Tag: Humility

“The Last Supper – True Humility”

The Last Supper – True Humility

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

June 12, 1955

Now, of course, the first thing we see here is the true humility of Jesus. Jesus, knowing that, knew that He had been in the bosom of the Father and had come out. He knew that He was very shortly now to return again to the bosom of the Father, where He had in undisturbed tranquility from the beginning, of the beginning, before the beginning was dwelt with the Father. And He knew that because of His death on the cross and resurrection, which were shortly to take place, that all things were to be forever delivered into His hands. Knowing this, He laid aside His garments and took a towel and washed the disciples’ feet and wiped them with that towel.

Now that Jesus Christ, our Lord, could do one in the light of the other, accents His humility. If He had not known that all things were delivered into His hands, if He had not known that He had come from the Father, if He had not known that He was soon to return to the Father again, He might easily have washed the disciples’ feet on His own level without stooping, and there would have been no humility there. But knowing His high and exalted position, both by His being and by His work, He laid aside His garments and washed the disciples’ feet.

You see, what I’m trying to show you here is that to be low and to act low is not humility. Humility is not acting low if you are low. It is coming down from conscious heights to a low position. Now, to be high and to stoop low, that is humility. To think little of ourselves is not humility.

You see brethren, it is unbelief to think little of ourselves. To think well of ourselves and then to stoop low for Jesus’ sake and for the sake of humanity, that is true humility. There isn’t any other kind of humility than this. It was said of our Lord Jesus Christ in Milton’s great poem, that glorious form, that light unsufferable, and that far-beaming blaze of majesty, wherewith he was wont to sit at heaven’s high council table. All these he laid aside, and here with us to be, forsook the courts of everlasting day to take and find with us a house of mortal clay.

Now that was humility. To come down from that far-beaming blaze of majesty, to come down from the trinal unity of the Godhead, to come down from the insufferable light that no man can approach unto, and to take with us a darksome house of human clay, that is humility.

Now I wish that we might see this, my brethren, and understand it, that humility is not thinking little of yourself. To think little of yourself is to doubt and to be filled with unbelief, because God made you in His image, and outside of sin you have nothing to be ashamed of. And God even said, I have made Him a little while lower than the angels. And he was talking about the Son of Man, but He was also talking about the sons of men.

And in that day, when the last soul is in, and the last tear is shed, and the last pain is felt, and the last woe is suffered, and the last journey is made, you will find that the redeemed Church of God is above the angels, and that the angels of God shall worship Him, and the angels of God shall be servants of His church. For a Christian not to know who he is is no indication of humility, it’s an indication of ignorance, or unbelief, or both. You and I ought to think well of ourselves. And then for Christ’s sake and humanity’s sake, we ought to come down as low as we need to go in order that we might help everybody. The man who thinks he’s no good and acts no good is no good.

But the person who knows that he is dear to God, and knows that in Jesus Christ he has been exalted to heavenly places, and made to sit down with him in those heavenly places, and yet will wash the disciples’ feet, and yet will go to the Kapulkins, or that’s the correct pronunciation, brother, and will go to the plain people, and will serve and take a bowl of soup or a glass of milk to the poor widow, will scrub the floor of the man who is ill, and will do that all the time knowing that he belongs to God, knowing that he is both by first creation and by the new creation higher than any being there is, because of that original imprint of the image of God. That’s humility, and it’s the only kind of humility there is.

Go into the certain ghetto sections or certain sections, even in the United States, and you will find conditions about as primitive as it’s possible to imagine them. You will find dirt. And then we talk about them being humble. No, they’re not humble, they’re dirty. They’re not humble, they’re simply lowed down because they have never been inspired to rise.

And the woman who goes about all day in her bad, dirty feet, and with her hair uncombed, as I’ve seen them, and with streams of snooze, you know, Swedes know what that is, snuff down her chin. She’s not a humble soul, and don’t you say, oh, she’s a poor, humble soul. She’s nothing of the sort. She’s dirty. She thinks little of herself. She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know she’s made in God’s image. That’s not an evidence of humility. That is an evidence of lack of common aspiration.

But for that woman educated in the schools, and taught the finer things of life, and then to get converted, and to become a mountain worker, and put on an old pair of grimy overalls, and ride an old jeep up the mountain trail, and go into that dirty home filled with dogs and lice and mice and children, and sit down in the dirt and talk to that woman about her soul, and sit down and swallow her squeamish feelings and eat, in that home, there’s humility. That was conscious descent from where you know you are to where God sends you for the sake of suffering humanity. That’s humility.

It’s time we got over this idea, that if a person has culture and has an education and has lived a better kind of life, that he’s high and proud, and if she’s walked around in her bare feet until they’re twice too big, and she’s dirty and out of shape and disheveled, and she’s humble, it’s all wrong, my brethren. It’s bad thinking, bad philosophy, unscriptural.

Jesus Christ did not wash the disciples’ feet because He didn’t know any better. He didn’t wash the disciples’ feet because He had been a servant and was acting like a servant. He washed the disciples’ feet knowing that He had been with God and was going back to God, and that the whole universe was in the palm of His hand. Then He deliberately got out His towel in His basin, poured the water, washed the feet, and said, I hope you know what I just did.

Ah, my brethren, that’s humility. And I wonder when Milton said that glorious form he laid aside and here with us to be, I wonder if he didn’t have in mind John 13, and after suffering he laid aside his garment. I think he did. Old John was a great lover of the Scriptures, you know. So I think that’s where he got it.

Now, about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. Now what I plan to say from here on, I’ll be as brief as I can and as long as I must. What I say, plan to say from here on, I want it understood. I want several things understood. I want it understood that what I’m saying is what I believe the Bible teaches, not what I have been taught by the Alliance.

What I shall say now is not said in a controversial spirit, because there would be no reason in the wide world why I should gratuitously raise the question of foot-washing in church. And third, that what I’m going to say now is said with the deepest respect for and appreciation of those churches that teach literal foot-washing.

I have been among the Mennonites who practice literal foot-washing. That is, at a certain service they bear one foot, men on one side of the church and women on the other, and the people go through, and they wash each other’s feet, or wash each other’s foot. Now the Mennonites do that, and I have preached for the Mennonites, and I have seen them weep at the altars, and I have heard them shout the praise of God while I preach, and I know these Mennonites are good people.

And if I were in a city where there was a strong Mennonite church and there wasn’t an Alliance church, I’d be most happy to attend a Mennonite church if they’d have me. And I also have the utmost respect for the Dunkers, the German Baptists, who also practice foot-washing. I have utmost respect for the Church of the Brethren, whose hymnbook, incidentally, we use here.

I have preached for the Church of the Brethren. My good friend Carlson down here a few blocks in, I forget the name of his place, is a sweet, warm Christian brother, and his people sometimes come here to church. And if any of them are here tonight, I want you to understand that I have the utmost respect for, and the deepest appreciation of, you, and the kind of thing you stand for.

About a year ago, I was out in Pennsylvania and preached there three times in Messiah College at what was called there, I don’t know what they called it, we would have called it our Council. Nine hundred of them were gathered there, and I preached three times. I told you that before.

And the night that I arrived, I was to speak three times the next day, they had their foot-washing service that evening. And they very courteously invited me to sit in on it. But I had been traveling all day and was desperately tired, wanted to be at my best, so I excused myself and said, Brother Hostetter, if you’ll excuse me and forgive me, I’ll go and go to bed, so I’ll be at my best. I’ll not go to your service. It was quite all right. But if I had been there and they had wanted me to do it, I’d have no hesitation, whatever, in joining in.

So, you see, I say this in order to clear myself of taking a sermonic blow, striking a sermonic blow at the humblest and loveliest people that I think I have met, the Church of the Brethren and some of the Mennonite folks and some of the Church of God people.

Now having said that, I want to tell you what I believe this teaches here. In the first place, the disciples’ feet needed to be washed. They had bathed, the Jews were very clean people like the Japanese, and they had already bathed, Jesus said so afterward, but they had traveled to the place where the meeting was being held, where they were eating, and there were no paved streets, and the cattle and the goats and the rest traveled around over the little narrow streets with the results that we all might imagine, a dirty, littered street, and it was a dry part of the country, and there was things dried up, mud dried up, and pretty soon they had ground it to pulp, and we had, they had dust there.

And they wore sandals, not shoes like we men, but sandals like some you women, toeless, soulless, topless, and all the rest. Simply a good excuse, a gesture in the general direction of a shoe, and you’ll pay fourteen dollars for it, and it doesn’t fit. But that’s the kind of thing they wore, sandals.

Well, naturally, when a man had traveled and had wended his way, as the Evangelist always says, between goats and asses and cows and what have you and people over the dusty road, no matter how he might have bathed before he started, when he arrived, there was a quarter of an inch of dust on his feet. And so, when they came to eat, it was common courtesy that a servant came around and washed their feet. Their feet needed to be washed.

Now, my brethren, humility never does anything unnecessary, never practices on anybody, and never does anything merely formally and perfunctorily for the sake of getting in your good homework. A lot of humility and a lot of so-called spirituality in the day in which I live, we have so many tracts to give out every day, and so many souls to speak about every day, and so many everything to do every day, and so we pile up merit.

And many an old sinner has had a red-faced, busy, fast-talking personal worker go to work on him for no higher motive than the personal worker had to get his homework in. Now, that’s not service, and that’s not humility, and that’s not godliness, and that’s not what Jesus did here. Foot-washing that cleans a foot is a practical service, and that could be done anywhere.

Foot-washing that does no service is futile, and it’s simply a waste of time, though it’s perfectly harmless, and if they’re in everything else, they love God and each other. What’s the idea? We wouldn’t raise any trouble over that. I’d never split a church over foot-washing. I’d go through with it all right. But the point is, anything that is not done out of necessity and doesn’t perform a service is empty gesture.

Now let’s look at Jesus and Peter. Peter knew his Master, and he knew that his Master was stooping down to be a servant, and naturally he objected strenuously. He wasn’t an unbeliever objecting to the ordinance of foot-washing, as some of our brethren might have it. Peter had never heard of it except as a common social practice over those dusty, dirty streets, and all he objected to was that Jesus Christ, his Lord and Master, should ever stoop to take the place of a servant. And to his objection, then, our Lord Jesus Christ turned this common thing into a spiritual one, just the way He often did.

Remember that in John 4, He said to a woman, give me to drink, and she said, why do you ask me for water, seeing that you’re a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman, and the two of them are at feuds with each other? The McCoys and the Hatfields don’t get along, and why should you ask me for water?

And then the Lord began with a glass of water, and He went on from that to the water of life, and the deep well that was flowing up unto eternal life, and He taught the spirituality of religion, and the fact that wells and cities and mountains didn’t matter, but he that worshipeth God must worship him in spirit and in truth.

And in the sixth chapter of John, you’ll remember He fed the multitude, and when they came around and started talking about it, then He turned it around and elevated it, and used the common matter of eating bread as an object lesson, and raised and elevated their thinking to the high heights of spirituality, and said that he that eateth My bread, body and drinketh my blood, and so on, and some left Him. They couldn’t take the sheer spirituality of it, but he had taken an ordinary thing, water and bread, two things, and had showed them to have inner content.

Now in the 13th chapter, we come to the common social custom of washing the feet, having a servant to wash the feet before the meal, and Jesus Christ our Lord does the same thing there. He makes the application, and He raises it up from the level of the plain foot-washing up onto the high spiritual level, and says, in effect, I humbled Myself to serve you in your need, in order that you should learn to humble yourself to help others in their need. And what I do now thou knowest not, but thou shalt know hereafter. You see, it was a deeper and of more spiritual significance than they ever dreamed. Then He said, if you knew these things, happy are you if you do them.

Now my friends, the great danger here was the danger of literalizing His lesson. And that is the great danger today, the danger of literalizing the lesson. You see, the easiest thing in the world, the easiest way to discharge this 13th chapter of John, is to wash somebody’s foot. There couldn’t be anything easier.

We all come to church all fixed up and perfumed up and carefully ivory-soaped. Then we sit down, and somebody washes a foot already clean, and then we say, now that’s fulfilling the passage. All right, do it. And I say, if I were in your church and I’d go right along, I’d have no objection, nothing wrong with it, it’s just all right. But the point is, it is literalizing a spiritual thing, and if you don’t look out, you’ll take the easy way out. For the easy way out is to wash a clean foot.

And I have no doubt that many of those who practice literal foot washing wouldn’t stoop to go down to the ghetto and wash a colored man’s foot, wouldn’t stoop to go to the prison and give the gospel there to some group of forgotten pariahs rejected by society. They discharge the whole weight of this chapter by sitting in church on a Sunday evening and washing somebody’s clean foot, and so miss the lesson altogether.

Now I want to talk a little, and I won’t be too long, I hope, about the error of literalizing spiritual truth. To literalize, of course, means to give a truth its fulfillment in the performance of an external act. A truth is laid down, and it has an external shell, like baptism.

And then we literalize it by allowing it to be fulfilled in the external act. And thus we escape the force of it, and the sharp nails of the cross, and death to self, and crucifixion of our ego. We escape all that by literally fulfilling a passage in its external application. Institutionalized religion has always done that. They’ve literalized doctrine, and they have missed the living heart of it by making it external. They put it on the outside instead of on the inside, forgetting that God looketh not on the outside, but on the heart.

Against this fatal error of fulfilling the external letter of the law and missing the inner spiritual meaning, against that fatal error the prophets of old time pleaded and thundered and wept, and for it they got thrown into jail and some of them slain.

And against that fatal error of literalizing a doctrine and escaping the force of it, by so doing, Jesus our Lord himself warned while he was on earth, and for it He got crucified and nailed on a cross. And we escape the Truth; we escape the deadly and glorious life-giving weight of the cross by literalizing it.

Put the cross on your church steeple and you’ve escaped the weight of the cross, the sharp killing point of the dagger. Put the cross around your neck on a chain and you have escaped all the meaning of the cross by literalizing it, externalizing it, objectifying it, putting it on the outside.

Take baptism, for instance. I have heard on the air, and I know and have friends who believe that you are born into the kingdom of God by water baptism. They carry out Matthew 28 to the letter, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and behind those curtains is a baptistry. We believe in it here.

But you know the easiest way in the world, the less painful, the least painful, and the least purifying, and the least, the easiest, is to obey Matthew 28. Go get baptized. Whatever mode they practice in your church, go get baptized. And then you get a certificate. This, the undersigned, will certify that the undersigned has been duly administered the right of holy baptism in such and such church, signed Reverend So-and-so. Keep that around when the Lord comes and you’ll be all right. The easiest way in the world to escape the force and the power and the sharp point and weight of the meaning of Scripture is to do the thing on the outside and dust off your hands and say, it is done.

Brethren, it’s not quite so easy to go to Romans 6. Let’s go there a little bit. Romans 6 tells us a few things that Matthew 28 doesn’t tell us. I can find it here, and if I can’t, shall we then continue in sin that grace may abound, God forbid, know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?

Therefore, we are buried with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.

That’s not so easy, is it? That’s spiritualizing it. That’s getting at the root of it. The external practice of it is simply the external practice, but the meaning of it is spiritual. And when anybody is put into the water in baptism, if he has not also gone in or does not also follow the Lord into the crucifixion of his old life and the rising in newness of life, then he has simply gotten wet in a very ecclesiastical way. That’s all. Nothing else has happened. He’s a sinner who was dry until he went in and he comes out a sinner who is wet. And there is no difference. But oh, how many there are that look back with hope upon the hour they went into the water and were baptized.

Now, I say we practice baptism here, but I trust that we do not literalize it to the point where we believe that it has been fulfilled when we have gone into the water. It would be as foolish as for a woman to get married and then go to the door, hold up her wedding ring, say, goodbye, honey, and leave her husband for the rest of her life. And then if anybody said, are you married? She’d say, sure, look at this. She had the symbol of it, but she didn’t have the reality of it. No home, no children, no responsibility, no housework, some other part of the world. And the man who had given her the ring was way back there. She had the symbol of that which had never been consummated.

And so, it is in spiritual things. To be baptized with water, confirmed, sprinkled, or have anything else done to you without having the spiritual reality is to lose yourself in externalities and never consummate the spiritual meaning at all.

And there’s the Lord’s Supper. Again, we observe the Lord’s Supper in this church once a month. But the literal observation or observance of the Lord’s Supper costs us absolutely nothing. It costs you nothing to get baptized. They don’t even charge you for it in Protestant churches. It costs you nothing except the inconvenience of getting wet and cleaning up again before you take your place in the audience.

It costs nothing to have the Lord’s Supper. Anybody can receive the Lord’s Supper in its external, literal observance. 1 Corinthians 11, listen to this. This is another matter altogether. It says here, “…for he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.” And all the weight of Paul’s argument here is that they were doing an external act without knowing what its internal meaning was.

And they carried the thing so far that they actually overate and overdrank at the communion table. And he said, you’re being judged by God because you do not see the internal meaning of this. You have institutionalized and literalized the Lord’s Supper. I never know whether to go away and weep or growl or pray, or just how to take it.

The idea that tithing is a slick way to make nine tenths go further than ten tenths used to. If that’s true, sir, then you would be a business fool if you didn’t tithe. You don’t lose anything by tithing. It’s a business investment and you’ll get more back than you put in. And yet that’s what I hear. Tithe and your nine tenths will go further than your ten tenths did.

Well, anybody that wouldn’t do that, somebody tell me that if I will, if I will give away a dollar and keep nine, I’ll have 11 as a result. I’d get rich in 24 hours. All you have to do is keep books and juggle your money.

No, peeling off one dollar out of every ten and giving it to the Church is the easiest possible way to discharge your obligation. That’s why I never like to compete with other churches in missionary offerings. Some Alliance Church I heard of that’s having a big offering. One of the members said, we’re tired having Park Street Church get the credit.

Whoa, sister, come down off of that old nag before God lets you and your church down. Wasn’t this church that said it, but that was quoted to me as having been said by one of these churches that’s going to town on missionary giving.

No, my brethren, if that’s your reason for giving, you’re doing the easiest possible thing. A person can give to missions and give to the church and give heavily and never have the cross touch their inner life at all. Never have the nails enter their hands or feet. Never die to themselves. Still have their own way in everything.

And many a Christian woman walks up and sticks a little sanctified chin at her husband and makes him peel off of his roll to tithe and brings it to the church. She’s had her way and reversed the order of the Scriptures, which says, let the men be the head of the house. And she’s done God’s service, she thinks.

In that great day, when everything’s leveled down, nobody can puff himself out any. Everybody’s reduced to size. There’ll be a lot of us weep some tears. I’m glad that the Scripture says that there’ll be no tears in heaven because God will wipe them all away.

John R. Rice claims, I think, that there’ll be tears in heaven, otherwise they couldn’t be wiped away. And for once I’d like to say I agree with the man. Oh, I agree with him on a lot of things. That sounds awful. I come from Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Dutch have a way of saying things backwards. When the doorbell’s out of order, they put a sign up saying, don’t bell, bump.

Now, I say that in that day, some of us will find that when we decided to give our tithe, we decided to take the easy external way of serving our God. You say, don’t you believe in tithing? Oh, I believe in tithing and some more. But I warn you against literalizing it to the point where you fail to see its meaning. Jesus told the fellow who tithed mint and cummin and myrrh and everything else, He said, you did right in it. This you should have done.

Here’s where you broke down the weightier matters of the law. Mercy and kindness and love, you’ve forgotten it. And you have institutionalized and literalized the service of God. And you’ve carefully gone and weighed out your mint and myrrh and anise. And you have gone away feeling that you’ve done God’s service. No, no, said Jesus. Because that is only the external shell of religion. The internal heart of religion is love and faith and kindness and mercy. And you’ve had none of these, but you’re good tithers.

And then there’s church attendance. There are those who haven’t heard from God for 21 years, and they have been in church every Sunday for 22. And you couldn’t get them; they’d be carried there on a shutter. They’re church attendants. And I believe in it myself. I think we ought to go to church regularly. And when I preached this morning on one of the roots of the righteous being regularity, I meant what I said.

Do you know what you can do? You can literalize church attendance and never get anything from God year in and year out and still always be in your place. Why tread ye my courts, says the Holy Ghost? Why tread ye my courts? To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings and the fat of fed beasts? And when you come to appear before Me, who required it your hand to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations and incense, their abominations unto Me, and your new moons and sabbaths and calling of assemblies I can’t stand.

It’s iniquity, even your solemn church service. Your new moons and your Lent and your Fridays and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. They are trouble unto me. I am weary to bear them. When you spread forth your hands, I’ll hide Mine eyes. Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow, and then come and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. How studiously we have ruled out that opening passage.

Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings, learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow, and a little quartet will stand up and sing in a very soft caterwaul.

Though your sins be as scarlet, though your sins be as scarlet. Nothing is said about washing you, making you clean, putting away the evil of your doings, learning to do well, judging the fatherless, relieving the oppressed, and it’s all here together. And the Holy Ghost put it here.

So, you see, friends, the easiest way to do anything is to observe the external observance, or observe the external fulfillment. Then there is simple living. And again, I would say that any who have convictions about their simplicity of dress, that is all right.

And I think that we’ve gone too far the other way, and I think you women could stand a lot of good preaching to. And I think that a lot of these rapings under dark bridges, some of you good Christian women have put it in the heads of these young crazy fellows, not by anything you said or did, you wouldn’t stoop to that, but because you insisted on dressing like Lana Turner. Now, that’s just on the side, that wasn’t in the sermon.

But I say, and I mean that, and don’t you get rid of it now by laughing. I mean what I say. Simple living. But you know something? The easiest way, let me read it to you here in the Bible. Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands, that if they obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of your wives, that’s conduct, while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Who’s adorning? Let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting of hair and wearing of gold or putting on of apparel. Period.

Now that’s as far as some people go. So, they studiously avoid adorning, outward adorning, plaiting of their hair, which means braiding. They will not wear gold. They never go quite so far as to rule out putting on of apparel. They put on some kind of apparel. Usually it’s not very good looking, but at least it covers up. And then they put a period there, but did you know that’s only part of it? That’s the external, and that’s the easy way, sister.

The easiest way in the world for you to get rid of the point of this is to go home and decide to lower your skirts four inches and wear nothing but long-sleeved dresses and dress old-fashioned.

Now if you do that, that’s the easiest way to get around this. For what does the rest of it say? Who’s adorning? Let it not be the outward adorning, but let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price. The spiritual sight of it is that the heart must be an ornament, that it must be meek and lowly and quiet and holy in the sight of God.

So, you see, sister, the easiest way for you to fulfill Peter’s instruction is to dress a little more modestly, and I wish you would for that matter. But if that’s as far as it goes, you haven’t had anything happen to you yet. Oh, it’s a lot easier to wear a long dress than it is to humble yourself and do what your husband tells you to, because that’s what it says here.

It’s a lot easier to wear long sleeves than it is to have a meek and quiet, humble heart; keep still instead of talking back. I’ve gotten in trouble with everybody in Chicago tonight, haven’t I? Anybody left, I’ll try him on. Not you? All right. It is true, nevertheless.

Now I’m through, and I hope for three minutes.

The difficulty that lies here has led to two mistakes. It has led to people taking refuge in literal fulfillments and forgetting that everything is given for the heart’s sake. It has led, on the other side, to denying the literal meaning of everything altogether and throwing it out. The Quakers did. They said, water baptism. Out it goes! Baptism is inward. Lord’s Supper? Out it goes! And there are those in Chicago who say, church attendance? I’ll go if I feel like it, but if I don’t feel like it, I’ll stay in bed.

That is using Christian liberty as a license for the flesh. Both are mistakes. The correct way is to obey the letter of the Word, but in doing it, knowing that it’s only for society and the outward eye, and for uniformity and regularity, that it’s the external shell, the scaffoldings of the temple, and then not neglect the inward sanctuary.

And in your baptism, rise in newness of life to walk in the Spirit. In your Lord’s Supper, eat indeed of the body and blood of Christ by humility and faith. In your tithing, give, tithe, give more. And then in your humility, say, O Lord, I’ve given nothing, and accept it as a sacred ministry. And your church attendance, come regularly and all the time through all kinds of weather. Bow your head when you come and say, My God, if you don’t open my heart and illuminate my spirit, this will just be a trip to church. Help me to be kind and loving and do well and cease it to do evil and be good to the poor and help the widow, in order that this sermon might do me some good.

And in your simplicity of living, if you want to live and dress with a modesty becoming you as a Christian woman, don’t imagine you’ve purchased merit by so doing, but say, O God, help me, and while my outer adorning is simple, let my inner life be a shining diamond for God. Let the gold and the silver and the platinum and the silk and the beauty of it be in my heart.

Well, that leaves foot washing back where we started. It doesn’t try to settle it. My own personal convictions are that the Lord has given us two ordinances, the Lord’s Supper and water baptism, and that foot washing was not intended to be an ordinance.

But I nevertheless have utter respect for those who believe otherwise and believe that in their simplicity they do what they believe is right, and if they also have the inner adorning and, in their humility, do it for Christ’s sake, I believe God will honor them, though I do not see it that way. If I believed in it, I’d practice it.

And if the church board said, Mr. Tozer, you can’t be pastor of this church and teach it, I would say, all right, goodbye, it’s been nice to know you. I’ll go somewhere where I can preach it. But I don’t happen to believe that that’s literally to be so. I just happen to believe that that was one of the many simple things that Jesus did, like the birds and the flowers and kings and builders and all the rest that he used to show forth spiritual meanings. But two ordinances stand out. The church of Christ has held them all down the centuries.

So two things are necessary, my brethren, obedience and the deep inner understanding of the Holy Ghost in the heart. Those two things are necessary, else all our outer observances mean nothing at all.

Institutionalized Christianity grinds people through as they grind them into the army, puts a uniform on them and sends them out. It’s not so easy, brother. Bible schools teach how to win souls in three easy lessons. And they get a hard old sinner and take him through Dr. So-and-so’s easy way to win a soul. And he comes through and he’s been given the treatment, but he isn’t saved. He’s just been given the treatment. He goes out thinking he’s saved and he’s proud of the fact he’s saved, but he’s not saved. Nothing’s ever happened inside of his heart. There hasn’t been a change. He hasn’t learned to do well and cease to do evil, hasn’t learned to help the poor and the fatherless and do good and walk humbly with his God.

So, his sins have not been washed away. The scarlet iniquities of his heart have not been made white as snow. He has observed a text and missed the inner meaning. Or they take him and put him into the water to bring him out. These folks cry on his neck, say, oh I’m so glad you got baptized, but nothing has ever happened in his heart.

Let’s not avoid the cross by carrying the cross around our necks. Let’s let the cross enter where it belongs into our hearts and slay the old man with his deeds. Then we’ll know the true meaning of the cross indeed. And so with all other ordinances. And if you go to a church where they wash feet, go ahead and wash feet and don’t ever say that I said any smart thing about it or that I oppose it. I don’t. I just don’t think it’s for us now. But please, if you practice it, be sure you know what you do.

For Jesus said, you don’t know now. This easy external thing, you don’t know. If that’s all there was to it, then you’d know. But you don’t know now. But when the Holy Ghost came and God took religion from the outside and put it on the inside, then they knew. And I hope you know. I hope we all know. Let’s pray.

O God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we’re not going to be around long, none of us. These young people, without a wrinkle, without a gray hair, without any evidence of age at all upon them. They won’t be around long either. Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away. They fly forgotten as a dream dies at the opening day. The little tribes of flesh and blood with all their cares and fears are carried downward like a flood and lost in following me.

O God, we pray, give us spiritual good sense. Give us insight. Give us prophetic vision. Please help us to see past brick walls and water and beads and feet and basins and bread.

My God, these things all perish with the using. Help us to see past it all and discern the Lord’s body and discern the deep meaning of things. Lord Jesus, they crucified Thee because Thou did see the deep inner meaning of things and they saw nothing but the shell. Please help us that we may not be on the side of them that crucified Thee in our sympathies.

Help us rather to get over on the side of them that understood by inward light that the kingdom of God is within you and that you are the temple of the Holy Ghost which you have of God and that Christ dwelleth in you except you be reprobate and that Christ in you is the hope of glory. Please Lord, we pray thee, keep us right and help us to be right and obedient in all the practical things of life.

Help us to be sound and practical and help us also, great God, to pierce through all the outer scaffoldings and gaze and gaze and gaze where the shekinah fire burns between the wings of the cherubim.

O breathe, O breathe, thy loving Spirit into every troubled breast. Let us all in Thee inherit, let us find that second rest. Great God, take away our bent to sinning, Alpha and Omega be, and the faith as its beginnings set our hearts at liberty.

Now God, we pray Thou talk to everybody’s heart tonight and in this frank and blunt message, we pray that thou will help everybody to understand what is meant, that no good person might be offended. If an angry bad man goes away mad, we haven’t much care because they walked away from Thee white with anger. But we don’t want any good person to go away feeling bad, unless by conviction the Holy Spirit’s trying to teach him the error of his ways.

O for Christ’s sake we pray that Thou would make Thy people good people. May it be said of us every one, if not now, then may it very soon be true of every one of us, he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost. Grant this we pray, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

“John The Baptist’s Humble Ministry”

John The Baptist’s Humble Ministry

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

March 14, 1954

In the third chapter of the book of John, beginning with verse 22. Verse 22 says, after these things came Jesus and His disciples into the land of Judea, and there He tarried with them and baptized. And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there. And they came and were baptized. For John was not yet cast into prison.

Then there arose a question between some of John’s disciples and the Jews about purifying. And they came unto John, and they said unto him, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou bearest witness, behold, the same baptizer, and all then men come to him. John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom. But the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. This, my joy, therefore, is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.

Now there with the end of verse 30; John’s testimony also ends. And from verse 31 on, it is John, the Beloved, the writer of the gospel, commenting on the whole chapter. So, we’ll stop where John the Baptist stopped. He must increase, but I must decrease.

Now there’s a good deal of history here, and I’ll make it as brief and as interesting as possible, although there’s a certain amount of plain facts which we’re going to have to consider.

Both Jesus and John were baptized at this time, though it is explained below, though Jesus Himself baptized not but His disciples, and there’s no disparity there between the words of those who came to John and said, Rabbi, he that is with thee beyond Jordan is baptizing. Because it explains in a passage here that Jesus, while he was conducting it, He did not himself baptize anybody. His disciples baptized, and He sort of overlooked the ritual.

Now these two were baptizing, Jesus and John, and in their journeys, they had come here nearer to each other. John was bringing his colorful career to an end, and Jesus was just getting his brilliant career started. Each was fulfilling his divine commission.

And as Robertson has said about this, that between these two men there was no rivalry except in the minds of the people. But there was nevertheless jealousy which arose among the followers of each man, not between Christ and John, but between the disciples of Christ and the disciples of John.

They were obviously jealous because they came and said, listen, we don’t understand this, John. The one that you talked about as, and bear witness to, over on the other side of the Jordan, he is eclipsing you. His crowds are bigger than yours, he’s baptizing more people, he’s raising more excitement than you did, and he is just pushing you off the front stage. You are being shoved back by this new prophet that has come. There was jealousy there, all right, but it was not jealousy for themselves, it was jealousy for their master.

Now I want to point out here the wickedness of jealousy in sacred things. It’s bad enough to be jealous any time about anything, but when it enters the sanctuary, it becomes wicked to a point of utter heinousness. The wickedness of jealousy is like fighting over a crown that belongs to the Lord himself.

I have two unanswerable questions about religious jealousy, two questions that I think nobody can ever properly answer. One of them is this, if the Lord is doing it, why should anybody else be jealous? If another man is having success and you’re not, and the Lord is doing the work for the other man, then why should you be jealous because the other man is not doing it? It is the Lord that is doing it, you couldn’t be jealous of what God does.nThat’s one question.

The other one is, if God is not doing it, why should you be jealous of it? Because if God is not helping a man, and a man is only seeming to have success, he’s going to wake up at the end of the journey and is going to find he has nothing but ashes for his trouble. Why should you be jealous of a pile of ashes? So that if God is doing it, why should you be jealous of a man who isn’t doing it? And if God isn’t doing it, why should you be jealous of a man who thinks he’s doing it and isn’t and will wake up in the last day to find he has no reward and nothing but the disapproval of God?

Now, like all logic, that won’t help anybody. I might just as well have recited, Mary wants a little cracker or has a little lamb backwards, because nobody pays any attention to logic. They want to weep or laugh, but they don’t want to think. Maybe you do if you’re blessed exception, all right.

But for the logic of jealousy, the illogic of it, bowled me over. I can’t see why if McAfee sings a solo, why I should run out and take a bow. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t my vocal cords that vibrated, it is his. And if his solo is good, why should I take the credit for it? And if it’s not good, why should I worry about it? I didn’t do it, so it is with the things of God.

If a man is having any spiritual success anywhere, that if God is doing it, then God’s doing it, and I shouldn’t be jealous of God, but if God isn’t doing it, then I ought to pity the poor man who thinks he’s doing it. And God isn’t helping him at all.

Well, that dispute, like often disputes do, it took another direction, and they went on to talk about baptism, and that is purification, their rite purification by water baptism, and they had a dispute over it, and it appeared to be a sincere question, but it was inspired by other motives and hidden motives.

The wise man is the one who always gets through to the motive for anything. A fellow comes up, all smiles, and starts to talk to you. If you’re foolish enough to take the smile at his face value, you may easily be led astray. But if you can penetrate the man’s motive, it’s easy to grin for ten dollars. You can smile for a good sale.

And many a man, as Shakespeare says, smiles and smiles, and is a villain still. The man smiles at me, I want to know why. Is my hair on straight, or what is it? Is he smiling at me, or with me, or about me, or for me, or is he trying to sell me something? Motives is all that matter anyhow, motives. They matter, nothing else does.

So that if we could always know the motives back of religious disputes, we’d shrug our shoulders and walk away and close up tight and never answer at all, because the reason back of all this was rivalry and bad feeling. I don’t know whether Jesus baptized more deeply down into the water, or whether John baptized more deeply than Jesus did. I don’t know whether John baptized in a still stream and Jesus in running water. I don’t know, but they got into a dispute about it, and it was the result of rivalry and bad feeling.

I’d like to say this to you, that out of many years of experience, of what I hope is prayerful observation, I’m prepared to say that it’s rarely that two God-hungry men ever disagree. If there is a disagreement and a doctrinal dispute, one of the men has ceased to be hungry for God, or both of them have ceased, either of them, neither of them ever was. It’s rare that two God-hungry men ever dispute over modes of baptism or of purification. It is when we’re no longer hungry for God that we get concerned about the niceties of doctrinal interpretation.

And what passes for zeal for the Lord is very often zeal for my own opinion. It is amazing how much zeal a man can work up. What a head of steam he can get on in favor of his own opinion. And sometimes that will come clear down to very tiny little things that don’t matter at all.

I sometimes say to people that disagree with me, well, you can be a good Christian and not agree with everything that I say, and you can go to heaven and not agree with everything that I say, provided we get together on the fundamentals. And if we get together on the fundamentals, then the incidentals never ought to divide us.

And I do not believe that two God-hungry men ever yet quarrel over incidentals, because if they’re God-hungry, they’ll get down on their knees. And when they’re on their knees, they go immediately from the incidentals to the fundamentals. And when we agree on the fundamentals, we are one, and there isn’t anything to dispute about. But nevertheless, they were disputing.

And these religious disputes over rites and baptisms very rarely have an honest origin. Almost always they’re born in the dark of the moon and subrosa, and they come up of a source that is not good, and so it was here.

And John, this was one of the nicest things John ever said. This man John was a son of thunder in the real sense of the word, this John the Baptist. And he could really peel a man’s epidermis down close to his bones. Do you know how he did it? If you look at the writings or the New Testament descriptions of John and of John’s preaching, you will find that John was a terrible prophet with a sword of God in his hand. But he was getting toward the end of the journey by now, and maybe he softened up a little bit.

And so, when these anxious people came to him, jealous for him, he kindly changed the subject. And he did what his Master often did. Our Lord often did this. They came and asked Him question number one, and He never paid any attention to question number one. He answered question number two, which they’d never asked. Jesus often did that, and John did it here.

They came to him and said, Master, how is it that that man that you pointed to over beyond the Jordan is now crowding you out, you the great baptizer? You are being crowded out and your popularity is waning and His is rising. How can these things be?

And John said to them kindly, your problem is not ritual problem, nor practice problem, nor mode of baptism problem. That isn’t your problem at all. Your problem is you’re far off distance from God. That is your problem. Don’t you realize that a man can receive nothing except it be given him from God? Why should you be excited in the flesh and worry about man’s opinion and what man thinks of you? Why should you change your color or complexion, or the feelings within your heart disturb you because I am being eclipsed by the Man beyond Jordan.

He could receive nothing if God hadn’t given it to Him, and I can receive nothing if God doesn’t give it to me. And if God gives it to Him and gives it to me and gives more to Him than He does to me, why don’t you see that’s nothing to worry about? It’s nothing to get excited over. We’re all in the hands of God.

That would be wonderful if we could all see it like that. Be wonderful for church choirs if they could see it like that. Wonderful for boards if they could see it, that a man can receive nothing except it be given him from God. And if he’s got something that God didn’t give him, he simply has wood, hay, and stubble that will perish in the last day. So why not throw ourselves over on God and say, well, I’m not going to worry about appearances. I’m not going to worry in the slightest what men think of me. If anything I have is of God, and God’s given it to me, then I have it.

And if God has given something to somebody else, then that man has that, and he’s responsible for it, and we’re not going to worry about that. A man can receive nothing, said John, except it be given him from God.

So that if God has given Jesus, this man Jesus, a ministry, why should you be jealous of me? Because I told you long ago that I am not the Christ. I did my work, and now I’m about to fade out of the picture. And I have introduced Him who is to do a vaster work than I have ever done, the man Christ Jesus the Lord.

Then he used a lovely little illustration here. He said the bridegroom is really the main one, the best man. He’s only up there as an ornament, and he sort of arranges things. In those old times, I don’t know how they do it now. All I ever do is stand up here and say, wilt thou?

But in those olden times, the best man, the friend of the bridegroom it calls it here, used to sort of take over and arrange the whole business. And he had no part in it except that he arranged it for the bridegroom. And when he heard the bridegroom’s voice, he was satisfied. The bridegroom said, well done, that was beautifully done, thank you, I appreciate this a lot. That was all he wanted. He was happy because he had served as the best man to his friend.

And John said, now let us apply that. He said, I came from God, sent of God to introduce the Bridegroom and to prepare the country for Him, prepare Israel for His coming. Now He has come, you have heard His voice. Now there’s nothing left for me to do, I might as well turn out the lights and go home, because from now on the interest is on the Bridegroom and the bride, not on me. I was only the best man. I simply got them together and arranged the walking up and down the aisle and the things they did. I have no part now, I’m finished.

Blessed old John, nothing that he ever said during his preaching was quite as nice as a thing he said when he was through preaching, when he brought it to an end, which is always a happy circumstance, brother.

If we preachers only knew when to quit, I mean not when to quit in a given sermon, but just when to stop preaching. Men have had a wonderful ministry, and then slowly they began to peter out and sound like a parrot and repeat and run around in circles. Their friends began to desert them a little at a time, and they began to get sour about it, and their preaching got filled with rancor and gravel.

Oh, if they’d only quit when they were on top. If they’d only stopped and retire. And you say, you believe in retiring? I believe in retiring rather than getting sour.

If you can keep right on going and stay sweet to the end like John did, all right. John was sweet right on to the end. And he said the nicest thing is just as he was bringing his ministry to a close.

And then the last line that John ever uttered, I realized that a little while later, maybe a few months later, John got worried and sent a note to Jesus. But that wasn’t in any sense a public utterance. That was simply a note which he sent with certain disciples to the Lord Jesus, asking if He was indeed the One. John was discouraged in prison and maybe even sick or at least badly discouraged. So, we don’t count that. This is the last public utterance of the man.

And according to Knox’s translation here, here’s what John said. He, Jesus, must become more and more, and I must become less and less. Now this was John’s last utterance, I say, and it gives us the secret of his ministry. This is what made John tick. This was the beating heart of John’s ministry, that Jesus Christ was to become more and more, and John himself was to become less and less. He must increase, but I must decrease.

So, John condensed into this one sentence the secret of his spiritual greatness, and he unwittingly, I suppose unwittingly, put into one sentence the secret of the success of every prophet and every saint and every devotional man and every holy woman that ever lived in all this wide world. God must increase and I must decrease. Jesus Christ must be getting more and more, and I must be getting less and less.

And here is the strange and wonderful thing that as these saints said, God must become more and more and I less and less, God became more and more, but he also made them more and more. But the man who said, I willing that God should become more and more, but I also want to become more and more, immediately started to become less and less.

Now, here is a strange voice sounding out here, this text. Jesus Christ must be increased, and I must be decreased. He must become more and more and I less and less. This is a strange voice, I say, and it is sounding over this modern religious vanity fair.

I received in the mail yesterday a nicely done brochure called, “The New Mood.” Yes, I’ve heard of The New Look. This is The New Mood. And the story was that we have a new mood now, a new religious mood has come to America, and that we’re all very much better off than we were.

One pastor brushed off his metaphors and came out with the amazing statement that Dwight D. Eisenhower had resurfaced religion in America. The surface had worn off and Dwight Eisenhower had resurfaced the poor old worn-out church. And one after the other, talked about this new business in religion, more churches being built, and more educational units being built.

Well, why wouldn’t there be? We have unparalleled prosperity. We have more money than we know what to do with. If you see an old sack of something down the street here, it’s money. Somebody’s thrown it away or hadn’t carried it around. We got money in these days, brethren, lots of it. This world in which we live, particularly our United States of America, this is a vanity fair here.mWe’re given over to the lusts of the flesh and to the pleasures of life and to the sight of the eyes. We’re given over to it completely.

And to hear a Voice sounding, listen real closely and maybe you’ll hear it, in midst the babble of voices, He must increase and I must decrease. And we say, oh, wait a minute now, that’s for our day. That Voice sounds in our day. Yes, that’s for us in our day. But it’s hardly heard in this day when men shamelessly promote themselves and allow themselves to be promoted by language so extravagant and so preposterous that it amounts to downright lying.

Where publicity is worshipped as a god and where success is coveted and courted and wooed like a soiled courtesan, and men would rather succeed than to be holy, and where the models for rising young Christians are not found in Jerusalem but are found in the world, and where saintliness matters very little. We make Christians, get them in, label them, tag them, count them, register them, and in many instances they’re seven times worse children of hell than they were before.

Because there’s been no repentance, because there’s been no appreciation or understanding of what Christianity means, because they do not come into the Church of Christ as new creatures, but they think of the church of Christ as a kind of religious secret society or religious social club.

Now, this voice is sounding. It sounds strange in this day, incredibly strange, that anybody should say, from now on Jesus Christ gets bigger and I get smaller.

Oh, we say, you’re going to have to hire someone. Surely, you’re going to have to hire someone to do publicity for you. You need a man, a publicity agent, to put you over.

John said, He must increase, and I’ll do the decreasing. And as the Lord Jesus gets larger and larger, I’ll get smaller and smaller, and it won’t matter because that’s the way God ordained it. No man can receive anything except it be given him from God.

And I have had my time, and now it’s my time to quit and turn the light on the One who is rising with healing in His wings. He gets bigger and I get smaller. Oh, that sounds like a voice out of the past, or it sounds like a voice out of the future, or out of eternity that has no past and no future. But it doesn’t sound like the voices I’m hearing in the day in which we’re living, uh-uh. Because these are the days when everybody’s promoting himself. Everybody’s beating the drum for himself in religious circles, almost everybody.

And we’re going to have to stop and tune our ear trumpet up a little and see whether we can’t tune in that strange voice. I hear it. He must grow larger, and I must grow smaller. You really mean that, sir? I mean that. I’m satisfied to let Jesus Christ get larger and larger, grow in my ministry, grow in my heart, in my life, at my expense. He gets bigger and bigger, and I get smaller and smaller. And in doing it we both do the will of God. That was John’s last word. And I say nothing he ever said while he preached among men was as wonderfully illuminating and revealing as what he said as he was leaving his ministry soon to be thrown into prison.

Now, let us note here that it’s only a rare soul that can hear this message, only a rare soul. Remember that your spiritual life, the depth of it, the purity of it, the intensity of it, and the quality of everlastingness that it contains or doesn’t contain, will depend altogether upon how sincerely you are able to say, I want my life to be so that I become increasingly less important, and Jesus Christ becomes increasingly more important. Remember that you don’t have to do it, but your spiritual life will take on quality from whether you do it or not.

Now, the fruit of your Christian life also depends upon whether you say, He must increase, and I decrease, or whether you say, I insist upon increasing, I insist upon it, and the result of your labors. We’re going to all be called home one of these times.

We grade men according to whether they’re young men, middle-aged men, old men, or doddering old doters. But God doesn’t look at it like that because the wink of an eye and a thousand years have passed away. Ten thousand times ten thousand millennia are nothing to God.

And God knows that we’re all old, that we’re all in the long sweep of the years, won’t be around very much longer. And you’re going to have to answer to God for your labor and the fruit of your labor. Some say, well, but I am not responsible for the fruit, I’m only responsible for being active or being faithful. It’s a nice way to dodge out of it, my brother.

You will be responsible to God for the fruit of your life. For the fruit of your life is a simple layman that couldn’t stand on your feet and talk five minutes, but you’re responsible for what God has given you. No man can receive anything except it be given him from God. And if God has given you something as He undoubtedly has, you’re responsible for that thing. And the fruit of your labor will depend upon where Christ is in your ministry and where you are in relation to Christ, and your conscious union with Christ.

Now this is what I talk a good deal about, and I don’t know how far I’m getting with it, but I talk about the union of the soul with the Savior. The conscious union of the heart with Jesus. Not the theological union only, but a conscious union. A union that is felt and experienced.

And remember that Jesus Christ will brook no rivals. He will not allow this holy union to be perfected where there is a rival, where there is someone else who is demanding the crown that He alone must wear, where there is someone else that is pushing himself or herself up into the seat where He alone can sit.

That union of the soul with God comes when we follow John in the wonderful blessedness of bowing ourselves out completely and letting Jesus Christ be all in all in all.

You see, friends, God made us for eternity, as I have often, often repeated. And this little brief minute of time that we inhabit now isn’t too important when it’s seen against the vast reaches of time that we will indwell finally and inhabit.

And if you can afford to push yourself up, can you afford? I don’t think you can. I think that you could for time. If time was just all we had, then I say that everybody ought to go out and get all he could get and in religious circles push himself up.

But when we use the holy sanctuary as a place, a theater, where we show off our talents, when we use the religion, the holiest activity of the human mind, as material out of which we make a crown for our own empty heads, the whole thing is tragic beyond all description, my listeners. Tragic, I say, to the point of absolute calamity. When we come to the altar of God, every man is the same size as every other man. When we enter in behind the veil where the dim fire burns between the wings of the cherubim, every man is the same size as every other man.

And there are no great men, no small men, no large men, but there are only men. And when we can kneel there before Him and take the holy vow that we’re going to so live that Jesus Christ shall increase and grow always, we shall taper out and down and cease to mean anything and get smaller, then we’re on our way toward not only immortality to come, we’re on our way toward the immortality of our deeds.

It is one thing to say that God will at the coming of Christ give every Christian immortality, but it is another thing to know that immortality will also invest our deeds and our toil. You’re working a little, you’re giving of your money, you’re trying to win a few souls, you’re helping out here and there, that’s toil, that’s labor. You’re standing against the enemy that’s fighting like a soldier, and all that is good.

But beware lest it perish with the using and watch that it gets invested with the quality of immortality, so that when our Lord comes and gives immortality to our souls and incorruptibility to our bodies, that our deeds also and our labors that follow us shall also be invested with immortality. An immortality of deeds and labor and fruit never comes to the man who says, I am getting bigger and bigger. It always comes to the soul that says, He must increase, and I must decrease. He grows more and more and I less and less.

We often talk about Dr. A. B. Simpson. He has been a great blessing to thousands of people, and it’s quite an amazing thing that a revival of his books in the last few years has come. And so, they’re selling them like hotcakes, and they’re being sold and reprinted and reprinted. And yet he wouldn’t allow his picture to be taken until he was an old man. He said, no, no, I don’t want to be pushed up, I don’t want to be elevated above my brethren. He took the lowest, the humblest place and always kept it.

Someone came to a meeting, you’d heard about the great Dr. Simpson. And this woman, and I don’t know what she expected, Bo Brummel, John Wilkes Booth, or Jimmy Walker, I don’t know what she was looking for. But she said afterward, oh, what a disappointment. She said a man came in the back way and went to the back of the choir and sat down behind everybody else. Pretty soon they announced that Dr. Simpson would preach, and that was Dr. Simpson.

She said, imagine that, taking the farthest place back. He couldn’t understand that because being used to vanity fare and being used to men horning their way forward and rooting their way into the middle of the trough, she didn’t recognize a man when she saw one who was dedicated to the proposition that he ought to get smaller and smaller while Christ got larger and larger. And he gave to the Church probably the biggest vision of Christ given by any man in a hundred years of ministry. That is, a hundred years of the various ministries of various men.

Now, if I were at this juncture to ask you or ask any average group of Christians, do you want to become, would you like God to come and do something for you that would make you great? Would you like to come to the altar, and we’ll pray for you that God will come and fill you in order that you may go out and do great exploits? There wouldn’t be an altar room anywhere big enough to contain the people that would rush to the altar of prayer asking God to do great things for them. O God, I want to be, I want to be, is our cry.

But if you gave an invitation and say, now how many would like to come and dedicate yourself to the everlasting vow, O Jesus, from here on Thou will increase, and I will decrease. And I am willing that Thy increase should be at the expense of my decrease. And I am willing that in proportion as Thou dost get larger, I should get smaller. And I am willing that as men love Thee more, they’ll love me less. I’m willing that as they admire Thee more, they’ll admire me less.

I wonder how many people would come under those terms. Not very many. They wouldn’t stampede down the aisles and race into the places of prayer and kneel down and say, Lord, let me be nothing and be everything. But don’t forget my brethren, immortality lies there. I mean, immortality of deed, immortality of labor and fruit and reward lies there. Not only that, but saintliness lies there. These grinning, glassy saints, and I want to run as far as I can run. These born-again egotists, these twice-born extroverts who rush in and horn you out.

O Lord, give me the wings of a dove that I may fly away and be at rest and never have to face that sort of thing. But ah, the man of God who says, I’m satisfied to be nothing if only God will be big.

I’ve had a prayer written down for a long time where I’ve been praying it to the Lord, and I don’t want to sound funny. I especially don’t sound funny when it comes to prayer, but I’ve asked God, I’ve asked God whether he would allow a scriptural application of a New Testament text to me. Brother McAfee here grins at me about it. But I’ve been asking God whether, I don’t know of course what they’d say down in the Moody Bible Institute, the exegetes, but I’m asking God whether He’d allow this application to be made of Jesus riding into Jerusalem.

You remember that story. Jesus, rode in and the little fellow with the long ears got less and less, and Jesus got more and more. And as they rode in, they threw palm leaves down on the ground, and the little hoofs of the donkey beat on the palm leaves, and they threw garments down, and his little feet beat on the soft garments, and he was having his moment in the sun. But nobody saw him.

There wouldn’t have been three people in all the thousands that lined the highways could have told whether he was a brown spotted donkey or a white donkey with brown spots. They wouldn’t have known. They weren’t paying any attention to him, but Jesus rode on top of him, and they were crying, Hosanna to Him that cometh in the name of the Lord.

Now I don’t think donkeys go to heaven as John Wesley thought chickens did. I don’t think that donkeys go to heaven. So, I suppose the poor little old donkey got his reward by a good feed after the day was over. But if they do go to heaven, I’ll recognize him there. Because I am asking God whether he won’t sort of let that be the way it is with me and with many of my brethren, simply that we be nothing, that we furnish the four legs and Jesus Christ rides in triumph into Jerusalem.

And when people look at us, they see two, but they don’t see us only out of the corner of their eye. They see Jesus in the middle of the eye, and they say, Hosanna to the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s saintliness, and there’s union with Jesus, and there’s spiritual elevation, and there’s great delight, and there’s that borderline ecstasy of soul that the saints used to know. But it only can come as you give yourself up to diminish while He increases.

But if you insist upon being big, all that I’ve talked about will vanish away. You can’t grow, and you can’t be fruitful, and you can’t be successful, and immortality will not invest your deeds, and it will be wood, hay, and stubble in the day of His coming.

So, what are we going to do tonight? Where are we going to put Jesus in our ministry, the layman simple ministry or the grandiose ministry of the bishop? It matters little.

It’s still the same ministry. And there are no big or little men with God. And whatever your ministry is, if it’s only to tithe your modest income and intercede and be faithful, that’s a ministry.

And the outcome of that ministry altogether depends upon where you put Jesus Christ in it. If Jesus Christ is big and getting bigger all the time, well and good for you and blessed art thou. But if you’re insisting upon pushing your way in, and God help you and have mercy on you, because I see nothing but loss and tragedy and loss of reward and the shrinking of the soul and the diminishing of the light as time goes on.

Well, John left us a wonderful text. That last verse he quoted in his final sermon was a wonderful verse. What do you think about it? Would you bow your heads with me now in a moment of prayer?

O Lord, the flesh is strong and vigorous, and the world is magnetic and dynamic, and the devil is active. And unless we have Thy help, we’re not going to get very far. But, O Lord, Thou hast said, I will be with you. I will hold thy right hand. I will lead thee. I will turn away the arrow that flies toward thee. I will quiet the tongue that rises against thee. The fire that is kindled shall not burn thee, and the water shall not overflow thee. These things I will do unto thee and will not forsake thee. O Lord, we fear not, for we are in Thy hands.

But, O Lord, we pray thee about the place of thy Son in our lives and the place of thy Son in our labors. We are concerned that He should be the Son, and if we shine at all, we should shine only as the moon, reflecting the light of the greater orb.

O Lord, help us tonight. There are some young people who may later on in their lives become missionaries or ministers. And, O Lord, we pray that Thou will teach them and then lead them through at the cost of bloody feet and torn sinews and heartache. Lead them through until they know that they’ve taken the vow that’s been said of them.

They’ve taken the veil. Their holy vow that can never be unsaid has been said. From here on, it is I, nothing, Jesus, all. From here on, it is I, diminishing, Jesus, increasing. His light shining, mine dimming, more and more. Grant, we pray thee, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.