one. Outside of being on a check, it wouldn’t be of any value to me. And I don’t get many of them. But I’ll say this, there are two men I want to meet. I don’t want to go up and meet them as equals. I just want to be permitted to stand off at a little distance and gaze at them with love and wonder, David and Paul, marvelous old brethren.

Paul, a man of God who couldn’t stand a tree that didn’t bear fruit. David, the man of God with his homemade harp, who looked up with tears and said, what is man that Thou art mindful of him. I want to meet them both. And you know what? I’ve got a real deep feeling I’m going to do it one of these times. For the God, the God Eternal has taken all my sins away. And David’s royal fountain has delivered me from all the weights that would take me down there. I hope you can say the same. I trust you can. God bless you.

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The Blessed Hope of Christ’s Coming

The Blessed Hope of Christ’s Coming

Author and Pastor A.W. Tozer

July 6, 1958

We are continuing in the book of Titus, the second chapter of the book of Titus. The man of God says, for the grace of God, that bringeth salvation to all men hath appeared. Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

Now, I have on a previous occasion dealt with some care with that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, and living soberly and righteously and godly in this present world. Now, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the Great God and of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Those words will engage our attention for a brief time.

Now, if you will note here, and it’s always well to follow punctuation carefully in our King James Version, and not break into verses without regard to punctuation. If you will notice what it says here. That the grace of God teaches us to live–looking. It teaches us to live. Of course, there are some adverbs coming in between, soberly, righteously, godly, and the phrase, in this present world. But, it doesn’t in anywise destroy the force of the passage, teaching us that we should live–looking.

Now, I want to just talk about that a little bit, that the Christian lives–looking. That is, the Christian life is a joyous anticipation. Everybody knows what anticipation does for human life. If you did not have some hope of something you planned to do, somebody you hope to see, some advance you hope to make, your life could soon level down to a drab, colorless existence that wouldn’t be worth the living. If you were to take joyous anticipation out of the hearts of men, the suicides in the world would be so many, that literally there would not be enough technical help to dispose of the dead. We must have something to look forward to. We should live, looking, says the Holy Spirit here to Christians. We Christians should live–looking.

Now what is it that a Christian looks forward to? A Christian looks forward to what the Bible calls, the blessed hope, which is the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. Now this is the epiphany that the churches talk about the shining forth, used for the coming up of the sun, and used also for the coming of Jesus Christ to the world. Used of His first manifestation to the world and also used of His second. The churches, the ritualistic churches that follow the church calendar, have certain times when they celebrate the Epiphany, the shining forth, the coming, the appearance of Jesus Christ our Lord.

And the Bible also talks about another epiphany, a shining forth. The two of them are found together in the Books of Timothy. Paul wrote Titus, from which the text is taken; he also wrote First and Second Timothy. And here’s what he says, God, who has called us, saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, there, after an eternal purpose.

I want you to understand I’ve said this and continue to say it because it is a very basic spiritual truth, that the Bible-taught Christian is not an orphan. He is not somebody who by some accident has happened upon a book and is now a Christian. He is a part of an eternal purpose which God purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began. And this eternal purpose says, the Man of God is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Now, those are all past tense expressions. That’s something that has in our modern English, has been done. Now, if you have the same kind of Bible I have of columns, just cast your eye up, just a quarter of a page and you will read these words, where the man of God says, same man writing in a different letter, to the same man. I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Jesus Christ, who before Pontius Pilate, witnessed a good confession. I give thee charge that thou keep His commandment without spot, unrebukable until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in His times He shall show. Who, is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen or can see, to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen. Now, below, he has brought life and immortality to the light through the appearing of Jesus Christ our Lord. That’s one. He will show in His own times, at the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, who only hath immortality dwelling in life.

Now, there we have the two epiphanies, the two shinings forth set before us in sharp, beautiful contrast, the one to the other. We should live–looking. And what are the directions, for there is not one, but there are two. What are the directions that a Christian should look in his living?

Well, at our communion services, we often quote, in fact, almost always quote, somewhere, we do show forth His death till He come. A Christian is one who deeply appreciates the past for what has been done, but who does not anchor to the past knowing that the past is a prelude to the future. And therefore, his gaze is sometimes back for reassurance, and sometimes forward in happy anticipation. When he looks back, he sees the Epiphany, the shining forth of Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin, to suffer under Pontius Pilate, to be crucified, dead and buried, to rise again from the dead the third day, to go to the right hand of God the Father Almighty to be seated there at that right hand ever making intercession for His own

That’s the past, but then we tear our eyes from the past and gaze into the future. So that time when He shall appear, and there shall be another world epiphany, when He shall be shown forth to the world as the Potentate and King, the only Potentate, the only King. The way they’re getting rid of Kings these days, it looks to me as if we were kind of cleaning house for the coming of the Lord. There was a day when we had so many kings, every third fellow you would meet in Europe, either was a king or was related to one. But now, either they aren’t kings or they’re ashamed to admit they’re related to them. We don’t have many kings left, very many potentates left, nor plenipotentiaries.

I remember when we had a confluence of big shots, political big shots come to this country some years ago. I listened on the radio to the speeches and the introductions and they talked about the plenipotentiaries and potentates. Well, the plenipotentiaries and potentates are sort of petering out. And we don’t have so many of them anymore, because the Lord is bringing us to a time when it shall be seen who is the only potentate who only hath immortality; who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords who dwells in the light which no man can approach unto, to Whom be glory and honor everlasting.

Now, even if we should die, yet, we will see this Epiphany, this awaited revelation. Because in 1 Thessalonians 4, notice that again. We’re just reading from the Bible itself. Paul says, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and all churches do believe that Jesus died and rose again, or they’re not churches. Even so, them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this, we say unto you by the Word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not go before them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout and with the voice of the archangel. And the trump of God and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then, we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Isn’t it rather ironical that we reserve the reading of passages like this for funerals? Isn’t it rather a cynical twist of the human mind, or of the devil, himself that we should have taken all such beautiful passages as say, John 14? Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me, that we should take these and reserve them almost exclusively for funerals.

My dear little old mother was a great lover of flowers. She raised them and had flowers every little spot where a flower could grow she had flowers. But she insisted that they grow, that they have their roots in the ground. When they were cut and put on a table, she shied away from them. The reason being, she had gone to so many funerals, and had seen so many cut flowers, and it smelled the heady fragrance of so many bouquets for the dead, that she instinctively associated the smell of cut flowers with the coffin. So, Mother didn’t care for cut flowers. She liked the kind that grew in the ground. They reminded her of sunshine and rain and wind and clouds and birdsong and beauty. Whereas cut flowers reminded her of the dead.

And we find the same thing true of such a delightful passage as this, let not your heart be troubled. There’s Jesus cheering up his people. And isn’t it unfortunate that we have relegated this to the dead with the cut flowers, and the silent tread, and the sonorous, solemn tone of the minister. Isn’t it too bad that we can’t see that this is the Lord calling His people to look forward with anticipation to the Father’s house and the many mansions? So it is with the Thessalonian passage here. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again. Soon as you start to read that, you look around for the coffin. And you wonder whether, who died and how you got at the funeral without knowing it?

Well, the simple truth is, this is not for funerals only. This is the word of the Lord for all of his people, all of the time. I tell you again. I’ve said this many times. In fact, I don’t say anything anymore that I haven’t said many times before. But I tell you again, that there are lots of worse things than dying. Dying is one of the easiest things possible, and one of the most delightful for a Christian, so that we ought not to associate all the hopeful promises of the Lord with dying, and dying with something we don’t want to do. The Lord says, that we are to live, looking. That is, there’s anticipation there. What do we anticipate, or rather, who is it that we anticipate? Well, he says, the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord. You know, the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. That Christ is God is taught here. Do you hear me, that Christ is God is taught here, this is the book of God. And that Christ is God is taught in that book all through that book.

Now, there are some who consider that Christ is not God. That He is only a very, extremely good man. Oh, nearly as good as Albert Schweitzer, but that He is a very good man. Not as wise as Albert, because He didn’t know of course how to perform operations and cure up the yaws by an injection of penicillin, but they’re willing to put Him along at least with Albert Schweitzer, but He is not God.

My brethren, why can’t we be honest with ourselves. I have a great deal more respect for an out and out unbeliever who stands up and smiles and says, I respect your faith, but I don’t own it. I don’t have it. That can say with Emerson, why should the robe on him allure which I could not on me endure? He said, I like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; Yet not for all his faith can see, would I that cowled churchman be.   Why should the vest on him alure, Which I could not on me endure? I confess I’m modernizing the English, but that’s it generally.

And the man said, now, I respect your right to believe. I don’t care what you believe, but I just don’t believe it. I respect that man. I could shake hands with him and live alongside of him and borrow his hose and lend him my grass cutter. I have no trouble with him and be perfectly tolerant, and he with me and I with him. But what I can’t understand, is the person who says I am a Christian, and then denies or doubts or holds in foggy uncertainty, the deity of the Son of God. My brethren, why don’t we do one thing or the other? Why don’t we get over onto one side or the other? If the people of the Lord, or the people who claim to be people of the Lord, were just to get over on one side or the other, what a fine housecleaning we’d have. It wouldn’t be any trouble, no difficulty, we wouldn’t fight. We’d still be Americans together. But at least we’d know where we stood. So many of us, we don’t know where we stand.

Now, when they said Jesus was God, the old scribes of Jewish days thought he was blaspheming. The Unitarians of the day reject His deity, many liberals reject His deity, and many cults reject His deity. But the man called Paul, who wrote as he was moved by the Holy Ghost said, we look for the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, either he was wrong, or else somebody is wrong today. And I have decided that I’m going to go along with Jesus, who claimed to be God, and with John and Paul and Peter and Jude and Luke and Mark and Matthew and James, who said He was God, rather than going along with those who doubt that He is God. For to doubt or deny the deity of the Son of God is to reject the Holy Scriptures.

And you will have a perfect right to reject the Holy Scriptures, remember that. Nobody is bound in any wise to accept the Holy Scriptures. You can reject the Scriptures and you will get no argument from me whatsoever. I would never spend one minute of my time arguing with anybody, not even pleading with anybody to believe the Book of God, because not all men have faith. And if you have not been touched by the mighty Holy Ghost, you won’t have faith. You know, the Presbyterians in their prime, taught election and predestination. And they believe that when God touched a man, he believed, he believed. When he was touched, he had to have some work done on him, some previous work done on him before he could believe.

That’s pretty well gone down the drain now, but I still happen to believe it. I believe that no men can come unto Jesus Christ except the Father draw him. And if the Father draws the man, if that mystic something settles on the man and draws him toward the Son of God, he’ll come. And when he comes, he’ll believe and when he believes he will be saved. That’s Bible my brethren. The whole book of Gospel of John teaches that. And our spiritual fathers, the Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians thought that, well, the Methodists taught it, but not with such finality, perhaps as our Presbyterian forebearers.

But nevertheless, we’re live now between two mighty events. His appearing to redeem us and His appearing to glorify us. This then is interim. It is interim, but it is not vacuum. I cannot find in my Bible where any man is ever called to live in a vacuum, that he is called to live in a spiritual emptiness, looking no direction. The Bible says we live in an interim between two epiphanies, two mighty, world-shaking events: the appearing that brought life and immortality to the light through the gospel, and the appearing that shall show to all the world who is the only Potentate, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, worthy to rule the world.

Now, between those two appearings we stand. And you say, well, when is this second appearing going to take place? Now, you won’t fool me like that. I’m too wise an old trooper ever to give myself up to a prophecy of when another appearing will take place. Frankly, my brethren, I don’t know. I can always answer all questions, either by giving you information which is reasonably accurate or by saying I don’t know. And in this case, I say, I don’t know. Don’t be too hard on people who have set dates and been fooled, because they meant well. But the Lord says, no man knoweth, not even the Son, save the Father which is in heaven. He knows. But we do know that we look for His appearing.

And incidentally, if you imagine that this is some kind of cultism or some sort of strange borderline or fringe doctrine, let me tell you that the Dutch Reformed church believes in it. Let me tell you that the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Nazarenes, the evangelicals, and you can just name them up and down the line and there isn’t one church that exists today, that believes the Bible but what also believes that there’s to be another shining forth, another shining forth. When he was shown forth, being born in a manger, will shine forth wearing the robes of royalty. Not one. They have differences of opinion about how it will take place. And I for my part, don’t care one little bit how it takes place. I haven’t the remotest care how it takes place.

A man called me just before I came down here, and he said, Mr. Tozer, you don’t know me, but I’m in trouble. I said, I didn’t sleep all night last night, I went to bed at seven, got up at seven and didn’t close my eyes all through the night and I’m in deep difficulty. Will you pray for me? And I said, yes, I will pray for you and also, I want to give you this verse, that the Lord will not suffer you to be tempted above what you’re able to bear. And he said, but you didn’t quote the rest of the verse. And I said, well, I couldn’t quote all the Bible at one sitting. I said, I gave you that part of it. Well, he said, the rest of it is, but will with the temptation make a way of escape. Now, what is my way of escape? And I said, my friend, this is just the neat, little way the Lord works with people. He promises them a way of escape. He leads them out and saves them, but he doesn’t show them how ahead of time. If the Lord were to take you aside and give you a schedule, or up in Toronto, they’d say shedule of future events, your head would get so big there isn’t a hat in Cook County would go down on it, not one. You would lose your humility and become so proud, you couldn’t keep from telling you wife and everybody else but what you knew about the future.

So, the Lord says, I will make a way of escape, but you leave the way of escape to Me. And so the Lord says, looking forward to His coming. And I said, when will it be Lord and what will be the signs? The Lord said, now, don’t ask me questions. You leave that to me. And you trust Me and I’ll take care of it. Just believe that there’s to be a shining forth. So I believe there’s a shining forth. And so this is interim.

But what are we to do in this, live in a vacuum? No. We are to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. Soberly, that is my relation to myself. Righteously, that is my relation to my fellow man. Godly, that is my relation to God. And so, there are the three dimensions of the Christian’s life, soberly and righteously and godly; God and others and myself. And you can’t get out of that. And it’s a strange thing that as brilliant as the human mind is and as utterly wonderful as it is, still, we cannot escape these three dimensions. We cannot get beyond them, any more than you can jump into the fourth dimension in space. You’ve got to stay within them. Everything that you can think about, that touches humanity in your life, everything has to do either with yourself, with somebody else, or with God, and there’s no fourth place. Only three. That’s where you live. And so we live soberly and righteously and godly.

Then why? Why did the Lord say there’s to be another epiphany, a shining forth. Why did He say that. He did it because he that hath this hope in Him, purifies himself even as He is pure. The Lord did it. Oh, could we could we pull an illustration out of the air? Suppose that a man has been away. And, oh say, he’s a soldier and he’s been on some duty in some far-away country, in the Far East or in Europe. And he hasn’t been home for a couple of years. And he calls transatlantic telephone and says, I will be in at such and such a time by Air France or some other of the great lines. And I will land at such and such a field and I’ll take a taxi. I should be there by 3:10.

Well, you know what they will do, Mother and the girls? They will clean up that house as it’s never been cleaned up before. They will busy themselves fixing things up. And then the girls will dress themselves up in their finest and wait for their father. Now, that’s what anticipation does. It gets you ready or tends to want to make you want to be ready and to get your work done, and be ready when he comes. So, he that has this hope in him, he purifies himself even as our Lord is pure.

So, the hope of the shining forth, which is yet future, is not a foolish notion held by certain cults. In fact, a very few cults hold it. It is a doctrine held by our fathers back to Paul, Augustine, and all the church fathers down the years. They varied I say in regard to detail and schedule, but they never varied one little bit with regard to the overt fact. He is coming and there is to be a shining forth. And so in the meantime, we do show the Lord’s death until He comes. And there is the beautiful meaning of the Lord’s Supper.

I had not planned to bring this up at all, and this is not dragged in by its ears in order to fit. But just here that I have received of the Lord what I delivered, that the Lord took bread the night He was betrayed and when He’d given thanks, He’d break it. And He said, take and eat. This do in remembrance of me there. That’s the remembrance of the epiphany that was. And as oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord’s death until He come. And there is the epiphany that will be. So, that is one of the meanings among many, of the supper of the Lord, that we remember that he died for us. We remember that He’s coming for us. That He died for us is a fact. That He’s coming for us is a fact. How His death for us could prepare us to meet Him, we do not know. When He’s coming, we do not know. That He’s coming, we are certain.

So now, we do show the Lord’s death until He come. Only this you say, what qualifies a person for the Lord’s Supper? The answer is soberly, righteously, godly. Let a man examine himself. Is he living soberly, righteously and godly in this present world, looking. That’s all. Let a man examine himself.

How have you been living? Soberly? Or have you let yourself go? Have you forgot you’re a Christian when you were out on your vacation? Did you do a lot of things you wouldn’t do if you had been home? Strange isn’t it how it works? A tame, domesticated Maltese-type of husband who says yes dear, yes dear all year-long, goes away on convention. And the tamer and the more domesticated he was while staying at home with Mama, the more of a long-eared donkey he made out himself when he got in a strange city on convention. It’s almost always that way.

Now, that ought never to be so of Christians. A Christian is one who carries his shrine with him. His sanctuary is in his heart. And whether he is traveling somewhere to see relatives out in the mountains for a rest wherever it is, he should never be out of his sanctuary. He should be in the holy place because the Holy God is with him and living in his heart. Lo, I’m with you always, even unto the end of the world. How’s it been with you this last week? Have you lived soberly? How’s it been with you and your neighbor? Have you lived righteously or have you had a tiff with somebody two doors away? If you have, don’t take communion this morning. How has it been with you and God? Have you kept up your prayer life and your devotional life and your Bible loving life? I don’t say you haven’t and I don’t ask those questions in a tone of voice tending to accuse. I’m just inquiring.

Now our friends, the brethren will meet us and we will have the Lord’s Supper. We take it once a month in this church, every first Sunday. It’s not for members of this church, but members of the church of Christ. And if you qualify–sober, godly, righteous living and confident faith in our Savior–you join with us because you’re a member of our church anyway, whether we ever saw you before or not. Let’s gather.

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“The Benefits of God’s Grace

The Benefits of God’s Grace

Author and Pastor A.W. Tozer

June 29, 1958

Now the difference between a classic and anything less than a classic is, that which is less than the classic gets tiring after you hear it a good many times, a few times. But the classic never wears out. It’s good anywhere, anytime, and continues through the years. And though heard, over and over, never loses the freshness of its youth. I mentioned this because I want to read again, for I guess about the fifth time, that beautiful passage from which I have been preaching lately.

Titus 2, beginning at the 11th verse. For the grace of God, that bringeth salvation to all men hath appeared, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world. Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee. Our Savior, Jesus Christ, you see, we have dealt with the earlier part of this passage. So, we begin with the last line of verse thirteen. It’s the last line in my Bible. Our Savior, Jesus Christ.

I read the other day, and the children of this world are often wiser in their generation than the children of life. And I read the other day by a Polish writer who was writing about communism. That is, he was writing about how he’d escaped from it and was writing against it, but not from a Christian standpoint. He was a child of this world with such light as a child of this world may be expected to have; an unusual degree of it, for he was an unusually brilliant man.

And he said this, that the only teaching worthwhile is that which is valid in the face of imminent death. He said that because he had been, and mentioned others who had been at times, faced with instant death. And he was forced to say, what do I believe now? Here, death’s facing me. It may be a matter of three heartbeats away. What is this that I believe? And he said, no teaching is worth your time unless it stands solid and true and valid, faced with immediate death.

I mentioned this because I begin with the words, our Savior, Jesus Christ. And I would like to guess, if I might be allowed, how many have faced imminent death with these great, beautiful, meaningful, strong words in their mouths, our Savior Jesus Christ? If you knew that death was three heartbeats away or five or seven, I’m sure you wouldn’t try to remember what the Greek baptizo was and what form of baptism was the proper one? I’m sure that it would make very little difference to you whether the Presbyterian or the Episcopal form of government or the congregational were the right form of government. I’m sure that there would be an infinite number of things that clutter up your spiritual thinking now, that would fall away from you instantly if you knew that death was a heartbeat away. But there is one thing I’m sure that you’d cling to and repeat over and over and over until you could repeat it no more, our Savior, Jesus Christ. I know you’d want to say those words, because they’re valid under any circumstance, you see. Those words are good any time, young or old, our Savior, Jesus Christ; beautiful, wonderful words. Then Paul goes on to say, who gave Himself for us, who gave Himself for us.

Now, we may learn the value of a thing by the price men are willing to pay for it. That is, we may learn its value to the individual who’s procuring it. I remember when Charles E. Dawes, the great American general was Vice President. I’m not sure he was vice president at that time, but he had been Vice President, or was of the United States. And that was the least thing he did. He was a great general in the First World War. And I remember what he said when they had him before some kind of a committee accusing him, or at least inquiring, why he had paid such vast, huge prices for horses in France. And he settled the whole business and set his inquisitors back on their heels by this abrupt expression. He said, I’d have paid horse prices for sheep if they could have pulled my guns where I wanted them. It wasn’t a question of how big the horse was, it was a question of a desperate and critical need, and though he did pay huge and exorbitant prices for French horses, he used those French horses to win a war. And he said I’d have paid that much for sheep if they had done the job for me.

Now, what I’m trying to illustrate is this, that a need, a value, determines the price you’ll pay for a thing. Even though a man is wrong in his appraisal, personally, I think that we human beings have set a wrong value on jewelry. I think for instance, we’ve set the wrong value on diamonds. A piece of glass can’t be told across the room from a diamond. And yet the difference, it runs up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in some instances. It’s because we have set an arbitrary value upon jewelry. I don’t mind people wearing it. I don’t own any except this thing to hold my tie down so it won’t flap around when I get to preaching. But outside of that, I haven’t any and don’t want it, but I think that we have set wrong values on things.  But the illustrations still holds.

We can tell how precious a thing is to a man or woman by how much they’re willing to pay for it. We can learn that. And so, when it says here, He gave Himself for us, we learn how dear we are and were to Christ. Remember, when we say “are” about Christ, or “were” about Christ, whether we’re using the past, present, or future tense, we’re using all the tenses there are. Because Jesus Christ, being Himself very God of very God, embodies in Himself all the tenses there are. Or better still, He has no tense. There is no yesterday and today and tomorrow with Christ. There is a yesterday and tomorrow and today with us. The Bible says Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. But it’s not talking about His yesterday and today and forever, it’s talking about ours.

We have a yesterday, and really not a very much of a yesterday. The oldest one of us has much of a yesterday compared, say, with a mud turtle or a crow, or a sequoia tree in California. We haven’t much of yesterday, but we’ve got a little yesterday. We have it today, which is getting away from us fast, and we have an eternal tomorrow. So that our yesterday and today and tomorrow are valid. But when we apply that to God and Christ, we invalidate the meaning of it. For we cannot say that Jesus our Lord has no tenses, because all that He is, He ever was and all that He ever was, He ever will be.

So, when we say how precious we were to Jesus, we mean how precious we are to Jesus. And when we say how precious we are to Jesus, we mean how precious we will always be to Jesus; for I, the Lord change not. I, the Lord, change not. Now, we can learn how precious we are to Christ by how much He was willing to give for us. What was the price that He paid. Don’t forget that all through the Bible, Old Testament and New and particularly in the New, the idea of redemption is found. The idea of the paying, the giving of value for value, the giving of price for something precious. And Jesus Christ gave, says the Holy Ghost here, gave Himself for us. What was He willing to give for us? Let’s look back at the book, say, of Colossians. No, Philippians. Look back at Philippians.

He says, Jesus Christ, second chapter, fifth verse. Jesus Christ, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, O Lord, in the form of God. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God and the Word was with God. Thou, O Lord, art the Eternal Word, the Eternal Son, begotten of the Father before all worlds, by the mystery of eternal generation. Wilt Thou then O Lord, give up this mystery and wonder even for a while, that men might be redeemed? He answers, yes. He considered it not something to be held on to, but made Himself of no reputation by becoming for a time, less than God. He made Himself of a reputation less than God and thus being of no reputation. O Lord, how far will you go? I will take upon me the form of a servant. He had been before in the position of the Master. Now, He stoops to the position of the servant. But how much more will you pay for men O Lord?

The answer is, He will be made in the likeness of men. And how much more Lord, for the price is going up. He will be found in fashion as a man and even then, He will humble Himself. Not only be a man, but be a humbled man. Not a humble man only but a humbled man. And how much more wilt Thou pay O Lord? I will become obedient unto death. But all of the sons of men are obedient unto death. Yes, but for their sakes, I choose the worst death that ever was invented, death of the cross. So that is how much He paid for us. And the Scripture says then, Jesus, our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, and who advertised to all the intelligent universe, how precious we are to Him by how much he was willing to give for us.

Now, if you’re ever tempted to think little of yourself, I want you to know that it’s never a godly thing to do. I want you to know, that if you’re puffed up and think you amount to anything, then that’s wrong. I want you to know, if you overlook your sin, and imagine you’re good, that’s wrong. I want you to know, that if you were inclined to compare yourself with another and put yourself above that other, that’s wrong. And all these wrongs should be repented of and amended so they don’t occur anymore in your life.

But this idea of voiding our preciousness, and writing down our value, and putting a price tag on us that’s cheap; cross out the value that used to be and put a lower one on, that never occurs in the Bible anywhere. Never. When God wants to talk about man’s weakness, He says, that man’s breath is in his nostrils. When he wants to talk about how little time he’s here below, He says, that time, like an ever-rolling stream bares all its sons away. And that a thousand years in God’s sight are about as yesterday when it is past. When God wants to talk about how weak we are, He calls us grass and says we’re like the grass that grows up. But never anywhere in the Bible does God say anything derogatory about the nature of man. For the Scripture says, so God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them.

And the passage we read from James this morning said, why curse ye man, who was made in the similitude of God. That is why it is so sinful to call a man of fool or to say raca, because it is heaping contempt upon man. And remember, that there isn’t an order of angels before the throne of God, that is as high as man will be when God is thrown with him. Remember that there isn’t a cherubim nor seraphim, there isn’t a creature before the shining throne of God that gazes upon the sea of glass, but what must be beneath man when God is through with man. For God has made man in His image, and when man sinned, turned around and made Himself in man’s image, that He might thus dually and forever unite Godhead and manhood, so that man is the creature nearest to God, nearest equal to God, of all the beings that fill the vast universe.

So, if you imagine that you’re humble, by thinking little of yourself, you’re all wrong. Why callest thou unclean that which God called clean? Why callest thou worthless that which God called worthy of giving himself to die for it? No, no. We must remember how dear we are to Christ by what He gave for us; and He gave Himself for us.

Why did He give Himself? It says in the next phrase, to redeem us from all iniquity. Iniquity was our problem, you see. We were caught in the meshes of iniquity. And He gave Himself to redeem us from all iniquity. Notice the prepositions, and they’re actually there, not in, but from. He shall save His people from their sins. Let me repeat, and I’ve said it, I guess 1000 times that any interpretation of New Testament Christianity that allows sin a place in the human life, is a false interpretation. Let me remind you once more, that any interpretation of mercy or grace or justification by faith, that allows any kind of sin, external or internal, to live unrebuked, unforsaken and unrepentant of, is a travesty on the gospel of Christ, and not the true gospel at all. He gave Himself, and the price was Himself, that He might redeem us and purify unto Himself–purify.

Now, the one deep disease of the world you know, is impurity. And by impurity we mean, anything that is unlike God. Sexual misconduct, yes, but that’s only one facet of this impurity. Contentiousness is another. There are some people that you can’t say it’s a nice morning, isn’t it, but what they will say, no, I don’t think it is and start an argument. If you compliment, they will start an argument and no matter what you say, they’re contentious. I’ve met that kind of contentious people. They live in the world by the mercy of the people who aren’t contentious. And they imagine themselves wonderful, when they’re merely the recipients of an almost infinite amount of patience on the part of people, who would like to tramp on them, but won’t. And so, these contentious people are impure people.

Then there are hatreds, hatreds of every sort, that’s impurity. Gluttony is impurity. And slothfulness is impurity. The lazy person is impure. Or the person who works only that he can play, is impure. Self-indulgence is another form of impurity. Pride is another form. Egoism is another form. Self-pity and resentfulness and churlishness, I’ve named only a few. But all that is not of God. This is all impurity, and the work of Christ is to purify a people.

Now, remember it my brethren, you can quote Scripture by the yard, but if you haven’t been purified by the fire of the Holy Ghost and the blood of the Lamb, you are of all men most miserable. Because you will find in that day, that you will be rejected from the presence of the Lord, because it will not be your belief, so much as the state of your heart, that will tell where you go in that day, though your beliefs will certainly take you to purity. The work of Christ is to purify a people; by blood and by fire, and to rid them of these things.  The churlish Christian excuses it, and calls it by some other name. The resentful Christian, says he’s nervous, but he walks around with a chip on his shoulder. And I have been informed, that if you find a chip on his shoulder, it’s very likely to have come off of the block further up.

But resentfulness and self-pity and egotism and pride; all these we are to be purified from. And if we had as many Bible teachers, trying to teach how pure Christians can become as we do, trying to teach that they can’t become pure, we would have a better church than we have.

Now he says here, he purifies unto Himself, a peculiar people, a peculiar people. Let’s look at that a little bit, that word, peculiar. Well, that word has been used. It’s gotten into the hands of the enemy, and it’s been used to cloak some very weird goings on in the Christian church. But the word has no connotation of strange or irrational or queer or ridiculous or foolish. No, Jesus Christ was the perfect example. And He walked among men with utmost rationality. Everything He did was as logical and as clear and salty and sane as the sunshine on the grass of a June morning, Jesus our Lord was the perfect example of a mind that was poised and balanced and symmetrical and in perfect adjustment to itself.

And yet, of course, He was our example. He was our sample man. And He never did or said anything, or left anything unsaid, that would cause the raising of an eyebrow, or the wondering if we might not be quite there. Now, they said He had the devil because He healed the sick on the Sabbath day, the false teachers and those who believed in commandments, instead of people; who loved law instead of men, and those who loved text in place of children, and those who would rather take the evil woman and hurl her into hell than see her forgiven. They of course, said He had the devil. But read if you will all four Gospels and see, in not one instance did Jesus do or say anything that was not sane and salty and completely normal and right.

So, those who do irrational things in the name of the Lord have their own selves to blame. And those who are queer and ridiculous and foolish, and then flippantly say, I’m a fool for Christ’s sake, they’re not. You know, you can’t do anything you want to do and say, I do it for Christ’s sake and make it all right. Keep that in mind, brother. You can only do for Christ’s sake that which Christ told you to do. You cannot do what you’ve decided to do and then make it good by saying it’s for Christ’s sake. That is offering a swine on the altar of the Lord, and it will be rejected abruptly by great God Almighty. So, let’s remember that Christians are not to be weirdies, strange people, odd balls, not at all in any sense of the word.

But, what does the word peculiar mean here? Well, it means the same thing in Greek as it does in Hebrew, so the scholars tell us. And it’s found in Exodus 19:5, thou shalt be a peculiar treasure unto me, above all people, He told Israel. A peculiar treasure unto Me, above all people.

Oh, if you’ll allow me, indulge me again. My own family laughs at me. But if you’ll allow me. This afternoon, God willing, about 1:30 I’ll see a little boy, five years old, blondie, a brown-eyed blonde. His name is Paul, and he’s, my grandson. And I’ll see him, well, if we both live that long. Now, there’s a boy, really, there’s a boy. And you know, there isn’t anything peculiar about him. He is sensible, sane, good natured, poised, balanced, symmetrical in his character, so far as a five-year-old can be, and is already learning to read and is allowed mathematics and can connect with a ball every time it’s tossed to him. And he’s just a boy. And there’s nothing peculiar about him at all. If he was playing on the lawn with a half a dozen other boys, you wouldn’t pick him out. Except of course, he’s better looking, but you wouldn’t pick him out. He’d just be one more boy there playing on the lawn. And yet to his father and mother, and to us at our house, he’s a peculiar boy. Why? Because he’s peculiarly ours.

I saw him when he was just a few hours old in the hospital, a terrible, homely-looking mess of something or other there. But now he’s blossomed into a grand boy. Well now he’s peculiar. How is he peculiar, little off? No. Because he acts queer? No. He’s peculiar because he belongs to us. He is ours, as God said of Israel, a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people. And every mother knows what I am talking about. Every mother knows her little crow is the blackest. And every cat knows her kittens are the softest. And every father knows his son is the sharpest, his grandson the brightest. Everybody knows that. A peculiar treasure unto me. Love has made you mine in a way that logic can’t explain, that you have to feel it to know it.

And so that same word peculiar came on over into the Greek and then into our English, that same word. That same meaning, I mean, a peculiar treasure. Etymologically, it means, shut up to me as my special jewel. Imagine that, shut up to me as my special jewel. I have you under my hand as my specialty jewel. Buddy Robinson used to say, that dear old saint. One of the few modern saints that I’ve ever known. Buddy Robinson said that the Lord holds him in the hollow of His hand. And every once in a while, raises His hand a little and says, are you alright, Buddy? Now, that was Robinson’s simple, childlike way of telling what a Butler or a Calvin or a Wesley would have cloaked in great, heavy, resonant, resounding English phrases. But Buddy just simplified it. Moody had a way of doing that too, take some great profound doctrine and simplify it.

Well now, that’s what it all means, that the Lord has us as His peculiar treasure, and He is purifying unto Himself, a people to be His as special jewels. And yet, Israel in the Old Testament, they were different, but they were not different in a queer or ridiculous way. When Daniel, say, went to Babylon, he was different. Daniel wouldn’t eat the meat of the Babylonians. And Daniel prayed several times a day facing toward Jerusalem. If that made him mentally disturbed, that nowadays you know, they’d have sent out a booklet on that. And they would have said that that’s, a mental health outfit would have wanted to take Daniel up on that because he prayed three times a day facing toward Jerusalem. But was there anything crazy about that? No. Daniel simply recognized a higher loyalty than Babylonian kings, and he stayed by that loyalty even to be cast into the den of lions.

And so, in the New Testament, Christians are God’s special jewels marked out for Him to be peculiar, but not queer; to be peculiar, but not ridiculous; to be peculiar, but not foolish. And yet, they are different. They are different. Somebody told me he’d heard a sermon on the air recently where some preacher, I suppose he was a young preacher, I hope he was. God forgive him if he was over 21. But he preached anyhow and said, people think to become a Christian you’ve got to be a square. But I tell you, you don’t have to be different to be a Christian, oh, brother, if he had said five times five equals 99 and three fourths, he couldn’t have been any wronger than he was.

To be a peculiar treasure unto God does make you different. And you do live differently. You have a higher loyalty, and you’ll recognize the right of God to tell you how to live. And men’s philosophies come and go. Religions come and go. Quasi-revivals come and go. Healing campaigns come and go. And new ideas come and go, and scientific notions come and go. And all the time, this Christian has got in focus the heart of God and He’s living just like the way he had been, going on doing the will of God and recognizing only one final loyalty. Thrones and crowns may perish, kingdoms rise and wane, but the church of Jesus, constant shall remain. And that constancy is because of her. She’s got God in her focus.

And so other things come and go. They’re like the winds that blow and the storms that come and pass. But we go on. That makes us different, but it doesn’t make us queer nor foolish. It makes us right. Put one sane man in a ward where everybody else is in a bad, advanced state of paranoia, and the one man who looks right, and is right, will look wrong. H.G Wells wrote a book called “The Country of the Blind,” just a simple little story; and it was just to bring before his readers an idea. A man fell into a little valley somewhere, where people had no eyes. He of course had eyes. And there among these blind people who had learned to live without eyes. They were scientists and philosophers and poets and all the rest without eyes; and he had eyes. And it wasn’t very long until they were preparing to operate on him, to get rid of those strange protuberances that were just beneath his eyebrow, because they said it made him act queer and say queer things. But his queerness was his own sight. He saw, and therefore he was different from those who did not see.

And so a Christian is one who sees, and because he sees, some people who don’t see, say he is all wrong. But when God says He makes a peculiar people, He doesn’t mean that He makes a lot of ridiculous and queer people. He merely makes them His peculiarly, His shut up unto Him. And of course, the world won’t like them because they’re His.

Lastly, zealous of good works. These peculiar people, they sing loudly, but they give generously. They pray along, but they work hard, zealous of good works. The Bible knows nothing of armchair Christians. The Bible knows nothing of ivory tower Christianity.

I maybe could mention this. Just within the last two weeks, I’ve had at least a partial offer, and if I cultivate a little bit, it would become a valid offer, of a foundation’s $13 million in it; to be turned out to pasture, like a fine old horse that has seen his day, and just write and have my time; just do nothing but except the big salary and just be retired to write and have fun. I give you three guesses whether I’m going to accept it or not. An ivory tower Christian? For me to move out among the blue birds and sit with an electric typewriter in an air-conditioned study done in knotty pine? You couldn’t sell me that, my brother. You couldn’t give it to me. You couldn’t get me to take it. I’m not for sale. And furthermore, if I lived, I don’t suppose I’d live very long at that rate. But if I lived even a year, I’d become an ivory tower suburbanite, a Christian that just couldn’t live unless I was looking on green things. And I’d just have to have a birdsong in order to be happy. No, my brother. The Bible teaches that we are to be zealous of good works.

I talked last evening to a woman. I don’t know too much about her, and I’m not setting her up as an example. But she was here at our meeting. And her husband told me of how in the pursuance of her work she goes through all these areas north of here into places where it looks dangerous for anybody to be. He said, she’s got faith, Reverend. She’s got faith. She goes in anywhere and she’s afraid of nothing. He said she was a little afraid, but she went. And yet she belongs to a congregational church somewhere in the suburbs. But, she comes in where the need is, and goes from home to home. And I say, God purifies unto himself a people peculiarly precious to Him. And while they’re down here, they’re going to be zealous of good works.

Now the church can silence her critics by good works, and she can silence in no other way. Take doctrine, and they’ll turn your doctrine against you. Quote scripture, and they’ll say that isn’t the right translation. You can silence your critics only by godliness and good works. And nobody can argue down godliness and good works. The devil himself wouldn’t try it. He wouldn’t try it. He knows better. Godliness and good works shut the mouths of everybody. They may take you out and hang you, but they’ll respect you while you die; godliness and good works. And yet not to be seen of men, but to imitate our Lord who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.

So, we have it again, this beautiful passage that can’t be worn out. Our Savior Jesus Christ who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity; and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. Then Paul adds these words. I don’t know why they’re here, but they’re here. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. And don’t let anybody despise you. Amen.

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“God’s Word Manifested Through Preaching

God’s Word Manifested Through Preaching

February 9, 1958

The book of Titus, the book of Titus, Titus 1. I been reading just from the introduction, really, Paul. Paul, he says he is a servant of God, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Then he refers to the faith of God’s elect and the truth which leads to godliness, and the hope of eternal life which God that cannot lie promised before the world began and made known in time. Promised in eternity and made known in time and has manifested His word now. This will be the message for the morning.

A little prepositional phrase tagged on here, it could have ended, but hath in due times manifested His Word, and put a period there and ended it, but he didn’t. He added “through preaching” and then explained that this preaching was committed to Him according to the commandment of God, our Savior. So, I want to talk a little bit about this. And have prayed and hoped that it will be helpful to us all. These two great truths we dealt with last week that the plan of God to redeem mankind was rocked out in eternity. It was planned in eternity and worked out in time and delivered in time, but was made manifest, that is, proclaimed, declared in due time, then through preaching.

Now, I don’t think in all my years I ever felt the weight of a thing quite like this, those two words before–through preaching. And I thought of the condescension of God that He should use these words at all, that they should be here, that there should be any reason for their being here. How remarkably sure of Himself God must be, to entrust such a perfect plan to such an imperfect medium. This perfect plan, the plan of God drawn up between the persons of the Godhead before the world was; a perfect plan to recover man from his lost condition, to reclaim him after his fall, to reinstate him after his disgraceful expulsion, and to give him eternal life, and at last, immortality.

This was not an easy thing, the laws of God being what they are, and God being who He is, and His nature being what it is. This was not an easy thing, but it was more involved here than things political. Things involved here were moral, and they had to do with the structure of the universe. They had to do with the very foundations upon which rests the heavens and the earth and all things visible and invisible, and to work out a plan to lay its blueprints, and then build according to those blueprints, and then unveil the structure. It took God to do it. It took God to do it and God did it; and He did it in a manner infinitely perfect and excellent as might be expected of God. Infinitely perfect and excellent beyond all the power of language to describe. That’s the perfection of the plan. And now he makes this known, wonder of wonders, he makes this known through preaching, one of the most imperfect of mediums.

Why is preaching imperfect? Because language is involved. And wherever language is involved, there’s imperfection; always there must be imperfection for the simple reason that language is fluid, it changes. Language tends to localize itself and mean in one place what it does to a particular word, and mean in one place, what it does not mean in another. I mean in one locality. And even the nations that use the same language, use different words to mean the same thing. As for instance, such a simple thing as you get into an elevator in America and into a lift in England. You ask the conductor if this is the right train in America, and you ask a guard in England I understand. That’s a simple illustration only. And it doesn’t affect anything very profound, but language does become profound and highly significant, tremendously so when it deals with religion and the soul of man.

And this perfect, infinitely excellent plan of God was entrusted to the imperfect medium of preaching. Preaching which uses language I say, which the speaker himself may not always understand fully, and which the hearer may not understand fully. And which the hearer having been brought up in one area or locality, may mean by a word one thing and here may mean another. And so, they make no contact. They fail to do what they say now, communicate. And then, because of the many languages all over the world, our missionaries tell us rather heartbreaking as well as humorous stories of their effort to get ideas across, efforts that simply cannot be gotten across.

I remember when my older brother was in China when he was a young fellow. He came back and told us smilingly about how he’d gone into a department store and asked to buy a cow when what he wanted was some garment or other, what a sailor might want, a handkerchief maybe. But he had had a wrong inflection, or wrong tone, and so what he asked for in a dry goods store was a cow. And that’s only one of the 1000s of changes and odd angles and facets of meaning. It is not only between languages, but within languages.

And so He committed the eternal hope of mankind for recovery and reclamation and reinstatement and eternal life and immortality. He committed it to the imperfect medium of preaching. And it’s imperfect because language is involved. And it’s imperfect because preachers are involved. And preachers are men and hence faulty and defective. Paul recognized this in 1 Corinthians 1:21 when he said it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

Paul knew very well that for one man to stand up on a raised platform and address other men and talk about things he couldn’t see and refer to historical incidents which there was no proof for and to offer gifts which he could not, you could not weigh nor measure and to talk about the unseen things and demand they be seen, and unheard things, and insist they ought to be heard. He knew this was a foolish thing to do. And yet he said it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. And while we do not underrate the printed Word, we say that God hath said here in 1 Corinthians 1:21, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save people, and in Titus 1:2 that in due time He manifested His plan through preaching.

Well, what a noble army they have been. I have a great big book on the history of preaching which I have lent to brother Milton Moore. And now I’m almost sorry I did because thinking over this, I’d like to have checked just this thought over again. The great men who’ve stood up in the earth with all their imperfection using an imperfect, fluid medium such as language. They have moved generations and changed the course of history. Think of the man Noah way back there before the flood, who for a long, long time, probably the longest pastorate any man ever held, 120 years while the ark was in preparation.

This man was a preacher of righteousness. Where he got his text I don’t know. Whether he read it or whether he memorized it or whether it was extemporary, I don’t know. I don’t know what type of preacher he was, but I know that he was a preacher of righteousness. And certainly, this old man of God back there before the flood, you say he didn’t win many, and not many were saved, no, but what he did was this. No, he didn’t win many back there, but he did deliver his soul and delivered God Almighty from any remote shred of accountability for those who heard him. If there is such a thing you know as God sending a man to a place and say, now, you go and preach to these people and don’t expect converts. You won’t get them. Don’t expect results. You won’t have them. But I want them to know a prophet has been among them. He told that to Ezekiel the man of God. Now there’s such a thing, Noah was that kind of preacher. And in hell today, in hell today, those anti-diluvian ones are deeper and more tragically, terribly and eternally responsible because Noah preached to them.

And then there’s the prophets, the old men of God, they were not students in pastor’s studies, these prophets of the Old Testament. They were mostly great, rough fellows who with the exception of one or two, a priest and another one a courtier, Isaiah. But mostly they were rough fellows that God had laid His hand on as He did on a Billy Nicholson or Billy Bray in later times. And they stood up and declared the Word and declared it roughly and coarsely and they struck out, and in their striking sometimes they hit posts, and they hit people that weren’t guilty, but they struck hard, these mighty prophets of God. And God loved their sermons, and He had given them the sermons to begin with, and then had them recorded so we have the prophets, major and minor, giving us the sermons that were preached. And how those sermons must have changed man. And yet God said, I raised my prophets up and sent them and stretched out My hands and you wouldn’t hear. And so, God delivered Himself and the prophets delivered themselves.

And we come to the New Testament and we see first of all, Jesus, a preacher, and we see those apostles who went about preaching, and those disciples in Acts 8:4, which says that because of the persecution that had arisen about Steven, they went everywhere preaching. I don’t know what kind of preaching it was, but it was effective. They went everywhere preaching that Christ had died, and now lives and is at the right hand of God. And then in post-biblical times, we have the great preachers down the years, the silver-tongued preachers. In later times, 12, 13, 14, 1500s we have Johannes Tauler, that great German orator who went about all over Germany preaching Jesus Christ and preparing the ground for the Reformation.

In Spain, a little later we have Molinas who went about preaching that you could get to know God yourself, that you could, that you could pray in your heart and God would hear you; that you didn’t have to pray through beads and forms and stated times, but anytime you lifted your heart to God through Jesus Christ, God would hear you. He later paid with his life for teaching such doctrines as that, because it made it tough for the priests. The hold the priests head on men was, that priest had to be around or you couldn’t pray, or you had to pray according to His prescription. But Molinas said God will prescribe for you son, go ahead and pray. So, the Spanish Inquisition put him in prison. Shortly afterward, he died and historians think he was poisoned, but nobody can prove it. The judgment day will reveal it. But, Molinas was a preacher known all over Spain, and now known all over the world.

And there was Richard Rolle, one of my friends. God, in His great mercy, allows such things to happen in heaven, and I am not so completely overcome with a sense of my own inferiority that I’ll be afraid to speak, I want to hunt up Richard Rolle. I want to hunt up the man who gave up his monastery and walked out of it, took a guitar bless you, a guitar, an instrument we kind of look down in our day, usually, I guess, because the way it’s been abused. But he took a guitar and went all over England preaching, preaching the love of God in Christ Jesus the Lord. And he said, if you let the love of God come into your heart, it’ll fill you with sweetness and fragrance and song. He went everywhere preaching. And I didn’t know until I looked it up recently, but I could have suspected it, that before he died he got in trouble, because he wrote himself a good stiff book in which he denied that the Pope had the authority he claimed he had. And he managed to die in his bed. But think of that preacher and what he did for England.

And later on when the preachers came to England after the Reformation, they found soil, pretty-well prepared. And there was Luther, we’ll skip Luther because everybody knows about him. And there was John Knox, that mighty Scotchman who preached with a burr, but who was such a frightful, such a terrible and terrifying preacher that Bloody Mary said she feared him, feared him worse than she feared the armies of Egypt. She feared his prayers, to say nothing of his sermons.

Yes, there’s been a lot of them. But they are the stars of the first magnitude. Think of the thousands of little stars that barely shine, that takes a whole Milky Way of them to make a little light, but they’re there and they’ve got some light. Thank God for every one of them. And I thank God for every one of them today in this city, big and little, poor and good that are standing up to declare the Word. For God has made His Word known through preaching. Now, that’s the condescension of God.

And then, think of the mighty obligation of the preacher. Think of the weighty, enormous, crushing obligation that rests upon a man who stands to declare the Truth, anywhere, at any time. Why? Two reasons. One is that he is the messenger of the Most High God and he comes clothed with the authority of the Most High God with a message from the Most High God. No secret document ever carried in any portfolio by any ambassador, top secret though it might be from one country to another, can even compare with the seriousness and weight of the message carried by the simplest, poorest preacher that stands today to preach to a little flock. And the future of millions of moral beings lies in the hand of the preacher. It always has. You say millions? Aren’t you getting a bit exaggerated? No. Suppose that a little unheard of Methodist preacher, say, up in Wisconsin that nobody will ever hear of but his own superintendent and hundreds of people who might hear him. Suppose he wins one man to God. Suppose that man wins another. And suppose then that man wins another. The next man wins two and somebody else wins three or ten. Multiply it and see how by multiplying it runs into hundreds of thousands.

Paul saved one, two to Christ, and the man, each of those two won two more and each of those two more, won two more. All you have to do is take a pencil and sit down and figure it out, you’ll see that the conversion of one person will run into hundreds of 1000s in the course of years.

So, the future of millions of moral beings lie in our hands, the hands of the man who stands up to preach the Word. The teacher who stands up before his class to declare the Word, that’s a form of preaching too. Don’t rule it out. It is a form of preaching. It’s giving the Word, teaching the word, instructing man, exhorting men; inspiring men and women and young people. If you could only know. I wonder if we will know. If you could only know who it was way back down there, what Swede or German or Scotsman or Englishman, or maybe even some other country we’re not thinking of now, that a man got up lazy one morning, head aching and said to himself, I don’t think I’ll pray today as much. I think I’ll kind of rest and so he puttered around the house, and before long the Spirit of God began to move him, and he said, I’ve got to pray. And he got on his knees and began to pray. And as he prayed, the light of God came to him. He went out that night maybe and preached, or the next Sunday, and somebody is a result of his hearing God’s voice and got converted. And the conversion of that person resulted in the conversion of one of your ancestors. And the conversion of that ancestor resulted in the conversion of one of your less-remote, and so down to you, and you now are a Christian, and your home Christian, because somebody back there didn’t fail God. Think of it.

But how can, how can preachers be what they are sometimes? I’ve said and I’ve gotten in trouble for saying, but I kind of thrive on it. I don’t mind it too much anymore. But I say that if a man is lazy, the best place in the world to indulge his talents is the ministry, because nobody checks up on him. He can sleep until noon. And if he gets a phone call at 10 o’clock, he can get up and try to sound alert. But, how can a man from whose head God has laid His hands ever be lazy when you consider the condescension of God; that He made His perfect plan, made through the imperfect medium of preaching. And with the mighty obligation that lies on the man of God, how can he be lazy? How can you be careless, and yet men are? How can he be cowardly? And how can it be covetous?

When George Fox came to England, he had one category for all ministers. He called them priests. And he had one place to put them, as far down in the pit as he could shove them; putting his hand on their bald head and push it. And I read his writings years ago, and I thought, oh, George has been rough on people. But George knew to whom he was speaking. He knew. He saw them. He saw them stand up drunk and had to have choirboys to hold them up so they could deliver their sermon. He saw how careless and utterly worldly they were, and how they cared for the pulpit, only as a man cares for a bench in a factory, as a means of making a living. So, I’m not going to be too hard on George. He may have pushed a fellow in the face that didn’t have it coming, but that was just an accident mostly. They had it coming.

Well, think how could a man be cowardly when he considers that God has given him the message to deliver however poor he might be and however few might hear him, he’s given a message. And when you think that message carries with it such tremendous obligation from God, how can a man be cowardly and back up and say I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you, and back out on his message, back out on the Truth. Now, if he is honestly wrong, he ought to apologize. The preacher is not above apology. And of course, as a Christian man he ought to apologize if he’s hurt anybody. But never be afraid.

And then, the covetous man. I don’t understand the covetous man, the man who allows the offer of the board, so much money, so long, determine whether he will preach or not. I don’t understand it, but how terrible it is. Listen to this, I want to read it to you.  Son of man, I’ve made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel. Therefore, hear the word of My mouth and give them warning from Me. When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. And again, send a man, when a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block for him, he shall die because thou hast not given him warning. He shall die in his sins, but his blood will I require at thine hand. Think how terrible this is. And yet, we can dare to think these holy thoughts and mingle them with money and popularity and what people think and what they’ll say.

Well then, next is the overwhelming responsibility of the hearer. The condescension of God that He should make His Word known through preaching and the mighty obligation that lays on the preacher; and the overwhelming responsibility it lays upon the hearer. What puts the hearer under such obligation? The source of the message for one thing. God said this, the Most High God, son of man, I said this, go tell them I said this, the God in whose hand you’re held, and the God out of whose hand you’ll tumble into hell, or in whose hand you’ll rise to heaven. Son of man, go tell them I saith. Think of this message itself, a message of the eternal deliverance with approaching death and judgment. This is the terrible, wonderful, glorious, all inspiring message which the simplest, humblest preacher; that he gets up and humbly gives a little interpretation of John 3:16. Maybe he’s never gone any further than that. Maybe that’s as far as he’s gone, but he does his best with the elementary things of the gospel. But he’s God’s man anyhow.  And it puts the preacher, he puts the hearer under obligation.

Remember one thing my brethren, nobody’s done with a sermon even when the benediction has been pronounced. Nobody. Nobody’s finished with a sermon when the preacher said, and now lastly, amen. Nobody. Nobody’s finished with the sermon. They here may sleep and some do. And they hear me scorn and some do. The hearer may resist, and some do and reject, and others do. But he will face his responsibility, certainly, surely, in that Great Day. He’ll face his responsibility. Do you realize you’re children of eternity? Do you realize that you’re not born to die once down here? You’re forever. You will rise again in heaven or hell, and you’ll face up to things.

I don’t know how they do it now; and if this doesn’t conform to what you younger men know about the services. Why, you’ll believe that I’m accurate anyhow, because I remember this very well. They did it with that first World War. They took young rookies in around 21. I think they didn’t take in at that time, take anybody in under 21. And the young men went in at 21 and I saw them. There they would come out of the woods, out of the factories, out of the coal mines, out of the offices.

I remember washing dishes alongside of a professor of chemistry and university. And I was, I don’t know what. But there he was, we were washing dishes together, he and I back and forth. Well, they took them, all sorts. And some of them of course, being Americans, when some sergeant told them what to do, they said, you and who else? America, you know, that’s American. And then they’d be taken in and they would say, now, line up here and they would all line up. And then an officer with some kind of affairs here on his shoulder to give it the punch, would stand up and read what they called the Articles of War.

The Articles of War, I don’t remember, I think I couldn’t recite a phrase of it, but what it meant in essence was this, your country is now at war with an enemy. And whatever you do from here on will be considered as having been done in time of war. And any crime you commit in the Army of the United States, under war conditions, is stepped up in its intensity and its degree of guilt and the punishment that much the greater, Articles of War. And when a young fellow who wasn’t used to being pushed around, fought back. They said, have you heard the Articles of War? If he said no, they said, all right, come on, they took him over and let him read the Articles of War. If he’d heard it, he went to the guardhouse. It depends on whether we have or haven’t heard.

So, there’s an awful lot that this illustrates. Let me read again from this same chapter. Listen to this. Yet, son of man, if thou warn the wicked, and he turns not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul. He’s heard the Articles of War. He knows how serious it is now. He’s not an innocent Dani in the valley there stark naked. He’s now a man who’s been in some major illuminated. He knows how serious the charge of God is. And he shall die in his iniquity. And over here, nevertheless, if thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live because he’s warned. Also, thou hast delivered thy soul.

There you have the two sides of the same mighty coin. The preacher with his obligation to tell and the hearer with his obligation to hear. Think of the overwhelming responsibility of the hearer. Not the hearer of Billy Graham, or Paul Reese, or Robert G. Lee, or any of the great preachers, but the obligation to hear the simplest preacher that preaches today and Chicago United mission, or Pacific Garden, or any hall, storefront hall down the avenue. The simplest man who gets up under the anointing of God and dares to tell the whole truth, he lays an overwhelming obligation upon the hearer to do something about it.

So I say, God have mercy on us all. God have mercy on a preacher who fails. God have mercy on that son of man, that prophet called of God who thinks more of his home and his car and his salary and his comforts than he does of the souls of men. God have mercy on that cowardly man who edits out the offensive things out of the doctrine for fear some hierarchy will rebuke him or he’ll get a reputation for not being sound.

Any of you young men who are going to be preachers, let me tell, you can live down reputations that have killed some people if you’ll just want to do it. They’ll say first, you don’t believe in eternal security, therefore, it’s too bad for you. Later on, they’ll forget that. Or they won’t know whether you do or not. Or, they’ll say that you don’t believe in dispensationalism, and they’ll give you the cold shoulder for a while. And the Holy Ghost comes on you and you get blessed and you bless people and the people begin to demand you. And then those that are trying to stand in your way, they can’t stand in your way anymore. And so, they accept you, pat your back and say, well, I don’t see it quite with you, but okay. You don’t have to be afraid in America. Now, there are some places that I suppose it would be dangerous to stand for all the Truth, but certainly not in the United States. We’ve got enough of the blood of our Puritan ancestors in us yet and enough of the blood of the rebel in us that we don’t have to be afraid.

Well, God have mercy on us preachers, and the preachers who fail. I think of the time I’ve wasted and the time I’ve used wrongly. I’m not looking forward to the coming of Christ with as much hilarity as some people do. I’ve heard sermons preached by men cold as ice, but they were trying to show with what great joy they’d meet Him. I hope they do. But I don’t look forward to His coming personally with anything like assurance. When I consider as a man called of God when I was 17 years old, and I’ve had all these years and how much of it I’ve wasted. And what a poor wretch of a preacher I am compared with; what I could have been if I had obeyed God.

Son of man, says the Holy Ghost, I’ll require his blood at your hands. And then, God have mercy on the hearers who ignore, who take for granted, who like a skillful batter have learned to hit every offering the pitcher makes. They’re used to him now. They know every curve. And they can hit him every time. And after you have preached to people long enough, they either get right with God and get blessed, or else they learn all your curves. And they stand up there and bat them back to you. Nothing gets passed. God help such hearers who ignore, who toss every offering back to you and who refuse to be affected by it.

I can’t get over this statement I quoted the other day about my brother here who said some people won’t let you help them, this terrible thing. Some people just won’t let you help them and no matter who comes, they won’t let you help them. Son of Man preach to them. Either they will or they won’t, but whether they will or they won’t, you’re free. And if they will, then they’ll be delivered. If they won’t, then they shall die in their sin. How terrible, both for the man who speaks and the man who hears. God help us all. You teachers help us all. It’s more than standing up before a few squirming people. It’s holding holy things in our hands. And we’ll all have to give account in the day of Jesus Christ. God help us all. Amen.

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“God is Wisdom

God is Wisdom

January 12, 1958

In the book of 1 Corinthians first chapter verses 22 to 24, Paul says, The Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified. Unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks, foolishness. But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. And then Colossians 2:2 and 3, Paul prays, or indicates his desire that their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Now, as some of you know, this is the second in a series of Sunday evening messages to be called “The Voice of Eternal Wisdom and I don’t mind telling you that this should be given by a fire-baptized scholar. We need an Anselm or an Augustine. We don’t have it. A large book should be written about this voice of Eternal Wisdom; none has been written. I know of none in the last 100 years.

And Christians should be exposed to this truth. Not over a period of a half dozen Sunday nights, but for a long, long time. We should sing about it, pray about it, preach about it, understand it from the Scriptures until it becomes a part of our lives. And I have nobody to guide me much, because nobody’s written on the subject much. But my heart has stirred me up to talk about it. And I shall do the best I can. Let’s pray.

 Heavenly Father, we pray that thou wilt Illuminate us and enlighten our mind. For they are dark, and we pray with thy servant, Thy blind servant, what in us is low, raise and support. What is dark, illuminate, that to the height of this great argument we may assert Eternal Providence and justify the ways of God to man. We pray that Thou wilt help us as believers this evening to throw our hearts open to the Voice of Eternal Truth. And we pray for the unsaved man who’s out of the fold living for the flesh. We beseech Thee that thou talk to him too and may he decide that he ought to be a follower of Christ. We ask this in Jesus’ name.

Now, last Sunday night I said that there is in the Old Testament and in old Hebrew literature, a doctrine called, well I’ve called it the doctrine of Eternal Wisdom, but it is the doctrine of wisdom. And it is a Hebrew concept. It is this, that somewhere, out there, in God and with God and beside God and yet being God, there is an afflatus, a fullness of wisdom of word and idea and concept and expression of that wisdom and word and idea. And we find it of course in the New Testament in John the first chapter, particularly. And up until not too long ago, I had to somehow, to try to twist myself out of a bit of a dilemma. I had been told that the doctrine of the Logos, the Logos, the Word, where John says, in the beginning was the Word, that that was a Hebrew concept borrowed from the Greeks. And I didn’t know why John would borrow a concept from the Greeks. But if he did, and the Holy Ghost wanted to borrow from the Greeks, I wasn’t going to complain, or at least, I kept my heart right about it.

But you know, a further study of all this shows me that that’s liberalism that teaches that. It is not, simply not true. The doctrine of the Word, the Eternal Idea, the Eternal Thought, is a Hebrew concept. Look at David’s Psalm 33:6. Now look, what David said here, by the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. Now, that’s quite different from the idea that God made everything by hand. Here it says, He made it by mouth. He made it by the breath of His mouth, by the Word of the Lord were the heavens made. That’s 33:6 of the Psalms written by the man David. And that was written 1000 years before Christ, around 1000, maybe a little over.

And then, in the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, we find the same idea of that Eternal Wisdom which gave birth to everything. We find it in the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, particularly. And that was about 1000 years before Christ. And then in the book of Job, which was written at the very least 900 years before Christ, and most people think it’s the oldest book of the Bible, which would put it of course, way beyond that, so that Job believed the doctrine of the Eternal Word, the Eternal Wisdom, at least 900 years before Christ. And Solomon believed it and wove it into his proverbs and into the Book of Ecclesiastes, 1000 years before Christ. And David taught it not only in the text I have quoted, but all through his Psalms at least 1000 or more years before Christ, but now it was introduced into Greek thought, only 600 years before Christ by an old chap named Heraclitus.

So, Heraclitus was at least 400 years later than Job was or Solomon or David, so that the Christian doctrine of the Eternal Logos, the Eternal Word is not the Greek concept borrowed by the Holy Ghost. It is a Hebrew concept which dates way back, long before the Greeks ever began to think about such a matter at all. So therefore, shake your head and see if you can shake some of the fog out. And the next smart fellow you meet that tells you that you’re a follower of Plato and Platonism and that the ideas of the New Testament particularly the book of John, were borrowing from the Greeks, you tell them that you happen to know that before old Heraclitus was ever born, who in the mature life introduced into Greek thought the idea of the Word, that it had been believed and taught by David and Solomon and Job and the prophets long, long before there was any Greek idea about it.

Now my Brethren, the teaching of the Old Testament on this is that there was a creative impulse, that God had an idea, that God had a thought. And you know, when you get to thinking about it, Scriptures come to your mind. I know the thoughts that I think about you, saith the Lord. And My thoughts are not as your thoughts. As the heavens are higher above the earth so are My thoughts high above your thoughts.

Well then, John and Paul were illuminated to see this. In the Gospel of John, in the beginning was the Word, which was just what the man David had said. The Word of the Lord, by that Word were the heavens made and all the hosts then by the breath of His mouth. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And I said and repeat that the idea of this Eternal Wisdom which was with the Father, and looked at another way, He was the Son. And looked at another way, was the Fountain, the Creative Fountain out of which everything came. That was the teaching of the Old Testament Hebrews, the old fathers, the rabbis, and the old men of God who lived and studied the Scriptures. And John simply picked it up, not from the Greeks, I repeat, but from the Hebrews.

And then Paul was illuminated in Colossians 1:15 and 17 to see the same thing. He said, Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature. For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers. All things were created by Him and for Him.

Now, that’s what Paul said about it. And this was the flowering of the Old Testament teaching. It flowered over into the New Testament. And so, Jesus Christ came, who was Himself that Eternal Wisdom. And He took upon Him the form of a man and He was incarnated in mortal flesh, and he walked among men. And they said, how hast this man learning, having never been to school? And He needed not that any man come and snitch on anybody else, because He Himself knew everything that was in man. And at twelve years old, He put the doctors to flight and asked them questions which they couldn’t answer, and answered questions which they asked Him. And Paul says that the Jews were after signs, and the Greeks were after wisdom, but Jesus Christ is both the power of God and the wisdom of God. And in Him, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden away.

So, my brethren, don’t you see that this doctrine, this beautiful doctrine of the Presence of something the old mystics called her. They said was a woman and I’ll show you in the Old Testament that, they’re almost the same thing. And they’re called her Sophia, which of course is to make her equal with wisdom. So, if your name happens to be Sophie, well, that’s where you got it Sister. And we hope that you’re touched with some of that divine wisdom. But I asked you to notice here now what the the prophets taught, what the men of God back there taught. They said, the Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth. That’s Proverbs 3:19. By understanding, He hath established the heavens. Jeremiah 10:12, He hath established the world by His wisdom and has stretched out the heavens by His discretion.

Now here are three triads. There’s the earth, the heavens and the world, founded and established and stretched out, done by wisdom and understanding and discretion. Now, I wouldn’t stand here and say it, but I have a perfect right to believe it. And I do believe that this is a hint at the Trinity. This is the Old Testament doctrine. Here is the earth, which was founded by wisdom; the heavens, which were established by understanding, and the world, was stretched out by discretion. And if you read Job, Ecclesiastes, the Book of Proverbs, you will find that this wisdom and understanding and discretion was a person, that this was a person; that it was somebody that you wooed and won. It was something, an afflatus, a holy oil that God poured out on people. You find that there. And all, that same thing David said when he said, by the Word of the Lord, and by the breath of His mouth.

Now, I read out, a little out of an old book called, “The Wisdom of Solomon” last week, and I was very careful to show you that the wisdom of Solomon is not an inspired book in the sense that the Proverbs is an inspired book, but it represents the good word. Nobody would complain if I were to quote from Spurgeon. Nobody would complain if I were to give you a paragraph from D.L. Moody. Nobody would care at all if I were to stand up here and say, this is what Augustine said. Here’s what Luther said. Nobody would complain about that. They were the fathers. We would skip Moody on that. But they were they were the fathers. And we would say, while that’s what they said, it wasn’t inspired. It represented a distillation or a condensation of truth from the inspired Scriptures.

So, I want to quote from a book called Ecclesiasticus, not Ecclesiastes, but Ecclesiasticus. It was written about 200 years before Christ. And here is what the brother said. Now, he wasn’t writing as he was moved by the Holy Ghost; neither was Augustine or Luther. But he was giving the beliefs in the teachings of the fathers, about what the inspired Scriptures taught. And here’s what this sole gentleman said. He said, all wisdom coming from the Lord, and is with Him forever. Who can number the sands of the sea and the drops of rain and the days of eternity? Who can find out the height of heaven and the breadth of the earth and the deep of wisdom? Wisdom hath been created before all things. And if you wonder about that word, created before all things, you’ll find it again in Colossians 1:15, where it says, who is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature. And some have tried to make out that that meant that Jesus was a creature. It means nothing of the sort. That idea of first born, it’s first born from the dead. And Jesus Christ is the first born, in that He, out of the dead, He’s the firstborn of the creation, because, what He is, the creation sometime will be. And what He is, you and I are going to be. And what He is, He’s going to make this world over in His image.

Now, I scorned to spend any time on the Sputnik. I don’t want to bother with that hunk of hardware, because I don’t think it’s worthy of my attention as a preacher of the Word. But the reason I’m not disturbed about satellites and all that is, that all this is temporary anyhow, for the heavens shall be dissolved with a great noise and shall melt with fervent heat. And we look for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. And when God’s busy melting down the universe, He won’t need to mind melting down an extra hunk of Russian hardware. It will be easy to do, and if by that time, brother John Foster Dulles has got one up, why, He’ll melt that one down too. We won’t have to worry about it.

And that’s why I don’t get excited and stampede and start preaching sermons about it. I can’t because I see that all wisdom cometh from the Lord and is with Him forever. And who can number the sands of the sea and the drops of rain and the days of eternity? Who can find out the height of Heaven and the breadth of the earth and the deep and wisdom? Wisdom hath been created before all things and the understanding of prudence from everlasting. The Word Most High is the Fountain of Wisdom, the Word of God Most High, and Her ways of everlasting commandments. To whom hath the root of wisdom been revealed? There is One, wise and gravely to be feared, Jehovah sitting upon His throne. He created her and saw her and numbered her and poured her out upon all His works.

You know, there’s a Christian answer for almost everything. And while I don’t go into it, I think that we Christians have some answers. We wonder how the wild bird finds its way north in the spring and south in the fall? We wonder how the The Orchard Oriole and the Baltimore Oriole managed to build their beautiful swinging nest. We wonder how the bee finds its way across the meadows to its hive. We will wonder about what men call instinct. I believe, and there are some verses I’ll quote maybe later on in my series where that it says that God poured wisdom out upon His creation. And I believe that what the bee has is a touch from the Hand that made the bee.

Now don’t look down your nose and say, what does God care about a bee? God made that bee didn’t He? And also, God made the birds. And He even says in one place why you’re dumber than the ox that knows his master’s crib and the bird that knows her nest. And my people do not know, neither do they consider, they, made in the image of God, had lost the wisdom, but the very lower creation has that wisdom. That’s why I don’t worry about the universe. It’ll run all right. God has poured out that wisdom upon all His creation. So everything works alright and everything does all right because God made it that way.

Now, this is the doctrine. This is the doctrine of the Eternal Wisdom, which was incarnated in Jesus Christ. And that’s why He’s so hard to understand. A man named Bruce Barton one time, wrote a book called, A Man Nobody Knows. I read that book and came to the conclusion that there was at least one man that didn’t know Him, and that is Bruce Barton. Because he was writing about somebody. Somebody sent the book to me, an editor and said, Will you review, will you review this book? Well, I wrote back and said, Bruce Barton, writing about Jesus Christ would be exactly the same as Esau writing about Jacob. They just couldn’t make it. There was something that he didn’t understand.

This fellow Jacob, he wasn’t a nice chap, and he certainly wasn’t a straight fellow at first. God had to straighten him out. He’s name was, supplanter. He was crooked. But, he was touched with divine wisdom. The great God Almighty had reached down with His wand and touched his shoulder and said, rise, Jacob, and Jacob, got up Israel. He had a wisdom given to him. And Esau, a far nicer chap than he was; and was more socially acceptable that he was, nicer to live around, if you could stand the smell. He smelled of the field you remember, which the Lord has blessed and it’s all right in the field, but it’s not so good in the house and he came in with that smell on him.

And the fellow, Esau, a nice chap, lived in the flesh and died in the flesh. And Jacob, who wasn’t as nice a fellow had seen light and he had been illuminated and the Divine Wisdom had touched him. And Jacob came out all right, and became a prince with God. And men and women today name their babies Jacob, but they never name their babies Esau, because Esau, the name Esau is of the flesh and belongs in the flesh. And yet he was a nice chap.

Well, there we have it, my brethren. It’s the root of it and the base of it. It’s the old Hebrew doctrine that God is wisdom. And we sing it in our song, God is wisdom, God is love. And you will find it all through your Bible; run the references as we say. Go to your concordance, and you will be enlightened and illuminated and delighted. Perhaps even ravished as you see how back before Mary ever had her baby, back before ever the little baby Jesus wailed his tiny protest to the world in Bethlehem’s manger, way back before that in what the theologians called pre-incarnation times. Jesus Christ was, and He was the Wisdom of the Father. He was of one substance with the Father, equal with the Father, as ancient as the Father, eternal with the Father, having all the attributes of the Father, He was the Father’s outgoing, He was the Father’s expression. And that’s what the book of John says, in the beginning was the Word and everybody knows the Greek students have an awful time. What a deal of throwing around of brains takes place when some fellow starts to translate John, because John went so far up and so far in, that it takes a lot of sanctified imagination to understand John. Most people don’t have sanctified imaginations. They’ll just settle for a footnote. And that’s about as far as we go.

Well, now what do we learn from all of this? What is this? Is this Christianity? Of course, this is Christianity. In our day, we’ve degraded Christianity to be a kind of Salk vaccine shot against hell and sin. We round them all up and stick a needle in them and say, if you’ll just accept Jesus, you won’t go to hell and you’ll go to heaven when you die. Keep living as long as you can, but when you die, you’ll go to heaven. And we preach a kind of a lifeboat salvation. We even sing about it, about the lifeboat. I suppose it’s permissible, maybe, I don’t condemn it, but it certainly is an inadequate concept of Christianity, Brethren.

The purpose of God in redeeming men was not to save them from hell only. The purpose of God in redeeming man was to save them on to worship, and to let them be born through, into that Eternal Wisdom which was with the Father, which is synonymous with that Eternal Life, which was with the Father and which was revealed unto men, in which John said, our eyes have looked upon and our ears have heard and our hands have handled of that Word of Life. For you’ll find in the Gospel of John that the Holy Ghost through the mouth of the man John, mixed up in an holy and happy confusion, light and life, Light and Life and the Word, the Spoken Word was life and life and light, and the light was the light of men, and In Him was life.

Well, it’s all one because it is Jesus Christ our Lord, this Eternal Life. And doesn’t it touch you my friend? Doesn’t it touch you, or have you been brainwashed by footnotes to a point where you can’t think this way? Doesn’t it touch you that the Greeks sought after this and couldn’t find it? Doesn’t it touch you? It did Paul. In the 17th of Acts, Paul preached on the hill in Athens, and he said, I see that everywhere you’re very religious, not superstitious, you’re very religious, for you have an altar to the unknown God. You’ve put up an altar to every god you know by name, and then for fear you will slight some god, you put up an altar to an unknown God. And then, happy, smart Paul said, He whom thou dost worship in ignorance, I now preach unto you. Well, Paul understood and he said, in Him we live and move and have our being, and that we stretch out after Him, they did, stretch out after Him, if per chance they might find Him.

And I don’t think there’s anything more unbecoming, than for an evangelical preacher to get nasty and tough and say a lot of harsh things about the Greek philosophers and the ancient religions. Brethren, they did what they could with the light they had. I wonder if we can say the same about ourselves. Old Heraclitus who lived 600 years that I say before Christ, perhaps he had never heard of Solomon’s proverbs. Maybe the Book of Job was unknown to him. And maybe he had never read a Psalm in his life. But somehow in his dreaming and crying after the Most High God, he thought his way through to the idea that the eternal life, and that that word out of that word, everything came and he gave the Greeks the doctrine of the word which Plato and others brought to perfection.

Some years ago, I preached of all places at the noonday meeting down with the Christian business men. And I preached from the text, Jesus Christ is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. And I said that the Jews sought after righteousness. And Jesus Christ came, and was that righteousness; that the Greeks sought after wisdom, and Jesus Christ came and was that wisdom. And the religionist sought after redemption and sanctification, and Jesus Christ came and was that redemption and sanctification. And I gave an altar call. I got a letter from a professor at Wheaton College and he said, Brother, I have believed this all my adult life, but I never hoped to hear it turned into an evangelistic sermon. I didn’t know it either. But I did my best on it.

But that’s the fact my friends, that the quest of the human race; the Jews sought after righteousness; the Greeks sought after wisdom; and the religionists sought after redemption. And when Paul was preaching Jesus, He said to these people, I’ve got news for you, I preach unto you, Jesus, who is the incarnation of all the Jews sought, and the incarnation of all the Greeks sought, and the incarnation of all that the religionists sought; wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And the Greek scholars tell us that when he said, He’s made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, that we don’t get quite the right meaning in the King James. They said, what Paul actually said was, Jesus Christ is made unto us wisdom, and that wisdom is our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption. They say that’s what he actually said. He said, this wisdom, this that we call Ancient Wisdom, which the Greeks and the Hebrews before them talked about as a Uncreated, and yet somehow created strangely. But, is it any stranger than that passage that says, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God? Now, which was He? With God? Or was it God? Well, He was both.

And so, we say that that same truth applies to the ancient idea that there is a Fountain of Wisdom, the Womb out of which was born all things that be. I can live in this world believing that and not worry about it and not get into too many jams intellectually, because this world is beautifully put together, Brother, beautifully put together.  Talk about a watch. I have a watch here given me by the church for 25 years and I carry around it. It’s a Lord Elgin, a good watch. It’s magnificently made. I haven’t looked at the jewels. You never look a gift horse in the mouth. I don’t know how many jewels it has you know, whether it’s 17 or 21, or how many. I’ve never tried to find out. But I know it’s expensive and I know that it is beautifully made. And it’s a tribute to the genius and skill and patience and perseverance of men who can sit down and screw a telescope in their eye and go to work, and do work so fine. But it’ll last 100 years, and if this isn’t dropped and smashed and thrown around, my grandchildren or great grandchildren can be carrying it.

Wisdom, where did they get it? There was a man named Bezaleel at one time. Bezaleel, if you like. Bezaleel I like to call him. It is easier. He was a Jew. And God said, we’re going to build a temple here and a tabernacle. And we’re going to have a veil, a veil, and that veil is to be thick, and it’s to be embroidered, embroidered so beautifully. And you would have thought, now the way we’d have done it when we were making that veil, we’d have run to the women and we’d have said, Mrs. Henderson, you make your children’s clothes and you’re good with the needle, could you give us a half a day to work on the veil? But the great God Almighty wasn’t going to allow anybody to simply turn loose his human skills or hers. So, we picked a man by the name of Bezaleel and He filled him with the Holy Ghost and wisdom. What for? In order that he might ply his needle to make beautiful embroidery work on the veil.

So, the very veil of the temple was wrought by the wisdom of the Holy Ghost. So that all that you see. This is a great time for this series, because this is the time when we are materializing everything. We’re materializing everything. I lay for an hour last night and listened to a one hour, eight to nine, summation of where we stand. Did you hear that, put on by the Columbia Broadcasting Company? Everybody was quoted and spoke on tape and told us where we were. Everybody’s scared until he’s shivering. Generals and admirals and all the rest are just shaking. Because you see, they’re conquering outer space.

And I even heard in the radio the news just recently, well, in fact it was released only today, this afternoon. I heard this broadcast that the President of the United States, one General Dwight Eisenhower, has written Bulganin. He’s premier something or other. He may be running a filling station in Siberia one of these days, you know. But he’s got a job over there, and he wrote a letter tonight. And Ike wrote a letter back. And Ike actually said and suggested in his letter that we and Russia get together on what we’re going to do about outer space. We can’t even run Washington, and we’re working on outer space. And the first fellow that puts a flag up there on the moon just as sure as you live, now watch it. We can do it they tell us. We actually have what Truman used to call the know-how, a terrible Missouri word, but we’ve got the ability to do it, and the rocketry and the rest. That little word rocketry, that’s a new one. And we’ve got the rocketry to send a, something to the moon. Well now, if they will listen to me, which they won’t, here’s what they will do. They will put a copy of the Constitution of the United States and a silk American flag in that little hunk of hardware. And when they showed it to the moon, it’s ours. We stake out our claim and say, you lay off.

 I don’t know where I got there, but I’m just saying this is the time when space and moving bodies and matter and law is on everybody’s mind. Well, back of all that, you see, God made all things, and all things came out of wisdom. Now, what does this teaches us? Well, I’ll give you a sketch of what it teaches us and then that will be all for tonight.

From this, we learned a number of things. We learn that the universe is basically spiritual. Now, we learned that, basically spiritual. A few years ago, back in the time of Lucretius when he wrote his famous, what did he call it, The Nature of Things. He said that there were atoms, and he lived about, oh, a little before Christ’s time. And he said that there were atoms and that they were a little hard, square balls, like dice. And they were little hard things. And a ball, not balls but were square blocks, blocks, that’s the word, like dice. And he said that everything was made up of these little square blocks. And that was the first, so far as I know, the first, at least he popularized the idea of the atom. And then 3000 years nearly went by over 3000 years, I think went by before we discovered that Lucretius had an idea, but he was wrong. He said everything is made up of atoms. He was right about that. And when he said atoms were square blocks hard as diamonds, tiny beyond all belief. And everything was made out of those little square blocks, he was wrong. Because modern scientific technique has discovered that these tiny little blocks that Lucretius saw 3000 years ago, nearly, were not hard blocks at all, but disembodied bits of energy, and that you can keep breaking them down and breaking them down and breaking them down until you find exactly nothing at all. And I know they’re right, they proved they’re right by their ability to run a ship by atoms and put up and send an atom bomb on Hiroshima.

So, the modern idea of the atom coincides perfectly with the Old Testament idea of the creation, that all things are, come out of spirits. And that if you go back far enough, and back far enough and back far enough, you come to Spirit. Things are spiritual basically, that the earth is not a solid thing. And then there’s Spirit that hovers over it. But that the earth is an emanation of Spirit, and that all things that are, came out of Spirit, even that Eternal Spirit which we call God, and Who was incarnated in the form of a man and lived among us. And was so wise that He astonished men though He’d never been to school.

The second thing we learn from this doctrine of the Eternal Wisdom as the source of all things is that man is a spirit and sheathed in a body, not a body having a spirit. How do you think of yourself? Do you think of yourself as this being you? Is this you? Some of the movie actors, they call them, the body. That’s an awful thing to say for them, because if that’s all she’s got and usually it is, that’s going to get old on her one of these days. She’s going to get arthritis and gray hair and teeth will come out, and then she won’t have anything. But is that the way you think of yourself? As a body with a spirit? No. That’s not the Bible teaching. The Bible teaching is that we are a spirit, living in a body. And it’s vastly different Brethren. If I was a body having a spirit, then I could worry about this body. But knowing that I am a spirit made in the image of God, and God is Spirit, and God made me and made me spirit, made you spirit, and said, now live for a while, in what William Jennings Bryan called, this tabernacle of clay.

So we’re here. The greatest thing about you is not your body, not the house you live in, the car you drive. The most awesome and all inspiring thing about you is you are a spirit. You’re a spirit. Bacon said, God made the angel spirit, and he made the beasts, flesh. But he made man greater than all compounded of spirit and flesh, so that man is a spirit which has a fleshly tabernacle to dwell in. You’ve got to remember that, that all things came out of spirit. And Jesus Christ was incarnated, and He was that Eternal Wisdom, and that man is a spirit ensheaved in a body. You see, that fixes your values for you. That decides what’s valuable and what isn’t.

The trouble with this is, we don’t know what’s valuable. Did you ever have this experience, and we’ve gotten all of two houses full of grandchildren. We’ve seen this happen. A couple of times happened this year. It happened a couple of years ago when everybody was hilariously happy around the Christmas tree onloading gifts and giving gifts and unwrapping gifts. Here would be a little 18-month-old baby sitting somewhere quietly playing with a box that the present came out of. Well, the little thing didn’t care. I remember one sitting there chewing the little red box having a time of her life and everybody else was “ooh, just what I wanted. Ooh! How’d you know what I needed? Just the thing.” And everybody was looking at what they got, and she a box, and was chewing on the box. It happened twice in our house right down where we live among our grandchildren. That is I mean happened among them.

And why, you see they don’t know what’s valuable. This watch I referred to, it came in a box. But I don’t carry the box around with me, because the box is relatively unimportant. It’s the watch that matters. A stale fish head is a precious treasure to a cat. Why? Because he is a cat. A bowl of the same red pottage was of great value to Esau. Why? Because he was Esau. And the everlasting covenant was a value to Jacob. Why? Because he was Jacob. He was touched with heavenly fire. And the man Paul found value only in Jesus Christ our Lord. Only in Jesus Christ. Why, I give up all things he said and count them but dung, that I may win Christ and be found in Him. If you understand this Eternal Truth you’ll know why what is valuable and why it’s valuable.

Now the truth, that the Word was made flesh, stands as a warning, lest we forget who we are. And it stands as a rebuke. It stands as a rebuke to us for living as animals, for living as people of one world when God made us for two. Living for time, when God made us for eternity. And back in the Book of Proverbs we find a beautiful woman. In the ninth chapter, she’s said to be a woman, here she’s not. She’s just called wisdom. But in the ninth chapter she’s called a woman. Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets. She crieth in the cheap places of concourse. What is this? Oh, it’s nothing but the voice of Jesus, the voice of the Holy Ghost. In the opening of the gate, she crieth. In the city she uttereth her word, saying how long, how long, ye simple ones. Will you love simplicity. And the scorners delight in their scorning and fools hate knowledge, turn you at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my Spirit upon you. I will make known my words unto you. And those terrible words, because I have called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no man regarded. I will also laugh at your calamities; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation.

My dear friends, you’re not an animal. God made you a spirit and gave you a body to cart you around in, to live in, carts so that you could, that spirit could be carted around. And it’s a rebuke that we live as if we were animals. We live as if we belong to this time. I’ve known old men. Old man, so old that they had all of the characteristics of old men. I have a few, but these men had them all. And yet, they were worried right down to the last about their property. Right down to the last, worrying about their property. Great God, how awful it is. To have been made in the image of God. To have had that eternal Ancient Wisdom which was with the Father, in which was God, come down and become one with us and be made flesh and die and rise and live above, and stretch out His hands and say, come, come, come ye foolish. Come ye foolish for I have set my table. I have prepared my feast. Come. Why will you die? Come ye simple, foolish ones in your wisdom.

We walk about on the earth thinking about our car and how high the tailgate is. Tailgate is an old farmer word. These things are called fins I think now, fins. How many lights are on the fins? And some of you if you didn’t have four lights on the fin, you couldn’t sleep tonight because the fellow across the street has four lights on his fin. Some of you women with your clothes. Some of you women with your gifts and your property. Great God, that we should be like this, that we should be a dove, made to soar and sing, or soar and coo and be a dove and act like one. That we should find ourselves in the garbage heap digging like a buzzard. And yet that’s what the world is doing. And they’re doing it because Christianity hasn’t told them what I am telling people tonight. Christianity has told them, come and accept Jesus and you won’t go to hell. And they said, oh, hell, I don’t care whether I go to hell or not. We’ve cut the ground out from under the Truth. We’ve cut the foundation out from under it with our materialistic theology and our carnal approach to things. When you walk out onto the sidewalk tonight, look up at God’s stars and say, I’m part of the everlasting universe. And I will not, I will not respond to the Voice of Eternal Wisdom as if I were a man made for time, for God has put eternity in my heart; not as if I were a man made for this world because God made me for another. Not as if I were a man of flesh, because I’m a man of spirit. I will respond as a man made for eternity.

Dear friend, if you don’t have it straightened out about eternity, the yellow curd that looks, that digs in the garbage can for food is better off than you are. Listen to me now. Don’t get mad at this. It’s terribly brutal, but it’s true. If you, made in the image of God and destined to be conscious through eternity, an individual, a conscious entity through eternity, with God having given you birth out of the Ancient Womb of Eternal Wisdom, and then incarnated that Eternal Wisdom in the power of a Man and sent Him to die for us. And if you go on your way and live your lives as if you were a beast, and Esau, I say the yellow curd that digs tonight in the alley for a crust, is better off.

When John Bunyan was under the great conviction of the Holy Ghost for sin, they didn’t get saved so easy in those days. And when they did get saved, it mounted to so much. We get saved so easy now. I told the Youth for Christ’s outfit over here that I spoke to Wednesday. I nailed 13 Theses on the door and one of them was this, that we have no right to make Christianity ridiculously easy when Jesus Christ made it tremendously hard. But we’ve made Christianity so easy.

Well, John Bunyan lived in the days when Christianity wasn’t easy. You carried a cross if you were going to go to heaven in those days. And he got under such blistering conviction that he was sure he was going to hell. And one day as he walked down the street, a man in despair, he saw a dog loping along. And he said, O God, I wish I were that dog, then I could die and be no more. But I’ve got to face Thee in judgment. Well, it didn’t take God long to straighten him out and saved him and made the great John Bunyan out of him. But he had to come there first. I say that though you walk all up the Gold Coast and all out in Beverly Hills and everywhere you want to go and see them out with their Cadillacs on the highway, Brethren. If they don’t know who they are, and if they don’t know why they’re here, and if they don’t know out of what they were created and back to what they will go, they’re as ignorant as Dani in the Baliem Valley. And all of their high fins won’t do them any good. Better be a living dog than a dead lion, said Wisdom. Better be a humble Christian who knows God than a big shot who doesn’t even know who he is himself, who doesn’t know he was made in the image of God to go back to God again.

You oughtened to go out of here tonight a man. You ought to go out of here a man in God. You oughtened to go out of here tonight and an Esau looking for the same red pottage. You ought to go out of here tonight a Jacob, changed and transformed by the power of God. Let’s pray.

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“The Hebrew Doctrine of Wisdom

The Hebrew Doctrine of Wisdom

January 5, 1958

In the Book of Proverbs, the eighth chapter, verse 12 says, I wisdom, I wisdom dwell with prudence and find out knowledge of witty inventions. Verse 17, I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me. Still wisdom is talking, and says, the Lord Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of His way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was, I brought forth. While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there. When he established the clouds above: When He gave to the sea His decree, verse 30, then I was by Him as was one brought up with Him. And I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.

You cannot in the reading of this, if you’re a student of the Bible, you cannot miss the similarity with the first chapter of John here. Hear instruction and be wise and refuse not, O ye children. For blessed are they that keep my ways. Blessed is the man that heareth me watching daily at my gates and waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso find me findeth life, and shall obtain the favor of Jehovah. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. That’s an Old Testament passage.

In the New Testament, we find this, 1 Corinthians 1:22 and 24, to 24, For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks, foolishness, but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Colossians 2:2,3, That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. There’s love, understanding, mystery, wisdom and knowledge all wrapped together there.

Well, I will quote more Scripture, and I will read a little passage from the Old Testament apocryphal book, the Wisdom of Solomon after a while. Not that it is inspired, in the sense that canon of Scripture is inspired, but that it does represent the beliefs of men who lived before the time of Christ, Hebrews, students of the Word.

Now I am to deal with the Hebrew doctrine of eternal wisdom particularly as it relates to Jesus Christ our Lord. The Hebrews believe, and you can take only what I’ve read already here tonight and there’s much more. Because you will find this taught in Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the prophets. The Hebrews believed that there was an ancient, uncreated afflatus, a breath, and that it was variously thought of. Sometimes it was thought of apart from God. Sometimes it was thought of as being God. Sometimes it was thought of as being brought into being and other times it was thought of as bringing all things into being. And in this, it is very close to John 1 where it says, strangely says; Have you ever thought how strange this is? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. There, John thinks of the Word as being with God in one breath, and being God in the next breath. So, it’s the same with this doctrine of wisdom as found in the Scriptures. It is considered to be the womb out of which all created things were born.

Let me read a little of what they thought about this doctrine back in the days about the time of our Lord, a little before and a little after; oh, 130 years before Ecclesiastes was written. And it was a translation from something that had been written two generations before. So, that would take us back maybe 200 or 250 years before Christ, but this is a little later. It says this about this wisdom. Now, Solomon didn’t write this, but it represents the teachings, the beliefs of the Jewish teachers.

And it says, wisdom is the worker of all things; for in her is an understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold subtil, not subtle, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subjected to hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be hindered, ready to do good, kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing all things, and going through all understanding, a pure and most subtil spirit. For wisdom is more moving than any motion, and she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness, for she is the breadth of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty. Therefore, can no defiled thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of the Everlasting Light, the Unspotted Mirror of the power of God, and the Image of His goodness. And being one, she can do all things and maketh all things new. And in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and Prophet, God and prophets; for she is more beautiful than the sun and above all the order of stars: being compared with the light, she is found before it. For after this cometh night, but vice cannot prevail against wisdom.

Now, I don’t quote this because I think that it’s inspired even in the sense that the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are inspired. I quoted as I might quote Spurgeon, or Ironside, or Augustine, or anybody, who while they were not Bible writers, nevertheless, were keen students of what the Bible wrote, and therefore can be trustworthy teachers of what the Bible teaches.

Now, that is the belief that the ancients had about this. And here’s a strange thing. It is this wisdom, this I, wisdom dwell with prudence. I was with God. I was brought up before Him. And when He laid the foundations, I was there. And John says, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. And He is in the bosom of the Father and He’s revealed unto us. The language is the same you see. You’ll find that Old Testament and the New Testament staying close together there. And then the Scriptures teach, and the fathers believed, that this Spirit that they talk about here, this, this, this Spirit which is called the breath of the power of God, the pure influence, flowing from the glory of the Almighty. This that is the brightness of the Everlasting Light. The Unspotted Mirror of the power of God and the Image of His goodness, that this is Christ; that Christ is the wisdom of the Old Testament. Sophia, they called Him in mystical days.

But this is what the fathers believed, many of them believed, and I think it was pretty generally believed. And so when John wrote, in the beginning was the Word, he was not identifying Christianity with Greek thought. You see, because the word elogious is Greek. The liberals claim that when John wrote the Gospel of John, he was under the influence of Plato, that he was being, and early Christianity was being strongly influenced by the Greek doctrine of the Logos, the thought and expression of God, for one word will not take it, thought and expression of God. And therefore, they’ve tried to tie Christianity in with Greek thought. And they said, you cannot trust, you cannot trust Paul. You cannot trust those writers that identify Christianity with Greek thought. You’ve got to go to the Gospels. Take the gospel, Sermon on the Mount and the teachings of Jesus and go back to Jesus. That was the cry a generation ago, back to Jesus, which meant back to the simple teachings of Jesus, such as the Sermon on the Mount.

Now, the simple fact is, when John wrote this, John was not identifying Christianity with Greek thought, for there isn’t one line anywhere in the New Testament that would allow us even to hint that John knew anything about Greek thought. John was a brother of James and a simple workman. And he didn’t know about Greek thought. Palestine was an occupied country. And John was not a scholar. And he had not gone to Athens or studied somewhere as Paul had studied under Gamaliel. But he was identifying the doctrine of the Word with Old Testament doctrine. He was identifying Jesus Christ with Old Testament doctrine, the doctrine of the Creating Word, for that is not a Greek thought; that antedates Greek thought by hundreds of years.

You take the Book of Genesis for instance, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God called the light, day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the heavens and it was so. And God called the firmament, heaven. And God said, that the waters under the heaven be gathered together, and it was so. And God called the dry land, earth, and it was good. And God said, let the earth bring forth, and it was so. And all through this, it was the Creating Voice of God. It was that Greek elogiouis, pronounce it as you please. I was taught to pronounce it logos. They call it logos I think now.

But this ancient Word that said, let there be light and there was light. Let the earth bring forth and it brought forth. And the Scripture says that it is through the Word He commanded and it stood forth. He spoke and it was done. It was the commanding voice of God that brought things into being. And it is written again that He upholds all things by the Word of His power. It is the speaking voice of God in His universe that holds things together, my friends. It is in Him all things are held together, not by adhesive, or by law, but they’re held together by the voice of God.

Is this awful dull? No? To me, this is just wonderful, but I don’t know. I guess you have to preach about Sputnik to get anybody to hear. Maybe after I’m through with this series I’ll preach about what the Bible teaches about Sputniks. And when I do that, I’ll just be as dumb as all the other preachers that are preaching about Sputnik. They don’t know anything about it either, only they know that’s the way to get people interested. And I’m so naive and stupid that I think God’s people ought to be interested in what I’m preaching now. I hope they, a few of them will be anyhow.

Well, I say that John was identifying the, Jesus Christ with the old Hebrew doctrine of the Creating Wisdom; the Spoken Word, the Creating Voice created all things; and not with Greek thoughts at all. Now, the church fathers believed this. And they saw in Jesus Christ, the incarnation of this ancient afflatus, this brightness of the Everlasting Light, this unspotted mirror of power of God, this image of His goodness, this that maketh all things. And in all ages entering into holy souls, she makes the friends of God and prophets.

Now what was it that entered into holy souls and made them prophets? It’s written that it was the Spirit that did it. It was the Spirit and the Spirit of Christ speaking in the book of Psalms, testifies, and David’s, the Spirit is speaking in David. He makes David sometimes sound like the Messiah, so that it’s the voice of the Messiah speaking. My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me? Well, that was David writing, but it was the Messiah, the Spirit of the Messiah, the Ancient Wisdom of God, the Word, that was speaking in the man David.

And so, it says that entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God and prophets. Then you come to this, for after this cometh night, says the Holy Ghost, says this man, but vice shall not prevail against wisdom. Doesn’t that remind you of that passage that says that the light dwelleth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. And if you’re a student of other versions you know, that what he said there was the darkness lays not hold of it, or the darkness does not rise up and prevail against it. The darkness cannot prevail against the light. And so we identify the Hebrew doctrine of the ancient and eternal wisdom with the New Testament.

Now Paul taught this. And Paul distinguished it sharply. He distinguished Greek thought from Hebrew doctrine. The other apostles wouldn’t have known how to do that. But St. Paul did because he was a learned man and he had studied Greek philosophy, but the other gentleman hadn’t. And so, they were forced just to stay by the text. But Paul could talk about Greek thoughts. So, Paul said this, for the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks, foolishness, but unto them which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. And he said, a little further down in that same chapter, first chapter of 1 Corinthians, that Christ is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And he distinguished sharply in those first two chapters, Greek thought from the Hebrew doctrine of the Messiah. And he said, when I came unto you, I came not with words of man’s wisdom. You will remember that in the second chapter of 1 Corinthians. He said, I didn’t come preaching unto you the speech of wisdom, excellence of speech. For I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ. And I was among you in weakness and fear and much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom.

There he was writing to Corinthians and Corinth was a learned city and the city of a great many philosophers. And this man was deliberately inciting here he got in past their guard. He was giving it to them where it hurt. And he said, this is the demonstration of the Spirit and power that we’re preaching. For in order that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men.

Always remember my friends, whenever we begin to equate Christianity with any current philosophy, or any ancient and honorable philosophy, it loses its power immediately. As soon as we begin to equate Christianity or show how that it can be made to fit into any of the doctrines of the fiery store of the Greeks and the Romans. Just as soon as we do that, we, it loses its power, Paul refused to do it. Paul distinguishes the doctrine of Christ, the wisdom of God, from the doctrine of the Greek doctrine of the Logos, the Word, the Wisdom of the Word, they got pretty close to it. Sometimes those old Greeks, and I saw in His magazine just this week, this came this last week, and I saw an article there about Hinduism. And the brother said, there what’s usually dangerous to say, these times, that the old Hindus sometimes managed to get awfully close to truth. And they said, some very noble and wonderful things. I’ve been saying that for a generation now, that not only the Hindus, but the Buddhists, and the you know, the men who wrote the laws of Manu and the Egyptian Hotep. And many of the others were very close to truth.

And I’ve been thinking about writing an article about Marcus Aurelius and show him how Mark Aurelius an unredeemed Roman was a better man than 99% of us Christians, and he had no redemption at all, and we have redemption. That’s an amazing thing, Brethren. And it proves to me how completely down, how down our Christianity is, how weak it is, how meaningless it is, how, how undistinguished and insignificant it is. When the whole power of God, the whole wisdom of God as it came down and took incarnation and went to a cross, can’t produce men as good as this stoic philosophy produced when it produced Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves before God Almighty and we ought to lie all night between the door and the altar, and repent and grieve before our God that we’re so unlike Christ, and that there’s so little spirituality, and so little godliness in us. That wasn’t part of the sermon, but I couldn’t help but say it.

Now, Paul, I say, taught that, that the doctrine of Jesus Christ, incarnated idea, the incarnated Word, the incarnated Wisdom, was Hebrew and not Greek. And he said, I reject all your Greek ideas, and I give you Jesus Christ and Him crucified the Messiah. He is the fulfillment of the ancient Hebrew doctrine of the internal wisdom out of which, out of whose womb came all things and that is worth more than jewels and silver.

Now, I have read you some from the book of Proverbs. Now I want to read a little from the book of Proverbs again. This time from the ninth chapter. Wisdom has builded her house. She has hewn out her seven pillars. She has killed her beasts. She has mingled her wine. She also has furnished her table. She has sent forth her maiden. She crieth upon the highest places of the city. Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither. As for him that wanteth understanding, she said to him, come eat of my bread and drink of my wine which I have mingled. Forsake the foolish and live and go in the way of understanding.

Now, I read you a passage in the New Testament. Jesus answered and spake unto them by parables and said, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king which made a marriage for his son, and send forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding. Tell them which are bidden, behold, I have prepared my dinner. My oxen and my fatlings are killed and all things are ready. Come unto the marriage. Almost word for word from the book of Proverbs. So that the Lord Jesus Christ literally was the incarnation and the fulfillment of this voice of wisdom that cried out to the sons of men.

That my brethren is not only the Lord and Head of the church. He is that, but that’s not all He is. He’s not only the coming King of Israel and King of the world. He is that, but that’s not all He is. He’s also the Enlightener and the Illuminator and the Quickener and the Annointer. Somebody said that there is no better commentary on the Scriptures than a good hymn book. I think they’re right. And I think that anybody will, that’ll borrow them, you can’t borrow them. You just can’t. I’ll try to find you one. But I won’t lend you mine because my friends are good bookkeepers. And I’ve gotta have this, but I think that the man, was it Watts and Wesley just to mention two, were better commentators than the fundamentalist writers that have written over the last half century. And if you will get their hymns and read them and study them, you know. They didn’t stick a lot of stuff in to fill space the way they do now, to make it rhyme. Everything was thought out carefully and set down and cut like jewels. At least, all that’s been saved for us it is so, that it’s commentary.

I have at home a book sent me by Leonard Ravenhill from England. It’s a book of I would suppose 300 pages, quite old, leather bound, and the leather is getting old and cracked, but it is this. It is Charles Wesley’s commentary on the Scriptures done into hymns. Not the whole scriptures, but the salient passages of Scripture down from the beginning Genesis 1 on down through to Malachi. All the outstanding passages of Scriptures instead of preaching a sermon on them, he wrote a hymn on them. Why, you’ll get more information and more light by reading it than you do in all of this so called commentary business.

And then He is, I say, our Enlightener. I got off onto those hymns by starting to say this, that when Isaac Watts said, the Lord pours eyesight on the blind. Incidentally, he didn’t say that John Wesley added that and made him say it. The Lord pours eyesight on the blind. Now there’s what I, can’t you think of that wonderful thing? Can’t you think of a man sitting over there blind from birth. And here comes someone with a vessel filled with a fine liquid, he just pours it on his temple and it runs down onto his eyes. He shakes his head twice and says, glory to God I can see. God pours eyesight on the blind.

My Brethren, that’s true. He’s a bringer of eyesight. The colored brethren say he’s a mind regulator. And He’s all that. He’s a regulator of the human mind. He’s an Enlightenment. So, that when the Scripture says that they that sat in darkness saw a great light, and they that sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned upon them, they’re quoting from the old Hebrew doctrine of the Eternal Wisdom, the Wisdom that created all things, that which was God and that which was with God, and that out of which came all things that are. That which had all the attributes of Deity. Have you noticed how they make wisdom to have all the attributes of God, or I don’t say all, but so many of them that you couldn’t give them to anybody else? Listen, an understanding spirit, holy, one only, one only. There you have the famous Hebrew doctrine, hear O God, hear O Israel, the LORD thy God is one Lord, and which cannot be hindered. There’s His sovereignty. And having all power, there is His omnipotence. Overseeing all things, there’s His omniscience. And going through all understanding, there’s His all knowledge.  Pure, there’s His holiness. And, it is the breadth of the power of God and influence, pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty. For the brightness of the Everlasting Light, she is on the unspotted mirror of the power of God in the image of His goodness.

Who else can you talk about there? You can’t put the Virgin Mary in there. You can’t put Paul in there. You can’t put David in there. They weren’t describing David. They were describing none other than their Messiah, who was born of the Virgin Mary, to suffer under Pontius Pilate, and arise after His suffering from the dead and take His seat at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He is an Illuminator it seems to me, like the Enlightener of the mind, he is an Illuminator of the heart. He is an Anointer that pours eyesight on the blind, and we don’t know it.

Now, Paul’s prayer in Colossians 1:9, let’s look at it a minute here. Paul prayed in Colossians, a little prayer and He prayed it for those Christians. And he said, for this cause we also since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

Now, what would wisdom and spiritual understanding make out of a man? If a man was filled with wisdom and spiritual understanding, would he write poetry? I hope not. I hope not. There’s too much of it now. Too much of it now. I get too much of it already. What does he do? What does he do? Walk around in a brown study and pull loose from the world and hide in a cloister or in an ivory tower? No, no, what’s the purpose? What’s the purpose of this baptism of the ancient wisdom of God into the heart of a man? Well, the old wisdom man said was to make a man a friend of God. But Paul said, that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God and strengthened with all might according to His glorious power and to all patience and long suffering with joyfulness. It had this practical meaning.

This that I’m preaching to you tonight, is not something that once or twice a year you take out as you take out one of Mozart’s little pieces of chamber music and play it for a friend. This is not something like that at all. It’s as practical and hard and sound, and you can gear into it and it means something. It means something to the whole church of Christ. If we only saw this and understood it. And it says in Ecclesiastes, which is older than the wisdom book I read from. It says into a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter. Wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul. And he says that this is poured out. This is poured out upon men. And she’s pure, and she won’t come upon any of this, this wisdom won’t come upon any other. But she will not dwell in the body that’s subject to sin. The inner heart and the outer body have to be clean. We have to be right inwardly and outwardly before we can have this, this afflatus, this anointing that Paul prayed the Galatians might have.

Now, there’s this little poem, I’m just about finished for tonight. So, really, this is introductory. And this is the hard, this was the grubbing out, the laying the foundation. But we’re going on next week. But here’s a little poem and I don’t know where I got it. It’s got only four lines, which is in its favor, three better and two still better. But there are four here. It says this, wisdom and goodness are twin born, one heart must hold both sisters never seen apart, never seen apart. Wisdom and goodness are Siamese twin sisters and you’ll never see them apart. And if you’re going to have wisdom in your heart, you’ve got to take the other sister along. And the other sister is goodness. Wisdom and goodness are twin-born. One heart most hold both sisters and they’re never seen apart. I don’t know who wrote it. It’s not very good poetry, but it’s wonderful theology, that when the Lord redeems man and saves him, He takes him out and not only that he might go to heaven at last and escape hell. This frightful effort to get across that bridge and escape hell, it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. But that isn’t the purpose of God in redemption, to save us from hell. The purpose of God in redemption is to save us unto heaven. It is to save us unto something not from something; although to save us unto, He’s got to save us from.

And so we are saved. We’re saved from sin, but that’s the negative side. We’re saved unto holiness. We’re saved from hell, but we’re saved unto Heaven. We’re saved from the devil, but we’re saved unto Christ. And that’s the teaching of the Scriptures that we Christians, we Christians are followers of One who came to the world and claimed to be the fulfillment of all the ancient teachings of prophet and sage and seer, and men who walked with God. And we are followers of One who claimed that He was with the Father in the beginning, and that out from His bosom there flowed all things, that He was the fountain out of which came all wisdom, all knowledge, all light. He had no hesitation in saying I’m the Light of the world. He has no hesitation in saying Wisdom said when you meant some prophet had spoken. He said wisdom said. Do you remember that? Jesus used that word, wisdom said so and so. And he quoted it from, He had no hesitation in saying you that look on me, you’re seeing that ancient afflatus, that ancient Breath of God, that Ancient Word. In the beginning was the Word.

I don’t know what this does to you. But this is wonderful for me. If any of you are students in colleges where the professors don’t believe in Jesus Christ and you’re ashamed to speak up for Him, you ought to be deeply ashamed of yourself. Because that poor man is ignorant. He may be a PhD, but he’s ignorant. He doesn’t know that Ancient Wisdom, which was with the Father, and which stood up before the world was, he doesn’t know Him. But you know Him and you you’ve been introduced to Him by incarnation, by atonement, by resurrection, by the new birth you know that Ancient Wisdom.

And as Spurgeon said, let a man, let a man build himself a house on the hillside under the shadow of Calvary and he would be wiser than the Seven Sages of Antiquity. He’s perfectly right. And yet some of you are ashamed. You hide away and you try to try to keep covered up that you’re an evangelical. Brother, I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not going to stand up before Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer and all that gang and say, now I’m a poor little dumb evangelical. Please forgive me. I won’t say it at all, because there’s no reason for apology. The only thing we have to apologize for is our sin.

When we’ve got rid of our sin and the Lord has taken our sin away, we are as wise as the angels, and as discreet and as knowing as the seraphs before the throne; for we have an afflatus of that wisdom. It won’t teach you mathematics. It won’t teach science. It won’t teach you chemistry. It won’t teach you English literature. But it will teach you something vaster and wider and deeper and grander and more wonderful. It will baptize you into that Light, that wonderful Light.

I just can’t get enough of this what the old man said. He said this is the breath of the power of God, that pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty. She is the brightness of the Everlasting Light, the Unspotted Mirror of the power of God, and the Image of His goodness. And in all ages entering into holy souls, she makes them friends of God and prophets. And I’d rather have a baptism of this in my spirit than to have the biggest church in the world and to be known widely around the world. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you? Yes, yes, yes. Seek not fame, seek not popularity, seek not publicity. Seek only to know Him, to know Him.

That’s why Paul said, that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering, that I might know Him. That’s why Paul said that. That’s why he pressed on and pressed on to know Him better and better. That’s why because in doing it he was going back to the fountain of everything.

Do you know this Savior? Do you know Him tonight? Do you know Him? Remember this and I will read this passage and quit for the night. Do you know this? You don’t find this out in school. In fact, I don’t suppose anybody mentions it in school, anywhere, from kindergarten on up to the PhD, but here’s what it says. Jesus answered and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and the prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight. All things are delivered unto Me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father. Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son. And he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. Babes, children, humble people, meek people, they know! And the wise and the prudent and the learned and the proud and the arrogant think they know. Let’s pray.

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“Conditions for Answers to Prayer

Conditions for Answers to Prayer

March 11, 1956


Now, before I speak, I want to comfort Brother McAfee. I want you to stand up Brother McAfee, please. He’s been walking around upstairs in his study shaking his curly head and saying, oh, it’s such a beautiful instrument and it’s out of tune. I’m so ashamed. I’m so ashamed. Something happened to our piano. How many here noticed the piano was out of tune? Raise your hand. One? Few people know. Two people knows it’s out of tune? Now, isn’t that wonderful? Here he’s been groaning over the fact that the poor, lovely piano, such a beautiful thing, and it’s out of tune. We couldn’t get the man to tune it. He was ill. And something happened to it. It was, I suppose a piano can go down with a cold like anything else. And it’s out of tune and only the pianist and the Director noticed it. If everybody was, expressed themselves. So, from now on Brother McAfee I beg of you, don’t worry about it.

Now, another thing is, the board Sunday night, uh, Thursday night took notice that we’re in need of a little facelifting in here. And we are proceeding to have a housecleaning this spring, a new decoration job which should last us another couple of years. This has been about two or three years of Chicago soot, and of course, it’s a little dirty. If I hadn’t called attention to it you wouldn’t notice that either. But I’m as bothered about that as he was about the piano. How many knows how dirty the auditorium is? Well, he had two and I had about a dozen, about a dozen people notice.

Now, last Sunday night, I made the mistake of saying that next Sunday I would speak, give my third in a series of talks. I don’t know what was wrong. Brother R.R. Brown says when he gets above 2.98, he’s in higher mathematics for him. And when I get above three, I can’t figure right. I had three Sundays to conjure with last Sunday when I spoke, next Sunday, that I’ll be in Pittsburgh, and tonight that I will be here, leaving right after church. And I told you that it was next Sunday night that I’d finish my series, but it’s tonight. And therefore, we’re all confused tonight. But you know, it’s a blessed thing to not mind it. And I will finish tonight and then I’ll be ready for something fresh and new. When I returned from Pittsburgh.

I have talked on prayer from the book of John you know. We’re in the book of John, the 15th chapter. And I have taken that passage in John 14:13&14. Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it. If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you. Now, there are other verses that I have read, but I’ll just limit it to those tonight for a few minutes and then I want to read a little more Scripture.

But I have demonstrated before in two previous sermons that prayer has a specific power over the one who prays. And not only that, but that God answers prayer in the world of nature in external matters, so that it is both subjectively and objectively powerful. Prayer changes the individual subjectively, and also prayer changes things objectively. And I think, at least I hope I laid the emphasis upon the former as being the more important. It’s vastly more important to me that I should be changed to suit God than that I should have the power to change external things. Though the Bible teaches, as I want to point out, that God does change external things. I preached a sermon on that last week.

Now tonight, I want to talk about conditions, the conditions that must be met. It might be well for you to take this down and think it over later in your prayer times. I want to show you that there are about six conditions. I have no doubt there are more. But there are just six that seemed to me to be important enough to deserve a stress in this message tonight.

The first condition for prayer is that we have a right relationship to God. When ye pray, say, our Father. Now, God does not become our Father by our saying, our Father. And it’s not necessarily true that He was our Father and we didn’t know it. But he said to those whose children, who were children of God, when ye pray, say, our Father. God hears his children.

Now, there is a popular notion that God hears everybody. And this notion that God hears the prayers of everybody that prays is not an Old Testament doctrine. If I want to stay by the word of God in my beliefs, then I must discover whether a thing is Old Testament doctrine or not. And this is not Old Testament doctrine. In fact, the Scriptures were very plain in the Old Testament that God only heard those who met His terms.

And the idea now popular that God hears everyone is not New Testament doctrine. It is not found in the New Testament either. And Christian testimony all down the years have never taught that God hears everyone. This idea that anybody anywhere, a gangster on his way out to bump off a rival, or someone ready to rob a bank, or a man whose soul is all loaded down with iniquity, that all he has to do is simply pray to the all father or to the man upstairs and he will get the answer. He is unenlightened guessing. It is wishful thinking and no more. It has not tradition behind it, the tradition of holy men. It has not the New Testament behind it. It has not the Old Testament behind it. It has not the testimony of the closest walkers who walk the nearest to God.

Therefore, we should throw it out. In case anybody says, well, but if it’s not in the canonical Bible, it’s found in some other books. Well, I happen to have most of the other books. That is, I have what they call the Lost Books of Eden. And I have also the apocryphal Old Testament and the apocryphal New Testament. I’m taking the apocryphal Old Testament with me to Pittsburgh to study there in my quiet times. I have read these books, and there isn’t anything in any of them that will give credence to the doctrine that God hears everybody. Jesus said, when ye pray, say, our Father and God hears his children.

Now, we go back to the book of 1 John 5, 1 John, the fifth chapter. And listen to this, whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. And everyone that loveth Him that begat, loveth Him also that is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is a victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcome the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. This is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ. Not by water only, but by water and blood. It is the Spirit that beareth witness because the Spirit is true. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, the water and the blood. And these three agree in one. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. For this is the witness of God which he hath testified of His son, he that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. And he that believeth not God has made Him a liar, because he believeth not the record. God gave of His Son. He that hath the Son hath life and he that hath not the Son, hath not life.

There you have a sharp distinction drawn as fine as a razor blade between those that do and those who do not; those that are and those that are not; those that had life and those that have not life; those that are God’s children, those who do not; those that have the witness; and those who do not have the witness; those that love God, and those that don’t; those that keep His commandments, and those that do not. There’s a line drawn. You will find that same line drawn through all the New Testament. So one of the conditions for getting our prayers answered is that we should have a right relationship to God. And in Galatians 3;26 it says, we are children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Now, these are the ones and the only ones that can say, our Father Who art in heaven.

Now, in 1 John 3:16-22, we, uh, 19-22, we read that a good conscience is necessary before we can pray and get our prayers answered. My little children, let us not love in word neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are all of the Truth and shall assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth of all things. Beloved, if our heart condemns us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask we receive of Him because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. Now there is a passage from the first John epistle. And thus, the innocent heart is the confident heart. And the man who has a heart that troubles him, a conscience that’s bad, can never believe. He can pray, and he can pray endlessly, but he won’t get anything for his prayers because God will not hear a man’s prayer if he allows unconfessed sin to dwell in his heart. If he has a bad conscience, says the Holy Spirit, why there’s no use to pray. But if his conscience is clear, then he has confidence in God, and whatsoever he asks for, he gets.

And then we must pray according to God’s will. I typed these over so I could read them more easily, 1 John 5:14-15. Listen to this, and this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. And if we know that He hears us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him. We have confidence when we ask according to God’s will, and we know that then God hears us. And if God hears us, He answers us. The two are the same. One is tantamount to the other and the equivalent of the other. When God hears prayer, He answers it. And we know that we have the petitions that we desire of Him. So there, we must pray according to the will of God. God hears no prayer contrary to His will.

Now, the extreme example of praying out of the will of God is the Mohammedins who goes out on a forage to kill and to rob the caravans. And before they go, they kneel on their prayer mat and ask Allah if He will be so kind as to help them murder the traveler and steal his goods. Now, don’t smile, the human heart is capable of great iniquity and of great delusion. And of course, these people are deluded, deeply deluded. And they might as well, they’d better pray to the devil, because it’s the devil that wants to help them to kill and rob and steal and it’s not God, but they pray to God.

Now, no Christian would be so foolish as all that. The Christian ethic is too well known for that. And the Christian standards are too well known. No Christian would do that. But you can refine that a little bit and here at any Sunday morning in the average church, just refine, take away the blood and the bones and the dying and the robbing, and people pray selfishly out of the will of God. And God hears no prayer that is out of His will. And there is no possibility of praying with confidence if we pray out of God’s will. And if we pray without confidence, we pray without faith. And if we pray without faith, we pray without effectiveness.

Now, how can we know God’s will? There are two ways we can know God’s will by the Scripture and by the Spirit, by the Word of God, and by the Holy Spirit. First of all of course, there would be the Scriptures. A man can know that it’s the will of God that certain things should be done. And he prays within the bracket of the Word of God, knowing that the word of God gives him full authority thus to pray. And then where the Scripture doesn’t cover certain details, then he has the blessed Holy Spirit that can whisper to his inner heart the will of God, not contrary to the Scripture, though there may not be a text to cover it.

In a book on prayer written many years ago; and I read many years ago, but Dr. Reuben A. Torrey, he told about going to a YMCA and preaching on prayer to a young men’s group that gathered there. He preached on prayer and Torrey you know, was a believer that when you ask God for anything, you had the right to expect it, and God would give it to you. He just lived like that, though he was, they said, one of the most learned of the evangelicals. He still had got past that to simplicity of heart. So, he preached on prayer, and after he was over, the very embarrassed leader of the YMCA group said to him very courteously and yet was very much distressed. He said, Dr. Torrey, I’m sorry, and pardon me for mentioning it, but he said, you know, I think you left a wrong impression with these young men. Oh, Torrey said, indeed, and how was that? What did I say? Well, he said, you left the impression that we could ask for specific things and get them. That we could pray for specific events to take place and specific things and God would answer our prayers. Well now, he said, I’m sure you didn’t mean to do that. But I’m sure that that’s the impression you left.

Well, Torrey breathed a deep sigh of relief and said, well, my young friend, if that’s all you’re worried about, let me hurry to tell you that I meant to tell them that. That’s exactly what I meant to say. And if I said that and made my point, then I’m glad. Oh, but the embarrassed young man said, Dr. Torrey, you know, that’s true in the will of God of course, if it’s God’s will, we can pray and get anything, but how are we to know God’s will. How are we to know God’s will? Dr. Torrey said, young man, there’s a passage that says, if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God and God will give wisdom to him. So that ended that and the young man probably piped down, but I doubt whether he was convinced that Dr. Torrey, this wise old saint of God, knew that if you didn’t know the will of God, you had a perfect right to ask for wisdom that you might know the will of God, and thus pray according to the will of God.

Mostly the Scriptures will cover the will of God, so that we can pray within the will of God according to the Scriptures. But as I say and now repeat, sometimes you cannot know without appealing through the Scriptures to the wisdom of God. And God answers your prayer and gives you wisdom so that you will not be praying out of the will of God.

Now, I don’t want to introduce anything humorous here because this is very serious truth, but there have been some very humorous things said and done. I remember a young lady who came to a preacher and said, Reverend, would you pray for me? Well, he said, what’s the matter with you? And she said, well, I want you to pray for me that I might be two inches taller. He said, are you healthy? And she said, yes, but I am two inches too short. Well, and you believe that God answers prayer and will do anything the Lord, that we asked Him to do? And I want you to ask the Lord to make me two inches longer and taller. And he said, well, I’m curious, why do you want to be two inches taller? Well, she said I want to get in as one of the girls in the chorus, as a chorus girl and dancer, and I’m two inches too short for the line. And unless I can stretch two inches then I won’t be able to get the job in the nightclub. Well, if that preacher was what I think he was, I’m sure he didn’t pray for her. I’d like to handle that lady. I’d have enjoyed that, I really would. I’d have liked to enjoyed that.

Well, now that’s funny, but she was a serious young woman. Now, nobody told her any better. And until you’re told better, sometimes you can be very foolishly wrong about very evident things. Things, that we after we see them and see how wrong we were, we smile at ourselves or blush. But until we are told and it’s pointed out to us, we can be very badly deluded. This young lady was. Now, that is a grotesque example of praying out of the will of God. There just isn’t any use to pray out of the will of God. If you pray in the will of God, God hears you. And if God hears you, He answers your prayer.

Now, right here, it’s not in the sermon, but I’d like to step aside from the regular development of the truth long enough to say this to you. Don’t press your prayers and expect them to be answered immediately. I suppose there are prayers that will have to be answered immediately or they won’t be answered at all. When Peter said, Lord help me, as he was sinking beneath the wave, he had to have an answer within one and a half minutes or there would have been no Peter. They would have fished him out and buried him somewhere. So I suppose there are prayers that have to be answered immediately, but they’re not very many. Mostly, God allows our prayers to drag along a long time. And it’s for our good that we might learn patience, that we might learn to trust Him, that we might have an opportunity to be disciplined and chastened and taught, instructed, and led in the right way. And that we might have an opportunity to check to see whether that prayer is of God or not, and then see whether we really mean it.

I don’t like to do this, but sometime I like to travel around and take down the number of petitions that I hear in prayer meetings or church services, and then check on how many of them ever get answered. Well, not only do most of them not get answered, but it would be a total surprise if they were answered because most of us pray more than we remember what we prayed for. We asked for things that we promptly forget because we’ve heard somebody ask for those things. We rib the Catholics because of their formality and ritual and because they pray by set form. We Protestants pray by set form too, the difference being that they’ve worked it out so that it sounds beautiful and we just improvise as we go along and play by ear. And because we haven’t the time to do it, mostly, it’s pretty bad. I believe there’s just about as much ritual in the average Protestant churches there is in the Catholic or the Lutheran or any other the ritualistic churches, they print theirs, and repeat them. And we remember ours and repeat them. And they’re about the same old thing. I could pray a pastoral prayer if it was nine o’clock any evening hanging by my toes on a clothesline wire, and know exactly how to intone it and how to make it work and then how to finish it off.

Now that’s, that’s simply religious habit. Brethren, by the grace of God I want to be delivered from that, even if it means that my prayers can’t be beautiful, and they can’t be, can’t be eloquent, they just have to be blunt preaching I pray. I remember one time that old W.T. MacArthur, William T. MacArthur was asked to lead in prayer. This sharp old man who God, one of the sharpest brained old man I’ve ever known, and a spiritual man, walked with God, but he wasn’t anybody’s fool. But he said, now we’ll have brother William T. Macarthur lead us in prayer. He got up and waddled over and he said, what do you want me to pray for? He wasn’t going to waste his words nor go through a ritual. He wants to know what they wanted done and what they wanted God to do for them and he wanted to pray with some meaning back of it. I thought it was rather blunt, but I’m not sure but it wasn’t all right. What do you want me to pray for him He said. They got him straightened out and the old man prayed and sat down.

Well now, the next thing is, what have I said up to now, you got to have a right relationship to God. There must be a good conscience, and it must be according to God’s will. And then in Jesus name, John 14:13-14. Ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it. Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Now, this is so overwhelming that you won’t believe it. And it is so huge that I scarcely believe it even as I preach it. I pray that I might believe it. And I try to believe it and I cry, O Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. But you know what He says here. He gives power of attorney to praying people. How many here know what power of attorney is. You go to a lawyer, an attorney, and you sign over, sign your name to certain papers giving that man a right to act for you in anything pertaining to your business. He can commit you to anything, power of attorney.

Putting it around another way and giving it a biblical figure rather than the one I’ve chosen, He puts in the hands of any of God’s children, the royal seal. Did you know back in those old Bible days, they didn’t have typewriters and telegraphs and TVs and radios and all the rest that they have now? A man had a seal, a royal seal, a king did. And that royal seal had to be on all documents or they were invalid. Anything that was supposed to go out from the King and it didn’t bear the royal seal, they could have torn it in pieces and laughed at the messenger and thrown it on the floor. It didn’t have the royal seal on it. But everything that came out with the royal seal on it, instantly must be done, because it had the seal of the King on it, the emperor’s seal.

Do you remember back in the Old Testament when Joseph received the seal from Pharoah? And that meant that anything that Joseph did, the King had to back. He had the royal seal. And so, Jesus Christ puts the royal seal in the hands of His people. They usually wore it as a ring. That’s where we get our word signet ring. You know, occasionally now you’ll see some youngster running around with the signet ring with his initials, or initials cut in it. And that’s an old hangover from the days of the royal seal.

When a king had his seal on his ring, just to save him time, I think it’s pretty neat myself; in place of having to hunt around for the thing, he just had it on and all he had to, was just turn it over and stamp it and it was sealed with the royal seal. And when the King gave that royal seal to anybody, he could go throughout all the King’s domain and act for the King and have all the authority of the King and the power of the King. There wasn’t anyone from the corner policeman on up to the assistant king but what had to hop to attention when anything was spoken in the name of that royal seal.

That’s exactly what Jesus had in mind and what He meant, and it was out of that background, the figure that Jesus said, anything ye asked in My name, I will do it. I hereby bestow upon you the royal seal. I put the ring on your finger and all you have to do is pray and turn it over and stamp it with My name. And it carries all the power of the King. It carries royal power with it–absolute authority. Now, I said before I introduced that idea that you wouldn’t believe it. And I said that I have difficulty believing it. It’s true. I believe it’s true. But to believe that means, me, now that’s a difficult thing.

Do you know what unbelief says? Unbelief says, some other time, not now. Somewhere else, not here. Somebody, else not me. And faith says, if it happened somewhere else, it can happen here. If it happened to other people, it can happen to me. If it happened at some other time, it can happen now. There’s the difference. There’s what’s hard. O Lord, help our unbelief. God puts into the hands of his children the royal seal. But do you notice my brethren? God is not foolish, and God will not give the royal seal to the wrong man. Never would a king give that royal seal to an outlaw. Never would he give that royal ring to a man that he had reason to believe that would betray Him. He gave that royal seal only to one who had proved himself to be worthy of every confidence.

So before Jesus turns the royal seal over to His children, He says, you must have a right relationship to my Father by the new birth so you can say, our Father who art in heaven. You must have a good conscience. For if your conscience is against you, how can you use a holy thing like My name? And you must act in my Father’s will, because if you’re not in my Father’s will, then you’re in rebellion. And how could I give a royal seal to someone in rebellion? And having met these tests, being children of God and being good children of God with good consciences, and living and walking in God’s will and praying in God’s will, we have all the authority to move heaven and earth that Jesus Christ has. Do you believe that? Does anybody here believe that? That’s true, my brethren. That is true. That’s what the New Testament says. That’s what the Bible says. That’s true. And our wretched unbelief is the reason we do not put it in operation.

And then, here’s what the Scripture says. The Scripture says in Matthew 7:7-8, ask and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh, receiveth. And he that seeketh, findeth. And to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that asked Him. In other words, if you’re born in sin, conceived in iniquity, having walked in the ways of sin, and having the disadvantage of having been a sinner, if yet your love for your little children makes you willing to give your little children anything they want, If it’s good for them of course, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask Him. He didn’t say, how much more will your heavenly Father give anything to them that asked Him. I wouldn’t hand a revolver to a two-year-old child. I wouldn’t hand a razor to a two-year-old child. I wouldn’t hand a pound box of chocolates to a two-year-old child. But I would give good things to that child.

And so, He doesn’t say He will give anything. He says He will give good things. And the good things are in His will. And the good things are the things you want if you’re right with God. And in Mark 11:22-24, Jesus answering saith unto them, have faith in God. For verily I say unto you that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he said should come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore, I say unto you, whatsoever things ye desire when you pray, believe that you receive them and ye shall have them.

I said a while ago that we will not depress our prayers and would be discouraged if we didn’t get them answered right away. I believe that faith can afford to wait. Real faith can afford to wait. And the way God operates is very likely to be in nature the way it is in grace and vice versa. If you want a stick of chewing gum, or a little bar of Hershey’s, put a penny in a slot in the subway and you’ll get it. If you want an ear of corn, plant a grain of corn and wait. Cultivate it and watch it grow and wait. First the blade, then the tassel and the green ear and then the full corn, ripe corn in the ear. That’s the way God works.

God doesn’t work with slot machines. I am on a one-man lonely crusade against slot machine religion. I’m a voice crying in the wilderness. And nobody in within hearing distance, slot machine religion, put a nickel in the slot and get anything. Well, that’s the way people work, but that isn’t the way God works. If God wants chickens, He waits 21 days and makes the old hen sit for 21 days patiently there. I used to pity them. I used to say, Oh my, why couldn’t you just flop down and get up and they would follow her away. But no, she had to sit there for 21 days. And with some birds, it’s 28 days, and with others it’s still longer. If God wants an oak tree, it takes him 20 years to grow it. When He wants wheat, it takes all winter and up to July of the next year. And the God of nature is the God of grace, so that I think that the parallel there out to teach us that we oughten to rush heaven when we pray; that we ought to pray in the will of God and then watch God work slowly.

I’ve asked God for things and almost got discouraged, and then saw them begin to happen. They’re too personal. I would not want to introduce them here. But I would only say that some of the prayers that I’m carrying around with me in a little notebook. I bought a little notebook in a little 10-cent store in this little town of what I call the lazy sprawling village of Nyack one time when I wrote about it. I got it. I never have been without except once. I was afraid that I had lost it, but I found it around the house. I’ve carried that little thing with me since about, I guess,17 years. And I have prayers in there that I look over every once in a while, and remind God of them. And you know, some of them aren’t answered yet. In 17 years, God hasn’t answered them. But some of them have not only been answered, they have been answered so far beyond what I asked, that I wouldn’t have accepted it as a fact if God had told me what He was going to do then.

Sure, you can afford to knock and then wait. An American, you know, have brass knockers and they knock three times and want to go right in. But the kingdom of heaven can wait. You can wait and I can wait. So, let’s trust God and be patient. Some of them in the Old Testament even in that 11th chapter of Hebrews which is the Westminster Abbey of the Bible, even there some of them died without ever having their prayers answered. They got them answered, but not during their lifetime.

Now another thing about prayer if you want to pray successfully, and I take it you do, is that the whole life’s got to pray. God sometimes answers emergency prayers. There isn’t any doubt about that. They say that once during a flood, there were two houses. One was going one direction; another was swirling in another direction and they passed within hearing distance. And there was a colored woman on top of the roof of one of those houses, and somebody else on the roof of the other and the one was praying loudly to God; and the colored woman shouted, God doesn’t hear scared prayers, son. But God does hear scared prayers. He hears the prayers of His true people no matter, and He does hear emergency prayers.

So, I’m not going to stand here and tell you that your life must be perfect before God can, will hear your prayers, but I am going to tell you this, that while God does turn aside and hear sometimes emergency prayers, prayers that are a little above the level of our living, that isn’t His highest will. His highest will is that we should live the way we pray. William Law in his most famous book, “A Serious Call to Religion,” this William Law makes an argument which I have always thought, I guess I read this 25 years ago and it’s stuck with me ever since. He says that our trouble is often, we pray one way and walk another. And we cross ourselves up. He said, we ought to go the way we pray. Our prayer ought to go the way our life is going. If a man walks a holy walk, he can pray a holy prayer. But if he tries to pray a holy prayer and walk an unholy life, he’s crossing himself up. And he pleads that the people of God might begin to live the way they pray.

That’s what I mean tonight. I mean, our whole life ought to pray. I mean our whole life should be a prayer. I mean it should be a sacrifice on the altar. But the whole life should be. And I mean there should be nothing in the life that can cancel out the prayer. There should be nothing in my conduct, in my thoughts, in my deeds or ambitions, or my relationship to people that could make it impossible for God to answer my prayer. My whole life ought to pray. And you know what I think? I think the greatest prayer in the world is the unuttered prayer of a great life. I believe that. Jesus prayed. He sent up ejaculatory prayers. He prayed long prayers. He prayed before meals. He prayed in company. He prayed with the people. He prayed alone. He prayed every kind of prayer, I suppose there was. But the greatest prayer He ever made was the walk He took from the time He toddled out of Joseph’s carpenter shop until they nailed Him on a cross. His life was his greatest prayer.

The Bible says He pleads for us at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, making intercession for us continually. That has given some people the impression that Jesus Christ is engaged in a perpetual prayer meeting on His knees before the Father, interceding forever. No, His presence there is the most eloquent prayer in all the wide world. That He is there and that we are here, and that He wears our nature and has our shape and looks like us. And an angel walking about could see that form and say, a Man has arrived. A Man’s in heaven, a man. Sure, a Man is there, our Man, God’s Man, the sample Man, the second Adam, He’s there. And His presence there by the right hand of God is the great eloquent prayer for you and me. He bears our names on his hands and on His shoulder and on His breast. And there before the Father His eloquent presence is His mighty efficacious prayer.

And I believe the greatest prayer in the world is the prayer of a life, a life that goes in the right direction. That’s not to spiritualize praying and that is not to give it a mystical turn and relieve us of the privilege and necessity to pray for specific things and expect them. I think we should do both. I think a man is a mighty unskillful, is mighty unskillful in prayer if he has to unscramble himself, wash up and get a quick haircut and straighten himself out and try to look decent as he walks into the presence of God. He should have been like that all the time, should have been. Children of God should be presentable all the time. A man who allows himself to run down, four days growth of beard and clothes that are soiled and then suddenly he has to appear before the King; he’s got to do some fast footwork to get ready for that royal appearance. He should be ready all the time.

God’s people should never need morally and spiritually to have to rush around and get straightened up to get into the presence of the King. They should live so they can enter that Presence without embarrassment anytime. They should have on the robes of Presence that would allow them to go in before the King without embarrassment.

Now, three more thoughts and I’m through. In the Book of James it says, ye have not because ye ask not and ye ask and receive not because ye ask to consume it upon your lusts. And then it says, ask and ye shall receive. Now, here we have the word “ask” three times. Ye have not because ye ask not, and there is the penalty of prayerlessness. You could have it if you had asked for it. You’re not asking for it and therefore you’re not getting it. How little we have may be the result of how little we ask. More asking means more getting. Less asking means less getting. Ye have not, because ye ask not. That’s the penalty of powerlessness. But, ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss, that you might consume it upon your lusts. There’s the penalty of selfishness. To ask selfishly that I might have it to consume upon my lusts is to make it impossible for God to answer. And then, ask and ye shall receive, and there’s the reward of faithfulness. Anybody can have that outline who wants it and you preachers, ye have not because ye ask not, the penalty of prayerlessness; ye ask and receive not because ye ask amiss, the penalty of selfishness; and ask and ye shall receive, the reward of faithfulness.

So now I hope that this may have encouraged you to know that prayer is not simply something that religious-minded people mumble, but that it is a science, that it is an art, that it is a skill to be learned by the grace of God, that it is a privilege to be enjoyed, that it is authority to be wielded, that it is a right you and I have in the blood of the Lamb. And we can go to God and ask what we will and it shall be done unto us. Do you believe that? Will you then practice it a little more than you have been? If I could be sure that you would pray 15 minutes more a day than you’ve been praying, it would be well, would have been worth my time here tonight. Will you do it? Will you take it on yourself? Will you dare to go to God? If you shouldn’t have it, don’t ask for it. Don’t want it. Stop wishing.

God’s poor sheep wishing, wishing wishing like the farmer that sits on the front porch and wishes for 10 acres of golden corn. And he calls his wife and says, May, would you please join me in wishing for 10 acres of golden corn. So she joins him. She says to him, George, I think that we ought to call in our neighbors. I think there’s power in numbers. Let’s call in our neighbors. So she goes to the old phone and rings three times and the neighbor answers and she says, come on over, George and I are sitting on the front porch wishing for 10 acres of golden corn. Pretty soon, they have a front porch full of people all sitting there wishing for corn. I know it’s ridiculous. I know it, but a lot of God’s children are doing the same thing. They’re wishing for things. Stop wishing. If you ought to have it, pray and you’ll get it. And if you can get it without asking for it by a miracle, get it. Go do it. God won’t do what you can do. And there’s no use for you to try to do what only God can do. And if we can get untangled on this thing so we’re not trying to do what only God can do, and not asking God to do what we ought to go do.

Could I tell again the old story of Moody? It is so old that it’s as worn as the shoes that he looked at when he came into a prayer meeting one time and there were a lot of monied-men, Christian men with money. Here they were, and as he walked in, all he saw was the soles of a whole lot of businessmen’s shoes all around a circle. They were asking God for $1,500. Little old blunt Moody said, Brethren, get up. I don’t think I’d bother God anymore about that. He had it. Any one of them could have written a check and never noticed it. But they were down on their knees asking God Almighty to give them what they could have gotten by a scratch of the pen. Don’t waste your time asking for things you can do yourself. Do them! God isn’t going to spoil us by waiting on us hand and foot. God won’t make your bed. God won’t wash your dishes. God won’t mow your lawn. God won’t shovel your snow. And be careful you don’t do what I did. I shoveled snow twice during the week I had off and I’ve had a sore back ever since. But watch it. But you do it. If you can do it, do it. Hire it done, but get it done. Don’t bother God about it.

But oh, there are so many things you can’t do, and those are the things God wants to do for you. God specializes in the impossible. With God, all things are possible. And all things are possible to him that believeth. And there’s a realm of impossibilities, a realm of exploits where human brains can’t do it and human hands can’t do it. Only God Almighty can do it. That’s where prayer becomes powerful. Prayer moves the hand that moves nature in the world. But if you can do it, do it. And if God doesn’t want you to have it, don’t waste your time wishing for it. You only learn bad mental habits. If God doesn’t want you to have it, don’t want it. And if He wants you to have it and you can’t honestly get it, pray for it, that is, if it’s in His will. If it’s unselfish, if it’s for His glory, if it’s for the good of humanity, pray for it. And the Lord will answer your prayers.

Amen. You’ve got the royal seal. I hope you use it. I hope you’ll learn to use it. What couldn’t we do if we learned to use the authority given us by our Savior? What couldn’t we do?

We’re deliberately not using man’s methods in this church, deliberately not using man’s methods. We repudiated them as bad, opportunism and advertising methods and big businesses. We’ve thrown them out as being bad and we’re trying to go the New Testament way. We must look out now that if we choose the New Testament way, that we have the New Testament Spirit, because technically to take the New Testament way and then not live the New Testament life is to work against ourselves. Let’s believe God together and let’s pray more than we have. Ye have not because ye ask not. Put prayer to work and see what God will do for you and your family, your business, your home and your church and your life and your country. And everywhere within the will of God, green grass will spring up by the water courses. And where dragons used to lie, roses shall bloom, and you will find yourself wonderfully enriched as you pray believing.

Now let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for the privilege of prayer. We thank Thee that we’re not out of touch with heaven. We thank Thee Thou dost incline thine ear unto us and hear us. We confess to Thee our staggering unbelief and our doubtings. We confess to Thee Lord, that as a company we’ve not dared to be as bold as we should. But we want to correct that. We want to come boldly to the throne of grace and ask for what we need. Thank Thee for the answers we’ve seen, marvelous answers Lord that couldn’t come except Thou didst send them. But there are still some things unanswered. O Lord, we pray Thee, make this a praying church. Make these people so bold, so aggressive in their praying that they will cry under Thee boldly and dare to continue to pray until the answer arrives even if it takes weeks and months, and in some instances may be some years. But it will come, for Thou art God and Thou wilt not confuse Thy people nor cause their faces to be ashamed. Teach us to pray O Lord. Teach us to pray. In Jesus name, Amen.