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“An Exposition of Psalm 121″

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“An Exposition of Psalm 121”
Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer
December 2, 1956

The 101st Psalm, I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills of whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil. He shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even forevermore.

Now the man of God says, I lift up mine eyes unto the hills. And if you have other versions, you will notice that they try to correct the King James and they put a question mark there. Of course, there are no, there are no punctuation marks in the original. And they make it read, shall I lift up mine eyes unto the hills? Why, no, certainly not. My help cometh from Jehovah. But I reject that reading with an explanation. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, perfectly fits the 121st Psalm because it’s a song of degrees. Now a song of degrees, is a song of accent toward the temple. And these songs came to be written as short hymns which the worshippers sang as they marched upward.

There were 10 steps leading up to the temple, not stairsteps, but broad rises one above the other, making room for choirs and orchestras. And as the high priest moved slowly with his incense up to the temple to enter and make atonement, the choir followed behind, or choirs, followed behind singing as they went facing toward the hills and towards the temple. And naturally, they were lifting up their eyes, watching the high priest as he went into the temple. And they would sing there on those different rises, and then step up again on to a new rise and sing another anthem. And they sang these songs of assent, or songs of degrees. And thus, the worshipers moved ever toward the temple and ever toward the high hill there where the temple stood and ever toward that holy sanctum where the Great Jehovah dwelt between the wings of the cherubim. And the high priest was on his way with blood not his own, to sprinkle it upon the holy mercy seat, and thus make atonement for the people for the year. And thus, these songs were born.

So, we need not juggle punctuation marks. We can understand easily how it was. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, not looked down at his feet, but gaze upward where the temple stood, where high the Holy Temple stands, the house of God not made with hands as we sing. Well, that one was made with hands, but it was the picture of the heavenly.

Now he says, my help cometh from Jehovah. And though he said, I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence my help cometh, he wants us to know that his help did not come from a hill or even from the temple. But his help came from the One whose dwelling place was in Zion. Toward the holy Presence they were marching, and they said, my help comes from Jehovah who made heaven and earth. And don’t think this is merely a word. I noticed sometimes anthems are written. Now this happens to be something that I had said more on than I have, than I know, and I have information on. I’ve talked just because I felt that way. But I noticed that when some composers write an anthem, they get stuck. They’re genius. They run out of gas, and so they start yelling, Jerusalem, hallelujah. And you can sing an anthem on two words, you know, hallelujah, Jerusalem. You can sing three quarters of an hour and not say any more than that.

But the Psalms were written by the Holy Ghost. They were inspired by the Spirit and He didn’t waste any words. And he said that my help cometh from Jehovah which made heaven and earth. And that’s not a phrase thrown in there as a filler. There is no filler in the Bible. If you publish a magazine, your article will run to within two inches of the end of the page. And rather than leave a corner white, why they put in what we call filler, a quotation usually by Andrew Murray or Spurgeon. But there is no filler in the Bible Brother, none whatsoever. The Holy Spirit has no filler. So, when he said, which made the heaven and the earth, he meant exactly that.

Now, the heathen around about them had local gods with limited jurisdiction. You will read your Old Testament and you will find how many gods there were. They named them, many of them, and they were all local gods. You had to get a passport, you know, a visa in order to get in to worship them, because they had local, there were boundaries, and you couldn’t get past those boundaries, and they didn’t have any jurisdiction outside their boundaries. Baal had his limitation and Astarte had her limitation or was she a he? I’m not sure. And all the gods had their limitations, but Jehovah made heaven and earth and he had no limitations. My help cometh not from a local God, but from the God that made the heavens and the earth. And if He made the heaven and the earth, hence He had sovereign universal authority and power. And these marching Jews, marching upward toward the temple behind the high priest, were thanking God and worshiping and looking forward to help knowing that they were talking to the God who has absolute sway, and who is not limited in His jurisdiction.

Now, the Christian believer is like this, he goes past all secondary things. He goes back of all matter and all motion and life and all mind. And he goes to the God, the un-beginning One, the uncreated One, the primal source of all things that we call our Father which art in heaven. Not a law nor principle, but a Person who made the laws and the principles, and whom we call our Father which art in heaven.

Remember that the praying Christian never deals with subordinates. It’s wonderful to learn that, because down the years, some people have been afraid to go straight to God. They have thrown up a series of subordinates; office boys and clerks you have to get by before he can go to God. But there are no office boys nor clerks to a true praying Christian. He never deals with subordinates. Isn’t it wonderful that you, riding on a bus or washing dishes at your kitchen sink, isn’t it wonderful that you can look up and say, our Father which art in heaven and address directly and without the intermediary, the Deity? The only intermediary is the man Christ Jesus, who is also God, and whom you are addressing, so that when you address the Trinity, you address God at the summit. And every praying man is having a meeting at the summit. That is, we don’t work in degrees of importance upward, but go straight to the summit and talk to God our Father Himself.

Now they said, my help comes from Jehovah which made heaven and earth. And once the blood was on the mercy seat, any Jew anywhere, any place in the world, could look up and say my Father and could look up and say the God of our fathers. And we can say, God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that no Christian ever deals with subordinates nor secondary things. You can go straight to God and address God Himself. Because now the blood is on the mercy seat.

Then they consoled themselves as they stood there and sang and played their instruments, He will not suffer thy foot to be moved. Now this doesn’t have too much meaning for a generation that were born in hospitals and raised on sidewalks, because you don’t slip on the sidewalk as a rule. But to travelers in Palestine who made long trips and found their way on foot to the temple to worship at certain seasons, they could easily fall by stepping on a round stone and having it go out from under them. On some mountain paths, they could easily step on a rock that they thought was solid and find it was only a bit of shale, and would give away and let them go down to break a bone or kill themselves. But it says here, He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.

Now the word “suffer” here is a good word. It means permit, allow, that’s all. But it does mean that, and then it means a good deal more by connotation. God will not permit thy foot to be moved. He will not allow it. And he doesn’t say he will not permit, but he says, He will not suffer, because suffer is to permit with a connotation of pain. If your child, say, has to have a surgery, you don’t want him to have surgery, but you’re suffer him to have surgery. You don’t want him to have to undergo the pain and the fright of the knife, but if he must have it, or if she must have it, then you suffer it to be done. Even as Jesus in one occasion said, suffer it to be so now, permit it with suffering. And so, he says, He will not suffer, that is, God will not endure the pain of seeing your foot slip. Now, that’s what the Bible says here. He will not endure the pain of seeing your foot slip. Not only will He not endure it nor permit it, but He will not suffer. And then he says, He will not slumber nor sleep.

Now, the pagan gods, and you and I don’t understand this as we should. It doesn’t hit us as it should, because in America, we don’t worship idols. At least we don’t worship visible idols. But the pagan gods encircled Palestine except for the Mediterranean, and then beyond they did, they encircled the Jews with their idolatry. And those pagan gods could be caught asleep. You remember that when the man Elijah was on the mountain and the Baal priests were praying and they weren’t getting any answer, he got sarcastic with them and said, well, maybe he’s asleep and you must wake him up. Maybe he’s taken a journey and isn’t home. He’s out of his jurisdiction. But he says here, He will not slumber nor asleep.

Now, Jehovah’s eyelids never close. I wish you could keep that in mind. And the reason, there’s a reason back of all this. I said to Brother Reidhead, you know, I don’t have the interest in study that I used to have, that is, I have interest in spiritual things, but not in other studies. And because I said, why should a man who’s getting along in years study more? Well, he said, remember, you’re learning for eternity. And that was the answer. I had no reply to that one. You’re learning for eternity. And I’d like to find a reason for everything God reveals. Brother, I would, I really would. I’d like to penetrate below the surface and find a reason.

You know something? I don’t believe we’re as good as Christians as we ought to be until we not only accept what the Bible teaches, but until we try to discover why it teaches it, and get at the root of the thing. Now, I think I know why God never sleeps. I believe I know. Sleep is a recouping of spent energy. Sleep is necessary to recharge the batteries. And when we have worked eight hours and done some other things, necessary things, our energy is down, and then we must go to sleep in order that nature can recoup her wasted energy. But Jehovah never expends energy and therefore, he never needs to sleep.

Now, the man Jesus slept in the back of the boat because He was a man, and being a man when He walked ten miles, He had expended some energy and He had to sit down weary on the well or sleep in the boat to recoup His energies. That was the human Jesus. But the God-man and the eternal Godhead, never sleeps, because they never, that is, God never expends energy. How could God expend energy when God is the source of all the energy there is? Where would the energy go? And then if God recouped His energy, that would mean He would have to get energy from somewhere. Where would he get it from?

You say, where do I get my energy from? You got it from food, water and air. You get your energy from something you’ve taken into you. And that’s why we have to eat all the time, to me a bothersome necessity, but we have to eat. And that’s to recoup our wasted powers. But God doesn’t recoup his wasted powers, because He hasn’t wasted them. He doesn’t recharge, because He hasn’t lost anything. And the energy that God gives you to live hasn’t left God. It’s still in God, because God surrounds all things and holds all things.

So, there I think is the answer to why Jehovah never sleeps. And the God who sleeps or has to sleep is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He’s a local god with a limited jurisdiction that’s dependent upon somebody. You can catch him napping. And a lot of the stories, and they’re beautiful stories without a doubt of the old Greeks. They turn up in Shakespeare and in many of the other poets and in Homer and the rest of them. The gods who tumbled off to sleep and somebody slips up while they were sleeping, and did something that they wouldn’t have allowed if they’d been awake. But thank God for One who never sleeps. He slumbers not nor sleeps.

And then he says, the Lord is thy keeper. He is thy keeper and thy shade. And now it says, the Lord is thy keeper, not the Lord will keep thee, nor the Lord will give thee shade. That is true also. But notice that it is not what the Lord will do, but what the Lord is. And we are kept not so much by what God does as by what God is.

The new Christian and some people never get beyond that, the new Christian is greatly taken up with what God will do for them. Tracts and booklets and books and testimonies are given and songs written about what God does for us. And it’s legitimate, I suppose, just as it’s legitimate to walk around on your stubby one year old legs, if that’s the best you got. But to walk around on stubby year-old legs when you’re twenty-five, would be a bit incongruous, and yet Christians for twenty-five years Christians have never gotten beyond what God does for them.

But as you go on into God, brethren, what God does for you becomes less and less important, and what God is to you becomes more and more important. It’s not what God does so much as what God is that matters. Jesus did certain things, and I believe along with my brethren in what we call the finished work. But I think that by always mouthing the phrase, the finished work, the finished work, I think that we can reduce salvation to a job done, a contract fulfilled. It was that but it was infinitely more than that. Jesus not only did something for us, He became something to us. He is our righteousness. He is our wisdom. He is our sanctification. He is our redemption. He did not say I will raise you from the dead. He said, I am the resurrection.

There is the difference between being the resurrection and merely using the resurrection, a vast difference I say. And in our day, in these terrible days of making the Lord your servant instead of being the Lord’s servant, and always emphasizing what the Lord does for us, I tell you, you’ll never grow spiritual giants in the earth with that kind of teaching. We’ve got to turn it around and begin to talk about what the Lord is to us, He is to me. The young wife isn’t so concerned with what her husband gets for her. If she’s unworthy of a decent husband, she is concerned with what he is to her. And children, if they are properly trained, will not be so concerned with what their parents get for them but be concerned with what their parents are to. So, the Lord is thy keeper, the Lord is thy shade. And the Lord will preserve thy going out and thy coming in now that He’s guard and shield and secure and that’s what the word preserved means.

Now this idiom, thy going out and thy coming in is quite common in Hebrew. And it’s quite common to us in our language too. The going out and the coming in. After all, you think about it a little, that’s about all you do. You go out and come in. You go out in the morning and come in at night. The next morning you go out and the next night you come in. And our going out and our coming in, that’s just about it. That about covers it. And the Scripture says here, with a sweeping it in, it takes all of life in. The Lord will guard thy going out and shield thy coming in, and secure thy going out and coming in. Now what more do you want? He not only is thy keeper and thy shade, but He will guard, shield, and secure because He is all these things, Thy going out and they’re coming in.

Then he ends, from this time forth, even forever more. Did you notice God never stops with time? Everything people do, some people wonder why I do not take to politics more and preach politics from the pulpit. Well, there are several reasons. One is, I have no commission from God Almighty to preach politics. And the other is that politics deals with time and God has sent me to deal with something else– eternity.

And I never like a sermon or never like to have anybody come to me and say Brother Tozer, that was a timely sermon. I’m not dealing with timely things. I’m dealing with timeless things. And a Christian is not concerned so much with time. He’s concerned with eternity. From this time forth, even forevermore. Ultimately, only forevermore will matter. Ultimately, I say only forevermore will matter. Time will not matter.

Four years, I thought that the time of the election, when everybody was pushing and two men were seesawing to get a job. But Cal Coolidge had the answer to that long ago. He was walking somewhere with a friend and he saw the White House and the gentleman reminded Mr. Coolidge, who was then President, that it must be a wonderful privilege to live in the White House and be President. Well, he says, it has its disadvantages. And they said, what are they? Well, he said, there’s no chance for advancement. And second, he said, you can’t keep your lease. You got to get out of there.

Now, here we were fighting over who got in there. But how long will they stay in? Four years more and the law says I can go to your farm and settle down and raise Angus cattle. I don’t want anymore. And if Stevenson had been elected. At the best, eight years and we’d said, go back to your farm and raise Berkshire hogs, we don’t need you anymore. So, no matter who gets in or how, or by a landslide, it’s all got time on it. And that’s why I can’t get enthusiastic about anything that has time on it either.

Even from this time forth and forevermore. There you have it. God Almighty is forevermore and He made you forevermore. And all that really matters is forevermore. From this time forth and forevermore. I want to warn you beware of the treacheries of time. Time will get you down. I know that I might as well be singing bass in an angelic choir as to preach this to some of you young people. Because old Mother Nature is making you think you’re going to live forever, you sixteen-year-olds and seventeen-year-olds. You know it hasn’t been more than two weeks ago that I was seventeen. It seems like it, just a little while ago. If my father we’re living now he’d, or my mother we’re living now, she’d be over a hundred. And there we have it. I believe I figured it out right. Time goes by and you think you’ve got all the time in the world young fellow. You have a pitiably short time. And if you get bogged down in time and all tangled up in the temporal, woe be to you. And don’t let anybody get your tangled up in the temporal or in time.

Here’s a story you’ve heard before, but they say that it is true. Some years ago, some sheep perished and were thrown into the Niagara River just above falls at wintertime. And the water wasn’t frozen yet, and it was freezing, but the water was still flowing. And they said that the bodies of these sheep were plunging over the falls. And somebody said he saw some eagles. And those eagles were swooping down, tearing at the flesh of the sheep. And then just before the sheep went over the falls, the carcass went over the falls, scream and fly away and dip and turn and go back and get the next sheep and pull out a hunk of meat and hold it in his beak and then just before it plunged over the falls, leap up again. Something was happening the eagles didn’t know.

And a man said, I saw this thing. I saw an eagle floating and with her great talons deep into the wet wool of the sheep and unknown to her, the freezing was going on. And just when the race started swift and the sheep carcass began to dip, she screamed and spread her wings, but she was frozen into the wool. And so with a scream she plunged over into the rapids and rocks beneath and it was destroyed. So, we fool with time. And we get tangled up in time and we say, well, we’ll get away from that, but slowly we freeze in. And finally, one last scream, and we find that time has ruined us.

Every great thing goes on into eternity Brethren, every great thing. Somebody made fun of a hymn one time in my presence, of a sermon, and said, why these sermons that always end in heaven, I don’t like them. I think they’re the best kind myself because they’re the most Scriptural and in keeping with all Christian tradition.

Look at their great hymns, Rock of Ages, a great hymn. Do you know where it ends? When I rise to worlds unknown and behold Thee on Thy throne. That’s the last verse. Look at Jesus Lover of my Soul. spring Thou up within my heart, rise to all eternity. Love Divine all Loves Excelling. The last verse, stanza says, till in heaven we take our place, till we cast our crowns before Thee lost in wonder, love and praise. Guide me O Thou Great Jehovah, prays in the last stanza, land me safe on Canaan’s side. My Faith Looks up to Thee, the last stanza says, oh, bear me safe above a ransom soul. And My Hope is Built on Nothing Less says, when He shall come with trumpets sound, oh, may I then in him be found. And Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound the last stanza is, when we’ve been there 10,000 years bright shining as the sun, we’ll have no less days to sing His praise than when we first begun. So, the great hymns almost invariably end in heaven, where they ought to end, where a Christian ought to end.

And then look at the 23rd Psalm. Did you ever read it? It starts out that about the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, and it goes on to say, and I shall dwell in, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. So, the 23rd Psalm ends in heaven, and anybody that criticizes a sermon that sweeps on down the ages and ends in heaven has to criticize the Bible itself. For it begins, In the beginning, God created the heavens, and the earth and ends, and I saw a new Heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away and there was no more sea. And I John saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. So the Bible that began with the creation, ends with the new creation and the holy city and the land.

So, my brethren, don’t allow yourself to get involved with anything that’s got the taint of time on it. You will have to handle some things that have time on them without a doubt. You’ll have to handle some things. Your job, your work, your house, your car, your body, your family, they’ve got time on them, but never let them get a hook in you that you can’t get free from. Every child of God should be like a fireman. While he’s sleeping, his ear is geared to the sound of the alarm, whatever it is in the fire houses and he’s ready by just putting on one garment and sliding down the pole. He’s out onto the car and gone. He isn’t twenty seconds away from slumber until he’s on his way. Every child of God should be like that. You ought to be fixed up so in ten seconds even be ready for heaven. It doesn’t have to wait.

Some of you have to cram like a lazy high school student that’s forgotten your homework and your exams are coming up and you have to cram and sit up and cram into the night hours. Maybe you won’t have any night hours to do your cramming Bud. Maybe you’ll go suddenly, the alarm will sound and you’ll be gone. And maybe on a little page in the Tribune it’ll say, such and such died at his home last night of a heart attack. He was forty-seven years old. He was fifty-two years old. He didn’t have any time to cry. He didn’t have any time to make up.

So, the child of God should use time very loosely. And as they say around the camp meetings, wear time as a loose garment. Never button up your garment. Always have it ready to loose and in a second and throwback the garment of mortality, the robe of temporal things. Leave them loose so they can be thrown away, and you can rise to worlds unknown and behold Him on His throne and say, Rock of Ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee.

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“Thirteen Theses Nailed to the Evangelical Church Door“

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“Thirteen Theses Nailed to the Evangelical Church Door“

Pastor and author Aiden Wilson Tozer

speaking to Youth for Christ Meeting

January 8, 1958

Reverend A.W. Tozer is no stranger to this radio audience listening in today for he’s heard every week on Saturday mornings in the series of messages entitled “From the Pastor Study.” Whenever I’m in town I tune in Brother Tozer to your challenging message, and God has repeatedly has stricken my heart as you have opened your heart to the Word of God to me. You may not know it, but I listen regularly and God has spoken to me many, many times from your ministry and heart.

Brother Tozer is the pastor of the Christian Missionary Alliance Church on the southside here in the city and is the editor of the Alliance weekly, the official organ of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. You may be interested to know that this morning we presented to this fellowship our new editor of our magazine Vernon McLellan. We prayed with him and for him, and we believe that God has sent to us this very choice servant with a facile pen and typewriter who will be managing the editorial aspects of our Youth for Christ magazine. I want, ladies and gentlemen, that you take now to your heart this choice servant of God who has been such a blessing to many of us here in the room and to a host of people across the country, our brother, A.W. Tozer.

Thank you very much. I suppose that some of you have heard that I have been critical of some things done by Youth for Christ, but I want to tell you that I am critical of my own church and my own denomination too, and everything that I think doesn’t fit quite in with the will of the Lord. So I’m among you as your friend and I believe that I am among friends. And if some of the things I say don’t accord with what you already believe, it could be I’m wrong, but it also could be that you are. So what we want to do is get together, when our friend Headley called me and asked me to come, I said, well, Brother Headley, you know that I don’t agree with everything. He said, well, that’s why we want you. Well, that’s all right.

Now, I’ll tell you what I want to do, and I’m not singling out the Youth for Christ organization. I’m thinking broadly. I never think of my own church or our own denomination, the Alliance or any particular group. I think of the whole church of Christ. I try to cultivate a catholicity of approach, the true ecumenicity. The whole church of Christ is before me, the whole evangelical church. And I’ll tell you what I’m going to begin with. I’m going to begin with a conclusion. I want to watch out that I don’t, after the conclusion, sit down and forget because the conclusion usually comes last.

But I begin with this conclusion, an assumption, and one that I’m increasingly convinced is in accord with the facts, and one shared by growing numbers of serious-minded Christians everywhere. This is the basic thought that I’ll have for you, and if you don’t agree with it, I might as well stood in bed because everything I have to say is going to be based on this. It is that the evangelical church or evangelical Christianity has gone far from the New Testament and is in Babylonian captivity today and needs a restoration and reformation.

Now, you remember that when Israel was in Babylonian captivity, she was still God’s people. And she still had His promises and His covenant and all the blessings that had been given to the fathers. But she was out of the land and she was in captivity. And she needed an Ezra, a Nehemiah, and a few others to bring her out of captivity into the land again. Now, to clear myself, allow me to assure you that I don’t visualize myself as the reformer to do this job. I have no messianic complex. One of these times, I am going to die and go to heaven and leave the work to others. I hope maybe to some of you.

But now 450 years ago, the church was in a similar situation. She was in Babylonian captivity and a man arose. And he diagnosed her disease and he analyzed her trouble, and then he published his findings. That man, of course, was Martin Luther. And he nailed on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg his 95 theses, which he was prepared to defend by public debate or by writing anyway. October 31, 1517, he nailed his 95 theses on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg, and the great Reformation resulted.

Now, I believe that we need not only the evangelical thrust which Youth for Christ supremely embodies, but I believe that we need to have and are in critical need of a reformer to diagnose our difficulties; find out what’s wrong with us, analyze us and then find the cure and then publish it abroad so that we can relocate ourselves, not lose any of our evangelistic zeal, but direct it into a more perfect way.

So, I have for you here now, and I’ll be very cautious; and I’m going to quit when the time comes, because I’ve seen that WMBI sign there so long that I never run over, not even one second. But I want to present to you thirteen theses for the door of the evangelical church. I want you to take these down. These are theses which I am prepared to defend from the Scriptures any warm day or cold one.

The first one I quote from Martin Luther himself, it’s his first thesis. He said, our Lord and master Jesus Christ in saying, repent ye, meant the whole life of the faithful to be an act of repentance. Now, that was his first thesis. And we’re in need of having this repeated in our day, that when the Lord says repent, He meant that the whole life of the faithful should be an act of repentance. We are, in our day I am afraid, certainly I’m not saying this is true of Youth for Christ everywhere; I am saying it’s true in my denomination, it’s true among evangelicals, and I feel that it needs to be corrected if we’re to have the revival we want and escape our Babylonian captivity.

We are forgetting that the whole life of the faithful ought to be an act of repentance. And we’re making Christians either without repentance or with inadequate repentance or with superficial repentance. And you can be absolutely sure that your Christianity will be just what your repentance has been, no more, no less. You dare go high in your building only when you’ve gone deep in your foundation. And repentance is the foundation, and the rest is the superstructure raised on the foundation. And unless we go to bedrock with our repentance, we’re due to have our building tumble down later on. Now that’s thesis number one, that our Lord means that we the whole life of the faithful should be an act of repentance, not simply a statement, but the whole life.

Second one, and I borrow this from Luther is, that when, that Christ does not mean interior repentance only. Nay, interior repentance is void if it does not externally produce different kinds of mortification of the flesh. Now, he defended that and I am prepared too, that it isn’t enough to say, well, I have changed my mind. They tell us you know, that repentance is a change of mind and it is. But it is more than a change of mind. It must eventuate in external conduct. But the acceptance of Christ without cross-carrying and without self-denial, is a snare and a delusion. And to present Christ to be accepted, either not mentioning, or denying that there’s anything of cross-carrying and self-denial as we sing, much self-denial that the dear old Brother wrote into his song, nothing between my soul and my Savior. He said much self-denial.

Well, we’re living in an age when the spirit of self-denial has been, has gone from the earth. But into this snare, the evangelical church has fallen, so that now we’re preaching acceptance of Christ and not telling our new converts that they’re going to have to take up a cross and follow Him, our Lord, and denying themselves. And we’re not telling them, and thus we are betraying them.

The third thesis is, and now we depart from Luther, is that there is no salvation apart from discipleship. Take that down if you wish. In our days now we make a distinction, and I hear it in my denomination as well as in whatever denomination you are in. We make a distinction between the believer and a disciple. I will give any man ten dollars right out of my own little wallet if you’ll find me anything in the New Testament, which properly understood, allows a distinction between the believer and a disciple. The New Testament knows no such distinction. We believe on Christ unto discipleship. We go to the school of Christ by believing on Christ. Believing on Christ is the open door, the act, the way in, but it’s unto discipleship. Now, until we change this, we will stay in Babylon.

And then the fourth thesis is that the way of the cross is hard. Now we have no authority from the Bible, Old or New; we have no authority to make the way of the cross easy, yet we have done or tried to do just that thing. We have made salvation ridiculously easy when Christ made it extremely hard. I would suggest that all of you dear friends listening to me, reread the Gospels, reread the Gospels. Now don’t fall victim to the man who puts the Gospels in another dispensation. Believe as our fathers believed from Paul on down and take the Gospels and read them and see what Jesus says about the difficulty of becoming a disciple; and the way of the cross, how difficult the way of the cross is. But we’ve made salvation ridiculously easy, with the result that we have a cheap grace and a superficial Christianity.

My brethren, I believe that what we need more than we need evangelism, now, is a reformation that will purify and elevate the evangelical church so that her evangelistic thrust may bring people to her, up unto a higher level than we’re now bringing them.

The sixth thesis is that there is no Saviorhood without Lordship. I have been taught, and even I admit being taught in my own denomination, I have been taught that you can accept Christ as Savior now and so have eternal life, and then later on decide whether you want to have Him as Lord or not. You know, nobody ever thought of a more vicious heresy than that, and yet good men teach that.

They invite me, I get invitations from all denominations almost, asking me to come and put on deeper life conferences. Well, you see, the trouble is, the only reason we need a deeper life conference is that we didn’t start right in the first place. If we had taught the truth when we made our convert, he’d move right along nicely and grow like a little weed or flower. The difficulty is, we have said, believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and you’re saved, and then later on discuss this matter of His lordship and their surrender to Him.

Now, if you have accepted Him without knowing that He was to be your Lord, then of course, the only thing to do is to back up and accept Him as Lord. But you can’t take Christ, one of Christ’s offices and neglect the other. He is Lord and Christ. And the Scripture does not say, believe in Jesus and thou shalt be saved. It says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. So when you preach, accept Christ and believe on Christ to a sinner, you’ll include the Lordship of Christ and the right and authority of Christ to be the Lord and boss of that convert’s life all during the days of his pilgrimage.

Seventh is that the methods of the Holy Ghost and those of men are diametrically opposed one to the other. Many evangelical leaders, and I certainly find it among my friends in Youth for Christ, and I find it among my friends in the Alliance; many evangelical leaders lack historic perspective, and thus do not know how the Holy Spirit has worked and how He works. We lack knowledge of God’s ways and so we substitute our own.

Now, there are three methods that are being introduced in our time which are contrary to, and diametrically opposed to the methods of the New Testament. One, the method of big business, the second, the method of show business and the third, the method of the Madison Avenue advertiser. And Bible methods are supplemented, and the Holy Spirit is grieved and withdraws Himself. And we, because we’re young, I’m not, but some of you are, because we’re young and have a lot of animal spirits, we make up by sheer enthusiasm what we lack in the power of the Spirit. And because we lack historic perspective and spiritual discernment, we don’t know one from the other, so Bible methods are supplanted.

Gentlemen, you can be sure of this, that to attempt to carry on a sacred, holy work such as the work of the church of Christ and of evangelism and missionary activities around the world, after the methods of big business and show business and the Madison Avenue advertiser is to grieve the Holy Ghost and remain in Babylonian captivity.

Eight is that Christ needs no sponsors. Now, this particularly irks me. I hope it doesn’t irk me in a carnal way. I try to be sanctified and keep spiritual with all my criticism, and sometimes I have failed and have to apologize, but I do want to be right about this. But you know, the Wheaties approach, it’s this, this ballplayer likes Wheaties, therefore Wheaties must be good. This ball player likes Wheaties. That boxer likes Wheaties. This movie actress likes Wheaties. This big politician, the Chairman of the Board of this so and so company eats Wheaties therefore Wheaties must be good.

Now that’s the Wheaties approach. And we have blossomed out in our day, and it’s in our magazines, our religious magazines, and the philosophy is that this entertainer believes in Jesus Christ, therefore Jesus Christ must be all right. This politician believes in Jesus Christ, why don’t you accept him? This movie actress prays to Jesus Christ, why don’t you pray to Him? This playboy, this politician, this athlete, they have accepted Christ, ergo, why don’t you accept Christ?

Now that’s the Wheaties approach. Do you know what that does? That makes Jesus Christ to ride in on the sponsorship of some big shot. That’s big shot-ism, brethren, and I am against it 100%. And it’s your business to preach Jesus Christ as the sky-tall Savior and never make Him to depend upon the sponsorship of any man. For Paul said, you see your calling brethren. Not many great men believe in Christ. And Jesus said He hides these things from the wise and prudent and reveals them unto babes. And I have seen humble ladies, little old ladies who read little who know nothing except their Bible that were greater, greater examples and demonstrators of true Christianity than a lot of these who were supposed to be big shots. Now, this is an affront to the Lord of Glory. We’re guilty of sinning against the Majesty of the great God when we make Him be to be sponsored by somebody.

Then nine, Christ saves us to make us worshipers and workers, but we evangelicals ignore the first altogether, worshipers, so that we’re not producing worshipers in our day. Workers, yes, we’re producing workers. Founders, yes, they’re a dime a dozen. Promoters, producers, artists, entertainers, religious DJs, we’ve got them. We got them by the thousands. Beat a bush and there’ll be two artists hop out and a DJ. And they’ll have a Scofield Bible under their arm, but they’ve departed far from the Scofield Bible.

We are to be worshipers brethren, Tarry ye until ye be endued with power from on high. Why? Because God wants worshipers first. Jesus did not redeem us to make us workers. He redeemed us to make us worshipers. And then out of the blazing worship of our hearts, springs our worship. In the thirteenth of Acts, it was when they were meet together, worshipping the Lord, that the Holy Ghost said, separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work where unto I have called them. And I challenge you that every great spiritual work from Paul to this hour, has sprung out of spiritual experience that made worshipers. Unless we’re worshipers, we are simply religious, Japanese dancing mice moving around in a circle, getting nowhere.

Now tenth, I’m trying desperately to crowd these in. The tenth is that the spirit of modern evangelicalism seems to me to be foreign to that of the New Testament. There was an old fellow by the name of Democritus or I believe that’s the way you pronounce his name. He was an old Greek philosopher. And George Santayana has written about him. And in the shade somewhere, the philosophers were gathering in and he said, and Democritus began to sniff. And he said, I smell a false philosophy. And the young fellows said, now just a minute there Grandpa, you don’t mean you can smell philosophy. He said, I can. He said whenever an idea emanates from a human mind, it gives off an odor. And he said, I can tell whether it’s good and sound and fragrant or whether it’s putrid. He said, I smell a putrid philosophy here someplace.

Well, I only read that recently. But I’ve been saying for years, that God gives us a sense of discernment and enables us so that we can smell and know when things are right or when they’re wrong. For instance, if an unprejudiced observer who had spent say, ten years in the book of Acts and in the Epistles, if he should come from another planet, or runaway Sputnik or something, and he’d come back down, he’d never been among us evangelicals at all. He never attended a Youth for Christ meeting or been in an Alliance missionary meeting. He just came from another world down. And his nostrils were all tuned to the sweet fragrance that he had got in the Book of Acts or the Gospels and the Epistles, and then He sniffed around. I’m perfectly certain that he’d say they don’t smell the same. They say the same words. They talk about the same Lord, but there’s a difference of spirit here. I recognize a difference of flavor. So, do I. I recognize it among us evangelicals that we don’t smell like those Christians who came out of the ivory palaces along with their Lord, smelling of myrrh and aloes and out of the ivory palaces.

Now, the eleventh is that evangelical Christians every day violate the Scriptures without compunction and without rebuke from their leaders. Such Scriptures as, be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. What fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion hath light with darkness and you know the rest. And this, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world and the world passeth away and the lust thereof. But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.

The church of Christ, to change the figure, is like the ark of Noah that sprung a leak. If the ark of Noah sprung a leak, you wouldn’t be here, because they would all have drowned and there would have been no human race. But the church has sprung a leak and the world is leaking into the church.

Then the twelfth is, meekness, modesty and humility make a man dear to God. The Old Testament, the New Testament Proverbs, Psalms, prophets, Gospels, Epistles, Revelation, all the New Testament teaches and all the Old, that meekness and modesty and humility are dear to God. And the man who’s meek and modest and humble, God will honor. But we evangelical Christians have geared our philosophy to the exact contrary. Instead of meekness, we’re show-offs. Instead of modesty, it’s arrogance. Instead of humility, its ambition.

Well, the thirteenth. Thank the Lord we’ve arrived, the thirteenth. The thirteenth thesis is that we seek revival, but we don’t know what we mean when we use the word revival, because we interpret the word revival or the concept which the word covers, to mean a big enthusiastic increase of what we now have. Whereas, revival must be preceded by a mighty change from what we now have. If what we now have was all right, why don’t we have that revival? The simple fact is, it is not all right and must be corrected and changed and edited and purified and elevated. We must have self-knowledge which we don’t have. We must have a changing, a giving up, a dying. Did anybody ever preach about dying to self among you brethren? It’s in the Book all right, dying to self. Dying to that snappy, vibrant you; dying to that and living in Christ Jesus, a mighty confession of carnality and pride and ambition and self-confidence and timidity and all these things.

Now, there is no escape from our Babylonian captivity. We’ve had a generation born in Babylon. And there’ll be another generation born in Babylon unless we brethren, who are in places of leadership and undoubtedly you, most of you are, unless we see these things and make some specific changes. When Luther nailed his 95 theses, there was a reformation. But I have nailed my thirteen and I don’t suppose there be anything but a song and a prayer. But I do pray, I do pray that we may do something about this. Like it or not brethren, Youth for Christ is in a place of leadership, and you’re the die that is stamping out thousands of other Christians. And the terrible thing is they’re going to be just like you. And what you want to do dear friends is to pray that God will help you to be the kind of Christian so that when he makes other Christians in your image somewhat and they follow you innocently, they will be following the Lord at the same time. Don’t you want that? I think you do. Now, we’ll turn it over to the chairman.

Thank you. Brother Tozer. Some things have been said this morning that we need to heed, not just the voice of man, but I believe to us as an organization, to us as members, leaders in this organization, to me, needs to be said and received by us. We’re grateful to God for this this morning and thank you Brother Tozer.

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“The Power of the Word“

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“The Power of the Word“

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

October 28, 1956

I spoke last Sunday night, on the 119th Psalm as the Word; the Word and the Word, the written word, the speaking word, the Living word, the Incarnate Word. And I want to talk tonight a little again from that same Psalm using some of the verses as I come to them. And I want to talk about the power of the Word and say to you that if we’re going to have the power of the Word released to us, that we’re going to have to be convinced beyond argument that it is true. For a great many years, probably millions of years in the creation and certainly at least 6,000 in the history of mankind, the little invisible atom was all about us. And then, when men learned to break down the atom and get at it and release its energy, we had the terrifying atom bomb.

Now, the word of the Lord God is not destructive primarily, though it can be that. It is primarily created. For it is written that He by the Word created things. And it is written that He by the word begets us and brings us into the new birth. And we’ve got to be concerned or convinced above all things that this word is God’s Word and that this Word is true.

Now, in verse 128, the writer; I’ll probably say, David as I go along, but really, I don’t know whether David wrote this or not. He probably didn’t. But a Psalmist wrote it. I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way. Now, that’s nailing it down there where there isn’t any equivocating. There isn’t any, this saying, well now, you don’t quite understand me, and as I see it, it is thus and thus. But the man of God said, I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right, and I hate every false way.

Now, let me say to you my friend, that to come to the Word of God, testing and tasting and tempting and experimenting, is to assure yourself that you will not see anything or learn anything or feel anything. And in this skeptical age, many people come to the Word of God as they came to Jesus, the Living Word, the Incarnate Word, when He walked among men to catch something out of His mouth or sneaking in a back way through the alley by night to ask Him questions. Now, you may be sure of one thing, that nobody that comes thus, unconvinced, will ever receive anything from the Lord. There is an act of pure faith necessary, that reason hasn’t anything to do with; an act of pure faith, an act of faith as simple, as real, as true, as the faith that the Catholic Church requires of the dogmas of the church.

Now, I believe in the faith that asks no questions and takes what it’s told and accepts it. It so happens that I don’t believe in faith in dogmas. If we were required to have faith in whatever some church leader told us, then we’d be required to go crazy in 24 hours if we tried also to have faith in the Word. You’ve got to take one or the other. But the Living Word is settled in heaven forever. And in all things, it is right and it is good the Psalmist says in other verses, good and true and righteous and very pure, good and very pure.

I read this insufferable bit of hogwash in the press the other day that somebody said that the Bible should not be taught to children; that it’s filled full of questionable stories and embarrassing things and that it’s not good at all; that it’s on borderline, its stories are borderline.

Well now, the difference between the Bible and any other book is this, that the Bible tells the truth about people, and naturally it involves sex and murder and lying and robbery and all those things, and it tells the truth about people. But in telling the truth about people, it tells it in a way that makes everybody hate the thing it’s talking about. But the worldly press tell their stories, and they tell them in a less serious and drooling way that tempts everybody to go out and do likewise.

And you will not find one lone instance anywhere in the world where the Bible ever lead anybody into sin. You’ll find the devil did, and you’ll find instances where the devil quoted a verse of Scripture somewhere in order to ruin somebody. But the Bible itself is very pure, and it’s righteous and true and good. And he says elsewhere, that it is like silver purified in a furnace seven times. So don’t be afraid to let your tiniest child read the Word. It won’t hurt the child. As soon as he’s old enough to know what it means it will begin to purify him.

Now, there are a lot of people who come to the Word of God testing and tasting and experimenting, and that just builds the ego up. That puts not only, saves face, that puts four faces on the impenitent ego because always you will find the impenitent man or woman, particularly young men or women, that doesn’t tend to give up his iniquity. He just doesn’t intend to give up his iniquity. You will find him saying, I am searching, I am searching. Pardon me for not being sympathetic with these solemn owls who look at you and say, I am searching.

Well, now I’d like to believe that is true. But Jesus Christ said one time that he that is willing to do My will, he shall know the doctrine. And all we need to do is stop sinning, and our search will be over. It’s not searching, it’s sinning that people are doing. And so, we build up our ego. Let me remind you, my brethren that the Word of God is not on trial before men, but men are on trial before the Word of God. And this patronizing attitude that we are searching, I am reading Buddhism, and I’m reading what Swami so and so said, and I am searching. What unconscionable hypocrisy. They are sinning somewhere, and they don’t want to give up their sin. And buried somewhere, in some closet, you will find a skeleton that will roll out when the door is open. Hidden somewhere, you will find some festering sore of iniquity.

And so, they cover the whole thing up by saying in a very learned way, I am searching. My brethren, the Word of God stands very pure, and all its precepts concerning all things are right. And there is no more trying or testing; here it stands the Book of God. And remember this, that God has given assurance to all men, in that, He has raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and has made Him to be the judge of the living and the dead. And the Scripture and Jesus Himself said, in the Scripture, that the words that I speak unto you, the same shall judge you in the last day.

Now what’s our part? Well, in going through this variously now and I don’t always tell you where it’s found. I don’t think I’m trying to slip modernism over on you. I just don’t want to talk about numbers all the time. It wasn’t numbered in the beginning, some people who get number crazy. And if you can’t give the verse and chapter, they think you don’t know it. But remember, the verses and chapters are put in there by men for convenience. They weren’t inspired of the Holy Ghost. But meditate, that’s one thing. I will meditate on thy precepts he said,

Now, what is it to meditate? Well, like the brother that defined unction, talking one time to a brother preacher he said, what’s unction. He said, unction is that which you don’t have, and meditate is that which nobody does anymore, or at least very, very little meditation. For meditation means to muse. It means to reflect and ponder.

Now my brethren, the heart is like a photographic plate and the Word is light. And when the light of the Word hits the photographic plate of your heart, it makes its image there. And remember this, that what is in the Word comes to the heart by meditation, for God never take snapshots. Some people try to give God His minute. I saw a book somewhere, “God Minute.” What an insult to Almighty God. We have 24 hours a day and live 70 years and give God a minute of the day. God never takes snapshots. God always takes time exposures.

And so, when the Word of God is there as light and you come and expose your heart to the Word of God by long meditation, you will find that what’s in the Book will come to your heart. And there will be help to your heart if you muse and reflect and ponder. But you say, that was written for a slower day. We’re a faster moving people. We’re going to hell faster than they went to hell that sure enough. But don’t boast about doing anything fast. We boast about breaking through the sound barrier. Well, what have we gotten by breaking through it?

These serious old men of God meditated. They weren’t so nervous and scared that they wanted to get someplace else. They meditated. They had time to meditate. And he says, my eyes prevent the night watching and I prevented the dawning of the morning by waiting on the Word of God. So many of us cheat ourselves by not giving the Word of God time to get to our hearts. Well, he said, not only do I meditate, but he said, I choose. I have chosen the way of truth.

Now, the heart must make its choice. There’s no way God can help us until we do. The Lord can’t help an experimenter. The Lord can’t help one of these searchers. The Lord can’t help somebody that is tasting and testing. The Lord can only help a man who’s convinced that this is the book and he needs look nowhere else, and then choose. When a man’s heart, when that in a man we call volition, the will, bites and snaps shut like a bear trap and it’s all over. He’s not testing now and choosing and looking around and acting wise. But he’s decided this is the book and Christ is the Son of God, and God is the one who speaks and the living and written and speaking Word come to my heart. And the heart closes down with a snap on it and says, this is it, this is it.

Some people don’t like sudden conversions, and they don’t like instantaneous conversions. But my brethren, when the heart of a man closes down tight on the Word of God, he says, I have chosen the way of truth. A heart has to make its choice you see, for if you don’t make your choice, you will never get in. Some think they’ll get in by osmosis, a kind of a leaking through the walls and the kingdom of God. And some think they’ll get holy by brushing somebody. And so, they run around after preachers and praying men and good men, and they sit and talk with them and think it’ll come off.

No, my friend, it won’t come off that way. Your heart has to make a choice. This is the Book. God is the God. Christ is His Son. The gospel is the message, and my heart shuts on it like a bear trap. And He said I have chosen. Now, that man you see must aim itself and does aim himself. His heart aims itself like an arrow and sets its seal and burns its bridges so there’s no retreat, and then you have the beginning of a Christian on your hand. Then I have a little word here that I kind of like in the 34th verse, the 31st Verse, it’s as quaint as can be. He says, I have stuck unto thy testimony. Did you hear that, I have stuck unto thy testimonies. O Lord, put me not to shame.

Now, here’s a young fellow in high school, and he’s surrounded by quick-witted, quip artists who don’t care whether it’s true or not, and it’s funny and cute. And he tries to be a Christian surrounded by a crowd like that, or he’s in an office of grown-up people who also are trying to give Bob Hope a run for his money. And it’s all got to be funny and cute, and maybe a little off center. And a certain psychological pressure comes on to ease up a bit; not be so religious, and they grab ahold of every excuse imaginable not to be quite the Christian they are. And so, they keep still about it.

Now, this man of God says, I have stuck unto thy testimonies. And I recommend tonight, that instead of you young people easing up on your Christian testimony, stick to thy testimonies. I have stuck on unto them he said. Because the determined soul always wins, remember that. Daniel set his face that he would not eat of the king’s dainties. And Jesus set His face to go to Jerusalem. And Paul said this one thing I do, and Luther said, Here I stand, I can do nothing else so help me God and the Reformation was born.

My brethren, there’s got to be such a thing as sticking unto thy testimonies. And then what’s the result? Well, the result he says, I will walk at liberty. Verse 45, I will walk at liberty, there’s liberty. That’s one thing that comes to the heart, and that’s about all I’ll talk about for the remaining times tonight. I will walk at liberty, verse 45, because I’ve kept thy precepts.

Now, one of the fallacies of the unbeliever is that the Christian must surrender his freedom to be a Christian. That’s one of the greatest fallacies that I know and I think I know who invented it. Now, I’m not sure. But I think I know who invented it, brother. Just as when a good politician is smeared from one end of the country to the other, I’m pretty sure I know what he’s been smeared with. I think it’s old Bulganin’s paint pot. And when the story gets out that a Christian is in shackles, that he’s in chains, that he is bound up, a little narrow-minded, fenced in and boxed up, and that he can’t get away, I think I know who invented that. Can you tell me in three guesses? I think it’s that old serpent, the devil and Satan.

Now, a sinner imagines he’s free and he ponders and searches and says, now I’m going to search and I’m going to ponder this over. Do you think that I can give up my freedom to become a Christian? Do you think I can give up my liberty to become a Christian?

Well, let’s look at the liberty of the Christian. He has liberty to do what? Does he have liberty to be free from his temper? I wonder how many sinners in Englewood are free from their tempers, free from blowing up like a fire cracker and ruining their home for a week? How many? Is that what they want freedom from, their temper? Do they, have it? No, they don’t have it. How many of them are free from their cigarettes? I am not an anti-tobacco man exactly, but I have had just about enough of this business of the fool on one end of a little stick and a fire on the other and blowing the result of it in my face. I’ve had about enough of it. We spend millions of dollars on air conditioning and in three minutes, you can stink up and foul up the finest air-conditioned room in the world. And the expensive air conditioning labors and groans and blows and puffs but it can’t beat the fool on the one end of the stick and the fire on the other.

And they’re always inventing a new one. I see the newest one out now. I’ve heard it on the radio and it’s got an anthem attached to it too.  You know, they sing anthems now to sell cigarettes. They used to, just, a line or two but they’ve developed whole anthems now to sell that dirt.

Brethren, how many say, oh, I don’t smoke. Well, I wish I didn’t. You wish you didn’t? Why do you brother, you’re a sinner and you’re a slave. All right. All right. You’re free, free to leave that alone? When I am walking around there and I hear him riding along or he comes on the radio. This one won’t hurt your throat as bad as the other one. I say to myself, none of them are going to hurt my throat if I can help it. I don’t have to take my choice. I just don’t want anything to do with any of them. And you can make them as long as you want to and make them emperor size and still, I don’t want them.

All right Bud, you say you don’t want to be a Christian because you don’t want to give up your freedom. Are you free from alcohol? Are you free from blue, gloom and discouragement on Monday morning? Are you free from fiery, heartbreaking jealousies? Are you free from disappointed hopes? Are you free from the fear of death? Are you free from the fear of hell? Is that the freedom you have? No, you know you don’t have it.

All right, what freedom do you have? You have freedom to sin. You have freedom to sin and pile up condemnation, mountain upon mountain, and hill upon the hill to the clouds. You have freedom to sin. You have freedom to get old, and you have freedom to get disillusioned, and you have freedom to die and you have freedom to go to judgment, and you have freedom to go to hell. Is that the freedom you have brother? That’s the freedom the unsaved man has. And he looks at us happy Christians who are as free as birds, I will walk at liberty he says, walk at liberty. What did the rest of it go? Because I seek thy precepts. I’m looking after thy precepts, and walking and I’m meditating and choosing and sticking to thy precepts, and I walk at liberty. And the only free people in the world are the people that God has set free. Whom the Son has set free is free indeed.

So that, don’t let any of you young people now, don’t let anybody fool you. Don’t you let anybody lead you aside and say, well, now, do you think you can give up your liberty? Liberty to sin? Liberty to get old and die and go to hell? If that’s liberty, I don’t want it. And yet, that’s the liberty of the sinner.

Well, what’s the Christian’s liberty? I will walk at liberty. Well, he has freedom. He has freedom from his past, that’s one thing. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want anything to do with my past, up to here. I want the blood of Jesus Christ to flow like a river and like boundless salvation in the song, to roar like ocean billows over my past and put it where the devil can’t get to it and where God won’t look at. Now we have freedom from our past, and we have freedom from our sin, and we have freedom from the fear of judgment to come. And we have freedom from fear of death and hell, and we have freedom to do good. Now a sinner has freedom to do evil, but the Christian has freedom to do good. He has freedom to love and to serve and to worship, and he has freedom to develop and has freedom to gain immortality at last.

And then verse 47, he’s got freedom to do the thing that delights him the most. Somebody came up to me recently and said, Mr. Tozer, was it Luther that said, love God and do as you please? Well, I think it was Augustine who originally said, love God and do as you please. I believe he’s the man who said it. Luther could easily have quoted it because of course, he was a learned man who knew what all these old brethren had said. But that’s shocked some people terribly. Love God and do as you please. But you know, if you love God enough, you’ll only please to do what God wants you to do, and that’s what that expression means; love God and do as you please. For if you love God, you will please to do the will of God.

So, this man, David, or whoever wrote it. It wasn’t David. I’ve said forty times it was somebody many years after David. And he said he had freedom to do what delighted him. Now the man that is free from fear of death and free from fear of sin, and free from sin itself, and free to do anything he wants to do, and then is delighted with his freedom, do you pity that man, brother? Say, poor sinner, can it be that my heart should pity, the heart should pity me, or I should envy thee? Never, never, never, for the Christian is free. He walks at liberty, freedom to do what delights him.

And so, in this Psalm, we have the mighty Word, the mighty Word. I said, it’s all mixed up. When the Bible talks about the Word sometimes, we don’t know whether it means the Person who is the Word whether it means the speaking Word or whether it means the written Word. So, we have the Word and that mighty Word that made the world, that made man. You know how you came into being? Not as the preacher said in that famous piece that I often quote, for it’s delightful and wonderful, but it’s materialistic of course. And it says, you know, that the Lord sat down on the bank of the river and took a piece of clay and rolled it in His hands until he made a man and into that man, he blew the breath of life and man became a living soul. Amen, amen. It’s beautiful. But it’s just a little too physical to be true. The fact is, God’s spoke and it was done. And out of the creative, dynamic, living voice of God, creation came into being. And it was God’s Word that created man. God said you were to be and that’s why you were.

So that mighty Word that made the world and that made man, now speaks to us in an invitation. It speaks to us in an invitation, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. The Spirit says come and let all that hear-say come, and the bride says come. And that mighty Word speaks in invitation. But you know, some people have not believed it to be valid. And some have not the courtesy even to reply. God sent His invitation with an RSVP and some people never even care enough to send God word they won’t be there. They just do nothing about it at all.

Well, I want to read to you in closing the prodigal’s prayer, the latter part, the latter section of the Psalm. And I recommend that if you’re not right with God tonight, and there is grief in your heart, there is sin or sorrow or self-accusation or remorse, or fear, I recommend that you pray this prayer. Let my cry come near before thee, O Lord, and give me understanding according to Thy Word. Then he slips down a verse and says, let my supplication come before me and deliver me according to thy word. Deliver me from what? Deliver me from the bondage of iniquity and deliver me from a record I don’t dare face. Deliver me from judgment, which can only condemn me. And deliver me from the grave and from hell. Deliver me. My lips shall utter praise, and my tongue show speak of thy word. Let thine hand help me for I have chosen thy precepts.

Would you have the heart to go to Jesus Christ tonight and pray that prayer, let thine hand help me? You remember that wonderful hand that healed so many people? That wonderful hand you remember it, let thine hand help me for I have chosen thy word. I have longed for thy salvation O Lord, and thy law is my delight. Do you long for the salvation of the Lord? Then make God’s law your delight. God will hear you. And he says, verse 175, let my soul live and it shall praise thee. There’s the quickening of the new birth, and let thy judgments help me.

And then this tender, lovely little verse at the close, I have gone astray like a lost sheep, poor lost sheep. I have gone astray like a lost sheep, seek thy servant. He knew the servant really couldn’t do much. It’s seeking Him, we think we can, and the Lord lets us try. But the Lord has to seek thy servant, he said. And I wonder, I wonder if our Lord had this in mind when He gave us His great 10th chapter of John, when He told us that He was the shepherd, and the people were sheep, and they were lost, and they heard the voice of the shepherd and that if they’d been taught of the Father they’d come and come back home. And then he said, If you’ll do this, O God, I’ll never forget thy commandment. I do not forget thy commandments.

Why not this evening, before you go to bed tonight, before you let another day or even an hour pass, why not do something about this? Comeback, like a lost sheep. The mighty creative Word has now become the invitational word to call you back, two little written and living and speaking Words, Jesus Christ the Son of God. And He calls in and wants you to come.

Now, we’re going to release you. We’ve discovered that pressure at altar services may result in occasionally somebody meeting God but more frequently results only in confusion, so we’re not going to do it. We’re only going to tell you, you won’t be able to get away from it tonight, the laughter at the soda content, the noisy planes and their automobiles and stoplights and all the rest, nothing can take that out of your ear, the sound of invitation or voice. Come on back home boy, come on back home daughter. Come on, come on back home, the mighty, living Voice is calling you back. You have only to believe and say, I consider it to be true of God and right in every detail. And therefore, my heart will stick unto thy Word. If you do that, you will find your life will begin to marvelously change, wonderfully change. The things you hated before, you love; and the thing you loved before, you will now hate and you will become a new creature in Christ Jesus by trusting in His son.

Will you stand with me please? Brother Ray, lead us in old sweet wonder. Jesus the Son of God, how I love thee, how I adore thee, Jesus the Son of God.

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Messages

Tozer Talks

“That in All Things He Might Have the Preeminence“

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“That in All Things He Might Have the Preeminence“

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 2, 1956

For a meditation before the communion service, a familiar section of Scripture, the book of Colossians, the first chapter. There in verse fifteen where it says, Christ, His dear Son, God’s dear Son, is the image of the invisible God. The first born of every creature, for by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were recreated by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things, He might have the preeminence.

Now, that’s what Paul said, breaking into it and breaking out of it again. That chapter where it clings together by a tight logic, that one has all but to do violence to it, to select anything from it. But here in verse eighteen particularly, I want you to see that He is the head of the body, the church. He who is the beginning. He who is the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence.

Now here is Christian truth. Not all Christian truth is here, but all that is here is the proper object of Christian faith. Our Lord Jesus Christ gave us to understand that after His going, some unnamed person or persons should receive new truth, which He could not give them because they were not spiritually in a position to receive it yet. That’s found in John 16. And it seems that Paul became the principal one of those so honored to receive and transmit truth that even our Lord was unable to transmit, because of the condition of the people’s hearts before the coming of the Holy Ghost. Paul was not one of the original twelve, but he was called and prepared under most extraordinary circumstances that he might receive the revelation. And now he tells us in this book of Colossians, it’s 1:18 that I have read twice now in your hearing, what we are to believe.

And so, out goes our vaunted independence. And out goes our appeal to reason, because bluntly, this is above all ability of reason, to receive, or at least to discover. And this is above all the powers of the enquiring mind ever to reach or to learn. And out goes our liberty to pick and choose. A heretic they say, is one who picks and chooses. That’s what the word means. He likes certain passages, and so he picks them and chooses them as his creed. He dislikes others and he rejects them. But there is no liberty for any Christian at any time to decide what he wants to believe.

This is the book of God I hold in my hand. And when an apostle moved by the Holy Ghost, says, that He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, and that in all things He, Christ should have the preeminence because it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell. And that He, having made peace through the blood of His cross, reconciled all things unto Him, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. We are therefore not to pick what we shall like and what we shall choose to believe or emphasize. This is Christian truth to be received, whether we understand it or not.

Now, there is no coercion here however. No one needs to follow Christ. It is not incumbent. It rests not upon anybody. There is no obligation there except the high obligation, which the sinner does not admit. But no one need follow Christ and no one will be forced to do it. All nature obeys Him. And so all nature holds together, and in Him all things consist. But the creatures who kept not their first estate, chose not to obey Him. And all the long history which antedates even the history of mankind, is strewn with wrecks of their lives, and mankind has chosen not to obey Him. And the price man has paid for his refusal to obey is written in tragic letters across the face of the world, written on the bloody highways over this weekend, written on the police blotters, written in the death cells, written on the charts of the hospitals, written in the wild walls of the insane asylums, written all over the world that men would not obey Him. But you and I, as His professed followers are to obey Him. We must. It’s not a question of whether we understand it. It’s a question of, He said it, and therefore we obey it, and we believe it.

Now, faith and unbelief stand together outside the temple, and they look in and there in the dimly-lighted, mysterious recesses of that many-roomed temple, they find mysteries. The mystery of the Trinity stands at the beginning. And the mystery of sin and Adam’s fall, and the mystery of incarnation and Christ’s Atonement, and the mystery of salvation by faith, and the mystery of the resurrection. All this is there in its beauty in the dimness of the temple. And unbelief sees it and walks away, and says, I cannot understand it. I will not walk into the soft-lighted temple. I want to be out where I can see where I am walking. But faith bows reverently and walks inside. And the mysteries instantly flame up and become a bright and shining light that lights them more and more unto the perfect day.

So, you and I are to believe what God says about His Son, not stand outside in our human pride lighted by the sun of reason alone and say, I can’t understand it, therefore I reject it. We must come on in. And when we get inside, we’ll find we can understand it at least to our heart’s content, if not to the pride of our intellect.

Now, it says about Him here, that He is the beginning, the original, of the old creation. You see my friends, there are two creations extant and they coexist, to use a modern word, in the world in which we live. There is the old original creation and the new creation, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, and of that old creation, He was the originator. And that old creation through sin is moving toward dissolution and judgment at last.

And you can’t get away from the word “world.” Hardly a newspaper, I suppose there hasn’t been one printed in the last 20 years that hasn’t had the word world and in some place. I suppose scarcely a sermon has been preached or a prayer made, but what the word world has been used in it, that word. And what is it after all? But there is a new world and He is the original of the new creation. The new creation is moving away from death, and the old creation is moving toward it. And the new creation will finally displace the old, and be there with eternal permanence.

The world is a collaboration between men that die and forms that perish. And that’s all we have in the wide world, men who die with an unbelievable shrewdness and skill, take forms that perish and recut them and shape them, and arrange them and put them together and come up with astonishing things from the simple wheel to the hydrogen bomb. And that we call a world. The men die and the forms perish. That is the world. That’s the old original world.

Now, my feet are down on that rock, I believe that. I couldn’t rest on isolated texts my friends; I couldn’t possibly do it. Those who want to isolate a text and give it to me and say, now you believe this text. I believe it alright, if it’s from the Bible, but if I can’t relate it, it won’t do me very much good. So not an isolated text, not one doctrine handed to me, but this is the foundation, the rock upon which everything else is built, that there are two creations and that one of them is on the way to perish and the other is on the way to immortality. That one was the old creation which was ruined by the fall, and the other, the new creation, which was made one in Christ Jesus. And it’s made up of all who have believed down all the years of every tribe and tongue and color and nation and language and level of education or culture, from the time that Abel offered his acceptable sacrifice, down to the latest convert in Borneo or Peru.

So, this is the message we have that Jesus Christ is the original of the new creation. He was the originator of the old creation, but he is the original of the new creation. And because the new creation is to be born out of death, He is the first born from the dead. And because the church is the first of the new creation, along with her Head, Jesus Christ, why He is said to be the Head of the body, the church.

Now, Paul leads up to this, that in all things Christ might have the preeminence. And I, whenever I get hold of a word like preeminence, instinct tells me if nothing else, but that’s an important word. And I went into the original to see what it might mean; and it just means preeminence. It just means that He’s the most important one. It means that He is the Chief One. It means that He is the top one and that there can be no higher. It means He has authority above which there is no authority. It means that. It just means that. So, we’ll not to try to display any Greek here. We’ll just say it means preeminence. Everybody knows what that means. Eminent, eminent, they say, on a high, rocky eminence means a mountain, way high there. And then, when you put the word “pre” on it, why you have elevated it, so it looks down on everything. And this is our Lord Jesus Christ. In all things, He might have the preeminence–all things.

Now, the term, all things, includes the philosophic universe, the totality of existence. It means life and matter and form and substance and law and spirit and intellect. It means the physical, the material. It means relations. It means laws. And it means all the totality of created things. And in all things, He has the preeminence. And it also denotes heavenly and invisible bodies; persons and spirits and creatures of which you and I know so very little; and the strange beings with four faces and six swings, and the fiery burners before the throne of God. And those watchers and holy ones, those beings that race with the speed of light through God’s vast creation and run to the help of the people who shall be heirs of redemption. And it means all that and of all things He shall have and does have the preeminence. He is the preeminent One. Rise as high as your imagination will lift you, and when you have gone to the highest eminence, there is one that stands on the preeminence above all the highest eminence you can conceive.

I smile sometimes at the names, the grandiose titles we invent for each other. Plenipotentiary. I always thought that was a lovely one. A plenipotentiary, I don’t know what that is. And still, let’s break it down here a little bit. Let’s see, plenty means full in all, and potent means powerful. And the ary hasn’t anything to do with the penitentiary, Brother McAfee. But plenipotentiary means that somebody who has all the power there is.

And the little fella has hardening of the arteries and fallen arches and he’s lost his teeth and he’s on his way to die, and yet he comes in robes and everybody knows. And the speaker gets up and introduces him. We present the plenipotentiary, the man who has all the plentiful power there is, says the Word. There isn’t anybody like that, only one man and they called His name Jesus. And the only plenipotentiary there is, is Jesus Christ. No, we daren’t use the word. Oh, if you put it in lowercase letters I suppose and printed real pale on the page, and have an understanding that we know what we mean, I suppose that we could without sin, call some old king or czar, a plenipotentiary.

But there is one that’s above the all the plenipotentiaries and all the kings. Now, when I think of the kings and the mighty men that have walked over the earth and with the wave of their scepter have condemned thousands to die. I think of that story told us by the missionary of the tribal chief, I think in Africa, who managed somewhere to secure down at the coast, a barber chair, and he put that barber chair in his hut and sat in grandeur and regal dignity in the barber chair and received the plaudits of all of his followers.

And after all, what’s the difference between the tribal chief in a barber’s chair and a plenipotentiary surrounded by all the culture and tradition of mankind. There is only one about whom it can be said, in all things He has the preeminence, and that all things fall down before Him, the philosophic universe, the totality of existence, the heavenly bodies, the kings and those in authority, and the princes and the holy ones and the watchers and the seraphim and the cherubim and the angels and the archangels and all the creatures about which we know only dimly or know nothing at all. By virtue of what He is and by virtue of what He did and by virtue of what God did for Him, He sits supreme in majesty above them all.

That’s why, and I speak with apology to any of you whose feelings might be hurt by this. But, that is why I never could refer to the man who sits in Rome as a holy father. That’s why I never could call him a holy father. He’s a bachelor to start with, and how he could be a father and not be married is beyond me. And how you could call him the most holy father, I will never do it, never do it. While there sits One high and supreme on an eminence elevated infinitely beyond the highest man or angel or seraph. There sits our Lord Jesus Christ. He has in all things the preeminence. And since He has the preeminence, and since for a little time, we can’t see it, but God is working out a plan that will display it. And since it’s true, that in all the moral world He has the preeminence, and all the physical world, He has the preeminence. And in the fallen world, He’ll take the preeminence when His time comes. In all this is a powerful argument for giving Him the preeminence now, in our lives. It argues with an unanswerable logic, that if He’s preeminent in heaven, He ought to be preeminent on Earth.

And I read again yesterday, that which I think I quoted here years ago, that wonderful, strange saying to come from a man who doesn’t claim to be a Christian, Aldous Huxley. That stream saying where he said this, that our kingdom go, must be always and forever the proper corollary to, thy kingdom come. And there cannot be, thy kingdom come until there has been my kingdom go, for no two kings can sit on any one throne.

So, if His Kingdom is to come, my kingdom must go. And prophetically and literally, when the kingdoms of this world go, the kingdoms then become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ, and He shall reign on the earth. But there will have to go the rule of man before there can come the rule of the God-man. And what is true in society and in prophecy in future events, it’s true right now in my life. My kingdom has to go. Nothing, nothing, nothing that this little dying man would like better than to sit on a throne. Nothing, that he would like better than to be called by magnificent titles and sit on the throne. And if he has to compromise with the barber chair of his own little ragged life, he nevertheless wants to sit on that throne. But my kingdom go before His Kingdom can come.

So, His preeminence in His universe argues and pleads and sings and preaches, that we give Him preeminence now. The wonder and the mystery of the human heart. How wonderful is the human heart. Bunyan called it, the kingdom of man’s soul, and he thought of a single human heart as being a whole kingdom. They used to call it a microcosm, the little world, the whole world in little, lying in the bosom of a man. And I can’t prove this, and so don’t ask me for the verse yet, but I feel and sense and intuit that there isn’t a law nor a beauty nor a loveliness nor a glory anywhere in the created universe that hasn’t been compressed into the human heart. God said, if nothing else, let us make him in our image and after our likeness.

And when God made man in His own image, whatever sin has done and however died, the human heart now may be through sin, potentially lying there is all the wisdom and all the beauty that God put in all in his creation, and He compressed it into the human heart. How wonderful is the human heart. Who has a right to preeminence there? Who has a right to sit there in relaxed majesty and rule the kingdom of man so? None other but He who was born of the Virgin Mary and be crucified under Pontius Pilate and to rise again from the dead the third day, to take His seat at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens, preeminent above all, preeminent in our hearts, the mysterious wonder of the heart. And He wants to move in there and become its King, its King.

I’m too democratic ever to wish we could have a king back. His Majesty is too big a mouthful for me. And if you are from Canada or England, don’t feel bad, please. I’m just an old American talking. And I understand of course about those things. And I know what you mean when you say, his majesty. You’re simply doing what custom requires, and you have as lofty a view of God as I have. But from my American tongue, his majesty doesn’t sound smooth, unless I’m talking about the One who by a life laid down and taken again, Who by the holy mystery of virgin birth, Who by the deeper mystery of incarnation, and Who by the awesome, dark mystery of death on a tree, could be raised to the high preeminence so that archangels would fall on their faces before Him. And could take our form and our manhood and our blood and flesh, or at least our humanity, to the right hand of God, and look down on all the vast universe. If you meant His Majesty, I would gladly bow with you until my knees were callous before that Majesty. That in all things, He might have the preeminence.

In all our thinking and feeling and willing, in all our thoughts and word indeed, in our home and business and work and money and service, and you think for a second that it’s easy for me to give the preeminence to Christ because I stand here in the pulpit, a bit elevated, a bit removed. It’s harder or just as hard for this old heart to give Jesus Christ preeminence as it is for the man who drives the truck that picks up the ashes in the alley.

Jesus Christ wants preeminence, and He wants it in homes and business and work. He wants it in your monetary affairs. And this, to this glorious project, this church is dedicated. I pray that God will let me die or will let me move, or some providential arrangement will take me out of here before this church ever, ever allows itself, ever there’s a member on the board, ever there’s a superintendent in the Sunday school or teacher in any class, ever there’s a young people’s president or a prayer band officer, ever there’s anybody that wants anything else except Jesus Christ to have the preeminence. When that time comes, we’re not only no longer an Alliance church, we’re not even a church. We’re not a church at all.

For a church is an assembly, met and gathered unto Christ. An assembly of redeemed people of all colors and classes, met unto Jesus Christ to worship Him. And to pray, and when need be, fast and hear God say, separate me Barnabas and Saul. That’s a church. And when this church becomes less than that, I don’t want to be its pastor. And in our service and in our worship, that Christ should be glorified. And in our all in all, in the service of the Lord’s Supper this morning, we trust our Lord Jesus shall be glorified. Don’t let’s stare at each other, please, nor let’s wonder who that is two seats in front. But let’s, if not with closed eyes, at least with reverent hearts, think on the Lamb of God. Think on Jesus as we take of the body and the bread, the body and the blood, the blood of our Savior.

Now, Lord, Thou grant that this whole service today, everything, might reflect the honor, the honor, the Triune God, and that Jesus Christ might have high priority, top place in our thoughts and our feelings and in all are willing and doing and saying, for Jesus sake. Amen.

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Messages

Tozer Talks

“How to Think as a Christian“

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“How to Think as a Christian”

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

March 17, 1957

Now, in the 16th chapter of the book of Matthew, the second of two talks on that, where Jesus began to show His disciples how He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. And Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him saying, be it far from thee Lord. You’ll notice the margin says, pity thyself, Lord. This shall not be unto thee. But He turned and said unto Peter, get thee behind me satan. Thou art an offence unto Me, for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

My almost invariable method is to consult anywhere from five to a dozen or more translations in order that I may be sure I know just what the man said, or what Christ said, or the prophet said, or the apostle. And what Jesus said here was this, you’re not thinking like God, you’re thinking like a man. Last week, I talked about that and showed that human sympathies and affections can get in and make us think like human beings down on the earth instead of spiritual beings born from another world. And I closed with the question, how shall we escape the world’s influences, and think the thoughts of God, we Christians?

For you see, the world has all of the techniques of brainwashing. The world has all the techniques. They have literature, schools, the general-accepted mores of society; they have history and tradition. They have every kind of sort of communication now, the two new methods of communication, radio and television. And they have all this.

And so, the world creates a mentality, but it is not the mentality of heaven. It is the mentality of earth. And the work of the Holy Ghost is to create on earth a mentality of heaven in the hearts of people who are on earth, but whose interests are in heaven.

Now, how shall we escape the debauchery of our minds by the world? And how shall we gain the mind of Christ so that we shall think like God? Well, briefly, there are I said, three, I said four last week, but I want to give you a fourth one. The first is revelation, the Scriptures of truth. You see, there are two kinds of theology abroad. There are three kinds. There’s a theology of the world, which is simply paganism. That’s all, nothing else, just paganism. They may name the name Jesus or God or the Bible or have some Biblical words, but their theology is that of the world. It’s been influenced by Christianity, but not controlled by it. So that while it is not Greek or oriental, it’s pagan. Nevertheless, it’s American paganism and we must, then there’s a second, we must correct that, there’s a second. We’ll never be able to correct the world’s theology, but there is a second, and that is, the church’s theology.

And the church’s theology is a compound of badly, infrequently read and badly understood Scriptures, along with what has been called, chimney corner Scripture, and what Paul called old wives tales. And when you shake this all up together, you have a strange and corrupt mixture which is neither one nor the other. It is neither Christian nor totally heathen, but it’s a mixture in between.

Well, how are we going to get to the truth, the Word of God? This book that I hold in my hand is the Word of God. And we correct misconceptions and cleanse our minds and deliver ourselves from wrong thoughts about God and ourselves and the world and sin and the future by reading the Scriptures themselves. There never was a time when so many Bibles were printed. It’s the world’s best seller, everybody knows it. And I read just this week, this last week, that the librarian down at the main library down in the city said that the Bible was the most asked for and the most read book that they have down there. That is true and that’s good. But it’s not good enough. In going to the Scriptures, we are not to go to them to criticize them nor to bring anything to them, but to find out what they teach about all these things, and what they teach about God and Christ and creation and man’s relation to Himself, and man’s relation to God and man’s relation to the future. And all of these things that we must know, we’ll have to go to the Bible to find it out.

There is a sentence used by, I think the Baptists, which ought to be true of everybody, that it is the, what do they call it, the source book of faith and practice, the only alone source of faith and practice. What we are to believe and how we are to live is given to us by revelation. And the Spirit breathes upon the Word and brings the Truth to sight. And we must go to the Scriptures themselves, the Word of God and read the Word of God.

How much Bible reading do we do? That’s an important question. Because I well know how much newspaper reading we do. I well know how much reading is done of other things. And remember, whether you know it or not, if you do not constantly correct your thinking and purify your mentality by the Word of God, you will be thinking like a man and not like God just as sure as you live, and nothing will change it but that. There’s revelation. That’s first.

Then there’s inspiration. And what do we mean by inspiration? We mean the Spirit’s impulses within the mind to correct any wild notions that we might have. Job talked about the wild ass’ colt, the untamed wild creature given over to its impulses and whimsies, that puts its nostrils in the air and snorts and bays and races across the fields untamed and uncorrected. And so with the impulses of the human heart, even Christian impulses, unless we have what the old men used to say, the sweet influences of the Holy Spirit, you know, when we came under the domination of the imagination-less, inspiration-less, beauty-less culture, we got afraid to talk about the influences of Spirit because they said while the Spirit is not a thing, the Spirit is a person.

Well, of course we know it’s a person. We can quote the creed’s. We know what the Bible says about it. We know the Holy Spirit is a person and not an it, though even the King James version uses it once or twice. But the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. But, shall we say, that because He’s a person, He can’t have influence? They talked about the influences of the Spirit. And they believed that there was a divine inspiration that came on men, and came through the Scriptures and by means of the Scriptures. But that it put within the hearts of Christian men, impulses to righteousness, the influences of the Spirit, they called it. We will rule that all out. Nobody will talk about that now. But that’s one of the things we ought or bring back into the church again, and, and dust it off, and polish it up, and make it mean what it used to mean, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the heart to correct the wild notions that we have; the impulsive, Adamic notions and ideas, and bring them into line with revelation.

Then there is a third word and that is illumination. It’s not quite the same as inspiration, for inspiration has to do with impulse and influence, while illumination has to do with Divine Light that falls upon the Scriptures. The Spirit breathes upon the Word and brings the Truth to sight. And it was our father’s belief that the word of God could not be understood unless the Spirit breathed upon it. The Methodist believed that. The early Baptists believed that. The Salvation Army believed it, and the Lutherans used to teach it. And it was true taught in the Presbyterians. All Protestantism once believed it, that it took an illumination of the Holy Ghost to make us see Truth. And the German said, the heart is always the best theologian, always better than the head, because it’s there the illumination falls.

So, illumination is the third word. And we must have the illumination of the Spirit on the Scriptures. Saw through the Word of God. Saw through it and read it through, and yet never have any illumination on it. It’s like walking in the night. But when we have the illumination of the Spirit, breathing on us, then we know we know. And it saves us from the darkness of reason, for reason is dark, don’t forget it. In the world they tell us, and this is part of the world error; they say reason is a lamp. And there is a sense in which that is true. Reason is a lamp.

When I was a boy, I went fishing with an old fellow named Billy Q as I recall, an old man. And we fished along a creek, or run, we called them there. It was very dark, very dark. We had no lights of course, of any sort, and it was very dark. But he had a fire going. And I said, Billy, how are we going to get home? How are we going to get out of here. We were really in the bushes. And he smiled in front of the fire there. He was an old woodsmen and an old fisherman and he knew. So, he picked up a firebrand. And you know, a burning firebrand gives off very, very little light. But Billy knew what to do with it, so he just began to swing it. And swinging it around his head, he walked ahead of me. And as he swung it around his head, the flame went out, but the glow came on, and Billy enlightened our pathway. Illumination took us clear up the path and back onto the road so we knew where we were out of the bushes. He did it by swinging around this brand that glowed by the wind, in the wind.

Now, that is one kind of illumination. But there’s a better kind, and you know what it is. We have now the electrical lights, various sorts of electric lights. And we have artificial lights which aren’t really artificial. They’re actually, they go back to the sun, but they’re caught and funneled in another way and we call them artificial. And that kind of illumination is infinitely better than swinging a firebrand round your head.

Well, now about all the light that you and I can have by nature is the light of the firebrand we swing around our head. But there is a better light than that, and it is the illumination. Reason is a firebrand, and it’s better to have it than not to have it. And if we do have it, it’ll help us to walk right and stay out of jail and look after our families and be decent. Reason will do that. And we can by vigorously swinging a little stick we call reason. We can get enough light to walk right, but we can’t get enough to save us from the torch itself. We can’t get enough to save us from the world itself. It takes revelation plus illumination that our minds might be illuminated by that which is above reason. If you think that Paul ever fell on his knees before reason, and Paul was Greek-taught, don’t forget it. Paul knew the Greek and was taught by the Greeks under the Greek philosophers and knew about them and could quote them. And yet, if you think that Paul was on his knees before reason, read 1 Corinthians 1 and 2. That’s all you have to do. Just read 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, and you’ll know better from that time on. For He said, where’s the wise man? Where’s the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world and the reasoners, that God made them all foolish, and He has by the Holy Ghost through the gospel given us the real light. And then I mentioned a fourth, and that is the presence of the Holy Spirit Himself to create the mind of Christ in us.

But I want to issue a little warning right here, and it is that no single act of grace will do for us alone, and we with finality, what we want. I picked up a hymnal here, my old 108-year-old hymnal. I go to it sometimes as a source of inspiration. Here was a man of God and they used to sing this in the Methodist Church and other churches. Jesus, plant the root in me; all the mind that was in Thee. Settled peace I then shall find, for Jesus is a quiet mind. Anger no more shall feel, always even, always still. Meekly on my God recline, Jesus is a gentle mind. I shall nothing know besides Jesus and Him crucified. Perfectly to Him be joined, Jesus is a loving mind, I shall triumph evermore, gratefully my God adore. God so good, so true, so kind; Jesus is a thankful mind. Lowly, loving, meek and pure, I shall to the end endure. Be no more to sin inclined, Jesus is a constant mind. I shall fully be restored to the image of my Lord, witnessing to all mankind, Jesus is a perfect mind.

Now they used to long for that, and when a young preacher came to be ordained, they said, have you succeeded in entering into the experience of this perfect mind, perfect love? And he said, no sir, I haven’t yet. And they said, are you seeking? And if he could say, yes sir, vigorously; earnestly seeking they would ordain him. They wanted to know that he either had had some kind of an experience or was earnestly seeking.

Well now, I want to warn that no single act of grace, and it’s never meant to teach it, no single act of grace will do this alone. The mightiest, overwhelming anointing of the Holy Ghost that ever came on a man, will not do this work finally and alone. We can undo the work of God and do it in our own hearts. God wants to baptize us with a spiritual mind and He will do it, but it requires that we live by the Word, that we study the Word, that we fill our minds with the Word, that we look to Him every moment for illumination.

And then there comes our fifth word, cultivation. There is something for us to do. We must cultivate the Spirit’s mind, the mind of Christ. Let this mind be in you, said the man of God. Bent is really what He meant rather than intellect. But let this mind be in you. We’ve got to cultivate. It’s a great mistake to think that we can get converted and then because we have it in Christ, we have everything and from there on we can give little attention to it. It’s a great mistake to think that if we go on and are filled with the Spirit of God, that’s the end of it, and that there’s nothing nowhere from there.

My brethren, when Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit, anointed is the word that was used by Peter, anointed with the Holy Spirit. Do you know the next thing He did? What was it? He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. That was the next thing. So, don’t think for a second that the anointing of the Holy Ghost in any degree or measure that God may give or may have given it to you is sufficient. There must be cultivation. And by steeping our minds in the wrong things, we can undo the work of God in making the mind of Christ.

I wonder if I could dig up kind of a grotesque illustration. Suppose that there is a very fine interior decorator. He has consulted the finest, most artistic minds that he can could locate, and he is busy decorating a room. And he has his various colored paints there, and he’s doing it slowly. And this room is evidently going to be a beautiful room, beautifully designed and beautifully done. And then quitting time comes and he goes home and in the middle of the night, some scoundrelly little vandal-ish boys come in and to have themselves a good time, and I wouldn’t have been above it when I was a kid. They pick up brushes and go to work, and undo everything up to that moment. And it’s repeated the next night and the next night. That’s exactly what you and I can do my brother. The mighty Holy Ghost can bring a thankful mind, a noble mind, a pure mind, and begin to teach us to think the thoughts of God. And we can walk right out and fall into the hands of influences like bad boys that will paint weird pictures and make our ugly faces all over the walls of our hearts. And instead of the walls of Zion, standing in their beauty, they will be defaced by the mischief of the devil.

So, you and I have to cultivate the mind of Christ. You cannot without the Scriptures have the mind of Christ, and you cannot know the Scriptures without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Ghost. But even these will not keep your mind heavenly unless you cultivate a heavenly mind, by prayer, by meditation, by dreaming over the Scriptures, by deliberately thinking God’s thoughts about things, and by deliberately eliminating the influences that make your mind either impure or worldly.

I sometimes don’t care whether I’m with some certain Christians or not. They don’t do me any good and I can’t do them much good. For everything from the time, you get with them until you leave is the world. It’s the world, it’s a nice part of the world, but it’s the world nevertheless. But there are some thank God that when you talk to them, the conversation swings around as a needle in the compass swings around to the north magnetic pole. And pretty soon, you’re talking about wonderful things. They that loved the Lord met and talked often one with another. And the Lord heard it and wrote it down in a book. And they shall be mine, saith God in that day.

We can be too jocular. We can be too worldly. We can know too many things, and we can be interested in too many things, and thus scatter our mind. Jesus talked about a single eye, and Paul said, this one thing I do. So there must be a unifying of the forces of our minds and a settling of our minds on the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we’ll think like Jesus. Would you say that narrows our minds, narrows them terribly? Oh, my friends, just what little experience in a small, imperfect way that my own heart has had, I want to tell you that it doesn’t narrow them at all, but it releases them into a vast world of freedom, our minds I mean, into a vast world of freedom that we never knew before.

He is not a caged-bird, who looks heavenward and moves toward God. He’s released. He’s in the cage who thinks as man thinks. Peter was in a cage. His mind was in a prison when he said, Lord, that isn’t the way we do it here. Don’t go get yourself killed. You don’t need to. Pity yourself, Lord. He was in a cage, and it was the Lord who was free when He turned on him and said, you’re thinking like a man instead of like God. That’s not good grammar, but that’s the way we say it now. We’re thinking as a man thinks instead of as God thinks.

Now,  my brethren, may we not these days, don’t go home from church this morning, or wherever you’re going, and by remembering the latest Reader’s Digest quip, or the funny thing somebody said, or some worldly thing, dissipate the influences of the Holy Ghost. But, rather go and live in line with them. And then you move upward into freedom. And it’s the centered mind that is the free mind. It is the scattered mind that is an imprisoned mind. And the mind of the world is imprisoned, but the mind of the Christian is released upward into God, upward into infinitude, upward into the vast sea of being we call the Godhead.

So, that is how we escape the evil influences of the world and get a mind like Christ: revelation, inspiration, illumination, the indwelling Holy Ghost, and cultivation.

I hope you’ll be back tonight. There will be a lot more here. If things go as they have been, I think they will. Some are coming that I know from out of town. And I want to talk tonight and give the 10th in a series which I’ve been following Sunday nights and we’ll have one of those gracious, wonderful song services. I don’t ever hear anything like it anyplace to go. And I could come and sit and listen and join in with my cracked baritone and when time comes to preach, I could go home and say, well, I’ve been to church. So you come tonight. Breathe deep before you get here. Get your lungs ready. We’re going to have a great evening by the grace of God. All right.

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Tozer Talks

“Peter and the Lord“

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“Peter and the Lord”

Author and Pastor A.W. Tozer

March 10, 1957

In the 16th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, the Gospel as written by Matthew under the inspiration of the Spirit, beginning with verse 13. When Jesus came into the coast of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, whom do men say that I the Son of Man am? And they said, some say that Thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, others, Jeremias or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, but whom say ye that I am? Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. And charged He that his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. From that time forth, began Jesus to show unto His disciples how He must go up unto Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him saying, be it far from thee Lord. This shall not be unto thee. But Jesus turned and said unto Peter, get thee behind me, satan. Thou art an offense unto me for thou savoreth not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

Now, I want you to notice the illogic that is here. First, Jesus blesses Peter because Peter is illuminated and has a testimony that our Lord approves. And then following immediately upon that, Jesus, because there’s more light there, gives still more light and says, I must go up and suffer and be killed and rise again. And the same Peter, whose name had been changed and who was said to be the rock, and thou art Peter, and the same Peter that had had the words blessed art thou for the Father has revealed this to thee, takes Jesus aside. Took Him I assume, took Him aside and rebuked Him and said, be this far from thee Lord. This shall not be unto thee. What you’ve said, isn’t so. It can’t happen to you. But He turned and said under Peter, get thee behind me satan. The same one that He had said, blessed art thou, Simon Barjona. Get thee behind Me satan. Thou art a stumbling block to me, for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

Now, if these two stories, or the two situations that are revealed here, had been backwards to each other, I could have understood it. In verse 21-22, and three where Jesus says that He has to be crucified, and Peter rebukes him for it, and Peter says, get behind Me, Satan, if that had come earlier. And then the great confession had come later, I’d have done what everybody is forced to do. I’d have concluded that there had been a conversion take place in between. But it was a backward conversion. Jesus had predicted that He should be taken and arrested and crucified, and finally He should rise again from the dead. And Peter had protested this. And Christ then rebuked Peter. Now that’s the situation. And the fact that Peter had been illuminated by the Heavenly Father, according to Jesus own words previously, that he had faith in Christ Jesus and nobody else had, and that he was willing to give that as a testimony. This, though it brought the approval of the Savior, and the pronouncement of blessing upon Peters head, it didn’t guarantee Peter against mistakes.

Now, with that thought as a background, I want to go on and point to you simply, that human sympathy can impair spiritual judgment. Peter loved the Lord Jesus. And when Jesus said, I’m going up to Jerusalem now; and you’re thinking of me as the great Jesus that can heal the sick and raise the dead and still the waves and do wonders. But I’m going up to Jerusalem and in a measure, I’m going to disappoint you. I am going to be taken by the Gentiles. And at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, I’m going to be killed. And then He added, I’ll rise again the third day.

Now, if it had been today, they’d have suggested a vacation to our Lord. They’d have said, now the pressure is too heavy, Master. And we love you and we believe in you, but the pressure is too heavy. Evidently, you’re not in a very good mental state. And therefore, we suggest, we will pay your way to Florida. And we will give you a month just to loll around in the sun. But there was nothing wrong with our Lord’s mind. Nothing at all, no exhaustion here, no need of a vacation. He rested when he needed to and told them to do the same. But that wasn’t the trouble here. The trouble was, as He said to Peter, thou savorist not the things that be of God, but the things that be of man. Peter’s mistake was natural enough, and that was just why it was a mistake. It was a natural conclusion.

And Jesus said, you think not, though I’ve looked up about a dozen versions and read about a dozen versions, the most scholarly and accurate, to see what He really said, and they vary. And what Jesus said seemed to be about this. He said, your point of view is earthly instead of heavenly. Your viewpoint is man’s and not God’s. You’re thinking like man, instead of thinking like God. That’s what he said, in effect, thou savorist not is rather old English and we don’t say that anymore. You don’t walk up to a man and say thou savorist wrong. You go up to him and say, I think you’ve got a wrong opinion. It’s just a different way of talking. But that’s what Peter said. And it was Peter’s sympathy. That’s what Jesus said, and He said it because Peter’s sympathy had led him to deny truth, rebuke the Lord and called down self-pity on the Savior. The margin says, pity thyself, Lord. Another version says, why, God have mercy on you Master. This can’t happen to you.

Now, human sympathy then can impair spiritual judgment. Now, we can hardly exaggerate the injurious effect of the fall. When the devil began to deny the fall, about the time of higher criticism and what we now call modernism; when he began to deny the fall and say that humanity has not fallen from a better place, but climbed up to its present position from a worse one. One of the major tenets, one of the keys to unlock all Christian understanding was taken away from us. But we can hardly exaggerate the injurious effects of the fall. And we are made to see, by the words of our Lord and by the Bible generally, that even our good is bad. Or if that’s too strong to say that even our good is bad, then we may say that if it is not bad, it is at least, it at least may blind us and mislead us.

Now, it’s pretty hard to walk up to Peter and say, Peter, your human sympathy is bad. And yet our Lord seemed to do it, for He said, you’re satan; that’s satan talking through you. And this viewpoint of yours, that I’m to be protected and not allowed to suffer, it’s not right. It’s a human thing and a fallen thing, and it’s not God thinking in you. It’s you thinking yourself, or the devil thinking through you. Get behind me satan. So that human affection, one of the most beautiful and tender things left in the world, yet places us on the other side from God, for that’s exactly what happened here. Peter was placed on the other side from God because his affection for the Lord Jesus forbade that Jesus should go and suffer, and said, God, have mercy on you. Don’t you pity yourself Master? Don’t you see, this can’t be. We won’t allow this. And his human sympathies were talking, and his affection was eloquent. And it was this beautiful thing as we say. Human sympathy untouched by Divine Love that placed Peter over on the other side, even though I hesitate to say it, on the side of the devil temporarily and away from Jesus Christ.

Now, the human reason is fallen. And being fallen, it’s not trustworthy. It is like a false compass that is just a little bit off, not much, but enough off so that if a ship or a plane trusts it, there’ll be tragedy and break. It is like a watch that varies, first running ahead and then falling behind. And it may do for a farmer maybe who doesn’t care whether it’s seven or nine to him. It doesn’t make too much difference, but to someone who depends upon a watch, such as a railroad man, it can mean wreck and death. If it’s a varying watch, the human reason is like a colorblind eye in traffic that doesn’t know when the lights have changed.

Now, that’s human reason. And that’s what Jesus meant when he said, Thou thinkest as man thinkest and that’s why you’re so mistaken. And because the human reason is fallen, the religious judgments are warped. They’re warped by passion and by fear and by desire and by prejudice and by pride, all these warped human judgments, just as a watch may have something wrong with it, and its hands may thus be deceiving the owner. Or, just as a compass may deceive the sailor, so human judgments are deceiving to the human who has to trust them, because they’re twisted by the magnetic attraction of passion. They are driven by the dynamic force of fear, desire and prejudice and pride and many other things, twist our judgments. And yet, we are dependent upon our religious judgments to a great degree, because we’re bound to approve and disapprove every day, we’re alive. The Bible says, test the spirits and see whether they be of God.

And the Bible also says, prove all things and hold fast that which is good. And the Bible says, by your fruits, you shall know them. And it says that in one place where it’s possible to be where our senses are sharpened, and our inner life able to tell what is good and what is bad. Hebrews and Paul talks about that now, yet be even though we have a warped, religious judgment, and even though some of those things that are best to us, our sympathies and our affections, will help to warp our judgments. Yet we are forced to use those judgments I say and make decisions that involve life and death and heaven and hell. A carpenter or a farmer or a coal miner or a man who deals in great rough chunks of things, a little mistake might not be so harmful to him, but let us surgeon make a mistake. Let a surgeon make a mistake and how tragic it is. Let a pilot in the air there make a serious mistake, and how tragic it may be and sometimes is for everybody on board.

And you and I are compelled to make decisions, not great chunks of decisions that don’t matter; don’t matter whether it’s seven or nine o’clock, whether we’re on this latitude or longitude or another one or what, but that involves life and death and heaven and hell and peace, a woe forever. And yet, the Lord said to this man, Peter, your thoughts are not God’s thoughts, but the thoughts of man and you think like a worldling.

Now my brethren, up to now it might be discouraging, but I have this to tell you, that the Bible, the Christian dynamic, engages to redeem and save the human mind. The Christian dynamic engages to purify the emotions and to deliver us from the things that warp our judgment: fear and hate and prejudice and pride in these things, and warp our judgment. And the Christian message and the dynamic engage to save us from the carnal human sympathies and from inordinate, carnal affections.

Do you want me to give you an example of what a carnal, human sympathy will do? Here is a pastor, and while he may be himself a saved man and believe in the new birth and the gospel, his human sympathies, such as Peter showed here, often lead him to do, to say this. He goes to visit a man who has been and is known to be a sinful man, a very sinful man. And he’s always been sinful and he’s never lived any other kind of life but a sinful life. And they tell him at the door of the hospital room, the nurse whispers this man has only a few hours. And he checks with the doctor, yes, he has only a few hours. And the weeping wife outside trying to keep back her tears and says, John’s gone in only a few hours. And then she says, but Pastor, I want to ask you one thing. He’s a very sensitive man. He has been all his life, easily hurt, and he’s an affectionate, warm-hearted man and his ideas of religion have all been very broad, and please don’t talk to him about Jesus. Please don’t talk to him about the Savior at all. Because if you do, you will stir him up and he may even have fewer hours to be with us. So when you go in, console him and comfort him.

Well, this pastor stands there in the door, looking at the sad, eager face of the wife, and then looking in at the set face of his old sinner friend whom he knew, and he’s caught in the middle. Is he going to think like God, or is he going to think like a man? Is he going to have divine love or human sympathy? Is it going to be God’s way or man’s; but he’s too weak. He has his children think of, a nice job, and he’s too weak. So, he allows sympathy to get the better of him.

So, he goes in and chats a bit about the weather and he saw a robin this morning, and you’ll be ought of here soon, John. You’ll be back on the golf links and I’ll see you again. He knows he’s lying. And so, after a little perfunctory prayer in which nothing is mentioned about sin or repentance, or the new birth, or hell or death, he goes. He’s made his pastoral call. Three days later, he has the funeral. Again, human sympathy comes and dictates, and human affection says you don’t dare tell the truth about this man. So, he gets up and reminds the public what an outstanding citizen John was. And the shadow falls over everything. The coffin is screwed shut. The man is put down in the grave to await the judgment of the wicked dead. And there has been a falsification of divine truths. Human sympathy has conquered over God’s love. And human affection and pity have taken the place of the tender mercies of the Holy Ghost. Truth dictated that he go in and say to the man, friend, please don’t feel bad, but I must tell you that you’ve been a sinner and except you be born again, you shall surely perish. You may not have long and I’m here as your best friend you ever had. You don’t know it, but I am the best friend you ever had, because I’m telling you, you don’t dare face judgment the way you are. That would be the kindest thing, but it wouldn’t be the most sympathetic thing. It would be the truest thing, but it wouldn’t be the most affectionate thing. And that happens all the time. Afraid to talk to them when they’re dying, for it will hurt their feelings and then preach them into heaven after they’re in hell.

Jesus turned on his old friend Peter and said, and I can hear sadness in that voice, but I can also hear sharpness there. He said, Peter, satan has taken control of your thinking. Get behind me. You are an offense unto me. That is, you’re stumbling block in my road. Get behind me. He was trying to get Jesus to pity himself and miss Calvary.

I think there has not been a time since I’ve been a preacher and been connected with the Missionary Alliance, which has been most of my all, of my adult life that I ever felt this until the Maxeys. Somehow or other I fell in love with those, Shirley and Ed and their lovely children. And they seem, as my wife and I often say, like our children and grandchildren. And for once, human sympathy rose up in me. And I felt like saying, you can’t take these darlings, to that awful Valley. You can’t, this refined, gracious, smiling little woman, you can take her in there Ed. I didn’t say it. But my human sympathies were at war with my, the divine love in my heart. For if ever there was a rose in a dirty junk heap, it is to send the Maxey’s into the Baliem Valley. Human sympathy would have said, no.

And our Lord would have said, get thee behind me. This isn’t the way my church is run. My church isn’t run on human sympathies. My church is run on sacrifice and giving up and cross-carrying and dying, and it means martyrdom or death or cannibalism. My church is run that way, not run by human sympathy. Well, thank God, the Christian dynamic, the power of God in the human life, I say, engages us to deliver us from carnal human sympathies which may be very dangerous. And other cases of sympathies get in the way.

A couple pray and they believe God and finally, years go by and there’s no children, at last, thank God, they’ve got a little girl. Well, now she’s, their delight. And they offer her to the Lord in dedication and they pray over her, and their faces shine as they tell how God answered their prayer and when they had given up hope of ever having children, had this lovely girl. Now, she’s 20 years old and she’s at a missionary convention somewhere. And she’s a Christian and she hears the call and she goes forward with the rest and says I am putting myself in the hands of God. I’ll go anyplace. And she comes home, delighted to tell her parents, I am going to be a missionary.

And that beautiful thing, human love rises and strikes and says we brought you up, we’ve educated you, we’ve prayed over you. You can’t treat us like this. And many such a young woman or man, young man has been beaten down and defeated and forced to take a path God never called him to take, and the foreign field lost a missionary because human sympathy said, no, you can’t go and waste your culture and your education and your intelligence somewhere in some hole in a foreign land among half naked pagans. Sympathy, won over consecration, and human affection over divine love. That’s happening all the time.

And so, the carnal mind is present. It’s present even after we say, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And even after Christ repeats, blessed art thou, you’re my child. The Father has revealed who I am in your mind. Even after that, the carnal mind is present, and the world influences, and it has its educational media, tradition, and history and society; in schools and literature and all the rest. And these capture and charm even Christian minds. And so, we say, we’re Christians, but we think like men, we’re going to heaven, but we’re thinking like the earth. We say God has our heart, but our mentality is a carnal thing. How shall we then escape the world influences?

It would be time for another sermon, and I wonder, if right here, I shouldn’t break off, and next week, give you a four-point sermon on how we can escape the carnal mind and the earth and the world’s thinking and think like Christians. I’ve got a little four-point conclusion here. But I think I’m going to hold it. It’s five minutes to twelve and I’ve talked about long enough.

But I’ll conclude anyhow by saying this. That we don’t dare trust our human sympathies, and we don’t dare trust our human affections. And yet, we can’t eliminate our human affection. How can you? Already I’ve loved that little boy that I held in my arms this morning. I’ve never seen him before, but already, he grinned at me with that broad, toothless grin. Already I love him. How can you keep from it? What can you do? Is it wrong to love your babies? Is it wrong for me to grin every time I think of my little grandson Paul? No.

Human sympathy is a valid thing. Human affection is a valid thing. But when we project it upward into the spiritual realm and try to understand the strange, self-contradictory mystery of a cross, by means of it, we always fail. And that’s what’s the matter with liberalism and modernism and half of these so-called churches that have no life in them. They have glorified the tender virtues, sympathy and kindness and friendship and tolerance. They’ve glorified the human virtues, and they’ve pushed them upward into the kingdom of God, or tried to do it. And their religion is simply a composite of human virtues.

My brethren, salvation is not a human thing, though it was done for human beings. It’s a divine thing. And My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are My ways your ways said God. And when we try to understand Christianity with our human heads and evaluated it with our human sympathies, we’ll miss it every time. Now thinkest not as God thinkest. Thou thinkest as man thinkest. Get behind me.

Now, those are pretty stern words. And I’m sure, Christ would have been called unChristlike for doing it. But he did it and boldly put Peter behind him. In one version says He turned His back on Peter it’s told, dramatically saying, get out, I can’t listen to that kind of talk. And just three to four verses above, He’d said, blessed art thou. No, my friend, the fact that you’ve been converted, won’t save you from thinking like a worldling unless you do something about it; unless you let God save you from it.

Next week, I want to talk about four escapes: revelation, inspiration, illumination and the power of the Holy Ghost. That’ll be next Sunday morning’s sermon. In the meantime, let us thank God we don’t have to be carnal men and think like carnal men. That God has given us His book and He’s given us His Spirit. And if we dare to be cross-caring Christians, we can get deliverance from the sentimentality of the world and rise into the love of God and see clearly. Amen.