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“Seven Miracles of Israel“

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Seven Miracles of Israel

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

April 27, 1958

Summary

A.W. Tozer explores the seven miracles of Israel and their significance for the church and nations. He emphasizes God’s power and sovereignty, and highlights the supernatural nature of these events and their far-reaching consequences. Mr. Tozer also discusses the miraculous preservation of Israel as a nation, despite being scattered among the nations for nearly 2000 years, and the future of Israel in God’s plan. He emphasizes God’s unwavering promises to restore Israel to world primacy, and highlights the gathering of the Jewish people, their repentance, and the eternal plans of God to save and restore both Israel and the church.

Message

The incurable propensity to change which is found in society everywhere, is also found, I regret to say in the churches, and even among gospel churches. Twenty-five years ago, you couldn’t have attended a gospel church one month without hearing at least three or four sermons on prophecy, but you can attend a gospel church now for a year, or two years, and not hear a sermon on prophecy. I felt that I wanted to talk to you tonight on a prophetic theme. I gave this talk one time to the congregation, what did they call it, the World Conference of Jewish Christians, and I never preached it here, never gave it. I might have referred to it but I never gave it. So, I thought that I would give this word to you tonight, the Seven Miracles of Israel and fulfill my duty and take the privilege of preaching prophecy tonight.

In the first of Luke, 30th, and following, the angel said unto Mary, fear not Mary, for thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom, there shall be no end. I want to explain what I mean by the seven miracles of Israel.

First, what I mean by a miracle. I mean, an effect without an adequate natural cause. Whatever is an effect, is caused by something. And if the cause is not natural, then it’s supernatural. And if it’s supernatural, we usually say it is a miracle. A miracle is something which would not occur in the course of natural events. And though this miracle is projected into nature, it is not a product of nature. It is not part of it.

A flower growing on a bush, a fruit on a tree. Those are not miracles unless you want to be very poetic about it. They come in the course of nature. It is God working through His natural laws and you can trace those natural laws and predict what will happen by those laws. But a miracle is an act of God wrought in creation, independent of nature, not always apart from it, but certainly independent of it. Not contrary to the laws of nature, but certainly superior to them.

Now that’s what I mean by a miracle. And what I mean by seven miracles of Israel is, not miracles wrought by Israel. For Israel never wrought any miracles and neither did anybody else, but miracles wrought by God for Israel. And certainly, the miracles which God wrought for Israel could not be limited to seven at all, because the Old Testament tells us of many, many more. But I select seven major ones which were critically significant for the human race. And now I want to give them to you and in the doing of it, we will raise our telescope down the centuries somewhat and remind you that know, and teach you that do not know, what the plan of God is for the future for Israel, but certainly also for the church and for the nations.

Now, the first great and notable miracle that God wrought was the birth of Isaac. Now God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees and said, get thee out unto a land which I will show thee. But he didn’t say, I’m going to do anything miraculous. I’m simply going to lead you and you won’t know the way and I’ll do the leading. There’s no miracle there. And God gave him the promise that he should have a son, and that through that son, there should come the Messiah who should redeem the world. In thee, all nations shall be blessed. And there was not necessarily a miracle there.

But in the fulfillment of that promise to Abraham, God lifted it out of the natural and made a miracle out of it. Because you see, Sarah was 90 years old, and Abraham was 100, about 100. And it says, Sarah received strength to conceive when she was past age. And out of Abraham’s sprang of one, and him as good as dead, as many as the stars of the the heavens or the sands by the seashore in multitude. This was a miracle.

Isaac was an effect without a natural cause. That is, it couldn’t have happened, but it did. And there wasn’t any way to explain it in nature. It had to be the intervention, an act of God. And though that intervention did not make it unnatural, it made it supernatural, which is quite another thing. And thus, all that followed, sprang out of this one notable miracle: Isaac born of this old couple. Now there’s the basic miracle, which was wrought by God for the nation we call Israel.

The second great miracle of Israel was the deliverance from Egypt. Now, you know the story, but we’ll sketch it; that Israel had been in Egypt for 400 long years and all the high purposes of God for her apparently were shipwrecked. It looked as if there was nothing that could be done. For 400 years, she had been down there in Egypt; slavery, she was in deep slavery and not in chains, but worse than in chains, there was no place to escape to. And slave drivers drove her men day and night, the old and the young, to make bricks without straw.

Then God sent a man, Moses, and the saving of Moses from the destructive tyranny of Pharaoh. While it was a most wonderful and notable thing, it was not a miracle. You see, it wasn’t a miracle, it was a providential arrangement of God, that the mother took her little boy, Moses, when she couldn’t keep him any longer. And she put him in a basket and calked up the basket with some kind of gum so it wouldn’t sink and put him in the river.

And the daughter of Pharaoh came along, going down to swim in the river. And just as she arrived, the little baby cried. He hadn’t evidently been crying before, it might not have been, but he cried just on time. And she took him and took him to her mother, back to the home. And she said, I found this little fellow in the river, and I would like to keep him and you can’t deny anything to a princess. So, they said, all right, you keep him. But how will we feed him? And about that time the mother of the baby appears and modestly suggests that she would like to nurse him, and she could. She was the mother, and she only had the baby away from her a day or two or less than that.

So, that wonderful set of circumstances, little Moses got his mother back, and mother got Moses back. And that was worked out beautifully, but there was no miracle there, because it was not above nature. It was not a supernatural. It was a natural set of circumstances, providentially worked out by the omniscient and omnipotent God.

Now, God sent his man when this little boy, but had such an inauspicious beginning. This little boy, when he grew to be a man, he was brought up in Pharaoh’s house and was educated as a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, which made him of course, I suppose, grandson of the Pharaoh. And then this man, Moses turned on that idolatrous nation, even turned on the nation that had been good to him. But he wasn’t willing to be selfish about it.

And though the nation had been good to him, he was a Jew, and he knew it all. I think his mother whispered it in his little pink ear long, long before he’d ever come up to the age of the teens; while he was still a lad, she whispered, Moses, I have something to tell you, something that will be so wonderful, you won’t believe it. But you are a descendant of the fathers: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And in you and in all of us, in the Jew, God is going to bless the whole world. Well, Moses remembered that, and then he noticed that Pharaoh and his people, Egyptians, or his people as it looked, he noticed that they were terribly oppressing the Jews. And he turned on that idolatrous nation.

And God revealed His choice of and His love for Israel, and He revealed His name Jehovah. He said, I have appeared unto Abraham, not by my name, Jehovah, but I now appear unto you by My name, Jehovah. And so, God met and defeated the gods of Egypt. And this deliverance was a wonder and a sign. It was done in such a manner that it could not have been done by merely a slick arrangement. It was beyond the possibility of mere providential arrangement of circumstance, it took a miracle indeed.

And this deliverance was so wonderful, that afterward, through all the rest of the Bible, God kept saying, I’m Jehovah which gathered Israel out of Egypt and took them into the Promised Land. And through this, God got fame in all the world to this day. And to this day, Jehovah, who brought the children of Israel by a kind of miracle, out of Egypt, bear them on eagle’s wings and brought them unto Himself. To this day, God gets glory from that great event. And it was so and such that it could not have been done. An unarmed nation of about a million people, could not by any stretch of the imagination have arisen against a solid nation such as Egypt, a kind of Russia of its day, and have thrown off the yoke and walked out free, and yet they did it. That was the second great miracle of Israel.

The third one was the giving of the law. I sometimes go back to the 19th and 20th chapter of Exodus just for what it will do for me, for my own soul. Now, there were law givers, you know, and many of them, but this giving of the law to Moses, it was not properly the law of Moses. It was the law given to Moses. But with our usual way of associating names, we call it the law of Moses. It was the law of God given to Moses. There on the mountain, that awesome, terrible, glorious scene that is pictured there, the tall mountain, the cloud and the fire and the smoke and the blackness and the darkness and the tempest and the sound of trumpets and the voice of words and the mediation of angels, and Moses cowering among the rock saying, I exceeding fear and tremble. And there came the law.

Now, I have read the law of Lycurgus. And we know in some degree, the laws of Solon. We know something of our laws of our own land, British laws and Roman laws. And this is not to talk down any of the great works of the legal works, the great works of law that had been given to nations. But I think it could be said, and no one would argue otherwise, that there on that mountain, that trembling mountain with that trembling man on it, there in the fiery, lurid darkness, there was given the loftiest instrument that ever has been read by mankind, the most perfect moral code ever known in all the world.

And God said, hear O Israel, the Lord God is One Lord. And thus, a law was given a law and a law of love, and this was a miracle. Now, there was something supernatural about all this. For God to come down and take His finger and write it on the rocks. That was a miracle. And so the giving of the Law was the third of the great miracles which God wrought for Israel.

Well, you know the long, sad, checkered winding history of the nation we call Israel. You know how tragically they broke their own law which God had given to them in such dramatic and marvelous manner. But in all during the writings of the Prophets and Moses himself indeed, and the other prophets, there was the story told that there would be a Coming One who would redeem Israel from the broken law and then restore her again. And Isaiah, the man of God, called Him when He was to come, a root out of the dry ground.

Now, everybody knows that you can’t make a root or a seed grow in a dry ground. They will grow a little bit in a ground that is not very moist. But if it’s entirely dry, they won’t grow at all. It takes moisture to create and start the process of germination that makes a root grow. Now, in Israel for more than 400 years, there had been no prophet. There had been no oracle. There had been no king. And the 10 tribes were lost to history and Israel was under occupation.

And here was Israel in Palestine under occupation of the Romans, and her religion had degenerated and sunk to such a terrible low that it could only be said to be morally and spiritually, dry ground. If you had been looking for the Messiah to appear, if somebody in the Far East had known that there was a king to be born, they would not have hunted up Israel. Indeed, they did not come to Israel, because these wise men had picked Israel out as the place where our Messiah should be born. They came to Israel because they had seen a star in the east and had followed that star, something of a miracle itself.

Israel was the last nation. If you had said, is it possible that Greece might produce a savior? Why, the worldly-wise man would have said, well, they certainly have the civilization to do it, and they have the size. If you had asked, will Rome produce a savior? You might have said, well, I could see where Rome with all her learning and her arch might have done it. If you had said, could Assyria, could China, or named any of the great nations of the world, you might have looked there for the Messiah.

But you wouldn’t have looked at a little nation. With only a few million people in it, and they under occupation with no king and with no prophet and with no real leaders of any kind; their religion hardened up and dried so, that it was like powdered ground, powdered earth. You would have said, no, it’s impossible; 200 300 500 years ago, we might have said the Messiah will be born to Israel, but no more. Israel is like Sarah. She is long, long past the time when she might bring forth a Messiah.

And then suddenly, like spring coming in mid-January, there was the miracle which Paul called the mystery of godliness. That star which Balaam had seen shine on Israel, and that savior which David had seen, and that Isaiah had prophesied about, suddenly He appeared. He shouldn’t have, but he did. He couldn’t have. but he did. Born of a virgin, without human father, this was the fourth of the great miracles which God did for the nation of Israel.

And then the fifth one that I want to mention, is the preservation of Israel among the nations. Now, in Deuteronomy, it tells us how God is going to scatter them. He says, And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from one end of the earth even unto the other. And there thou shalt serve other gods which neither thou nor thy fathers knew. And this 28th of Deuteronomy, tells the long, detailed, gloomy, bitter story of the dispersion, the scattering among all the nations of the world. And God did exactly what He said He would do, and history records its sad fulfillment. And you would expect that Israel would have been swallowed up in the years; it would be natural.

You let an Italian family come to the United States and wait 50 years, and they will have been dissolved into the great stream of life. Let an Irishman, come here, and in four or five or two generations even, or three, his grandchildren will remind their friends about their grandfather who was an Irishman who came from County Cork, but they’ll be so mixed up that they will no longer be Irish, and so with all the rest.

I have written to our good friend, Aaron Judah Cougerman and asked him whether he won’t write for us an article showing the relation between the present nation of Israel with God’s nation of Israel, which He is to restore again to the Promised Land. How much that’s a fulfillment and how much that is not a fulfillment, but simply an incident in history, I don’t yet know.

And yet here is a nation which has existed for nearly 2000 years since 70. AD. And long before that, most of them. But the nation of Israel we know today as the nation of Israel has existed among the nations and yet has not been swallowed up by the nations. Now there was a miracle my brother. The Scripture says the iron did swim. And just as Jonah was swallowed by the great fish, but was not digested, so Israel has been swallowed by the nations, but not digested. But I know there must be a relation because about the time the prophetic teachers were saying that Israel was going to go back to the land, a great World War blew the nations apart. And when the dust finally settled, there was a little nation called Israel. It is now 10 years old.

Well, now, for all these 2000s of years, Jonah has been in the belly of the whale, but he’s not been digested. The nations of the world have found that you can persecute the Jew. You can burn him. You can throw him to lions. You can put him in gas chambers. You can make him wear a badge with an evil word on it. You can turn on him and persecute him, and when it’s all over, he’ll come crawling up out of the ashes and live on.

God has said to Israel, I will keep you; He kept him. And just as He kept Daniel in the lion’s den in Israel, three Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, and Jonah in the belly of the whale, so He has kept the nation of Israel down the years. Right now, fundamentalism has swung away almost completely from the pre millenarian position that we believe and that our fathers knew and taught. And we don’t hear much about it anymore. But my brother, I believe that God is preserving Israel still. You know, she’s surrounded by the Arabs. And Nasser would love to go up and pulverize that nation. So, God’s preserving Israel.

And now the next great miracle, preservation. I’ve said is the fifth and the next great miracle is the regathering of Israel. Let me read to you from the book of Jeremiah: I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them. And I will bring them again to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and increase. Behold, the days comes saith the Lord that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and the king shall reign and prosper; and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. And this is his name whereby he shall be called, the Lord, our righteousness. And the Lord liveth, it shall be said which brought up the children of Israel and lead them out of the north country and from all countries whither I have driven them, and they shall dwell in their own land. Somebody says that was fulfilled when His children of Israel went back from Babylon. But they were in Babylon. long country. But this passage in the 23rd of Isaiah says, from the north country and from all countries whither I have driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land,

Ezekiel 39 says, therefore, thus saith the Lord God, now, will I bring again the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel. And I have brought them again from the people and gathered them out of their enemy’s lands, and then sanctified in them in the sight of many nations. When I have gathered them unto their own land and have left none of them anymore there. Where? In the nations where they have been scattered. I have left none and none is singular, not one is what none means.

I have occasion to notice that in editing that everybody wants to put a plural verb after none. But none is singular, no one, not one, is what none means. I have left not one single Jew any place, anymore where they have been driven. Now that’s what God says. In Romans 11, he says, I say then, hath God cast away His people? God forbid. God hath not cast away His people whom He foreknew. And so the gathering of Israel is the sixth great miracle of Israel.

Now, whether Israel has been gathered, and that nation over there called Israel or the Israelis; whether that’s the true nation or not, we’re going to have to wait and see. Personally, I don’t think so. But listen to this, therefore, thus prophesy Jeremiah, and say, thus says the Lord God, because they have made you desolate and swallowed you up on every side that ye might be a possession unto the residue of the heathen, and you’re taken up in the lips of talkers and are an infamy of the people. Therefore ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God. Thus, saith the Lord God to the mountains and to the hills and to the rivers and to the valleys, to the desolate waste and to the cities that are forsaken. which have become a prey and derision to the residue of the nations that around about. Surely in the fire of my jealousy have I spoken against the residue of the heathen, and against all Idumea, which have appointed my land into their possession with the joy of all their heart, with despiteful minds, to cast it out for a prey. Prophesy therefore concerning the land of Israel, and say unto the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys, thus saith the Lord, I’ve spoken in my jealousy and in my fury, because ye have born the shame of the heathen.

Don’t forget that even today, as I talk tonight, there stands on the site where Jesus used to worship in Jerusalem, the great temple of the false prophet Mohammed. Ye have born the shame of the heathen, therefore thus saith the Lord God, I’ve lifted up mine hand, surely the heathen that are around about you shall bear their shame, but you, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to my people of Israel, for they are at hand to come, Behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown: And I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it: and the cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be builded: And I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and bring fruit: and I will settle you after your old estates, and will do better unto you than at your beginnings: and ye shall know that I am Jehovah.  Now, that’s the regathering of Israel. And that’s what it says.

Now, the seventh and last that I want to mention tonight is the restoration of Israel to world primacy. I was asked, you know, one time to speak on this subject, “is there a future for Israel in the plan of God,” and I refused to do it. I won’t discuss the obvious. Is there a future for Israel in the plan of God? Why should anybody waste a half an hour talking about something that everybody knows. I might as well, I might as well preach a sermon called, will the sun rise tomorrow morning. Of course, it will rise. One of the prophets suggested a way to destroy Israel and cut off their future. God Almighty Himself through the prophet said it. Do you and you destroy Israel, he said, when you pull the stars down from the sky and put out the light of the sun? Then may you prevent my people from going back to their land, and then may you turn me against Israel for good. That’s paraphrasing a passage, but it’s close to it. So, the restoration of Israel to world primacy is another miracle which God has wrought or will work for Israel.

Now, Jehovah is sovereign. Don’t forget it. And let me urge you, don’t let Edward R. Murrow bother you. And don’t let the rest of these excited news commentators bother you. Don’t listen. I always listen to them, Face the Nation and Meet the Press and all the rest and get all the education I can about world events. But I’m not bothered about them at all. It wouldn’t bother me one bit. That is, I wouldn’t want to see it. And I would sympathize and feel deeply sympathetic and sorrowful if it should happen. But if the Arabic nations should turn on Israel and dissolve her and tear her apart and to make her to be no nation, it wouldn’t bother me, because I very well know that the God of Israel is a sovereign God. And if this present nation called Israel over there should be scattered to the ends of the earth, God still will fulfill His Scripture which says, I will bring you back from all the nations. I don’t like the palsy-walsying around with communism, that I’m afraid may be present a little over there. But I know that God by one dramatic wave of His hand can change that whole thing. I know it. I don’t know how He’ll do it, but I know He can do it. And He will do it.

And not only that, He will bring Israel to her knees and Israel will repent in the last chapter of the prophetic book of Zechariah. And in the 13th, and along there, we learn in the 13th and 14th, we learn how Israel will repent, and all her families will go apart and weep deeply in grave sorrow over her sins. And she will look on Him whom she has pierced, and she will recognize Him as her Messiah. Jesus Christ our Lord who was born of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh, and who came in the line of Isaac and Jacob and David and on down to the little Virgin Mary, and became flesh to dwelt among us, He will be true to His people, and will restore them again as He promised to do.

Now I look at my text a minute, and I’m done. Notice what it says here. He said to Mary, thou hast found favor with God, and behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb. Count these prophecies. That’s number what? Thou shalt conceive in your womb, one, and bring forth a son, two and thou shalt call his name Jesus, three. He shall be great, four. And he shall be called the Son of the Highest, five. Has this been fulfilled, yes or no? Yes. This has been fulfilled to the letter. Mary, who had no husband, brought forth a son. And He was called great. And He was called the Son of the Highest, even by the devils who fled before His face.

And He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, six. Has that been fulfilled? And of His kingdom there shall be no end. The Lord shall give unto him the throne of his father David. Has that been fulfilled? That’s the seventh one. He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. Neither of these had been fulfilled. He has never sat on the throne of his father David. There was no throne of David when Jesus walked the earth. And Jesus has never for one remote hour ever reigned over the house of Jacob. For the house of Jacob refuses to believe that Jesus is their Messiah. And they said, we will not have this man to reign over us. Therefore, the God who gave seven prophecies, and fulfilled five of them, has got to fulfill the other two. Do you think He will? I believe He will. But we swing back and forth and back and forth.

The day was when men ran everywhere with charts painted in red and blue and green and purple; arrows running this way and mountains erupting this way and big queer beasts over here, and goggle-eyed congregations heard them teach prophecy. And then, wars and tribulations and depressions and Sputnik’s and all the rest upset their little detailed plan. And they got red faced and quit it. So now you’re hardly hear anything about prophecy. But I want you to know, I still believe that Jesus Christ is coming back to the world. And I believe that though Israel deeply deserves punishment and is going to get it, she is yet going to be restored according to the ancient prophecies that went forth on her even before Christ was born of a virgin in Bethlehem’s manger.

So, cheer up, cheer up. Don’t let Sputniks get you down. That old bald-headed guy. He can’t even raise hair, and still, he sits over there and rumbles and rumbles. I’ve been around awhile, and I remember when another old bald-headed fellow with a jaw on him like Dick Tracy. Bigger still, how we used to get up in the little bird’s nest, you know, above the street. And up there, he’d raised his hand dramatically and in beautiful sonores Italian, he promised them the world wrapped in cellophane. The last picture I saw of him. He was hanging upside down on a beam and his girlfriend hanging alongside of him.

Then this other fellow, this other angry little man used to say to the nations of the world he would want to come in and take them over. Most of them just folded up and said, come and get us. But a few would stand up and say no. And he’d make another speech, louder and more guttural than the one before. And in it, he would say, I’m about to lose my patience. He not only lost his patience, he lost everything. Where is the guy anyway? I don’t know where he is. Somebody said one time, I’m going to vote for Hitler, just being funny. Somebody else said Hitler isn’t running. Somebody else said if he’s alive he is. And I still believe it. If he’s alive, he’s still running. And now he disappeared, and I don’t scare easy.

And so, when this fellow says, we’ll bury you. I remember the man with no hair and the man with a little mustache. They’re both gone. They were going to bury us, but they didn’t. So that’s why I’m not too much worried. God Almighty has His eternal plans laid just like an architect and he will fulfill them all. And they include the saving of a church, the restoration of His people and their restoration to primacy among the nations of the earth.

Then God will raise Abraham from the dead. His old dusty bones will come out of the Cave of Machpelah where he has slept now these 1000s of years alongside of Sarah his old wife. God will say, Abraham, you remember way back down the years when I told you, in you and your seed should the world be blessed. And Abraham will say in great reverence, yes, My God, I remember.

And God will say, Abraham, I’ve made good. I’ve made good. You see the spiritual seed? That’s the church. You see the physical seed? That’s Israel. And they’re both redeemed. And instead of fighting, they love each other. And the church is my bride and Israel my people, and I am King of the earth. Even so, come Lord Jesus is my prayer and my cry. So don’t you get discouraged and don’t let anybody frighten you, and don’t let anybody threaten you.

A little boy one time was down on his back, fighting, but licked. He wouldn’t give up. And the boy that was bending over him was just a couple of years older. And he was saying, are you going to say, uncle? Are you going to say uncle? And the little guy kept saying, no, no. And here, the big boy couldn’t understand it. Then he looked over his shoulder and saw another boy a couple years older than he was, who was a brother to the little boy. And he understood why. The little boy wasn’t going to give up because he had taken a little peek there as they struggled and fought, and he’d seen his big brother with the bulging muscles on his way.

Well, that’s the way I want you to feel about it my dear people. Don’t get discouraged about anything. Don’t let the devil get you down, because we’re not going to say uncle, no sir. The word doesn’t appear in our language, and we’re not going to say “enough” to the devil, because we look upward and we see our brother whose name is Jesus, and the Scripture says it.

One man wrote me and told me we never ought to call Jesus our brother. But He said He was going to be the firstborn among many brethren. And if He calls me, my brother, I can call Him my brother, can’t I? So, our brother is coming, and when He comes, He’ll straighten all this mess out. Nobody can do it in Washington or anywhere else, but He’ll straighten it out. Amen.

Those are the seven miracles of Israel. Some of them have been done. Some of them wait to be done. And the fact that most of them have been fulfilled encourages me to believe that the rest will be fulfilled. For God who cannot lie, promised before the world began. Let us pray.

O Father, we thank thee. We’re living in an awful world as Thou dost know, a Vanity Fair, a Sodom and Gomorrah. Evil and wickedness flow around us like sloshing waves of a vile sea. Threats and dangers are on every hand. Planes plunging out of the sky and ships going down and accidents and death and disease around about us. But Thou hast told us we were not to be afraid. Thou hast overcome the world. So, help us, we pray thee, to relax and trust Thee and not to be afraid of anything or anybody, but to know that Thou, which has begun a good work, will fulfill it unto the day of Jesus Christ. This we asked in Thy name. Amen.

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“The Mistakes of Israel and Possibly Ours”

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“The Mistakes of Israel and Possibly Ours“

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

April 13, 1958

I want to talk a little about Israel and a mistake she made, and that you and I can make if we don’t watch out. It’s in Hosea, the 10th chapter. The first two lines in my Bible read like this, Israel is an empty vine. He bringeth forth fruit unto himself.

Now, the prophet Hosea was sent to Israel in one of her low times, or times of declension. Declension is a nice word for backsliding and that’s what Israel was doing. She’d forgotten some vital things. She’d forgotten her origins in the covenant of Abraham and she had forgotten in a large measure the God of her father’s. And according to this prophet, she had a divided heart. That’s 10:2. She had a divided heart. And wherever there is a divided heart there is a civil war. A house divided against itself cannot stand said Jesus. And a divided heart means civil war within, what Bunyan called, The Little Kingdom of Mansoul. Jesus said, ye cannot serve God–and. You cannot serve God and, but Israel was trying to serve God–and. She had not quite the courage to reject Jehovah, but she was adding other gods and putting up other altars and she was trying to serve God–and.

Now that’s to be double-minded, and James warned about being double-minded. Jesus said, a single eye. We were to have a singular, that is one, single focal point to which the eyes look. And another prophet said, son, give me thy hearts. God was speaking through this man. And Israel, according to 9:4 had put herself in a position where God rejected her offerings. And so the Prophet said about Israel. Israel is an empty vine. She bringeth forth fruit unto herself. Look at that a minute.

Now, what’s the purpose of a vine. It is to bring forth fruit unto. The fruit of the vine is never brought forth for the vine. The fruit of the vine is not for the vine. The fruit of the vine is a gift from God and the vine receives it as a gift for others. The vine is to bring forth fruit unto others. Israel’s mistake was she brought forth fruit unto herself. The vine is to bring forth fruit unto the food of man and the food of other creatures and for the creation of other vines. Every grape has two or three seeds in it capable of producing other vines, and so any given vine produces fruit, receives the sweetness and fragrance and nourishment from God in order that she might give it to others. She’s backslidden when she produces it to consume it herself. She brought four fruit unto herself. This was true of Israel and it’s true now of many, many churches and many people.

Many Christian people who claim to be God’s children, they nevertheless are bringing forth fruit unto themselves. Now, that was Israel’s failure. She kept her treasure within herself. For it was not God’s wind overhead nor God’s rain. It was not God’s soft soil. It was not the laws of nature nor anything that you could lay the blame to. It was something wrong with the vine, that instead of the gifts of God externalizing themselves and flowing out into fruit for others and for the production of other vines to come, they stayed within the vine. And the vine had nothing but leaves and no fruit. So the fruit was actually brought forth unto the vine for the vine, and this was the mistake. So, the vine missed the will of God and was an empty vine.

Now applying this to the Christian church, applying it to this church, I would say that our lives can become wholly selfish. Good, honest, Christian people can, unknown to themselves, little by little, become wholly selfish so that it’s all in-flow and no out-go. Remember those two rhyming words in-flow and out-go. Ye shall receive power and ye shall be witnesses said the Lord Jesus, and out from within him shall flow. There’s the in-flow and the out-flow or the out-go and this is normal. Because what you receive you do not receive for yourself. If the Lord’s people could only remember that.

We are not like the Dead Sea to receive always and give nothing off, except what is taken away by evaporation. But we are channels to give. We are not lakes not lagoons. He did not say, when the Holy Ghost comes, you’ll be like a lagoon. He said, when the Holy Ghost comes, you’ll be like a like a river, and the rivers always flowing. That is why you can hardly pollute a river. You can pollute a pond or lagoon or a little lake. But it’s very hard to pollute a river, because it’s always flowing.

There was a little saying back among the hills of Pennsylvania where I grew up, that if water flows over two stones and purifies itself. I think that perhaps was overstated. But that was the way we boys decided whether we could drink out of a stream we happen to come to. If it was flowing, and there were two rocks there, we said it’s clean. Well, the river keeps itself clean by flowing. And the Christian and the church, for what is the church? It’s a lot of Christians working together. And what this church is, is what we Christians are.

There isn’t any mysterious, mystical third thing called a mysterious church. There isn’t any invisible church here. The church is you and me in this congregation. And therefore, whatever we are, the church is. And the total cannot be greater than the sum of its parts. The total at the bottom cannot be greater if it’s properly added up, than the parts above it. And so, this church is what we are. It is no less than that, but is no more than that. So, it’s true of us that there must be in-flow and there must be out-go, out from within him shall flow. But we often are like the vine that brought forth fruit, but kept it inside of itself, and had nothing but leaves. Our lives are selfish, wholly selfish.

And then, the second thing is, that it reveals itself in this, that we’re careful to spare ourselves. I was thinking, somebody said to me last week in New York City, this doctor’s orders business; and he gave me quite a little lecture, not talking to me. He was talking about somebody else, but I was getting the lecture and I enjoyed it; this doctor’s orders.

There are so many preachers sitting around afraid to move for they’ll drop over. There were two men out on the West Coast. One of them, a great tall fellow, Robert Kilgore, a good friend of mine and a hard-working Christian brother. The doctor said to him you have, I forgot what of the heart, and you’re going to die. You take these little tiny white things. What is it? I started to say dynamite. No, not digitalis. Anyway, they put them on their tongue and dissolve them and that, nitroglycerin, that’s it. And he said, now, Brother Tozer, we were out to the council out there, and he looked down at me, for he was a great, tall fine-looking man. He said, Brother Tozer, there are three of us preachers out here on the coast, and he said, we’ve all got heart trouble. We are cardiac cases.

Now he said, if I slow down and take it easy, retire and don’t do anything, I may be can stretch my life a little while. He said, I’m not going to do it. I’m going to serve God. He lived about a year, and they found him lying quietly on the floor beside his bed. But he served God that year. He didn’t vegetate. He didn’t sit around and rust. He served God that year. Two other fellows are still out there waiting, waiting, looking every day down the street wondering if that long black car is coming for them, waiting. Doctor’s orders they say, doctor’s orders.

Now, brethren, I wonder if there doesn’t come a place in the Christian’s life when he stops listening to doctor’s orders and he begins to hear God say I count not my life dear unto myself. We talk about Dr. Jaffrey. Dr. Jaffrey never should have gone as a missionary in the first place. He had an enlarged heart and diabetes. And the AMMO, which has kept a great many people home, would never, never have sent him out, but somehow, they got him through in those early days. And you know what he did? He went over there and shook a continent and the islands. Then when he got old and they said it’s time for you to retire, he said I’m going to do that very thing. Retire means put on new tires. So, he put on new tires and opened another whole world, we used to call Indonesia. Doctor’s orders would have said you go back to Toronto, that beautiful Canadian city with all her parks and beautiful buildings. One of the cleanest, most beautiful cities in the world that I’ve ever seen at least is Toronto. And he owned stock and was part owner of the greatest newspaper in the city.

He could have gone back there, had a fine apartment or an estate outside the city somewhere on the edge where you could have lived in the suburbs and all would have been well with him. He might have stretched his life a long time, but he put on four new tires and went back to Indonesia. He died out there as you know. He died in a pig pen, where the Japs put him. He died, well, he didn’t actually die in it. He died in a poor homemade hospital on a cot. But he had been kept in that pigpen by the Japs. But in the meantime, he opened all that area, and there are Christians over there now because he went there. Ed Maxey’s out there with Shirley because he went and opened it up. Walter Post’s out there and Harry Post because he went out and opened it up after he should have according to doctor’s orders, gone back to Toronto and waited for the end. No, my friends, as long as we keep sparing ourselves to bring forth fruit unto ourselves, you are to bring forth fruit unto others. And then we refuse to inconvenience ourselves.

So, the Lord’s work is carried on like the birdwatcher’s society. The tattered edges and the leftover pieces of our time and strength and abilities, or like a crocheting guild, where when they’ve slept all they can and sat around and eaten all they can and nothing else to do and they’re bored with being at home. They go to the crochet guild and sit around gossip. And the crocheting guild gets the tattered remnants of their time.

Well, the church of Christ is being run, and mostly like a birdwatcher’s society or a tatters or crocheters guild, from the tattered remnants of what is left of people’s time. And so, because we refuse to be inconvenienced, we’re bringing forth fruit unto ourselves. When I heard that organ there with that offertory, I raised my eyebrows at Mr. McAfee and I said to brother Jake Hoeber, do you know what that is? That was one of Simpson’s numbers. That was put in my feet to go and put in my heart the woe.

Now, that doesn’t sound like a birdwatcher’s guild. That sounds like somebody given up to something. They have a word they’re using here and there in the world now. It’s too bad the world had to teach it to us. It’s the word committed. They say, he’s a committed man. They say of the communist leader, they’re committed men. They believe in their devil’s philosophy, but they believe so fully that they’re committed men, and they’re ready to be expendable and die for it. And some of them do. They put it across because they’re committed men. But we who know the Red Cross of God, who’ve seen Jesus die on it for our sins and know that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, we insist upon giving God the tattered fragments of our time. And Christianity for the most part is run by a bored, blaised, burned out people who’ve been Christians so long, the joy has worn off. Like an old, married couple sitting around behind their newspapers, the freshness and beauty of the dream has worn off and the glory has departed, or as Hosea said here in this book of his, thy glory has flown away like a bird and always centering around ourselves.

You know what the cure is my friends? The cure is found in the twelfth verse. Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it’s time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you. I’m not going along with all of those who are saying, let’s meet and pray all night for revival. Let’s meet and pray for revival. I said to the man that approached me about it, all right Brother, the day that the evangelical forces of Chicago will come to me and say, we have been bringing forth fruit unto ourselves. We have been astray from the Scriptural pattern. We have added a thousand anti-scriptural gadgets to the pure work of God. We are careless about the Lordship of Christ. We are not living as we should live and I want you to join us in the prayers of repentance. And then we promise to go back to our churches and straighten out and get right and clean up from the ground, and from the bottom up. Clean up our churches and cast the money changers out of the temple and the sellers of bulls and cows out of the temple and start clean according to Book of Acts New Testament Christianity. I’ll join you. I’ve never heard from them since. Nobody wants to do that. We want to revival but we want it the cheap way. We want God to come roll over us with a huge wave of emotion. And if we have a huge wave of emotion, each go to the other and say I thought a bad thought about you two years ago, forgive me and everybody have a good cry, and then go back to our idols and back to our selfishness and back to our carnality.

No, there’s only one way to repent and that is to reverse our ways. And instead of doing the way we’ve been doing, do the way we ought to do. You don’t have to notify God. He knows. Those two boys that Jesus told about, the father said to the boys go work in the vineyard today. One of them flared up and said I won’t go. The other one said all right, Father, and then he went fishing. But the boy that had got angry and said, I won’t go, he saw sadness and hurt in the Father’s face. Twenty minutes later, and he was down on his knees saying, O God, what a scoundrel I was and he went right out into the vineyard and worked all day. The father came back and found the boy that said he would go didn’t, and the boy that said he wouldn’t–did, and Jesus said, that’s repentance. There’s repentance. We say, let’s meet and have an all-night of prayer. Yes, Father, yes, Father we’ll work in thy vineyard, but the next day we go back to the old rule again.

Now, I want to tell you about two men. Two men that talked to me this morning. Those two men never dreamed that I would mention it. And I’m not going to mention their names and I’ll keep you guessing for the rest of your lives. I will not tell you. Two men saw me today. And they’re men who are honored in this church and who are in official position. One of them met me and said, Pastor, my hours are such that if I work, I can’t attend the meetings of this missionary convention. So, I’m taking one week of my vacation now in order that I can stay home and go to every meeting of the missionary convention this week. Now, he doesn’t have to send a telegram to heaven. God knows that kind of activity. God recognizes practical doings. He recognizes actual doings. That man is doing his Christianity. He’ll be here at every meeting, because he’s taking his vacation now, part of it, half of it, now, so that he’ll be home able to, instead of sending back cards, wish you were here, he’ll be here.

Now I don’t say you have to do that, but I point that out. As long as we’ve got our hard cores, the Baptists call it, I’m a little afraid of that expression. I’m afraid it’s a little too hard, often, but as long as we got a hard core of that kind of spiritual men in this church, I’m not afraid to stay around here.

Another man said to me, and he’s in a position where he could have lots of lectures. He said to me, you know, Pastor, I think he included his wife in this. I don’t remember for sure, but I know he said himself, that I’ve decided on fewer luxuries. He said, I’ve decided on fewer luxuries. The work of God needs it. And I’ve decided fewer luxuries and more self-sacrifice. The kind of works I believe in.

One of my friends and I met last week in New York. He had written me a letter, one of the most wonderful letters about what God had been doing for him. And I saw him. He lost weight actually. He said, look here and showed me his belt and said, look, I’m losing weight. He said, you know why? He said, I’m getting up early in the morning and meeting God. I’m eating less. I’m missing some meals in order that I might meet God. And his church is going like a prairie fire. Lean godliness, that’s what we need ladies and gentlemen, lean godliness. We got too much fat in our spirit. We need lean godliness. Too much being careful to spare ourselves, and excusing ourselves on the ground that it’s doctor’s orders. I’d spend three fourths of my time in Florida if I listened to doctor’s orders. And I’m not going to listen to doctor’s orders. I’d rather die five years sooner and get something done while I live than to vegetate like an old cabbage.

So, let’s remember. Let’s reverse our ways of selfishness and let’s bring forth fruit not unto ourselves, but unto others. I have confidence in this church. You know this church has suffered over the last two or three years. You know what’s happened. It’s not been from within. It’s not been from the pulpit nor from the board nor from any of the congregation. It’s been from a changing social order here. And almost every other church has fled the neighborhood. We’re still here. And somebody would say, well, we’re down. This is going be a low convention. I don’t believe a word of it. We may, times ahead, we may have to relocate. We’ve got our committee. We’ll talk about that later next fall, but now we’re here and you’re here. And God has sent his messengers here. And we own this place and we don’t owe a dime on it. And in spite of the fact, we lost a whole church in numbers over the last two years who have moved away and out into the suburbs, into Wheaton and all over the country, we still had $36,000 for missions last year. So there isn’t any reason in the world why we will reverse our laziness and our love of luxury and all the rest. There isn’t any reason why this can’t continue to be one of the strongest and most godly and most Christ-like churches.

Israel brought fruit unto herself. Too bad. She had all the light. She had the sunshine. She had the soil. She had the rain. She had everything. But she turned in on herself and she never got a grape for some for weary bird. God wants you and me to keep pouring out of our life and love and sacrifice and money until instead of it saying, that Alliance Church brings forth fruit unto itself, it can be said that church brings forth fruit unto the ends of the earth. Amen. Amen.