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Tozer Talks

“Things Permitted by God for Growth in Grace“

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Things Permitted by God for Growth in Grace

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 28, 1958

Outline

The Bible and the nature of the world.

Disciples appoint leaders to manage daily ministry, prioritizing prayer and preaching.
Tozer desires to be a liberal preacher, imagining headlines like “Khrushchev converted to Russian Baptist Church” or “Walter Reuther apologizes to General Motors.”
Tozer laments the absence of biblical preaching in modern Christianity.

Church conflicts and sin in early Christianity.

Tozer argues that conflicts often have deeper causes than apparent.
Tozer: Early church faced sin despite Pentecost, miracles, and redemption.

The Presence of Sin in Religious Settings.

Tozer argues that holiness cannot be assumed based on outward appearances, even in a church setting.
Satan targets those closest to God, not those far away.
Tozer argues that Satan hates prayerful people and tries to trouble them, but God loves them and delivers them.
Tozer advises against praying and instead suggests living a lukewarm life to avoid trouble but acknowledges that this approach may lead to hell.

Sin and its presence in the church.

Tozer emphasizes the importance of standing up for freedom and truth, even if it means facing opposition.
Tozer argues that sin will always act like sin and can only be dealt with through redemption or hell.
God uses evil to polish the good, as seen in the Bible and in the life of Paul.

God’s use of suffering to perfect believers.

Tozer: God uses suffering to polish and perfect those in His bosom.
Tozer argues that God uses difficult situations to perfect and cleanse believers, citing examples from the Bible.
Tozer describes a community where men would physically punish a wife beater, breaking his spirit and shaming him.

Facing and dealing with sin in the church.

Tozer: Shame can be a means of spiritual growth, as God allows us to be publicly corrected and humbled.
Tozer warns of unconfessed sin in the church, urging separation and spiritual maturity.
A.W. Tozer emphasizes the importance of being oriented towards the spiritual life, facing the right direction, and being prepared to jump into action when trouble comes.
Tozer uses the metaphor of a church being like a battlefield, with wounds and weaknesses, but also with forgiveness and growth towards maturity.

Message

In the Book of Acts, in the sixth chapter of the book of Acts, in those days when the number of the disciples was multiplied. there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them and said, it is not reason that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you, seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, who we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. And the saying pleased the whole multitude, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch: And these they set before the apostles, and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them. And the Word of God increased, and the number of disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly. And the great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. And Stephen, full of faith and power did great wonders and miracles among the people.

I want to make a confession this morning. I wish I could be a liberal preacher. I wish that I didn’t have to tell the truth. Oh, just for a little while, maybe, not long. I’d probably get tired of too much sweetness and light. But I’ve thought about what I’d like to do if I could write my own headlines. If I could write my own headlines, I’d have one of the most wonderful newspapers ever published since man scratched on a rock and left it for some other man to figure out.

For instance, if I were editing that paper that I’d like to edit tomorrow morning. I had to have a headline saying, Khrushchev has been converted and has applied for admission to the Russian Baptist Church. Now that would be a headline, and blood pressure would go down all over the world. And then I’d have another headline, say, Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek, went fishing together and kissed on each cheek when they parted. Then I’d quit worrying about the Formosa Straights. Then I’d have another headline saying Walter Reuther apologizes to General Motors for bitter things he said about them. And then I’d have another headline saying, 48 hours since a crime has been committed in the United States. Nobody has been killed on the highway since last Wednesday.

I can fix myself up a newspaper that would be something, now I tell you, and it would sell if I could follow it with anything. But of course, I’d have to, on the last line down below in red ink, I would have to write “April Fool’s.” Because that isn’t the kind of world we live in brothers and sisters. We live in a miserable, fallen, upset, hate-filled, God-defying world. A world where the spirit of wickedness works in the children of disobedience. And so that isn’t the kind of headline we get. Look tomorrow morning and see, find any of those headlines or anything approaching them.

Then I’d like to be able to preach for a while, announce a series of sermons and never have to acknowledge the presence of anything wrong with anybody. Start out with everybody 100% sanctified and cleansed and indwelt by the Holy Ghost, loving each other and in great fellowship; and great grace was upon everybody. And the devil was chained, and we were surrounded by the presence of beautiful angels. I’d like to preach like that for a while to be released.

But you know, you can’t find Scripture to support that kind of preaching. Some are trying it. And I don’t know how long they’re going to be able to keep it up. Some of them manage to find something to talk about and still keep it up for a long time. But you know, whenever you open your Bible, you run into two things, the grace of God and the sin of man. And no matter where, just close your eyes and flip it like this and see what you find, 2 Chronicles. Well, there you find trouble. And Solomon did thus and thus. And flip it over again. You find in the Psalms; God be merciful unto us and bless us. Well, why did you have to pray God be merciful? Because we’re a bunch of sinners. Find your Bible, open your Bible, wherever you will, and you will find trouble and grace, grace and sin, mercy and judgment, goodness and severity. You’ll find it throughout the entire Bible.

Now, all this is preliminary to saying a few words which I trust will be helpful. About this passage I just read to you here in Acts the sixth chapter. It says there arose a murmuring among the disciples about the Grecians against the Hebrews.

Now, the occasion was simply this, that certain people believed that the widows, certain widows were being neglected. They said, there is segregation being practiced here. And these Grecian Jews, who were Hellenistic Jews, Jews who had been brought up and trained in Greek schools in contradiction to those who had been trained and brought up in Hebrew schools. And when they got to Jerusalem and got converted, they naturally, the ones that were Hellenists and had been brought up in Greek schools and had been taught Greek, spoke with an accent. And the ones who had been brought up in Palestine, spoke the language of Palestine and had no accent. And the result was that the ones with the accent, said that their widows had been neglected. They said, you are showing partiality towards the ones that don’t have the accent. You’re practicing segregation here.

Now, the apostles, of course, were Palestinian Jews, and they were accused of favoring the Palestinian widows, very, very normal for the Hellenistic Jews, the Grecian Jews to imagine. Now, the cause of it was much deeper than that. Always remember one thing, when there’s a fight, the reason for the fight is never what you thought it was. Two men meet and start calling each other names, and then finally end up in a bloody brawl. And when they get dragged into court, the judge says, what caused this? And then one says he called me a name. And the other one says, Yes, but he called me a name first. That wasn’t the cause of it. That was the occasion for it. But the cause of it was deeper than that. And so it is with every trouble everywhere all the time. The real source of the trouble is always deeper than we think.

So, the cause laid deeper, the hidden presence of uncleansed sin was here. You know, we’re romanticists, you and I, and extremely inclined to be romantic. And we like to look back upon the church and talk in glowing terms about the church that was. There never has been a period in history when the church was all it should have been. And there never has been a church that was all that it should have been. I have quoted here before the little proverb that says he lies well who comes from a far country. And if you can find somebody that can come far enough that he knows that nobody can check on him. He’s likely to describe the spiritual conditions where he came from in glowing terms. But the simple truth is, if you went there, you probably would find that there were troubles there too.

Well, the cause lies in sin. And in the sixth chapter of Acts only a little while removed from Pentecost, what does it say here in the margin. It leaves it the same year. According to this, I don’t know how far you can trust these marginal dates. But according to the marginal dates here, it was the same year. And not yet one year removed from Pentecost, they were having troubles and accusing each other of partiality. So, you see, even that early church was human and the sin was there. And right in the presence of the apostles, here was the sour spirit expressing itself, expressing itself in dark looks and complaining and concealed whisperings and discontent.

And see the seriousness now of all this. God had become flesh to dwell among them. And they called Him Emanuel, Jesus the Savior and He was made Lord and Christ, and the Holy Ghost had come. After He had been slain and raised from the dead, the Holy Ghost had come. Redemption was an accomplished fact. And the Spirit had come as fire and sat upon them, and many were converted, and miracles were being done all around them. And yet, right in the very presence of it, there were murmurings and complaining. You see, this points up a well-known fact that sin is such a rash and unreasonable and rebellious thing by nature, that it will include itself even into the sanctuary.

I’d like to believe that when the Father puts on his black robe and gets his clerical collar on, and the little bright, freshly scrubbed altar boys get their robes, and everybody comes in still and quiet and the incense is smelt and the organ is heard and the bells jingle, I’d like to believe that that means everybody there is holy. And I’d like to believe that in an Alliance Church when everybody comes stumbling up the stairs and talking out loud, down to the front, and all the noise and ugliness that attend our services. Sometimes when we’ve all gotten together, I like to think that means simplicity, artlessness childlikeness, and that when we stand to sing and preach that that meant absolute holiness.

But you know, you can’t be realistic and believe any of those things. You can’t believe they would take a fellow that smokes and drinks and gamble’s and loafs and put a black robe on him and have him stand up and jingle bells. That doesn’t make him holy. And it doesn’t make a man holy who loves money and loves to eat a five-pound steak and go to bed at night and tell jokes until one o’clock. It doesn’t mean that when he gets up and preaches an evangelistic sermon that you’re hearing a holy man. As sin intrudes into the sanctuary, brethren, and it follows right to the prayer meeting. There are those that imagine that a banquet, or say, religious ballgame, that that’s where the devil; the devil never attended a religious ballgame yet. He didn’t need to. The devil attends the prayer meeting. He works where the people of God are trying to be a holy. A doctor doesn’t work on a man who had just been pronounced 100% healthy. He works on the fellow that’s likely to die.

And so, Satan doesn’t work on the man or the woman that isn’t close to God. He’s works on the ones that are so close he’s afraid he’s going to lose them. So, he follows around into the sanctuary. It was when the angels of God appeared before the presence of the Most High, as it was there that satan appeared. Satan appeared among the angels. You’ll look for Satan in a saloon.

The cartoonists have all showed Satan in a saloon, or in a halfway house somewhere, sitting on the front porch with half dressed women. He never attends any such places. Satan never attends a theater. Satan’s never found in a gambling den. Satan never goes to a saloon. Satan isn’t anywhere near Skid Row. If he sees a fella start for a mission and thinks he’s going to get converted, of course, he will send a demon to work on him. But as long as the fellow just lies around Skid Row, he doesn’t bother him. He knows he’s got him. The chicken raiser doesn’t bother when the chickens are inside the pen. But when one flies over the fence that he goes out and gets worried.

Now it’s right in the presence of the Holy One, right in the presence of God, sin comes. It’s so brazen and rash, that it follows right up to Pentecost and right in among the apostles and right where the saints of God are in prayer. My friends, we want to remember that. Some of you go to prayer and you say, I have a hard time in prayer. Well, if you don’t want to have a hard time, quit praying. If you don’t want a hard time, stop praying. You won’t have nearly as hard a time if you stopped praying as you will if you do.

But you say Mr. Tozer, I’ve always been taught the opposite. Well, then you’ve been taught wrong. Because it’s the praying man that gets himself in trouble. It’s the praying man that satan hates. It’s the right living man, satan hates. God loves, but Satan hates the praying man, the good man, the man who’s escaping, the man who wants to be right. The man who gets on his knees, He’s the One God loves, but satan hates. And so, Satan is going to trouble the man. It was one of the problems of the book of Psalms, one of the problems of the book of Job, why did the good people have such a tough time of it? It’s because Satan hates them.

God loves them, and Satan hates them. And they are in trouble because they’re prayerful people. So if you don’t want trouble, don’t pray. If you want to go to hell, why then, don’t pray. But if you want to have a relatively easy time and get along with your neighbors, don’t pray. Try to get along with everybody and go the way they go. And if they want you to drink, drink a little, but don’t drink too much. If they want you to dance, dance a little, but don’t dance too much. They tell dirty stories that makes your wife blush, laugh, guffaw and then apologize to your wife and say, that was kind of raw, but I had to laugh. Live like that and you stay out of trouble. Get on your knees and you invite trouble. Go to God and ask God to delivery you and set you free and make a holy man out of you, and you invite trouble. But it’s a wonderful kind of trouble, wonderful kinds of trouble.

I don’t quote Franklin D. Roosevelt very often. But he made a speech one time in which he said something that every American molecule inside of my body from my balding head to the bottom of my feet responded with an amen. He said we Americans love freedom and we’d rather die on our feet than live on our knees, meaning by that, we’d rather die fighting for freedom than to kowtow to a totalitarian big wig. And I, for my part, any day of the world at my age would rather give my life and die and have it over, to be a free American and to walk around looking over my shoulder for fear of Khrushchev or Mao Zedong was going to hear something I said. I’d rather die fighting than live a slave.

It’s the same way in things of the Spirit. Long ago I had to make up my mind. Are you going to be an easy, smooth preacher and get along and having everybody love you and celebrate your birthdays and bring you flowers and just carry around on a chip as we would say on the farm? Or are you going to be a prophet? And I said, God you can have the flowers and the other boys can have the gifts and memorials and I’ll take the power and the insight and the prophetic discernment and truth and the warfare in the fight. After a while you will likely smell the smoke. But I confess this morning that I’ve had on just about enough smoke. And I’d like to preach something nice and smooth and sweet. And I’ll do the best I can tonight.

But this morning, I’ve got to talk to you about this. And it isn’t sweet at all. It shows sin right in the presence of praying people, rationed rebellious. And now until it’s been destroyed, it will always act like itself. You can always be sure of that. It will act like itself. And sin can never learn good, and it must always be itself, even at the gate of heaven. Sin must always act like itself. God always acts like God and He can never act any other way. Satan sometimes tries to act like an angel of light, but that in itself is sin. So, the devil always acts like the devil. And God being holy, can’t possibly act any other way but like God. Satan, being unholy, can try to act like an angel but only succeeds in acting like a devil infinitely more devilish.

So, sin will always act like sin. And it can be dealt with only in two ways: by redemption or by hell. Either by confession and deliverance from it or by the certainty of hell after a while for it will go. And sin will be the fuel to keep the fires burning.

Now, why does God allow this? Why does He allow it among his children? Why? Well, He allows it for a number of reasons. Because He’s merciful, and a lot of people that were making trouble here in the book of Acts, the Bible just passed over them. They were making trouble, but later on, they saw their mistake and they went on to know God better, and they were ashamed of the way they had lived.

Haven’t you? Can’t you remember back, maybe some years back when you were sharp, and maybe you gossiped about somebody or said something hateful to somebody, and now you’re deeply sorry? And if God had judged you right then, sharply and harshly, he would have lost you. But He was patient and now you’re sorry, and you’re living a better life than you did. So, God in His mercy allows sin even to enter into the sanctuary.

And then it acts as an abrasive to polish God’s saints. God wants His saints to be shining saints. And God uses acids to make them shine, and to determine which ones are real and which ones aren’t which is gold and which is only imitation gold. The presence of evil in the world, and even crowding itself brazenly into the sanctuary, it’s the sharp switch God uses to chasten His children. And later, they’re to be thrown into the fire. Don’t forget it. He says, let the wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest. And then He will garner the wheat into His harvest. But He will throw the the tares into the fire.

Now those should be terrifying thoughts. They’re terrifying thoughts. It’s a terrifying thought to me that God uses the rejected to perfect the accepted. That’s a terrifying thought, that God uses a man He’s rejected to polish the man He’s accepted. He uses the woman He’s rejected, to punish and polish the woman He’s accepted. He uses the evil to help polish the good. If you don’t believe it, read your Bible. All the way through it was like that, tribulations and troubles and woes and jail sentences and lashings and all that Paul had to endure. They were that he might be a better man.

And Jesus learned obedience, how? By the things He enjoyed, no. He had learned obedience by the things He suffered. And the Pharisees and the scribes and Herodians and the lawyers and the rest of them that made life miserable for Christ, they were the abrasives polishing Him to make Him, even though He were God made flesh. They still taught Him something. He learned obedience by the things that He suffered.

Now, He never sinned. Let’s keep that straight. It’s necessary that we should. If He ever sinned, then sin had a claim on Him. He never sinned, so sin had no claim on Him. And when He died, He died not for Himself, but for us. And there lies the glory of atonement. But something He had to learn as a man, and that thing He learned as we are learning it in the same way.

Well, how the apostles met this. Do you notice how the apostles met it? I don’t know whether I’d ought to go on and talk about how the apostles met it or whether I’d better close here. I think maybe I’ll just close here and point out that God is using things and people that He is never going to receive to His bosom, to polish and perfect those whom He has in His bosom.

In the olden days, a man who loved his children very well, used to hire school masters and governesses. And they turned over to those school masters and governesses, the care of their children. And they were permitted to punish them; corporal punishment was permitted. And while the parents were greatly careful to get the right person, they did allow them to punish their children.

Now, God allows us to be punished. And it’s something we don’t like. We don’t want it. We wish it didn’t have to be so. We wish that everything could be sweetness and light. We wish that we could just live on syrup and lie down deep in green pastures, all day long beside the green pastures. We wish that, but it doesn’t work that way, my friends, God uses a tough, brutal husband to perfect and cleanse and sanctify a wife who’s obedient. And sometimes he lets her turn and say things back. And then he punishes her for saying it, even though the ugly husband to whom she said it, deserved that 20 times compounded. But that she dared to say it, God punishes her and makes her sorry, and she has to repent. And the good woman has to go to a bad man and say, I’m sorry. I’m to blame when it’s just the other way around. And so, it is God is using the troubles we have in this world as polishers and abrasives to wear away and take off the rust and to remove the impurities.

And this is one of the ways that God works. In the book of Hebrews, you know, it is so plain, that I don’t know why we escape it. It says in that 12th chapter of the book of Hebrews, that we must remember that the author, Jesus, is the author and finisher of our faith. And that for the joy set before Him, He endured. For the joy set before Him He endured.

And what did He do in the shame? You know, that’s one thing we can’t stand. We can stand pain, but we can’t stand shame. That’s one thing. That’s why I believe if corporal punishment were reintroduced. No, I’m not bloodthirsty, but I think that in the day, you know, when a big rough brute of a man beats his wife and beats up everybody he meets in a drunken brawl. Nowadays, they give him a suspended sentence.

But there was a day when men around the neighborhood, after a fellow out in our country, after a fellow had done this a few times, he’d beaten his wife a few times, or beaten his children until they come to school with black eyes.

He got a little note from the farmers around the neighborhood, signed by fellas around the neighborhood. And they said, now, we’ve had enough of this. Then the next time he got a little too much liquor and beat up his wife, several fellows appeared, too many for him to handle and said, come on, you might as well go quietly. And he knew what was coming.

So, they took him out, stripped him to the waist, and switched him like a kid. Switched him. And after a fellow had had a good licking, he never could lift his eyes again. If they’d come and tried to fight him; if they’d simply come and given him punishment for the body, he could have taken it.

But after he’d been taken out and whipped, it broke his spirit. He lost face. After that he had no face left at all, just a head. And every place he went, the people would smile. After that, he was a pariah, an outcast. Shame, often drove men like that out of the neighborhood. They just couldn’t stand it. They’d been licked like a kid. And they were so proud of the fact when they flex their muscle, a great big watermelon came up here, proud of their muscles. But after they got licked, they hadn’t anything left to be proud of. Shame is a terrible thing, brethren.

And the Scripture says here that he despised the shame. The shame He endured. He despised it and is now sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. And so now, you remember, that the Scripture says, my son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord. The very chastening we sometimes get from God, that very chastening is itself shameful. He allows us to be publicly put down a notch. And with shame, we hang around wondering if we will be received by the company.

I have never forgotten the missionaries telling about the Congo. A church member there who has been received into full fellowship, backslides, and commits any act he shouldn’t commit, and makes him sit in the penitential form for six months. There are special select box seats over here to the left of the pulpit. And if two or three fellas appear there with the shame of face and sheepdog look, they’ve been caught doing something good Christians shouldn’t do. And the old elder sentences them to sit in that box for six months, every Sunday twice until they have proved they’ve lived right, and then they can get out. It’s a tough way, a tough way, but it works. People are happy to keep right and live right in order that they might not get put out there on display. And Paul, in one of his terrible self-disclosures said, we have been made as the off scouring. We’ve been made a spectacle, the shame of it.

Well, it’s too bad, but it has to come, and it’s always brought upon us because somewhere there’s unconfessed sin, not necessarily ours, not necessarily yours or mine, not necessarily in among the people of God at all, except it has come in among them, and it’s not part of them. So instead of our seeing the headline, Khrushchev converted, Mao Zedong spends all night in prayer, we’re going to read Khrushchev insults Ike, Mao Zedong threatens to take Formosa. We’re going to hear, so and so dragged in an alley and murdered on the north side.

We’re going to hear that sin is present in the world. Sin is here and we’ve got to face it. And we’ve got to learn how to live with it but learn to live apart from it. And we’ve got to learn to live in a religious community, which we call the church, that isn’t perfect. And after all, suppose somewhere, there were to spring up in Chicago, a perfect church. A church where they had no carnal people at all. There wasn’t any flesh left, it was all crucified. Everybody was saintly. They were all Tom Hares. Everybody was as sweet and as pure as a dear old lady in Pittsburgh where I was last week. Ninety-nine years, nine months and 18 days she was, one of their old saints, she slept away and went to heaven.

Well, you fill a church full of people like that. Do you think you’d feel at home there? I don’t know whether I would or not. But you’ll never find one like that. You find one, two, or three or five or ten, but you won’t find a church full.

We’re growing up. We’re maturing. We’re fighting. And always where there’s a battle, there’ll be some people wounded. The only army that has no wounds is an army that has never smelled the smoke. And the only church that has no flaws and no weaknesses is a church who lives on Shakespeare and book reviews. They have no reason to have any troubles. They just come and go. But all of us who are seeking to know God better, we’ll have our troubles.

Now somebody says, trying to think this out and says, is Mr. Tozer slyly trying to get at some trouble in the church? No, there’s no trouble in our church. If there is, I haven’t heard of it. Everybody’s happy as far as I know. And we know and forgive each other and realize we’re not all we ought to be and not all we’re going to be. But there’s no trouble that I know of. This, simply, I preach it because it’s here, it’s in the book.

And it’s well for us to be informed. They call that oriented now, that is, orientated. It’s the same word. It means facing around in the right direction, so you’re squared off to where you’re going. Unless we know these things we’ll never be oriented to the spiritual life. You’ve got to get you squared off and face right.

I read somewhere a fellow said, never park with your wheels twisted. He said never back in, then leave your wheels turned left. If you do when you start. you’ll forget and you’ll leap out into the traffic. He said, always square them straight ahead so when you start, you won’t suddenly find yourself out in traffic.

Well, that squaring away. That’s what I like. I like to preach the Word of God so His people can, if they will be squared away facing the right direction. And from whatever direction trouble comes, and if they’re suddenly forced to jump, they’ll jump in the right direction, because they have been instructed and informed and orientated. Now, I think that’s all for this morning. And we’ll sing a closing hymn.

Tags Grace, Growth, Sin

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Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date October 8, 2023

“How to Grow in Grace”

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How to Grow in Grace

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 29, 1957

We may be very grateful to the Holy Spirit and to the man Peter who when he was very, very old and about ready to lay down his burden, said, wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance. Though ye know them and be established in the present truth. Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance, knowing that shortly I must put off this, my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me. Moreover, I will endeavor that you may be able, after my departure, to have these things always in remembrance.

Now, that was Peter in his second epistle. And he wrote a little further and then said, in 3:10, the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in the which the heavens shall pass away with the great noise and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless, we according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless. And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever. Amen.

Now, those last two verses, ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, why be careful, lest you be led away with the error of the wicked and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, this is the language of the dear old apostle. Ye beloved, he says. I still believe, I’ve said it a number of times in various contexts, but I still believe that old Christians ought to be sweet, mellow Christians, and that we ought to get more mellow and gracious as we get older. We find it here very plain in this last epistle of Peter’s, a perfect blend of tender love and severe faithfulness. Now one is necessary to the other, because without one, you will have only harm without the other. If a man is only filled with tenderest love, then he is likely to become sentimental, or he’s likely to become so tender that he’s harmful to those he ministers to. But, if on the other hand, he is simply faithful to truth, he’s likely to injure with the very truth he is using to help people.

But Peter seemed to have both. He said, you, beloved, seeing ye know these things before. And he took a good measure, an account to see that we would have this before us long, long after he was gone. He said, seeing ye know these things. And what are these things? Well, the things named above, the certainty of judgment for all mankind. That God holds up actions and doesn’t judge, not because He is careless, but because He’s waiting for men to repent. And then, that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. And the fiery passing away of the whole creation is before us and is coming, and the establishment of a new creation for eternity. These are the things, at least some of the things that he referred to; and said, seeing you know these things.

And so, he held them before us as a reason for our Christian living. Then he said, if you know these things, beware. Now here’s a red light. Here is a caution light. He said, you Christians, I’m going away from you and you’re going to be left here in what he called a wicked and adulterous generation. And so, you’re going to have to beware. That is, exercise moral caution.

Today, out in, I don’t know how many towns throughout the United States and on highways between towns, there will be men, or young men maybe, driving without caution. I suppose we tend to get more cautious as we get older, but I’ve seen old men drive with anything but caution. But there will be a number of them, I couldn’t tell you how many, I wish I could say none, but I know there will be many who will forget to exercise caution and will press on the gas and pull their great cars up to tremendous speeds and fail to, what the newspapers call, negotiate a curve. They mean they couldn’t make the curve and a hit or go into a gully or hit a bank or a bridge and they will be gathered up dead. They will not pay any attention to the markings. The markings are not put there by mean policemen or nasty state troopers in order that they might devil us. They’re put there because a little way ahead, there’s danger.

So, the man, Peter, said beware; not to take his spite out on the people. Neither do I repeat it because I have any grudges against anybody. It’s just a sign here, slippery when wet, sharp curve ahead, “S” turn ahead, and a crossroad and railroad crossing–beware. It’s just a sign on the way. And the moral fool disregards the sign, of course. He shrugs his shoulders, rushes on and perishes, but the wise man slows down and proceeds with caution and lives. And the man of God says, now you know what’s ahead. Therefore, you Christians, beware lest you be led away by the world as others have been.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about that fellow, that goat down at the stockyards that I’ve mentioned several times here, they call him Judas Iscariot. I can’t get him out of my mind. They say he’s down there. I’ve never seen him, but I’ve had it confirmed that they have him. He’s a well-trained old goat with a deadly cynicism and complete cruelty, or else just ignorance. I don’t know which. I hope it’s the latter. And when they want a flock of sheep to go into a pen so they can get killed. They won’t go in. They’re afraid to go in being timid things. So, they start this old goat down and he leads them down the runway to the slaughter pen. Then, they open a gate and he goes out. They kill the sheep and he comes back and leads another flock down. That’s his job. That’s his occupation, leading innocent sheep astray. They call him Judas Iscariot.

And that Judas Iscariot is in the church here and there, too. And some people live only to betray others and to lead them away and to drag them down. And after they have betrayed them, they have very little interest in them after that. So, he says, lest ye should be led away. Always remember that unless you watch, you can be led. But always remember that everybody is led by someone. You say not me. I’m as hard as a rock and I am not led by anybody. Do you know that you are led by your newspaper, your radio, the magazines? You’re led by Billboard, your schooling, your education, the people that talk to you. You are led by the history that you have read. You are led by the friends and associates and social companions. You are led, but you just don’t know it.

I have been hearing of something that I think; Mr. Chase and I sometimes say good naturedly, that if it gets any worse, we’ll hunt a cave and become monks. I don’t think we ever will, but under circumstances, but I’m inclined a little more that way lately because I’ve heard of a strange thing. It is a subconscious, subaudible advertising they’re putting on now on the radio. Your subconscious hears it but you don’t hear it. You can hear, God knows, you can hear an anthem sung now in favor of everything.

But they are now not only going to give you the ones you can hear, but they now are giving you ones that come through on a wavelength that your ear doesn’t receive, but your subconscious gets. And they keep plugging away at you like that. What is that but brainwashing? I wonder if we ought not to write our Senator and ask him if we can’t stop a thing like that. Who knows, one of these days when he’s going to rush out and buy a pink elephant? And his wife will say what’s the matter with you, Charles? Well, Charles said, I don’t really know. It just came on me, a desire to buy a pink elephant. And somewhere in Washington or New York or Chicago Loop, somebody has been advertising pink elephants on the subaudible wavelength.

And so, our subconscious gets all worked up. You’re being led Brother, don’t forget it; and you’re being brainwashed. But it just depends upon who does it. If the Lord does it; if the Holy Ghost, does it, if it’s washed by the water of the Word, then blessed are you. But you can be led astray. And the Scripture says watch it, that ye be led not astray.

Now, grow in grace rather than be led astray. Grow in grace. And I want to point out to you that whether it’s a child or a garden, it has got to be cared for. There’s got to be watchfulness and use of means. If you do not use means, we have a wilderness because nature will grow whether we like it or not. And the only way you can have a garden is to use means and care and thoughtful planning. Because if you don’t use thoughtful planning and take care, you will have something growing out there all right, because nature will grow. But you’ll have a wilderness. And the difference between a wilderness and a garden is that the wilderness grows without planning and the gardens is carefully planned. Grow in grace. Grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

I talked last week about backsliding, and I think it had some effect, because I’ve had a number of people talk about it, and not talk critically about it. That is, I didn’t hear the criticisms if there were any. I heard the other side. But have you ever stopped to think how many times we’ve gone to altars and knelt at chairs and benches, and prayed and stood when the evangelists asked us to and have gone forward and renewed our vows and consecrations? Have you ever thought how often we’ve done that? Well, a lot have done it and I wonder how many have gone on then and grown in grace.

The Word of God says it is better not to vow than to vow and not pay. But the Bible heroes vowed and kept their vows. And the Christian heroes since Bible times vowed and kept their vows. And there are those living now who have made vows and kept them. But we stand and we reaccert our vows and reconsecrate over and over and over and over again down the years. It’s like getting married again, taking your vows over and over and over and over again. Every time a new voice is heard, we come and take our marriage vows over again. I think it’s silly. But we might as well do that as to be doing all of this vowing and standing and promising and never doing anything about it. It’s better to vow and pay, but it’s better not to vow than to vow and not pay.

I have been reading about this Henry Suso, Heinrich Suso. This Henry Suso, if you will allow us to anglicize him. He was an old Saint and I just been reading again about his conversion. He began to serve the Lord when he was, let’s see, five off 18 would make 13, wouldn’t it. When he was about 13, but he got no place. And he said he was quite contented just to keep out of the sins that would spoil his reputation. But as he went on trying to live a good life, why, a conviction for sin came on him. And he got under the burden, not only for the sins that would have ruined his reputation, but for the sins that would have ruined his relations with God. So suddenly, instantaneously, he was converted; converted just as suddenly and instantaneously as the flash of an eyelash.

Well, immediately after he was converted, he began to get moved inwardly to become a saint, to become a saintly young fellow. He was 18 then, and to seek the face of God and to put the world behind him and the flesh under his feet. And he said, immediately, the voice of the tempter said to him, now Henry, it’s alright for you to be a Christian the way you’ve been, but you know, this, this saintly business, this desire to be an unusual Christian, that’s awfully easy to talk about, but it’s awfully hard to do.

And he said, he answered back and said, well, but God can help me. And he said, the voice of the Tempter said, Henry, God can help you, but will He? And he said, he went to the Word of God in prayer and settled that one. Then he said, I found that God not only could, but was willing to help anybody who wraughts righteousness in His name. So, when the voice of the Tempter couldn’t get any further with him that way, why, the tempter got awfully smooth and soft and patted his back and said, All right, Henry, it’s very good that God will help you. There’s no question about that. But now why make a production out of it? Why push it so far? And why be unlike other people. Take it easy. Eat and drink and relax and be like the other Christians around you. They expect to go to heaven. Why should you want to be any different from what they are?

Well, that was convincing enough, so he went to the Lord about that. And he said the voice of Eternal Wisdom said to me. I don’t know what that was. It could have been the Holy Ghost or the Scriptures or the voice of God in him. But he said, the voice of Eternal Wisdom said to him, Henry, anybody who tries to catch a slippery eel by the tail, or who will try to begin the saintly life with a cool, lukewarm heart, both are foolish men. Henry heard that, and God said, Henry, don’t let him talk you out of it. Remember one thing? Anybody who thinks he can serve God and live for the world is a fool. Don’t try it. So, Henry said, all right, God, I will go on and I’ll put the world and the flesh under my feet and sin behind me.

And he went awhile, and he was young, and he began to get discouraged. He had no help. So, he said, not having any help, I taught some of my Christian friends for a bit of consolation. And he said they shrugged and raised their eyebrows and said, no, I can’t do it. This kind of thing can never come to any good end; this yearning after holiness, this desire to be all out on God’s side. We knew nothing good would come out of it.

So he apologized and said, O God, he said, it’s my fault. He said, I wouldn’t have had to hear them if I hadn’t gone and listened to them. So, he apologized. But he went on and he became one of the greatest saints of the 14th century. And today, we sing his hymns. And today, we warm our hearts at the fire of His mighty devotion. But he had some temptations to put behind him, some vows to keep. He listened to the voice of the Tempter and answered it in the name of the Lord. And when he couldn’t get any help from his Christian friends, he said, I decided to go it alone. It wasn’t very long until he had others following him.

It’ll always be so. When you start out, determine that you’re going to have the best God has for you, you won’t have many who will understand you, but it won’t be very long until people come to you. And the numbers are growing. And I stand in great encouragement to tell you that the number of those who are determined to put away, not only sin and the world and the flesh, but degenerate and decay in Christianity behind them and serve God after the Bible pattern–they’re growing.

Mr. McAfee comes and tells me about a Dutch Reformed preacher from where? Holland, Michigan. And I just talked to a Presbyterian pastor the other day. Why, there are hungry men seeking the face of God, not many, but they’re growing in numbers. And they come up out of not only one group, but they come up out of where you wouldn’t expect them at all, seeking the face of God. They are there. You won’t find many, but you’ll find some.

And now grow in grace. How can I grow in grace? There won’t be anything new here in this brief recital from here on. But you should hear it again, or you should hear it until you do something about it. Why, have you been reading the Word of God with meditation? Have you read a good portion of the Book daily, the sincere milk of the word. You haven’t? How do you expect to grow in grace? How do you expect to keep healthy and resist the inroads of the virus of sin? How do you expect to be saved from the epidemic of iniquity that’s all throughout the land, a pandemic, indeed, for it’s everywhere.

Do you make time for private prayer? You come to church on Sunday. But if this is all you get, you certainly are in grave danger spiritually. Make time for private prayer and then learn to pray as you go. Learn to put things out of your mind. Sometimes I wake up at night and lo and behold, I’m thinking about myself, or something related to me or my family and I push it from me and say, O Holy Father, Holy Trinity, blessed Holy Savior, and try to turn my mind away from even my family and myself, because naturally we gravitate to ourselves and our people. And on certain times, that’s perfectly proper. God has given you your family to take care of them.

But I tell you, we ought to learn to pray when we go and as we go. And then I think we ought also to improve our mental attitude in church. I’m not satisfied at all with our church services. I’m not pleased, partly my fault, party my ignorance, partly my lack of insight and spirituality, but I think we all ought to join to see whether we can’t improve our mental attitude in church. Instead of joking out in front and joking up the stairway and all the rest, we ought to come with reverence, not into a building. There’s nothing holy about this building of bricks, but into the presence of the great God, O God is here. Let us adore and own how holy is this place.

So, let’s improve our mental attitude. Some are grieving God very greatly by their attitude in church, whispering, passing notes, and, or bored with the whole business. If the preaching is so bad, that it bores you, go somewhere else. Don’t come here and endure me. I mean that. I’m not being nasty. I just mean that. If I’m inflicting something on you that puts you to sleep, in God’s name, pray me out of here and get somebody that will keep you awake. But, if your sleepiness lies in your own heart, in your own failure to appreciate spiritual things, then let’s put the blame where it belongs. If it’s on me, I’ll take it. But if it’s on you, will you take it? And let us ask God whether we can’t improve our mental attitude. We’re grieving God. I’m sure we’re grieving God by our failures. We’re grieving Him by our failures in this thing.

And then, we ought to read. We ought to read good books. If you’re over 10 years old, you ought not to read Christian fiction at all. Throw it out. You ought to read good books. There are good biographies. I was called to preach by reading a biography of a southern preacher. God’s spoke to my heart when I read that biography. And there are missionaries all over the world that were called of God while they read, say, the life of Livingstone, the book that the Sunday school gave to some of the graduates this morning. So, let’s get a hold of good books. You don’t have to read trash.

Somebody says, oh, Mr. Tozer, I admit I don’t read but I just don’t have time. How much time do you spend waiting? Now, I ask you, how much time do you spend waiting? You know, I read lots of books. But you know, I rarely sit down to a book reading session, very rarely. I read them in between time. I take a bus up here and I read on the bus. I ride downtown; I read on the train. I wait for a train, and I read then. I wait to go to bed at night when I’m riding on a train, and I read then. You can get it read if you want to do it bad enough. So, while you’re waiting and while you’re arriving, and put some other things away, and read some good books, Christian biography, Christian devotional books, good sound, hard Christian theology. Read up on it, get it into your heart and so improve yourself.

And then take your stand as a witness and let people know where you stand. They’re feeding us now a soft, baby, pre-cooked mash that any baby could eat. It’s the mash of toleration and brotherhood. Don’t hurt anybody’s feelings. If you’re with anybody and you find he’s a Roman Catholic, don’t hurt his feelings at all by talking about the Savior because he’s got his religion. If you find he’s an atheist, don’t, don’t hurt him. Be tolerant. Be kind. Be brotherly. And the more they feed us that tasteless mash, the further we get separated from each other and the worse the nations hate each other. In the hour when we are being brainwashed from Washington on the subject of toleration and brotherhood and religion, we’re getting further and further apart, and our bombs are getting bigger and our guided missiles longer and our ability to kill more terrible. So, the whole thing is hogwash, and ought to be recognized as such. Be a witness For Jesus Christ. Tell somebody not later than tomorrow morning that you’re a Christian see what it does for you.

I remember when I was a very young Christian, another fellow and I, just two of us, neither one of us could sing, so we didn’t have a singing service, but we used to ride to Kent, Ohio. Kent, Ohio was a little town. We went to the mayor and asked him whether we could have street meetings. He took us good naturedly. I think rather with a grain of salt or maybe a whole pinch and said, sure, sure boys, you can have street meetings. And we used to go up there like an ox to the slaughter, you know, hating to do it. Oh, how I hated it because I never was much for approaching people anyway. I’d never make a salesman. I would walk past the door five times rather than push the button, the doorbell; but we’d get up on the street and I’d start to yell. And somebody would say, well now, just exactly what happened to him? And they would turn around and begin to gather and pretty soon in that little town of Kent, I would have great crowd listen to me.

And my brother-in-law was along. And he wasn’t anything of a preacher. He was a slow-talking southerner who kept his voice low. But His face shone in those days with the light of God. And after I had preached until I had worn myself out, I put him on to testify. And then after we would close, we would get on what they call nowadays, an inter-urban, a streetcar that ran between towns. Oh, what a relaxation and joy and delight on the way home. I had done it. I didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t the thing I liked to do. I’m not born for that kind of thing. I have met men that never saw a stranger.

I know a preacher friend of mine who went up to Washington and the United Nations. And where he was ready to sit and they were waiting on Mrs. Roosevelt, Mrs. Roosevelt, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. My preacher friend walks in, and I don’t know how he wormed it, but somehow, he got in touch with Ms. Roosevelt. And he stood there and talked about God for 15 minutes to Mrs. Roosevelt while United Nations waited. Yeah!

That same fellow went to Eastman Kodak Company, and he walked into with a big smile and said, I want to see the President. Well, the Secretary said the President is in a meeting of the Board of Directors. He can’t see you now. He said, I can’t wait. I want to see the President now. Well, who are you? Well, I’m Reverend so and so. She said, well, I’ll go to him. So, she went off rather tiptoeing in and not knowing whether it means her job, right, but what. She said, you know, Mr. So and so, there’s a preacher outside who wants to see you, a preacher. He says, just relax a few minutes. Have a coffee break, he said, I’ll go talk to preacher.

So, he went out and there stood my friend. And he talked to him about God. And this Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Eastman Kodak Company, a multi-million-dollar concern, broke down and cried and wept like a baby and said, Reverend, I’ve been around this town, I’m well known. But up to now, you’re the first man that ever talked to me about my soul or about Jesus Christ.

And the big shots of the Board of Directors twiddled their thumbs while this preacher, now, he can do that. There, he’s got that. But I couldn’t do that. If I went in and said, I want to see the President, they’d motion to a cop. And they would say, would you lead this, out? Would you lead it out, please. They wouldn’t even say he.

So, you see, brethren, we’re not all alike. And we can’t all do the same thing. But we ought to be at the disposal of the Holy Ghost. And if God leads you to do some hard, impossible thing, go do it. And if you go like an ox to the slaughter, you will come away feeling like a lamb that hasn’t been slaughtered.

Well, and separate yourself from pollution, all kinds of pollution, bad Company, bad habits, bad books. Begin to spread to the light. That’s the positive side of last Sunday’s talk. I talked last Sunday on backsliding and how we are bent to backslide. And I tell you, my friend, there’s a gravitational pull. There’s a moral, gravitational tug that is just as strong as the natural law of gravity. And it’ll pull you down and pull you down and flatten you out and mix you with the earth. And you’ve got to rise above it by taking the means of grace that God affords you; the prayer and the Word of God and the prayer meeting and the church service and testimony and witnessing and praying as you go and mingling with good people. If you can’t find any, then read a book about a good fellow. That’s next best. But somehow see that your fellowship is with the saints.

Many fall from their own steadfastness, because they don’t go clear over on God’s side. They get converted and then they listen to the voice of the Tempter. And the voice of the Tempter says, now take it easy. Take it easy. You see all these Christians? They’re all going to heaven. Why should you be unusual? I stand to tell you, if you won’t be an unusual Christian in this backslidden age, you won’t be much of a Christian at all. For the man who is much of a Christian is bound to be unusual.

If you were all as the whole city of Chicago were composed of little roots, four feet tall, I’d be an unusual man. I’m five foot 10. And in a Christian society where we’re pygmies, the man has got to be determined to be unusual to stand out.

Well, the wrecks are everywhere confirming the Word of God. The sad, miserable wrecks are everywhere. Because iniquity shall abound, the love of the many shall wax cold. But they that continue on to the end, the same shall be saved.

We’ve had that explained away, but it’s in the Book, and Jesus Christ said it and I can’t explain it away. Whatever dispensation that applies to or whomsoever it belongs, the principle lies there. They that persevere the same shall be saved. Somebody would say that’s Arminianism. Brother McAfee was reading out of the Calvinistic catechism to me this morning. You know what it said? It said, the grace of God that saved a man also worked in him to make him persevere and go on. That’s Calvinism mind you. To say that Calvinists say that you get saved and once in grace, always in grace. And from that time on you can put out your wings and you’d be borne home to heaven. They don’t.

That’s a misunderstanding and a misapplication. John Calvin never said it. He believed in a rebirth. He believed in a renewed life. He believed in a Spirit-filled life. He believed in a sanctified life. Why should we hide behind any misinterpretations of ancient theology when the Holy Ghost says, they that continue faithful unto the end, the same shall be saved. Saved up out of the wreck it means of course. Saved up out of the woe of the world. And for the moment it’s not talking about justification, but salvation out from the wreckage and rubble of the world.

Well, shall we go on? There are signs that God is blessing here and there. For a few days, we’ve got the next few days, I am to spend time preaching with James Stewart to the European Evangelistic Society; R.R Brown with Stacy Woods of InterVarsity, with numbers of others; Paris Reidhead and R.S. Roseberry. I don’t know what will come out of it.

But O Brethren, won’t you pray that God somehow or other, there are people everywhere hungry, but we’re not organized. We’re not together, we’re wasting our sweetness on the desert air if you will excuse the expression. I wonder if God won’t raise up some fellow like a Reidhead or somebody else who is young enough and vigorous enough to pull this all together. And perhaps the Holy Ghost will bring a new kind of revival to the world that won’t just scrape the surface but will go down to the roots in human living so that we may be saved from our sins and from ourselves and from the world and from iniquity and from our past and from our present; saved unto a life of saintliness and holiness before God. Won’t you pray? Won’t you spend a lot of time praying for this?

Tonight, I preach my third sermon on worship. I can hardly wait. I could wish I could start now. I had such a marvelous time preparing it. If the music tonight is anything like it was last Sunday night, I look forward to that with great relish and delight. God bless you. Try to come back.

Tags Grace, Growth, Prayer

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Tozer Talks

“Cooperating with God in our Spiritual Lives”

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Cooperating with God in our Spiritual Lives

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 30, 1955

I want to read a passage that I read and preached from at council during the Second World War in New York. It will not be the same sermon, but it’ll be the same text at least the same passage of Scripture. In the 30th chapter of Isaiah beginning with verse 18: Therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you. And therefore, will He be exalted that He may have mercy upon you. For the Lord is a God of judgment. Blessed are all they that wait for Him. For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem. Thou shalt weep no more. He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry. When He shall hear it, He will answer thee. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner anymore, but thine eyes shall see thy teacher. And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee saying, this is the way, walk ye in it. When you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left.

And then, with the verse 26, moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound. Behold, the name of the Lord cometh from far, burning with his anger, and the burden thereof is heavy: his lips are full of indignation, and his tongue as a devouring fire: And his breath, as an overflowing stream, shall reach to the midst of the neck, to sift the nations with the sieve of vanity: and there shall be a bridle in the jaws of the people, causing them to err. Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel. And the Lord shall cause his glorious voice to be heard, and shall shew the lighting down of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and with the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, and tempest, and hailstones.

I think I skipped verse 25, if I did, let me read it, there shall be upon every high mountain, upon every high hill, rivers and streams of waters in the day of the great slaughter and the towers fall. Now, that’s a section from the 30th chapter of Isaiah. And there is a verse in Deuteronomy 5:29, O that there were such a heart in them that they would fear me and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them and with their children forever.

Now, those who attend this church know that while we have a sense of humor, we do not approach the things of God in anything but a serious vein. That we are in dead earnest about the service of God; in dead earnest about what the Bible has to say. In dead serious, earnest about our responsibility to God, the fact that we’re getting along. That time, like an ever-rolling stream is bearing all its sons away. That the world is growing old and the judgment is growing near. And this church, if it must be alone, this church is having no part in the fun and fanfare and noise and pleasure and carnal delights. We are serious-minded men and women. And we take God seriously. So, I want to talk about this and about progress in our spiritual lives and in the life of the church.

Now somebody will say, there goes Mr. Tozer again. He apparently has a feeling that we’re not where we should be, and that there is progress. Our friend Ed Maxey, gave a talk somewhere here in the city. I’m not saying where here a few weeks ago. And there was an old deacon there. And the old deacon came around to him afterwards and said, my brother, the apostle Paul couldn’t live the way you preach. You are setting the standards too high, which you deacons forgive me for saying it’s typical of deacons. I don’t know why that should be, but it’s typical of deacons. Not of the deacons of this church, maybe, but it’s typical. They don’t want anybody to disturb their dead level of mediocrity. They want to be what they are, clear their throat, solemnly lead in prayer extensively on a Sunday morning and not be bothered any or have anybody disturbed the pattern of their lives.

Now, I believe that there must be somebody behind this if we’re going to make any time. I remember hearing about a preacher who was something of a crusader in his day. And he liked to get out and get into the newspapers and was somewhat a little sensational and something of a crusader; and was attacking the wrongs in the city in politics and in society. And somebody took him aside and said, my brother, I admire your zeal and all, but aren’t you a little bit unscriptural in taking out after the devil the way you do? Does not the Bible say that the wicked flees when no man pursues him? And he said, yes, I read that verse, but I’ve always thought he’d make better time if somebody got out after him. He flees when nobody’s after him, but he’ll speed it up when somebody gets after him.

And so in the church of Christ, I suppose there is something natural and normal. Take a little baby. And that baby will grow if it’s neglected. It’ll grow if it is just fed. It’ll grow. It’ll grow even if it’s covered with rash and neglected. It’ll grow. But it’ll do a much nicer job if it has the tender care of its parents. And so a church will grow if you have the seed of God in your heart and the root of the matter is in you. You will make some kind of growth, I suppose. It’s biological necessity that we grow. It’s in us to do it. But we’ll do it with a great deal more precision and correctness if we have somebody to help us along. So, in the moral life and the spiritual life, I suppose we’ll make some progress. Some don’t, but most do. And yet I think that if we would listen to the exhortations and even sometimes to rebukes of men God has sent, we’ll make a great deal better time.

Now, when I say progress, progress in my life, progress in yours and in our church, what do I mean? Do I have some wild, weird, insubstantial, fanatical idea in mind? No, I think not. I mean that there should come upon people a great seriousness. I think you know me well enough to know that I am not a man without a sense of humor. In fact, I’ve had to fight a sense of humor all my life. It has been my biggest hindrance in the pulpit next to my pride. It has been my biggest problem as to how to keep from being funny.

And at home, I am somewhat of a mess, I think. And my sons and daughter know that I can be a tease. But my brethren, before the Holy Throne of God and in the church of God when the believers are assembled to talk about God and Christ and the blood and the future and judgment to come, there’s no place for anything but dead seriousness. And I believe that a dead seriousness ought to be upon the people of God. I believe that we ought to take this whole thing seriously and that never for a moment, should there be anything but gravity when we think about God and Christ. And I’m preaching to Christian people ostensibly now and I therefore make no apology. And when I say that we ought to make progress, I mean that we ought to make progress in seriousness.

And then, I believe that we ought to have a great hunger of God upon us, a great hunger of God. We will only move in the direction of our hunger. You can be certain of that. Everything moves in the direction of its hungers. The sunflower that rises when the sun rises in the morning will turn its broad, yellow face to the sun and will follow the sun all day long and gaze on the setting sun with the same devotion that it gave when that sun rose in the east in the morning. And so, with a potato that is put in a basement. It will by Spring, that was put there in the Fall, climb for the light and begin to push out those brittle, juicy, long, little rootlet affairs. Not a root really, but a stock, and it will climb up to the side of the wall and climb to the light and if it could get through, climb out into the sunshine. The very potato in the basement has a hunger and it will move in the direction of its hunger. And so, it is with everything my friends. You will move in the direction of your hunger.

Some young men get married and establish a home and go in deep for a house. And they figure they’ve got to make a lot of money and I sympathize. It costs 10 times too much to live these days. And I’m certainly sympathetic with every effort of every young man to establish a good home for his family. But if that young man allows money to become his hunger, he will move in the direction of his hunger. Just as sure as he lives, he will move in the direction of his hunger. And the very little newborn creatures, the very newborn calf will stagger to its feet and put its legs all out in four directions and prop itself up and stagger toward the soft, fragrant side of its mother. He moves in the direction of its hunger. And the birds move in the direction of their hunger. Everything does. And it’s not otherwise in the kingdom of God. We move in the direction of our hungers. And when you will become God hungry, you will move in the direction of God and the direction of of spiritual things and eternal things.

I think that if God were to be unkind enough or kind enough, whichever way you view it, to take away the veil of unseen and show us briefly how much we have that’s perishing and how little we have that can’t perish, there would be weeping in this congregation. I believe that if we knew how much that we have is perishing who, who loves any better than I to hold in his hands a tiny little, warm, soft, fragrant baby and yet give that baby a few years and go up through the swift cycle to womanhood or manhood and then go down the other side. And those who helped bring it up to the pike will have long gone when it starts down. Everything parishes, homes parish, cars parish, jobs perish, our children leave us and go. And all that we have set our affections upon that has the stamp of mortality upon it. The stamp of mortality, it all dies. Change and decay and all around I see, O Thou who changes not abide with me.

I hope you’re all going to have a good dinner. I know we’re going to have it. We’re going to have our little grandchildren with us. And we’re going to have a good dinner and I hope you’ll have a good dinner. But my friends, remember this. If God should suddenly show some of you how little you have that can’t perish, you wouldn’t eat a bite. You couldn’t. You would be a miserable distressed person if you walked around and said everything I have is made a celluloid. Made of celluloid, a spark of fire and it will go in a quick blaze and leave me with nothing but gray ashes. O my God, how that moves me. How little I have behind me. How little I have that can last. Now, much that I have given my life to has perished before me and died and gone. And how little there is that is left that can’t perish, gold and silver and precious stones that can abide the fire.

Now my brethren, the most important thing is that we should have a great hunger for God upon us and a great seriousness and a great gravity and a great longing for everlastingness. And then, am I all out of place and fanatical when I say, that when I talk about progress, I mean a new zeal after personal righteousness. Are you as good as you want to be? Are you in there where you feel you’ve arrived and say, thank you, thank you. I accept congratulations for my spiritual growth and my high acquisition in the kingdom of God. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Are you in that place where you’re receiving congratulations from the devil for you are spiritual, or is there a hunger to be better person than you are?

I tell you friends; God will go a long way with a man however many faults he has and however he might be criticized justly for his blemishes. God will go a long way with that man if he knows he’s hungering after righteousness. If God knows that in the heart of a man or woman there is an honest hunger to have to be a better man, God will go a long way with that man. It is when we arrive and start taking bows. And we feel worse with where we ought to be and want to be let alone and say, why doesn’t the fella talk about something else? Why does he want to stir me to be a better man? Well, when we arrive at that place of course, too bad. But I don’t think many of us have. And I don’t think you think I’m fanatical or off the track when I say that we ought to have a new zeal for personal righteousness, that we ought to be better men than we are. Occasionally I get attacked and torn apart.

Recently, a brother told me about a little attack that’s been made against me in one of my books; that I’m sarcastic in a lot of things, and I may be it. But brethren, I don’t mind those attacks for one thing, for one reason, they drive me to God to search my own heart and say, God, please take out of me that which may offend my brethren. Take out to me that quality in my character that makes other people raise the eyebrow and say that fellow claims he’s a Christian and look at the way he acts and talks. I want to be a better man than I am. And if any of you have arrived, God have mercy on your poor, dead soul.

The progress in the Christian life is a constant, a constant progress. We’re always moving up. I mean the Christian life is a constant progress. And if there’s no progress, there’s no Christian life. Paul did not say I have finished my course until he heard the fellow outside wetting a sword. He heard, a wing a wang, a wing a wang. Some fellow had a stone and a sword and he was making that sword sharp and then pulling out a hair and like my father used to do with his razor to see if that was sharp enough or not. And when the sword was ready for the neck of the man of God, he stopped progressing. He said, I have arrived. Thank God I’ve arrived. I’m now ready to die and lay down my life. I have finished my course. I’ve kept the faith and I’m now ready to be offered, and God the righteous judge has a reward for me. Now, I don’t mean that that ended his spiritual progress forever, but I mean that his earthly progress had reached its climax with a whistling sword of the persecutor. And if the man of God, Paul never quite was satisfied with his spiritual life, why should you and I be?

My brethren, it isn’t that I can say, I’ve arrived. Everybody that’s arrived stand up. No, no, that’s not the point. But it’s that we are marching, we’re moving, we’re on the way, we’re going there. We have the life before us and the star that shown over Israel shines over us today and we move in that direction. I don’t want to know how fast the army is traveling. I want to know what direction it’s traveling and I want to know that it’s traveling. So, I’m urging you to this.

And then a new unity of heart among all the people who God. I believe in oneness, oneness. I don’t believe in the oneness that takes in the evil along with good. We talk about these United States of America. But when we use the word united, we mean that there is a union of like mindedness, a union of Republican and Democratic ideas. A union of free ideas, and that our union lies in that which is good. But the moment that we introduce or allow to be introduced anything subversive or destructive of those ideas that holds us together, it’s no longer unity, it’s asininity.

And when we talk about the union of the churches, we mean the union of those who believe in God the Father Almighty and Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord, and in the Holy Ghost, and in the communion of saints and the forgiveness of sins and the life everlasting and the resurrection of the body and the ancient holy faith of our fathers. But it does not mean that I reach out and draw into that union beliefs and ideas and doctrines and notions that would like a torpedo blow me up and sink me, and blow up the church of Christ and sink it. But within every church and among all the churches where God is loved and Christ is believed in, there must be unity; unity of heart whether they go along with us or not, unity of heart in all the sons of God.

Two little boys came selling Christmas cards to our house last week, and my wife wasn’t there. So, I went down and talked with him. They came clear into the dining room with two huge bags full of Christmas cards. One of them was a pronounced brunette and the other one a pronounced blonde. And I said, are you two fellows brothers? They grinned and said they were brothers.

Well now, here was one, a blue-eyed pronounced blonde and the other fellow a dark, dark haired, brunette, and yet they were brothers. One may be a year older than the other; out making themselves a little Christmas money selling cards. God bless the boys. They told me they were of Catholic parents, but they were selling nice cards. Well, we bought some cards. But you know what? They were brothers. The same father, same mother, same home, same environment, same food and probably the same bed for they were about big enough. And yet, one was pronounced blonde and the other equally pronounced brunette. Now, in the kingdom of God, all God’s people don’t look alike. All God’s children got shoes and all God’s children have got a robe and all of God’s children have a father, but they don’t all look alike. I leave a room for variation.

And maybe I told you this, but a gentleman who is a university professor, Northwestern University, incidentally, wrote me a very lovely letter. He said he criticized me in public and his conscience was bothering him and would I please forgive him. And I wrote him back and told him that I didn’t feel bad about that. I didn’t know about it, but beside that, I was harder on people than he was and so let’s just forget. But I said there are so many areas where we can agree, so let’s agree and shake hands and be friends. And I’d like to meet you, a gracious man like you that would write and apologize for criticizing me in public.

Well, brother, that man and I see not together on a certain matter of about what you criticize me. We don’t see together on that, but I feel warm in my heart for that man though I’ve never met him to my knowledge. But I feel warm in my heart. A man who has a tender conscience and a loving Christian spirit that will make you want to apologize for saying what he considered an unkind thing about a brother in Christ. Even though he disagrees with me, he’s my brother, whether he knows it or not. And he does know it. That man knows it.

So, unity, unity, unit, that’s what we need. And we need not the unity of the cemetery; for the most unified and perfectly ordered institution in the whole world is a cemetery. And the least orderly is a kindergarten. The most orderly thing is the cemetery because everybody in it is dead. But in the kindergarten, there’s not so much order, but there’s a lot of growth and vitality.

And so, in a church where there’s growth and vitality, you can expect that some people will be rubbed the wrong way and some people will be criticized. They blame Billy Sunday for rubbing the cat the wrong way. And he said, let the old cat turn around. He wasn’t going to rub it any other direction than the one that he was rubbing. And so, there’s a lot of rubbing the wrong way and occasional sparks, of course there will be. But there was in Jesus’ day among his very disciples. There was in the book of Acts among the very ones who were baptized with the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. But at the same time, there’s a unity that’s deeper than those surface things. So, we want a unity, a great unity of worship, a great unity of devotion, great unity of love and prayer and purpose. We want that and we want a new charity for each other and new concern for the church and for perishing souls.

Now, how are we going to get this? I haven’t much time left. But we’ve got to go along with God in getting it. I know I told you years ago about what John Wesley said a fanatic was. John Wesley says a fanatic is one who seeks desired ends, but ignores the constituted means of obtaining it. That’s a fanatic. A man who wants to reach certain ends, but pays no attention to the means. He’s just going to blunder toward it somehow. Like a boy to stand out on the hill and reach for the moon; he wanted it, but he ignored the desired end. Maybe in another 100 years they’ll be going up with rockets. And then if he’s around he can go. But you can’t get up and pull it down that way. And so, some of our spiritual longings are the results, or at least all we do about it ever is too long. We don’t use the constituted means. But my brethren, God has laid down certain rules and said, O that ye had a heart to obey my word and do my commandments, then you would prosper and then all your children would prosper.

Now we follow certain appointed means, constituted means to quote Wesley exactly, and by following these that God has pointed out plainly for us. And where are they pointed out? They’re pointed out specifically in the Scriptures. And they’re pointed out by the example of the early church and by the experience of the saints down through the years and by the plain indications of reason. And there isn’t anything I ever tell you contrary to reason. And never at any time, when I try to make you see there’s chariots and horses camped around about and chariots and horses of fire around the province of God. Everything can be brought to the sharp criticism of reason. And plain reason, tells us that these things are right. And by setting our hearts to do them and obey the Word and do the things God tells us to, counting upon God to enable us, we can reach the goal.

Now I’m going to give you two points that I want you to consider very seriously and then I will give you some more and finish my talk next Sunday, where God is offering us seven times, the night will be seven times brighter than it was, seven times as bright. The moon will be like the sun seven times as bright in the great day when the towers fall. One point is and I want you to take these down: read with meditation a generous portion of Scripture every day to feed and nourish your heart. People come to me from all over to get counsel and instruction and prayer. And I counseled and pray with people until I’m exhausted sometimes.

And it all comes down to this one thing. You don’t need me. You don’t need my counsel. Go down to these companies and buy yourself a dollar and a half Bible and read your Bible and obey God, then you’ll get along without counsel. We don’t need psychiatrists and pastoral counsel so much as we need to read the Word of God. Read a little of it every day, meditate on it, a generous portion of it. It will feed you and nourish you and give you faith and instruct you. How can you hope to be prepared for heaven, when all the reading you have to do is preparing you for earth? How can you hope to be ready to die when all the reading you do is good only while you live? No, no, meditate on a generous portion of Scripture.

Sometimes when people come to me, I say all right now I find out where they are in their spiritual progress and I say, now here, I want to tell you something. Go to the book of Psalms and read it on your knees every day. Read a Psalm. Meditate on it. Ask God to help you. Ask God to give you light every day when you read some of the Psalms. A new spiritual experience will come into your life on that Book of Psalms, just alone in the book of Psalms to say nothing of all the other great books of the Bible. And then when you read this book, it’ll crowd out some other things that you ought not to be reading for you’re wasting your time on.

So read this book and you will be delighted with the result. I’m positive of it. It will not lead you into any false paths. It will not lead you to any ideals an apostle couldn’t keep. It will not make a fanatic out of you. It will deliver you from fanaticism. For fanaticism means, according to Webster’s definition, that I am hoping for a crown in heaven and doing nothing on earth to obtain it. And I’m singing about the crown that I shall wear and I’m not doing anything toward getting a crown. That’s fanaticism, brethren, not the man who spends an hour on his knees with his open Bible. He’s not the fanatic. He’s the fanatic who comes to church and sings about the starry crown he’s going to wear. And he hasn’t read a book of the Bible for 20 years and he hasn’t prayed an hour for God knows how long. He isn’t living. He isn’t taking constituted means. He isn’t laying hold of the means God has put in his hands. God says, O that thou had such a heart in thee that thou would obey my commandments and walk according to my word. Then should you be prosperous and your children prosperous after you.

So, I say read with meditation, and this is last. Make time for private prayer. Find a way to do it somehow or other. Find a way to do it. You say, well, I can’t pray. I don’t have the time. I dash out in the morning and I grab the train. I don’t have time to pray. My brother, how can you expect to grow in grace if you don’t take the means toward that growth? You ought to pray every day. You want to learn that habit of praying every day. And you ought to wait on God every day. I recommend this to you in the morning instead of the Tribune. I recommend that your hymnbook sits beside you off to the left. Your wife won’t mind that. Look at a hymn.

The other morning, I got up early, and my wife hadn’t been well and so I got up and got my breakfast. And here I ran on: when morning guilds the sky my heart awaking cries, let Jesus Christ be praised. And I’ve been singing it ever since. And I said to myself, why should I ever read anything else in the morning except something like this. Let Jesus Christ be praised. In all our work and prayer, we ask his loving care.

Brethren, you can if you will, turn your shadowy day into the brightness of new if you will begin with the Bible and then you will make time for prayer. And you will memorize a hymn or two and begin to hum it in your heart as you go along. Now, don’t do what the Moody student did. Ray and I were on a street car one time when they still had street cars on Halsted, and we heard somebody whistling gospel songs and he had a ventriloquist effect. We couldn’t tell where he was. Finally, Ray hunted him up. He was a big, friendly Moody student. And he felt I guess that he wanted to have an evangelistic service. So, he was whistling gospel songs on the street cars. It’s all right only I wouldn’t do it, and I don’t recommend you do it, although it’s alright, if you want to do it you understand. I’m not condemning, I’m just saying that I wouldn’t feel I would want to do it. I couldn’t carry the tune that much anyhow.

But when I’m singing in my heart nobody knows when I’m flat. When I’m singing in my heart, nobody knows when I miss the tune. When I start, I say don’t you like this hymn and I started one at home. And then there are some giggles, and I’ve got two tunes consumed and I’m singing one of one and another of the other. But I don’t mind it because inside of my heart, nobody knows it. And I’ve got the words in God’s hearing the song and I’m sure that it’s just as good as Beverly Shea in the ears of God. Because it’s the heart of a worshiping man singing in his poor way.

So, all right now, I’ve got some tougher stuff to say to you next week. I asked God to pray for you. I am going to preach at Keswick downtown and ask Ray to pray for you to God. I was going to preach at Keswick downtown here and Dr. Thomas, Dr. John Thomas of the St. Paul Union Church was just leaving. He said, I’m sorry, Mr. Tozer, I can’t stay for the sermon but he said, knowing you, I’ve prayed for your congregation. He said, I know what you’re going to do and he said good-naturedly and ducked out.

Brethren, next Sunday morning, if you can’t take it don’t come to church. Because I want to talk bluntly and frankly about some things that I think are going on among us that ought to stop and some new habits we ought to form and some older we ought to quit. And I’m preaching out of my own heart as brother Chase read to me this morning something some old preacher had written. I am not standing up saying here am I. I have kept the law. I’ve done righteousness. No, no, no, I’m a man that has by act and by spirit, broken all the commandments of God including the last one, to love my God and my brother.

But I have found my way to Calvary’s bloodstained cross and been forgiven and cleansed and in meekness and humility. With the boldness of a prophet, I can tell you that there are some things we’re going to have to do if we’ll ever have the blessing of God on us as we should. And I want to continue and finish this sermon next Sunday morning. So, pray for me and come back. All right.

Tags Christian Living, Growth

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Tozer Talks

Post author By pshappard
Post date October 9, 2022

“The Cruel, But Effectual Plow in Fallow Ground“

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The Cruel, But Effectual Plow in Fallow Ground

Pastor and author, A.W. Tozer

December 30, 1956

Now, about 18 years ago, I preached a sermon, and then it got written up and got into a booklet. And I’ve steered away from ever preaching it since, because I didn’t want to repeat myself. I’ve been told wryly by certain people that they have heard men who’ve written books, preach their old chapters over again and they have sat in the back of the of the church and gone over word for word, the chapter. And the way they told me about it, I concluded it wasn’t a very acceptable thing to do. So, I’ve tried to steer away from it. But I feel I’ve just got to go back and preach again on the text. Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.

My old friend, Burt Miller back there, may have heard me preach on this once out in Ohio. If he did, he’s going to hear it again. Because I want to talk to you about certain truths that underlie this text. Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy and then particularly this, break up your fallow ground for it is time to seek the Lord. I told you this morning that I did not want at the end of the year to talk about what had been and scold you about it, but rather talk about what could be and what is to come. Now we’ll proceed.

Here are two kinds of ground mentioned, fallow ground and plowed ground. And I don’t know what you, in your part of the country mean when you say, fallow ground, because the scientific farmers use the word otherwise than what it was used in Bible days and out where I came from, before there were scientific days. But here are two kinds of ground, fallow ground and plowed. Now what is fallow ground? Well, fallow ground is ground that may be fertile alright, that doesn’t need to be necessarily, but it can be fertile ground. But it has been allowed to run waste.

And there it lies, this piece of ground as safe and smug, and I suppose, well satisfied with itself. No doubt it’s collecting the tradition and buttons for attendance at Sunday school. But it’s a safe, smug, self-satisfied, at ease in Zion affair. And the result of it is, nothing grows on it but green briars and burdock because nothing’s been planted on it and it hasn’t been plowed up. It’s just lying there. Its potentialities are tremendous, but it’s not getting anything done to it, so it lies there. It has no life in it. No miracle of life is present here, because it’s lying fallow, it has protected itself. No doubt it can turn to its constitution and justify its fallowness by Article 3 and by the marginal note showing that it was changed at a council in 1916. But there it lies nevertheless, fallow and there’s nothing growing on it. The blue jay won’t light on it except by mistake because there isn’t any reason why he should. There’s nothing there. It’s simply fallow ground. And then the farmer decides that he’d better put that back in production again. So, he gets out a plow.

Now, a plow was never a pleasant thing, never. Plows are not meant to be pleasant. They do not have pearl handles on them. And they have never been made soft. There never was soft plow yet. So, the farmer gets out his plow, and in olden times, his horses or oxen, back in the days when this was written. And that cruel plow goes to work on this smug, self-satisfied field that’s been lying there so long that it’s gotten gray with tradition. It’s got a beard on it because it’s been there, well-satisfied and content.

But now the plow starts. And so, there’s first the disturbance, and then it’s travailing and it’s pained and bruised and it’s unprotected. There’s one thing about a field, it can’t be protected and plowed at the same time. It just can’t be. A field has to have its fences, at least part of it, taken away so that the plow can get in. So begins the plowing. And if a field could bleed, it would bleed. And if it could mourn, it would mourn. If it could weep, it would weep. If it could suffer, it would suffer. For everything is going on there to make it suffer.

And so round and round go the oxen or the horses, and round and round until it has been thoroughly plowed. Not scratched on the surface, but plowed down deep. And somebody who doesn’t understand, watching the plow, would say, what a cruel man that farmer is. Why, I remember that field for nine years now, and it’s been one of the nicest little old green briar patches in the world, ground squirrels, and blue jays. But now look what he’s doing. He’s plowing it up. He’s cruel, that man. And they won’t come to hear him preach.

But nevertheless, I want to tell you what happens when you get your ground plowed up. After the plow has done its work and that field has had its smugness knocked out of it, and its safety removed and his protection taken away from it, and it knows what it is to be attacked and invaded and chopped up and chewed down and chewed out, and got mad by the plow. Then the wonder of life begins. That which had been lying and only now potential, now becomes a wonderful field full of life with bursting seed and life, and there’s birth and growth and there’s the hand of God manifested in corn or wheat or whatever it may be. And people who go by say, look what a comeback that field made. While I remember when it was an old, infertile thing lying there. But now look at it, why, the wheat’s as tall as a man bent over, with great, brown golden heads of wheat. Well, that’s what happens when the plow gets at the field.

Now, that’s the illustration only. But the application is, that there are two kinds of lives. There’s the fallow life and the plowed life. The fallow life is the contented life. That is, he’s the Christian who is quite satisfied with himself. He’s at ease and he has slowly grown a protective shell. He’s heard all the preachers on the radio and off. And he’s read everything so that he has grown a protective shell, and you can get at him. He’s protected. There he is. God can’t even get at him, because God didn’t say, I’m going to plow your ground. He didn’t say that. God didn’t say, I’m going to plow your ground. God can’t even plow him, because he’s too well-satisfied with himself.

And I don’t mind telling you I hate to wash our linen in public and talk before company, but I don’t mind saying to you that one of the heartaches of my life is that a number of our people and some of you may be here now. A number of our people have grown old and gray in this church, and you’re as fallow and as unproductive as you were when I came here, a black-haired stripling, 28 years ago. And I say that’s a tragedy too terrible. The only thing that’s changed about you is the color of your hair. You’re still the same fallow person you were before. Because you’ve thrown up a protective shield. You will not let anything get after. You’ve built a religious fence around yourself, and you’ve come to approve yourself. But do you know what’s wrong? There is no fruit and there is no growth. And there is no miracle of life, and there’s no wonder of bursting seed, and there’s no miracle of springing fruit. There isn’t anything there but a fallow life.

And the churches of this country brother are full of them. The churches are full of them, fallow lives. They’ve been on the board since the year 1, and they will be there yet, at the end of time. And there they are, religious fellows that there’s no more love, no more tenderness. They’ve never ripened any. There is no mellowness There is no evidence of penetration, no spiritual insight. No, no upward rush of spiritual life, but they’ve remained just what they were because they’ve protected themselves from the plow. They won’t let the Holy Ghost get to them. And there are some of us like that here tonight. We just won’t let the Holy Ghost get to us. We have become what they called blasé. And I think that’s French for dead. Anyhow, it’s French for burned out and dull and sophisticated and a state of just having heard everything, a perpetual yawn inside of their soul. And there isn’t anything that will stir them, no matter who comes to preach. They will come and listen, but they won’t let the plow ever get to them.

Then thank god, there’s the other kind, and we’ve had a lot of them around here and some of them are on the mission field Brother. Some of them are preaching the gospel in various parts of this country and some of them are still with us. And I’ve watched you grow and lived beside you, and in some instances, sat on the committees with you and watched you grow. Well, that’s the plowed life.

Now, what does that mean? It means that you begin to get discontented with your crop of green briars and burdock, and you’ve decided that you’d like to be a fruitful Christian. That you’re weary of producing nothing. That the Son of God’s love beats down, but only bakes you. And the rain of God comes down as sweet and merciful upon you, and yet doesn’t do you any good, and you’re getting weary.

Now, the first step toward any progress in the spiritual life is discontentment. And don’t you let anybody take a New Testament and try to take away your discontent. I am weary of these counselors whose whole job in life is to make everybody satisfied with his spiritual state. I say we need to be dug up sometimes. Not all the time, but plowed occasionally. Now, the plow only went in there once a year, but it did a fine job while it was there. And so discontent, dissatisfaction, and when would there be a time when normally and psychologically, we’d get discontented anymore than now.

We stand only a breath away from the New Year. And you’ve got behind you old ’56 with her troubles and her miseries and her scares and her frights and her weariness. Now look back over it. Are you satisfied with it? Have you been what you should have been? Have you followed God as you should have followed Him? Are you contented with 1956 and with yourself? If you are, then you might just as well go to sleep because I have nothing to say to you. You have got to be discontented before there can be anything else.

Then there must come contrition. There must come a sorrow of heart, and down go the fences. And there must come pain of heart, and we must put ourselves in peril. There must come a stirring up and a humbling and a seeking and a confessing and the going down before God either in church or in private. I don’t care which. I have gotten more from God alone in my own room by myself than I ever did any time anywhere with a company of people. And if you want to do it that way, it’s all right with you. All I’m afraid of is, that if you get out of here, you won’t. And so we insist sometimes that people come and do it publicly, because we know if we let them go, they won’t do it privately. That’s the only reason I ever give invitations, because I don’t care where your knees are resting. But I only know that if there’s a humbling and a seeking and a confessing, there will be preparation for progress at least.

And so that is the cruel plow. That’s the cruel plow. And the man who uses it, or who even exhorts toward it as a rule, isn’t a very popular man. I have noticed that the popular preachers of the day are very careful to be so general, that the plow point never gets in. That’s why we can have campaigns and not have any lasting results, or not raise the moral standards of the country. That’s why we can boast of 100 million church members in America, at the same time, sadly, admit the lowest moral standards in the nation’s history, all one at the same time. More church members and worst sinners, and very often, they’re the same people.

Now, that cruel plow, the odd thing about that is you’ve got to use it yourself. Nobody else can use it. You’ve got to take the protection away from yourself and take the shell off and let the Holy Ghost get to you. And if you do that, then comes the new life. Then comes the wonder then comes that miracle of new life. Then comes the manifestations of God. Then comes fruit and birth and life. And people go by and say, what happened to this fellow? He’s made a comeback. Why, I remember when you looked at him, it was as much as your life was worth. He gave you the half wham just looking at you. He was a cold fundamentalist, satisfied with himself. But now, bless me, he’s warm and fragrant and vibrant and full of something. What happened to him? Well, he got plowed up, and God Almighty poured seed in there, and the kind rains of Heaven came down and the sun warmed it by day. And now the miracle of life has taken place.

Now my friend, religious history shows these two phases, the dynamic or plowed life, when there’s advance and victory and growth and miracle and life, and the static or fallow phase, when there is safety and protection and weakness and silence and barrenness. That’s why I don’t stand always with my own Society, because I see that as we get more and more barren, and more and more fallow, we multiply protective regulations so nobody can get to us. And we’re dying by inches, because we will not expose ourselves. The old days our brother told about back there, 1897, when man had nothing but the will of God, their two knees and faith. Why, that was the day of breaking open things and doing things in the Alliance. But we’re so protected now that God Almighty couldn’t withdraw his forces from us for ten years and we wouldn’t find it out, because we’ve got it all regulated and looked at. And I want this church, we’ve got its constitution, but it’s so skeletal and necessary under law that we have it or I wouldn’t even have that. Because I find that when Christians are growing, they’ve got nothing but God. When they’re dying, they have regulations to protect them from finding it out.

Now, my brethren, these two phases are here, and they’re in church history. I don’t want to belabor it, but only point out that there was an old man one time. He had been young, but now he was a pretty old man. I can see him as a tall, upright old man with quite a beard, dignified and stately. For he never but once in his life did anything that wasn’t dignified that I can find in the Scriptures and his name was Abram. And he was in Ur of the Chaldees, thoroughly fallow, satisfied with Abram, quite, and making idols history tells us. And therefore, it was quite alright, thank you, a respectable religionist, and he was a statistic.

And then one day a strange moving came on his heart and he got discontented, and he walked around looking for somebody to talk to and nobody could understand him. And then when he did dare to bare his heart to somebody they said, now, keep calm brother, don’t get too stirred up. Religion will drive you insane if you to get too stirred up, you know. Psychiatry has proved that. So, Abraham had to get away and throw off each of the “go crazy” fellows and pulled up stakes and uprouted himself and started for a land he had never been in before, not knowing where he was going. Talk about plowing a man up. That was it, sir. He didn’t know his destination. He got his ticket and it was blank. And God said, now, you go but you don’t know where you’re going. But Abraham said, God, do you? And God said yes and Abraham said, that’s enough. And then started the fruit, fruit abundant began to flow out of the man’s life.

Well, then there was Israel in Egypt. You remember how Israel in Egypt, with no power, no victory, no advance, no life, multiplying physically, but having no spiritual life at all. For 100 years, Israel lay fallow, out of the will of God, or at least out of the directive will of God. And then one day God called a man named Moses. And Moses answered the call and went and said, let my people go. And out from Egypt there came a people, a disturbed people, an uprooted people, the people who were leaving or was for they were the people of Israel, leaving the old land and going out where they scarcely knew. And then came the miracle and the cloud of the fire and the crossing of the Red Sea and the manna and the wonder of God’s leadership, all because they got out of that old sandy deathbed where they’d been for 400 years. They had exchanged the static situation for the dynamic.

And then came the Judges. When you read the Judges you will find that there would be periods when Israel would go completely static and fallow. She would lie under the control of some foreign nation, then God would raise up some wild fellow who hadn’t much education or culture but who knew God. And Ehud or Samson or somebody would rise up and do strange disturbing things. And the plow would go into the soil, and Israel would have a renaissance and would come back to life again for a while and the blessing of God would begin to flow.

Well then, under the time the long cressence before Christ’s time, broken only on the surface by the Maccabees. But there was that long period between Malachi and the birth of Jesus, 400 years about, between the strange man named Malachi, that means a messenger of God. That’s all we know about him. History can’t locate the man. But he wrote that terrible, wonderful four chapters of Malachi.

But oh, after that, for 400 long years, there was the fallow ground. There was the static situation. Israel wasn’t growing. She was so dead, so infertile, that when the Prophet talked about the coming of Christ, he called Him a root out of a dry ground. He was born in a miracle out of the dry ground, for Israel was a dry ground. And then when Jesus came and the Gospels began to take place, the events of the Gospels and then the death and resurrection of our Savior and the book of Acts, the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.

And then came the miracles and the wonder. Then came the spread of the gospel. Then heaven opened and shown in its fullest glory. And what had been 400 years of drought, now became a long period of fruitfulness and power. And the rain descended and the floods came and the sun by day and the moon by night, and the plow and the uprooting and the disturbance and the persecution and the praying and the long vigils with God, and the disturbed upset patterning of our pattern of our living. Now, that came when their plow got in. Now that’s the way history shows it you see. I’m illustrating from history, and nobody can gain say it nor deny this is so.

And then there was that long period after the awakening of learning in the Middle Ages, or a little after. And then came Erasmus and the rest of them, the humanists, and they began to do translate and just rediscover the writings of the old Greeks and the rest. And men began to plow themselves up mentally. And they had what is called the Renaissance.

And then about that time also, there came that great big ploughman, we call Martin Luther. Now he was rough, and for an educated man, and for a man as brilliant as he was, for don’t forget, he was not only brilliant, but he was one of the great musicians of his time and composers. And yet he was as rough as a bull, literally. And there came that great big fellow. Now, if it had been some soft rubber-nose plow that was out to be kind to people, and remember they’re just dust, there never would have been any reformation, and you would have been kissing the cardinal’s ring come next Wednesday. And you would never have known the gospel that set you free. But this great big rough fellow had a plow. I think personally, he went down in too deep and hurt people just kind of because he wanted to. But he did it anyhow.

And Erasmus, the polished white-handed scholar who knew so much and did so little and who refused to go along although he believed in the evangelical movement. He wouldn’t go along with it because he said he wasn’t called to revolution. He was called to educate people. But Martin Luther was called to get people converted. And then we had the Reformation. And a nation was born and the Bible was released from its chains in the monasteries and got out among the plain people, so the German youth could read the Scripture and memorize it and quote it as he followed the oxen. And then followed after that period, periods of theory and indoctrination and marking of time, static periods, broken only occasionally by ploughman who came and put in the plow.

Revivals, we call them now in history and there they are. It’s not the wild imagining of an excited preacher. They’re there in history. They’re there, revivals in Ireland, revival in Wales, revival in England, revival in New England, revival in the middle western part of the United States under Finney, revival in Korea, revival in China under Sung. Those periods when a ploughman arrived, and men began to plow up their own hearts. And the periods of theory and a time marking were all broken up, and the plow was put in. Then men did daring things, and they’re walked out in the midst of danger. They did dangerous things.

But nowadays, I want to preach on it some time, but nowadays, our young people, they lack the spirit of daring in their Christian lives. They’ve got to be played into the Kingdom, entertained when they’re there and jockeyed along and fed out of a bottle, and nobody talk rough to them for fear they’ll backslide. And treated like a house plant raised inside, watched over lest they be told that there’s something dangerous in the gospel.

Brother, there is something dangerous in the gospel. There is a no and a yes in the gospel and the no means death and the yes means life. There is a cross and a resurrection in the Gospel. And the cross means death and the resurrection means life. There is a plow and there is fruit. And there is never any fruit before there’s a plow. And to tell our young people as is being done up and down the land, to tell our young people that it’s fun serving Jesus is to tell them a lie that may damn their souls. The cross of Christ is not fun. The cross of Christ is the instrument of your death. And up out of your stony grief and up out of your Joseph’s new tomb, God will bring you in life and wonder, and there’ll be blessing and fruitfulness and there may even be joy that you can’t contain. But it will not be the cheap joy that’s being offered by those who lead our young people astray.

And I’d rather preach to a few young people who have maturity enough to come out to hear me preach, than to preach to 10,000 of them who want only to be entertained, or who want to be told the grand lie that Christianity is another form of entertainment and that you can be, have a lot of fun following the Lord. Have you ever found much fun in it, brother, down there where your life was in danger? I have no trouble at home. I have no trouble with my family. I have no financial troubles. I’m not particularly sick though my family claims I’m neurotic on the subject. But there’s nothing wrong with me. We get along all right. There’s never an unpleasant word or thought between us. I’m not in trouble and yet I have a heart ache two thirds of the time.

But it’s a heartache for the church. Not only this one, but a heartache for the church of God. The heartache for bad evangelism and mislead young people. A heartache for the honky-tonks and juke-joints that pass for Christian churches these days. And I got a heartache for it. No trouble at home, nothing to worry about. I own this suit. It’s paid for. And I know I’m going to get my breakfast. And nobody’s after me. But there’s a heartache, a self-imposed plowing that keeps going on all the time in my heart, not always with the same intensity I suppose, but certainly keeps going all the time in my heart. Why are God’s people so insufferably stupid? Why are the dear sheep of God so easily led astray?

In an ad that I have seen in some of our current religious magazines, there is a fellow, a round-faced fellow that would look like a Christian whether he was or not. You know, he’s got a built-in smile there that he got from his mother in overeating, and he’s written a book. And the advertising for the book is this, “Now, Soul Winning is Easy.” Get his book and soul winning is easy. And to get a few dirty dollars, the magazines publish that stuff and except the money, or else they don’t know any better. But imagine saying, soul winning is easy, my brother. Soul winning is easy. Soul winning is no easier than giving birth to a child. Soul winning just can’t be done by rule of thumb. And it can’t be done. after any methods known by a man or that can be put into a book and sold with royalties attached. You can’t win souls easy. You can make these, what do you call them, these cheap converts that aren’t converts.

Well, anyhow, you can swing them from one religion to another. You can get them to bow their head and say I take Jesus, but you can’t get them converted. For conversion means wrestling a soul loose from hell’s grip, and you don’t do that easy. Getting a man converted means getting him born out of an old deadness into a new life, and that doesn’t come easy. Things are made easy enough and the result is we see all around about us. And so no daring, no danger, no growth, no upset, no plowing, we’re protected and cared for and watched over in order that we might not find out there’s a cross in Christianity. The only cross we know is the one on the church steeple, and the one on the Easter card. But the cross on which He died is carefully hidden behind the door.

My brethren, you can do two things with his talk tonight. You can shake your head and say that’s too rough for me. I preached this sermon 18 years ago on a missionary who is a missionary now, but he was there. Oh, brother, he said, that was brutal. It was brutal, but he went down to the altar. He met God. And he’s been a successful missionary on the field for some years. Brutal maybe. And you can say that man’s too brutal. I’m not coming back. Well, I’ll be sorry If you don’t and it will be another heartache. But I can bear to think. But you can’t dare, you can’t afford to take that attitude, because fruit follows the plow.

God’s power comes when it’s called out and never when the church is in hiding. What I’m worried about here is, we’re too cultured. We know too much. We’re too well educated. We’re too smooth. We’ve got it all worked out. And everybody is dressed so neatly. And nobody’s in trouble with himself. That’s what I’m worried about. God’s power comes when it’s called out, brethren, and never, never when we’re protecting ourselves. Never when we’re in the rut, never when we’re lying fallow. Never when we’ve got the fence up all the way around. And no matter who the preacher is, he can’t get past our guard. No, never does the power of God come then. Because then it’s satisfaction, and resting on our lees, and sterility and infertility, and borderline death. And then, maybe in a meeting like this, the blessing of the Holy Spirit penetrates the disguise and gets past the shield and gets through to the heart and power is released into the life. And the church dares to do something.

You know what can happen to us friends? We can get middle-aged in our church life the same as we can in our normal physical life. I used to remember when I never walked up a pair of stairs, never. I always ran up the stairs and invariably, two at a time. I used to remember when I never allowed a bus to get away from me. If it was in the same block, I caught it and got on. But you know, I’ve philosophically concluded that’s no way to live. In other words, middle-age caught up with me. And my physical daring is gone.

There was a day when long trips and all. I don’t want to go nowhere now, no sir. Lovely English, but I don’t want to go anyplace. I just want to, if I was a tree, I would just be happy and stay right there. I don’t want to go anywhere. And I never go out of the city but what I wish I was back and hate every inch of the journey. Middle-age brother, and you can get that way in the church. We can drag our feet and sit on our hands and be overcautious and not have any daring nor any aggressiveness.

All right, God says, go ahead. If you want to do it, I’ll just withdraw my power. You just go ahead now and become middle-age in your church life, and go through the routine. Have your elections and your board meetings and your gatherings and go your way and get hard and fallow and fruitless. I can’t do a thing unless you plow yourself up, plow up your fallow ground He said. He didn’t say, ask me to do it. We’ll have no all-night prayer meeting asking God to plow up this church. That would be as ridiculous as asking God to go out and drive you home in your automobile. God is not going to do what you’re supposed to do. God isn’t going to fry your ham and eggs in the breakfast nor perk your coffee. He’s given you sense enough to do it, and then you do it. And there are some things God won’t do. And so, God isn’t going to plow you up. God says, you plow up your fallow ground, for it’s time to seek the Lord.

And then will come miracles, and by miracles I don’t mean necessarily physical manifestations of power, even in healing as precious as that. I tell you; I’ve seen miracles that healing never could touch. I’ve seen an old bum get up and look all around wonder what had happened to him, and go on from there to live a wonderful, happy Christian life. I’ve seen a few homes that were broken, cemented back together again by a miracle of the grace of God. And I’ve seen young people full of nonsense. Not here tonight, I think, or if he is, he’ll forgive me. But I saw a young fella who was hot rod driver, if you please. He loved to zoom around corners, you know, on one wheel. And then one day, McAfee walked up and slapped his back and said, what’s the matter with you? Why don’t you get right with God? That same night I preached and I don’t remember what it was, but the plow went down his back. And He almost ran down that south aisle into this room. And I think his two knees hadn’t more than reached the floor until God met his soul.

Well, he’s in his last year at Nyack now and I got a letter from the Foreign Department and one from the Home Department, asking about him. Do you recommend him? And I wrote a letter of recommendation that would sell an electric fan to an Eskimo. And then they said, do you know anything against him? Well, I said, if there’s anything against him, it’s he’s too enthusiastic. But if that’s a fault, it’s one that’s not very common in our day. That’s a miracle brother. And that’s a bigger miracle than the healing of a cancer, though I’d like to see cancers healed too. If God Almighty in His kindness would deliver people, I’d like to see that. But I’d rather see this kind of thing happen to a young man in the dawn of his life, to change him from an opinionated, young, smart aleck to a happy, glorious, young Christian. That’s a miracle to me. And that’s the kind of miracles I want to see. And the other ones will come along if God wills it.

But my brethren, you have got to follow the plow. And you’ve got to use it and then miracles will follow you. For the safety and security of your life, dare to throw yourself out on God for something new. Do you suppose we dare to do that this year? Are we going to go around the squirrel cage this year, one more year around the squirrel cage? Well, I’m going to tell you something brethren, I’m not. I’m not. If God will help me, I’m not. I’m not boasting. I’m meekly, humbly making a statement. I am not. And if there’s going to be barrenness and continued fallowness and no effort to break it and no intention to do anything about it, then there must be some realignments and some partings of the way. Because I don’t intend to. I will be sixty years old next April 21. And a man my age can’t afford to fool around brother. I haven’t got an awful lot of years ahead of me, maybe. I’m not on my own strength. My family rides me for this. But it’s just realism and common sense. Suppose I put on a fiery red shirt and didn’t even tuck it in and ran around trying to be young? Wouldn’t I look silly? I am just admitting my position is off and I am not going to waste 1957 if God Almighty will help me.

And I have a little book here that I’ve got prayers in that go back to 1937. I keep it somewhere here in one of my, and one of those prayers is this one, O God, let me die right, rather than continue to live wrong. I would rather be right with God with His face in full view and drop over and be lugged out, than to continue to be a fallow, unproductive old man on his way to Carlisle old folks home, worse than he was when he was 30 years old. And I’m not going to have it. By the grace of God, I’m going to keep the plow in my life. And I’m the worst member of this whole outfit. And if God can bless me, he can bless you.

What about you, sir? Are you going to let God help you? Are you going to take the fence down, take the protection away and ask God to help you this new year to dash and dare to go out and believe for something new? If you are, God will work on your side. And only high heaven can visualize what may come to you in 1957, if you’ll put away your carelessness and your smugness and your contentment, and plow yourself up until you bleed.

Now, brethren, we’re going to close this meeting, I’ve had a friend who has been my friend. We call each other by our first names. And I think there are not three people in the world that call me by my first name, and he’s one of them. And I’m going to ask him to come down here after a while when I indicate it and take us before God and asked for help for us.

Now, first of all, who wants prayer, for you? You’ll dare to make this kind of prayer, O God, so arrange providential circumstances for me that I will keep plowing myself up and keep fertile and productive rather than become stale and fallow this year. And no matter what cost God, I want to make progress and go on with Thee so I’ll be a better Christian a year from now than I am now. How many will say, pray for me and stand? Brother, Burton Miller, will you come down here please? My friend, Reverend Burt Miller, evangelist and a man with great success in starting churches and resurrecting old churches. Come on up here Burton. Take us before God’s and ask God to do something for us, this church, and me, and these fellas back here who share my responsibilities and trouble.

O God in the name of thy holy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We would bow the knee and bow the heart tonight with all sincerity. We’ve listened tonight, Lord, with Eternity’s values in view. We refuse to go the way of the world and the flesh and The Devil. We chose tonight to go God’s way in God’s time. Lord, we thank Thee for the plow tonight. We thank Thee Lord it isn’t pearl-handled, but it’s genuine and real. The Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. We feel like we’ve been slain tonight. We thank You for it, Lord. And we will go down before Thee in sackcloth and ashes. We will do it now. And as thy people respond to the call of Thy Spirit through Thy Spirit-anointed servant, Lord, meet us tonight. Meet us in this church, with its long God-blessed history. But Lord, don’t let it get on the shelf. Let better days be ahead, days of revival power and fire. O Lord, were so sick of the sham and the program of today with its likeness and its cheapness so far from the Word of God, we can’t even recognize it. Lord. We go back to the book and back to the blood and back to the way of the Holy Ghost, and we do it now. We do it now Lord, not just by standing up here, raising our hands and going down before Thee on our knees. Give us a spirit of brokenness tonight. Lord, as we meet up with our fellow men these days, we’re so helpless to do too many good. We’re so helpless to help them to God. And that’s why they’re going here and they’re seeking things that seem to be genuine, but are so false. Forgive us for failing Thee. Forgive us, Lord, for being afraid to be genuine Christians and the followers of the Lord Jesus. We trust Thee to do it, Lord, even now, even now. I feel while we’re praying folks, God be pleased and begin to move right now, don’t you? I want to be among you to do that. God bless you richly. Amen.

Tags Fallow, Ground, Growth